Talking to people i know, friends or acquaintances, or people i have only just met sometimes gives me opinions i’m utterly amazed by.

I remember having a talk with the girl in the apartment in London i was staying in, for the Scritti Politti gig in February this year. I did talk to her about my plan to give my drawings away. At one point she gave me the suggestion to give the drawings to someone in my family, like the daughter of my sister. I was stunned. I could not see how she would come to this conclusion. How she could suggest this to me. I admit, this suggestion has been on my mind occasionally over this last year. So strange. She hardly knew me, and yet she suggested this to me so easily. Something which i had been thinking about for the past two years, which i had first thought about ten years ago. There wasn’t a moment in my mind in which i took her suggestion seriously. Hell no. But i did wonder how she could think about this so easily, and suggest it to so simply.

Yesterday i talked with a neighbour. We talked about my website for a while, and i mentioned my posts about the man of my dreams last week. There was a short chuckle from him. I was like what? But i could see how i, a fifty two year old woman talking about the man of her dreams, would cause this amusement.

I left the garden early today, this Sunday. I wasn’t sure why. But i felt a distance between myself and the rest. And the thought came up that i would be better of at home writing the post for tomorrow. Which is what i am doing now.

The world don’t need any more songs… As a matter of fact, if nobody wrote any songs from this day on, the world ain’t gonna suffer for it. Nobody cares. There’s enough songs for people to listen to, if they want to listen to songs. For every man, woman and child on earth, they could be sent, probably, each of them, a hundred songs, and never be repeated. There’s enough songs.

Unless someone’s gonna come along with a pure heart and has something to say. That’s a different story.

But as far as songwriting, any idiot could do it… Everybody writes a song just like everybody’s got that one great novel in them.

Source: Bob Dylan on Sacrifice, the Unconscious Mind, and How to Cultivate the Perfect Environment for Creative Work

I read this quote through a link on facebook. It spoke to me, the pure heart bit. I’m not sure i have a pure heart. But i do know it is purer than two years ago. I look into myself, see the way i respond to people and their thoughts and what they say; sometimes it hurts me, but i struggle through it.

To me, living like this is invaluable. It means the world to me. This is my life. This is my chosen life. I can not see another one so promising. Promises of living truthfully, in connection, in the world, endlessly. Until of course it ends.

Withdrawing is not for the time of now. Now i need to move forward. I need to speak of these things. I don’t mind if i speak to anyone listening now or later. I simply have to get it out of my brain. Not that i know what i’m gonna write. I don’t. But one sentence leads to the next. And all together they do make the story. The story of me.

This all is so sharp in contrast with our present world. It is hard to look at it clearly. I try to when i go out and go into the city center and look at the people’s faces and their expressions and their loneliness. The occasional hello. The occasional smile.

I try to make myself still, quiet. To look out into the world and see it, to give myself a good position and move from there.

Or i could simply fool myself. Yeah. Not too sure about that.

I am not sure what posts i will make this week. Well, i know two of them. One is a video with me singing. The other is a post i started in February this year. Life Is Wonderful. This post, Amazement, is a surprise to me. And that makes me happy.

Salute!

Source image at the top: Amaranthine – Pencil Illustration

Some parts of the post i wrote earlier this week i felt were true. At least, they were inside my head. But i do feel the post did not resemble what i wanted to write.

Yesterday, Wednesday, i listened to an interview with Bas Heijne, in Dutch. Some quotes are interspersed in this post.

Can art play a roll in finding that big story? That big story we need to keep afloat our civilization? If you want to pick a position in this world, as it is today, wouldn’t the best position not be the one with ambivalence, with ambiguity? Isn’t that the domain of the arts?

The past two years i felt very erotic. A new experience. Not that i never felt erotic before, but not this severe, this extreme. There have been weeks that i didn’t masturbate, sure. But sometimes this erotic feeling would overflow me. There was nothing i could do about it, but to let it take over me. This was all felt only by me. I never had the thought of finding someone to help me with this. Not really.

These past two years are also the happiest time of my life. I started to work again, on my own website. First on lfs.nl, where i somehow found a good way to end it. Something that was always in the back of my mind, but which i never could imagine happening. I remember that feeling, that thought cropping up. “Is this the end?” That it was an about page did feel fitting. And then starting with this website, ellenpronk.com. With the first day the About page done and a first post: Hello World.

My life has taken a different turn over these two years. Money is an issue. I have given myself this year to try and find a solution for this. Still one week of posts to go. I have started to work in the garden, the Peace Garden. I have met many new people through this work. Good people. I’m looking around myself, making walks. I started to sing. Not terribly good, but i do love it. I started to make videos. Not terribly good, but i do love it. I started to do all these things from my dreams, from way back, hidden away inside myself. And i do love it.

I have only had one boyfriend my entire life. I wasn’t even so much in love with him. But it still hurt when it was over. I remember feeling that i should be more careful with myself. Which i did. The next boy i fell in love with, didn’t fall in love with me. That was hurtful. It took me years to get over it. To look into that experience and see it, clearly. To leave it behind me.

This year, the one thing i am most happy with, is giving away my drawings to Green Gartside. It took all the courage i could muster to do this. Thirty years i had these drawings. Twice i had given these drawings away, to close friends at the time. Both times they had given them back to me. I do hope they are in the right place now. I do still think about them. But i don’t need to see them.

I do remember that feeling of sorrow when i got back home and nobody asked me how it was. Nobody. The people from the garden i only just met this year. And my older friends, i don’t see them anymore. Everybody is busy, everybody has his or her own life. I understand that. But it was still hurting a bit. So when i met an old old friend and talked and talked about many things, when these drawings and giving them away came up, i felt happy for a while.

We need to enchant this disenchanted world once again. We do stay human beings. We do want to fall in love. You can say, love, love is a chemical process in your brain. That is possible, that is the case. But, when you fall in love, you do not think i am in a chemical process. That is not how we work.

My life has been so quiet. All my loves have misfired. All the loves directed at me i didn’t respond to. I feel like i was cocooned in my life, not hearing what was out there. Happy, yes. But also closed.

It does feel to me that i have opened up these past two years. I’m still me. Of course. But when i’m outside my house, i do feel my attention focused on the trees and plants and buildings and people surrounding me. A good feeling. I am watching the people in the city. So many are not paying attention to the outside at all. Hiding away.

For Freud love is a way to deal with reality. The most beautiful way to release the tension between the inner and outer world.

To me, my life and the world i’m living in has profoundly changed. My life has slowed down. I do see myself. I also do see how other people see me. Or don’t see me at all. Most of these people i do not know.

So i am sitting on this little hill here, watching around me, looking back on my past, seeing the patterns that brought me here.

And yes, i do hope to meet someone who i can be together with. The man of my dreams. Someone to love. And be happy with.

But first of all, i am with myself. I do have work ahead of me. Which i love to do.

And money? I still believe that money is one of the last things i need to worry about. Still.

One more week in 2016 is left to work on. Five posts.

Salute.

Enjoy your weekend.

Quotes translated loosely from a Dutch interview with Bas Heijne, published on the Correspondent.

The first party i voted on, when i was eighteen years old was the Dutch Communist Party. I remember a couple of years before writing in my diary that i felt the communist system was the only honest system with an equal load for everyone. I was still very young then. When i grew older my voting pattern changed. Most of the time i voted for the PvdA, the Dutch Labour Party. I think i have also voted for other left wing parties. I never once voted for a right wing party.

The home i grew up in was a left oriented home. We had a Rotterdam newspaper, Het Vrije Volk. We listed to the radio show In De Rooie Haan each Saturday, from the VARA, the main Dutch left wing broadcasting association.

The next elections are in 2017. I’m not sure yet for which party i will vote. I do need to make some background research. I have downloaded the party program of the Partij van de Dieren, the Party for the Animals. I do like the main drive of this document, but i need to read it a bit more carefully before i do decide about the party i will vote for. My work in the garden this year, the people i got to know through working there do have an influence on my vote next year. A large influence also is my work on ellenpronk.com and the time to write about all different aspects of my life.

I’m not an intellectual. I am an artist. I live my life through feelings. Through emotions. It is hard for me to get to a thought, clearly formulated, in language.

I have always adapted myself to the crowd i’m in. I see it happening to myself in the garden people community. Not the way it used to happen to me, where i could feel myself disappear. But still, i need to fight it. Keep it distant. Hold it and study it. To do something with it in the end. But not to swallow it whole without asking why. Not anymore.

So i’m not sure if i will celebrate old and new with them. For the past ten to fifteen years i celebrated it by myself. And enjoyed it. Well, a bit anyway. I’m still thinking about this invitation. Not sure yet.

I do try to be nice. To smile at people and say hi. Today, while i was sitting close to the library i watched all the people walking by. Most kept tightly into their own world. I watched a man trying to talk to them. He had a bunch of papers with him. He could be a part of the religious group standing there. Most people said to him they didn’t have time. Something i could see myself doing. I said hi to a woman passing by. First i caught her eye, then i said hi. She was surprised. Talked to the other ladies walking with her. I called to her, saying i didn’t know her. She sort of laughed.

Yesterday i said hello to a man. When i was a few meters further on i discovered he was following me. He was walking the other way when i had said hi. He asked me where i was going. To the supermarket i said. I don’t remember fully what i said after that. But it was something like “i simply said hi, i wasn’t after anything”. The man turned away. These men must be so lonely. To follow a woman saying a simple hi to them. I came across man like this before. A simple no is enough to keep them away.

So, the man of my dreams. When i first had the thought of this post i had a whole story in my mind. But the truth is, i’m me, i’m on my own, i’m happy. Really, it would be great to fall in love with someone i think i can spend the rest of my life with. Someone to share my thoughts with, someone to laugh with, someone to lean against, someone to sleep with in the dark of night. But i’m still on my own, and i know i can not force anything from this world. And yes, i am happy. Right now.

I end this post with a video. I still have to watch it myself. More like a bookmark. Bas Heijne today got awarded the P.C. Hooft award for his prose. Congratulations!

• On Bas Heijne, Dutch Public Intellectual