The little Wallhouse at Lippoldsberg

After all that heavy groundwork it is clearly time to take a break. This afternoon in and around the St. George Church in Lippoldsberg I felt tired and shaky. The silence there and around the former cloister worked as a consolation but also as a confrontation. We have barely had any time for reflexion and meditation. No reading space at all. I do not want to lament here, ask for pity, help or advice. Because this is all part of the changing process in which we are engaged.


To emigrate is not a sinecure. Insecurities, worries and discovering everyday “normal practices” as a foreigner are tantamount. We lack consciousness of the so called selfevident daily administrative practices, regularities, provisions and services, as long as we stay citizens in our native country. But once you leave the safety of that old nest, you have to discover and learn in a foreign language, a different culture. And there are more and deeper motivations why most elderly people would not dare to leave the embeddedness in their “good old world”. He who does not return to Ithaka, must either be a notorious vagabund or an irresponsible idiot.

This seems so much common sense. But it leaves out an important fact of life, which tips the balance between the deep need for security and our longing to find ourselves, not back but anew in a very unexpected way in strange and “holy” places. These are the kind of places you will see in many of our photographs. Places like an old cloisterwall with a crooked halftimbered wall-house. Those are the places where we desire to stay, move in to sketch, to write poetry, to read or simply to rest and celebrate emptiness and wu-wei.