Temporary Obsession Knowledge Extraction

Now I am not sure whether or not the title is correct English but I like how it sounds. It has some nice kind of rhythm about it. Loving words and rhythm I find this irresistible. However, words are not the only place I love rhythm, I am no musician (1 year of piano classes and all I can do is play with one hand), but I like composing things with a kind of rhythm. Whether it is titles of blogposts or designing with textile objects: embroidery patterns, knits, quilts, drawings, or the latest: weavings. Not sure if that is a word either, but it goes nicely in the list. The last Wednesday it was Kingsday, the day Facebook says to you that it is a wonderful day for celebrating you are Dutch. So how do Dutch celebrate on a day that is apparently about being Dutch? Well… we take out all our junk, put it on the street and sell it to our fellow Dutchmen. Right. Our idea of a party is selling our old stuff starting from 10 cts. Even though I was slightly disillusioned about Kingsday this year, especially since I live in the centre of Amsterdam and all the big parties with music and dj’s were held outside the centre, I really enjoyed the day. Not in the least because I bought some creative gear that I wanted for a long time for only 1 euro :). So what did I buy? A.K.A.my latest obsession? I bought a small loom, part of a ‘weef je eigen tasje’ box. So today I proudly present my production of this week.

However, this post wouldn’t fully ‘belong’ on this blog or in my line of thought if I did not use this latest temporary obsession as a means to explain something bigger. Once upon a time in high school my tutor tried to help me study more effective. He asked me to, for a week, fill in a form of what I did that week. When I showed it to him  he asked me what it said on the weekend: It said ‘chainmail’ : I spend that weekend learning from the web how chainmail is made. Even though I might not have spend many more days pursuing this craft I still know it’s basics, though, it turned out that these basics were a lot easier to understand than carry out. Nevertheless my knowledge of the technique, or something like how to turn iron wire efficiently into rings, will not be lost. I have learnt a lot of things this way. Sure, not all my knowledge is entirely useful, since it sometimes also goes into ‘which actor is in which film’. Then again, I remember being so impressed by my friend who knew all these things, and now I know these things as well. I love how my temporary obsessions aid the extraction of knowledge about a certain technique or cultural phenomenon. I prefer obsessing about (crafting) techniques, because facts and stories change, or get updated all the time, but techniques stay. Such as weaving. One of the oldest techniques of the world. 🙂

 

Feelings are fleeting, thoughts are not/ Thoughts are fleeting, feelings are not.

A little time ago I volunteered  for participating in a survey about emotions and food. How did that happen you might think? Well, someone asked me, and I must say a lot of things that have happened in my life are a coincidence of ‘why not’ and a hard time saying no, and of course loving a lot of things :). As a preliminary part of the survey I had to fill out a survey on how you do or do not manage your emotions. Things like: when I feel sad I try to change my thoughts so I feel less sad. I must say all the concepts seemed quite foreign to me, especially the part where you don’t allow yourself to feel a certain way. Sure, this would sometimes be useful but I happen to feel that if I have a certain feeling or emotion I have to see it through. That said, I often will talk about it with a number of people trying to understand what I’m feeling, why,  and of course to complain about it.

‘Random Image I Needed To Make The Post Look Better’ – Photo I took from ‘drie bomen zes lenzen’

 

 

 

 

 

Today I want to write something about the interesting relation we have with our emotions and our thoughts, and actually perhaps our bodies. Currently I look out on a street that is still wet from the rain but at the same time the sun is streaming into my windows and it reflects on the water. Perhaps this is both happy and sad weather. In general I think of the sun shining as the world smiling. Perhaps the situation now is the sun smiling after having a good cry. Honestly, currently I feel like having a good cry. There is not something very particular that has upset me. However, it is cold, and I had a long day, and I’m tired. At the same time due to the crazy amount of things happening in the last two weeks it might as well relate to that. Anyways, I have a feeling in my body, but not a very clear thought in my head. I know the feeling though. I know it as being tired. Wanting to cry.

It is crazy how little we know about ourselves, and how much we forget. However, what happens to me sometimes I can only describe as the title of this post. Sometimes, because of a certain event or situation you can have a certain feeling, and from this situation and feeling you come up with a thought, perhaps a theory, and even thought the feeling fleets, it is quite likely that the thought stays and you continue to refer back to it. However, sometimes it happens the other way around. In some particular instances I feel something, and even though the current situation that ‘made’ me feel this way is completely new, I recognise the feeling. I have felt it before. Often it takes quite some time to find out where and when I had that feeling. Sometimes I understand the ‘felt’ reference, but often barely, I don’t know what the situation was, but I still know the feeling.

Thoughts and feelings shape our lives and are often our main responses to events.  However, they are not clear cut, and I am far from understanding them. Still the puzzle and wonder inspire and encourage me: there is no one way to experience the world. All different events, thoughts and feelings are woven piece by piece. I try  to sew them together with the threads of admiration and grace.

 

The power of love

Today I again attended the alpha course, and we talked about the death of Jesus Christ, and how it represented how he loved us. And yet later we came in to the questions: how do we know if someone really love us, or if we really love others, and does it matter how much  someone else loves us? Do we not choose what we like, love or what is convenient?

a place I love

Interestingly enough I just remembered we discussed this after I wrote the title. The title I wrote because of something I just now experienced. I read something written by someone I know, and I realised: oh how I love this person. I rejoiced in seeing, reading the kind of things only she could write, the very personal yet very professional ideas she had, carried out and wrote down. The text was about data analysis, something I’m not particular interested in, but the power of love was that I wanted to read it, I rejoiced in reading it because trough the words I recognised her soul, and learned somethings about wat was going on in her mind, as the work shows the artist, whether it is a self-portrait or not, it shows their eyes.

The power of love is reading something that does not necessarily interest you, discussing things you never would choose to discuss yourself, because you enjoy seeing what makes the other person tick, you enjoy to see through their eyes, and you let them paint a part of the world that is now coloured by their vision on the matter, and whenever encountering the same thing, you will think of what they thought, and what they said. Because they are ever present in your heart. It is : I wonder what you would have thought of this? would you have loved it? or argued that it was the most horrible thing you have ever seen? I want to know, I can imagine, and I will remember, because I know and love you, you are a part of how I view the world, what I see and what makes me look up and smile. Looking back, remembering in wonder, knowing that you would not have seen the world the same without them, knowing you travelled together and have grown trough knowing and loving them.   That, tonight I experience as the power of love.

Inspiration and ‘Mirror Question’

Inspiration is a strange thing. Today, I remembered that I have this blog, I have this random place on the internet where I can put on some content, in whatever form. This was a nice reminder because I felt inspired, or rather in the space of mind where writing a blog about everything at the same time sounds like something wonderful. However, unlike the few earlier posts I do not yet have a clear idea of what I want to write, what I want to bring across, unless… unless I write about something amazing that happened to me yesterday.

Life, going, working, leaving , or not. 

For those who know me, or not, anyways, something that seems to happen to me a lot, and I describe as my strongest qualities or disabilities is that I’m not good a leaving. It might take me quite some time to go, but when I’m gone, I love ‘staying on the road’.  Yesterday I had a wonderful adventure because of this quality. With a group we are working on the next edition of ‘Quo Vadis Café’ a creative endeavour that combines art, questions, beauty and the meaning of life, all in a café setting on a Sunday morning. For that reason I had to run some errands at the church office where I met a friend of mine who could use some help, preparing for ‘alpha course’ and since I had no particular reason to go home I decided to volunteer to help her, I decided not to leave. I had no particular plan for the evening, I thought ‘I’ll stay as long as I feel like it’. I thought maybe just stay for diner: I was curious what kind of people that I did not yet know would come to a church attic to talk, together look and search into the meaning of life. I was tired, but for that exact reason I thought I might just stay for the free dinner. However dinner was late, so in the end I ended up being part of the group, accidently. I loved the freedom of speech and the power of vulnerability that is so little seen or found in our society nowadays.

Now why does this posts title refer to ‘mirror questions’? The question ‘what do you want?’ asked by some god,  was introduced to us by one of us, and I was inspired and amazed by how differently all of us regarded that question. Some of us where afraid to answer the question, fearing we might say the wrong thing, or longing for knowing the answer so we can work towards that desire, others objected to the question as being way to easy, and simply asking a god or having a god giving you what you want as proof of little true intention. All this ideas are fascinating  really… For me, the question was like a mirror. For me it was not about actually getting what you want if you would actually be able to answer the question. For me it seemed that the question was posed as a mirror. As an invitation to explore my heart, my mind, my body, longings and purpose. No answer was needed. I could just sit or stand and perhaps, look into the mirror.