"Het Dolhuys"

this pic is from a new exhibition in "Het Dolhuys" Haarlem called the "Paradijsvogels of Zorgmijders" ["Bird of Paradise or HealtcareAvoiders"]. "Het Dolhuys" is old dutch word for someting like a "mental Hospital".

Someone asked me why i placed this picture. Well first because i love the way she is looking at us [the photographer] and how we look back.. maby uncomfortable curious afraid under her stare; btw thats what the exhibition is about "the way we look at the mentally-ill trough time", the branches shaped like an aureool or crown round her head. Why did she do that? How and what is she thinking? ...

Im always fascinated by mental illness. Started in my darker (darkest) period when i got totally phobic. I was afraid of getting insane. For a few years thinking i saw the first signs of becoming a shizofrenic. Brr horrible times and difficult to explain if you dont ever where a "true" lol fobic. I read about it try to find confirmation about my 'illness' which, of course, i didnt found. Only that i had big mentally problems dealing with fear and phobics. Luckely i did not only read about psychic illness but also, for the first time, literature. Among the first ones was Herman Hesse I stumbled at the next quote of him: "The fear of getting insane is most of the time nothing more then the fear for live, for the demands of our own passions. There is always a gap between primitive passions and that what we conscious like to be and also try to be. One cannot pass that gap, but one can jump over it, hundreds of times, and everytime one needs courage and one feels fear before he jumps". I felt a sigh of relieve trough me when i read that-although the fear didnt dissapear. Also this quote of him struck me. "Yes, say yes to yourself, to your isolation, your feelings, your fate! There is no other way. I dont know where it leads, but it leads to life, to reality, to "prickly" and inescapable problems. One can find that unbearable and comit suicide, thats ones own free decision - its often a comforting thought, also for me. But one cannot run-away-for-it, not by decision, not by treason their own fate and destination, not by trying to fit in with the ‘normal people’; that would only work for a short moment but bring even more despair".

Wish i had found him sooner.
How great for the one who has found a "teacher in life" early. "Noch seh ich ihn vor mich treten in lächelnder Betrachtung, noch hör ich seinen Gruß und seine Fragen". One who can stimulate and point at traps in life, who is honest about fear, feelings, views. The meaning of what oneself is! What it means to live your own life. 'Your tasks’. How much spoiled energy in self-hate, depressions, fustrations, fear and self-focus [the focus without solving but 'spiral-thinking' down down down]. "meines Adamas, meines Adamas"..
So there i was in life with no free horizon -yet!- lonely but not lonely in myself anymore it broke my bans "suicide.. often a comforting thought, also for me" for the first time actual looking at myself. Most important for me was not what the quotes said but the different way to look. All much too late sadly. But now i could work for the first time at free views.
lol how do i came here?? So its association with this picture too. Anyway another great book i read that time was by former doctor in psychiatry P.C. Kuiper "Ver Heen" [Far Gone]. He discribes the process of getting insane from own experience. One day he gets a infection in his brain which lead to psychotic depressions. He stayes in mental hospitals [Hesse was too] but fully recovers through psychotheraphy, medication and painting. (If im correct he died a few years back but cant find info about him). 'Its a book of hope'.

And how many writers live at the edge of insanity, isnt thinking bringing order in chaos? one can loose his foot grip easily there.. its the fate of the great thinkers writers and poets. Those people passed the edge and some payed, sadly, a hard prize for that.. of what makes humans so great. Thinking, dreaming telling stories. But not only them, insanity is closer then one thinks, like death its on everyones doorstep.
They get my sympathy and compassion.


Het Dolhuys, Postbus 2327, 2002 CH Haarlem