Gardenig always has a therapeutic effect on me, whichever mood I’m in, it doesn’t matter, gardening makes me forget, kinda like alcohol but different :)
However, last time I was digging a trench to plant some strawberries my mind started drifting away.

Working on the trench made me think and transcendent the actual work. I was making an incision in our mother earth, I was cutting her skin, in my imagination the trench really started to look like a gaping wound while my hands were covered with earths blood. The hole I made in the earth began to look somehow surreal.

What would prehistorian people have thought when they consciously dug in the earth for the first times? Why would they have dug the earth? Was the first protrusion of the earth’s skin a ritual or did it serve a function? Was it done to bury the dead, was it to cultivate plants or maybe something else. Were they superstitious about their doings? Did they do it ritually, where they afraid about what might happen if they dug too deep? Suddenly my garden’s soil began to look like the border to another dimension and the hole I made was a passageway to this whole new world beneath. I felt like an intruder, a voyeur staring into something that was kept secret all the time.

The trench also reminded me of ‘l’origine du monde’ the famous painting by Gustave Courbet but then beyond because here we even go back some steps, in fact the trench is l’origine de l’origine du monde. We are all made out of earth (be it by some detours maybe) everything started from here. So now my trench became a vagina out of which everything once (and still) emerges. My trench also became the grave in which everything returns, no earth escapes it merely transforms to finaly return to it’s origin. Is that why we burry our deads in the ground, to return to were we came from, ‘from earth to earth’?

So there I was planting strawberries while at my feet lay something that exceeded the mere trench it was. This was a trigger for inner thought, a massive explosion of deformed perception. It was as if opening the earth also opened up my eyes to transcend into a different state of awarenes. This hole in the ground showed me what I allready knew but what I didn’t know I knew. To me this experience was somehow what art should do to me; awaken me from the ordinary life, shake my being, twist my vantage point. So I wondered, is this trench art? Even if it’s not in a gallery or depicted as such? Or was the way I perceived the trench art? What makes art art? Did I make art in my garden or did art reveal itself to me. Maybe I should go out and try to convince the art people to take my trench idea up into an exhibition. But probably people would never experience what I did without me explaining the whole thing… and even then the explanation would destroy the intimacy the experience initially had. Explanations turn you into an understanding outsider instead of an undergoing insider. However the beauty of my experience asks for sharing with others I feel like shouting ‘people, come out and see what I saw, look at this trench!!’ Probably they will just have the same look on their faces like my wife when I called her over to bring me my camera to make a picture of this amazing trench and my hands covered with the earths blood. But there is no way to share, these kinds of experiences reveal themselves in the most strange places and when you least expect them. I gues we just have to enjoy them as they come.

I have never witnessed a more all surrounding beauty than the skies above my head. No piece of art, movie, music or anything else can replace it’s impact on my being. Every day, hour, minute as far as my eyes can see I am presented with an ever different pallet, one that’s unique and will never ever return again. These celestial settings can evoque emotions ranging from dramatic over happy to eerie or treathening to name just a few. However little attention is given to this phenomena. The sky has always been there and will always be there. The sky is not made by human hands and our cities’ concrete horizons often enough hide her beauty. That’s maybe why days can go by while not even consciously noticing our beautiful everchanging outdoor ceiling. There is nothing exclusive about it, it can not be sold or possessed nor is it containable. Should the sky on the other hand have been made by human hands then it would be all over the news, signed prints would be sold in galleries, intellectual properties would be defined, ego’s would be caressed and people would gaze at it with awe and amazement. But it’s not, it’s for free and it will always be there! So once in a while lift your view above the horizon and be stunned by the beauty that takes place above your head.

Sometimes I really wonder what the hell I’m doing. What’s the point in designing while the world is destroying itself. Feels a bit like the band that was playing music while the Titanic was sinking. To put it even stronger in my opinion design is one of the many things that is bringing this world down. There already is sooo much stuff around on this planet and still we feel obliged to design new chairs, tables, cupboards, etc… and waist valuable resources and polute the earth while doing this. But why? Who needs another chair? Is it to feed our designer ego’s? Is it the unhealthy habbit and strange urge to come up with something nobody else ever came up with (again ego!)? Is it embedded in human nature to keep on creating even when everything has been created? Honestly I don’t know.

On the other hand. Just like there are many ways in using a tool there are also many ways in using design. Design itself is neutral it’s the way that we use it that makes a difference. Maybe I am focusing too much on one part of the design universe (the fashionable part). Maybe design’s new future lies in finding new ways to cope with our overpopulated and energyconsuming planet? If so why are so few attracted to this noble cause. Is it because this goes further then just mere form?

So there are days when notcot, dezeen, behance and so on just make me desperate, sad and mad. There are days that I’m paralised by my own thoughts. On such days every idea I come up with gets aborted even before birth. Nothing that I ever make will make me really happy because in fact it’s all bullshit and it doesn’t matter. But still I keep going on and I am part of this big charade, just because it’s what I like to do. It’s what I was destined to do, it’s what I did when I was a kid and still do today. I was born to make useless stuff!

What is cancer: Its two main characteristics are uncontrolled growth of the cells in the human body and the ability of these cells to migrate from the original site and spread to distant sites. If the spread is not controlled, cancer can result in death.

Don’t you feel addressed when reading this? In my opinion we are earth’s cancer. We people are growing at an uncontrollable fast rate and spreading all over the planet, even beyond the planet if we could. This in such a way that soon enough our the planet cannot contain or support us anymore and this will result in a death of the host (earth). The will to live as a species is driving us to death.

But On the other hand cancer is nature too. Nature knows no good or bad it’s us humans that judge things as good or bad. So just like cancer is intrinsic to nature we humans are nature too. We’re just nature able to look at itself. And all this talking about disturbing or destroying nature’s balance is bullshit. The balance we experience seems like a balance because it’s just a micro capture of natures appearance through time.

Nature has never been in balance it is through nature’s inbalance that it is able to constantly evolve (it’s a bit like constantly moving to stay in place). And maybe we are the cause of some sudden shift in nature in which there is no place for us anymore. However in the end, nature itself doesn’t care, it’s us who care because we are pushing nature to evolve into a new “balance” in which there is no place left for us. If you look at it from nature’s point of view (as far as this exists of course) this new ‘balance’ or condition is no better or worse then all the ones that came before our time and the ones that are to come.

However, maybe there is a difference between the human body being infected and killed with cancer and the earth being infected and killed by cancer. The human bodie’s purpose is to live and procreate (please don’t ask me why) while the earth has no goal programmed in itself. With that I mean that nature didn’t program the earth to fullfill something, it’s just there. So maybe we humans can be destroyed in a sence that we cannot fullfill our function anymore. While the earth considering it has no function can not de derived of its function and thus cannot be killed? If I think further on this the earth has a function and that’s to support the procreation of all species that are programmed to procreate

Should we cure the cancer that we are? And how to do it? I think chemotherapy (read mass elimination) is not really an option. Birthcontrol? How can you force people not to have children, who has the right to demand this. What if earth really was our mother and could discipline us, talk to us, educate us.

All that leads me again to another question, aren’t we the eyes and consciousness of the earth maybe the universe. Aren’t we the universe that’s looking at itself. Aren’t we the consciousness of it all.

My conclusion once again is that there are no conclusions, there is no truth there are only perspectives. Doesn’t that make you hopeless and happy at the same time?