Writing

Winter Morning

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In the mornings

when everything is still.

The sun aligns the mountains horizion.

And gently baths it’s colors on the snow.

Life starts slowly and warms the cold.

Café Hommage: Canggu's Best Ding Doctor

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This is Aki. He's a Ding Doctor in Canggu, Bali. With his team, they're fixing an average of 35 boards per day. Why? Because he's the best. And he's in Canggu.

I got to meet him after my girlfriend got ridden over while doing a Turtle Roll on her brand new 7' Mid-Length one morning on the famous break called Old Man's here on the coast of the busy Town of Canggu. Some guy smacked his fins into her board in the white water which left not only a small thing but quite an open crack in her board. Good thing it was only her Board, could as well be a body part.

It's something that happens on a daily basis many times a day when you have hundreds of enthusiasts, from beginner to intermediate to advanced surfers on the same perfect waves. No wonder the photographer at the beach didn’t act like it was a big thing when she showed the damage to him.

Back at the store where Daniela bought her Board a couple of days ago, the local Surfer who works there, whitout hesitation, recommended that we bring it to Aki for repair.

Located on the road that leads to the infamous Short Cut, Aki welcomed us with his bright white smile. With the garage looking quite busy, which they always are, we were sure it'll take at least a few days to get the job done. To our surprise, once he checked the Board, making sure it didn't soak up water and defining the damage, he said it'll be ready in a day.

Aki talks very openly and generous about the work they're doing. After learning the craft from an elderly Australian, he and his Brother opened a Surfboard Repair Shop in Kuta. After working on countless Surfboards there and building a reputation, Aki decided to part business with his Brother and moved to Canggu where he opened his Shop „Ding Repair By Aki“ four years ago.

Sticking out in all the competition is not easy. But Aki picked the best of the best to work with for his Shop. „Every single Surfboard that comes in goes through my hand. I personally check it, assign it to the right repair guy and it’s not leaving my Shop before I make sure it is 100% the best work that can be done.“ tells me Aki. There are three guys in rotation doing the simple Ding repairs, simple dents, cuts from fins or damages from being crashed on a stone shore in the shore break. He especially hired one skilled Man who is responsible for repairing the Boards that have been broken in two pieces. A job that can’t properly be done by everybody, as there shouldn’t be any indifferences in weight from the original, unbroken Board.

Same goes with the painting and finishing. Boards, like my Girlfriends, that have a beautiful, distinguished color leave the store almost without any visible spot of where it was repainted.

„You can learn a lot of things online nowadays.“ says Aki. „And there are a lot of people repairing Surfboards at the lowest cost possible. But it’s not as easy as it might seem on a youtube Video. To repair Surfboards without compromising a weight difference or any optical indifferences take a lot of work and a lot of finesse and requires a lot of experience. We want to make sure, you’ll love your Surfboard as much when it leaves our Shop as you loved it when you first hold it in your Hand before it was damaged.“

With that being said we left Aki’s repair Shop. My Girlfriend holding her beloved Orange glowing Channel Island Surfboard in her hands, not believing how good of a job Aki and his Team were able to do.

Canggu, 29.03.2024

New Wave Up Mag contribution & the importance of Print.

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Every once in a while I’m honored to be allowed to contribute Photographs or a Story, or both, to the Wave Up Magazine. The only remaining Surf Magazine that’s still available in Print. In times where everything seems exclusively available digitally it’s not to take for granted that a is Magazine still published in the form of print, let alone a Surf Magazine from Switzerland where all Surfer are landlocked.

Not being a fan of reading digitally myself I appreciate a printed Magazine more than ever. But as I just learned, there seems to be an upcoming trend on the horizon as more and more people want to abandon their phones in their free time and are looking to put some more time into something with a little more substance to grab, so to say.

A New York Times Article that’s been recently published states that high-end print Magazines are thriving. Same as it was the case when Vinyls made their comeback and stayed, more as a niche but still the sells picking up every year.

Here’s the whole article on how “In a digital age, high-end outdoors magazines are thriving in print” - although only in digital form… Read here.

Wave Up Magazine #38 is out now and available HERE.

A Little Poem Of Love

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A blessing or a fraud,
that’s what runs the questions of my heart.

Are we long gone?
Or just beginning, where should we start?

A yellow rose or black abyss.
All confidence, a close miss.

The lips so red, the soul so tight.
It hurts the dark into starry night.

Let me sink into that abyss.
All I long for, is one last kiss.

 

Writing Journey Update

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A different current in improving writing:

The wind blows gently on my neck through the open window space behind me.

With a little bad conscience shadowing my self I had to admit I have failed regarding the goal to write everyday for 365 days. It’s a goal I’ve set for myself and myself only. Which doesn’t make it any easier to let it go.

How come? So first and foremost I love to spend some day not touching a Computer, Laptop or sometimes even take a day off my phone. It gives me a certain calm of mind and mostly a push of creativity through resting and recovering. Does that mean I don’t write anything? Mostly not. As much as the idea of putting something out there everyday appeals to me, it simply doesn’t resonate in reality. At least not in this phase of my being. I felt a certain burden over me at some days.

When I’m interested in something I wanna start to engage in it. Being interested in different kinds of Art, Photography being my first and foremost passion, I learned to reach out to people who are way more experienced and ask them for advice. Which, in terms of writing, is an opportunity I already got granted with talking to my friend and Author Daniel Allison.

Daniel is an incredible Storyteller and Writer. He was kind and offered me his support on this journey. When we sat down, having Coffee, we spoke about the process of writing. He helped me question my writing style and more importantly how to actually find my style in writing.

One of his suggestions was to think about what I want to say, to give my poems and stories some kind of place to go. Which I find is something quite hard for me to do. It is easy to start somewhere. There is always an idea popping up somewhere in the mists of my monkey mind. As thoughts flow it feels easy to write them down, arrange the words in a sense that it sounds appealing, but very hard to drive them to a certain destination.

Another recommendation of his was that I might wanna try to write longer pieces.

As with recommendations, you always have the option to adopt or repudiate. Coming at it with an open mind and, of course, appreciative of any help, I didn’t do neither but rather kept on writing while contemplating this thoughts on either I should adopt or dismiss. Don’t get me wrong, the thought of dismissal is in no way a disdain of Daniel’s advices. It simple stirred the thought that maybe, I wasn’t going for longer stories. I love to write short poems. Random words assembled by whatever comes to my through some higher consciousness. And who knows, maybe they don’t have to have a certain destination in means of an ending in each of them. I do see them more as a puzzle forming a bigger picture that will end up eventually as something whole. But the thing is, you can’t force them. They will come up when they feel like.

Neither the less, what I really found interesting in writing every day is that, to my surprise, something always popped up. Which is fascinating. I’m by no means a religious person. Only maybe if you count all kinds of Spiritualism as religious endeavor. But as I went through my morning routine, waking up, making Coffee, reading whatever Book I’m reading at the moment, always after meditating words just seemed to trickle down from the “heavens” for the lack of a better word.

So why did I fail after 32 days of swimming in heavens creative swamp? Because I wanna take Daniel’s advice and build some longer pieces through, gathered through some days before I post them on this lovely Website (referring to Substack). So I won’t stop writing everyday, if something is still revealing itself everyday, but rather learn how to form and structure then post a piece once a Week. Probably on Sunday, but don’t nail my word on that.

Writing this, I already get excited to share this next progression with you all.

Follow me on Substack to read more.

Day Twenty Eight

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Maybe we’ll meet in heaven, where God and the Buddha reside and everyone speaks the same language.

Maybe we’ll meet in heaven, were we’ll bask in liberation.

A few words from heaven had rendered all the words on earth inconsequental.*

I’m taking a draw from my cigarette and watch the smoke yild towards the sky, when all or a sudden it all comes to me.

All of what we percieve of as heaven is right here. Don’t you see?

Earth is already the place where God & the Buddha speak the same language.

It’s witnessed in life and translated in books.

We just have to open the door when we hear the knock.

*quote: Mitch Albom - Phone Call From Heaven

Sunday Thoughts.

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I took a two cups of fairly strong coffee to get my system going. 

Not to make my mind race at all but it has this calming feeling of sparkling the creativity which helps me write down my inner most feelings.

A Sunday morning, my lover’s gone.

All quiet around me while the clouds overcast the sun so that hot summer day feels like beginning of the  autumn harvest season.

Fall always brings out reflection, then closure and yielding.

I feel young, sometimes childish. Yet I know my youth lays behind me.

Somedays the body aches and the soul is torn.

But, like in buddhism, if I try to look at the world with childish eyes, non judgmental and endless curiosity there’s proof that age don’t matter.

Besides, what’s more rewarding; being a careless child or a rebellious teen with not a care in the world doing unconscious decisions or having that awareness we ought to gain with age?

Both have its pros and cons in a philosophical way. What matters is the perception of it and how to not get drowned in the everyday mental chatters of our surroundings and within our brains. 

So I write myself a little postcard, a remainder that the child, the punkish’ teen and the buddha all live in me. 

They belong together. It’s what forms our personalities. 

I give them a hug and open my eyes. The kid want’s to play now.

Random Thought on The Human Condition

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What is the heart of the human condition?

I mean, what is it that drives us out of bed each morning.

That source energy that pushes us through the day. Through life.

But also the one that keeps us from going for our dreams. Or even out of the house on a mundane Sunday.

It’s complex, I think. Not sure. So that makes it that.

Can we operate it with certain behaviors, or let’s say, non-behaviors?

By nourishing our bodies and our spirits?

By keeping our minds clean. Out blood cells flowed?

Is to move ourselves the magic trick to keep everything else in flow as well?

Old Coffee & Leftover Cake

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There is certainly something about old Coffee and leftover Cake. A Nostalgia if you want so. In the recent memories storage of the brain I guess it awakes in us feelings of yesterday. A nice Sunday when Pots of Coffee where brewed while the scent of your girlfriends freshly baked pie covers the air. A cozy feeling of love and harmony. 

Or maybe it digs even deeper. To childhood. When Mom baked a Pie for a special occasion. May it be a family reunion, a birthday, or simply because she felt like making a regular day special while she reheats her cup of Coffee over and over again in the microwave.

Then the happy surprise when, the next day, you realize nobody there’s still a piece of pie left! What a way to start the day with pie for breakfast isn’t it!

As I reheat the leftover cup of Coffee and turn on the oven to warm the last piece of pie a warm feeling fills my body. A feeling of joy and good memories. It’s fantastic what food can do to us besides nurturing us obviously. 

So let’s be more like Coffee and Pie. Let’s live a life of love and harmony.

Peace, and enjoy that pie.

To those who might concern:

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Today I got to read a Substack article written by the great Brandon Boyd concerning his thoughts on thinking. The article revolved around the human brain, asking the question of how much of our thoughts we really own when we really go into ourselves and shut off the noise of everyday life. The question then was raised “What do yo think?”.

So while your asking you shall get an insight:


We are all products of our environment. Mostly despised, or at least not obviously relevant to the greater good of mass humanity. But every once in a while an individual is emerging. He, too, a product of his collected memories, thoughts and influences impacted by his life experience and chosen environment, none the less manages to impact a “new” so to speak generation. It seems he bundled his collected projections and is able to convert them into a new creative force. Then sending, spitting and blasting it out into the greater collective forming a new offspring for them to soak in as part of their existence. I think, what touches, influences us the most is what we absorb and review as “new”. Something we never saw, heard or tasted in a same way that this new delivers. Merely a compromised quantum of pre-existing creative tentacles, summarized so simple for us to digest easily enough that this new creative force is able to create new form and evolution in this abstraction of time and space.


So what do YOU think?

Café Hommage: Ma Chambre Noire (Lukas Bühlmann)

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The craft of creating a Photograph, from choosing the right Film, getting your setting right, finding the light, waiting for a moment to unfold itself, developing the negativ, ends with the precise work in the darkroom. The work in the darkroom itself is a mastery. One of those masters is Lukas Bühlmann.

Balancing his job as a Teacher for children with special needs and being a Dad of (soon to be) two Kids, it’s not always easy to pursue a time consuming hobby as Photography.

Lukas is a humbling guy with a lot of patience. You can tell he’s passionate about what he’s doing.

His body of work “On & Above”, which captures a sense of loneliness in rather depressed moments of last years lockdown, can be seen at the La Buvette until the end of January. Of course every one of his pictures is printed in his own darkoom. For the final artistic approach he used 50 year old printing paper to give it that moody look on print.

Go see his “On & Above” work HERE until the end of January 2023.

And make sure you check out more of his work in his Instagram page here.

If only I could write.

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If I could write,

I would write a story.

If I could write,

I would write a story of a world being safe.

If I could write,

I would write the story of a white man being black.

If I could write,

I would write a story of a woman being a man.

If I could write,

I would write a story where ethnics or race or gender don’t matter.

If I could write,

I would write a story where we’re all in synchronicity with nature.

If I could write,

I would write a story where we all let us being guided by the power of choice the universe has to offer.

If I could write,

I would write my story.

If I could write,

I would write your story too.

If I could write, If only I could write.

seeing without a sight

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As my eyes touched the surface of this world, the light was blinding me out of the beauty it has to offer. Only when shadows came I also came to realize what it has to offer. Boundlessness bounded and free to roam we are here to express ourselves from the abyss. Out of the shades to use the light and guide our inner voice to places not even visible at most times.

The Interbeing of change

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You cannot reduce being into non-being. Life is a process of change. Without changing, life is impossible. Once you accept that with joy, there is no fear. That is the practice of looking deeply. - Thich Nhat Hanh

Lover

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You make my heart open up like a butterfly.

Good and Evil, side by side.

Shame and pride and everything beside.

A Jar full of inspiration and love.

Your energies is the calling from up above.