The House of Shadows would be easy to miss. A small door, No big fuss. Typical of the park in general. Everything in Duinrell was very much find it, enjoy it. Strangely alien when you are used to the more in your face approach taken by attractions back home. I doubt I would have found it had it not been recommended by another seeker. What is it? Well its a black box with 2 doors and all of the walls are clad with glow in the dark panels. Every 30 seconds a siren announces the 4 second countdown (I counted) until the very bright lights flash. The flash then keeps an image of your shadow on the wall which gradually fades until the next flash erases this physical memory. It is great fun. That afternoon we set about creating some work based on our experiences in the park. Jennifer and Dagmar chose to work with me to utilise the House of Shadows in some way. We knew it looked good, but how to make something meaningful and relevant? Difficult when really it is a place of play. We talked and latched onto the notion of memory, we could create an animation which used the memory of our presence in the room to convey flashbacks of memories in our lives. Haikus written then we hit the House. Lots of patience required, not much slows animation down but capturing 1 frame every 30 seconds max was a new challenge! We enjoyed our afternoon greatly and here is the result.

Memories

I don’t know why I bought them. We had already started our adventure that day. Starting in Den Haag and jumping on the first bus out of there. Where was it going? We did not know at the time. It took us to Leiden which is beautiful. We had many encounters which led us to the canal. I had been carrying my bunch of flowers, looking for the person they were intended for. Who would it be? I had a few candidates but none of them received them. We had some discussions about who they were for. Maybe a woman who looked a bit down in the dumps? A single mum or an older lady? Definitely not a man. That was clear. That could only lead to violence. But we were wrong. They went to Ferdinand the Peanut Cheese Festival man. We met Ferdinand after Emanuel had sent us in the direction of Peanut butter, the answer he gave as part of a magic trick performed on him by Tim. His words were “Peanut butter is that way” It was a joke but we followed this direction and 200 meters away there was Ferdinand with a plate full of Peanut Butter and chilli on bread promoting his festival. He was the first person we encountered on our route after crossing the canal. It was a moment of chance, of fate, of connecting with the world and our seek. What a lovely man and how interesting. We learned about the nicknames of the Indonesian immigrants – Peanuts and the Dutch – Cheese heads. His festival was called peanut cheese as he was bringing them together through the arts. We had similar purposes. Seek and the world provides. We knew that we were going to get a boat and tour the canal and promised to try to sail past and see him again.
We had a few more encounters and time passed by. No one for the flowers. Then we went onto the canal which was rather pleasant, if not a little hairy at times. We did not think that our route was going to take us passed Ferdinand, in all honesty it was a few hour before we had spoken to him and we had all lost our bearings by then. Turning the map the right way did help us navigate a little better. Then we realised where we were. We were going to pass him and as a group we knew who the flowers were for. It just felt right. It was right. Such a warm familiar greeting. His friend was keen to meet us and we knew that we had made an impression with them. He loved his flowers. It was a beautiful moment for us all. This is the view of the hand over.

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No violence, just happiness.

Link for the pindaKAAS festival Twitter http://twitter.com/pinda_KAAS

So as we set out on our journey I set myself a mad task. Document the project in the form of Haikus. Writing is something that I do not often do. I find it a labour and by giving myself rules I hoped to make the process more rewarding. I write this now with more than 100 Haikus under my belt and many more still to go. They have been liberating. So small that they can only capture a moment, a single memory, a thought. I do not know how much some one outside of the experience will get from them, or indeed what I shall do with them once they are complete. I know that they have helped me to capture the spirit of the seek and make me more aware of the skills that I have both with and with out the word. I shall continue till the end of my seek and will look back at this odyssey with fondness.

For a while now I have been noticing incidental art in my environment. Mostly this is faded road markings, spilt paint etc. I am drawn to these “images” I like the process of time on the markings of man, so clean and straight to start with and then gradually undermined, The ability for moments in time to be captured like memories, a foot print, a tire track. I have often had the means and desire to capture these images, to claim them as art, but I have not. Why not does not really matter, today I did. My family protected me from the traffic and we collected these images on a circuit from our door and back. We turned right at each available opportunity door to door. My son Orynn took a few pictures, something that he has shown no interest in before. I think he will be excellent company on our future seeking.

Seek has reminded me that finding the time and opportunity to be inspired is as easy as just doing something, anything, the moment you have committed to that thing is the moment that you have won.

I know its showtime right now. I regret that I will never be able to share this part of the project. I hope I can see a recording of it but that will not be the same as being there.

So after a long journey I am home. Su is much calmer to have me back and baby zazzi seems to have responded by chilling out. Now that I am here things seem less urgent but I have no regrets. Life sends you choices which you have to make and even if our baby does not come for weeks I know that as a partner I have responded to my loves needs. I have continued to seek and here are the results:

Orynn and I have found many circles and squares. We were looking to find the largest possible examples of both. A fantastic back sky light provided both the largest of each. It is truly impressive that Natwest has such a beautiful feature but I anticipate that it goes unnoticed in the busy pursuit of banking needs. We noticed it today. Triangles are not so easy to find. We left Natwest to visit the Orange shop and when asked what he would like to do Orynn obviously had triangles on his mind. We found a plug socket with a triangle switch, nice but small and then the back of a computer monitor got us a bit larger. Apart from that not a triangle to be seen. Fay was serving us and so we asked her if she had any triangles we could have. Fay disappeared out the back for a few minutes and returned apologetically with a leaflet that had triangular bunting on the front. It is another example of the signs you get from seeking. When Orynn was born he was welcomed to the world by a length of bunting each flag having been made by some one significant in our lives. Bunting will always be important to me as a result. With that Orynn and I left them to sort out the contract details in the shop then collected Orynn’s full name from letters in the street leading to the Milkshake shop where we were due to meet up with mummy when she was done. Here is our name seek:

On completing our challenge and enjoying our smoothies (always better than a milk shake in my humble opinion) Su returned with the biggest free item of the week. It is truly impressive. After we had left the shop a young man from the back burst out triumphantly having found a better triangle. The triangle is part of the stand. It also has a rather nice circle in it. The big revelation today is purely about the amount of joy a single seek can have on those who come into contact with it. A simple question like do you have a triangle can involve and captivate an expanding group of people and leave them all feeling slightly more positive. Priceless.

As we traveled down to Newbury in Janet (Martins car) with Dagmar and Jennifer the sense of anticipation was delicious. What are we going to do? We know what we know and not more. We knew absolutely that anything we said would change as we started to find that which we seek. How to communicate the varied responses we might take to unforeseen experiences? We are all nervously excited. Games played on the way down and it feels like we are going to get along just fine. The adventure has begun.

We arrive into Newbury and our group slowly starts to form. Alison and Alicia join us. Justin will arrive by train tonight. Will and Roland will meet us in the early, early morning. Every one is on good form. It is lovely to see every one and I am reminded how much I genuinely enjoy spending time with these fantastic people.

Off to the Travelodge. Spend some time in the service station and compose a suitable greeting for Justin which gets us some funny looks from the staff and other patrons. Justin really liked his song and it put everyone at ease. It feels a bit to late as we leave at 4am.

Time for bed

I am starting to feel nervous. In 5 days we go into the unknown. I am curious to see what we will find. I am looking forward to meeting new people, new cultures, new landscapes and new thoughts. It is going to be great to bring together our responses as individuals and collide them into creative responses, the not knowing what that will be is the source of my nerves and the excitement in my belly. Lets see where we and it goes. Each journey starts with a small step and we shall bound back home full of our discoveries.