I'm Alive

Dear Friend!

Happy birthday to your dad. I hope the day will be less of a mess. A wish that might be too much to ask. It might be a relief to be silly, a poor in spirit person, as the Bible says: blessed are the poor in spirit. Simply observing the busy bees as a spectator.

I don't really get to know the people I meet. The teacher is 77 and needs surgery, one of the other ladies is very elderly and fell on her head and can't feel anything anymore, but I do know that she and I paint ugly.

And there's also Eve, also elderly, who talks very loudly and has MS and can only just walk with help. Then there's another person, an Indonesian woman who apparently has been painting for a long time and comes. Also elderly. She and I are the only ones who paint and don't chat and don't respond to "Would you like coffee?"

The conversations revolve around bladder infections, the teacher's sick sister who refuses euthanasia even though she can't do anything anymore, not even eat, and has been doing so for a year.

A discussion follows about who wants euthanasia and who doesn't. Only the teacher, the woman who forgets everything but knows my name and feels nothing, and I were like, "Shoot me, I'm not going to live on as a living fossil." And don't resuscitate either, the woman with no feeling says, and no blood or organ donation, I add. Then she daubs red on a canvas, saying, "I'm just doing what I can, I've never painted before."

The teacher paints and says, "That's excellent, butterflies have all kinds of colors."

I don't believe it, and she looks skeptical, and I hear her thinking, "I think this is ugly, something she said last week."

My thistle was a sight to behold, and there was no purple or lilac, not even red, but the bee on the proof sheet was better than the one I'd sketched on watercolor paper. I really can't sketch with pencils. I can do it with water. The problem: I don't like coloring.

Another member was taken to some location in the capital where her husband isn't allowed to go, who has been placed elsewhere, but she lived there, so it's okay, and she was already depressed. And no, it's not the teacher's fault that no one visits her, and she didn't for a while after being yelled at.

I didn't get coffee or tea, but I did get a hard cookie, because it's healthy, and the teacher likes hard cookies, not soft ones.

The CD kept repeating the same notes endlessly, even though I'd already put it through three songs. It sounds uninspiring, just like the conversation, which also seemed to be struggling to produce a few different sounds.

Vivaldi was finally put on, and memories were reminisced about painting giant paintings by feeling. Although the music was "Spring," apparently someone had painted a snowy landscape.

Painting by feeling. Just daubing on a canvas. It's perfectly fine if it's nothing special. Just a mix of all the colors. You know, that muddy look, or just plain black. A mud bath is healthy, and black calms the mind. So, nothing is as disturbing as a hospital room or being born in an operating room.

The Bissau strikes are also mentioned.

We shared some names of bladder infection medications, but I've forgotten them. That's pretty much my life, and those are the people I get to know. It's not much, but then again, it's me and het, I'm Alive even though I meet no one and life is too exhausting to live.

The alarm goes off. The 1.5-hour session is over. Today, for a change, I was on time and everyone else was late, and I was in luck. The teacher was angry because her painting supplies had been stolen from the cupboard by another teacher during the stone painting session.

_{5.11.25
Prompt: see title or CCC
Picture: watercolour test covered with plastic. It took over 24 hours to dry. It's not finished yet.}