The darned gossip machine

                                          Amsterdam, 31 Dec. 2011.

Back home, dead tired after yet another day of shovelling horse manure, cow dung and goat shit, another day at the petting zoo where the gossip machine was once again in full force, a bit like wind force gale ten running wild and without restrictions across the communal minds of my dear colleagues, the who-is-in love-with-whom always a big topic in any sub-culture of colleagial conversations...

Rumour has it I am in love with German born Andrea, but then Vera is convinced I am in eternal love with Laura. Sanny is the big match maker of the farm and maybe the only one who should know all that relational "shit" is not my English cup of tea but will give it a try anyway, Andrea is a good match for you, Hans, foremost on her match making mind...

Muscle ache and mental fatique are my only concerns when I cycle home, interested only in painting, no Andrea nor Laura ruling my gray brain cells but my paint brushes, my cans of acrylics, the cold beer in my Frigo as well as the cheap bottle of Albert Heyn Vin De Table De Coleur Rouge...

So sorry my dear colleagues but the only feminity I think about are the two dimensional types on my wooden boards...wish you all a happy new year nonetheless as well as to whoever is out there on the Sacred Internet reading all these weird stories about my life and mental tribulations I write down in the privacy of my crappy old house here in Amsterdam!!!

Of hunting girl and brown-outs

                                              Amsterdam, 30 Dec. 2011.

My brown acrylic paint is a bit clotty - small wonder there considering I forgot to put the lid on the paint can last night, too much red wine, good food and cold pilsener I guess before staggering to my bed intoxicated and falling into a dreamless slumber...

Not that I care much, freaking around with my paint and brushes well into the night, alone but into the late hours accompanied only by my lifeless but trustworthy friends, red wine and cool beer, my models from the dream world where the crazy god Morpheus and the fickle lady Fortuna rule the trance I am in while I paint and paint...

I seem to remember I was back in The Phillipines last night, vividly reliving my scuba diving trips on Boracai Island, Puerto Gallera and more of these exotic locations in the Land Of The Phillipinos, starting and ending each trip In Manila's obscure area Ermita where the bars were plenty and the local Hunting Girls even more so, always on the look-out for pinkish male skin and the fat wallets these ladies of the Phillipine were probably hoping for, a couple of hungry babies back home in the back of their young female heads driving them on...making me wonder why the mother instinct is so much stronger than the father instinct...willingly selling their nubile Asian bodies to feet starving offspring...

Baby rooms in cheap steaming hotels where the all overpowering smell of stale unrine originating from the one and only dirty toilet ruled the sticky air in the corridors, groaning noices betraying coupling people...I still remember till today though all so long ago, almost like another life time, really!!!

Frequent brown-outs as the locals used to call electricity problems, and corrupt coppers apart from drunk and Pagwan promising cutomers - a Thai word for sweet talkers - were these poor creatures of the sex trade main problems...

Miss Miae from Corea

                                         Amsterdam, 26 Dec. 2011.

Miss Miae whom I met last month while walking the Camino De Santiago De Compostela and who send me a FB friendship request a few days ago...

Not that we ever walked together, just had a meal, El Menu Del Dia, in a local restaurant in some obscure Spanish Aldea...after all she only walked 10 to 15 km. a day to mine 25 to 35 km. a day...needless to say she only recently finished her hike where I am back home already and looking forward to my next stay in Thailand in only mere weeks.

Hope you like the portrait, Miae and your holiday in Marocco...watch out for these young local Maroccan blokes that would love to marry you and a free ticket to Seoul into the bargain, courtesy of your family's fortune...hehehe, LOL.

Angels with dirty faces

                                       Amsterdam, 21 Dec. 2011.

After the United States and Ireland - to name just a few - , Holland now has got its very own chatolic child abuse scandal, hunderts of fiars, priests, Padres and assorted "mental health workers", "the guardians of the faith of Man", having sexually assaulted thousands of minors, given in their care by unsuspected parents..

Like depraved arachnits waiting in their malicious webs for the innocent offspring of the devout faithfull...life time traumas caused by a criminal organisation in the very heart of the Vatican...

God will judge our actions!!! Their numero Uno excuse...

Angels with dirty faces claiming to be devoted to a higher being!!!

A cultural meltdown in progress

                                           Amsterdam, 19 Dec. 2011.

Most of my days while waiting for my Bangkok departure, are spent in complete boredom, getting up with a red wine hangover from the night before, a bicycle ride through chilly Amsterdam to that homeless centre De Tweede Mijl for a free bowl of awfull tasting soup, waiting in the Albert Heyn to pay for my shopping - no prolotarian shoplifting for me -, the usuall crap of being alife in a city that has long ago lost its appeal to me...or at least at this time of year.

However, the evenings are a different matter all together, the evenings when I withdraw to my little mental Buddhist prayer cell while I freak around with my acrylic paint, nude females in all their physical glory appear on the wooden boards I have so laboriously carried upstairs during the last summer...my gray brain cells are in some sort of strange trance transporting me across time and distance, to dirty, smelly bars in third world garbage belts, capitals and sex tourist hang-outs, where trhe local women are available by the hour in small dingy rooms upstairs or in the back of the dump, where the bed sheets are stained with the sticky remains of your predecessor's cum...

My fingers holding the paint brushes fly arcoss the wood like lightning, big daubs of paint land on the floor and my dirty old blue jeans...

Inside my caucasian mind a cultural meltdown is in full progress, having no control over my mental processes or the outcome of my crazy artwork!!!      

Boom Baba Boom

"Boom Baba. Boom!" The chillum is lit, it carries through the utter darkness. It lingers. It strives to stay alive. But if only for one moment. One moment that will warp your utter understand of values, morals, norms, and standards that make up this world. For if the chillum had not come close, the dark energy of Banaras would have never been internalized and never realized that its everywhere and that it consumes you. It pulls you and pushes you because it's in you. And is you. And isn't you... Its just the end of the beginning. It's the flip flop. Flip... Flop... It's the past and the future. It's the right and the wrong. It's heaven and hell. It's angels and daemons. It's life and it's death. It's the night and the day. For all these gracious things don't exist without the other. How can nothing (no - thing) exist without something (some - thing). For without nothing there would be no conception of something and without something, there would be no conception of nothing. They are interdependent. They are the reciprocal. They are the negation. The flip flop. The life beginning with death. Its the fire of the sun and the power of the moon. With it, you live. Without it, you die. And its all around you. Burning on the river side while Babas of God eat the very flesh that burns. "Boom Shiva... BOOM - Smoke for you are after all still alive." Puff.....Puff....Puff...Puff..Puff.Puff You are clouded. You are winded. You are coughing. You are gauging. You are stoned. But whose you? Is it you or is it I? "Boom Bolinath!" - Shanthi, Shanthi, Shanthi, and when your dreaming those dreams be mindful of realizing that you might actually just be awake

Two Asian ladies from the Land Of Ozz, part two

                                        Amsterdam, 16 Dec. 2011.

The two Asian sisters I met last weekend In Cafe De Gaaper on the Prinsengracht, the saturday evening meet-up of the Amsterdam Couchsurfing Requests group of http://www.couchsurfing.org/, these two ladies of Vietnamese origin but were born and grew up in Melbourne in Down-Under, whose parents were boat refugees after the American/Vietcong conflict somewhere in the sixties of the last century..

These two young Asian beauties who told me they needed a place to crash before their flight back to the Land Of Ozz early next morning, who invited me for a pint of beer and had the patience to pose for a quick portrait in my sketchbook...

These two jewels for my eyes who explained they had actually read my profile on http://www.couchsurfing.org/, enjoyed my artwork I uploaded on that site and would love to pose for me once back home, making me feel proud hearing the way they upgraded my artwork to higher levels as I would ever have thought possible...

Wishfull thinking it was, once back in my seventy square meter two room old house in Amsterdam-West, a quick sorty to the nightshop on De Wittestraat for a much needed bottle of red wine, me asking them "okay ladies, please take of the clothes and start posing", ...

Wishfull thinking indeed, no the ladies had to get up real early, thanks for the free lodging and will leave you a possitive reference on http://www.couchsurfing.org...still/ waiting for that possitive reference and the posing session that never came around!!!

I did this acrylic portrait of them, a copy of the pen drawing in did in my sketchbook at Cafe De Gaaper...a double nude would have been all that much better!!!

Hungry animals depending on my sanity

Amsterdam, 14 Dec. 2011.

The memories in my dream world are like over ripe fruit in my mind, flooding my consciousness, waking me up as so often in my early morning bed, the sheets soaked with alcohol based perspiration, making me feel nauseous and ready to puke my heart out...

No time to wrap them up these yellow stained sheets, put them in the 240 Euros washing machine I bought with the money I got for the renovation of the crappy old house I live in...the other 4760 Euro of these 5000 crappers I spent on booze, drug and women in that sodom and gomorra hellhouse called Pattaya twelve hours flying from my native Amsterdam, but then that is a completely different story...

I drag my middle aged body to the toilet, the contents of my stomach, my home cooking of the night before - no more Nasi Special Pork from the Kam Yin since I kicked Lola out of the house - flooding the paint I put in the inside of my toilet bowl - I live the life of an artist and put my paint all over my place, including my toilet...

I have to get my act together, have to get dressed, have to leave the house, unlock my bike, cycle to the petting zoo, hungry animals depend on my sanity!!!

A friend in Thailand

                                    Amsterdam, 12 Dec. 2011.

This is a friend of mine, normally residing here in good old Mokum though right now on a visa run to Lao, another two months before returning to his native soil, living in up in that Asian kingdom whose God-King has just turned 84 despite frail health and the last three years interned in a Bangkok hospital, the longest ruling King in the world...hail to the King!!!

Back to my friend who already had two great months - no doubt about it - in Thailand, enjoying the charming company of his local Tilac, with me counting down the days of my own departure....twenty-two days and 8 hours remaining!!!

Hope you like the painting, Paul, enjoy your holiday, your girlfriend and lets have a cold Leo when I arrive, mate.

Two Asian ladies from the Land Of Ozz

                                             Amsterdam, 10 Dec. 2011.

Saturday night and the http://www.couchsurfing.com's/ Amsterdam couch requests group's saturday meet-up in Cafe De Gaaper - five minutes walk from the central railway station which is convenient considering tourists with Pas De Couch and Pas De Host don't have to go far in a - to them - unknow city dragging heavy packs along - is in full swing with potential hosts mostly outside smoking Marlboros and passing fat joints along, exchanging the latest experiences about sexually willing couchsurfers of different nationalities...I know of one host who keeps a checklist in his shirt pocket, making sure he gets p*ssy from a new country, checking his p*ssylist regularly to be on the safe side of P*ssy Land...( his words not mine!!! )

I work my way through the heavy clouds of Mary-Jane vapour mixed with excited typically male testosterone, though I detect some female hosts as well, bragging just as loudly as their male comtemporaries making me wonder if maybe they too carry the famous nationality checklist... I suppose it would be a H*rd-on list in their case unless they are more interested in the same sex...whatever not my business.

The inside of Cafe De Gaaper feels claustrophic, a game of shadows playing havoc on my eye sight where I detect huge carton boards that read "we need a host for tonite", or "EMERGENCY, NEED COUCH TONITE", and more of the same freeloading shit, Pas D'Argent, we need that for the coffee shop, their owners looking either hopefull at me or with eyes that somehow remind me of puppies begging for hand-outs at the dinner table!!!

Two Asian ladies that look like sisters catch my eye, wanting to get to know me, "we saw your profile on couchsurfing" they tell me with an accent that comes right out of the Land Of Ozz, adding they liked the artwork in my house, offering me a pint of beer...okay, that does it, I will take them home tonite.   

Unhappy Lola

                                             Amsterdam, 08 Dec. 2011.

Not like Lola looks all that happy in this painting which makes me wonder wether or not I should consider that a compliment...I have, after all, just told her this is the last painting I will make of her and "no, you don't need to undress", "keep on the shirt and the blue jeans and don't forget to close the door downstairs on your way out"!!!

I have not yet forgotten all the crappy mails her ex-boyfriend has flooded my Yahoo in-box with this last week...I can understand some stupid Kutsmoesje  that he got my house phone number from the telephone guide...but my on-line yahoo address???

Adios Lola, thanks for your patience during our painting sessions these past couple of weeks, all the red wine you dragged along to my house, the Kam Yin take-away meals and especially for introducing me phone-like to that crazy Novio of yours...

Back in Nairobi

                                            Amsterdam, 07 Dec. 2011.

Reading this chaotic and disorderly book called Kunst Kanibaal - art canibal - written by a artist friend of mine here in good old Mokum, his crazy adventures in the slums of Nairobi which are ruled by dark skinned sluttily dressed prostitutes, ragged street children and local throat cutters, I am transported back to somewhere in the early nineties of the last century when Nairobi was my favorite haunt, back alleys where I would pick up my models and possible bed partners alike, drag them back to cockroach rife dirt cheap hotels where I would paint them on the discarded newspaper pages of the Daily Nation english edition which I would normally steal from the upper class hotels in the better parts of town..

Where I was the Mzungu and my Swahili just about enough to say Jambo and "would you like to see my room?",  - don't seem to remember these last words in the here and now though - a handfull of tatty notes of Kenian Shilling doing the job just great, now that I do remember...vividly I might add!!!

Where everybody wanted to buy my army issued military boots and the local beer tasted like cat piss but would get me drunk nonetheless which suited me just fine..drunk enough to muster up the courage to wander the dirt ridden alleys of an African metropole full with new adventures each day, each night...

I would change my hotel often to avoid crazy, drunk and drugged-up money crazed women from the street, contacts from previous modelling sessions and physical excerzise Aficionadas to kick down my door in a mad search for Mas Shillings.

Prejudices and generalisations in Farang Land

                                            Amsterdam, 06 Dec. 2011.

It is busy inside the Thai Consulate on the Amsterdam Herengracht 444, a bunch of old Belgium f*cks discussing the merits of young Thai Hot Mommas, two elderly Brabant hags in moth eaten second hand clothes looking shocked, making me wonder why they eavesdrop on Belgium sex tourists in the first place...

German Hildegard and her Dutch Friesian boyfriend Jelle, both in their early twenties and impatient to start their six month Asian trip, willing to pose for me while waiting to get their visa applications processed, wanting to know all about local prices but very little about local tourist attractions...

A budget of five Euro a day for the two of them should see them through their six month Asian adventure, a childhood dream come through, or maybe just about to begin - maybe more like a nighmare reality with empty wallets and Pas D'Assistance from Dutch embassies in foreign lands...

I tell them I have saved up well over five thousand doomed Euros and expect to be bankrupt on the plane home, leaving out my obligatory expenses like medical care for undereducated Isan wh*res, clothes and expensive dinner dates for local female members of the Sisterhood of Bar Girls, Boulevard workers and the like in that Farang male paradise two hour by bus from Bangkok...

Too many prejudices and generalisations in Farang Land already!!!

The Dutch Santa Claus and Donald Duck

                                         Amsterdam, 05 Dec. 2011.

Considering I promised the four year old son of my lesbian neighbors upstairs I would paint him a Donald Duck as a sort of misplaced Dutch Santa Claus present, it seems unfair not to keep my promise to the biggest fan of my artistic carreer...needless to say I had to add a Mickey Mouse as well...

A free of charge assignment but which will probably add positively to my Karma, maybe a shit load of presents in the youth of my next excistence though I doubt very seriously I will return as a human being...

Not with about all the shit I had to go through in this present life and the negative way I reacted to it...

Being a member of the humanoid race and therefore in the possession of a one-way ticket to the Buddhist Nirvana, maybe the Jesus Christ misguided idea of heaven, or else Allah's divine kingdom where ninety-nine virgins will happily await my earthly demise - though in the last case rumour has it these virgins will only be available for those that are mad enough, or far enough on their religious path, to blow themselves to kingdom-come in a crowd of over-zealous jews or hated heathen Americans...not my cup of English Darjeeling tea to leave this polluted lump of dirt En Esa Manera Loca Y Sangrienta-

No, no, no, these enlightened spiritual kingdoms are not there as a reward for my sins in the here and now...

Actually I am pretty sure I will materialise in my next reincarnation as a stinking fearless cockroach...but, maybe, maybe, maybe...painting these comic characters for four year old Hannes living upstairs will upgrade my next journey in this corporal valley of tears and tribulations to that of a big brown rat living on a third world garbage belt...

Another Camino photo en my Yahoo in-box

                                           Amsterdam, 04 Dec. 2011.

I seem to remember that this photo was taken on the Meseta half a day walking from Logronyo though I ain't quite sure..I do remember that the Vistas up there were worth the effort of hiking up there to that paticular spot underneath that massive cross ...

Ain't even sure about the identity of the photographer of this pic but thanks for sending it to me mate/lady...really appreciate it!

Ghostly wanderings

Amsterdam, 03 Dec. 2011.

I am learning new Dutch swear words here though it is not like I am paying much heed to the drunk male raving at the other side of my house phone conection...today Lola's ex-boyfriend is really in full swing but I have decided to face the music, hear it all out, not interrupting his intoxicated jealous monoloque, his plans for my inminent future, bleak and bloody it will be, probably better I make a quick visit to my undertaker first thing tomorrow morning and get my - by then - mangled body sized up for a luxury coffin...

The black marker between my fingers moves rapidly across the page of my sketchbook, in my mind's eye I see a sexy young lady at the other side of the phone asking me politely if she can come over despite the late hour, some ladyfriend has told her about the beautifull colorfull portrait I did of her, "I want one too, sir"!!!

"Are you listening to me, you f*cking sh*thole"?, bringing me back to the here and now and reminding me of the Ghostly Wanderings at 03.30 h. in the morning by a possessive sorry example of the male human race, almost like making me feel guilty being male myself....maybe pay him some of his own medicine...

Telling him during a brief moment of silence how I f*cked Lola last week up her *ss because she was on her period..."come to think of it, maybe you should take a taxi downtown to the gay sauna behind Leidseplein, find yourself a well-bestowed black Surinam bloke and experience first hand what your beloved Lola felt when I did that to here",..."or else I will be quite happy to pay you a one-way ticket to New York, Ryker's Island is rumoured to crowdingly full with well-hung Afroamericans, very keen on white male *ss"...

The amount of bad mouthed threats followed is staggering, better I quit this crazy bull!!! Be Die Eule, Herr Der Weissheid as the german saying goes.

  

Art Canibal

Amsterdam,

I wake up with a splitting headache, vague memories of some book presentation party plaque my poor Testa while I try to get up, hard work at the petting zoo awaiting me though it ain't one of my traditional days...why did I sign up for today knowing fully well I would have that hard drinking night La Noche Antes downtown, blond beer and red wine in great quantities, a pinkish colored book with big black letters telling me the book's name is KUNSTKANIBAAL, art canibal in my native Dutch?...did I buy it out of real interest or because I felt guilty drinking all that free booze???

Four hundert pages of probably chaotic writing into the future will give me the anwer to that question, I guess.

Some colorfull painting on the floor bringing back even vaguer memories of coiming home late and opening a bottle of Mooi Kaap red wine, only two Euro at the Appie Heyn, two Euros that will probably soon be worthless anyway with the bleak future awaing our beloved European monetary unit, pushed down our citizens' throats by over zealous politicinas who are now remarkably quiet, and painting this sleeping Lola though she didn't spent last night here...I guess with her having spent most of the last two weeks nights here I didn't really need her to know what she looks like deep asleep in her favorite comatose position...

Seriously wonder how long this boy/girl contact is gonna last...in my life relationships with the other sex are inherently doomed anyway...I love t'he carnal part but don't get mixed up in the oral love fights...withdrawal to the more dustier corners of my gray braincells my favorite defence to angry and screaming members of Eva's realm...