Yesterday, Sunday, i did work hard in the garden. This whole Monday i felt my arms, my shoulders and my legs. And no, i hardly slept last night. So i got back in bed this afternoon.
So this is it for today. A slow second Eastern day, as we have here in the Netherlands. I’m gonna leave it a that.
Salute!
I just watched the last part of La La Land. I tried yesterday, but the movie stopped so many times, i stopped. I did cry during the last bit. I do really like it. About young people, who fall in love, who want to make it work for themselves, who want to make an impression on the world. Who slide away from each other. And end up in an different world. And i do like both actors playing the leading parts, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.
The strange thing about Moth stories is that none of the tricks we use to make ourselves loved or respected by others work in the ways you would imagine they ought to. The tales of how clever we were, how wise, how we won, they mostly fail. The practiced jokes and the witty one-liners all crash and burn up on a Moth stage.
Honesty matters. Vulnerability matters. Being open about who you were at a moment in time when you were in a difficult or an impossible place matters more than anything.
Having a place the story starts and a place it’s going: that’s important.
Telling your story, as honestly as you can, and leaving out the things you don’t need, that’s vital.
The Moth connects us, as humans. Because we all have stories. Or perhaps, because we are, as humans, already an assemblage of stories. And the gulf that exists between us as people is that when we look at each other we might see faces, skin color, gender, race, or attitudes, but we don’t see, we can’t see, the stories. And once we hear each other’s stories we realize that the things we see as dividing us are, all too often, illusions, falsehoods: that the walls between us are in truth no thicker than scenery.
I was sitting in front of the television this Sunday morning. I thought about this post. On Saturday I came across a link on facebook and was enchanted by the quote on the linked page on Brainpickings. I copied it to a new post. I first gave it another title, but changed it to Live boldly. I don’t even remember the first title. Something with silent.
My thoughts wandered away.
The dream and photo i wrote about in an earlier post, Memories.
My earliest memory came back to me in a dream. Around my twenties i dreamed i was crawling on a short stairs with maybe two steps. It was warm. I felt the warmth in my hands which were resting on the steps. I felt the warm stones beneath my fingers. My mother was sitting in front of me. She pointed to somebody behind me. My father. He was standing there with a camera in front of his face. He clicked. I had the photo. Somehow i lost it. I searched for it quite a few times. I still hope it’s somewhere in a book or a notebook. Somewhere hidden. I do love this memory. I can still feel the warm stones. I was like a year, a year and half old.
This photo was taken in 1965. It is something that really happened. And the dream i had, when i was around twenty years old, happened too. The dream, even with this distance of around thirty years, this dream i can still remember clearly. Pointing to myself, feeling the warm stones beneath my hands and looking behind me. The memory of the event itself, when i was only one year old, has faded away for a long time.
This dream is the counter point of the photo. In this dream i look at my father, with a camera in front of his head. His finger on the button ready to make the photo. I had only turned around a second before that. My mother was pointing at something behind me. My mother with her dark hair in a high knot up above her head, smiling. The sun shining. Warm stones beneath me. I turn around and look at my father. I do not see my father’s face. A mechanical object is in front of it, a camera.
Click
My father is the one not in the photo. He took it. What i see in the photo is me and my mother, still pointing. Me, the one person i do not see in the dream. Me, the one person who is experiencing this event. I feel her, i feel what she feels, but i don’t see her. What i see is my dad.
My dad who has been absent from my life for the past twenty-eight years. My dad who is still alive. Who lives in a older people’s home somewhere in the west, between Rotterdam and the beaches. My dad who is slightly demented. Not sure about the slightly. My dad whose voice i last heard on the phone. You are not my daughter.
As you live your life, you are the only person you can not see entirely. You see your hands. You see your hair, when it is longer. You see your legs, your tummy. You do not see your back. You do not see your eyes. You see your nose only from the side, a bit blurry. You see your mouth only when you make a kissing face and put your mouth way out in front. Still blurry.
You do see other people completely. You see their face. You see their eyes. Their nose, their cheeks, their mouth. Their hands, their feet, their legs, their tummy. You see their backs. The top of their head.
But you can not see what is in their head. You can not see their thoughts. You can not feel what they feel.
They are a mystery.
I made many self portraits. When i was at art school, i started out with drawings. Then photography. My final project was with self portraits.
Making these self portraits was not extremely difficult. I only needed myself, a tripod, a camera and film. I started out with black and white film and ended up with colour. I used 25 ASA film most of the time. Very fine grain. Great colour. I still have all the negatives.
I used a whole film for each set. Looking into the camera with different facial expressions. A smile. A serious look. A look away. Different angles. From above. From the front. From the side.
I postponed seeing the look on myself. I only got to see what i looked like when i developed the film and started printing. Contact sheets gave me an overview, a chance to pick the best photo. The ones i believed to be the best anyway. Very difficult to get to that one.
This situation was very different from my initial photo opportunity, when i was one and a half years old. I was grown up. I was making these photos myself. Picking the right time myself.
For years i didn’t make photos of myself. Or they were hopeless failures. Not good. Not a good look. Not a pretty girl. Not a good photo.
I did make a few in 2010 i liked. And last year i made two great ones. In the sunshine. With the sun shining on the white cd cupboard. With my iPhone camera. I did need to make a cutout. The photo was ok with the entire shot. But a square cutout worked like magic.
I confess, i do like it when i look pretty in a photo. Of course i have so much more ugly photos of myself. But i get to pick the ones i show you. So yes, i show you the pretty ones. Even though i don’t feel i’m that vain, a bit of vanity i don’t mind.
So most of my work has a relationship with my dream of me and my mum and dad when i was around one and a half years old. I didn’t realize this at the time. This dream i still remember. I don’t know why i had this memory dream. I don’t know why exactly i made the work i made. But it did call to me. And yes, it is becoming clearer. I can put it into the story of my life. The story i’m telling you here. Which i forged out of my memories of the fifty two years of my life so far.
The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.
We all make stories. We grow up, from childhood through adolescence to adulthood. All different things happen to us. Happy things. Sad things. Painful things. We meet other people. And things happen. We fall in love. And out of love.
We try to make this story matter. We have so much inspiration. We have all the old stories. Fairy tales. Movies. Television. Books. Myths. Religion. But all the stories in our lives are only pieces of these old stories. Our own lives are a multitude mass of little pieces, each told with a slightly different voice.
But each one of us is also a physical person. A whole being.
Born. Growing up. Walking. Working. Loving. Dead.
There is mystery in each of us. Fractured existence. Different voices. Each telling another side.
Me, here, on ellenpronk.com, i’m talking about my own existence. Fifty two years now. Halfway. Or slightly over.
I’m trying to make my stories work. For me. To understand my life, so far. To see threads. To make new threads. To tell new stories. To notice new things. Sometimes i fail. Many times i fail. But everything i tell here is true. In a way.
A bit tired today. Yesterday evening was nice. A bit cold and wet, misty. But good people in the garden, some singing. A good fire. Champagne and Dutch oliebollen.
I did go home around ten minutes after twelve though. Not sure why. When i got home, i put up some water for my hot water bottle. I did watch a bit of television, but nothing much was on. Listened to some music. Then i went to bed.
This morning i woke up around six. Early. *sigh* I did get out of bed and watched an episode of Westworld. I enjoy that show. I did go back to bed and slept a little more, till eleven. Watched two more episodes. Will most likely finish it today.
I did go to the garden to empty my compost bucket and see if i could gather the pots i brought yesterday for the candles. One was broken. It’s ok, i simply save these pots for any use.
I leave this post with this quote. I do feel this is relevant to my life at the point where it is right now. On the brink of being penniless. Yet i do not feel afraid. (That is not entirely right. I still have an occasional eek feeling.) I need to trust myself. I do that most of the time. The people close to me, my family, are afraid for me. But i can not change my path at this moment to satisfy them. I need to live my life for myself. I need to let my life story find its proper setting.
There is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity. But the contradiction lies a little deeper than the mere conflict between the desire for security and the fact of change. If I want to be secure, that is, protected from the flux of life, I am wanting to be separate from life. Yet it is this very sense of separateness which makes me feel insecure. To be secure means to isolate and fortify the “I,” but it is just the feeling of being an isolated “I” which makes me feel lonely and afraid. In other words, the more security I can get, the more I shall want.
To put it still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.
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.
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.
This is what you shall do:
Love the earth
and sun
and the animals,
despise riches,
give alms to every one that asks,
stand up for the stupid
and crazy,
devote your income
and labor to others,
hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God,
have patience
and indulgence toward the people,
take off your hat to nothing known
or unknown
or to any man
or number of men,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons
and with the young
and with the mothers of families,
read these leaves in the open air
every season
of every year
of your life,
re-examine all you have been told at school
or church
or in any book,
dismiss whatever insults your own soul,
and your very flesh shall be a great poem
and have the richest fluency
not only in its words
but in the silent lines of its lips
and face
and between the lashes of your eyes
and in every motion
and joint of your body.
No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don’t ask, walk!
The real value of a real education [has] almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
‘This is water.’
‘This is water.’
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime.
It is different now. Different from a few years back. I felt unhappy a few years back. But these days, this past year and a half, i felt happy. Truly happy.
But yes, i am still alone.
Lives of my old friends has moved on. They moved away. They got children. All very understandable.
Looking back at my old life, i see now i always felt a need to adjust myself. To change how i respond. There was always tension. There still is. I still feel it. It is very hard for me to relax and be myself, completely, with other people. To be honest, i will rather be by myself. It is easier for me.
Working in the garden has added some difficulty these past months. All different sorts of people, with whom it is hard to find the right note. Who say things i don’t understand. I need to deal with that, by myself.
They do not know me. I tell myself that that is fine with me. But some of the things they say are hurtful.
And, as it turns out, some of the things i say are hurtful too. I learned this this week. Strange.
Right now, i feel happiest when i’m alone watching at the world. Reading articles, thinking my thoughts all by myself. Trying to find a place from where i can speak, think.
It is still a bit muddled. A bit unclear.
I hope i am growing up steady.
It is hard for me to talk about with a clear mind.
I am trying.
So please, do what ever you want. You may read the articles i posted at the end of this one. Or not. You can read the quote. Or not. You can watch what Simon Vinkenoog is saying, in Dutch. Or not.
Whatever you want.
There is a gentrification that is happening to cities, and there is a gentrification that is happening to the emotions too, with a similarly homogenising, whitening, deadening effect. Amidst the glossiness of late capitalism, we are fed the notion that all difficult feelings — depression, anxiety, loneliness, rage — are simply a consequence of unsettled chemistry, a problem to be fixed, rather than a response to structural injustice or, on the other hand, to the native texture of embodiment, of doing time, as David Wojnarowicz memorably put it, in a rented body, with all the attendant grief and frustration that entails.
I don’t believe the cure for loneliness is meeting someone, not necessarily. I think it’s about two things: learning how to befriend yourself and understanding that many of the things that seem to afflict us as individuals are in fact a result of larger forces of stigma and exclusion, which can and should be resisted.
Loneliness is personal, and it is also political. Loneliness is collective; it is a city. As to how to inhabit it, there are no rules and nor is there any need to feel shame, only to remember that the pursuit of individual happiness does not trump or excuse our obligations to each another. We are in this together, this accumulation of scars, this world of objects, this physical and temporary heaven that so often takes on the countenance of hell. What matters is kindness; what matters is solidarity. What matters is staying alert, staying open, because if we know anything from what has gone before us, it is that the time for feeling will not last. (Source: The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone)
Food has always been important to me. When i lived at home with my parents. Especially when i lived by myself.
I remember going to the Gimsel in the center of town, opposite the supermarket De Gebroeders De Jong, now called the Jumbo. The Gimsel is an organic vegetarian store. I bought the corn bread and loved it. It was compact, yellow and tasted great. I’m so sad they don’t sell it anymore.
When i was still working full time it was hard to keep track of everything i ate. I did sometimes buy a ready made meal from the supermarket, usually the Albert Heijn. I was never very thorough with what i bought. I like good food, i like salt, i like sweets and cream. So i might have cooked some recipes from the macrobiotic cookbook i have, but i have many others from which i cook too.
The past two years i started going to the market again. I found a good vegetable stall and got my veggies and fruit there. I also went to the Gandhi garden for a few times to work there.
I go less to the supermarket. I get cat’s food there, dried chick peas, tahin. At the Marqt i buy butter, eggs, flour for bread, sometimes a bit of meat.
I work at the Vredestuin, the Peace Garden, twice a week. I meet different people there. Most are in their thirties. I love to learn more about vegetables, weeds, insects, feeding the vegetables, planning the garden. I love to work there, even though i’m not the hardest working person. I love to sit there, feel the earth, look at the worms, listen to the humming of the bumblebees, and hear the droning of the cars and the trains in the background.
We have become a pyramidic society of the omnivorously acquisitive few, an insecure, dwindling middle class, and a multiplying number of ill-served, throwaway citizens and workers [resulting in] a kind of public breakdown, with symptoms along a spectrum from acute self-involvement to extreme anxiety to individual and group violence.
This quote is an example of the multitudes of words, sentences, essays, books written by artists, scientists, all sorts of people from the past century about our current culture.
Its advocates support extensive economic liberalization policies such as privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government spending in order to enhance the role of the private sector in the economy.
Sounds familiar?
A few weeks ago i went with my mother to a supermarket in Leusden. Walking through the store, i started to see the enormity of produce in it. The wall of butter and margarine. I felt it. It must have been the fact i do not know the supermarket very well. When i go in a supermarket here, in Rotterdam, i’m more used to how it looks.
That feeling kept coming back to me over the past weeks. In the Marqt supermarket there is less produce. Butter and margarine is only one shelf. Today i went to the Gimsel and walked past all the shelves and looked at all the produce. The two blocks of self-serving big jars of dried beans, nuts, cereal, dried fruits.
The supermarket Marqt and Gimsel are expensive. I checked for the other end, the cheap ones, Lidl and Aldi. I just decided to go out and get to the ones closest to me. Still not in the center, but walkable. Simply to see what they have, how it looks.
I remember watching the show Keuringsdienst van Waarde, the one about fish, broadcasted 2 June 2016. Vegetarian fish grown in tanks in a Belgian industrial area.
In that show people are using the argument that we need to be so efficient to be able to feed all the people in the world. In 35 years time there will be 9.3 billion people on this planet. With 800 million people now already being hungry, we need to be terribly smart in making all the food necessary.
This is simply not true.
In the list of articles at the end of this post, you will read several articles saying that there is plenty of food right now and for the future. The division of food is unbalanced. In the rich west we, the consumers, the shops, the agriculture, waste around 30 – 50 % of all the crops. It may be not compliant with our demands for cosmetically perfect food, it may be out of date and thrown away by the supermarket, it may have turned to waste in a fridge somewhere. And then there is the 550 cubic meters of water wasted globally in growing crops that never make it to the consumer (Almost half of the world’s food thrown away, report finds)
I read the article about the apple Pink Lady: Pink Lady, de rotte appel van de vrijhandel. This apple needs lots of sunshine to grow. It is cultivated in New Zealand, South Africa, Chili. It is transported to Europe. And we export our own homegrown apples.
This is partly because we want to eat apples the whole year round. It is also part of the globalizing world we live in. Where profit rules. Where it doesn’t matter what costs we make in transporting and cooling fruits and vegetables. As long as we make money, we go for it.
I’m saying we. Because we are here together. Some may have stepped out. Some may try to do their best. Some may not care at all. But it is still we, who are all doing this. We who are all responsible. Not us, the good guys, versus them, the bad guys. We. All together.
And i don’t want to work in this world, here in the Netherlands, here in this current time, here with these rules on how we deal with each other. I don’t want to do that anymore. I have done it enough.
I have said it before. This website, ellenpronk.com, is my work. It is how i want to earn my living. I see only one way. I need to become famous. Now, i know, nobody else will do that to me. Nobody else will say that they like what i do and that i should be famous. Nobody.
I wrote this two days ago. It is a bit stark. What i do know is that i do not want to do my previous work, front-end development, anymore. Not professionally. There are many other things i would want to do. Right now, i am going for the one thing which i believe will make me happiest. The possibility to travel, meet and talk with many different people. The possibility to see the world, feel the wind in my hair, feel the sun on my face, hear the birds, the waves of the ocean crushing on the beach, the leaves of the trees rustling in the wind.
I am angry.
Furious.
I am not saying i have all, if any answers. But i do remember how i used to view this world growing up and for a large part of my adult life. As me simply a part of the world. This world which seemed to go at its own pace towards its own goal. Me tagging along. Trying to find a right spot for myself.
It is not like that. We all are here living on this earth with a certain responsibility towards its destiny. It is not politicians who decide, not businessmen, not scientists. Each and every one of us can make the choice to make this world a better place.
It is not something we can demand of each other. Each individual person has its own path through life. I can only talk for myself.
I am trying to find my place in this world. I feel i am getting there.
Hunger can have many contributing factors; natural disaster, discrimination, war, poor infrastructure. So why, regardless of the situation, is high tech agriculture always assumed to be the only the solution? This premise is put forward and supported by those who would benefit financially if their “solution” were implemented. Corporations peddle their high technology genetically engineered seed and chemical packages, their genetically altered animals, always with the “promise” of feeding the world.
The report of 400 experts from around the world, The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), is ignored by the proponents of a New Green Revolution, precisely because it shows that the best hope for ending hunger lies with local, traditional, farmer controlled agricultural production, not high tech industrial agriculture.
The ultimate cause of hunger is not a lack of Western agricultural technology, rather hunger results when people are not allowed to participate in a food system of their choosing. Civil wars, structural adjustment policies, inadequate distribution systems, international commodity speculation and corporate control of food from seed to table— these are the causes of hunger, the stimulus for food crises.
Fifty years ago, when the world’s population was around half what it is now, the answer to looming famines was “the green revolution” – a massive increase in the use of hybrid seeds and chemical fertilisers. It worked, but at a great ecological price. We grow nearly twice as much food as we did just a generation ago, but we use three times as much water from rivers and underground supplies.
The universe is not a miracle. It simply is, unguided and unsustained, manifesting the patterns of nature with scrupulous regularity. Over billions of years it has evolved naturally, from a state of low entropy toward increasing complexity, and it will eventually wind down to a featureless equilibrium. We are the miracle, we human beings. Not a break-the-laws-of-physics kind of miracle… It is wondrous and amazing how such complex, aware, creative, caring creatures could have arisen in perfect accordance with those laws. Our lives are finite, unpredictable, and immeasurably precious. Our emergence has brought meaning and mattering into the world.
All lives are different, and some face hardships that others will never know. But we all share the same universe, the same laws of nature, and the same fundamental task of creating meaning and of mattering for ourselves and those around us in the brief amount of time we have in the world.
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
Que Sera Sera – Doris Day
When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother what will I be
Will I be pretty will I be rich
Here’s what she said to me
Que Sera Sera
Whatever will be will be
The future’s not ours to see
Que Sera Sera
What will be will be
When I grew up and fell in love
I asked my sweetheart what lies ahead
Will we have rainbows day after day
Here’s what my sweetheart said
Que Sera Sera
Whatever will be will be
The future’s not ours to see
Que Sera Sera
What will be will be
Now I have children of my own
They ask their mother what will I be
Will I be handsome will I be rich
I tell them tenderly
Que Sera Sera
Whatever will be will be
The future’s not ours to see
Que Sera Sera
What will be will be
Que Sera Sera
The title of this post is still uncertain. First it was Whatever will be will be. Now, at the time of writing this, it is Moon River. Both titles are titles of songs. The song Que Sera Sera has a three stages structure, going from a young girl asking her mother, to a young woman asking her lover to a mother telling her child.
Moon River is more difficult for me to analyze. On the wikipedia page there is the following quote by Robert Wright from The Atlantic Monthly:
“This is a love sung to wanderlust. Or a romantic song in which the romantic partner is the idea of romance.”
This was not how this post started. Today, Tuesday, a link was posted from Brainpickings to a 2013 post titled The Psychology of How Mind-Wandering and “Positive Constructive Daydreaming” Boost Our Creativity and Social Skills. I have written about daydreaming before. Sometimes embarrassingly. Some things i would like to hide from you, my dear reader, for ever. But i told you, and it is there for you to find these little secret hiding places in this website. Out in the open.
Singer described three core styles of daydreaming: positive constructive daydreaming, a process fairly free of psychological conflict, in which playful, vivid, wishful imagery drives creative thought; guilty-dysphoric daydreaming, driven by a combination of ambitiousness, anguishing fantasies of heroism, failure, and aggression, and obsessive reliving of trauma, a mode particularly correlated with PTSD; and poor attentional control, typical of the anxious, the distractible, and those having difficulties concentrating.
Looking at these three different types of daydreaming, i definitely fall in the first category. A lot of wishing, a lot of romance, very vivid. Yes.
Living in the now is a popular way of being for i’d say the past forty years or so. Fifty years even, or more. It has its value. I will say that those moments when you are present in your current time with all your attention towards it may be your happiest moments on this world. But i don’t think this is all for us. We need to position ourselves towards what we have done and said in the past, we need to make plans for the future.
Singer explored the relationship between daydreaming, personality, divergent thought, creativity, planning, problem solving, associational fluency, curiosity, attention, and distractibility. Singer noted that daydreaming can reinforce and enhance social skills, offer relief from boredom, provide opportunities for rehearsal and constructive planning, and provide an ongoing source of pleasure. In later work, Singer describes those who engage in positive constructive daydreaming as “happy daydreamers” who enjoy fantasy, vivid imagery, the use of daydreaming for future planning, and possess abundant interpersonal curiosity.
Last Sunday was a Bonfire evening at the Peace Garden, the Vredestuin. I talked for a while with Matthijs. About his travels, what made him feel happy, the love he felt for people. Later on, a few hours later, we talked again. This time i told him about my life, a bit. The things i make for myself: my toothpaste, washing liquid, body and hand cream butter. How i was working on a recipe for falafel, which is still not right. I also talked about me living my life mostly by myself.
Later on i talked with Anne, who i had only met that day, the weeding queen! I talked about my work. This website and my previous website, lfs.nl. What i was doing there. And that i could imagine myself living anywhere else. Or London. I didn’t agree with her when she said i lived here in Rotterdam for the past thirty years and that i would spend the rest of my life in here. I don’t think that is true, not for anyone. But i was a bit all over the place. I am not used to talking about these things so openly with people i have only just met.
Yesterday i was a bit tired. I had to think about the night before, about all the things i had said.
Today i first had an idea of making a post about doing my nails. But later on, after i had come back from the market, i started to think about another post. About what i wish for myself, what i hope for, what i want. But also that i felt i couldn’t grab it, i couldn’t want want it. I have written about this earlier, in earlier posts.
I need to find a way to make myself money to live off. This house, the water i have, the gas i use, that all costs money. My two cats, they cost money. I have only enough for the next two to three months.
And i don’t want to work in this world, here in the Netherlands, here in this current time, here with these rules on how we deal with each other. I don’t want to do that anymore. I have done it enough.
I have said it before. This website, ellenpronk.com, is my work. It is how i want to earn my living. I see only one way. I need to become famous. Now, i know, nobody else will do that to me. Nobody else will say that they like what i do and that i should be famous. Nobody.
But me.
But who will listen?
Well, there are many different ways of being famous. And i don’t need to be all worldwide famous right from the start all at once. I can start smallish. Actually, i have already started. With this website. With lfs.nl even. I can set up a Patreon page. Hmm, i should do that quite soon.
So i can not predict my future. I have only dreams, which are changing all the time.
But this Monday, while i was thinking about the night before, i noticed different daydreams. I noticed a change in myself. And i do know i’m living my life right now, taking one step forward each time. And i’m not going back. But i do need to really think about where i am, and where i want to be in a couple of months.
So yeah, i may daydream part of the day, part of the night. But i also need to really think about my life and not take for granted everything will be just fine in my life. I do need to do certain things, need to write about certain things, need to make certain things. Not let the dreams take me away in their soft arms and let my life drop below me. I need to take charge.
My way.
Of course.
Moon River – Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Moon River, wider than a mile,
I’m crossing you in style some day.
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
wherever you’re going I’m going your way.
Two drifters off to see the world.
There’s such a lot of world to see.
We’re after the same rainbow’s end–
waiting ’round the bend,
my huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me.
It is Sunday morning. A bit warm. A bit cloudy. But still, the balcony door is open, the cats dozing of. A lovely morning.
I have chickpeas cooking. Beetroot in the oven. I’ll be making hummus with it in a few hours. A bit of tahin left over, but not enough. I’ll be putting some sunflower seeds in there too.
I just looked up a recipe for the sunflower seeds. I do need to roast them for around 5 – 10 minutes. They do need to be cool before you move on.
OK, done that.
I only need to add olive oil and blend them until smooth.
I did just taste a chickpea. It is ok, but could do with a bit more cooking, for around half an hour or so.
Well, i hadn’t planned on writing about the hummus i’m about to make! I did set the category of this post to food too. I might even make a few pictures.
What i had planned was writing about not falling in love. Which is what i have planned for myself for the moment. I’m not sure though.
I came across this quote from Maya Angelou at Brain Pickings:
We need the courage to create ourselves daily, to be bodacious enough to create ourselves daily — as Christians, as Jews, as Muslims, as thinking, caring, laughing, loving human beings. I think that the courage to confront evil and turn it by dint of will into something applicable to the development of our evolution, individually and collectively, is exciting, honorable.
The courage to create yourself daily. That does speak to me. I do realize that posting this on this blog makes it open for others to see. That is my own choice. It forces me to keep on working on it. And i don’t mind. Well, not too much! Sometimes i’m embarrassed. Ouch.
It is difficult. I treasure the time at home. To listen to music. To watch tv. To read. Not as much as i would like, but still! To watch youtube. To read the whole internet! To cuddle my cats. To cook.
I have to reread what i wrote in my last post Work. I do try to keep things simple. But pfff, that takes much.
It’s evening now. I didn’t do a lot of work in the garden. Nicole from the States came by and we talked for a long time about the garden, about why we work there, what we buy in a supermarket and other things. I showed her around. It was raining the whole time, but not cold, so i didn’t really mind that much. Once i was wet anyway.
I watched a bit of television. Grand Designs, De grote verbouwing, i love to watch. I had already seen the episode, but i still watched it.
Then i danced.
That was quite a few weeks, since i last danced. Took some time to get into it. I always dance with other people in my mind. People from the garden popped up. Marijn was there too, Liorah, Jeroen, Carolien. I was inviting them to come to dance with me. It was good.
And then the thought hit me. I should fill up my life. I should be as happy as i can be. Time alone is part of that, of course. But i also love to be with other people. Simply talk with them. Enjoy life.
I do not know everything. I have so many things to learn.
But i do realize that the past year and a half i’ve been happy, all by myself. In a very quiet way. Other people will have hardly noticed it. i’m sure. But yes, the Turkish man selling big potatoes and kebab on the market has noticed it. People eating chips at the side of the library have noticed it.
So yes, fill up my life with the things i want to do. Be as happy as i possibly can.
😀
Ooh, the title of this post. Yes, not fall in love. If i can. 😉
