My life as an amateur. Part 20.

 It is not going that well. No need to worry, this moment will pass. As long as keep on making short sentences in English, no matter how many mistakes I make. Today I am going to seperate myself from two different editions of ‘Lust for Life, a novel based on the life of Vincent van Gogh’ by Irving Stone. I am making a list of the things abandoned by my person. Maybe it is a good idea to bring them to the amateur-workshop and drill some holes in them. Great. I am feeling better all of a sudden.

Before I forget, we were walking near ‘s Graveland and a buzzing creature flew close to my left ear. I always have to think about writing when such a thing happens, whatever the origin of the species is. Me, for instance. I am named after the mother of my father. Why I don’t know. Maybe I was their first grandchild and the sixth of my mother’s parents. Maybe it was important for them. What can you do when you are seventeen and already wearing a full teeth protese

Today is a sunday and all of a sudden, again, I was running during the Amsterdam Marathon with my dog. A six kilometer part of it. I made a to-do list when we got home, for myself. 1. Throw the bikes out. 2. Make ugly paintings, at least three. 3. Vacuum clean the whole apartment. 4. Walk the dog. 5. Do some shoppings for dinner and breakfast and every time in between. 6. Work on the film 3Start. 7. Writing My life as an amateur. Part 20. 8. Throw more books out. 9. Throw more clothes out. 10. Think during the day. 11. Make a selfie film. and 11. Do some mindfulness.

This morning I had a bright thought: ‘I am getting behind my own schedule’ is a misunderstanding of life.

My life as an amateur. Part 19.

 For a year I have been travelling around the world, maybe two years, it’s difficult to let space and time coöperate so I do not remember. First I went to Ireland and stayed there for quite a long time. It was not a holiday or such a thing. I do not like to be a tourist, like all tourists with decent working brains.

Sorry for that.

I need to talk about my father. But for today the time is over. All I have to do is to paint a white square in the upper left corner. I think I lost track of him. I think I lost track of a lot of things ( things are people too, and vice versa ). What did I write in Part 1, and Part 2, and Part 3, etcetera? I do not want to read it back now, so there might be some repetitive subjects. Do not worry. This afternoon, a friend of mine told me I was writing in Dunglish, a language somewhere in between English and Dutch, as you may presume. First I was shocked, because I thought I had failed. Even with the autocorrection. The second thought was I do not give a fuck, this is the language I do, if someone want it different, go ahead, my story stays like this, my story. Stop.

My father got himself a life insurance, for himself. He died at the age of 57 because of liver failure. He stopped drinking eleven years before so he didn’t see it coming. His life insurance was for his own long life. The money that was left went to the insurance company. In his younger years he sailed around the world as an underpaid sailor and fell into the ship’s hold. He was in the hospital of Seattle for three months.

My mother died eight months later. Of heart failure. She only drank white wine in the morning and some instant coffee in the late afternoon. She never ate anything and smoked like a steam train. No need to worry about that, it was a long time ago. I think I will visit Canada next.

My life as an amateur. Part 18.

 This is something about poetry, and abstract art. I was reading the newspaper today, and in an interview Lidewijde Paris says, ‘Sometimes a poem is like abstract art. What you see is a field and nothing happens in your head. Then you switch to another field and suddenly it hits you. Without understanding why.’

This early morning, I was running with the dog through a slight drizzle ( a drizzle is always slight, sorry for that), the sky was yellow, purple and a little bit white with blue. I decided that this sight was enough ‘Erlebnis’ for the day.

 This is about dragging things inside my studio too. Except for the paintings and the art materials, it is overwhelmingly full with books, clothes and bicycles (parts). Needless to say, I do not want that many things because it's inhabiting my brains. And I want my brains to be clear. So I decided not to bring anymore clothes, books and bikes into my studio and throw each day one article out, or maybe two or three. 

I started yesterday, this morning I bought a second hand down jacket, and I found a very very nice bike that needed to be fixed. 

We can say that I am quite an amateur in keeping my promises to myself. But I will try again: these were the very last goods. The poetry of it.

Lucky for me I do not drink, smoke, gamble or do drugs. 

My life as an amateur. Part 17.

 What I wanted to talk about is running. ( I loved the book by Haruki Murakami ‘What I talk about when I talk about running’). Let me tell you first that what I do isn’t a bit of an athletic bootcamp running at all. I am going very very very slow. And all the moving people are going faster and sometimes my legs are going like rubber because of that and sometimes my legs are going step by step. Very slowly. Because this is what I do.

I am such a person. On my way to my appointment I happened to have a gap in time, an hour even, which is a very long time. I find it difficult to admit but I found myself in a giant situation of panic. Just this day I left my ‘just in case there will be stolen time’-book at home for a change, because of the weight of my shoulder bag and because of the fact I actually never have time leftovers between everything I work and meet. Stop.

Whenever I have time. Stop. Reason, rain or sunshine. When I spot a little library on a street corner I stop to check it out. I am a hoarder of books I might want to read one day. When I have read all the afore collected books. So today it turned out my lucky day, I picked the book “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life.” written by Mark Manson. For a moment I thought I had read it already, but that had been a self help book written by a woman not called Mark.

I was looking forward to my good life. Stop.

My life as an amateur. Part 16.

Today I do not want to do anything. I want. But I cannot. I read books about Zen and step by step, being in the NOW. It's for other people. Ok, when I run I have to think continuously one step at a time, but one cannot run all day long! What do you think, there wouldn’t be time for all the other things that need to be done and thought of.

I think everything I make is ugly, so I keep on trying to make the best of it. Layer over layer, just me and the paint, nothing in between. Keep your own pace, however cut down.

Tonight I stepped accidentally on a painting that was lying on the floor of my studio. Blue. My daughter.

I sometimes called her names, just for fun, not really bad bad names. She even liked those names so much, she used them for her friends. Now the whole of Bulgaria and the city of Groningen are throwing cursing words to each other. WhoRRRe.

I like to wear dirty white flubbery basketball socks. After one day wearing them. Yesterday I was told about the mosquito, again, that it is such a nice personage for a short middle of the road story. My story. In fact, I had totally forgotten about this tiny specimen ( of course, I am aware that almost everyone knows that a mosquito is not that big compared to almost anything bigger ) myself.

I don’t want to talk about it. It is such a sad story.