Here’s a fun and interesting film about deception. For most of us the word deception has a negative connotation. To deceive someone or to be deceived is considered wrong, for it is dishonest. But that is not necessarily so. The magician Karl Germain (1878-1959) once said: “Magic is the only honest profession. A magician promises to deceive you and he does”. In this film you’ll see Swiss magician Marco Tempest using 3 iPods to deceive you or better: to create magic.
Imagine you’re searching for a key, but you don’t know what a key looks like or even what it is. How will this affect your search? Where will you begin? What do you look for? And what will you think when you see the key or even hold it in your hands? You probably wonder what it is… and continue searching. My point is, in life we’re searching for all kinds of things of which we often don’t really know what it is or what it looks like. I mean: true love, passion, happiness, the perfect job etc.. We want all that, but we don’t always have a clear visual of what that looks like. And so we become restless, constantly questioning ourselves and the things we do or don’t do to find it. Therefore, try to picture what it is that you want, for it will help you searching. Imagining things can be confronting, for it may show you a life that you are far from. It may show you an emptiness, that needs to be filled in. But even then, it is without a doubt the start of getting to where you want to be. So feel free and rest assured, if you picture life how you want it to be, bit by bit, one day you’ll find yourself living that life.
Yes, I love road trips. Because of the freedom, when mind meets matter without pressure. No history, no future, just now. This short film makes you feel like you’re a part of a road trip. In Vermont, USA. With it’s 12 minutes you can argue it’s too long for an online video. But it’s not for a road trip! So, relax. Give yourself the joy of feeling free. This means you don’t worry and there is no hurry. Just enjoy. If you like, check out the tag cloud on the home page for more road trips.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “Every wall, is a door”. I can relate to that from an experience I had yesterday when I ran the Amsterdam Marathon. It was my 3rd marathon, the weather was perfect and until the point of 38 kilometers, everything went really well. But then – out of the blue – a huge wall of intense muscle fatigue blocked the way between me and the finish line, just 4 kilometers ahead. Afraid that cramp would knock me out, I started slowing down, almost walking. As if someone was pointing a gun against the back of my head. This was my focus and Where focus goes, energy flows: I suffered 2 kilometers. Fortunately, the Emerson quote popped up in my mind: “Every wall, is a door” 0r in my own words: “Every obstacle is an opportunity. This changed my focus drastically. I started thinking about what I wanted, instead of what I didn’t want. What I wanted, was to start running again. And so I did. I took the chance, switched from small steps to big steps. It hurt, at first, but it gave me confidence. I was running again! I was not going to be stopped, this wall of fatigue was actually a door! This obstacle was actually an opportunity, to proof I am not my thoughts, that I could beat my fatigue. Ultimately I was able to sprint the last 500 meters to finish in 03 hrs. 49 min. 32 sec. Not my best time ever, but still 2 minutes and 36 seconds faster than last year. I felt euphoric!
Here’s a short poetic film about the sea. It’s made on the marine vessel “Portland Senator” on it’s route from Los Angeles to Shanghai, in December 2008. It took 17 days to get from A to B and during that time, apart from doing a many other things, the filmmaker stared at the sea countless hours. He wrote down 10 things he learned from his experience and one by one they appear in the film. I’ll give you 1 in advance: “The sea is like a mirror. If I’m happy, it will be happy. If I’m sad, it will be sad”. Since I’ve been wanting to travel on a vessel like this, to experience the vastness of the sea among others, I loved watching it. It made me feel like I was actually on the vessel. Watch full screen.
I love lullabies. Yesterday I stumbled upon this one, by My Brightest Diamond. It’s a wonderful song and video, filmed during a music festival in Berlin, august 2011. The filmmaker: “After the concert I finally dared to ask her what I wanted to ask her that morning, to sing us this lullaby that struck me down. It’s Sunday morning, a morning of hangovers. The whole hotel seems suspended in the air. We ask her to get to the bar, to make it sing for her, to sing for her son (for whom she had written this song). We erase ourselves. She, she doesn’t. After we’re done filming, I cry. She cries too.”
There are many food metaphors explaining life. A popular one is: “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get”. Yes, true and I love the movie too. Besides chocolates we have Apples (that do not fall far from the tree), Omelets (that you can’t make without breaking eggs) and Cookies (that you have today, but will be crumbs tomorrow). And of course we have Soup (that you shouldn’t eat as hot as they serve it). Slightly different from the English expression, is the Dutch proverb: “The soup is never eaten as hot as it was served”. It means that what seems intimidating at first, will proof to be far less intimidating in reality. Whether it’s something you heard in the news, an important presentation you have to do, a blind date that waits just around the corner or the thought of life without cigarettes: reality often is much kinder than our thinking.
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