If you read part one of my first thirteen years you will know that i love food and have a deep love for nature and what things she can teach us.
Me and Jose picking wild blackberries.
As well as the food in our garden, the cherrys and apples and pears in our field, the bees that gave us natural honey free of any drugs, heating or processing with all the goodness natured intented, we used to go to the fields further a field, pick thenicest plums on earth, warmed by the sun, we used to eat cherries until we were full and rested under the trees, these are times I will never forget. Sadly I eat few fruit these days because i am always looking for that experience, you can’t imagine how good fruit is supposed to taste unless you have had it ripe, at it’s peak straight off the tree, not picked unripe, shipped accross the world and stacked on supermarket shelves, looking great, all perfect, yet tastless with no character.
A pattern that too often repeats itself in modern life and we let ourselves be fooled by the packaging, but if we really knew what something was made of and I don’t simply mean new the ingredients, but the total experience of what it has taken to get it to you, from beggining to end, we would either be totally discusted or amazed and in ore as in my example of the perfect chain going from tree to heat.
When you know exactly what has happened to something, how it was grown, who grew it, how they where treated, how it was transported, how it was processed, and finally how it looks and tastes then you have all the information needed to make a proper desision as to wether you want to consume something or not. We are not told the truth, if we knew the truth, the total raw truth, I believe we would change our buying habbits, we don’t want crap, we just don’t realise how crap the crap we have is!
Me as a bigger boy getting cherries.
This is a video of me in a field above where we lived, talking about how picking fruit and how that is one end of the scale that I use to measure sustainability, health, goodness.
Other things that I loved in Belgium was making stuff, experimenting in my dads shed, he had all the tools and I had great fun making cabannes I call them, houses in the woods, playing cowboys and indians, mums an dads. I was alwasy curious how people made things, I was always wanting to do it myself, i was very practical and loved using my hands, I made model planes form wood, built model train sets, loved making things with lego, building houses with wooden blocks.
I went to music school for 6 or so years, played the piano and was inspired by Boogie Woogie, something about that music makes me so emotional, I just love it, I love the rythem, the speed, just makes you want to get up and moove. I went to Liege the local big town and saw boogie concert with some US artists and it was mental, i just loved it so much, that was one of the first times I remember crying of joy.
Boogie Woogie
Amazing Boogie Video:
I went home and drew the concert in miniture like I used to love doing. The teachers hated it, they wanted big bubble drawings, my dad used to always turn up to school and argue with the teachers about that, and many other things, such as being told of by the reigion teacher for drawing faces on the Sun, I used to draw the sun in alot of my drawings. Religion does not want you to put a face to nature. My dad took me out of the religion class and put me into “La Moral” as it was called, “The Morals” same thing without a religious agenda.
If the teachers had encouraged me to carry on my unusual miniture drawings, maybe I would have been a top miniture artist! doubt it, I can’t or tell myself i can’t draw anymore, i do great computer generated drawings though! But I get so embarrased when i have to sketch something out these days in front of a customer though!
When you have no TV and you live on a dead end road, you notice all the cars that go by, I used to know who was coming to visit us by the noise of the car, the joy I had when someone came to visit was incredible, one of the best and most regular visitors was Rene, the fireman who lived in the village, he had a 2cv, (une deux cheveaux) it had a beautiful sound, then the engine would switch off and the door would slam and then I heard a jolly wisteling that would get louder and louder the closer Rene got to the house. That is one of my biggest feelings I remember and treasure. Whoever much i love social media these are the things that you can’t quite get unless you have that real one to one experience, but then social media is not meant to replace that, it is there to complement it and a tool to spread good around the world.
This is what a Deux Cheveaux looks like, though the sound I remember is not the same as in the video.
Wonck was a famous place for motor cross, they used to race in the fields then and in the many quarries around us. Belgium still has top racers now. I used to love motocross and want to be a racer until my aunty told me not to because I would loose my head. I say that to my children now! My dad hated them, but I loved the sound, they used to pass past our house and I loved the high up suspension, the mean tires, the mud, the lot. I used to ride my bike up and down the street with playing cards pegged with clothes pegs to make a motocross sound.
Me on my bike and sister Cybele in push chair.
I used to be a bit of a maniac with my bike, i also wanted to be a stunt man, I always wanted to push myself to the limit. Whatever I do I got for it. I now channel this energy into the direction of promoting the use of totally sustainable materials in furniture and I won’t give up.
Me and my cousin playing on an old quarry truck.
That was a brief introduction about my life as a child, by no means comprehensive, I will cover other parts in more detail, such as my great uncle’s tower of peace, the museum in the village etc.
Tristan Titeux 18 feb 2012
To read part one of my first 13 years click this link.
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[…] For part 2 of my first thirteen years click this link. […]