Earthquakes, Mudwrestlers and elegant Trapieze
I’m over in Europe mostly to visit my eldest son Sid, his partner Sylvia and my beautiful grandaughter Toni. They all live in Amsterdam at the moment and Sid invited me over to a large event called The Earth Festival he helps run every year at the A.D.M (Amsterdam Dry Dock). This is a large ex-industrial area at the side of the North Sea Canal basin.
My first visit to this site was 10 years ago and what a sad festival that was! My daughter and three year old grandson Lucas had been at the A.D.M for several weeks helping out. When I arrived on site Lucas and his pal were playing on their little toy cars between two large entrances in and out of the massive warehouse, as soon as I saw Lucas I felt he was in danger, so I grabbed him and we ran off. Seconds later a car roared through the space killing a young Italian DJ called Antonio and carrying Lucas´s pal off on the fender, the little boy was unharmed thankfully.
This was a much happier occasion. My son had since become a brewer and was still busy with the organisation of the festival and running his micro-brewery. That’s a new plus to being a mother, free beer!!
There was a heck of a lot going on among the camper trucks, tents, Mongolian yurts, and art installations. The main attraction on the first night was “the Dirt Babes”. Two almost naked women, who kist each other ferociously at the start of the bout, and then proceeded to trow each other around in a huge mud bath. I couldn’ t see all that much as most of the big blokes were standing at the front in the way, but perhaps that was all for the best.
The next day my sons beautifull partner, Sylvia, who is a professional trapieze artist, was hiked up to the sky by an enormous crane and proceeded to whirl and rotate and do the splits against the background of a glorious sky, long skiens of lilac tulle floating behind her. The effect was elegant and the strenght of her body astonishing.
On the last night we had an earthquake, it had all been prepared over the weeks and was entirely staged but so realistic, this is what happened:
the ground began to shake under foot, air raid sirenes began to scream, people were running around with stretchers carrying individuals covered in blood soaked bandages. Onlookers were kept in line by “armed guards”, uniformed personnel, and the same militia ran by the side of the “President’s” huge winged car. The tutored crowed began to howl and hold themselves at the car wind screen and were thrown to the ground, twitching and screaming.
If I hadn’t known it was all staged I would have been really scared. Lots and lots of other stuff going on, to much to tell, though I did love the enormous box that sat there lazily blowing out smoke rings.
On the train the next day to friend Karina’s in Brussels. Karina lives in the most elegant apartment in the world, the palace is across the road and this apartment was to house the King’s mistresses at one time. Karina has two well behaved children, Mira 8 and Victor 6. Karina is a geologist and investigates the soil and the water of Brussels and tries to fix it. She was married to a Mongolian for years and now they have been separated for some while she thought she would rescue the childrens cultural heritage. So they returned from Mongolia last week after two months of travel with lots of interesting stories and photos, that stirred my interest again in religion. Mongolians on a general level worship through the Shamanic Buddhist tradition, first thing theu do on waking is to read the sky and have a believe it will tell them what is happening.
I love the architecture and art galeries in Brussels. Yesterday we went to the Magritte exhibition, he is from the turn of the last centuries surrealisme school. There is his drawing of a pipe and underneath the picture it says ” this is not a pipe”. He wants people to understand that it is only a representation of the pipe and a little movie runs along side showing him cutting out the pipe and lighting it to show in fact that it isn’t a pipe.
Today piep….
Tomorrow we will go and look at the Art Deco parts of the city and on Saturday I am going to Geneva to stay with friends Nelly and Erling, I so looking forward to see them, I haven’t seen them since their fabulous wedding two years ago in the south of France.
So that’s all my news and as they say here ” Ajus”.