The birth of this website

May 2026

In 1965 I was at the end of my wits. There was nothing in the world (back then without internet) that interested me. I didn't want to go to university and get crammed full with facts for a job where I could use them. I wanted to use my creativity. Not as an artist but 'something else'. I tried interior design and got a job. I had good spatial awareness, but unfortunately problems dealing with customers. Or with the world in general, for that matter.

My childhood was idyllic, which made it difficult for me to cope with a harsh world. At the time, it was also a world in which women had very few opportunities to achieve anything. I wanted to create, both intellectually and tangibly, but most of all I craved a meaningful life.
When I was 24 I met an artist, Anton Heyboer. He knew how to make life meaningful. He had descended to the roots of the tree of life and brought its meaning up to the surface.

He was a worldclass artist, with exhibitions together with the grand masters of art. Within two months after his first exhibition in 1957 he was purchased by museums in Europe, the US, and Japan. He had a superior intelligence but also from the war a severe PTSD. It turned him into a mystic or shaman - or in psychiatric terms: a schizophrenic genius.

I was fascinated by him. I joined him and his wife and we lived an extremely simple life, with very little money. Graphic art does not make one rich, despite the fame.
Three other girls joined us. Of course newspapers wanted the story. He enjoyed telling them what they wanted to hear so we became famous for our 'spectacular' lifestyle. Never answering their standard question if we had sex (we didn't), but letting them decide. Their articles always insinuated their own idea.

In the war Anton had learned that every possession meant danger, so he made an end to his success. Sent every gallery away and started to sell his work himself for low prices. When there was money left over, he gave it away or bought worthless things for it. Our house was filled to the brim with old stoves missing a few feet, lamps missing arms, 3d quality semi-precious stones. And dogs, always many dogs. Great Danes, later German Shepherds.

I came across Wilhelm's I Ching in the sixties. It immediatly captured me but I cound't really make much sense of it. Only when Ritsema and Karcher published their Yijing with concordance I discovered its real meaning. A dance of images, hidden in simple short 'poems'. When I found the ideograms of the ancient characters I was touched to the very soul.
In China poetry is not that much about a sequence of words and their meanings, but about a dance of landscapes. Each character on its own contains a number of images, from one up to ten or so. A short poem about mending the roof can be a song about loneliness and poverty and rain and friends and support and joy, just by the choice of characters. Loneliness can be a character containing 'far away'- or another one with 'sadness': different images, different sounds in the song.

What I would love most of all would be to add the images of the oracle-bone characters, their ideogram or pictograph, and then add links to them in the text. It would elevate this beautiful oracle into an extraordinary piece of art for us non-Chinese Westerners.
I need time! Lots of time.

But there are Richard Sear's Chinese Etymology, and also Chinese Character Wiki and there is the wonderful Wenlin software for learning, reading and writing Chinese. I use that one daily.
Harmen Mesker told me where to find the sources and often sent me what I needed and a lot that I didn't even know that I needed it. Harmen - thanks!!