Dear Helen,

My post was going to be about something entirely different, but accidentally – and luckily – I have found out about your incredible life. You were long gone when the Internet had been discovered, you would have loved it. Here, with a tap of a finger I found some of your thoughts: “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature”.

How much I would love to discuss that thought with you, dear Helen...  I am wondering whether you’d be bored and disappointed with us - people of 21st century - or fascinated and proud?.. I can only guess. Things seem to come much easier to us these days, yet people don’t seem to get any happier. Oh, and the security topic is much loved by the modern society, along with money and stress.

Helen Keller in 1904. Image from www.wikipedia.org

You, on the other hand, unable to hear and see, saw and understood the essence of things like only few did: “Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therin to be content”. I was looking for a read for my journey next week. I have found one now: it is your “Optimism” (1903): “The will to be happy animates alike the philosopher, the prince and the chimney-sweep. No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right”. 

 "Page 238 One". 130 cm x 130 cm. Acrylic on canvas. 

Originally I wanted to post my latest painting titled “Page 238 one”, so here it is. A few reflections led me to paint this somewhat cracked picture. :-)  How do events - within us and outside - influence us? Do our past experiences shape a cast around oneself, moulding one into someone new, someone different from yesterday?  Or is it a shell of our own imagination of who we are?.. Is it possible to throw the cast away and restart from a blank page? Paint it all over with a fresh layer of white? Or sooner or later the wine coloured stains of memories will leak through and remind us of our past? You would have known the answers, dear Helen, you would have known...

Love,

AB