Do you remember? Blind man’s buff: first being turned and turned, eyes covered. You got pretty dizzy and once your sense of direction was lost, the game really started. One could become quite confused, not only by children and not just while playing. A life by touch came across.
Graphite and ink
When I was young, I used to lick my pencil. It gave me a rough mouth. But my scratches on paper were beautiful: pitch black. And I also licked my pen. It tasted good and .. and it also made my pen-writing beautiful. As bright and blue as the sky can be. And I curled the letters in slanted characters. Angled, they almost came to lie down on the line. Just rippling water.
Actually, I didn’t want to have anything to do with lines: such a would-be quarter of a sun, in the upper-right corner of my drawing sheet, with black sunbeams. Or a knurled mourning edge that was supposed to be a cloud. Or birds in the form of a V, how about that? As if an image could be replaced by a character. Just like: “Colour neatly between the lines, you hear!’ And: ‘Like this you draw a house, a pig or a small road to the horizon’. Even my father teached me like that. No, I knew: lines would catch you!
Personally, I preferred drawing with color and I loved mixing them: much more authentic! At school it couldn’t be worse…. But in group 4 it seemed to be right for a while. We were asked to draw authumn leaves and I got an A for my brown colours. Easy done-it for a mixer. I knew all gradations between red and yellow, with a little green and some purple, but witout blue in this case.
In retrospect, it seemed that this time the blue disappeared from my palette. With all the transparency in it. For a very long time.
From now on were allowed to write with a ballpoint: a glass Bic. Well .. they were pens in the shape of a pencil, made of transparent plastic. 30 cents each, or four for a guilder. In red, green, blue or black. And how they smelled nice. Everyone always chewed the back and broke out the cap. Not me of course .. way to beautiful!
But… nothing for nothing: three clours for you and four for the master. Because only he was allowed to use red. He singned with red curls, that had nothing to do with the curls in your dreams. Red is wrong and colours can curse. Nothing to explore or invent for yourself. Time had come to believe.
Before you knew, the conscience of your environment had nestled within you. Actually, who didn’t at that time? Develop your own wisdom? No way: believing comes first, that’s knowing for sure.
1st person singular, passive- and indirect object .. here we determine the subject. And so every sentence ended up in a point and you pulled the curls streight into a perfect circle. From now on this is your horizon and origin. And what’s all about, comes from above.
Most of all I liked to write with black and, whenever allowed, in block letters.
And imperceptibly, I would rather bite my nails.
Blind man’s buff.. getting confused.. excited.. this is strongly related.
Especially the spinning in my neighborhood .. It certainly could one make or break.
Example turned into regulations, not only at school, no everywhere: vanity of vanities, all is vanity and chasing the winds.
At that age autumn breeze caught me in my highly pulled-up jacket; each letter got drawn, every word it’s meaning and every question an answer: with a look in the mirror you studied your own appearance. Not too long and only for correction. And certainly don’t get excited. Not from yourself, not from others. And make no one excited as well. Vain is thin and at the same time full of yourself. Just like in dreams. They are cheating.
Imagination and own imaginations? No difference at all: look straight ahead! Before you knew was, what you had learned, erased by some conscience.
But iunderneath a memory was kept alive: something’s not right out there.
Thin and at touch
Little dreamer within the laws of decency. No choice between rebellion and obedient. So I chose one and sometimes the other. In both cases they would have liked me stuck behind wallpapers, I now can imagine. And me equal to them, but only if I was rebellious. Then I usually ended up in the corridor, between the switch of the buzzer and the 10 commandments list. I remember exactly: near the main entrance.
Close, closer, closest to
Certainly there are lines: you see or pull them afterwards. They define and link. But different from the skin where you start or end. In which you are going through what is in and around you. And you yourself are going through to who you want to be. Lines clear up differences, do set you apart, give insight and understanding. Develop awareness of the relationship with yourself and the people and things around you.
Oh wonder of irony: More than half a century later, I walk around in that school. The place where everything comes out of our hands – our studio – is located right on that spot next to the entrance. Groping behind a cupboard I rediscover the the buzzer’s switch. And a little further also the hook. There the law must have hanged on. I move over the cupboard to be able to get there. The buzzer doesn’t work anymore. The hook, I take carefully off from the wall. I’m amazed at what I see and what it tells to me. That little hook is mine!
I don’t like heart signs very much, as the V-pads for a bird. I do not change much. Yet, at such a moment of cohesion, my disgust melts and my senses glow red. Right across the iron sheets of opposites. Here poetry is winning.
come close, closer, closest to
Distant turns up indeed,
recalls beyond the conscience
gilt edges
