Hello again. Every day we’re making progress on the mural, and by now we’re approximately a half of the way done-ish. Yesterday, Ms. Snow emailed us about the mural, which she recently saw, and was very posh and very British about it: “The blue/ red skyline has translated most felicitously from your sketch to the wall, and the white childish figures are full of motion.” She also told us “Tant Pis” about the fact that we paid the sales tax on the 200$ worth of mural supplies even though the school should technically be exempt. Yana didn't realize that Tant Pis were actual words, even though Amelia tried to tell her exactly what it meant → that is regrettable, too bad. Classic miscommunication. Anyways, here’s a few more crucial updates on mural/ life progress.
1. Stars make everything better. The top half of our mural is supposed to be a galaxy (or at least galaxy inspired), which took us a little too long to figure out how to actually make. The final technique we settled on: A solid bottom layer of deep purple, followed by several patchier layers of dark blue, purple, and magenta paint, followed by a top layer of wispy pastel pink, baby blue, and lavender. When we finished this, we decided to splatter paint white on top to form the stars (except Amelia’s brush was dead because we got the cheapest brushes we could find, so I painted all the stars, as apparent in paint-covered photo of me below). The effect was v cool, and we briefly considered adding stars to the whole thing, and then our more rational selves led us to decide against it (unfortunately).
2. Amelia has a personal agenda against all healthy food. Since it’s my (Yana’s) turn to bring food on the snack schedule again, I decided to deviate from our great usual selection - cookies, bagels, chips, anything with sugar or carbs - to a more healthy lunch of blueberries and granola bars. Amelia’s response to my literal attempt to save her life: disdain, anger, and outrage.
3. There is an almost suspicious amount of similarities in our life. During one of our classic ~deep mural talks~ (you know, the talks you have when you’ve both been painting the same wall for weeks, you’ve been all alone in a school building for days, you haven’t eaten in hours, and you forget what life outside of muraling actually looks like, yeah that talk) we realized that we both are not from Massachusetts, we both had weird childhood events (autoimmune disease, bomb raids), we both had only one cousin our family was close to and another secret cousin we’ve never actually seen, we’ve both recently been to a funeral, and neither one of us has ever been to a wedding. I guess in a world with a 7.5 billion people (and growing) population a few coincidences should be expected.
4. Life update from Yana: Ok, so this really has nothing to do with the mural or Catcher in the Rye or even art, but I’m the same with my foster dogs as new parents are with their child: I have to talk about it everywhere, even a random blogging sites where no one wants to hear about it. This summer I'm fostering a little pitbull/ terrier/ who-knows-what-else puppy named Anna who got rescued after her mother was shot by a hunter and she was found living alone on the street. When I got her, Anna was quiet, shy, slept on the floor, and kept to herself. Now, Anna barks all the time, is the bossiest dog I’ve ever met, demands to sleep on the bed, and bites me if I stop playing with her. I think I need to figure out a new training method.
5. Life observation from Amelia: we were playing mahjong with one of the seniors who wanted to learn. Mahjong is like 50% skill and 50% luck. A realization: you can’t choose what tiles you get in mahjong but you can choose how you play them. And maybe that is enough
CQOTD (Catcher quote of the day): “Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules."Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it."Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right-I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game.”
very insightful amelia i will try to play my life like a game of mahjong.
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