Archives for posts with tag: personalities

Devil has left his spot on the sofa and is nowhere to be found. He is not one for being known as a gossip, but I have the feeling that all the Dedes know of our little disagreement that just got out of hand. Whenever I see two characters sticking their heads together I can’t help but think they are talking about me and how mean I am to poor Devil. Whatever I do, they all watch me out of the corner of their eyes and shut up, or worse, lower their voices to a whisper as soon as I approach. The situation is becoming increasingly awkward.

I wanted to ask Fairy Godmother for advice, but when I arrived at her place Devil’s Advocate was already there and they looked as if I had interrupted something important, their eyes unmistakenly told me: “Bugger off”.  I might try to win Witch as a confidant in this case.

Two friends of mine dragged me to the Gallery yesterday, where my installation is on display at the moment. I was fearing the trip, as I am not entirely over the shock of the bargain basement feeling I was left with last time. But it was good, really good. Liar looked me straight in the eye and said: “You need to be honest to yourself!… Why are you doing all this… us… Why are you making us?….”

All I could answer was:  “Because I love you!”

I had planned to write a post about being boring, but one of the bloggers who I follow, Rose, beat me to it. She had a really nice angle and I love her refreshing style of writing (butIamBeautiful). In her last two paragraphs she pretty much covered what I wanted to say :).

The label “boring” is a third party attribute: Not many people think about themselves as being seriously boring. One might get bored from time to time, but  being boring?…. This is a totally different kettle of fish. On the other hand there is a huge discrepancy in numbers when one looks at how many people are described as being boring by others.

Isn’t it just a matter of having a little or nothing in common? Would it be possible, with a little effort to turn a bore into an inspiring fountain of knowledge?

Now to a typical  puppet subject… Emotional cross-dressing. I have been thinking about this for quite some time and I believe this is the real reason for my puppets’ existence. My puppets can have all these traits without being aggravating. They are not based on anybody in particular, but show easily recognised generic behaviour.

Emotional cross-dressing comes in different guises and is a kind of unintentional lie, a self-defense mechanism. These particular cross-dressers are people who, for some reason or another, hide their real emotions and pretend to have different feelings. It comes on a sliding scale with two poles. On one end you find the always friendly person, sweet and kind, but when you look away the bile rises straight to their eyeballs. On the other end of the scale is the old grump or tough guy, who pushes everybody away, but when you invest the time to know him better, he is the most generous and friendliest person ever. Of course there are a lot of shades between these two extremes.

In both cases the cross-dressers themselves suffer more than their surrounding, as they are not in sync with their own emotions and most of the time they have the feeling of being terribly misunderstood.

More often than not they are forced to cross-dress by expectations put on them, for example, by parents, spouses, friends. And they want nothing more than to oblige, to fulfill the expectations. But at one stage they have to, and will, crack.

PS: People who use these strategies to knowingly deceive others to get an advantage, I would call devious.

Remember the little boy entering the Woods of life without sign post in yesterday’s image? What will he look like in forty years time?

The path is meandering, but level; the trees are crooked!

I only hope he doesn’t lose the spring in his step!

Last night I went to an exhibition opening of my students. I was impressed. This is one of the things I enjoy most about teaching, seeing individuals developing in their art. They are by no means all young kids. In photography we have a lot of mature students. Unfortunately I have the ungrateful task of teaching digital imaging. Generally, the younger ones just do it, the older ones say “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it”… but at one stage (and I can usually wait for it) they come up to me with a big wide smile all over their face and say something like “I am proud of myself, I have done so much on the computer”. The best of course is when they say “I love digital now!” I can’t take the credit for this, though. It doesn’t have much to do with my teaching, but with them gaining confidence in an area they never would have thought they could excel in. Good on you!

After the event I was hurled towards the opposite end of human emotions. I bumped into a friend, a very talented musician, who is currently drifting down the path towards middle age. I love him to bits. He really has something going for him, but he doesn’t know yet what, and he is increasingly running out of patience. He told me, and I repeat verbatim: “I don’t like what the world has on offer at the moment.”

Oh dear! What a puppet moment!

I had lunch today with a very dear friend of mine, who incidentally also reads my blog. She commented on me slipping into the deep and meaningful at the moment. Ah well, I am still on the search where the puppets came from. But I guess I have to ease up a little. My post yesterday didn’t go down too well :).  This morning I was thinking of writing about what I call “emotional cross-dressers”, but I give it a miss. I have to think about the subject for a little longer anyway.

A few years back I attended a training course for a volunteer organisation. One could describe the course as psychology for lay people. Most of it was common sense. But there was this one diagram describing the basic mental attitudes, which I found very good. I re-drew it this morning; something I wanted to do for some time. Yep, I know representatives of each and every one of those four catagories.

Personally, I am oscillating between the two left images (as I guess most women do!) When I am in the top left, everything is honky dory. I strongly believe in win-win situations and I work hard to achieve them. When I am in the bottom left, my soul mate comes in very handy :). Thank you!

Problems arise, when I come across someone who has the mental attitude of the top right quadrant. Often I simply walk away, but I can also turn into a lioness, particularly if  a third party is involved. Lioness mode, believe me, is not a pretty picture and it is very exhausting, so I try to avoid it… Unfortunately I am not always successful.

Further to my post of yesterday… I had a few conversations since and I realised I wasn’t entirely clear in what I’ve said.

It is very sad, but ultimately I think (and this is my very own cheerless opinion) we are alone in the world. I believe there is no way, one human being can ever completely know and comprehend another living being (often we don’t know ourselves). At the same time we crave for others to understand our individuality, we are searching for closeness, for acceptance. We want to be understood, we want to be looked after, we want others to help us carry our burden and share our plight. We want  for someone to complement what we are lacking. We want, we want, we want… But of course on our terms… People are selfish! But if we wouldn’t look after ourselves who would?

I can understand that humans look to Him and find solace. We are here on borrowed time and only once, so we have to make the best of it! There might be re-incarnation. I don’t know. I will find out one day. In the meantime I try to be nice to people. I say I try, as it doesn’t always work this way… I have no influence on how people perceive me. They might not like my frown lines, they might not like the pitch of my voice or my accent… all things I can’t change, and I shrug my shoulders and say: their problem not mine… On the other hand, if somebody is grumpy… How do I know what happened to them before we bumped into each other? Maybe their wife just left them, or their father had a car accident, or their child was diagnosed with an untreatable disease. Their grumpiness might not have anything to do with me at all…

It is this split second of eternity in which we meet and make a decision about whether we like or dislike a person. Scaaaaryyyy! And, be honest, once we have formed an opinion about someone it is very, very difficult to change.

To cut a long story short, what I am advocating is, find yourself a person who has similar values as you have, fall in love with this person and note, IN love is a completely different feeling than love itself. Being in love is a wonderful folly, and a period of exaggeration and best behaviour. Love itself is a feeling that has to be nourished to grow, a feeling of warmth despite all the flaws, the farts and burps. If it is allowed to grow it will lead to the ultimate trust… in the acceptance  of two people in their individuality and differences. And this is what I mean by soul mate.

Introducing Ms SM today. She is the fourth one of the installation puppets. I don’t know her real name. It might be Sue or Sophie Miller or even Steven, who knows. I don’t know what she looks like without her mask, but I hear she is an accountant in a big corporation and pretty dull to talk to. She just hides her real self from her colleagues by fading into the background during the day. A precaution that makes her own life more bearable. “Normal” people wouldn’t understand. Being her is difficult enough, even without all the ridicule and bullying. It can’t be easy to live two lives. Of course her web friends understand… she feels safer there than in “reality”.

Originally this puppet was supposed to be  Witch Version 2. Only when she was completed did she reveal her real identity. She was virtually begging me to be allowed to become Ms SM.

To link it back to yesterday’s post: Is she living a lie?