My life as an amateur. Part 93. Ideas for a better world.

 One day back from Japan I want to go back to Japan. I photographed the pots with plants next to the front doors and call them each Japanese garden. Furthermore I do not feel like doing anything. But I need to pot a plant that has gotten many roots in the water.

The plant is in the pot. Two days later it is still upright.  I want to cast off one piece of garment a day ( and not gathering two pieces at the same time ). And a book. I already threw out Charles Bukowsky, obviously I am afraid. Yesterday I bought a travelbook of someone I will recall later because it’s in lying in the other room. After I finish The Vegetarian by Han Kang which is suffocating me. Not so pleasant. I really need to go think seriously deep about my art. About including more white and simpleness. 

My life as an amateur. Part 92. Ideas for a better world.

 So we went to a miso brewery yesterday and learned that dark miso is three years old and the healthiest. It sits in ceder wood barrels. The dot painter Kusama was born in Matsumoto and she has a permanent exhibition in the modern museum. I liked two works, the pounding heart in a mirror and a light ladder. The rest I do not like. Today we saw Fuji san so we are lucky, it’s a shy mountain. Now we are in Tokyo, our hotelroom on the fifth floor is so tiny we have to put our suitcases under the bed. I am flabbergasted by the view. Tokyo has a lot of welldressed citizens .I had misosoup for breakfast. This was our last day in Tokyo, Japan. We visited an old neighbourhood with houses from the fifties with the potted gardens in front of them. I made a series these weeks. I want to go home and I don’t want to go home. I feel at home in Japan although there is a lot of loneliness and killing competition. When we are home I am going to follow Japanese lessons, in a serious way.

My life as an amateur. Part 91. Ideas for a better world.

 I am making videos and photo’s of houses, clusters of potted plants in front of the houses and people who are standing or sitting in the streets. I specifically like the movements of  they who are cleaning something. After visiting the very old village Shirakawa in the Japanese alps, which was something like Marken but then a little bit more real snd naturalistic, we went back by bus to Hida Takayama. It rained cats and dogs so we went for the local thriftstore. My goodness, such great shoes and clothes. We finally just went out with a very small Dickies pants and a padded oker padded jacket from Uniqlo. I know by now that I have to buy an extra bag in Tokyo where are a lot of Second Street reused stores.

I have running along the river Susuki in Matsumoto.when I got the idea of moving things. That’s all.

My life as an amateur. Part 90. Ideas for a better world.

 We went to Nara were the deer walked on the street. There was some bread in the supermarket black from the sesame seeds and fresh until the end of next week. Today we will go for the Japanse Alps by Shinkansen. We are told to get on really quick and sit immediately. Only after all the passengers are seated you are allowed to put your bagage in the racks.

There was an angry Italian who wanted to get in first although his seat was last situated. He needed to go last in line. He wanted to be first in line because he was there first. Now their group has lost three passengers. 

We are headed for Takayama through the mountains. When I am home again I want to follow Japanese classes and prepare Japanese food more often. Japanese food makes me happy. Today we are going to see some bears.

My life as an amateur. Part 89. Ideas for a better world.

 I couldn’t sleep last night. I was thinking about the Japanese, and me trying to learn Japanese. The ticket controller on the train bowed for the passengers before leaving the compartment. Kukai died in the year 1757 but is still in mediation. A strong man with a large temple. The monk prayed for us, for us to be happy. Yesterday I drank the nicest green tea. 

I ran through Kyoto this morning, an elderly man raised his vist for me as if I was a superathlete. Fifty minutes later he still stood on the same place and raised his vist again, smiling broadly. We went by bus on our own for the first time, you only need to check out. There is free jazz blazing out of every speaker in the streets. A lot of people are wearing their shoes too big. I like that. They walk like crazy.

My life as an amateur. Part 88. Ideas for a better world.

 So my ears are getting bigger and bigger. I plan to smile more maybe my mouth will become bigger as well. I like mosses. I like languages. I like eavesdropping. I like a lot. I am waiting with my partner and sister in law at the airport. I am not a professional traveler. I filmed the legs of the people passing by quickly on the elevator.

I have been reading one novel in the airplane ‘Snow Country ‘ written by Yasunari Kawabata. Persons in the mountains were wearing ‘mountain trousers ‘. I wonder how they look like. This morning I ran through Osaka. I heard sparrows near the railway tracks.

I visited my first toilet building near the white castle. The flush didn’t work. We might need to ask the nice man in ‘Perfect Days’ here. Each time I am late with my thoughts.

I like the people here. I like to buy things in the shops, the employers are unimaginable nice. I am almost happy.

My life as an amateur. Part 87. Ideas for a better world.

 Our favorite neighbor passed away early this morning. Scheissedreck she would call it. She could roll her eyes making me feel stupid. I bought her vintage Nikes second hand, I hope she will wear them into eternity. These days. I made some strange works. One has the title ‘The beginning. Wait a moment.’ It’s written bluntly above a red oval circle. I am part of it. Another work is a piece of white formica with some saw cuts. At the top there is a strike of white paint, as if I wanted to get rid of it. This afternoon I catched Catch 22 by Joseph Heller out of a free library just behind Het Concertgebouw. I ‘ve never read it. I bought three records by Joan Baez. On one her teeth are suddenly straight and she is wearing an astronaut suit. I also bought a plastic red suitcase by Samsonite for five euros to fly to Japan with, maybe. I haven't decided yet if I am going to use my purple backpack. I never traveled that far.

My sister went back to the place we went with our parents on holidays. She sent me a picture….

Standing on my head, leaning works. 

Someone could have done something completely different, then that would have been history. My ears are getting bigger. This week I made five simple videos of ideas for a better world.

My life as an amateur. Part 86. Ideas for a better world.

 I think I am going to be a writer.

Saskia Keuzenkamp.

Alok Vaid Menon.

Maaike Meijer.

Tijn de Jong.

Olave Nduwanje, OneWorld.

Trevor Alabanza, None of the above.

Shon Faye, The transgender Issue.

Brian Michael Smith, Disclosure.

Rebecca Solnit, A field guide to getting lost.

Elliot Page, Pageboy.

Sabrina Imbler, How far the light reaches.

bell hooks, The New School.

Paul B. Preciado, An apartment on Uranus.

Édouard Glissant, The Archipelago Conversations.

Liv Hewson, Teen Vogue.

Ocean Vuong.

Maggie Nelson, Bluets.

Naomi Shihab Nye, Your Life is a Poem.

Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble.

Maia Kobabe, Gender Queer: a memoir.

Lana Wachowski.

Kübra Gümüsay.

I need to check out these writers. I have light years of time, all of a sudden. When you do things slowly you have more time. Even more when these happen to be repetitions.

My life as an amateur. Part 85. Ideas for a better world.

 We saved the life of a baby lizard. “Dendroalsia tolerates these wide swings in moisture, with a suite of evolved adaptations known as poikilohydry. Its life is tied to the comings and goings of water.(…) Mosses have a covenant with change.”, from GATHERING MOSSES by Robin Wall Kimmerer, I could cite her whole book over here. I am reading it very slowly with a lot of attention. To take it in. There happened to be a giant fog in the valley. It’s coming up to this house on the hill. I dreamt that I had an appointment at the hairdresser’s but I couldn’t get there. In the evening just before closing time a lot of clients were waiting to be hairdressed, so I thought my turn to be over. But the hairdresser showed me a place to sit and asked what I had in mind. I said that I would like to have a model that would fit a non-binary person. I confined in the hairdresser’s imagination. We went with the whole family to Bistro Luzy. There were more families, very quiet and very loud ones, talking in Dutch. Perfect for eavesdropping: ‘Everyone is doing the same, right’, ‘Well right, we have a new roof’, ‘There is no understanding, for mé ( pointing his indexfinger to the breast )’. It was a nice restaurant. I had a salad with tons of croutons. I feel like a totally loser when one of the headlights turned out to be broken.

My life as an amateur. Part 84. Ideas for a better world.

 I bought a minimalistic metal fruit bowl at a flea market, for two euros. I think the lady must have been confused. Tomorrow we need to go, for the next place where we will meet our children. I miss the book by Lara Billie Rense. Maybe I should write this in a message on Instagram, if that’s not too stalkery. I started up a drawing today, it seems to be the case that I do not feel righteous alive when I do not make anything. I have to make this in between world inhabitable. It sounds slightly dramatic. Sorry for that. I am missing Too good to go, and other things from home. Somewhere in this village I hear a screaming person, angry it seems because of a continuously barking dog. I walk as slow and quiet as possible so the snake won’t sneak away. Can a snake be nervous as I am? I saw a yellow bird fly from one treetop to another. I heard a group of bee-eaters having their on air party. I bought a double record of Sidney Bechett for my just started collection of jazz records.

I am having a giant writersblock. Luckily I am an amatuer and I am on vacation. But still, my time is running. I never thinking about time as if it’s anyone else’s time. 

We hiked ten kilometers in the semi mountains. We found a military hidingplace from 1944 with real crutches for the crippled soldiers. I made two works on thick paper. My son catched five hornets.

My life as an amateur. Part 83. Ideas for a better world.

 I had a really long trailrun this morning. It wasn’t even 10 km, but really hilly and hot. In the end I had to do my best not feeling a loser. When I came home with blisters on my toes, A. told me she had an accident. She turned around on a gravel path and fell with her head on the stones. The owner of the house heard her screaming and helped her. There was blood everywhere and A. told the lady that it didn’t matter for het clothes because we always buy them secondhand. The lady liked that. I found some sage on our round through this tiny village. The giant antique mirror came from the wall and down the stairs. At that moment we were not going up or down.

We can hear the tawny owl. That is so beautiful. And I saw it fly away in the early morning. I finished the book by Lara Billie Rense. It deeply affected me, even as if it is a blue print of my inner wonderings and being. I started to read ‘Gathering Moss’ by biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer. During our walk we entered a tufière, a place in the forest where mosses turn into tufstone by cause of the chalk richness of the source. A. said a beautiful sentence about blue but I didn’t wrote it down. Something like: ik hoop wel dat dit blauw het blauw is wat ik bedoel. Do color’s have a say about themselves, something with a soul, a character, do they send out messages? Kimmerer: ‘My thoughts feel noisy here, an annoying buzz disrupting the slow conversation among the stones.’ I am training my left handed writing by filling four star sudokus.

My life as an amateur. Part 82. Ideas for a better world.

 Today I saw two times a twinbike riding through the village. Big smiles big time for the ones who can’t go cycling by themselves. They had some loud music with them as well, singing along breathlessly. The volunteer in the thrift shop was micro-vacuum cleaning around her own feet. Dust by dust makes a mountain, she will get the place clean. When we drove through Triër I saw a large man on a step and between his feet a pack of four bottles of diet coke. He was going fast and all the way he was checking the bottles’ position. The wind rustles the leaves, after all. A winged maple. I do not feel like making drawings or whatever art whatsoever. Unless one thinks that this kind of writing is artistic. We saw a whole family without teeth trying to sell their things on a market. Mother, father, grandma, several children, all without teeth. They smiled to us, big smiles, because they found our dog very cute.

Sometimes I decide to say nothing to stay clear from the bombing of wrapped up questions in sheepcoats. To keep the things savely quarded for myself. It’s a hot day, so we went for a walk in the forest. When we were walking A. saw a farm on the route, probably with angry loose dogs she thought. And our own was suddenly too old and very tired she thought. Halfway we turned around. At the end, and the beginning, the dog went for a swim. Our very old and tired dog.