observations on a postive day
By postive I mean that I am relatively calm of mind and not dwelling on fear.
I did pop by the federal offices to apply for pension but I know personally it's a vain effort. Nonetheless, governments must have their forms filled.
I also popped by the fabric store for a few simple sewing staples like bias tape and any discount notions to which I took a notion. I was most disappointed that all the 50% sales were members only. I used to have to pay for membership and I just don't shop often enough to warrant it. They give it out free now, but I still consider it elitist and obnoxious. I never come away from that store feeling calm, but it's the last fabric store in town. It's them or amazon.
Like why bother with marketing and clubs and memberships and what not when you have no competition? Just sell it at a fair price, put it on discount to clear, and be normal and not play mind games.
I did this painting. It was a paint by number someone put in a box of other cool things and left on a trash can to get snowed on. the paint by number was not yet damaged, and they'd only taken a stab at it. One pot of paint was almost dried out but enough water soaking made it useable again. The coolest part about the kit was that it was on actual canvas with strap boards and a hang strap. It was intermediate grade. Given how few of these things I've done and how terrible they always come out, I wasn't expecting much.
Here's the thing, it wasn't some rembrandt, here. I didn't have to be accurate. This, this was an impressionist master, none other than van Gogh's work I was to mimic. I started at 1, and began. By 3 I could see it looked pretty awful in the traditional way of paint by numbers. Each color carefully minding it's border, trying to barely touch, thin in spots, too. Flat and dull. Well that's not how Vincent painted it. He daubed, he swirled, he stabbed and he stroked. Big chunks of paint being pushed around by the brush, not painted on. So that's what I did. I used the lines to reinterpret how the brush had fallen and moved. Using my familiarity with painting by brush, as I've done a great deal of it, if not a lot of fine art, I poked and swirled, stabbed and daubed, stroked and curled. As I went I could feel the energy in each part of the painting. How he'd been calm and measured when he began, painting the background, taking delight in the lights around him and above. Then when he began to draw the people, from outside the light, in the place where he hid because he just couldn't connect with them, his anxiety and depression crept in. His colors got more furious and clashing, hard blacks, aggressively cheerful yellows, and blends between them from trying to calm the whole thing down. Stabs, little furious swipes and bashes took over, millions of sparkling wet cobbles to do, yet, the prettiest part of the scene, but oh such a rush to get away from this jarring place of stress and otherness. I didn't finish it all in one session, it took three, but I felt the change of passions and speeds as I went.
Now, as I look at this humble paint by number, it moves and dances and speaks in the way of real paintings. Because it is one. Not an original, but not a print or a copy either. more of a mimic. And the whole story is still there, and felt and seen in the impasto waves and chop. In the wild lines next to passive ones. In the sketchy forms and bloppy shapes.
Vince was autistic. In a time where conformity to the social environment determined everything. Absolutely everything. With parents who were cruel to him, rather than supportive. And in spite of how often he reached out for help, nobody could understand. Autistics were robbed of voice time and again by institutionalization and the abuse that came with it. CPTSD can shut your mouth forever sometimes. If it lasts long enough. And for the "mad" it usually did. Autistic people are still treated as mad men by the general public.
"but Icould have told you, Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you." I forget the songwriter of that line, sorry, song is called "starry starry nights."
Today I met a man who looked to be near 30 in one direction or another and I asked him if he was familiar with van Gogh and he had no clue who it was. I realized that east of arabia or turkey or some such geographip point, they had other artists and styles and histories to focus on. I felt a bit embarassed and realized, well, this is what bias is, and good job spotting it immediately. Anyway, we talked lightly on that subject, that of course van Gogh is a western thing, and how silly of me not to realize it.
I had other thoughts I wanted to write down but it's ok. It only feels important.
That's the thing see, we have to prioritize ourselves, because nobody else will. So we must value ourselves as most important. But it's internal. Doesn't make us actually important to the world.
One of the things that bugs me about the positivity political correctness is the hypocrisy in it. Telling people they're important while metaphorically showing them the door, or even literally doing so. It's so much virtue signalling and too many people are learning to live with hypocrisy as ineviitable.. The world is meantime actually getting crueller again. The number of people sleeping rough in the winter snow is terrifying. Hard on one's compassion bone too, because exhausting myself to the point of homelessness to save a half dozen people won't work. That gotsnacks306 guy who goes out and hands out food and needful items to homeless people is doing a ton of good and yet, it's a drop in the bucket and doing nothing to stem the tide of failed citizens. These people are citizens. Who have been let down by society. A society that prates on about being wealthy. Is it wealthy when there's that much poverty? Methinks not.