Usually, unless you are standing on a shore, perched on a hill or otherwise elevated, the true horizon is obscured by trees, buildings, mountains, anything else bigger, more massive and permanent than you. Those things, cluttered within your sight, that intersection of earth and sky is called the visible horizon.

The word horizon derives from the Greek horizōn kyklos, “separating circle”, from the verb horizō, “to divide, to separate”, and that from oros, “boundary, landmark”.

The reason I love this shot is because of the off-screen action, the mystery of whatever is happening beyond my frame. The colors are also some of my favorite. At this point in time the symbolism of the shot seems poignant.

These men are staring at the horizon of the Thar desert trying to spot any oncoming camel activity. I wonder what’s on my true horizon for 2012. My visible horizon right now features an oncoming ski trip, a family reunion and a wedding or two, but other than that most of 2012 actually falls into that unmentioned third category, the invisible one, that direction that does not yet intersect with the world’s surface.

Whats on your horizon this year? Will you try to spot those ‘camels’ before they reach camp or do you prefer to be surprised?

What if subconsciously our Fuik-dag tradition, our sunrise swims after those all-night parties on the first of January, the freezing Nieuwjaarsduik in Holland; what if all of those traditions are our version of isnaan?

Bare with me for a moment and let me explain.

The word isnaan is a derivative of asnnaan (which appears is the Sikh scripture, Guru Granth Sahib) and means to bathe, cleanse or purify. Sikhism’s code of conduct instructs pilgrims and devotees to rise early and perform isnaan, bathing both body and soul. The body is to be cleansed in water, the soul cleansed in contemplation of the divine. We rise early, we cleanse in water. I am not so sure we cleanse the soul in contemplation. More likely in alcohol, but Fuikdag is a pilgrimage. Sort of. Isn’t it?

This woman is bathing n the waters of a sarovar. The word also means pond, lake or ocean but in Sikhism a sarovar refers to the sacred waters of a pool, or moat, built around gurdwara. This one is at the beautiful Golden Temple in Amritsar, India. (there will be a few more shots from the Golden Temple in the Fifty Picture Project)

Originally sarovar’s are intended to supply fresh water for cooking and bathing. Nowadays, pilgrims flock to them to wash their feet or to perform spiritual ablution – isnaan. We wandered around the temple for three days, sleeping on the grounds, eating in the worlds largest free kitchen (it serves over 80.000 people on weekends), folding yards and yards of orange cloth, all the while watching pilgrim after pilgrim solemnly dip their toes and wet their brow with the holy waters. And while they contemplated the divine, I contemplated everything. It didn’t get me very far.

But, that’s not the point now. My point is that;

be your bath in the clear blue Caribbean (lucky you), the cold split-pea-soup-green waters off Scheveningen (poor thing), or your first long, hot shower on January first, nursing your hangover (me); don’t forget to contemplate the divine.

I don’t mean to say we must all be religious. I do mean to say we must all contemplate. The divine. The not-so-divine. Your actions over the last year. Those you will take in the year to come.

It is age-old and therefore no news to you, but be grateful for what you have. Be happy not all of your wishes have come true. (Really, think about it. Being kidnapped by Brad Pitt at the tender age of seventeen would have been disastrous) Be careful about what you say, what you do and who you do. But most of all be nice. Be thoughtful. And maybe the world will be thoughtful with you.

Whether you are celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, both (me again) or Lorhi in January, there is something about the solstice in the depths of winter that compels everybody to extol light / birth / the promise of spring and so I want to wish you all…..

Merry Everything and Happy Always

May the light be with you

]]> http://kellyvanderkwast.com/2011/12/25/10-tis-the-season-to-be-thoughtful/feed/ 1 kellykorsow DSC_0369 http://kellyvanderkwast.com/2011/12/19/9-some-advice-this-holiday-season/ http://kellyvanderkwast.com/2011/12/19/9-some-advice-this-holiday-season/#comments Mon, 19 Dec 2011 09:30:34 +0000 kellykorsow http://kellyvanderkwast.com/?p=792 ]]>

Santa will pick up the box as soon as possible. In times of crisis the jolly old man can use all the help he can get.

Though I am sure that later, when I am old(er) and gray(er), it wont. Then it will be two distinct periods in my life. One post-highschool-college-years-period and one  post-trip-jobseeking-years-period. This picture was taken in the interim period – the part that feels like it never happened – in Buenos Aires.

I love that the longer you gaze at it the more bizarre it seems. And sometimes I feel like this little guy looks – probably the real reason I like the photo. Slightly time warped, surrounded by information I am not sure I will ever really grasp (all those books!) and being scrutinized by ‘the insiders’ – in this case embodied by a big, mean cat with a fierce look in its eyes – but still a tough little cookie who you better not mess with; check out his furrowed brow. (Also note the scary dolls in the bottom left corner and the gaping jaw above. Weird, right?)

The reason I love this photo is the same reason everyone loves Charlie Brown. We all feel a little misunderstood, we all lose a little bit. So we all identify with Charlie. I have just decided that’s the kids name, by the way. We’re all in it together to try to be a little happier in a world that’s just a little too tough on us. And when we come ‘home’ from an adventure that feels like it has already dissipated, and we expect ourselves to have morphed into something, or maybe just out of something, when all our expectations are too high, we need to take a few steps back and remember where we came from and try to imagine where we are going. At least, I do. Patience is not my strong suit. In fact, I regularly ask myself that age-old question; why is patience a virtue? Why can’t hurry the %*($ up be a virtue?

I like to look at Charlie’s face and remember all the wonder and curious energy and hope I had for myself, and the world around me, as a kid. That is one of the things that hasn’t changed. It reminds me what it’s like to squint back at someone – myself in this case, taking the picture – and think; who the f*ck are you?

Maybe part of returning to an old home, haunt or city is looking old you straight in the face and asking yourself that same question.

It’s that time of year again. Soft cotton covers buildings and and lies densely at their feet, clouding up the street, children count days till gifts, be them Hanukkah, Sinterklaas or Christmas-paper wrapped, and weather reports announce the onset of a short ice age. Everybody seems to be huddling against the outside world.

As was I. With a glass of wine and some butternut squash risotto. Friends and family gathered around our green plastic dining room table while the curtain-less windows looked out on a deep blackness, just beyond the glass, reflecting our own images back at us.

The conversation quickly turned to Zwarte Piet and Sinterklaas. Some people are none too happy about those two moseying in. Two newbies to our circle admitted to having seen their arrival, and having been shocked by it. “The most racists thing, ever”, they gasped.

Some of us who grew up with the Dutch Sinterklaas festivities reacted; “It isn’t racist. It’s a party. For kids! Besides, parents tell their children he comes through the chimney. That’s why he is black. It’s soot. He’s not a slave. Anymore.” The thing is, he never was. Bare with me.

(It’s worth noting most corners were well represented in the conversation; Dutch, Antillean, African, Asian.)

Even though the chimney story doesn’t explain Piet’s kinky hair or big red lips, I could not find fault with it. Much like Santa’s helpers, to me, Zwarte Piet is not human. He’s not real. Sure, he was at some point. But now he can hear you all year, he scales roofs, he jumps down chimney’s and he has an endless supply of candy. How human is that?

It was always implied that ‘the original story’ involved our hideous history of slavery one way or another, but children learn about that later. If the system does not fail them they will already know that not one color is better or different from the next.

When young, those same kids are worried about candy, carrots, hay, putting their shoes out, and singing in tune. One black friend who grew up with Sinterklaas says simply; “It’s just fun. There is no reason to look for underlying motives. It’s a guy who brings by candy and it became a tradition. That’s all.”

I never thought it racists either. I do think that looking for those underlying motives within both the white and black communities can give way to populism and might make room for racism.

“Surely a white man putting on ‘black face’ to play a black man is offensive!” someone shouts. Why though? What is offensive about it? Sinterklaas also puts on white paint to play a white man. In fact, in Curaçao, black men often put on white paint to play Sint.

The reply comes quickly; “Why is Piet black? And if he has to be black, why can’t a black man play the part? Why a white man dressed up? And why so stereotypical with the red lips and curly hair?”

In Curaçao black people do play the part. They also sport the curly wigs and painted on red lips. Who says it is white men dressing up like black men? It’s white men, and black men, and latino men. Maybe we should wonder why there aren’t any woman. Surely Sinterklaas isn’t a misogynist?

But the stereo type! That horrible stereo type; they say. They mention the lips, the black paint, the relationship between Sint and Piet. Yes, it’s a stereo type. But of what exactly?

The black devil that accompanied Saint Nic during his days of duty in Germany and the Czech Republic in the 15th century? (Derived from the Germanic god Wodan, who some say is precursor to Father Winter, and his helper Eckhart who filled the boots of Wodan’s loyal believers with gold)

Or of the legendary Saint Nic who fought the devil and won, making the king of the underworld his servant? The devil, back then, was called the black one – referring to the black peck of hell; not the color of his skin. (Philosophical debates about why black stands for evil and white for good are currently being held at the blog next door)

More often heard is that Saint Nic paid the ransom for slave Petrus of Moorish origin, thereby freeing him. Petrus stuck around to lend old Nic a helping hand. As the tradition rooted itself in Dutch society the story gained ground. According to this tale, Saint Nic came from Spain.

And yes, to the European rich and aristocratic alike, a Moorish slave was ‘normal’, fashionable even. The slaves were dressed in exotic customs so as to seem ‘relaxed’ and horrifically shackled at the ankles to prevent their escape. But Piet or Petrus was not a slave.

The first Dutch images of Zwarte Piet stem from 1850. They were conjured up by Dutch school teacher Jan Schenkman, together with Sinterklaas’ steam boat, his trusty white stallion who nimbly transports him from rooftop to rooftop and the gifts that fell from the chimney on the eve of the holy man’s birthday. In the picture book Piet works for Sint. Schenkman intended the story to be a pedagogy tool.

And we haven’t even discussed Nikolaus yet, the real person who was born in Myra, now part of Turkey, in approximately 260 A.D. and died a lifetime of Holiness later on the 6th of December in 340 A.D. (They think.) The man who is celebrated every year and in several countries. The patron Saint of children, women, sailors, thieves, the weak and the fragile. The man who did not have a slave.

So what stereo type are we rejecting? That of a freed (fictional) slave? That of a symbolic devil? That of a Moorish man? That of a master-slave relationship? That of a black man working for a white man? What if Sint were black? Would he be a bomba then? And why are we rejecting it now?

It seems to me that while the Dutch enjoyed a progressive reputation, that of a liberal country, tolerant and open, there was little complaint about the multiple-passport carrying Saint. But as Holland has become more conservative with its leaders, its people try to identify, divide, expel and dispel.

Turning Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet into a political agenda point feels both misplaced and superfluous. If the Netherlands is aware of its history, if their world-renowned education system and pedagogically infused up-bringing is as strong as they claim, could it not embrace Sinterklaas and his employees? Could their former colonies – the Antilles and Suriname – not do the same?

Tradition is about who you were AND who you are. Improving ideals won’t hurt, nor will understanding the pain of others. But before we change a children’s festival should we not properly identify the problem and should they, the children, not be taught to withstand any injection of hate mongering or racism – year round? And can the past not stay part of our present? If it can’t, have we learned nothing from it?

I propose that we leave Piet and Sint the way they are. One gentle, gray old man, and lots of happy, beautiful faces. Both fictional characters based on historic figures with many different roots and realities. Both meant to teach and entertain, but most of all, both meant to inspire goodness in everyone.

Maybe we could add some white Pieten. Would that solve the problem?

Getting rid of Piet, who to most children is a mischievous elf, is not going to solve the resurfacing problem of nationalism in countries like the Netherlands and its former colonies.

* This is the fifty picture project after all. So my picture this week has little to do with the subject matter in this blog other than I found it a nice example of two beautiful girls happily sharing a moment.

Zoom in a little – not too far please – and there, floating in the international news sphere, you will find Kim Kardashian, whose marriage lasted all of 72 whole days. The wedding reportedly cost a mere 10 million dollars. Nicholas D. Kristof makes the point that that money could have built hundreds of desperately needed schools around the world making Kim and her ex-husband Kris Humphries saints instead of another pair of celebrity basket cases.

Zoom in even further, into my personal space, and  you will hear a Dutch song about the 15 million people living within the borders of that minuscule country, rewritten about Curaçao. It now dissect the numerous problems of our microscopic island and its 150 thousand inhabitants. The lyrics say that lies reign supreme, corruption is rampant and no one is safe; all thanks to the persistently hustling, not-so-intelligent, power-hungry politicians resorting to stale rhetoric about race and hate, polarizing our paradise in order to line their own pockets and fan the flames of their own vanities.

Now zoom out again. Very far out, like you’re floating among the stars far out, and we have another number to contemplate.

7 Billion.

This week we will be – or already were – joined by our 7 billionth fellow world citizen. No one knows where or when the lucky – or not so lucky – kid will be born, but the United Nations guesstimates it is around now. As in; while you are sitting there reading this now.

I, for one, am stumped by this number. In elementary school, where I learned how to count and I learned about countries and flags and the world and all the different people in it, I learned we were 6 billion. Not precisely accurate, but clear and cool and seemingly stable. And maybe because it was ‘always’ like that for me, it seemed manageable.

I know pundits have been worrying for decades about the unprecedented population boom, food shortage and other capacity issues. The fact that humanity has more than doubled in the last fifty years raises several questions; How is it that we added India’s head count in 20-odd years?; “Is the enormous increase in households, cities, material consumption and waste compatible with dignity, health, environmental quality and freedom from poverty?” Joel Cohen wades a followable path through deep and murky numbers in this Op-ed piece.

In honor of this milestone and to contemplate the numbers swirling around my head like bees buzzing around a hive leaving long trails of zero’s floating behind their busy little bodies, I wanted to post the following picture.

It was taken at the Wagah border during the closing ceremony – it is the only (official) road border crossing between India and Pakistan. Every evening, before sunset, the two frenemies close the crossing ceremoniously and because of the complicated relationship between them this goes with some pomp. Both Indian and Pakistani soldiers march in full uniform, decked out in colorful turbans and kicking their legs up so high a Cancan girl would be proud.

Wagah lies on the Grand Trunk road between Amritsar and Lahore. Especially while I was packed into those far-flung bleachers on that dusty border road, the sheer number of people astounded me. Even in that out-post the sea of faces seemed endless.

Later I came across a t-shirt in a tourist shop in Mumbai that said ‘Come to India. 1 Billion people can’t be wrong’. India will have more people than China shortly after 2020, and sub-Saharan Africa will have more people than India before 2040, says Cohen. 800 million people, mainly women, will be illiterate. (No thanks to you guys, Kim and Kris.) 10 Billion people will be walking the earth by 2083.

After contemplating the digits Cohen goes on to ask if the world needs fewer ‘forks’, more factories (for all that food and material production) or just better manners. Maybe we should start with the manners. I know the politicians in Curaçao could take an etiquette lesson or two. They would be wise to pursue “fewer inequities, less violence and corruption, freer trade and mobility, more rule of law, less material-intensive consumption.” But, hey, then they would not enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Cohen asks if education of better quality and greater availability is a key ingredient of all other strategies. I think it’s paramount. The politicians we have voted into office think education is a tool with which they can wield personal power, playing with it until it suits sides like football teams, splitting everything into two camps. Maybe that’s because several of them never profited from one.

I can’t profess to know how to solve the problems of a stressed-out island, let alone those of an overpopulated world. However, I do think it is important to consider the oncoming revolution in demographics.

If we can’t get it right on the small-scale, what are we to do with this explosion? What do you think will happen? Where are the bottle necks? Will the world blow a gasket or does the pot just keep simmering and reach a slow boil? What’s the key ingredient according to you?

Two years ago, almost to the day, my friend Marieke and I took this train to Simla, in Himachal Pradesh. We were backpacking through India for a few months and early on we set out to see Simla and the Dalai Lama’s palace in McCloud Ganj. The famous toy-train climbs, chugs and pulls up the eternal faces of the lower Himalaya reaches. People hang out the open doors and windows – a train conductor in any other country would have had a heart attack – in awe of a natural beauty surpassing poetic words on mist and sky. Trees, and boulders slide past while from them monkeys look at the passengers hanging from the red train who look straight back all the while savoring their greedy gulps of fresh air; different from the spiced, fumed atmosphere hanging in the cities in the foothills.

Last weekend Marieke came to visit me in Paris. We hadn’t seen each other for nearly a year and half. As I stood at Gare du Nord, waiting for the Euro Star to pull in I made little mental notes of what adventures I could embark on with my friend. We would drink wine – of course, and rent bikes, we would get lost in the Marais and go to the market at Montmartre. Diligent as we both are, we managed to cram it all in into the few hours she was on French soil.

As we were strolling through the Marais, Marieke, who has the propensity to scream whenever she sees an elephant, suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, causing a fashionable french traffic jam on the narrow sidewalk. She pointed and shrieked ; “Hey! My elephant!”. I looked at her incredulously, wondering if the bike ride along the Seine had been too much for her. I let my eyes follow her stretched out arm and pointing finger until they came to rest on a picture taped to the gray outer wall of some old Parisian building. It was a picture of an elephant standing majestically on the firm sands of a South Indian beach. We had both bought a print during our trip.

The man who had taken the picture that captured Marieke’s imagination so is named Sebran. We met Sebran and his girlfriend Celine in McCloud Ganj, where they were roaming the streets with two Nepalese men, their Rollicord’s cupped in their hands, looking for memorable scenes. They fascinated us with their beauty and sense of adventure. They traveled by motorbike, bought old Polish camera’s, printed the images on thick paper and sold them to anyone and everyone interested, living off their earnings.

Feeling slightly time warped, Marieke and I crossed the narrow street and asked the pierced girl in the purple coat, dreads piled high, who sat hunched against the wall with pictures if she knew the man who had taken them.  She looked at us, seemingly scanning from head to toe and simply said ; “Sebran, sure. Do you?” We smiled and explain the story. She smiled in return and said if we went back down the street and took the second left, we would find the our friend.

Once on the designated corner we  did indeed spot him, with his back to us, talking to some buyers about his work, taped this time to the limestone wall of a church. He turned around slowly when he heard us giggle, his eyes widened and his hand came up to his face. He smiled and pointed, recognizing us, but clearly puzzled about why he would and from where. We burst out into an explanation, excited to have crossed paths again.

That weekend we ended up in his apartment, where we met Celine again as well, this time with an eleven month old baby girl perched on her knee. We poured over Sebran’s new images, shared tea, bought some beautiful bracelets from Celine and talked about motorbikes and highways, Indian villages and Japanese food.

So you see? The world moves in circles. Marieke is a circle. India is a circle. Sebran and Celine are circles. They were all part of the same circle. Now they hula-hoop around at different speeds, but they still come and go. Last week they just happened to collide.

The first was signed in a dimly lit cellar of a small currency exchange office tucked between two Tabac stores on one of Paris’ most expensive streets, the second was signed in the well lit halls of a massive call center, drowned in the tongues of its international employees. The first is for twelve hours a week of legal thievery, the later is for a part time stint as what I can only really describe as a modern pirate. And for those reasons, and obvious ones to follow, both companies will remain nameless.

A dimly lit cellar, with dangerously broken spiral stairs leading to the ‘safe’, is where I count the ‘caisse’ money before bringing the bundled funds upstairs where I put it all neatly in a drawer, ready to hand over to unassuming tourists who willingly give me their pretty bills in exchange for too few euro’s. The boss watches my every move over the always-on skype camera as I trick and bully people into excepting the terrible exchange rate. Granted, some people are just not too smart when it comes to their monetary decisions, others simply break my heart. Take the Japanese girl who cried on the other side of the bullet proof glass when I told her that was “just our rate”, after having given her half the amount in euro of what she had forked over in pounds. “But the pound dollar higher than euro dollar. I know for sure this” she sobbed from the windy street side of my window, her big deep brown eyes pleading me to just do something. “I know Miss, but that is OUR rate. You should have checked the board”, I am instructed to yell at her through the inch thick glass. If I did not need the job, I would have whirled around and yelled my resignation at the skype camera. After having canceled the girls transaction of course.

Then there was a woman who came back to reprimand me for an exchange her husband had okayed. She pointed her finger at my face, leaning in and smudging the window I would later have to clean, and said that I should be ashamed to work in that office. I think she asked if my mother knew about my job as a daylight robber. I am not sure. It’s hard to hear people through the glass. If only she knew how ashamed I am. But also, who does she think she is!? At least I have a job. Does she know how hard it was to get one? Does she know how expensive wine and baguette’s are?

Okay, so I have two jobs, not one. I know. I still need both of them. This because minimum wage in Paris is the minimum you need to live outside the city and commute (to the tune of ridiculous pass navigo public transport charges). If I actually disclose what I make an hour most of my friends, the good ones at least, would have me committed to the looney bin. But then, I think I already work in one. Example; a first-day conversations at the call centre went something like this, “Oh Hi. Nice to meet you.. uhm. What can I say?….. Well, welcome I guess. (insert feeble smile and slight giggle) Welcome to this freak show; where everyone is lost, and no one knows why they are here, exactly”. Doesn’t that sounds like an institution for the certifiably insane to you? Keep in mind that we are all there out of free will.

The other welcome I got – same place – was this; “Oh you’re new! Hi! Nice to meet you (insert wicked grin and twinkling eyes). Welcome aboard this sinking ship of gold diggers.” I considered running out the front door. Again, I signed contracts with clauses of secrecy, so I can’t give you the exact details of my activities within the incredibly white walls of that buzzing, ringing, multi-lingual hall of computer screens. But basically I call people who don’t want to talk to me, ask them if I can have their ‘waste and precious metal’ and then bully them, while they are trying to hang up on me, into giving me an appointment to come in and see the merchandise. What happens after such a conversation is anyone’s guess

The plus side; at the currency exchange office, when it is quiet and no one feels the need to walk up to my fish bowl of an office in order to be willingly, even if unwittingly, robbed, I can write, read and go about my business. At the call centre, I am surrounded by witty world travelers and entertaining personalities who are in the same boat as I – be it sinking or not.

And so, we get to the picture related – distantly; think of it as a third cousin twice removed type of relationship – to this post.

If I could get a hold on this guys ‘precious waste and scrap metal’ I would meet all quota requirements and earn my bonus at that call centre. I can sit on my laurels and have a bully free month. Also, I don’t think he would mind if I gave him an unfair exchange rate. Wait. No. Maybe he would. In fact, I think I would give this guy the best rate we have. I shudder to think what he would do if he felt cheated in any way.

The picture was taken at a Bull fight in the gorgeous corrida ring of Sevilla. It was the summer of 2007 and I was in Andalusia for a Spanish course. I was seated on the ‘al sol’ side of the ring because tickets for those places are cheaper. It was forty degrees at least on that hazy afternoon. The man in the picture is wearing a three piece suit, in case you haven’t noticed. As you can see, the Sivillanos are worth a closer look.

That advice is actually useful in lots of situation – or not at all. Sometimes the idea of a beach is just too depressing. In this case it’s what my father said to us on cold days. We would complain about our toes and noses and frozen finger tips. And he would march on, looking strangely like a penguin, with his arms stiffly held by his side and his small, determined steps. He would talk to us about his days at Blair, tucked away in the freezing reaches of Upstate New York. Of snow that piled head high. Of slippery morning walks to class.

We’re all island kids. We can’t stand being cold. But I love seasons. I love all the cliches about them. The changes they bring and all the sadness and happiness that goes with their ebbs and flows. Note: I usually claim to hate winters and rain and snow and the dark by the time February rolls around.  But eternal summer, though perfect in theory, makes no sense to me in practice.Her hair looks cold, there is frost on her jacket, the snow is a blinding white. But the winter sun brings warmth. The people standing on the frozen pond in the center of the Vondel Park, in the center of Amsterdam, all swirled around in a happy, giggling pool. Dogs barked, parents warned, children slipped and fell. That day is what I like to think about when the seasons change.

I haven’t been through a winter in a several years. Oh, there have been cold days. But I’ve managed to escape the really grueling months. As the Parisian days get shorter and the summer emptiness of the streets is replaced by the energy and onset of autumn with the return of tanned citizens, I’m looking forward to days like these and the ones in between. Don’t worry. Come january I will have posted a picture of the incredible blue Caribbean sea and I will claim to have been temporarily insane when I wrote this.

Avoir la Puce by Gaëlle Faure

During a wonderful picnic lunch in Versailles with a half French half English couple, the conversation inevitably turned to linguistic misunderstandings between the two subsequently spoken languages. Why do the french say they farted a cable when they are angry about something, my British friend asked innocently. Her French husband laughed. That’s not what they say, he explained. They say that they’ve snapped a cable. But the verbs for snap and fart when conjugated sound the same then, she states, baffled. She’s lived in Paris for a year now and thought people farted cables quiet often.

The French really do have a funny way of saying things. But then, so do the English. Lets start with the French. We’ll move to the Dutch later.

Take this line from a newspaper article; Ne pas avoir froid aux yeux. Literally translated it means not to have the cold in the eyes. It means that the person to whom it is linked is not afraid. I can tell you, from experience, that for someone who is studying French and reading newspapers to improve her skills, such expressions are not beneficial to your learning curve.

He didn’t have the cold in his eyes? Was the writer of this article trying to tell me the man had a friendly face? Did it want to say he had warm eyes? What did warm eyes have to do with a shoot-out? And why would the guy who stopped a gunman not have cold eyes? You would think they would be cold, steely in fact. Not warm. This was confusing, to say the least.

Then there is;  mettre la puce à l’oreille. Literally translated it means to have to put a flee in your ear. What it indicates is that Ah ha! moment, when you put two and two together and realize something. Example; your boyfriend is out all night and you have no idea were. In fact, you haven’t heard from him in a while. You find a sweet, handwritten note somewhere, stuffed between his messy pile of magazine’s while you’re looking for something to read. Voila! Vouz mettes la puce à l’oreille! All those times he was late, all those phone calls, the smell of perfume. It occurs to you that he must be cheating. This is not good obviously. Not the cheating part, nor the flee in your ear part.

Then you have the Dutch

My aunt likes translating strange Dutch sayings to English. She does it all the time, but especially enjoys dolling out confusing little lines during dinner parties, ruffling the feathers – and maybe curlicuing the minds -  of her fine British friends. After an anecdote about a man who threw a hissy-fit while waiting for his train, she’ll simply say something like, Ah, well, patience is the mother of the porcelain cabinet. Sometimes the result is less enlightening and more entertaining. Like when she shrieked that whatever it was her friend was yapping on about that particular dinner “hit like pliers on a pig.”

It does no such thing! The friend exclaimed. Little did this friend know that the Dutch saying – dat slaat als een tang op een varken – means that something is nonsense. She might have been just as offended had she understood my aunt thought she was sucking it all out of her thumb (there is another one that means the person is making everything up), but she would not have felt accused of abusing animals.

Whenever I come across one of these, I will try and post them here. If you have any fun suggestions feel free to leave them in the comment section or send me an email.