Lost in translation (2)

This painting is about a girl who, like most people, was born in a world where she didn't understand the people around her but slowly learned.

Nothing is fascinating about that. It is very intriguing, actually, just not extraordinary at all.

But then, one day, (not so) out of nowhere (after taking a magical flying machine to the other side of the world), she lost the ability to communicate.

For months, she lived confused until she met me, a long-legged man who didn't understand much -- except that she was colorful.

And I wanted to capture that as quickly as I could. To better understand it and to make sure I would never lose it.

However, without saying anything, when I showed her the painting, she left me. I'm unsure what she meant by that. Perhaps seeing herself be understood scared her away, or maybe she was just offended by my portrayal of her.

That's all.

Lost in translation (1)

While walking through the beautiful Den Bosch, I frequently wonder about all the genius ideas people that pass me by are having. They don't know me, so they'd never tell me, and if they did, there's a big chance I wouldn't get it.

It's hard to explain interesting ideas sometimes. 

I knew this genius in high school, who could've solved many of the world's problems had he been motivated to (instead of solving obscure ones).

However, whenever he tried to explain his thoughts, his words came out in a language nobody else could understand. 

Maybe you don't understand how I knew he was a genius, but sometimes you know from the moment you see somebody. Yes, he could not communicate well through language, but the beautiful way he solved problems showed me enough.

Nobody else could see it. They all called him an idiot because he could not bring his mind to words. Thinking about him still makes me sad, and the worst part? To a lesser extent, this is true for everybody.

Bruges Is Dead

What's the craziest thing you've ever done for someone close to you? I like to see myself as very rational. I've got emotions, of course, but I don't drastically act on them much.

But when my girlfriend asked me to go on a small vacation to Bruges, I couldn't help but say yes. I know—very crazy stuff.

My girlfriend is pretty crazy as well. That's why I like her as much as I do. There's one thing, however, in which she is typical; she likes tourist cities.

And Bruges, the city she took me to, is one of those. It also, for large parts, has been stuck in time, seeming to only still exist to give people the feeling of being in such an old world.

That sounds cute. But nobody lived there. The only reason (that part of) the city exists is for theater -- this made me sad.

Life means change, and the most beautiful thing about a city is seeing how the great collection of humans keeps changing everything. Eventually, it could become hard to recognize the origins, but that's life.

Disabling my lights

At some point in my life, I decided I liked drinking coffee. I don't remember when that happened, and there are many things like it. 

I also developed a hatred for ads at some point, perhaps because I don't particularly appreciate feeling like the easily manipulated sucker I am. But I know that the right ad still manages to entice me occasionally.

For example, I bought these expensive Philips Hue light bulbs. Who knows why? I barely use the features they provide. It's overkill, but controlling my lamps from an app is pleasant. I suppose.

Somehow, these expensive lights keep turning off in a way that requires the manual light switch instead of the app to turn them back on.

When I was a young boy, probably until I was 20 years old, I was scared of monsters in my parents' house. But when I moved into my apartment, where I thought no monster ever could come and which was way smaller, I stopped being scared.

It took me months to figure out what was turning off my lights. To do so, I had decided to sit in the corner of my living room, dressed as a painting, with the lights on, and to wait and see when they would turn off.

And then it happened. The door opened, and my girlfriend, who I now realize might be a monster too, came in, used the light switch to turn off my lights, and walked away again.

I couldn't believe it. I still can't.

Cutting an onion

I'm reasonably intelligent (the cleverest person I've ever been), so today, I'll grace you with a story about the most important lesson I learned. 

Here is how I learned why you should never sincerely try to help anyone with anything:

My girlfriend told me she was a horrible cook -- she worked as an au pair and told me that her host children always cried when they ate her food.

On our first date, she wanted to cook dinner together, and because I knew she was terrible, I thought I'd give her some tips. 

Well, that was a mistake. We started by cutting the vegetables we would be using in the dish. While my girlfriend listened intently, I explained easy ways to cut them.

I felt exemplary & clever, like the genius I am, until she started laughing maniacally, like some weird cartoon villain. For some reason, she only pretended to be a poor cook but had trained for years.

Not only did this make me feel like one of the dumbest people on the earth, but now I struggled to trust anyone else.

And that's how I learned why you should never trust or help anyone, even yourself.

Living in garbage

If you're at home right now, I want you to do something for me (if you aren't, you might try as well); look around you, and what do you see? I'm trying to understand if the stuff around you is useful. Or does it just sit there without any acknowledgment?

Because of laziness or perceived meaning, if you've owned something for long enough, it becomes nearly impossible to throw away. But I know better: it's garbage if I haven't and won't use it in ages.

My parents (but my mom especially) have large amounts of garbage. It's so bad they have rooms dedicated to all of it.

My mom has invented whole systems for organizing her garbage so that she can keep them more efficiently. For a lot of it, their only usage is getting re-organized.

That's one way to keep them useful.

But I think that's a waste of time. Instead of inventing these systems, I use the time to make more garbage. A big part of my life is committed to making this garbage that I barely look at. It's even all over my walls.

It's so bad that I've convinced myself that making said garbage is the meaning of (my) life. At least it's better than not having any meaning, woohoo.

Frustrated psychologist

Being in a, at worst near constant & and at best frequent, state of anxiety is just a hobby of mine.

But due to circumstances I'm too ashamed to admit, my family and girlfriend hosted an intervention, ugh, consistently ruining my fun.

So, a while ago, I started going to therapy. I guess to learn how to relieve some of that anxiety -- but I'm not an optimist, so understanding myself better is a more realistic goal.

The fact I don't understand myself much sometimes makes me worry that I can't communicate my feelings very well.

Occasionally, I'm nervous that my psychologist will get frustrated with me as I'm unclear about what's in my mind (because I don't know). And periodically, I'm anxious that her frustration could make her scream at me. 

I've decided to act like nothing is wrong anymore: the best way to solve all my problems.

To take a picture

For those who don't know, there's a small & magical city called Efteling in the Netherlands. It's mostly for children -- when you get old enough, all that mystical stuff is much less endearing.

So my girlfriend, who's slightly childish sometimes (and an alien, so unfamiliar with the city,) wanted to visit to see what all the fuzz was about.

I enjoy the idea of spending time with her, so I did to validate that imagination: we went and had a lot of fun. 

She wanted me to go on all these supernatural rides that made me incredibly nauseous; I did anyway to make her happy, but because I complained about my nausea, she called me a loser.

Very rude & annoying, though I wouldn't expect anything else from someone I like enough to spend time with. 

She likes to take pictures. It always makes me very happy seeing her focus on getting a good shot, much happier than seeing the perspectives she's capturing themselves.

At one point, she asked if I wanted to get coffee (and then, of course, bought a muffin & hot chocolate for herself as well), and when we were sitting, she made a picture.

I wanted to capture her taking that picture, but was too late. I asked her to take another one so I could still. Nothing about her picture, mine, or this painting portrays much reality. It's all staged or interpreted, but everyone likes living in fairy tales. So it's okay.

Some people are born wise, and you're probably not one of them. Though maybe, if you're lucky, you've met or even known someone who was. 

These kinds of people seem to come out of the womb with knowledge from outside, which is easy to understand but hard to figure out while being more truthful than anything others ever think of.

My toddler nephew sometimes seems to be like that. I'm not sure if he's genius or even intelligent, and he may lose his wisdom with age, but for now, the guy seems to speak truth into life.

While playing in the backyard, we talked about life a little bit -- like young men sometimes do -- I asked him a question that wasn't important enough to remember.

But I could never forget his answer: "Ja!" He loudly exclaimed, which helped me make sense of so much of what once had seemed unrelated.

Then he put his toy car in an impossibly tall tree and asked me to add another vehicle. But I was too busy thinking to play around, and before I knew it, he also had grown too old to play. What a shame.

It's okay sweetie

Normal people are scary for the same reasons monsters are: because they don't exist. When someone is strange, it will feel like at least you know what's wrong with them, instead of the fake normal ones for whom you'll have to figure it out.

Anyway, these scary people like going on vacations, yuck. Staying home is easy and great. I've felt more love while looking at the same old bland buildings than I have while looking at great world wonders.

But when my parents (some of the weirdest people I know) rented a small house in Delft and asked if I wanted to stay with them for a few days, (I'm trying to work on my anxiety -- part of the reason why I love home so much), I did something radical and said yes.

It was nice seeing them for longer than I had been (it's hard to see people you don't live with.) And, ever since becoming an adult, playing with my toddler nephew is the most fun I'm still allowed to have.

Though cute that he is, he's also a real troublemaker, so there wasn't a night where he didn't wake everyone up by screaming.

There must have been (fake) monsters in his dreams. Fair enough, they are scary sometimes, but even more frightening than that should be the real ones in his life. 

He'll understand that someday. Then he'll wish to return to the ones in his dreams, but it'll be too late, not that he ever really could.

Far from home

This Thai lady is lying on my couch -- don't worry about how she got there; it's a story I'll reveal some other time. 

I had told her she would look great as a painting, which she struggled to believe, only making her more beautiful.

She allowed me to sketch her anyway, and because I didn't know when I'd get such an opportunity again, I took full advantage, stealing her soul and capturing it on my canvas.

Well, that was probably my biggest mistake ever.

Don't get me wrong, the painting is excellent, but now I have this soulless body in my apartment who's NOT pleased with me.

Apparently, stealing one's soul is frowned upon -- maybe THAT is something they should teach you in school (though perhaps they did, and I wasn't paying attention.)

I would appreciate any ideas about rectifying this situation without destroying my painting or upsetting her more than she already is. I like her a lot, and I'm not ready to depart from my painting yet.

From the floor

Somehow, this girl found her way into my museum. She won't leave, and I frankly don't want her to.

(I do know how she got in; I let her. But still, it's surprising she's here. In the same way, it feels weird when you switch a job or something.)

Because of me, we fell on the floor while we were playing (building this Lego set she had bought, using me as an excuse to get it "as a gift.")

A mistake I can't believe I made, which I don't regret as much as I should -- I hadn't been making enough errors before she appeared, so her allowing me to make more is appreciated.

When I looked up, I noticed something I had neglected for a long time: the ceiling, which, at that moment, looked like an abstract masterpiece. 

Seeing my room from this new, yet oh-so-common, perspective made me realize what I already knew -- that it's too easy to just sit in a chair.

(artist) screaming into void

The biggest problem with cliches is how good they are, yet how unoriginal it feels to use them.

Maybe being unoriginal shouldn't matter much -- maybe most cliches were created as other cliches dressed up in a fancy enough coat to make everyone forget their nature.

Even what I wrote before seems cliche, but hopefully, my dressing will be tasty enough for you to be saturated. If not, well, I'm not sorry. You've got enough time to waste a minute on something I wrote.

Anyway, I'll keep this one short so that you won't have to feel bad if my pretentiousness isn't able to impress.

The working title of this painting was 'A real artist happily screams into the void,' but I didn't feel like writing such a long title, so I shortened it, perhaps a little too much. 

A real artist doesn't and can't ever exist, but if there was one, I imagine they would have to be able to make art because they want to make art and be happy doing so, even if nobody else notices or cares.

And that's all I've got to say about that.

Hating the gift

Lisa met Johny in a comment section for a post about a new pair of shoes that, for a couple of days, everyone seemed to talk about. 

They discussed and bonded over their shared hatred for the original poster -- who, in their opinion, wasn't cultured enough to voice their opinions.

They quickly started talking more and developed a close relationship rooted in complaining about pop culture; they fancied themselves unique.

However close they might have been, their physical distance did not help to resolve their otherwise lonely and empty existence.

Generally, most distances are reachable. Unfortunately for them, a human could not travel this route. It just was not possible.

But when Johny went to the post office to send back a recently no longer trendy sweater (he had ordered it when it was still stylish, it arrived late and now clearly wasn't,) he noticed that he could fit into the grandest allowed box.

So he shipped himself to Lisa, but the moment their eyes met, they found another shared thing they could hate -- each other.

Optimistically common if circumstantially rare

Long legged monster

If you don't know, you may be one of them, but in this world, there are a lot of monsters. There isn't much of a problem being a monster, and if you want to be friendly, you might choose not to call them that -- what is a 'monster' anyway? But there is no need to be friendly around these parts. 

I played, learned, and grew like anyone else, with similar friends, so you might've called me normal, that's at least how we viewed each other.

Only many years into high school did we learn that not everyone has such long legs. We called the others 'monsters' back then, thinking: "What a weird existence must it be; how could they reach the tree tops or climb steep hills?"

When I turned 20 and felt like most at that age that I knew & had seen it all, I decided I wanted to explore the world that allegedly was full of weird monsters, including ones with short legs.

Then I started to learn that in those other parts, I was the monster. Even though the short-legged weirdos could use my help with many tasks otherwise performed with uncomfortable or expensive tools, they all ran away.

Due to that ostracization, what used to be my benefits became my shame, and slowly, every day, I became a little bit more like the monster I appeared as. 

Finally, only an unreachable moon accompanied my heroic journey of leisure.

Learning to wait

Anticipating something good is often almost as pleasing as the thing itself. Add in uncertainties about whether you'll receive anything and what you'll receive, and you've got significant parts of most addictions described.

But if the wait is too uncertain or prolonged, it can be one of the most agonizing experiences. It's better than waiting for something nasty, but it's close. 

For some reason, my girlfriend keeps telling me I have to learn to wait for something good. Though she lives in Belgium, and we only get to see each other on the weekend and have to wait to see each other frequently, I'm not sure what exactly she means.

Challenging questions can only be interesting for so long, and after a while, I lost interest. So, instead of starting a fight with my girlfriend, I have just been practicing to wait for something good to happen. 

Something too easy for me.

To challenge myself, I'm now trying to learn to wait for nothing. I've removed everything from my apartment that could give me any distractions: my computer, paint, books, and instruments.

Now, I happily wait in my chair for nothing to happen -- until I can't anymore.

#679 Learning to wait

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