I have this drawing that I painted 4-5 years ago. It had been hung on my wall without any background color. I thought to myself at the time that it was already finished because the source photo, the one that I painted it from, had a plain white background. It is a photo of a temple here in Chiang Mai. I took it on a day trip with my close friend. So this painting of that photo has been hung on my wall for years, and when people came by, I often got asked, why don't you just finish it? Or is there more to it? And I just respond Oh no, it is already finished. Well, I never told them, of course, that the original photo's background was white.
Years passed, and while a close friend is no longer a close friend, the painting is still hung there, and has been hung to witness the life of it all. It probably saw me at my most raw, vulnerable moments, so more than anyone else had. It saw me when I binge eat, how I speak to myself and others, the way I learn, the way I work and develop, hundreds of times of crying probably, lot of torturous exercises, when I self-harm, record of fights, when I kiss and how I cannot kiss, and probably when I get kinky. And honestly, though I am aware that the original photo doesn't have a background, it has been bugging me a bit too that I cannot come up with something imaginative for its backdrop.
Last night, I dreamed about her. In 10th grade, I got to know this news about a girl. A small, one weird girl with glasses. She was a year our senior. The whole school knew that she was accepted into a famous scholarship program, AFS, to study in Japan for a year. However, taking the scholarship for her would mean that once she returned to Thailand, she would need to study another year with our class to graduate high school. That was Pang. She was the girl. The girl who was with me on the day I took the temple photo. Pang, which means white powder in Thai. She was named that because she was born with tanned skin. I remembered she had a hard time adjusting when she came back. Could you imagine? How hard it was going abroad for a year, and came back to the whole class already graduated without you, and then you were stuck with a junior class without knowing anyone.
Me and Pang, we got along pretty well, or it's me with my older female mommy issues. I was a few people who "knew" her, and so I thought. I really liked her. We talked a lot about things. We… Had a really unusual dynamic (yeah no we didn't scissor). There was so much that we liked about each other, but unfortunately, maybe we were totally two different people. Our friendship was on and off. We kept close in some periods throughout our lives, then again we parted ways, not long after my dog died, in 2022.
I dreamt of her, of us in Japan. She hasn't changed one bit. But the Japan was so different from my Japan. It was Autumn 🍂🍁 and all the leaves were red and orange and it was beautiful. And the mist. The moisture. I miss her, and I truly hope she's doing great in life. The last time we talked, she said that she planned to move to Australia, work for a bit and so she can pay off debt. I really hope everything goes and went well for her. She carries a part of me with her somewhere in this world, I think. So today after I woke up, I saw this fucking painting at the end of my couch, and I was like fuck it -- I'm doing something about it lol. I tried to go back in time, channeling the feeling of what I felt on the day, what colour the sky was, and I tried to paint it. And this is how it turned out.
I tried to go back in time, channeling the feeling of what I felt on the day, what colour the sky was, and I tried to paint it. And this is how it turned out.
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