POSTMODERN LATERALLY EXTENDED HOLIDAYS

Emma and Tim go camping in the wild at a lovely lake in Limousin with their mother Susan. Her new friend Bob will join her later on for a holiday with his two sons. But first Paul, the father of Emma and Tim, will come with his new wife Anna and her daughter Eva to spend some days together.

Then Emma and Tim move on with Paul, Anna and Eva to a campsite in the Ardèche and go canoeing in the rapids. Next week Bram, the former husband of Anna, will arrive with his new girlfriend Clara, stay for a few days and make a grand midnight fire with them.

Then Emma and Tim, along with their stepsister Eva, will move on in the car of Bram and Clara for a trip to the Pyrenees. They’ll stay in a small hotel and go for hiking at the steep slopes. In Andorra, Bob, the stepfather of Emma and Tim, and his two sons will arrive from Limousin and join them for a nice hike.

In Bob’s hired car Tim, Bob and his two sons will cross the Pyrenees for a pilgrimage to the great club FC Barcelona and watch a football match to see the legendary Lionel Messi show his brilliance. Bob will leave the car there and the four of them fly back to Amsterdam.

Emma will join Bram, Clara and her daughter for a pilgrimage to the cathedral of Chartres and, on their way back to Holland, make a stopover in Paris to see the Eifel Tower and as many shops as possible to finally collapse at the boulevard terraces in order to recover from the shopping.

They all remember something similar of last year and look forward to their holidays this time.

BIKING AND THE CULTURE OF EQUALITY

That the Dutch are bikers is fairly well-known around the world. But the often mentioned flatness of the country as facilitating our biking can’t be the explanation. Of course, biking is easier in flat country but the world is flat at many places and yet biking is not widespread at those other flat places. 

A better explanation is that the Dutch culture of equality makes biking less associated with low status or as just for the poor. The same culture of equality makes biking OK for girls and women. In Holland the bike is a socially acceptable means of transport to the fullest extent.

Moreover, Dutch government policies have made biking safer, especially after WWII, which made biking more attractive, including for children. 

The only places where I saw masses of bikes were Bangladesh and Beijing, and it was such a relief. You just heard the ringing of bike bells. I wonder what is left of those ringing islands.

Former Queen Juliana (1909–2004)

Present Prime Minister Mark Rutte 

Present-day Dhaka traffic

OUR MURDEROUS GOVERNMENTS: KURDS, GAZA, SREBRENICA

NATO and its western member-state governments implicitly accepts mass cruelty by the Turkish armed forces against the Kurds in order to appease Turkish president Erdogan.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-politics-of-betrayal-obama-backstabs-kurds-to-appease-turkey/5466075

It resembles what NATO and its western member-state governments do when implicitly accepting mass cruelty by Israeli armed forces against the Palestinians in order to appease the Israeli president Netanyahu.

http://stopwar.org.uk/news/david-cameron-defends-israel-s-right-to-commit-mass-murder-of-palestinian-civilians

And it resembles what NATO and its western member-state governments did when they implicitly accepted mass cruelty by the Serbian army against the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in order to appease the Serbian president Miloševic.

www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/04/west-true-role-in-srebrenica-massacre-bosnia

NATO member-state governments are democratically elected by their populations. These electorates, including the Dutch voters, are therefore co-responsible for mass cruelty against Turkish Kurds, Palestinians and Bosnian Muslims.

MEN DON’T NEED STRATEGIES TO APPROACH WOMEN

Do you go out of your way in passionately courting a woman or pretend that you indifferently wait for her to come after you? Perhaps neither of the two: a woman likes to feel both the genuine love of your heart and your respect for her need of having space to breath.

All fine, but in the end something has to be done, right? And how do you know what should be done? Well, don’t expect her to show the way. If she does, she’s the wrong one for you.

And don’t study her more in order to know what she wants. No? Then what? Here’s the answer. Give up thinking about her and the contact. Give up? Yes. Just focus on yourself and feel yourself, your body.

Feel love moving around in your heart. If you don’t feel it instantly, imagine it is there. Fake it until you make it. Nothing wrong with it, if you are sincere. Feel your longing for sex, not by fantasizing graphically about how you will have sex with her, but by feeling the blood heating up in your belly. Feel your fear of getting rejected or getting real close. Where in your body? And feel your lust for life, breath it in and out.

Feel your respect for her boundaries. No no, don’t try to imagine what her exact boundaries may be. That is up to her. For you it is about feeling your respect, inside of yourself.

And whatever you feel in yourself, express it in words. Deep down she knows already what you feel but she likes you all the more when you express yourself. Words make reality surface. Such words will reassure her. She wants you for that comfort.

Contact will follow. Don’t worry. And that contact may be the fertile breeding ground for deeper contact, for each of you and between the two of you.

If she still goes on asking you what you feel, grow desperate or angry, and show it. She will be quietly taking it in. And ask again. :-)