The Cuban Cigarbox.

Monday at lunch time I have duty in our cafeteria. Normally not much exciting happens in those 30 minutes I am in there. However, today I got some kind of surprise as something completely unexpected happened.

At one of the tables a boy sat with a wooden box. And that box immediately caused me to start associating. For many years I have not seen a box like that, and here in Hong Kong never and yet it was so incredible familiar to me and I fact I had to go ask the boy if I could take a photograph of his box.

 

He was a bit sceptical at first as I came up to ask him what was inside. He looked at me as if I was going to blame him for anything.

"This is just my pokermon cards cards he replied and opened the box to show me, as if he would show me it wasn't anything inappropriate.

The bad was a old fashioned cigar box. Rewinding now to my own childhood.

 

I had many cigarboxes as a boy. They were quite common on the countryside in Denmark in the 70ties. Even my mom had some for her collection of buttons in her sewing kit. My dad had them as well in his wood workshop. My brother and I had them for our collection of plastic animals and Cowboys and Indians and maybe some stamps and cuttings from the pop magazines.

With one magical touch all these memories just came up to the surface as I saw this box today. Mesmerising. Must be the word for what I felt.

for so many years I have not seen anything like that box. A lot of Tim boxes, and cardboard and plastic and foam and paper and and and and. But a wooden cigarbox with a matriculate closing mechanism. A little fitted metal lock in it own simple complexity.

As I asked the boy if I could take a picture he just looked at me and nodded. "My dad has got more of them he said."

It was a real one , from Cuba. Just as Fidel Castro dies I see a real Cuban cigarbox at our school in Hong Kong. Some coincidence.

"Do you think he would give me one?" Yes, I really asked the boy that question. Again he just looked at me. "Maybe, I don't know" he said.

Let us see if some day he comes to my office with one of his dad's empty Cuban cigar boxes. 

Frustration

Dead tired and out of sync with what I really want. And then I can't.

Writers block. Is it? If it is it must mean that I am a writer.if not I cannot suffer reform writers block. Then is the no idea about what to write just common normal. As I as a common normal doesn't write a thing.

No, I am not a writer and this is not writers block. This I a bit of frustration and tiredness I guess. I have just been reading an essay about Participation in Design. It was someone clever from M.I.T. -yes that M.I.T- and was about design and architects role and way of work in this new millennium. In many ways very interesting and uplifting and important in the way I am thinking myself, which now seems to be lingering as a new kind of trend among younger people.

So why does this frustrate me, it seems it should be uplifting for me.

I read it as part of a online Harvard Course I am currently take now, and I liked it. Or rather I liked the parts I can remember from it. This is my frustration.

I need to develop and to take on new knowledge and gain new skills and I really really want to. I have done all assignments by now and are good in it, however, reading all this clever stuff is what frustrates me. Not reading it. It seems interesting and I like it, but I can't remember a bloody f...... thing of it. As soon as I am about one sentence or 17 words in it, my mind starts to wonder. Suddenly I remember some episode from the children's film camp I participated in when I worked in eastern Germany and my mind are occupied with that for a minute.

Then I shuttle myself back to the text and back to the beginning and I start all over, but the text is complete new to me, as if it is the very first time I read it, and I've just read it less than two and a half minutes ago.

When my good Tai Tai asks me what I learned in the session, I can't tell her a thing, because I do not remember.

I can remember episodes from all our holidays and I can remember passages in fictional books I've read and I can remember from day to day when I read a book, what I read the night before. But I can't remember or focus when I read clever non fiction or should we call it academically reading.

I believe I have a growth mind set. At least I've learned I need to have one, so I believe I do.

However, with reading stuff like this I just need to say: I can't.

Even there is no such thing, I can't.

So maybe I am suffering of some kind of disorder. A denial of clever academically stuff. Denial of difficult stuff to read disorder.

Must say it do sound like something one could suffer from. In 2016.

So what do I do about it.

Read it again and again to hope more and more of the sentences will stick on the inside of that social led brain of mine.

Some of it does. But not nearly enough and it frustrates me so immensely much.

To go back to the essay I've just read before I started to write here.

I can only really remember something about the architect Mies Van der Rohe and something he said about the people taking ownership the buildings he created and how he couldn't stand they would personalise those buildings because it would ruin his functional aesthetics to the bit about the author sitting stuck in traffic with a friend, raving about all the ignorant and selfish owners of huge SUV's and Hummer's and other mega fuel eating carbon monsters, who causes the traffic to break down.

Two statement, two paragraphs that stuck in my memory.

From an entire essay.

So frustrating. 

But it is not writers block. It could be readers block!

Anyone out there who can give my a useful tip or three?

8:27 PM

At this time at night it is pretty quiet in our little home. 8:27 PM. Quiet in the sense of both of us doing stuff. (Then a little smirk on my face, but this is some complete other story).

Doing stuff like work stuff. Is mostly what we do at 8:27 PM.

Sometimes I do what I do now. Write. Stuff. Like this, it with another subject.

Tai Tai is at a point of change in her life and are finding it hard to keep up. I understand why. She is basically doing 1.75 jobs at he moment. And has no time for anything else.

I also do more work than usual. At he time I am doing a Harvard course online, and every week I need to check in and write reflections, connections and puzzles. And then I try to write as much as I can. And I try to draw and do some digital painting. Painting like in art painting. It was a passion I had many years ago. I was always painting and drawing. I really loved and enjoyed doing it. I was in a flow when I did that. I miss doing that for real. My excuse it now this one; "we don't have any room for it in our little house here in the village."

8:33. And true, we don't. Now I draw and paint on an iPad. And I write on a iPad.

12 hours ago my working day started for real. 13 hours ago, I was preparing to leave the house to catch the bus or what ever transport comes first, and take me to school.

14 hours ago my Tai Tai left for work. Poor poor Tai Tai. Even she does it to herself.

15 hours ago I started my morning routine with a workout. 16 hours ago I was asleep. In 20 minutes I will go to bed again. I will try to read and crash after 4 minutes. Lights out.

In 9 hours I will be up again drinking 3 big glasses of water before going down on my knees for the daily workout. In 10, Tai Tai will leave for work again. And here we go again.

8:42 PM. I will copy this writing from the app I use into my blog and post it.

8:44 PM. Copy.

8:46 PM. Paste and adjust.

8:47 PM. Publish.

Another cycle is over.

Dream a new painting.

Imagine to have a big empty space to use as an atelier. Like a real atelier. With huge Windows on 3 sides. And one big one at the ceiling. A place to have 4 or 7 canvases up at once. And I mean big canvasses. Not just iPad sized canvasses like I have now.

In a space like that, there should be no need to clean up or to put everything back into drawers and shelves and cupboards when finished and exhausted after a long days fight with those canvasses.

Just switch off the loud hifi stereo system. Turn off the light and go through a door into the rest of the apartment or house. Drink an ice cold soda and off to bed in the opposite end and go to sleep next to the beloved tai tai.

Dreamer. But wow, I would like that. And there should've a view. A great view from that atelier. Maybe towards the sea or some amazing mountains. There should also be a door out to a balcony or to a rooftop above the atelier. At one end of that rooftop should be a kitchen. Sinks, workspaces, oven and gas cookers, shelvings and cupboards and fridge and freezer.

Walls just made of glass with huge sliding doors to one side out to a covered terrace area with table and chairs.

Dream a little dream of an atelier like that.  

Digital distractions.

My digital devices distracts me and they help me. My devices anoyes me and they bloody excites me. They keep my awake and somehow away from my creativity and they make me so sleepy and yet, they help me built new skills and new areas to be creative.

This all sounds like a total mess.

On this iPad, I have an app that gives me a daily creative kick. It is called Oflow and I am fair to say that I like it.

I do not use it every day though, even I have set some notification to trigger me every day at a certain time. But when I do, I always open it with excitement to see what it has for me today.

Today it said that I should:

“Grab a timer and set it for a few minutes. Then disconnect the Internet, turn off your phone, and get away from any digital distractions that could prevent you from working.“

But my digital devices are making me work. And most of my work are on digital devices. But maybe that is the problem. But do I see it this way? At the moment, that is.

I would like to find my way back to painting and drawing again, old school like, not digital. I do less of that now than I've ever done previously in my long life, but, I do more writing. Digital writing that is. I. This way my digital devices are helping me, quite a lot I have to say.

If I were to write all this in old school ways, I would never have made it. I am too slow and have too many complexes about my handwriting, my spelling and my grammar.

Yes - or no - I am not a native English speaker or writer and before I came to Hong Kong to work at an international school where the language of instruction is English -with my English mother tongue wife - I lived and worked in Germany, which BTW isn't my mother tongue either.

In Germany I hardly wrote anything. There my complexes about writing, spelling and especially the grammar made my efforts crumble. I just had so much anxieties of writing anything in the German language.

Speaking it was another ballgame. I wasn't completely correct and did make many mistakes with the gazillions of grammatical rules and irregularities in that language, however, when you speak it, it seems easier to cover your mistakes and camouflage it as a foreign charming accent or style.

Maybe if I'd had the technology I have now - back then - could have helped me with these problems because that is exactly what they do now, when I write in English, and my devices are helping me with spelling and some grammar. I think it would have.

That is not now and now is where my focus is, now.

My focus is on writing. I want to develop and become a good writer. And to do that. I believe my devices helps me by making it accessible and joyful to do. Not only for the devices ability to help me with spelling and grammar, but also by offering a platform to publish it. And to archive it so I in fact can follow the development of my own writing.

Seen like this I think my devices has helped me grow.

The distraction lies in the fact that everything is so easily accessible and I can jump from one website with crap or gold in a matter of seconds. I must say I can get stuck in Twitter. However, again I see that as development because I always learn something new on Twitter, and I spent more time reading random exciting stuff and then gets caught up by another link or account.

And these things clearly distracts me from painting and drawing in the old school way. I have started to do some digital art using some painting and drawing app, but not enough.

So if I one day decide to do like the “Oflow” app told me to do today, I need to get out all of my big pieces of paper and maybe the unfinished work from when I had my last painting period, 8 years ago.

Shocking. Distracted by technology.

When I think about it, then it might be true that my devices keeps me away from getting my hands dirty with paint and brushes.

Ok, tomorrow I will follow todays "Oflow" tip.

Places of inspiration.

How many times have I felt a great wave of inspiration come over me?

And where does it normally happen?

Art exhibitions. Galleries. Out running. Being bored. On holiday. Sometimes on the train when I see an advertisement, a good one I need to say.

How many times has this inspiration resulted in me in fact creating something?

Ups. Not too often. I tend to have that feeling that this is something I can do when I get time. But when is that, when do I in fact get time? 

When I'm old?

But I'm kind of old now, yet still I think I can realise all those great ideas when I get older and get more time. And should this time come once, then I'm afraid I do not know what and where all this inspiration and those fabulous ideas were and where they went.

But then I just get new ideas, I think. Now. So what's the point of remember those other ones when they don't get made to reality anyway. Maybe it is better that they are all forgotten, as then I can't be devastated that I wasn't the one to actually create this and that.

How many unfinished paintings have I not sketched up? How many of my great plots for children's books or adults books have I not written down?

I still remember two good subjects for two different projects, but how long? 

So, from inspiring places I caught the downward spiral and fell into my own self pity and tried to make jokes about something that in fact is quite sad. I do have many ideas, but so fucking few of them actually get to see the light of the day.

That has to change. 

Now is the time to do some of all of these things I proclaim that I can. Now is the time, even I still do not think I have the time to it and don't feel old -enough. Yet.

Anyway, where are those places again where I get inspired?

Maybe it isn't so much “those places”? Maybe it is just one place, and that is within myself when I feel strong, free and happy = inspired.

It is all within my self.

Last passenger on the bus.

I am the last passenger on the bus. I sit in the back seat in the right corner of the bus. Behind the driver. It is a Toyota 16 seater minibus. In Hong Kong there are tons of these racing across the whole territory taking people from place to place.

It is my chosen transport when I leave work to go home and sit here, writing on my iPad for this blog.

The bus is number 807 B and is on route from HOng along University station to Mak Pin roundabout in Sai Kung country park. That is in fact just one stop from our village. One stop and about 200 meters. Well, stop is not the right definition. Minibuses doesn't really have any stops as such, they stop everywhere a passenger wants to get on or get off.

I hope to get on this mini bus from Wu Kai Sha train station which is at the end of the Ma On Shan train line. The bus should depart from there every 15 minutes, so there I stand waiting and waiting. Sometimes 30 minutes. And no bus.

I am bored. And then I think and get ideas. Often I don't because I just want to get home and try to listen and hope to hear the characteristic low humming of one of the mini busses approaching. Is it the right one going the right way.

All of this will require a little more explanation.

There is two kinds of 807 minibuses and both operating from Hong Kong university station. One is my one, the 807 B, and then there is the other one, which is the 807 K. Like I said, my one - 807 B - Goes to and from my village. The other one - 807 K - from a much bigger village closer to what is the beginning of the “big town area” around the settlements from MA On Shan and down to Sha Tin.

Che Ha village, I think it this bigger village is called. Anyway. This bus is much more frequent than my one because there are much more people going there, but because of so many people living there and wanting to get there from the train at University station, they also take the 807 B bus, because it also passes that bigger village. If then the bus is full and nobody wants to get of at the station where I am waiting and needing a lift, the bus will surpass that stop as no seats are available and nobody wants to get of. Therefor, why should the driver then go in there?

For me, of corse, this is mega annoying. I could go all the way home with that bus, but many of the people sitting in it and filling it up, will only go maybe 3 or 4 stops further than this station, and then the bus will be empty all the way through the curves and the forest to my village and the roundabout at Mak Pin. But I am not in it. I. Fact no one is.

That is why I am sitting there now, all alone on the bus. Tonight I was lucky and some people wanted to get of at the train station where I wait for that bus, and then it had room for me. 3 stops later everybody else has got off, and there I sit, in the furthest back corner of the bus and the driver will take me very quick home to my village.