Emily strolls through the art gallery, early in the Saturday morning, just before the place got stuffed by hundreds of footsteps. She loves paintings, she loves the texture, the abstract figure she can’t really define. Early mornings are perfect since she can touch the paintings without getting caught by anyone. And since her father works there, she could ask for his favor to keep an eye on her and if she’s going to touch a wet painting or something really fragile.
Emily Duncan lost her vision at ten years old, just when she finished her fifth painting after days of severe fever. She hasn’t even tried oil painting yet, her father taught her to use acrylics which texture are not good enough for her. Emily’s father is also a painter, the one who failed to make money out of it and work as the key keeper in the art gallery instead, to fulfill his visual needs. He used to show Emily the beauty of each paintings in the museum. Abstracts are located in the north wing, realistic ones in the west wing, together with the museum’s precious classical collections.
Portraits were her main fascination, “I love how he made her lips blue, it added some kind of character into it” or “his eyes are so deep, Papa, how could he do that?”. Portraits to portraits, eyes to lips, ears to hairs, she adore each painting in a detailed kind of view. Her first painting was the portrait for her father, the figure she loves the most, the only figure she could count on after her mother passed away. She was only seven when she painted that picture and her Papa appreciate it so much that he hanged it in the living room so all the guests that went to their flat can see how talented his little daughter is.
“Lavender scent for the purple paint, citrus for yellow, apple for red,” that’s how Emily paints now, her father dropped some scented oil in her acrylic paints to help her recognize the color. He also carved some braille numbers on her brushes to help her identify the size. Abstracts by abstracts, she could sit in front of her canvas for hours, jazz music on the background, TV turned on to add some ambience. In her age of seventeen, she had painted three more paintings on huge canvases. Abstracts, texture oriented, she doesn’t even got to see the final result, they’re all based on her feelings. Seven years, she only made three huge paintings, yet she made five before she went blind.
“I want to paint portraits, Papa. Like the ones on the north wing,” she complained, while starting on her fourth painting. “I can’t really see anyone’s face, you know. People are just voices, strange footsteps and vague scents and I can only imagine their faces,” she once mistaken a woman in the gallery as a man and called her sir all day, she got pissed and start cursing in French.
“Then use your imagination, ma cherie,” her father said in a very calming manner as if it’s an easy thing to accomplish. “Talk to a stranger in the gallery, imagine his or her face, and paint it with your feeling,” her second painting after she got blind was supposed to be a painting of the beach but her father said it looks more like a field of flowers.
She tried to draw faces; all the way since the day she lost her vision. She would try to draw her cousins and her schoolmates, but none of them got a positive feedback.
“Ems, that doesn’t even look like a face, I’m sorry honey, but this is just too funny,” said Laurie, her schoolmate and best friend since she was five. She swears that the drawing looks more like a mouse, and that’s so far away from a face. And the mouse
is not even doing a portrait; Laurie said it looks like she’s holding a tulip. “I got it, I’m a squeaky little mouse who’s so dear to you that I bring you flowers, you really are using your imagination here, Ems,” they both laughed but Laurie knows that deep inside her friend’s heart, she really was trying her best to draw her face.
Emily brought her sketchbook anywhere and would try to draw things as it is but fail at most of the time. She tried to draw a squirrel once, she wanted to feel its hand but she grabbed its tail instead and it bits her finger. She tried to draw her doll but Laurie said it looks more like a daisy. She started to think that maybe all these flower and fruit scents her father put on her paints took over her imagination.
One day, Friday on her seventeenth birthday, she went camping with Laurie and asked her to describe the night sky. “It’s dark, cold, deep blue, full of tiny little stars, bright little flickers and a bright, beautiful, yellow moon,” Laurie tried her best to describe it. She watched Emily draw; Emily could only hear scratches from her pencil and Laurie whistling Sinatra’s Fly Me to the Moon.
Her mother used to sing that song all the time; while she cooks, while trying to put Emily to sleep. The cold of the night reminds her the warm feeling she used to get while her mother puts her to sleep when she was two, she remembered her soft lips kissing her forehead, and her black, wavy hair fell into her hands.
“Ems, you just draw a face,” Laurie was shocked and her voice was shaky.
“I miss my mom,” Emily was in tears, her right hand was shaking. She doesn’t know how to feel, she’s sad, and happy at the same time. Happy she could finally draw a portrait, sad that she can’t ever see her face again and that she only exists on her imagination, in form of abstract lines and figures.
Laurie felt an immediate initiative to end the camping session and lead her friend to her house and let her draw on the canvas.
“Let’s go Ems, don’t lost the memory, pour it in the canvas, pronto,” she packed the tent, grab Emily’s hand and they ran through the cold night right to Emily’s house on the edge of the street.
Emily sat on her stool, still in tears with trembling hands and her sketchbook on her left.
“Feelings lead to imagination, imagination leads to a more sensitive senses, senses lets you draw as you may,” Laurie whispered to her friend’s ear while trying to calm her down.
“Lavender for purple, mom smells like lavender,” Emily felt all of her senses sharpens as she paints. Figure by figure, lines by lines, colors by colors, Laurie watched in tears as her friend drew her heart out on the canvas. Seconds to minutes, minutes to hours, and suddenly the sun rises. Laurie felt asleep somewhere between the whole process.
“Done!” Emily stood up from her stool, startling Laurie awake. Suddenly they heard footsteps coming to the room, Papa showed up and seems to be confused to find them home. He gave Laurie a questioning look and Laurie points out to the canvas in front of Emily.
“A portrait,” he said, tears started to fell from his eyes, “of Lisa, in her favorite dress, which you’re wearing right now.” It’s Emily’s first portrait, a portrait of feelings and memories, that can only be achieved due to high remembrance of the figure she’s drawing and to her, her mom is the first who gave her all those feelings. Papa hugged Emily and they seem so happy. He hanged his blind daughter’s first portrait in the living room.
“First from my portrait maestro,” he said with a big smile on his face. A smile that radiates happiness that Emily can felt in her heart. Her heart, that gave her an ability to see the world through feelings.
Scrolling through some articles on the internet, I found some surprising facts about the climate change in our beloved planet earth. I know this has nothing to do with retro things, but I find this thing pretty alarming for all of us.
According to NASA, our air has been heating up since the beginning of industrial revolution (yes, this has something to do with those factories that present you your favorite brands).
The average air temperature in 2016 is the highest ever, beating 2014 and 2015 consecutively.
Earth temperature has been increasing as much as 0.1 degree celsius per year during the year 1800-2000, that means in 17 years, humankind had increased the earth temperature for 1 degree celsius.
That 1 degree celsius is responsible for the ice melts in north pole.
If the earth is heating up again to 2 degree celsius, 40% of the rainforests will be gone.
In 3 degree celsius, trees couldn’t handle the amount of carbon dioxide and there will be more pollution in big cities.
In 4 degree celsius, the risk of forest fires will increase and rainforest will turn into deserts.
In 5 degree celsius, millions of living things will die because of heat strokes and many other condition due to the heat.
If it reaches 6 degree celsius the earth is no longer habitable. In other words, we die.
All of these would happen if we stop paying attention to the fact that we are responsible for all of these. We are the ones who are in need for those brands and we are the reason for those companies for building more factories. We need to change the nature for the industrial companies in the planet earth. Use organic materials, go green, is anybody with me?
Sometimes my obsession for vintage stuff take me to awesome places. This weekend it decided to take me to Pasar Mantan (in english, Market of Exes) a pop up market in Ngagel, Surabaya.
My friends and I was about to explore the culinary world of Surabaya until we stumbled upon the market’s instagram and immediately change our minds. Just like me, they also have this thing for vintage stuff (I mean who doesn’t? cheap branded clothes and rare findings, who doesn’t want that?). The little market consists of various vintage shops and they literally have vintage everything - band shirts (YUP, VINTAGE CONCERT BAND SHIRTS), jeans jackets, second hand ray bans, boardgames and even something as rare as movie tapes.
The market, consists of little vintage shops, opened from 12 am and we arrived at 12.15 am, some shops were still opening, some haven’t even put their stuff on display yet. My eyes immediately spotted two most interesting shops, Seek n Reload that sells band shirts and Wasik Galeri that sells vintage collectibles. And here are the stuff that I found.
What attracts me to visit Seek n Reload was the Sonic Youth shirt they had on the entrance, I asked the shopkeeper and he explained that the shirt came from
the 80s and I fell in love with the store in a blink of an eye. I look through their collection and found more and more golds, like this Queen shirt and a Mr. Big shirt from their concert in Japan. Since some of the shirts are rare findings,
the prices can be really high. That’s why I walk away empty handed, and decided to look for another vintage something.
Just around the corner, I found Wasik Galeri. The first thing that attracts me was the board games, those board games are probably older than my mom and they’re in a perfect condition! and they also have these vintage movie tapes (IN A PERFECT CONDITION, HOW?). So I decided to take a closer look and I
found this stack of old magazines and that’s when I found this irresistible item. It’s an October 1948 Movie Story magazine with Frank Sinatra on the cover.
And I went crazy about it, IT’S FRANK SINATRA! looking really young and handsome as usual. I did a little research on the magazine, ephemeraforever.com is selling it for $99.99 which is around 1,000,000 Rupiah and I got it for 85,000 Rupiah. :) ha!
The magazine is definitely my best finding from the market (I also bought this vintage oversized shirt but it’s nothing compared to the magazine). This is the first vintage magazine of mine and planning to collect more soon!
A little advice: vintage magazines can be really fragile so be gentle when you flip the pages and make sure you have something to store it nicely, away from dusts and molds.
As a carefree and adventurous little kid, I started a quest to find the actual meaning of freedom. The word was there all over my textbooks in elementary, freedom of this, freedom of that. It was all over the place, in the news, in the park, kids talk about it, adults talk about it often. I believe people have their own concept about freedom. What does freedom mean to me?
When I was a kid, freedom had a very simple value. Freedom was to play all day with my friends in the park. I would do anything to get an early start of my play time in the park, which back then can only be accomplished by skipping school. I would eat as much ice cream that I can, staying up all night, fell asleep in my tank top with AC on, just to make me look ill the next day, for the sake of going to the park early. The park was my freedom, a place where I can play with my friends doing whatever we want from catching butterflies to collecting ladybugs, those were freedom to me.
As I grow older, the concept of freedom develops. As a young adult who just entered a new world of independent choices, I experienced lots of interesting moments that were based on the little choices I made and each of them had their own element of freedom. That’s when freedom become a complex thing to me. Words were never enough to explain those moments of freedom that I experienced, sometimes they don’t even have a cause. It just come as it is.
It’s another chaotic day in class, people were struggling to chase all the deadlines before the end of the day. Lena seems to finish all of her stuff early, as usual. She stormed her way out of the class, leaving her work on the desk for all the classmates to admire. She seems like she’s in a rush, I wonder what she’s up to now.
She was really in a hurry that she left her sketchbook in the class. I left my work for a while and chase her way outside. I found her on the parking lot, standing still as she stared at her watch as if something is bound to happen. It seems like she’s concentrating on something, so I just watch her from a distance, holding her pink sketchbook waiting for the right time to approach her without bothering whatever it is she’s doing. The place was so quite I can’t hear anything except from the ticking of her watch.
Tick,
Tick,
Tick,
And suddenly it stopped.
Suddenly the pink sketchbook on my hand flew 2-4 meters away above me, opening some kind of portal. I knew it! She’s a time traveller! (or at least she has some kind of weird portal) The colours of the portal fascinate me, I just stood there in awe as Lena looked at me as if she just saw a ghost.
She was shocked to find me there, knowing that I watched everything. She frantically looked at the portal and her watch, and the portal, and her watch again. As if she’s trying to figure out what to do - take me with her to the portal, or let me go with her biggest mystery and risking everything she’s been trying to cover up.
Without second guessing, she grabbed my wrist and pull me inside the portal with her. Although she knew even though she let me go, I wouldn’t tell anyone about all these, but she wouldn’t risk it. She wouldn’t risk anything that can cause some kind of failure to her mission. So I came with her to the portal and became involved in this new adventure - which is still a mystery, indeed.
my next 2 posts may have nothing to do with throwbacks to my favorite eras, been gone from tumblr for days and I just feel like writing something different.
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
stormborns
gamechangershow
2087
tangentwithtanner
gracieabrams
