tuttleinbold
Tuttle in Bold
A collection of interests, thoughts, ideas and commentary.
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Land of Fairy Houses
I made it after departing Kinvara, Ireland via car to Dublin...
on foot, bus to Belfast, Northern Ireland...
bus, car to Larne, Northern Ireland...
ferry to Cairnryan, Scotland...
car to Stranraer Scotland...sleep...
on foot to the middle of nowhere, Scotland...
on foot back to Stranraer, Scotland...
bus, then another bus to Glasgow...sleep
bus, train, second train, third train to Elgin, Scotland...
car to final destination in the countryside outside of Aberlour. I’m at a workaway helping to bring more magic to an already incredibly magical place!!! I’m staying in a caravan while helping a family with their Hobbit Hideaway: https://www.hobbithideaway.co.uk/
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Squishy
I came up with the latest version of the logline for my current screenplay:
A romantic drama about two travelers who cross paths in Ireland and decide to undertake radical vulnerability in an attempt to live a lifetime in the 24 hours they have together.
It feels quite odd to share my art freely as I’ve spent so much of my life avoiding the vulnerability that comes with sharing such things. What’s changed? I’ve been unable to complete a screenplay writing projects in the past so I’m trying a much different approach of sharing my intentions and even sharing some of the work while it’s still in progress with the idea that perhaps it will help propel me across the finish line. Fingers crossed.
As a result of the writing and partly to do with this season of my life, I spend a lot of time pondering my own actions and beliefs. It wasn’t until I lost my dad suddenly and without warning that I vowed to move through the world in a way that either eliminated regret or very greatly reduced it. I was a person who in my 20s prioritized work and used the little scraps here and there to connect with my family. When I would be in touch with my family I’d keep things very high level, unable to open up to the real vulnerable things happening in my mind and in my life.
I have great regret for that time and for the lost time with my father; it felt like I had all the time in the world. But I didn’t. And after the fact, no matter how much I wanted it to be different or how hard I worked, I couldn’t change the fact that my Dad was gone and never coming back. That reality is something I still struggle with even 7 years after I lost my Dad. I’m on this thought thread because it was my motivation to approach my relationships and experience in a manner where I can live a lifetime together with the people whom I hold dear and love. The hard reality is that you never know how much more time you have on this earth nor how much more time your loved ones have on this earth. My Dad caught a bad case of pneumonia and a short time later he was gone. I’m mindful now to move through the world wholeheartedly and lead with affection, warmth, kindness, and love.
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Structure
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I do well with structure. Today had a plan set and I adhered to it.
Mandolin practice: C major, G major, D major and F major. My fingers need a great deal more time on the strings to build up the proper level of calluses but I do feel that my minimum of 20 minutes a day, starting Monday, has helped.
I also spent 1 hour today working on my screenplay. I busted out my old screenwriting notes from the course I took in 2013 (my god, it’s been that long?!) and am still working on a solid logline of which everything else will flow. So far so good although I’ve spent a fair amount of time staring out the window while searching for the ideal words.
I went on a three mile run and saw my favorite tower once again. It’s still there (inside joke as I’ve been told it was either built in the 7th century or the 14th century; either way, it’s older than my country, the United States!) but more on the tower in a later post.
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Gloom
It could be that it was gloomy and rainy all day.
It could be that I listened to interesting but disturbing podcast series, Bear Brook.
Or that my day was to greatly unstructured. But today I felt the gloom.
In other news, I ventured into the attic to retrieve a collection of items that I left here in 2016. The reason I left these items is that I had packed way too many things to effectively be able to backpack and so I left them here.
I opened up those bags of which had remained here and it was like a time capsule!! Maps, a number of receipts, a number of books, and far too many clothes.
It is also a weird feeling to think back onto that time as it was mid 2016. The presidential election was in full swing and I had just finished Season 3 of ABC’s MISTRESSES. I came to Ireland to visit a friend, I had a meeting with the Irish Film Comission, and worked on a few TV development projects. I had no “next” job lined up and it would be another few months before I would find myself in Greece working with refugees on the island of Chios.
I juxtapose that with my situation now where I will be spending the month of July with one of my favorite people at a workaway in Scotland where I’ll help with upkeep on the land and learn how to build a cob house (I think that’s the type of house I’d like to live in!) and in the meantime I am working on a movie script (hopefully this will be my first completed project!) and learning to play the mandolin outside of simply being present during my time with the Byrne/McGillycuddy family. And then start school in the fall. One’s path can be absolutely incredible! There have been times in my life where I was unsure where I was going. Technically, at this moment, I only know where I going concerning the next three years of school. But still, it’s quite comforting as I find day to day living to be a much bigger struggle when I’ve known that I can’t stay where I’m at but have been unsure or unwilling to walk through other doorways to find my way.
And now a few words from Joseph Campbell taken from “A Hero With A Thousand Faces”:
“Often in actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popular tales, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests. Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or “culture,” the subjects loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved. His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and his life feels meaningless–even though he may through titanic effort succeed in building and empire of renown. Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide from him his Minotaur. All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration.”
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Mandolin and Train Ties
In 2016 I decided that I’d make choice to ensure I was leading an interesting life rather than a predictable life.
I’ve stepped into another kind of life here in Ireland. Of course, being funemployed at the moment doesn’t make this life exactly representative of what “life in Ireland” is like but it gives me a pretty good idea. I’m living with dear friends of mine, a couple with an adorable six year old, an au pair, and two silly dogs.
Prior to this, I lived with a dear young Syrian friend for the last 7 weeks who I actually met in 2017 as I was his English teacher during my volunteering time in Greece, on the island of Chios. He was a prosthodontist in Aleppo until the war drove him out due to his refusal to join the brutal Syrian army and attempt to escape the bombs dropped on Aleppo from the Syrian allied forces as well as the American allied forces. He gained asylum in The Netherlands and is re-training to become a Dutch prosthodontist. This photo was a visit to a museum in Utrecht that displays in intact wooden boat from the time, 55 BC to 410 AD, that The Netherland was part of the Roman Empire, the northeast most boundary!!
At the start of 2019 I was quite timid of going to The Netherlands in March to take much needed math courses since the transition was so far outside my comfort zone and my boss’s boss made it clear she wouldn’t let me work remotely. I could have just stayed in Omaha until September when university begins but I was very unhappy with my employer due to the severely lacking and morally bankrupt leadership of the c-level executives.
In the end I decided to heed the call to adventure and “move” to The Netherlands to begin my math course (two courses actually, March - May) and have met old wonderful friends and made new friends along the way.
Today, I picked up the mandolin which had been awaiting my return since 2016, in the attic of a home outside Kinvara village. I’ve been in touch with a local acquaintance to setup face to face music lessons and in the meantime, I need to callus up my fingers as I’m in it to win it this time! So I tuned the beauty today and practiced cords, mainly C, D and a pinch of F.
I also worked on some housework, pulling weeds and dug a shallow trench with the help of the au pair and since the ground is loaded with rocks, it took us some time. And we broke out the ol pick axe. In the end we made a dent in the work but have a ways to go.
I also acquired a sunburn which is ironic as it’s Ireland so hour one is sunshine while hour two can dump the rain.
Lastly thought; this neighborhood consists of basically three houses in the countryside. Charlotte, the little girl of the family I stay with, is friends with all. She and her little friend were running around all over today. When the little boy saw his mom arrive to come pick him up he immediately fled, on a full out sprint, in the other direction. Priceless!
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My First Time on the Wrong Side
Today I drive on the passenger side of the car in the oncoming traffic lane. Or put another way, I drove on the reverse side of the car on the reverse side of the road in Ireland. The main concern for me was being on the tiny Irish roads while passing another vehicle and not love tapping the passing vehicle. Eamon McGillicuddy, my Ireland driving sensei, told me to look at the edge of my side of the road and I’d be fine and so far, it’s worked!
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Blowing the cobwebs off
Do I live in the moment? Or attempt to document my life? I think that decision has long since been made: live in the moment. But from time to time, I want to blow the cobwebs off the ol blog page and update my loved on. So buckle up as I have a lions share of updates to err....share.
Math is great. Well mostly great. I’d been a crush of work. I’ve had two days to learn Sequences before moving onto Period functions. I spend two days on then and on to Derivatives. Derivatives has come easier in part due to the refresher course I took proceeding my current course. I really enjoy the work but need more time to really master it. As I attend class and study the information it feels like I’m gaining a sort of super power that I’ll sometime soon be able to apply to answer questions to real world problems with hard data. This is very exciting!! Two weeks to go!
PODCAST – I’ve been on a podcast tear lately. A beautiful episode I listened to with a fellow beautiful soul recently was about the romance and inspiration behind the golden record flying through space on the NASA spacecraft Voyager 1.
Podcast: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/91520-space
Raw audio of both sides of the record: https://youtu.be/ROMKbthmyOU
BOOKS – I finally read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. It is as fascinating and thought provoking as the many glowing reviews have promised. It’s been especially helpful to me in this great season of change as I put together a different sort of here in the Netherlands. I highly recommend this book, “Sapiens”!
I am living with a young Syrian prosthodontist outside of Utrecht, Netherlands. During my time as a volunteer in Greece, I met a young Syrian man that I spent a large amount of time with.
He had escaped Syria as his home city of Aleppo was being bombed by all the military powers in the conflict. Recently, I came to learn that a bomb that killed his brother was dropped from a US war plane. Syria also forces mandatory army service for males so he was always in danger of being forced in to the army and due the Syrian governments bidding. He made it to Greece and there we came to know each other quite well as I was his English teacher. We had many tea times together and spent a great deal of time at my NGO’s center that had movie nights and art time weekly. We enjoy a lovely friendship together during our time on the island of Chios. In the summer of 2017 my volunteer time was coming to end and so it was a heavy heart that I said goodbye to my Syrian friend over dinner in an Athens Indian restaurant as he explained to me that his only hope for a future was in successfully getting to northern Europe and requesting asylum.
Though many of the stories coming out of my time working with desperate people escaping the middle east and Africa lacked happy endings, my Syrian friend I am ecstatic to say made it to the Netherlands, was given asylum, is learning Dutch via an intensive course, and will begin university to get his EU credentials for continuing his career as a prosthodontist.
So how did my friend and I reconnect? Well, after I had found a room to rent outside of the city of Utrecht, I finally responded to my friend’s repeated request assuming he was living in a far corner of the Netherlands but low and behold he was right down the street from me (well, a 40 minute bus ride). He had me over for dinner. It was Syrian food and delicious but I don’t have any of the names of the dishes (sorry foodies!).
We had dinner and after he realized I lived so close he presented a very persuasive argument of why I should live with him instead of spend money on renting my room. If you’ve ever been in such a conversation with someone from the middle east, you’ll find that their hospitality is overwhelming and you feel terrible saying no. He also explained to me that in part due to the time we spent together in Greece, he had been saved from drowning in the ocean of despair at that time. That since that time he’d seen me as a big brother. I was touched!! So I now live with a beautiful soul from Syria, share in a lot of laughs, share tasty middle east food, and learn as much from him as he learns from me. I would of never dreamed such an occurrence would be possible!!
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As is often the case, I at first thought I wouldn’t enjoy this episode. But then the synth blew me away!!!
Listening to Song Exploder (The Decemberists - Once In My Life)
The Decemberists are a Grammy-nominated five-piece band from Portland, Oregon. They released their first album in 2001, and since then they’ve put out seven more, including the 2018 album I’ll Be Your Girl. In this episode, singer and guitarist Colin Meloy breaks down The Decemberists’ song “Once In My Life," from his first demo, to the final tracks they recorded in the studio.
songexploder.net/the-decemberists
https://beta.prx.org/stories/253197
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Great Lentil Soup Recipe
I packed most of my spices when I made the trip from the USA to the Netherlands. This recipe is healthy, simple, and tasty-delicious!!
http://www.foodnetwork.co.uk/recipes/lentil-soup.html?utm_source=foodnetwork.com&utm_medium=domestic
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Arriving in Utrecht, Netherlands
Dear Tuttleonians,
I’m living in Utrecht, Netherlands since March 2nd. Most days, err, pretty much every day is overcast, windy and rainy. But I’m slowly growing accustomed to it. Only 50% of this country’s land is over 1 meter (3 feet) above sea level. Not much to slow the wind down.
On the second day here, I connected with a seller who had a “grandpa bike” for sale - it is perfect!! :D
I snapped a few pictures of my ride from the hostel to the school as I ride through or around (depending on construction that day) the Dom tower which was constructed in the 14th century.
MATH COURSE
I’ve just finished my refresher math course where we covered such classic hits (topics) including properties of exponents, calculating with letters, factoring expressions, fractions with letters, linear equations and equations of a line.
It was quite enjoyable but surprising a heavy load of work. It was customary for me to spend 6-7 hrs on the homework and still struggle to get all of it done. It was the perfect ramp-up class to take so that I could get my “study” bearings while also be reminded of what I learned more than 18 years ago.
As is the norm, I met some interesting people along the way. My main instructor used to be a lawyer and then a judge before going back to school and becoming a mathematics teacher she shared was her most fulfilling career to date. She also mentioned that she went back to school for mathematics in her 50s, insinuating that I at the age of 35 have plenty of time to switch careers. I agree with her.
Another instructor who gave us our end of the course test sat in the silent classroom while we were filling out our answers and would make these sounds as if he were about to address the class but I guess it was just the way he breaths. This went on for about two hours before he actually did address the class.
One of the students I met would always snack of peanuts the way one would snack on apples and in her case she’d drop all the shells and peanut dust into her pocket. She said she suffered by high anxiety and would squeeze the peanut shells in her pocket as a sort of stress reliever.
Before bed, I’ve been reading A Journal of the Plague Year, an account of one man’s experience of the year 1665 when the bubonic plague strikes London. However in celebration of completing my first course I picked up Joseph Campbell’s, Romance of the Grail, about Arthurian mythology. I’m very excited!
HOSTEL LIVING
Since arriving I was booked near the city center at Stone Hostel. Relatively speaking this was a good hostel for the price though not without it’s challenges. The first night there I was so jet lagged I didn’t notice much around me and collapsed on my bottom bunk, the room totally 4 bunkbeds (8 beds). The next day I noticed a fellow in bed all morning and all afternoon. That evening, returning from my math course, the man was still in bed. That night when I was getting ready for bed, I noticed the man was snoring and making choking/gurgling sounds. The room smelled of cheap cologne and alcohol. I switched on my flashlight to look around his bed and noticed trash strewn around his bed with something leaking out from under his bed. Shining the light under his bed I found more trash and a whole serving of discarded french fries. Yikes. Sitting in my bunk, lights out, pondering the situation, the man woke up. He didn’t really move then I heard the crack of a can opening. And the man drunk his can of beer down lickety-split, without leaving the bed. I moved rooms.
In the Netherlands, there is some sort of social safety net for people that would likely be homeless, where they can stay at inexpensive hostels. I ended up rooming with a couple of folks who fit that description though none as severe as the story above.
While in the hostel I met some really interesting people from all over the world including a lad from South Africa who worked in investments but is going back to school here in Utrecht to become an English teacher. I told him of my desire to visit Botswana and he agreed to give me the inside scoop when it was time to plan such a trip in detail. Whenever he asks me about Trump he refers to him as “The Donald.” Oy.
The Dutch don’t use shortening for backing. So I tried making this biscuit recipe without shortening as I couldn’t find it in stores. I substituted butter instead but the biscuits were crunchy and not that wonderful soft texture. I’ve since found a store and have custom ordered Crisco that I’ll pick up today – https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/fluffy-biscuits/
NEW DIGS
Sleeping in a hostel room full of snoring bears finally pushed me over the edge in terms of aggressively looking for a temporary room in Utrecht. Being perpetually exhausted due to little sleep due to loud snoring is a bad recipe. The housing market here is worse than Los Angeles if you can believe it. I would have never believed that was possible. When I first arrived I reached out to all the places that I know of with little results. One anxiety filled night, as the snoring symphony performed in the background, I did another round of online searching.
One of the people responded and so after school I rode my bike 20 minutes away, facing the wind, and wound up in what looked like a suburb sharing tea, chocolate and conversation with a fellow who was employed as a system’s analyst with shelves and shelves of books on all manner of philosophy. The convo went well and that night I waived sayonara to the hostel and had a full night of peaceful sleep in my new room at the new place.
PERFORMANCE ART
I met up with the local Couch Surfing group for drinks and a funny thing happened. The bar became absolutely silent. I turned around and saw two chairs atop a table with a man and a woman sitting in the chairs staring at each other. Then without a word they began a sort of choreographed movement grabbing each other, one much of the time mirroring that other’s movements. The performance went on. They stepped from table top to table top as the performance continued. The place was stone quiet. Nobody had their phones out taking pictures, no. Everybody just watched. The two performers had some interactions with the audience through body language but not a word was uttered. It really was an incredible performance. Afterward, I came to find out that it was part of a “Performing Art Festival” that happened annually in the venues in the area. I was hooked and recruited my South African friend, Jan Louis, to join me in checking out four additional shows the following day:
1. Barista Coffee Makers
A women in red and a women in black in conflict with men playing instruments musically representing them
A coveted ball being used between three performers and the audience
The dance of the devil, intense, animalistic, all to the music of a small orchestra
A woman from Spain upon hearing my above story said I should check out Marina Abramovic, a well known performance artist born in present day Serbia. Her work is quite fascinating and I’d encourage you to check out her TED talk where should gives a delightful definition to “performance art”:
youtube
And if you like that, you’ll likely enjoy this long form documentary about her:
youtube
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I’ve created a ton-ska-witz of goals for 2018! One of them is to do some baking which I’ve not had much experience or success with as I fall into the category of artist not scientist when it comes to cooking and by extension baking. But in baking I think I need to be much more a scientist to get a great outcome. So, I’m spending my first weekend home since moving in last month. Made a beautiful pot of chili and now embark on my first batch of biscuits ever!! Using the recipe above. I freakin love homemade biscuits so fingers crossed as I delve into a brave new world!!!
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I just returned from a 3 month trip working with war refugees and hitch hiking from Greece all the way to Finland. It was a beautiful experience, one that I’m already feeling nostalgic. I’m thankful for all the beautiful people I met along the way and will be using this blog to share some of the stories about the special people I met.
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The world's cartoonists remain defiant.
Incredible. Painful. Touching.
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More Einstein goodness...
http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/voice1.htm
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This was the first time I'd heard Einstein's voice...very cool!!!
http://www.openculture.com/2013/03/listen_as_albert_einstein_reads_the_common_language_of_science_1941.html
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