--- Story ---

[titia]

Between Dinther and Hoofddorp.
Translation Chris van Beugen.

Half past eight. Leaving from our home village Dinther for Hoofddorp by car.
Chris is driving.
Sitting upright is quite hard for me, so I tilt my seat a little backwards. It changes my view of and on the world.
I vaguely see shapes floating along. Shapes in many colors but at the lower side of my visual field they all turn grey.
There's a lot of green in all shades just above. Tops of shrubs and trees.
And above... a beautiful living display of clouds and sky.
In a flowing movement from right to left all kinds of forms float through the middle of my vision.
The sun, slanting behind me at the right, is still busy firing up. Her soft gentle warmth touches my body through the car windows.
A line of birds,... free... or bound? Free or bound...
Faster than the clouds they leave my vision.

In slow motion I see a vast stampede of the most peculiar animals.
Because of their horizontally stretched shapes they seem to be charging on with an enormously decelerating speed.
During their flight... well... from what, really?..., they seem to take on eachothers' shapes.

A giant sow with chubbby cheeks and ears standing upright makes her way through the crowd, just before a shortsnouted baby elephant whose behind slowly changes into a fat dinosaur.
A hippopotamus whose body keeps on swelling and expanding. His mouth opens up to let out a soundless roar.
A woolly lamb without feet but with giant wings instead.
A tiny little chicken with a bulging stomach seems able to hold her ground in all this violence. Undisturbed she hurries alongside a fatstomached goose with a dragging tail and a crocodile carrying a basket of oranges on his back...

The sun is getting warmer and feels very pleasant.
The stampede slowly disappears...seems to evaporate.
A huge landscape with beautiful mountains follows along.
Slowly the ground in this floating landscape opens up offering a view at a gorgeously clear crystal lake in deep blue colors...

I look sideways.
I've got wings. White and soft and radiant.
Now beneath me the ribbbon of manycolored shapes all moving in a lane towards their destiny in time. Lots of green at both sides of this lane.
I look up, to the sparkling lake.

High, higher...
Clouds, magnificently white and silvery, close beneath me.
I become a part of the landscape.
Sapphire. Sodalite. Calcite. Lapis Lazuli. Turquoise. Agate. Crystal. An enchanting world.

High, higher...
Fog is surrounding me. Beautiful pastel pearls add a magical appearance to my wings.

Strange....
After rising through the clouds I find they have taken their place above me...

Lower, low...
My wings carry me toward the mirroring deep blue crystal lake. Here and there silvery white islands seem to be floating. I almost drown in the beauty of this lake.
In one flowing glide I land on the silver beach of one of these islands.
This island is cloaked in a mysteriously blue-and-pink illuminated white pearly fog.
My wings have disappeared.
I look around in quiet amazement. Barefeet I walk to the nearest hill and enjoy the ever changing panorama that's unfolding itself.
Close by a floating castle, wrapped in a mysterious light is starting to find its own fate.

For a tiny moment I close my eyes...

Ten o'clock. We've arrived at our destiny.



image: Fractal Explorer