My life as an amateur. Part 43.

I would like to travel around the world and see how most people stay put most of their lives. In one place, being totally satisfied because this is where they want to be. 

I am sitting in the middle of the garden taking little grasses out that are growing rapidly between the flagstones. This is the nearest thing I can do that looks like gardening.

To bring something to another level that didn’t exist before. Like platform 13 ½.

Today I want to think. I saved my sister when we were very little. To be continued, and that was what happened. As a two years old she was left alone in the swimming pool of a hotel on a Spanish island. My parents were drinking there eternal sangria in their hotel room and suddenly I saw my sister floating facedown. I never had seen her doing this before so of I went to bring her in a more lively position. I was a very good swimmer. Fast. But more about that later, I need to write some poems now, in Dutch. I already know these poems will not be any good, someone has to do it.

So how is your opera today. The minute I wanted to write about me being not capable of making lists I completely forgot what I wanted to write about. My grandmother was just past het fifties when she started her dementia. Instead of going back to her childhood she thought that she was at least eighty years old, and dressed like that , , and had herself a haircut, or better, a permanent curly hairdo, like that. Like that, like eighty something. I was seven years older.

My life as an amateur. Part 42.

 After I was born pretty soon I joined the girl scouts. Everyone else was religious, and very very decent. I wanted to be decent too, or at least I wanted to have decent parents. Like the other girls. Nowadays I do not want to be decent anymore but way back then it was similar to having your mother at home taking care of your upbringing more or less, and sometimes your father too. So I went frequently to the other girl scouts homes. I was lucky.

Yesterday I was invited to come sit in a garden any time soon. I rejected dinner. I had this painting I wasn’t happy about. Today I deleted the work from my website and threw it in the waste bin. I am very happy about that, to work by throwing work away.

I might fall into repetition, sorry about that. Every day I run with our dog. I do not like dogs but we have one so I better like this one. He is a gentle dog but he is peeing against the walls of the expensive houses and the wheels of the expensive electric cars in our very expensive neighborhood. Today we just started our run as a man on an expensive folding bike was cycling after us telling me that my dog has peed two times against his house. He said he was going to keep an eye on me, better let the dog not do this, and that he was going to make serious arrangements against us… 

I am easily bored, so when I have a great idea I need to work quickly on a large series before I get bored. Game over.

I said I would do my best. But that was the wrong answer, the man said Doing my best was not enough, I just had to do it. Like running every day with Nike gear, probably. Later I found out that this stalker was a deranged tv-journalist, slightly disappointed in life. Game over. Gone his decency.

I wouls like to travel.

My life as an amateur. Part 41.

 We was going to Chicago. To sing. All we did was singing. And talk. About the singing. That’s how we lived, in Chicago we did.

It is important. When reality, whatever that may be, becomes part of a person, for example through a work of art, whatever that may be, we can say, I mean, we the people or those who agree, that there is an existence. I would like that all the time.

So which factor do you use? You say fifty, you say … I don’t know, you never get tanned that way. It is all about the making, to avoid the word creating, to become, to be one with the material that is vulnerable. I took some pictures of innocent people doing their business in the city, like playing in a brassband. They were wearing their striped blazers. They needed to go somewhere afterwards, maybe to a Chinese restaurant or to their hotel in the red light district. Waiting for the tram, one was on the lookout, one was checking the timetable, the rest were inspecting each other and their striped blazers.

I remember from the time I lived at my parents, maybe fourty years ago, I sat in the bus next to a school girl ( very strange thing to call someone something like that but otherwise I have to go guesing her age, which is impossible ), going home from my volleybal training.. she was handling her agenda and I could clearly see the words ‘I hate myself’. I hope she is oké by now.

Let me finish this Part with something different and maybe joyful. Stop.

My life as an amateur. Part 40.

I like to be productive at all times, daytime or evening, weekend or on ‘office’ days, and during holidays. That is great because I get all the work done, even the work I didn’t know existed. I must be fabulous.

Yesterday I had my birthday, a perfect day with my family in a second hand shop and in a museum, with lots of presents, to run with, to smell, to wash, to read, to wear, to paint and to examine mosses. This morning while running on my brand new shoes from Japan I decided to stop taking the orphan bikes home, in order to repair them.  The very very very last one will be the old Peugeot with the wobbly front wheel and hyper mobile ax. I feel lucky the bikes are not cigarettes.

Soap, black holes, food, sewing machine, water and mountains. And some nice thoughtful people. And some perfect tone of voice. Actually, I think my mother was a gangster. She had a gun in her jewelry box.

Twenty years ago I was vacuum cleaning our ‘entresol’ when the phone rang. The woman on the other end told me my mother died. I ended the conversation as quick as possible and went on vacuum cleaning. First things first I must have thought.

I would like to start very simple, clean, empty and quiet projects. They do not have to end, but I do need to dismantle my studio. This will take a very very long time.

Speaking words softly to a painting in progres, waiting for answers. And throwing myself, that is this body, against a wet painting.

I am happy with these ideas, in spite of these I can live. No need to add the drama. Stop.