9 July 2020

Letters to an imaginary friend

Writing has always been a vital part of my life, even though it has presented its challenges. I was born without a right hand and with deformed fingers on my left hand, so even learning how to put pen to paper was not easy.

In a quiet suburb of Rotterdam in the sixties, the Catholic primary school I attended taught us how to write with an old-fashioned dip pen. Since I wrote with my left hand, which would have been strictly forbidden if I had had a right one, during the quick pace of dictation, my words always came out smudged. I could not stop and let them dry; Miss Blok briskly continued, enunciating the words in a shrill voice that gave me goose bumps. By the end of dictation both my notebook and hand were smeared with black ink.

Even at that young age I sensed that the teacher was unsure of how to deal with me. Did I cause such a mess because of my handicap or was I not making enough of an effort?

She never said anything about it and that not-saying left me more uncomfortable. Even if it wasn’t my fault, I would have much preferred for the teacher to scold me like she did my classmates.

My mother noticed the ink on my hand and understood that the cause was the dip pen. So she bought me a gleaming red fountain pen that could be filled with cartridges, hoping that would make it easier for me. The following day she accompanied me to school to ask the teacher for permission to use the fountain pen rather than the dip pen. Again an exception was made.

There was no more dipping in the ink bottle, which did help somewhat, but I’d still smear the word I had just written when going on to the next. I never told my mother; I didn’t want to disappoint her. Before going home I’d rush to the toilet and wash my hand until the black stain faded.

I was around twelve when I started a diary by accident. A girl in my class, Connie, had a poetry album that she would take to family and friends who would write a poem in it and decorate that with colourful stickers and glitters. I asked if I too could write a poem in her album but she told me that poems were only for girls. I thought that was just an excuse and that she didn’t consider me a friend.

I went home and told my mother that I wanted a poetry album; she bought me one that very afternoon. When I unwrapped the paper and saw the heart shaped pink album I wondered if Connie had been right that poetry albums were not for boys. But I started to write in the pink album anyway. Not poetry, but letters to an imaginary friend. I would tell that friend about the shadows of the blinds on the wall of my bedroom, the dark red of the tapestry in our hallway, the colors that talked to me.

I wrote about the game I played out on the street, where I pretended that I could enter into the heads of passers-by to see what they thought about, to find out how they lived.

I wrote about my desire to go to faraway places where people would walk on wide boulevards with palm trees, as I had seen in the magazines my father read. I wrote about the paintings I had admired at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, which I visited on our free Wednesday afternoons when the other boys would go off to play soccer.

And I wrote about how lonely I felt, how desperately I wanted to be with others.

Much of what I dreamed of as a child—learning how others see the world, travelling to faraway places—is no longer a fantasy. I can see the world through the eyes of the emerging video artists that my foundation supports world-wide. I travel to art institutions in Seoul, Quito, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, and other cities to see the videos we produce with our artists.

When I now go to the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, I can admire art from my own collection that is there on loan as a promised gift.

I am no longer lonely. The last forty-two years, I have shared my life with the kindest man on earth, my husband Felipe. We’ve lived in Mexico, the United States, and now Barcelona.

I’ve written books and articles, texts for the catalogues of the artists we work with, and more. I’ve kept a journal all my life and always carry a notebook with me. Before the internet, I’d write long letters from wherever I was living, and for many years I’d send vignettes of my life to far-away friends.

These initiatives helped me to connect with the outer world. But in hopes of forging new connections, I’ve decided to start this blog.

I’d like to take the reader for a stroll as it were, chatting along the way. I hope you’ll enjoy our conversation, even if it is a bit one-sided, and I’d be very pleased if what I have to say sparks a flash of recognition every so often.

I’ve learned that when you share, you are not alone, even if you don’t know the person you’re sharing with. Thanks for joining me on the journey.

3 August 2020

How I cured my “fernweh”

As a boy growing up in a quiet suburb of Rotterdam in the sixties and early seventies, I had what Germans call “fernweh”: an intense longing for places I had never been. The depth of that longing was equal to my desire to escape from an environment in which I felt ill at ease and lonely. Fernweh is the opposite of homesick, which I never was.

I dreamt of visiting faraway cities such as Karachi, Beirut, or Montevideo.

I had no image in my mind of what they looked like but was intrigued by their unfamiliar sounding names when I saw them in the KLM timetable booklet I studied so assiduously that I knew many routes by heart, particularly the long distance ones. I saw myself strolling over wide boulevards with stately buildings and visiting countries where I could hear the call to prayer from the minarets.

Whatever I fantasized, there had to be palm trees, because a palm tree was for me the ultimate symbol of far-off lands.

Its elegance was the antithesis of the gnarled oak in our back garden. What’s more, palm trees only grow in warm climates and warmth was what I longed for most.

The fantasies I had as a young boy became reality when, the day after I finished high school, I left the Netherlands to take a summer course in Nice.

Seeing the Promenade des Anglais with its white buildings and graceful palm trees gave me a jolt of recognition even though I’d never been there. I was overwhelmed by the expanse of the Mediterranean Sea and its blue was of an intensity I had never seen before. The sky was more radiant than in my daydreams and the sun sparkled like a brilliant gem on the waves.

At that moment I decided that I was not going back home. Ever.

Over the last forty-six years I’ve lived in France, the United States, and Mexico, and now for many years in Spain. I keep on fantasizing about places I haven’t visited. I’d like to see the Imam Mosque in Isfahan and the Tiger’s Nest Monastery in Bhutan. I want to go to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, because of all the a’s in its name and because I know so little about it.

The difference with when I still lived in the Netherlands is that now I travel to new places out of curiosity, not because I have a deep yearning for a distant place that will give me a warm feeling. That warmth I have here at home in Barcelona with my husband Felipe, our dog Lucy, and our friends.

When I have an urge to see palm trees, I take a walk along the Passeig Marítim from the Barceloneta to the Villa Olimpica.

While ambling along that seaside promenade I can spot the planes taking off over the Mediterranean Sea. I can’t help wondering where they’re going.

Karachi perhaps, Beirut, or Montevideo?

3 August 2020

The smell of tequila is my madeleine

As a boy growing up in a quiet suburb of Rotterdam in the sixties and early seventies, I had what Germans call “fernweh”: an intense longing for places I had never been. The depth of that longing was equal to my desire to escape from an environment in which I felt ill at ease and lonely. Fernweh is the opposite of homesick, which I never was.

I dreamt of visiting faraway cities such as Karachi, Beirut, or Montevideo.

I had no image in my mind of what they looked like but was intrigued by their unfamiliar sounding names when I saw them i

During the confinement Felipe and I got into the habit of having a drink on our balcony before lunch. Felipe has his tequila; I don’t drink but I sniff his glass in order to take in the aroma.

Just as a madeleine dipped in lime blossom tea triggered memories of his youth for Proust, the sweet and woody smell of tequila carries me back to our life in Mexico City more than thirty years ago.

On weekend afternoons we’d sip tequila on our balcony there too; at the time I still drank regularly. Instead of looking out at the inner patio of the Ensanche district in Barcelona where we now live, we had a view of the tree-lined pathway that divides the two lanes of Avenida Mazatlan, a wide street with houses and apartment buildings from the twenties and thirties in the Condesa neighbourhood.

Artists, writers, actors, and musicians live there, and we’d frequent its movie houses, small theatres, galleries, and restaurants with sidewalk terraces. There was the Jewish delicatessen, the German store with great potato salad, and the Roxy ice cream parlour in front of our apartment, serving ice cream in exotic fruit flavors like mamey, chico zapote, and guanabana.

Indigenous women with toddlers on their backs wrapped in a “rebozo”, the traditional shawl, would sell avocados they carried in a wicker basket on the pathway. The local shoe shiner told me he’d lived in California where people called him Charles Bronson because of his resemblance to the movie star, albeit he was a Charles Bronson with a couple of front teeth missing. An elderly man would come by with a cart from which he sold sweet potatoes. He’d announce his presence by blowing a whistle, a high-pitched almost imploring sound.

There was no internet, no mobile phones, nor even fax yet. Phone calls were prohibitively expensive, the mail service was sketchy and it was nearly impossible to get foreign press.

Travelling abroad was costly and we spent most of our time with Felipe’s family who had adopted me as one of their own; “hermanito Juan” they called me, little brother Juan.

I worked as a correspondent for the Dutch radio, while Felipe had a job at an advertising agency. The future stretched out endlessly before us.

That carefree life came to an abrupt halt in November 1987 when I learned I have HIV. Because there was no adequate medical care in Mexico, we eventually left for the United States and I had to give up my work as a journalist.

After all these years that apartment in Mexico City still feels like home.

While sitting here on our balcony in Barcelona I see the old tree in front of our building on Avenida Mazatlan with its roots protruding from the soil. I hear the imploring whistle of the sweet potato seller.

Time feels like an illusion, the past is just as real as this very moment.

Particularly after several sniffs of tequila.

n the KLM timetable booklet I studied so assiduously that I knew many routes by heart, particularly the long distance ones. I saw myself strolling over wide boulevards with stately buildings and visiting countries where I could hear the call to prayer from the minarets.