Dutch Masters

This past week on my photography blog I did a series of these 3 rural Dutch scenes here in Holland, utilizing the PhotoShop craquelure texture to make them look like oil paintings.  When Astrid and I are out-n-about on our weekend car trips, I get inspired by what I see and sometimes can't help but "mess around" with my images, if I can get away with it.

But here is where it gets embarrassing (and shame on me for never taking an art appreciation class in college!).  I had heard the names of many painters all my life---like Rembrandt, Picasso, Dali, Vermeer, Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse, Da Vinci, Raphael, Rubens, Botticelli---names that had meaning to me even if I couldn't tell you whose painting was whose.  However, it wasn't until later in my life that I ever connected "The Dutch Masters" to a country called Holland/The Netherlands...where I now live!

DUH!  Can you explain that...the disconnect we have sometimes between language and meaning.  How could I not connect that there are great painters from The Netherlands who are therefore called DUTCH masters!

That reminds me of something from my early Sunday School days when we sang the "We're going to the mansion on the happy day express" song.  "The letters on the engine are J-E-S-U-S" but what I always heard was "the letters on the engine:  R-J-E-S-U-S." When I finally got it later, I just laughed and laughed.  DUH!  Of course I know how to spell Jesus.

See, language plays tricks on us.  And I'm talking about our own Mother Tongue.  What tricks will Dutch play on me, I wonder!  My second language.  Actually, it's my third language.  Spanish is my second language, which I can speak much better and faster than Dutch.  There are times with Astrid (and even at school) when I know I need to make a non-English reply but my spontaneous, unconscious response will be Spanish.  I know the Spanish word, not the Dutch word.  I know that it's not supposed to be an English word.  HAHAHA!  It makes me laugh when I write it now but DUH!  Language.

Did you know that in English cows MOO but in Dutch they BOE (pronounced BOO).  [Maybe Eliza can tell us what they say in Swahili.]  Oh, and we in English take photos but in Dutch they make photos.  We write things down and they write things up.  We sleep in over the weekend and they sleep out.  Go figure.  This is the beauty and fun of language.

But back to "dutch masters"...there are none better for me than the windmills and the sheep...and anything else that sets foot in the polder.  That includes all the gates as well as the cows and rabbits and geese and swans (almost every polder/meadow has a pair of swans that mates there for life and never leaves).

There's nothing else like it for me.  It's an art museum I enter almost every weekend, ooohing and aaaahing...and I know every "master" by name! 

Life Is a Journey

Or to put it another way, some things are just no-brainers.

Here I am, 5 months into another country with a different language than my own (Dutch is supposedly one of the 5 toughest languages in the world), and I can't carry on even the most basic of conversations...unless you count the "bedroom" Dutch I speak with Astrid.

So today, just days shy of my 65th birthday, I'm going back to school.  The operative words here are just shy of 65 because I'm getting in just under the wire to save myself €5813 (approx. $7,262 in today's exchange).  Dutch law requires anyone who immigrates to take an inburgerings (integration) exam within 3 years of arrival showing knowledge of Dutch society and language...up until age 65.  After 65, the requirement is dropped.  Technically, when I received my initial one-year residence permit in February, I became exempt from inburgerings because my 65th birthday is in this first year.  So in that regard, I do not have to go back to school.  I'm free to remain a dummy when it comes to Dutch!

However, if I really want to learn Dutch and not use my age as an excuse, I have the good fortune of being just shy of 65 in order to take advantage of the City Hall subsidy for the one-year Dutch course at nearby Da Vinci College.  After my birthday in June, I no longer have the option of taking the €6083 course for just €270 ($337).  This is what I mean by a no-brainer.  With a little bit of scrambling, some assessment tests before my trip back to Atlanta last month, and meeting up with my class advisor after Atlanta, I am hot to trot...today.

I just refuse to be an Ugly American (don't even get me started)!

Astrid had kept her old bike from 22 years ago, which will be my faithful companion to and from school, 15 minutes each way.  Trust me, before today I took several dry runs to make sure I had it all down pat.  It's not the bike riding per se (how do you ever forget to ride a bike?) but navigating the highest-bike-population-per-capita-of-any-country-in-the-world streets of Holland alongside of car traffic.  That and narrow streets!  I've had to get more confidence in riding my bike to school than going back to school itself!

I know all of you will wish me lots of good luck, for which I thank you.  But I've been thinking about  how Life is a Journey...for ALL of us.  Sometimes it's smooth sailing with a partner at our side and a wind at our backs.  Sometimes it's a maze laced with crossroads and dead ends that keeps us turning this way and that.  Other times it's a very bumpy road with potholes and detours of every kind.  Not even our mothers told us it'd be a rose garden.  Nor were we ever really promised our heart's desires...or even the slightest of indications where we'd end up after all is said and done.

That's probably why they say it's not the destination...but the journey.  And I'm sure that's why some things are no-brainers when they come alongside of us, like a caravan, joining us for a season and inviting us to but latch on for a bit.  You just reach out and grab on, knowing you're ready for the time of your life! 

On What Grabs Our Attention

They say (as they're wont to do) that after you get married, you should continue doing those things that attracted you to each other if you want your marriage to last.  Since Astrid and I met each other through our mutual photography site (Shutterchance) and then started doing photo hunts together in Holland, which we have no intention of stopping, I'm guessing we'll be happily married forever.  I like that thought.

Interestingly, when we compare our photographic styles, we've discovered this difference:  I tend to go for the big picture and she for what we call the macro/close-up shots.  I have a theory about that.  Most of what I see now in my new home in Europe is new to me.  I'm still looking at the forest.  Astrid is used to the forest and so looks more at the trees.  Little by little, beetje bij beetje, I, too, am looking at the trees.  In non-photographic terms, micro (close up) vs. macro (big) seeing.  In photographic terms, wide-angled vs. macro/micro (interchangeable) seeing.  I actually like both.

In a past life years ago, I had the training and opportunity to translate and interpret ancient Hebrew and Greek texts, mainly from the Bible, to address questions about the role of women in the conservative, traditional church (i.e. are they allowed by holy scripture to preach!) and whether or not homosexuality is condemned by Almighty God.  It intrigues me that the parallels to wide-angled and macro photography are similar.  Any ancient text read out of context falls prey to what we call prooftexting.  That is, you can find a Biblical quote/verse somewhere that will support almost anything you want to believe.  But if you want to be faithful to the text and understand what the original author meant, you are required to interpret it in the historical and cultural context in which it was written..not in your own 21st century context.  Contextual criticism vs. prooftexting.

Long before V&V was created, I was inspired by Frida's macro images.  Others of you also excel at them, I'm sure.  Usually I can extrapolate out from them and quickly guess the larger context.  But every once in awhile I will see something I simply cannot figure out.  Usually I'll guess or will read other comments to get a clue.  If still in a daze, I'll simply ask:  WHAT IS IT!  If I'm brave enough, I'll guess out loud and put my neck on the line, loving it when I'm right and laughing out loud when I'm wrong.  DUH!  Of course that's what it is!

My image today is basically a macro/micro image (from my 300 mm lens) that's probably a no-brainer.  It doesn't need the forest to "interpret" the tree.  Where do you typically see barbed wire?  And when you see this caught in it, what can you eliminate from all the possibilities?  Slowly you start to build the context...the forest...from what you see and  don't see (it's not sheep's wool, for instance).  You may not know where or when, but that may not be important.

So, when you pick up your camera, what grabs your attention?  Is it the big picture or the close-up shot?  Or both!  And how does it inform your world view of life in general?  Or does it?

(Speaking of world view, today I fly back to Holland from Atlanta...via Chicago and London.  Gotta keep that marriage in tact!)