Calla...

My neck of the woods...during this somewhat chilly summer

More Silver...

SILVER...

Summertime and the living is easy ;)

Here Comes the Spring...

All You Need is Spring...

The Emerald Isle...

One Photo...

Spring...

Spring...

The air is soft and the first rays of sunlight caress your skin...
A smell of jasmin fills the air and a soft breeze tickles your nose...nature is still fresh and young, the colors almost blind you...the vivid green of the leaves and the grass...you move through this life-like kodak-chrome painting and your heart is light...

Winter...

Came home tonight...drove down the hills (my Dutch friends would probably call them *mountains*) that surround the valley...and there was this velvet sky.

I love that...the twilight between the day that slowly disappears and the night that slowly claims dominion over the world.

Soft and beautiful, the air was crisp and you could smell a hint of cold winter night. I had to think of long evenings, falling leaves, hot chocolate, knitted wool socks and a good book...there are times when I love the winter...

Long Time No Post...

And another one...

Pic-art...

Blue Moon...

As we attended our first meeting at school today, we learned that one of our students had committed suicide during the summer break.

Julia's life ended on 29th July, after only 18 years...

She had been struggling with a so-called border-line-syndrom for years, on top of everything, her father suffers from terminal cancer...

In her farewell letter, she said that she had tried everything, tried out every path, but that every path that she had tried out had only led towards death...I found her words so unbearably sad, yet so wise for someone at such a young age. And her words rang true to me...they had emerged from a soul that was desperate to find peace.

I can relate to her words, to this feeling of boundless despair, fatigue and eventually resignation...I know this feeling well...When the demons that you're fighting seem overwhelming...When you are swimming under the ice - having lost track of the hole through which you slipped...desperate for air, frantically looking for that 'hole'...the world above the ice looks blurry...you perceive the world up there, but you can't participate, nor can you touch what is above the ice...

You keep swimming in the hopes that the 'hole' will suddenly re-emmerge in front of you and that you - like Alice in Wonderland - can slip back into the world, into your life, into the "true you"...I found my 'hole' eventually...sadly, Julia never found hers...her 'hole' was out of reach and she was too exhausted and tired of swimming around under the ice...she just wanted to rest...

I hope from the bottom of my heart that she has found peace and rest...

May Julia rest in peace and may her family find peace.

In the Mood...

Taken at "Mont Saint Michel"...

My Best Friend's Wedding...

In reference to the film with Julia Roberts...a very good friend of mine got married this Saturday. We all dressed in Medieval outfits, I was the "Court Photographer" of the event.
The wedding party (and that includes the "Court Photographer" :) looked like a cross between the "Merry Wives of Windsor" and "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"...Squires and Ladies, Lords and Peasants...Needless to say, the wedding was absolutely magical...

Masks...

I took this pic at our local theater...and I altered it. I don't know why, but I really like this pic...

Come to think of it...do we all wear masks at the end of the day...masks behind which we hide our true selves?

Brittany and Eire...