The Landscape Inside of Us : At The Threshold of Tolerance

There is a very existential British television series from 2008 about a police inspector, Kurt Wallander, that caught my attention over the more relaxed pace of the holidays, " Wallander ", that is adapted from the novels of the Swedish writer Henning Mankell, starring Kenneth Branagh. In one of the episodes, the father of Kurt Wallander, Povel Wallander, played by David Warner, shares a memory about a conversation they had when Kurt was a small child. Povel was an artist, a painter, and his young son Kurt wondered why the father always painted the same landscape, why he did not try painting something else? The father's answer was intriguing to me. Povel said, he did not paint anything else because that landscape was him, he had nothing else in his soul , no matter how hard he tried, he always ended up painting a variation of the same landscape. The boy would not have understood, and apparently Kurt was not sure that he understood right away what his father meant all those years later still. The father dies a few episodes later, as he finally succumbed to dementia. It is when Kurt goes through his father's painter studio and takes the time to carefully look over the landscape paintings, that he realizes the wisdom of his father's words. We all work with what we have. You can only bring out of your heart and soul what is there. Some people are exceedingly fortunate and bring out masterworks the way da Vinci did, or Michelangelo, others like Povel Wallander, try as hard as he could, could only paint one type of landscape. The challenge is to be tolerant of those who can only paint one landscape, and to be tolerant of ourselves, when we realize we are not the genius we thought we were in one way or another. The important thing is to share what we do have inside to share, as a talent, whatever it may be. I love to write, and share my enthusiasm for it very happily. It is quite wonderful when that gift is enjoyed, appreciated and shared in turn. Modern technology allows me to share my thoughts and experiences in prose and poetry across the world. The readers I have in North Africa, specifically in Algeria, in the Berber part of the North of the country, in Kabylie, give me great joy in their response to the articles I have been posting and publishing about a very talented nature photographer there, by the name of Djamil Diboune. My articles on his photography are written in French, and after all my years in the US, it is very fulfilling to write in the language that was my first love for my first poems and prose as a solitary teenager. The ability to express myself in French is one of the landscapes inside of me, and to give expression to it now feels really good. Living in an English speaking country, and writing so far mostly in English, having an alternate form of expression for my passions by writing in French turns out to be how my soul longed to express itself most deeply. The positive response from my audience in Northern Algeria is bringing me to a threshold of self- acceptance and self-expression that is opening up a new horizon of experiences. To feel that joy returned in equal measure by my Berber friends is incredibly satisfying. As an artist of photography, Djamil Diboune is rich and varied, and touches upon a whole spectrum of influences, culturally, intellectually, emotionally, his art is a rainbow of hope and joy in a rather somber world. Through the kaleidoscope that his photographs allows me to see, endless colours and nuances reveal themselves about life in his country, its nature, its history, its soul, and also about my own life here, my past and experiences, my hopes and dreams. The books I have published on Djamil Diboune's photographs are a way to share his gift, as a beacon of light to counter act the grey shadows lurking about, politically and intellectually. The landscapes inside of him bring out new colours in my soul, and sharing his art I hope will bring out new colours in everyone who learns about it. In turn, I hope that vision shared will bring us all a little closer to that much needed threshold of tolerance towards ourselves and others that our world is in so much need of. That is where art, like the nature photography of Djamil Diboune, becomes not just an expression of artistic notions, but a hand reaching out to the heart and soul, across cultural, historical, intellectual borders and thresholds, thereby enriching our lives with an increased capacity for hope, purpose and kindness, through the sharing of meaningful beauty.