Carpe Diem #1245 Head Above The Water (by Henk Hofstra)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I love to take you again to my hometown Lelystad The Netherlands. Recently I showed you "Exposure" and today I love to show you (and I hope to inspire you) another beautiful piece of "modern art" in my home town. Let me tell you a little bit more about my home town.

As you maybe know the Dutch people are masters in water-engineering. We fight against the water, because we are a country below the water. My home town is the capital of Flevoland the 12th (and youngest) county of The Netherlands. Flevoland is created by engineers, they created land from the water, The Zuiderzee. I live in what we call the polder and my home town (and the whole county) beneath sea level. The polder is surrounded by dikes to protect us from the water. Many of the city art pieces have to do with the polder, say to keep or feet dry or our heads above the waters.

Henk Hofstra has created a piece of art that shows you that. This piece of "modern art" is called "Head Above The Water" and it shows a head that "rises"from the water and on top of it you can see a statue-like person. That person is "water-engineer" Cornelis Lely (1854-1929) who created the plans for the so called "Delta Works" or the reclaiming of land from the sea. By the way my home town was named after Cornelis Lely.

Head Above The Water (by Henk Hofstra)

I think this piece of "modern art" shows what the Dutch are famous about ... the continuing fight against the water.

no longer do the
waves scatter on the shore
keeping dry feet

© Chèvrefeuille

Not a very strong haiku, but it tells us what the Dutch are famous about.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until September 4th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now .... have fun!