A Nahua village in Morelos (Mexico)

In October 1997, Gwen van Gelder, a Dutch woman of 67, left for Mexico with a personal mission. She wanted to undertake a project there with poor Nahua women, providing them with a source of income and, in doing so, a future.
In a dilapidated shed, Gwen set up a simple workshop and began making hand puppets with a small group of village women. These were eagerly sought after by schools and institutions in Cuernavaca, the prosperous capital of Morelos.

In her book 'A Stranger Who Does No Harm', she describes in brief impressions what the six years in Cuentepec meant to her.

Click the image to read her book online (± 100 pgs.)

Un pueblo nahua en Morelos (México)

En octubre de 1997, Gwen van Gelder, una mujer holandesa de 67 años, partió hacia México. Quería emprender allí un proyecto con mujeres nahuas de escasos recursos, proporcionándoles una fuente de ingresos y, con ello, un futuro.
En un pequeño cobertizo en Cuentepec, estado de Morelos, Gwen montó un taller sencillo y comenzó a confeccionar títeres de mano junto a un pequeño grupo de mujeres de la localidad. Estas creaciones eran muy solicitadas por escuelas e instituciones de Cuernavaca.

En su libro 'Una desconocida que no hace daño', describe mediante breves impresiones lo que significaron para ella los seis años en Cuentepec.

Haz clic en la imagen para leer su libro en línea.

Love lost

Si vous vaguez à la Foire du nord,
Où les vents soufflent à la plaine levée,
Souvenez de moi quelqu'une là-bas,
Celle qui jamais était ma bien-aimée...

In Search of Ann

The Trail
This is an engaging story of hide and seek and a riddle as well.
An elusive young woman leads her boyfriend to her hiding place by feeding him coded messages with cues. Can you help him find his girlf and guess the name of the city where he can close her in his arms?

Read the Introduction

A Poem of Love and Death

Maybe

Maybe, I'll weep before I die
Lying by you, my love, and cry
Feeling your heart beat close to mine
Probing your eyes for the last time.

Maybe, your tongue will taste my tears
While your sweet words will soothe my ears
And with my face I'll touch your hair
Its fragrance shielding off despair.

Maybe, I'll run my fingers close
Along your lips, your brow, your nose
As to remember beyond death
Their subtle lines and how they met

And while we're holding us so near
Then Death, the Still One, may appear
The breath from my kiss He takes away
And bids me come without delay

I feel Him stealing your embrace
Your very face becomes His face
My mind, my soul, He turns to Him
My heart grows faint, my eyesight dim

Already I am facing black
And when I struggle to look back
Maybe, I'll catch a fleeting glimpse
Of you holding still my lifeless limbs ...

---

I wrote this poem in the summer of 1995 by a sudden inspiration. The first verses created the next ones, as it seemed, and the whole poem took no more than half an hour to fully bud out. It truly made me wonder.

When, in 1998, I started my first web site at Angelfire – which, by the way, happened to be an anagram of my surname for people with a lisp – I published this poem as one of the first to go online. Over the years, quite a lot of people copied it for use on memorial web sites of loved ones, especially when they'd died young.

In May 2009, I was surprised at receiving an email from the New Zealand Film & Television School, who asked permission to use my poem in a graduation film of one of their students, which, of course, I granted. Afterwards, they sent me a CD-ROM with a copy of the film, which mentioned the poem's title and my name in the credits. Funny.

Lord Halewyn

Having an enchanting voice can make you millions, nowadays, not so in the Middle Ages. The best you could hope for was to become a minstrel, or a singer at a noble court. However, there were men who exploited their gift for a personal goal...

Lord Halewyn sang his chant so well
Whoever heard it came under a spell

By the magic of his voice Halewyn lured spellbound maidens to his lair in the greenwood, where he raped and killed them, until one of them outfoxed him. The story dates from ancient times and was told all over Europe in widely different versions. Around 1400, some Flemish bard composed a ballad on Halewyn's undoing you can now read here in English by clicking the pic.

A Crack in the Wall

Far away, somewhere, and ages ago, there were two farms bordering on each other.
Both had been part of a Roman estate with a spacious and sumptuous villa, but as the times of the Empire were fading from living memory the surviving structures of the main buildings had become split up between two feuding families.

Thus says the opening of an age-old tale of two unfortunate lovers, separated by a physical wall as well as by the social divide between their families. The story of Romeo and Juliet is a Renaissance example of this genre and generally known, but its roots lie in pre-classical times, when Pyramus and Thisbe met with the same unfavourable circumstances for their budding romance in ancient Babylonia.

I wrote this short story in the same vein, but took the liberty to alter the storyline considerably in a rather ironic way. As a background I chose an early medieval setting, a time when the Western Roman Empire had ceased to exist, but before Christianity could stymie the natural impulse of female sexuality.

I hope you'll enjoy the result.