STUDY WITH ALFONS

In a few months there will be thousands upon thousands of sunflowers

My brother and I, two young kids, sitting in the back of the car, trying to spot a rabbit or falcon or colorful pheasant in the landscape of Pannonia. My mom and dad recounting stories from when they were dating and made the same trip, but on older roads.

Driving to my grandparents was always exciting. The lush, mild air in itself was something to witness. The vast, open land. The smell of the stone floor, iron stove and wooden furniture in my grandparents’ house. My grandfather’s mysterious workshop in the back of the mill. My grandmother’s cooking, and openness to conversation. In between periods of privacy and rest, there were often visitors—relatives, friends, musicians, fellow members of various clubs, there was always something going on.

Lunch at 12 noon sharp, dinner no later than 5pm, early to bed, sound sleep in the deeply quiet house, with everyone I loved and important to me inside. Doves cooing in the morning through the slightly open window, and a distant rooster calling. My fingers running over the peculiar rug tacked to the wall beside my bed. Savouring every moment, trying to stop time. Trying to stop time. Though time kept moving on.

My dear reader, today I would like to share with you two insights:

1.Positive sounding headlines

Glancing over my posts, I see that some headlines convey lighter, brighter, more positive sentiments than others. A punchy, strong headline such as “Bad boy!” might be memorable and attention-grabbing, but in the long run it sparks far less joy than a gentle, friendly, hopeful headline. I feel.

For example in weight training, “Training to Failure” means repeating an exercise until momentary muscular failure.This sure is a punchy, strong concept, memorable and attention-grabbing, but training in a way that leaves you energized, safe, and eager to return tomorrow is far better. I reckon.

In short, from now on I want to watch my language even more closely.

2. The world — life itself — is a giant washing machine for the soul

I was so deeply immersed in my viewing experience that I didn’t take a screenshot, so here’s a mock drawing of the landscape and train.

I just got off a video call with my mom. She’s on her way to her elementary school class reunion in her hometown, class of over-70-years-ago. She’s looking good, good complexion, well dressed for a walk through the wide and wondeful westernmost edge of the Pannonian Plain. She’s on a train, a clean, new train, very smooth ride, obviously very comfortably seated. On my phone, through her train window, I see lavish green fields beneath a very blue sky, playful rays of light, fluffy white clouds, bright sunlight, crisp cold air that makes the colors and shapes pop, it’s simply a joy to watch.

I like to see my mom like this. But suddenly she got a call from a classmate: because she had missed the bus she will be picked up directly at the train station – this I learn later. She had to interrupt our call to answer it. And at that very moment I had this insight:

I do want to talk to her. I really enjoy seeing her, talking to her. It feels like an inner need now, as an adult, to talk to her. Not just making a check-up, catch-up call, but to connect with her, she being so dearly familiar to me, she who has been there since the very beginning of my world.

You might need to know that there were times — quite a number of years, actually — when my mom and I lived apart in the same town, never seeing each other, and neither of us would even think of calling each other, not even the idea of it; for several years on end. But over the past 20 years our relationship grew into what feels like converging into a most wonderful mother-son relationship, even though we now live 9,700 km (6,000 miles) apart.

So, while I was waiting for her to call (or not call) back, I was strolling through a park, beneath the shadows of trees with my own blue sky and my own white clouds, and I was thinking, “The world really is a giant washing machine.” It cleanses our souls, if we let it.

“What for?” I was thinking. “Are we humans some sort of AI models that are being trained? Or is this just the way life works?” There sure is a refinement, individuation, maturing, purification, cultivation, if we allow it…

…and if we don’t allow it, if we don’t let this refinement happen, and of this I’m pretty sure, then whoever operates the washing machine will pour in a stronger detergent, and set the temperature higher.

Tommy looked at us, seven sets of eyes, watching, and he reached for his spoon. “There you go,” my father said. “Attaboy. Eat up.” — from David Sedaris, Attaboy, Lets Explore Diabetes With Owls

My dear readers. “Maybe I should apologize for the many spelling mistakes I’ve made in my last post?” Me keeps thinking. Recently I’ve turned off spellchecking in my text editor and was honestly thinking that I will not make spelling mistakes if  I only focused hard enough. And it was only after I’ve emailed the post, that I thought, “a quick look can’t hurt” and put the post through AI; which found like 10 spelling mistakes at once and a few structural omissions. However, none of you complained.

What I did receive though, was a humorous Whatsapp message from my mom today (who does read my blog as well) showing the freshly cleaned hems of her cream-coloured wide-legged trousers, which she soiled on her bicycle ride just yesterday.

Therefore, besides the spelling mistakes nobody complained about, my post did seem to have an impact beyond my wildest expectations. Originally, I wrote “Did my mom scold me too much?” Quite unexpectedly, in a light hearted way, my mom and I both ended up healing a shared childhood bruising.

Btw, as you know, I’m keeping the “comment” and “like” features under my posts switched off, but I do like to receive occasional feedback, per email for example — as I’m not easily available via postal services. Sending penmanship-style letters in envelopes for private conversations, that ship has definitely sailed.

Ok, the bottom-line is I’ve completed spellchecking my “Bad Boy, sit!” blog post. You will find the updated post on my homepage and on Substack. Furthermore, I’ve added a sentence that it was the dog Oreo, who barked at me, so we can finally make sense of the post’s title (even though I didn’t call him anything, instead I sympathized with him for just having spent 2 weeks in an animal shelter while his mom was in Bangkok for a beauty procedure.) I made a few more improvements to the post, like for example, changing “five minutes” to “two minutes” in the toddler story, since it might have been closer to two minutes for real, and either way, it makes the story tighter, more humorous, AI confirmed (as if it ever dealt with a toddler.)

Ok, and now I’ll go ahead and switch the “Check spelling while typing”-feature of my text editor back to “on” again, but will keep any word-completion and AI features turned “off”.

On the upside of my faux pas, I have noticed that posting with spelling mistakes seems to be a thing now, trending. Perhaps because it makes AI postings look more like they were carefully handwritten, instead of mass produced in a data center? *shrug* So, in this light, in hindsight, instead of criticizing myself for having been careless, I can now tell myself that my 10 spelling mistakes were “up topaz.“

Please excuse me writing. I just find it so much easier to write than to speak on camera. Here’s two distinct cultural techniques, speaking and writing. Maybe they’re on equal footing. Nowadays people like to share recorded speeches as much as they used to like sharing books and newspaper articles.

I’m not saying that my musings are important enough for the world, or inspiring enough so that people would risk sharing them to their trusted ones. But what I do write does seem important enough for me to write down, and going through the trouble of publishing it online, even though risking wasting your time. But all in good faith.

So, here’s my thoughts:

I was sitting and thinking. Sitting in the corner of the coffee shop, thinking. Watching the people, glancing over them. This guy leans on a cane. Odd enough. A Westerner, of course. I’ve never seen a Vietnamese leaning on a cane. One guy is wearing a blue badge around his neck. Another woman with the same badge. Two people with face masks. One lady dressed all in dark wine red, with the exact same color handbag, and palazzo pants. A beautiful old cougar, very tasteful. But I wonder how she keeps those extravagant hems clean until the end of the day. Did my mom scold me too much? I see a woman in a white pant suit with maroon high heels, the blue badge around her neck, pushing a rolling suitcase with her left hand, and carrying a large wallet and a Grande Iced Latte in her right.

I suddenly jumped up to help her go through the door, which is a large and heavy swing door. She smiles, says, “Thank you,” a beautiful voice, a beautiful smile, a most beautiful woman.

Then I sit again, thinking: somehow, on a biological, biomechanical level, my body needs to accommodate the requirements for such a brief, strong action. Breathing is largely unaffected, but the heart rate is up, blood pumping strongly through the valves. Now settling back into sitting and thinking. “I should probably do more cardio,” I report to myself.

Sonja, a new neighbour, I guess around 45 years old, a beautiful gal from Canada, she’d lived in Hong Kong for 25 years, and in London for four, now she’s in Vietnam, waiting for some project in Portugal to kick off. Recently she took in a street dog, named him Oreo, because he’s black and white. I haven’t seen her for a few weeks. Now she’s back, bandages around her head.

I say “Hi”, she’s radiant. I say, “What happened?”, she says, “surgery.” She points to some invisible stitches below her hairline. I joke, “Did they take off the top plate?” Smiles, laughter, small-talk. I forgive Oreo for barking at me.

The next day, on my way into the coffee shop I pass by her table again. Susan, the 60-year-old teacher from Canada is there, too. Susan says, “I’ve been in Vietnam for 9 years already.” Sonja comes out to tell us about her surgery. It was a decade in the planning, that’s how long she had known the cosmetic surgeon already. Would have cost 250,000 USD in the US, 100,000 in the UK. Much more affordable in Bangkok, she says. The process was much more intense than anticipated. “It was incredibly hard on my body,” Sonja admits readily. The incision traced around her face, 6 hours of anesthesia, she shows us the almost invisible cut running by her ears. Everything went great. She does indeed look more radiant. And very happy.

I was sitting and thinking. Why don’t these people ever talk to me. I notice the lack of a question mark. Maybe I don’t advertise myself enough. Well, I think, there’s too much competition. And these professionals are all dead serious. Highly respected and highly competitive. Big money. The sword is mightier than the feather. Closed lips can sink one’s own ships.

It took me a decade to learn a very special massage technique from a Philippine healer, a great master. I think this massage technique could have produced better results than the surgery, and better in the long run anyways. But I would have had to do the work. And Sonja would have missed out on the experience of surgery in Bangkok. And I would have had to put the massage technique to the test, try and fail, most likely. And who has the patience anyways? One or two massages, probably for free, can’t compete with six hours of surgery for 50k USD in Bangkok. The two stories just aren’t on the same level.

I need to work on myself more. I’m such a slacker in this regard. Blessed with such insight and talent, and barely even applying it to myself. I should be ashamed of myself. I am Ignatius J. Reilly, the main character of John Kennedy Toole’s book A Confederacy of Dunces. I am worse than him. I’m certainly worse than him, minus the expressive ability.

There’s something to be said about beating oneself up. I laugh. I’m sitting and thinking, writing and giggling. I amuse myself. I’m easily amused by myself. I am Holden Caulfield, the main character of J. D. Salinger’s book The Catcher in the Rye. I am worse than him, I lack his negativity, I lack his lack of perspective. I can’t even swear that well.

A toddler walks by. Stops in front of me. Stares at me. I smile and say, “Oh hi!” The toddler looks at me with big eyes, probably expecting some more interaction. I continue to smile and say, “Oh wow! So good walking and standing, look at you!” Her dad catches her and brings her back to their table. The toddler walks back to me. She stands in front of me again. This time she lifts her right arm forward, with an elegant little rotation and then freezes in that position and stares at me. I smile and say, “Oh wow! Look at you! You’re able to lift your arm without falling over forwards!” Her dad catches her and brings her back to their table. Two minutes later the toddler walks back to me.

I’m getting up to order an Oatmilk Caramel Macchiato. Or another plain Americano. And I hope that I’ll be able to do something good for you, too. Take good care of yourself, and see you in the next video!