If I were to write a book, it would be called REMINDERS. Because, I feel like that’s what we need.
Of course, there are two sides to them. Sometimes they make our lives difficult but most of the time they help us live.
REMINDER #1: Remember why you started doing what you’re doing.
Here is a habit I developed for no reason other than to avoid having to stare at my phone when I am taking the BTS sky train in Bangkok. I write little French poems in a pocket size pad. I would like to share them with you and hopefully get the fun I was having painting words like brush strokes on white paper. You should try it too.
Voici une habitude que j’ai développée sans aucune raison autre que d’éviter de fixer mon téléphone lorsque je prends le BTS Skytrain à Bangkok. J’écris de petits poèmes français sur un bloc-notes de poche. J’aimerais les partager avec vous et espère que vous ressentirez le plaisir que j’éprouvais en peignant des mots tels des coups de pinceau sur du papier blanc. Vous devez essayer aussi.
Try to listen to the podcast first:
Here is the small page I wrote:
Written on 3rd of September 2021 (corrected version)
My mind is very chattery today. Oftentimes I’ve stopped myself from a thought painting because of my laziness to take the time to define concepts.
There is a reason why I call it thoughts painting. As an artist I don’t want to know what stroke every brush is going to make, I want to paint anyway.
I understand that without defining the ideas/concepts who play the protagonists in our mind-play, the dance might feel pointless.
But I do think of thinking as ART and if my juggle of ideas, or cocktail of concepts are wrong, tasteless at least I would have contributed to the recipe by showing what not to do. However, depriving myself of the joy of contemplation feels like a crime.
All this to say, listen to your inner voice. I am guilty of getting lost in listening to others’ voices through the technology we inherited. I forget to listen to the humming of my own muse.
Before you think about it, the title is totally click-baity. The word “race” is still a question to me. I once heard one of my idols, the author Alan Moore say that in the human genome there are no traces of race, it is a human construct, essentially Race is an illusion. (Note to self: Find out for once and for all if race is still a valid word to be used).
To put it in context, before what I tell you what happened, several days earlier I was in a meetup to network people because I was looking for a job, and I met this Indian guy to whom I said something within the lines of: I understand my Boris can be strange for people to hear, because I am probably the only Indian Boris in the world. But it shouldn’t be a surprise to see people from different cultures sitting around a table hanging out.
For a short time I used to live with my friends because I didn’t have a job so I couldn’t afford to pay for an condo. Back then I used to have habit: take the laptop in my backpack, walk around the mall with air conditioning because it was too hot outside and have the usual conversations with myself, sit down somewhere and let the words pour on the computer with the aim of organizing them later in form of a blog post (or hopefully several blog posts).
As I got on the escalator going up, I noticed something which took me off guard. Something that made me think about my comment mentioned above that people from different culture spending time together, living together should be completely normal.
What I saw was new but beautiful, I saw on my right an interracial couple on the escalator going down, so far so good right? But wait it was an Asian man and an Indian woman. Now why was that surprising to me? Have you been surprised like this before? Have you thought why?
As humans I believe we are programmed to see patterns everywhere, that’s how we went from hunters (figuring out at what time it was good to hunt) to farmers (planning the harvest) to corporate executives who use forecasts to build strategies. But if you have to understand this is the first time I see this configuration and I have lived in India, in France, in UK, in Germany and now in Thailand.
I just realized that, all ethnicities mix but some ethnicities mix more than others.
Bonne journée..
This blog post is short because I am acting on it… Get it?Â
Sharing is good but doing something is better.Â
Bonne journée.Â
SKETCHMAN BORIS 