‘Teatro de los Sentidos’ (Theatre of the senses)

What communicates the impact of light better than this colourful play? It reminds me of the Catalan theatre company Els Comediants, who identifies with the festive spirit of human existence. The goal is not only to open our eyes but also to be a theatre for the senses. It seems to me that the light in the impressive cathedral in the old city of Palma wants to do just that.  There is no separation between the light from the heavens and the space it illuminates. The floor space is like a stage. The stage is the place for the collective experience of the audience, while we entered as spectator in the house of the Gods. The benches are waiting for the Heathen and Pagan worshippers of an ancient Sun God. I sit down. As the sun caresses my skin, the fragrance of warm oak wood enters my nostrils.

Like many Christian churches, ‘La Seu’, the Roman catholic cathedral in Catalan-gothic style was built on the site of a pre-existing mosque. Lying above the old Roman citadel, it overlooks the emerald and turquoise Mediterranean and from the southern coasts you sometimes still hear the late afternoon Asr prayers calling to the island, while a breeze wafts along the mouth-watering smell of spiced couscous with roasted almonds. 

Visiting this ‘Tierra sagrada’* l am moored to the full spectrum of bright colours falling down from the rosette shaped windows. In this house I am moored to the beauty of Nature. Is this world not meant to be one wonderful big House, in which we can make love, create compassion and culture? As well as separation, skirmish and suffering, if we choose so…. I ponder over it while the light enters me. It makes me think in the colours of my heart.

© Adriana Sjan Bijman Photo: Palma de Mallorca, Easter 2011, text: Findhorn, February 2014.  

findhorn images

*holy ground. 

The Shutters

Doors and windows. There is a folder full of them in my photo-archive. They can be so symbolic, can’t they? Openings into another realm or a different reality…. We speak of ‘windows of opportunity’ and here at Findhorn we work a lot with the ‘Opening Doors Within’ guidance of Eileen Caddy. On the material level the door is the entrance and exit, the passage into a building. Sometimes the windows look like the eyes of the house.

Several summers ago during a journey through the south of France, I worked with the theme of windows and doors, their colours, potential and deeper meaning. They became the focus of that photo-travel. Les portes et les venêtres. Les yeux ouvertes ou fermés, qui me regardent, qui me parlent — et moi, j’ecoute. Et on se regarde, nous deux. *

In one quick movement, this window with its turquoise closed shutters in the bright afternoon sunshine called my attention. Was the Madame of the house having a well-deserved siesta? I imagine a late fulfilling lunch with friends, with Poisson aux Legumes, freshly baked baguette and a bottle of Sauvignon de l’Arjolle, a crisp white wine from their Languedoc region?

Was hers such a happy story? Or do we make our stories reflecting our own mood? Are they filled with our dreams and longings like shutters opening and closing to expose the film of our life?

The windows have their eyes closed for the world; looking inwards and I cannot read life in between the hinged wooden panels. But in the shade of the lush green tree my eyes keep moving upwards wanting the story to continue.

January 2014, © story and photo Adriana Bijman

*Doors and windows, eyes open or closed, which look at me, which speak to me — 

and I, I listen. And we look at each other.

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.