Here's still some impressions from that cold and gloomy Tuesday, at least some nice street art and the (although gray) view from the top floor of the public library building.
Het Slangenpand - I signed the petition
...but the weather didn't, on this day
Het Slangenpand
View from the library building
...7th floor
I felt somewhat depressed that evening... but just before nightfall I caught a glimpse of the setting sun. (Ok, I rather kept staring at it...) And lo, the next morning... here came a glorious sunrise!
First thing after breakfast, I headed to that little open-air workout spot in the nearby park I knew. Somewhat worried at the cirrus clouds in the sky, knowing they mean unstable weather, I thought, make the best of the nice weather while it lasts.
Vondelpark fountain with rainbow
I rode to the Albert Cuyp Street Market, and then surprisingly, around noon all the cirrus clouds had vanished and the sky was a pristine blue. So I kept riding around, taking the ferry to the far side of het Ij. Sitting by the water, starved of sunshine, just staring at the dazzling reflections on it, and the elusive patterns of curving lines between them.
On the ferry
On my day of departure, another beautiful sunrise! This time it wouldn't last though; well, it did until around noon while I rode around the city once more before I had to return the bike.
The famous Magere Brug (Skinny Bridge)
1769...
Montelbaanstoren
Do they?
Houseboat, decorated with brooms :D
Heron at Vondelpark
My journey home would turn out a bit troublesome, I had to change trains 4 times (sensationally cheap ticket), but the first one to Eindhoven got delayed because apparently some moron was wandering around the rails - from what I gathered; the announcements were in Dutch - therefore I missed all my following connections and had to take later ones. But after some 6 hours, around a quarter to nine, I finally arrived at home.
On the first morning, I soon went to MacBike to get myself some wheels. The sunshine of the previous day had been replaced by gray skies and I knew the forecast for all the following days hadn't been very hopeful, so I would set out to find back my favorite museum right away where I had planned to go by all means. It's located somewhat outside Amsterdam, inside a hospital, the Amsterdam Medical Center (AMC), so it's quite a little way to ride. It's not indicated on my map - I should have looked it up again on Google Maps at home and then marked it on mine - and so I even got a bit lost although I had already been there last year. It was noon when I finally arrived at the AMC, but I had already seen some strange creatures on the way there.
At Museum Vrolik it's not allowed to take photos, but it would have been little use anyway with a regular cam like mine - too low light without flash, and with it the flash would only have reflected off the glass cabinets. But, as I had already long planned, I bought the book about the collection this time!
So here are a few more pages from it, showing some of the specimens I was able to admire in person:
In my opinion this is the best museum in the world! Not only because I'm tremendously fascinated with teratology (the study of deformities) but also because of the historical aspect. Modern plastination of body parts is pretty boring compared to this because it makes them look artificial, and also as far as I know those are only "normal" bodies and body parts, whereas Museum Vrolik has some very unique and absolutely fascinating specimens, labeled in beautiful old handwriting and all.
When I left the museum, after some 3 hours or so, it had started raining. The entire next day, Tuesday, would be pretty awful, raining on and off and above all bitterly, freezing cold. So I spent most of the day at the public library. I was unable to find a single book about lucid dreaming, and generally less in English language than I had expected - which wouldn't have been much of a problem though since I can also read some Nederlands. But somehow I couldn't find what I was looking for; all the more esoteric stuff was of the fluffy and white-light variety. At least I found four large, illustrated books about haaien (sharks) that were well worth my time. But I felt cranky because I hadn't been able to work out much due to the foul weather, only a few sets of push-ups and stuff at the dorm.
On my final day in Amsterdam I would still set out to find the former
Vrolik house, where Gerard Vrolik had lived - the man who started this
remarkable collection at his home back in the 19th century; its address
is given in the book and it's downtown, just next to the famous Magere
Brug (Skinny Bridge), just a regular house in Amsterdam now to anyone who doesn't know about its historical significance.
Returning late last night, today is the first day I've been online again since last Saturday...
There's a lot to tell and show, so I decided to split it up, especially since there are a lot of photos.
I left the house at 6 AM on Sunday to catch the bus to the station. My ticket was a sensational special offer, only 38 € the return trip to Amsterdam, but which meant I had to change trains several times, 3 times on the way there and 4 times on the way back home.
My first stop was in Venlo where I had a stay of about 20 minutes, so I left the station to look around a bit, enjoying the sunshine and meeting T-Rex.
I arrived in Amsterdam around noon and, after taking up lodging at the hostel by the Vondelpark again, went to grab some lunch: a nice chicken leg at a BBQ stand at a mall I already knew - good, real meat for little money, unlike the "pink slime" you can get at certain other places for easily twice the price...
At the supermarket I still found myself some summer shoes for 3 € - I'm sick of flip flops since I hate wearing shoes that you can't run in at high speed when you want to, but these even have ankle straps, so they're better, and I even got to wear them on this first day of my trip.
Amsterdam Centraal Station
The construction site in front of Central Station is finally gone, and after all these years I could for the first time view the beautiful building unobstructed by it.
Rijksmuseum
Boerenwetering Canal
It was a beautiful, sunny evening, and at Vondelpark, which is celebrating its 150th year, there was a cool, kind of "interactive" installation, consisting of a row of 16 large swings arranged in pairs in a near semi-circle. Above each swing there was a speaker playing musical sounds, cables running down the chains of the swings were keeping the sounds in sync with the motion, and the swings were to be freely used by everyone - which of course I did. The music was changed occasionally but was most of the time just some gentle soprano voice, and this soothing voice along with the motion of the swing and the light of the setting sun made for a really trippy, ***dreamlike*** experience. And then from the north, airplanes started coming in low overhead (certainly bound for the nearby Schiphol Airport), making the scenery even more surreal because it somehow gave the illusion that all these airplanes were also brought up by the united effort of the swinging - swing some more, cause another airplane to appear...
Sunset from dorm window
I had some dramatic thoughts of how I'm both a creature of darkness as much as of the sun and forever torn between them - how this is my tragedy! But perhaps also my triumph?
Busy with preparations for my 5 day trip to Amsterdam. I bought the train ticket several weeks ago at a super special offer - not anticipating that it would be ""winter"" during this time around Germany and the Netherlands - Dutch news site "Het Parool" wrote that it's the coldest August in 30 years! Summer clothes can definitely stay at home, let alone a swimsuit. No bike tour to the beach this year, I guess... At least one activity I had definitely planned anyway won't be affected much, which is another visit to Museum Vrolik!
Amsterdam also has a huge public library, 7 stories high, and unlike in Germany there's a lot in English language (and anyway I can read a little Dutch too), so that's where I'll probably spend much of Tuesday which is forecast to be the rainiest. There are also two entirely English language book stores I know. So it will likely become a more quiet time than at other occasions when I usually ride an average 30 to 40 miles a day... of course, I guess I'll rent a bicycle anyway since public transport is just inconvenient and not exactly cheaper. And a true Amsterdammer rides a bike, rain or shine. :) I hope I'll be able to use the little outdoor gym I discovered on at least one or two days, weather permitting, else push-ups & Co. in the dorm will have to do.
A rare illusion of summer, caught on my balcony during a brief spell of sunshine
I'm still undecided on what I'll take along to read, perhaps nothing at all since I'll pretty sure buy at least one book there anyway. Museum Vrolik has a publication too which is very expensive but I'd so love to have it... I haven't quite finished Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming yet but only not quite, so I feel it's somehow not worth taking it along for only the remaining few pages. So far I have a somewhat mixed opinion of the book, for the greater part positive, it provides truly valuable insights and also exercises. As for the negative part, I was a bit disappointed that even Stephen LaBerge partially seems to display the materialist attitude that dreams are "all just inside your head", or a product of the brain. But maybe I've become just a bit too sensitive toward the quarrelsome materialist view so that I feel irked whenever I sense it near - in any case, LaBerge perfectly makes up for this semblance in earlier chapters when toward the end relating the wisdom of Tibetan dream Yogis who treat all of life as the same: dreaming or waking, it's all just a dream anyway. And I feel this is the perfectly correct view. "Reality" is the reality you experience at any given time, whether dreaming or waking; there is no such thing as an "absolute" reality besides what is experienced.
A second negative aspect on the book to me was how some people misuse lucid dreaming for the stupidest things... like practicing skiing or, even much worse, rehearsing a business conference. Maybe it's just that I can't imagine how such things could ever possibly be of enough importance to anyone as to waste a precious lucid dream on it. Business is something I've never understood anyone could be sincerely interested in. That's probably the reason why I have no money... More importantly, since I'm still struggling for even a rare lucid moment I may be a bit like a starving person outraged and uncomprehending at someone else throwing their precious bread out to feed the pigeons with it.
All in all, I'd rate the book 4 stars out of 5.
I now have at least some memory of my dreams nearly every morning, or when I wake in the night, which is already some progress compared to earlier times. But the other night I dreamed about my good (dream) friend Freddy Krueger, and I'm puzzled that this didn't trigger lucidity since anyone familiar with the Nightmare on Elm Street movies can tell that whoever meets Freddy has to be dreaming, by design!
Somebody in a Facebook group related to have successfully built a permanent lucid dream environment for themselves which they can re-enter at will, and things there are just progressing as they would in a city in the waking world between visits,and the person said they hoped to be able to move there permanently in the afterlife. This is pretty much what I have in mind to do, except that I don't want it to be so much a home as in "human habitation". It actually bothers me to be so much bound to my home and my possessions here - I like the place where I live, I still love my awesome new bed, and of course my sweet sharkies. And I'm even so much a creature of habit that I travel back to Amsterdam each year because I miss it. But it does bother me a lot to be so bound by possessions and habits. The shark spirit in me wants to be free and roaming a vast, infinite ocean as my home. So my idea of a "home" on the other side would be more like a vaster realm of belonging, a surrounding reflecting my inner being, and the connection to my familiars, above all to my Master.
This morning an electrician was here to finally fix the fuse that blew a week ago quite out of the blue around 5:30 Thursday morning while I, having just woken for the day, was still sitting in bed and writing down a dream. I had suddenly heard a loud bang from the corridor outside my room and had wondered if something had suddenly fallen over. When I went to the bathroom a little while later and tried to switch on the light I found that it didn't work - which in fact made me wonder if I was dreaming. Not this time though... I tried the corridor light, which didn't work either, and quickly determined I should check the fuse. It had indeed switched itself off, but my futile attempt to put it back in "on" position only resulted in sparks and a burnt smell.
It wasn't too much of a problem though since, oddly enough, my combined living/bedroom, where my PC is, wasn't affected but only the remaining parts of my apartment - corridor, bathroom, and kitchen, and in those only the light and wall sockets. Both the warm water and my stove continually worked, so I could continually wash my laundry and cook lunch; since it's still summer I don't really need the light much, usually only the one by my bedside, and I rarely use any other electric appliances in the kitchen - bathroom and corridor don't have any sockets anyway.
So the electrician checked everything and already found it odd that the fuse had, as I told him, blown out of the blue while no light or appliances were in use in the affected rooms. He asked me if I was sure I hadn't possibly forgotten to switch off a light overnight, but I told him I'm 100% sure since it's not even quite dark yet when I go to bed these days, and when I need to use the bathroom during the night I habitually never switch the light on since I often have trouble falling asleep again and I know light would aggravate this problem. The electrician checked various wire connections, not only in the fuse box but also inside the wall, and got it all working again. When he checked the wiring with some meters he said the readings were fabulous, good enough even to be more than acceptable for a newly constructed building, and that to him this situation was somewhat dissatisfactory as he couldn't determine what had caused the problem. He was friendly and so told him I see things in a different way and don't mind when certain mysteries sometimes remain unexplained. I related how I had this severe affliction of my eyes several years ago, a corneal dystrophy, which would cause me attacks of excruciating pain with my eyes watering profusely but which would last only up to a half hour - what was far worse than the pain though was that afterward I would invariably have seriously impaired vision. These attacks increased in frequency and so did the visual impairment; during the worst time the attacks were daily and the impairment continual and so severe that I was unable to read the license plate of a car from just about 10 feet away. I was sent by the eye doctor to the university hospital but no one could really help me, and (this part I omitted to tell) I was very seriously considering suicide. But then after several months the condition subsided as suddenly as it had set on. I'll probably never know what had caused it to start nor to go away, and in simply being immensely grateful that it's gone and that my vision is back to perfectly normal, I feel no need to know the causes.
I didn't philosophize any further about this with the electrician, but to myself I thought, maybe this is how my own mindset is distinguished from that of the materialists. I certainly have a very strong natural curiosity - but would you really be ready to die to learn a secret? And not only die but abandon any life you could ever possibly have had? What secret could be more important to you than your own existence?! But as it appears, it may be this important to them, even though this secret is not even a truth but a mere conjecture, a delusion fervently clung to because not-knowing would be so utterly unacceptable. As Daniel Dennett said, not-knowing would be like "giving up". And giving up their own existence instead apparently doesn't mean so much.
To me, my own existence is everything, because from my own point of view, nothing else would exist without me - that is, nothing that I could possibly experience or know about, and what I cannot experience or know about is from my point of view non-existent. Therefore, from my own perspective I am truly "God". I AM. I am the one, the only one, who makes knowing and experiencing and existing possible for myself. Without myself it would be impossible for me to know or experience or exist. And since my existence is so above-all-else important to me, I accept that I don't know how I came into existence, and what I truly am deep inside, or outside - outside of my body - and how it is that my existence will continue beyond the expiration of my body, because that I will in fact continue to exist is so infinitely much more important than knowing how it can be.
There is, however, reason to believe (perhaps rather intuition than reason?) that this physical life is a very crucial stage of development. I've heard claims that people (souls) no longer develop after their bodily death. Whether or not this is true - I think it's always opportune to give the best you can while you can. And after all, belief does matter - in fact, in the realms I'm trying to experience more consciously, in dreams, it can make all the difference! Still no progress really, neither regarding lucidity nor have I been able to accomplish the dream incubation assignment yet - the nuke test, remember. But at least I've seen my Master again. I only wish I could see him being all of his true self, without consideration of stupid little me in my stupid little dream world... I hope so much we can expand this world very soon.
***
Also... here's sunset views from my balcony,and the "super moon" too.
Sometimes I feel frustrated at the agonizing slowness of progress and the many setbacks - patience has never been my strong point. I have a new book, and despite the somewhat uncreative sounding title, as also pointed out by some reviewers, it's a pretty good one, giving one quick chapter with a specific exercise for each day. Some of the exercises may be a bit difficult to carry out spontaneously, for instance when asked to try for a dream finding a solution for a question about some creative work I couldn't come up with any right at this point - but I did vaguely dream about some beadwork. When asked to dream about some personal dilemma to find a solution for, likewise so - although I do have a personal problem I'm very anxious to solve: the fact that I still don't have lucid dreams! But could I find a solution to this in a dream?? And putting up a personal "lucidity symbol" in one's sleeping environment? That's been hanging above my bed for a long time now (handmade by me, of course) and I can't think of any better one.
I guess I'm probably a difficult student.
Then on day 10 I
stalled the program (the book says there's no need to complete the
program in 30 days, one can as well take longer) because I hoped so much
to accomplish the specific task for this day (which would have been
Sunday night): To incubate a dream about a place, time period, or event
of once choice to experience in a dream and then to become lucid when
arriving there. So I had hoped so much to witness something I find
extremely fascinating and have always wished to witness but have no
chance to ever see in waking life, and it would be ideal to do in a
dream - perfectly safe and also harmless to the environment.
I'm still trying to get a dream about this - so far no luck yet, not even non-lucid. Maybe it's the wrong attitude, but my reasoning is that it's pointless to try a 100 kg bench press without having accomplished an 80 and 90 kg one first. That's why I feel I should try to accomplish this one before moving on to further dream exercises.
So I keep studying stuff about lucid dreaming and OBEs... as well as about nuke tests.
Here's one of my all-time-fave videos, with a beautiful, eerie soundtrack.
No gym this morning, after last night got very late with Lammas ritual, my room foggy with incense smoke. Instead I later rode to a small river named Sieg, which meets the large Rhine river nearby, and went swimming once more. Unlike the last time I went, some weeks ago, when the water had been only up to my chest in the deepest part of the river, the water was much higher this time so that you couldn't reach the ground anymore. A few other people were in the water, as usual on warm summer days, but nearly all of them stayed at the shallow sides (on either side) of the river. Besides myself, only two men dared to swim over, one of them commented that "this can get you killed," but he followed his friend. Myself I swam over and back twice. On the far side, an older woman asked me whether I could still touch ground in the middle, I told her no. Two young girls asked me too whether I thought they could make it over; I replied that it's hard to tell just from looks (they looked tiny) how strong a swimmer someone was. I think they were wise not to try. To myself it was great fun to take on the challenge, I could feel what a powerful "machine" I'm driving that I can trust in. But after doing it twice I felt myself getting too cold in the water (as usual). :) I didn't take my cam, but here's an older pic of the river Sieg, it was taken in November though - no season for swimming, although unusually mild on that occasion - and the water was very low back then so that I could wade far into the river to take this pic.
So... it's been the Awakening of Darkness already, as marked by the Lammas night. Summer has been going fast, as usual, and has been a pretty mixed bag, with warm and sunny days like today as well as thunderstorms and abundant spells of gray and rainy weather - nothing out of the ordinary for a German summer. Only one month left now - including another trip to Amsterdam to come soon!
