This is my view!

Findhorn dunes with gorse - photo ©

I have moved house this week. To a wonderful apartment with a fabulous view. Culbin Sands Apartments still carries in its attics and cellars the pain of the past, as Culbin Sands Hotel, from which it was told it was haunted, and much earlier, when the Viking warriors stepped on land here and the soil soaked the blood baths. So much healing is needed, as well as joyful energy. I'm doing my best. Let me tell you: 

This apartment — rejuvenated — wants to be celebrated

While the smell of paint and varnish has hardly vanished

While many boxes full of life and release still wait to be opened and integrated

The walls still bare

Before my images fingerprint them

But the summer solstice sun and the full moon do call for it now

While the blooming gorse reflects on the walls

While endless skies and seas invite themselves in, to be discovered by experienced eyes still so curious.

So I give thanks to all involved 

And let us bless this place with Joy and Healing

To be my new Home

Summer Solstice  20 June 2013

Holding on to the Light

Decoloured wallpaper

In hand-painted floral patterns on

layers of wealth, unwelcome, and dust of decades

covering the secrets and scars of the past,

suddenly illuminated

and my eyes desperately try to hold on to the light. Slowly then

our chances fade again

We were blind anyway

not opening our windows.

© Adriana  Bijman, 2013

‘Holding the Circle – The Circle Holding Us’

The large pebble stone found on the sandy Findhorn Beach holds a ring, an ellipse, a circle. It is one of the many beautiful patterns nature gives us. Ancient rock formations of different minerals fusing together. Granite, quartz, Lewisian Gneiss, sand- and limestone… Time leaving its marks of ellipses and lines with which every pebble gives us it own story. 

Our beach is full of stories.

Natural circles have been known since the beginning of time, like in the sun, moon, whirls in water or wind. They have been observed and have inspired our civilisation to develop geometry, astronomy and many inventions.

We say that every circle is a magic circle, a sacred circle. In a circle of people coming together an extra energy of spirit is present.

We draw a circle of protection. I remember drawing a large circle during a quest in the Sahara desert to mark my territory; creating a safe space.  At home in the Findhorn community to attune at the start and end of a gathering or job as well as to bless the food we come together in a circle while holding hands.

And the circle is holding us.

‘Holding the Circle- The Circle Holding Us’ was part of a photoArt exhibition in the Blue Angel Café in the Universal Hall Findhorn in October - November 2012 with other canvas photowork. 

Hopeman’s Cove

These rocks are part of Hopeman’s Cove Bay at the north east coast of Scotland. Imagine these rocks once being part of a hot desert, where the Sahara is now and whose sand dunes still are preserved in the colourful rocks. Two totally different rock formations or characters or world citizens banged into each other and became a unity forever. Tracing the hot winds in the white sandrock with my lingering fingers while my feet try to keep sturdy, standing on the battered chilly northern coast……Since the Ice Age the whispers of the burning desert have always won from the battle cries of the north and they still fill my heart with longing and belonging…..

A 100.000 litre cow

During the second World War my father bought a cow, a traditional black and white Holland-Frysian Stamboekvee cow, called Hoekstra six, with which he and my mother started a dairy farm at Dorregeest in one of the old Dutch polders. Hoekstra 6 became the matriarch of a long line of dairy cows on the farm. The Hoekstra’s received many awards, their bull calves became famous for their semen and many Hoekstras were sold worldwide. This June my brother and sister in law, who live on the parental farm, had a party for Hoekstra 545, who was one of their 100.000 litre milk cows. On the photo you see the celebrated cow, after a career of 13 years, 11 calves and 100.000 litres of milk. 

Cows at Loch Fada

The Isle of Skye is a fascinating island on the Scottish west coast. From Findhorn it is quite a journey, but even the travel towards it is worth. Meandering along Loch Ness (Nessy has only appeared to me once, on a very dark winter’s day). Driving through the Highlands. Meeting the mountains, the moors and the many lakes, often called ‘lochs’ on the way.  A bridge connects the mainland at Kyle of Lochalsh with the island itself. I love tracking between the brown, peat coloured hills. There are empty left farmhouses. In the middle of nowhere cattle crossing the road, gates open. The fresh water loch ‘Loch Fada’ in the near distance. Cows and young bulls, reminding me of home and the farm in the polder I grew up in. When the young cows come outside for the first time, they don’t know yet how to use all their four feet and they jump all over the place. Almost as if they take off to fly. 

Waves are coming in - at Findhorn Beach

Regularly I go beachcombing at Findhorn Beach after a high tide, when the pebble beach gives space again to the endless sands. Then you can see the seals sunbathing on the banks far out in the sea where once was a village. Then, especially in spring and autumn, there are lots of ‘findings’ to catch at this part of the Moray coastline. Aplenty of colourful seaweed are coming in with the high tides from the deep ocean. Kelp, Pod razor shells, Red Rags, Sea Oak and Lettuce, and all kind of Wrack: bladder, flat, horned, knotted or toothed. Sometimes tree stems and branches and leaves in all autumn colours are brought back in by the river water, carrying the memories of a summer in the forests of the Scottish Highlands.

‘There is so much magnificence near the ocean

Waves are coming in’ *

·     *  as sung by Miten and Deva Premal

© Adriana Sjan Bijman PhotoArt, October 2011