Chrysanthemum
circa 1908-09
It is like a head of tossled hair, maybe a
little boy's, whose curls run off in as many odd and weird directions as does his
imagination. Can one really see the face of a child, of whomever a child will
grow up to be? Not really. The face of this little boy is therefore obscured.
He is lost in tangles of things that, only at this age, he can enjoy without
the burden of knowing what they actually mean, or what damage or joy they would
bring to his adult life. Laughing them away as mere thoughts, as ideas that he
will probably be indifferent to after a minute or two, are a child's remedy to
passing time. In and out of holes created by an immature mind gives children
the glazed look of serenity. A sudden silence or an outburst of energy seems
only childish to grown-ups, but with the amount children do not understand and
yet see and feel at the same time, their 'childish' behaviour is actually surprisingly
subdued.
If we, the so-called ''adults'', place our adult minds in that of a child we would explode. The pressures a child takes without realising - those that grown-ups normally experience, dissolve into or even over-analyse to points of depression or comfort or instability - weigh down and test prematurely the child's strengths. These pressures mould us from day one, whether we know it or not. Like buds we bloom but never truly re-bloom; we stretch ourselves slowly outwards, unable to really stop or revisit a fetal position of safety, until, as elderly people, we soon find ourselves fully splayed and naked to world, about to leave it. Like this Chrysanthemem we try to hold our heads high to the end, but in truth every one of us is the same child with tossled hair - observing, looking, but lacking any clue as to what is really going on in the world we see.
If we, the so-called ''adults'', place our adult minds in that of a child we would explode. The pressures a child takes without realising - those that grown-ups normally experience, dissolve into or even over-analyse to points of depression or comfort or instability - weigh down and test prematurely the child's strengths. These pressures mould us from day one, whether we know it or not. Like buds we bloom but never truly re-bloom; we stretch ourselves slowly outwards, unable to really stop or revisit a fetal position of safety, until, as elderly people, we soon find ourselves fully splayed and naked to world, about to leave it. Like this Chrysanthemem we try to hold our heads high to the end, but in truth every one of us is the same child with tossled hair - observing, looking, but lacking any clue as to what is really going on in the world we see.
