"Chameleon," © Frau Kolb, Acrylic on Canvas Panel, 5x7" September, 2013
Los Angeles, California
3 October 2013
IF you are the kind of person that changes COMPLETELY fades into the background and becomes part of whatever scenery you encounter, leaving your personality at the door, individuality at the coat check and BLENDS into whatever/whoever is around them in the BLINK of an eye, without feeling the lose of self as a deadly HORROR please pass me by. I am not interested in communing with the soulless.
Furthermore, experience has revealed to me time and time again that I work best with people of integrity. People that stand for something and don't change with the wind or the latest whim of contemporary fashion. I am a straight forward woman. When people SMILE real big and play NICE NICE, I often fall for their surface changing trickery. Based on being burned, a number of times by apparently interested, invested, and caring companions and co-workers, I've learned to avoid picking as work /play mates people I can not acurately read. IF you are the type that BLENDS well into your environment and becomes just LIKE every friend, employer, lover, acquaintance, dance-partner, or clever/dominant friend circle you ever had, well pardonne moi s'il vous plaît, but we are not destined for closeness. Intimacy being a treasure, to me, reserved for those that can handle my precious and tender soul with care.
I LIKE transparent people. This doesn't mean YOU are required to tell me what you eat for lunch each day. (Goodness forbid, in fact.) Yet, “Full disclosure,” of pertinent facts is a MUST for establishing a sticky bond in my book. No mystery for me (unless, of course, it is a Judge Dee book). I do NOT mean that I expect or prefer people to be boring or predictable. NO! I’m talking integral and REAL. YOU tell me your truth. I tell you mine. I appreciate that we are different people. YOU are YOU and I am ME, (Frau Kolb, the woman that snatched birth name away from the public eye in order to protect it from butchering by Americans and Anglo-Saxons and Others that can not roll their “Rs,” or delight in silent last letters and, instead, goes by the word for Mrs. in German because that is what people call her when she is in Germany, the nation she LOVES and where her one and only husband, a person so distinct, unique, and patently integral was born and raised by his equally forth right and authentic parents.) Anyway, this doesn’t mean that we don’t all change a little as time goes by or when we should behave in the same way when we are at a funeral AND on the dance floor of a thumping disco.
capicé
So... what exactly am I saying? I’m not exactly sure... butt, I will share with you my “train of thought.” I made a painting of a chameleon for my flourishing “Australian Animals,” (painted on canvas panel) puzzle series and THAT GUY came to mind, the one I worked with recently, the one that had had six jobs to make ends meet prior to taking my advice on how to negotiate and changing his reality, anyway, I remembered watching how his FACE WOULD CHANGE whenever he had to talk to a different person. IF he was with his boss, he was the most attentive monkey, nodding, head bobbing, ass-licking and making it clear that he simply LOVED the guy, even though he spent a lot of time BAD MOUTHING his employer in order to create solidarity with others at the Boss's expense, a BAD sign of character IF you ask me… After work among his rocker pals HE was the ultimate cock-sure punk rocker, full of hardcore absurdity and gangster verve, he was a ticking bomb of musical madness ever-ready to go OFF on musical tangents of great intensity (which I LOVED) and IF he was with a patient/client in his role as “health care professional,” he was a saintly OWL hooting the most appropriate advice, straight out of the book of standard-practice, even though he was unsure and insecure about the veracity of his training he hand no problem pretending to be a moral authority on health and nutrition. Yet, every night, he smoked cigarets, drank beer, and when others smoked he smoked some more and pledged allegiance to every flag waved before him, checking his personality at the door and BLENDING into whatever the tone of the room he had to work.
Getting to "know," him was scary, because, I had met him in one context and followed him into others, with each change in location discovering more and more of his secret hobbies and habits. He, by the way, seemed totally unaware that he had lost his self so long ago, or perhaps NEVER had developed a stable personality and was instead a collection of canned gestures and seemingly authentic statements, pronounced with as much confidence as he could muster that there was nothing left to admire butt a shadow, changing colors, to match the rich man’s or employing woman’s sofa. Dropping his ideals and actual beliefs had become second nature to him or perhaps he was simply a chameleon and had never had an integral personality with which to face reality.
Perhaps, it takes a lot of... I don’t know... mojo to stay true to one’s calling and steer clear of the well worn path of hypocrisy which is so alluring with its benefits of promised respectability and social acceptance. Butt, in my tattered and well worn book of life rules, I believe nothing would compensate me IF I hadn’t listened to my inner voice when it told me I must become a mother first and that everything else was less important TO ME.
I’ve never, I guess, “had to,” sacrifice myself on the altar of convenience. I never had to become what others wanted me to be. I am what I am: a gracious and vivacious HAM, a slightly twisted BRAIN, a woman that can aim at her goals and achieve them. I’ve always been me: buzzing along, smelling the roses, into sweetness, and occasionally planting my stinger in the enemy’s bum.
The bottom line is: BEE yourself. Buzz around obstacles to the true YOU. You are beautiful. You won’t find real pleasure in LIFE until you stop being a carbon copy of your wife when the two of you are at church and she prays publicly LIKE her life depends on it and you kneel down right beside her and pretend that you aren’t really into hot hairy sweaty men, ass you are. The fact is that with self acceptance comes freedom, JOY, happiness and the ability to stop judging, harassing, hurting, and bothering others that have made the leap and become who they really are.
BASTA!
Yours truly,
Frau K.