My life as an amateur. Part 56.

It’s important. It’s important to be friendly. It’s important to be friendly after running one hour in the rain, visiting three thrift shops without heating, driving two hours on secondary roads without lights but with rows of trees on both sides. We are visiting my sister in law. For a couple of days. It’s important. Sisters think that people with less money can not smoke cigarettes and keep big dogs. Maybe, but maybe it is so that we all can not smoke cigarettes and keep big dogs, or we all can. I think we should all have the right to have and do the same things, if you don’t mind. That money doesn’t have anything to do with it. I am making a jigsaw puzzle called ‘The Tree of Life’. There is not a human being to be found in this tree full of exotic birds and monkey’s. It’s New Year’s Eve and it’s important to be proud of someone, like your mother, or your father.

I am reading a really beautiful book. It is about a friendship between a 85 year old man and a thirteen year old girl. They are neighbors and the girl is ten times smarter than her mother who goes working late at night every night. The book is called Autumn and is written by Ali Smith. The neighbor is witty as well.

I am not made for big things, like big art projects in the middle of society. I am more convenient rummaging on the side, with found materials and some words, definitely some music, some dissonant music. Most of my years I have been making my own agenda, the little book with data and their right days I mean. I am writing down the next week or the next month as late as possible, actually when I need to note an appointment. It feels like I am making my own kind of time, instead of  the time made by some giant ‘agenda plant’.

Yesterday I was talking with some Good Martha’s. We told each other true stories, about parenthood, babysitters, donors and fighting. About moving to a certain neighborhood and being new, trying to visit this neighborhood’s marketplace invisible. Being spoken to, being asked how you are. Stop.

It might be nice, I dare to say interesting, to answer such a private question with a truly private and sincere personal story. The questioning person will probably think that this new person with very different looks and roots is an enrichment, although a little bit out of the mind, for their community. Yes, good idea. Our community. That’s what you get. 

My life as an amateur. Part 55.

 We have been talking. About making something out of these series of texts. In public. I hope I will not become famous, writing and making things shall be an impossibility in that case.

But it has just been talking. So that’s great. I had this thought that it would be a good idea to watch the world with my own eyes. So far any hierarchy eluded me. I like reading better than going through posts. When I do not know how to proceed I start a new one. We are watching The Polar Express, because my daughter loves to on Christmas Day. I want to tell something about my daughter. She is very brave. Three days ago she got diagnosed with diabetes 1, after visiting our family doctor and the emergency department of the hospital. Since then she is pricking and giving herself insulin, keeping schemes of her blood sugar mirror, throwing herself full in the world of this auto-immune disease. As if it is the most incredible thing ever happened to her. As if it is not inconvenient at all. She has all the reason to feel depressed, it is just not part of her system. My partner and I are very lucky parents. She is watching the world through her own eyes.

Every day nowadays I am listening to the remastered Four Seasons by Max Richter. It fills the gap between me and the world, and I can feel some tears behind my eyes this way. I like ‘Drive my car’. It takes three hours after a short novel by Haruki Murakami. I like it so much I fall asleep all the time.