A nude model

The indecent nun

Acrylics on a newspaper page

The three lady-bosses

The three managers at the Westerpark petting zoo, Laura, Andrea and Sanny....only tow left no I am afraid.

Andrea hard at work

Goodbye to Andrea

Me and Andrea, on the right, who was one of the managers at the petting zoo where I do my neighborhoodly thing, volunteering to shovel horse manure, goat shit and cow dung twice a week...no pay but hard work.

Unfortunately she decided to

return to her Sauerkraut and Bratwurst country, leaving us and the farm behind, too bad really...

Also too bad about that date we were supposed to have at the Amsterdam Hortus Botanicus last summer and that never came about, two failed attempt at getting to know each other apart from our mutual work at the petting zoo...

I don't hold it against you, my dear and wish you all the best for the rest of your hopefully happy, long and healthy life.

Portrait on newspaper page

About hardship and salvation

Amsterdam, 28 Nov. 2012.

 Rumour has it that life's hardship leads light the path to salvation...

Maybe in these so-called times of world wide crises, where the countless unemployed have Nada more to do but wasting the afternoon watching football matches on TV, though I have to be carefull making these grand assumptions knowing fully well that numerous males might disagree totally convinced that watching football matches on huge flatscreen TV set while knocking down cans of brewskies is much more preferably than getting thin soles on the undersides of your shoes running crisscross all over the city looking for possible job interviews, maybe play cards with the mates, joyfully aware that the financial problems hitting hard is actually a blessing in disguise for us the lads...

Me, I spend these dismal days of talking heads on the aforementioned flatscreen talking pessimism into the ground, analysing the future of the doomed Euro and the support packets for the "lazy" Greek, keeping myself busy with my jars of paint, though trying hard to stay economical by painting on newspaper pages instaed of buying expensive drawing paper, trying hard this way to show some simpathy with these fat bellied soccer fans idling all over the couch in unwashed jeans while Mommy The Wife is busy getting the kids from school, prepare the green pea soup we, the Dutch, call Snert and not all that popular by Argentinian born queen to be of Holland, Maxima...

No real hardship here in this country but spoiled semi-drunk soccer watchers, so no path to salvation either I guess...

11.22.63

I guess I have a carzy habit of drawing naked ladies on the blank pages of the books I read, amusing myself with the thought of after finishing them and selling them to second hand book shops, what other customers will think of these drawings.

These drawings I did in Steven King's latest novel called 11.22.63

Funny sight on a balcony in Barcelona

I discovered this very dead looking person on a balcony in Barcelona last week

My first night in the Spanish bush

My first night in the bush after cycling out of Barcelona, south of Sitges in the forest, nice bottle of Vino Tinto, good book and not yet being assualted by these terrible clouds of La Soledad.

Have to change my life style

Amsterdam, 21 Nov.. 2012.

A drunken degenerate making over a hundert doomed Euros on top of his cherished dole money, a social wellfare system called Workforce and set up to keep people like him of the street by keeping them busy collecting rubbish each morning, reflecting shirts costing the avarage tax payer even more bread in the daily wallet...keep them off the street by making them walk the street...and still needing some stupid spare change to buy tabacco and Alu cans of beer...

"Beers has become expensive, tabacco another twenty cents a bag, maybe you can help me out, Jos, Bor, was it Joost or plain old Shiva", not much left there in that block of concrete that has to pass for his head...another ten Euro down the drain and reminding me I am most definitely back in Good Old Mokum...oh Yeah and I have to do my volunteer job again tomorrow, hard work, cleaning stables, shovelling horse manure and goat shit at the neighborhood's petting zoo, but no financial bonus.

Maybe I should change my life style and enroll in that Workforce programm myself instead!!!

The Universal Will to ignore

 Amsterdam, 20 Nov. 2012.

Long bus trips can be best described as an excersize in total contemplation, consternation and irratation on the other hand have got to be banned to an absolute minimum...

Meditation is the key to the mystical union between body and mind, the spiritual power so necessary to endure the stinking farts and noisy snoring of fellow travellers, bored children and thier annoyed parents, all paret of an Euroline overnight bus crossing Europe from south to north, a bus toilet to small to turn around in, never mind having a cr*p, stale piss covering the floor...

I close my eyes and let the Universal Will to be elsewhere take over, pretent none of this is real, resign myself to the divine will to be home again...

Eventually I am immersed in spiritual mental waters too deep to be aware of this 24 h. trip through Ancient Europe. 

People on La Rambla in Barcelona

Two people who were friendle enough to pose for me on La Rambla Raval in Barcelona

Sylvia from Down-Under, The Land Of Ozz

My buddy Sylvia from Down-Under, The Land Of Ozz and her drawing, in Bar La Monyos, Barri Gotic in Barcelona.

Back in Holland now with only the memories and the Pics she send me on FB.

facing the home trip to Mokum

Barcelona, 16 Nov. 2012,

I don´t really need dozing in a plastic chair back at Sant Station waiting for my Euro Lines bus, annoyed at little black African children wailing, bored shitless while waiting for their bus up north to the Land Of Honey, Mummy giving me the accusatory look like it is all my fault she has got no control over her offspring, or maybe the accusation goes even further back, all the way to the Dutch and English slave trade...shit, I wasn´t even born then but will have to put up with the bloody blame nonetheless,

Tipsy men laughing while knocking down cheap Estrella beer proving to me that bus station are the same the world over, a haven for semi-professional drunks and homeless losers...

a bunch of taxis parked at the curb waiting for arriving travellers, their drivers are as bored as these aforementioned black enigre kids, reading La Vanguardia without any real interest...

Wainting for a bus back to wherever home is supposed to be these days while surrounded by crying babies and fustrated Big Black Mommas, overhead speakers annoucing the arrival and departure times, people who try to hard to look important, trying to look like businessmen in motballed suits that could fall apart at any given minute reading El Pais, middle aged people seemingly bewildered and probably on a social visit to son or daughter who is trying his or her luck outside of economically battered spain carrying hold-alls and duffels full with worthless belongings...

A definite feeling of duplication and Deja Vu in full progress here and will be my main obstacle tommorow...17.00 h. departure time for my bus to good old mokum, and all that comes with it...

Deja Vu in Barcelona

Barcelona, 15 Nov. 2012.

There is no duplicate of my life though it feels like that when I enter Barcelona, a city I have history with and  the capital of these independence loving Catalunians, red and yellow striped flags bungling from countless balconies betraying the  strong sense of We Are capable Of Our Own Destiny, fuck you Franco in the Land Of Ago and the same message to the present ruler called Rajoy...though he might not be El Caudillo, wellcome he ain´t here in this anarchistic city as is evident by all the rubbish left over from yesterday´s Vaga General...

Barcelona, a long time favorite urban metropole for me and dating back to my interrail years...I can feel the adreline rushing through my veins, the loniness that has plagued me so much during my cycle days and the solidary campfire nights in the spanish Campo, having come over me like ominous clouds pregnant with the promise of heavy Thai monsoon rain, fall away like they never existed...

streets full with people, Indians, Pakisani and phillipino imigres, illegal africans with a dull but dark skin complection pushing shopping trolleys full with Basura, hopefully worth something for the daily Pan, all of it familiar and a giving me a strong sense of Deja Vu, the feeling of duplication all over me...

My spirits lift all the way to high heaven and beyond while I enter the historic Barrio of Barri Gotic where I plan to take up lodgings in a small Hostal, dormitory style though I can affort to splash out and take my private room, still nostalgia and my ever present fascination with the abombination demand for cheap accomodation in a Hostal where everything is possible, whether it be a school class of rowdy French teenagers on a three day Barcelona excursion or drunk English hooligans on a stag party kicking people out of their beds upon returning drunk like skunks late at night, just for the heck of it...      

Vinaros impressions

Vinaros, 12 Nov. 2012.

It is late afternoon when I pass the sleepy beach resort of Vinaros. The N340 highway might not go right through this crappy and unpopular beach place but what I get to see is more than enough to last a life time and never return...

The air heavy with cracked petroleum having leaked into the raw sewage system at my left hand site while depressing concrete blocks of apartment building line the other side of the N340, women hanging clothes from rusty balconies, wearing garments probably purchased at second hand shops or else picked up from garbage belts, all appearing to be pregnant and eyeing me curiously...

A couple of bare chested men playing what appears to be soccer but might as well be basketball for all they care - or me for that matter -  on wasteland that is probably supposed to be a lawn and littered with red colored Alu cans of Estrella beer. The sigarette buts dangling from the corners of their mouths somehow seem to be out of place with their sportive endeavours, kicking the soccer ball repeatedly but I imagine without any real interest...

A boy with saggy daiper and a T-shirt reading ¨Watch Me¨ holding hands with another filthy little child but of the female gender here, equally dressed in the unavoidable saggy daiper but her T-shirt adourned with the brightly smiling face of Donald Duck, way too much alike to be anything but twins, look at me sort of in big time wonder...

A huge Big Black Mamma with a brightly colored blue dress that should have been motballed a long time ago and probaly dates back to her native Africa, does little to hide the rolls of fat that remind me of coccooned insects just before hatching, the posoinous type you know, going close to fifty or maybe even sixty, gives me the big friendly grin, revealing teethless gums. Dispite the dark facial color I detect the fading remains of a black eye, maybe Daddy The Hubby was drunk and angry again last night or maybe the evening before. I might not want to know her bra-size but give her my best smile in return nevertheless, realising this poor African lady inmigrant is more likely then not a prisoner of her own time and space in her particular life, no doubt having a bunch of undernourished and savagedly street educated Niños at home she has got to take care of...fat posoinous bugs waiting to hatch inside these huge rolls of fat notwithstanding!!!

Back on my Kross bicycle

Valencia, 10 Nov. 2012.

Do I feel disappointment, maybe even outright terror or a certain sense of panic - maybe relieve would be more in order here - when I leave my newly found dope smoking ´friends¨ behind in that third rate Hostal after five days of Valencia city wandering while they were at IT back in the dormitory, smoking pot all day and maybe a good snort of bad quality cocaine for the heck of it, 23 centimos German beer from the Carrefour to wash it all down, bought by yours truely though not on Pobre Moi´s dole money, Miss Rasta Haired Bob Marley Singer entertaining them with her sugar sweet voice, not exactly suited to sing Reggae but what the heck, take it or leave the dormitory...

Five more days of cycling ahead of me and the Soledad that comes with it probably responsible for my confusing feelings of terror and panic, sleeping in the forest again after partaking in Vino Tinto drinking in front of my tent while watching the flickering flames of my little campfire, my mental processes miles away in the Land Of Negative Dwellings, ponderings of long lost family and crazy adventures in third world garbage belts, totally fucked-up gray brain cells going helter-skelter, honkey-bonkey inside the Gringo head again...not exactly a way to enjoy what was suppose to be a relaxing cycle holiday, though negativity is also a sensation to grap on to...

At least a period of much needed withdrawal from the Sacred Internet, enough perpective gained here to realize how fucking addictive that nutty piece of human invented technology is, hours of useless sorting through unwanted Penis Enlargement E-mail adds with glory detailed photo attachments to get you going, visiting websites that are as useless as humankind spending all that dough in the late sixties to send a man walking on the moon...

Yeah, Barcelona, here I come, five days of cycling along the mediteranean coast and we will one more time meet like old Amigos!!!

 

My accomodation in Valencia

Valencia, 05 Nov. 2012.

The accomodation of my choise is as always in my life of the rock bottom type in Valencia, an old woman in rags that have probably seen no washing machine for some time, sitting in the lobby and having her eyes glued on an old yellowish paged comic book...

I will probably have to anaesthysize myself with at least half a gram of bad quality cocaine if I want the odour of s

tale urine and cheap perfume out of my nostrils that radiates off her...

Still... this dumphouse is dirt cheap and satisfies my fascination with the abombination I guess, apart from the fact I can stall my Kross bicycle in their luggage room free of charge...

Dragging my smelly packs up several flights of stairs, somehow I have never cared much for elevators in my life, I soon find the dormitory assigned to me, marijuan smoke oozing from the crack underneath the door I prepare myself to make acqauintance with my fellow room mates, floozy guitar music spilling into the corridor upon opening the door, a raspy female voice chanting a Bob Marley song ¨No Woman, No Cry¨, the cocaine I needed so bad to clear my nose earlier on the lobby of this seedy hostal is spiking the air like the ozone in a bad refridgerator...

Hippily dressed youngsters lying on bunk beds, smoking pot and humming along with the Rasta haired redhead Bob Marley singer, somehow remind me of my years in India when I was much younger and constatly doped up in my head, pretty much as these alternative members of the back pack scene are now....

Something bankers should try

Close to Valencia, 04 Nov. 2012.

The cacophomous roar of the metropole called valencia seems to rise up up and engulf poor Moi on my bicycle, especially so after all these lonely weeks on my Kross evading any sort of populous human centres on purpose...

Lanes upon lanes of nightmarish traffic crawling along at a slow pace in any direction, traffic jams reminding me of that other metropole back in South-East Asia called Bangkok, cars and busses jammed bumber to bumber with daily commuters, rural immigrants whose heads are full of hope for a better future and totally unaware of the bleak days ahead, sleeping in the streets a very real option for them...

Thousands of cars spewing black exhaust fumes and foul air into my Gringo face, no way to escape it, horns blaring betraying the fustration of its occupants, brakes hissing madly while I enter the city, passing block upon block of ragtag greyinsh appartment buildings, the only real color that of laundry blowing on balconeys, old battered Fords and Datsuns lining the shoulders of a bad tempered road, black porches with raggedly dressed local kids watching the endless parade of iron boxes, latin juvenile eyes darl like coal...

The two big yellow tits of McDonals and a billboard screaming Pepsi Cola at me, paper-bag luggage in Supermercado trolley cars belong to the homeless sitting in city parks, the dirty air of the city washing over me....

Life and death, blood, violence and sex, is it all back and after these weeks of self sought isolation I seem to sense it more intensely as I can possibly remember...

Maybe that was my intention all along, the realisation that this human society is hopelessly nuts to begin with...maybe something those corrupt wordly bankers in their 1000 Euro Armani suits who pushed this so-called financial crises upon us, should try!!!

More street children in Spain

Beyond Ibañiz, 01 Nov. 2012.

They remind me of a pack of orphans, a bit like the street children in the third world capitals I visited during my crazy backpack years, looking ragged and dirty, hardly human and all of them scrawny, prowling around me while I park my bike, my dirty equipment like a heap of garbage tied to the luggage rack, dark brown latin eyes full with curiosity looking up at me...

After all these little Spanish villages I have passed through, stopping every so often for much needed morning Cafe Con leche or an afternoon breqak and stocking up on my supplies, food and of course a few small cans of Estrella beer as well as a bottle of Vino Tinto to survive absolute boredom in front of my tent during boring evenings under Spanish stars and in the middle of proverbial f*cking Nada, I have come to hear their stories, most of them having moved back from the big coastal cities or else maybe Madrid where they were born, the offspring of parents who had to move back to their parental Pueblos because of Spain´s massive unemployment...No Dinero to pay the rent or food on the table...

Goodbye for these raggedly dressed city children to school mates and the Plazas and broad avenues of their erstwhile Ciudanial lives, having to cope with the dusty Calles of the Pueblos where their parents once, long ago, ran after soccer balls and upon reaching adulthood, moved to the more mundane cities of an Spain in better economical times...

I pay them a couple of cans of Pepsi coke, tell them a bit about my trips around this nutcase mudball, draw them in my sketchbook while sipping Cafe Con Leche out in the very dusty streets that have become their new playground, let them have a awkward go at my bike and have a good laugh when they tumble over unaccustomed as they are to the heavy weight of my worn out equipment, winning juvenile friendship in the process, for a short moment in time forgettng about my depressing feelings of loniless before moving on to the coast...it comes closer every day!!!