ik kreeg een prachtig paasboeket mee naar huis van werk. wit, geel en roze en met oncidium <3

Oma vandaag al weer 78, op dag

Oma vandaag al weer 78, op dag

Ff bakkie bloemetje en onze kleine jongen moet ook even gedag zeggen.

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July 17, 2023

Ik ga echt nog op die trein zitten voor gewoon dat hallerbos he

spot me vrijdag in doornroosje!!!!

capitalism really popped of met die bloemetjes collectie van de hema

bloemetjes van m’n boys.. ♡ #bloemetjes #madelief #daisies #myboys #myloves #lieffies #amorcitos #stonepaper #moyunotebooks https://www.instagram.com/p/CRW5-vFlzXd/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Verdwenen paradijzen

“Vlinders en bloemen, de donkerrode aarde van de Quantocks en witgepleisterde huisjes in het bos. Dagen zonder einde, met geen ander doel dan met wijd open ogen door de velden naar zee lopen en door de getijdenpoelen waden. Waarom kan mijn film niet terugkeren naar dat paradijs.”, schreef Derek Jarman toen hij 49 was. Drie jaar later stierf hij.

“Terwijl ik dit schrijf komen al die ervaringen weer bij me boven, veertig jaar en meer nadien – het rustgevende gedruis van de golven, en de zilte geur – jongensjaren, het schelpen graven, blootsvoets, met opgerolde broekspijpen – al oogstend de kreek langs – de geur van de zeggevelden ....”, schreef Walt Whitman honderd jaar voor Jarman.

Het verdwenen kinderparadijs is een krachtige literaire bron en wordt ten onrechte als een uitgekauwd onderwerp gezien. Wie zijn of haar schouders ophaalt voor dat verlies is een cynicus of heeft te veel pijn opgedaan als kind.

Gisteren zat ik in de benedentuin, onder het lichtgroene dak van een grote beuk. Ik zag dat er in het gras gewroet was. Reeën, volgens eigenaar Craig, ze zoeken de laatste beukenootjes. Ik hoorde de Maulde stromen, en zachter, bijna als geritsel, het stroompje dat kronkelend achter mij loopt. Het was daar dat ik eerder voor het eerst van mijn leven een onooglijk geel bloemetje zag, de 'goudveil'. De hemel was stralend blauw, Mont Loron stond pront in mijn blik. Mijn borduurwerk liet ik zakken. Ik was voor even in een paradijselijk moment beland. “Het was. Het zal nooit meer zijn. Herinner.”, schrijft Paul Auster tot slot in 'Het spinsel van de eenzaamheid. Twaalf dagen geleden stierf hij. Ik zal hem herinneren.

Ik kwam op dat goed bewaarde kinderparadijs omdat ik achterin de benedentuin een pol met dotterbloemen vond. Ze horen niet hier maar duizend kilometer noordelijker. Dotterbloemen vormden met zwanenbloemen, pinksterbloemen, en lisdodden mijn bloemenwereld als Indisch kind in het Friese weidelandschap. Ik hoefde maar de straat uit te lopen en ik kon ze al tegenkomen. Dat duurde niet lang, want de nieuwe tijd stond met heipalen en hijskranen te dringen.

Walt Whitman groeide op op Long Island. Hij schrijft over iets waar hij zielsveel van hield: het rapen van meeuweneieren. Onlangs kreeg een 71-jarige Brit zijn derde gevangenisstraf voor het stelen van enkele duizenden eieren uit nesten van zeldzame vogels. Hij had het als jongen van zijn vader geleerd, en kon er niet mee stoppen. Zijn verzameling oogt prachtig. Op onze kwetsbaar geworden planeet en in ons schuldig natuurbewustzijn is het rapen van meeuweneieren en nachtzwaluweieren volstrekt taboe. Het is een ander soort dood van dat kinderparadijs. Ooit vond ik samen met Baukje Fokkema, op ons negende, een kievitsei in de weilanden van Wolvega. We waren euforisch. Het was, het zal nooit meer zijn, herinner.

de weekendbloemejtes van deze week

Deze 2 kapoentjes zijn toevallig op dezelfde dag jarig en dat moesten we vieren! Arthur koos voor tikkertje, met de muziekinstrumenten iets doen, bellenblaas, ... . Morgen mag Mon kiezen en vieren we zijn feestje. Maar vandaag stonden ze uiteraard samen in de bloemetjes 🥰. 2x feest, joepie! Hieperdepiep hoeraaa!

Author Spotlight: Amanda McNeil

This week, we're highlighting Amanda McNeil, author of the current club read Bloemetje. This essay is titled Depicting Queer Families in Fairy Tales: My Journey from the 90s and Y2k to a Thumbelina Retelling - we hope you enjoy!

I’m queer and bisexual but growing up in the 1990s and early 2000s I didn’t have the words to articulate either. The possibility of being gay or lesbian was acknowledged in my small town. My high school debated the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. While it had a Gay Straight Alliance, it was both very small and, as far as I was aware, had no one in it who was out. My only exposure to someone out and living their life, then, was the media - primarily the tv shows Will & Grace and Friends. Both problematic in their own ways, and yet they made me aware that it was possible to be something other than straight and live a life that made you happy. But because of the culture’s monosexual biphobia, I thought that the only options besides straight were lesbian and gay. (And thus, for me, as a woman….lesbian.)

I knew I wasn’t a lesbian because I absolutely felt sexual attraction to men. I was so certain about that, I gaslit myself about how I felt about women. I told myself that I simply admired Christina Aguilera. I was only drawn to the woman in the red dress in The Matrix because she was wearing red and was supposed to catch our eye. I only identified with villainous (and queer-coded) characters like Shego in Kim Possible. They had more interesting plots than the heroes (ignore that I had similar feelings about Kim Possible herself….) And this is only considering the lack of awareness of my bisexuality. I knew that I wasn’t the heternormative woman, but the only way I could articulate that was by saying I was a feminist. Now of course you can be a queer feminist, but in retrospect most things I was saying I was a feminist about were actually expressions of my queer orientation. I wanted to exist outside of society’s mandates. I wanted to simply be myself.

Even at my liberal arts university, it took until my junior year to encounter bisexuality as an identity and realize that was me. There was a word for how I felt. It took a few more years after that to start embracing the word queer. These two words together define who I am. And in those years I started to build my own queer community. 

The years passed, and my friends and I all started to form our own family units. And I’m seeing what that looks like for queer people. Queer families in all our incredible varieties are not as present in the media, even today with better representation. We do now sometimes see two women being moms or two men being dads, but other permutations are not as clear. 

I view any going against heteronormative expectations as innately queer. The many ways this can be done is evident in my own family and in my friends’. My marriage is to a man, and at first glance we seem heteronormative, but we’re automatically a queer marriage because I am queer. We’ve also been married for eight years and have no children. One of my friends (who is also a bisexual woman) is married to a trans man, and they have two children that they had with fertility assistance. A friend has a normative looking marriage but it is in fact an open marriage. I’ve listened to queer people wrestle with whether to have children through fertility assistance or adoption. And even though I don’t have kids myself, I am the aunty to many children, and the godmother to a biracial little one with two moms. 

As my friends began having children, I started to wonder what sort of representation might they be seeing these days? And my mind jumped to fairy tales specifically, because I so loved them myself when I was a little girl. There are an increasing number of fairy tale retellings showing the princess looking for a princess or the prince looking for a prince. While this is important representation, they don't illuminate the beautiful diversity in queer families. They often seem to depict a reality where you grow up in a heteronormative family, come out, and then ride off into the sunset. There’s not a glimmer of what it looks like for kids to grow up embraced in a community that normalizes queerness in all its flavors. The feeling I have when gathered with my queer friends, their spouses, and their kids is vastly different from how I feel when I’m the only queer family in the room. While queer families do face some of the same challenges as heteronormative families, there are also unique ones. That combination of the beauty in the many different permutations of queer families and the challenges that we face was what I wanted to highlight in my fairy tale retelling.

Queer families deserve to see ourselves depicted in the fantastical world of a fairy tale in all the fullness of the many ways we can be. I wanted to be able to sit down with my goddaughter and say, “Let me tell you a beautiful fairy tale set on another planet in another time far far away” and have her see her own reality reflected within the magic. While of course I want these little ones to hear the message “you can love whoever you love,” I also want them to see queer families wrestling with issues that go beyond our queerness. Where the central conflict is not, “I’m queer.” Because for children growing up in queer or allied families that should hopefully never be a conflict. So instead, let’s see a queer-affirming culture and family tackle a conflict. How do we do that? What does it look like? In the case of Bloemetje, the central conflict is, “oh no I’m participating in colonizing…now what?”

Fairy tales at their best are an amazing combination of beauty and grotesque. The princess in a silken dress pricking her finger on a spinning needle and going into a coma. The amazing edible gingerbread house that hides a witch who is planning to eat you. In Bloemetje, there’s a wonderfully queer-affirming society but it also is a profit-driven monster out to use its workers at the expense of their physical and mental health to steal a whole planet from the Indigenous population. Fairy tales wrap an important caution in an ethereal other-worldliness. Be careful when using machinery. Don’t trust people based on what their house looks like. Don’t fall for the belief that your society is beneficial just because it allows your family (or other families) to be openly queer.

I wrote this fairy tale for this rising generation of little ones being raised in queer and allied families. May they see themselves and those they love. May they also see all the ways in which they can use the strength found among their queer families and friends to tackle whatever difficulties may arise, remaining rooted in love along the way.

April 06, 2023

2 uur en 10 minuten is echt niet zoooo lang voor gewoon even te wandelen in het hallerbos