Dear Ms. Butler,

I'm writing you to commend you on your outstanding performance in my medieval art survey.  You were by far the best student in the class and, I might add, one of the best students I've ever had.

Because of the sharpness of your intellect and the lucidity of your writing, I would encourage you to consider graduate school.

Best wishes,
Kirk Ambrose
Associate Professor &
Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies
Department of Art and Art History

I hate crying over school. More than that, the professors who appear to make unfair criticisms that send me into tears really frustrate me.

Yet again finals comes around. I always feel so much anticipation for finals week, tests to study for, projects to finish. Yet I always find myself with much less to do than I expect. I suppose my nervous anticipation causes me to finish with time to spare. I feel myself breathing freely this afternoon. I don't want to study any more and I don't have to. It's a beautiful day and I really must go outside and enjoy it.

I have been neglecting writing in general recently, here I am always a bit lazy. But I have also been avoiding my journal. I find myself repeating the same themes and phrases. Despite so much going on around me, it's all the same nonsense that seems to flow from my pen. That's what happens when I don't write intentionally. When I sit down to just write anything, the same things come to mind. 

But these things come and go. My hope is that in a few weeks when school is no longer a concern and everything really does start changing I will find a new thought track to follow. Perhaps without academia distracting my brain, I will be able to sit down and write more intentionally. It is definitely something that I want to try to do. I consider writing one of my strongest skills and I don't want to get rusty as I leave school.

Yes, I said it, leaving school. It's truly happening (for the next few years, at least). I would be a lot more scared if I didn't have something ready for  me to do this summer. I was actually freaking out when I thought I was going to have no plans, but apparently I have enough credentials and support that an awkward phone interview doesn't detract too much.

So yes, I am moving on from CU, from college, from Boulder, and even from Colorado. I am nervous to do this again, but I feel much more prepared this time. I am not concerned about the internship, about finding a house, or getting a second job. I am most worried about knowing no one, honestly. But I do what I can to reassure that voice in my head.

I am excited to live in New Mexico. I have half been calling it "home" in recent years, but that is becoming a slippery term. Santa Fe, here I come! I don't think I quite realize yet how fortunate I am to have the position at SITE. It's the perfect balance for me, I think. A world-renown space for contemporary art, but not a white tower museum. I thought about applying for MoMA in New York, but I don't think it would have suited me at all. SITE is so small, a tight staff, lots of hands-on work, and the reputation and connections as well. My hope is that I can make the most of it, learn a lot, and not let myself disappear because I am afraid to speak up.

Kerry's new motto is "You do not have to be good." My mantra for now is going to be "You do not have to be afraid". Because the anxiety that I feel sometimes, especially in new situations, is in many ways a choice that I make. So, I am not going to be afraid and I am not going to be complacent. It is a liberating opportunity, in a way, simply, LIFE! As a side effect (or perhaps a direct effect) of being me, I have spend my academic career building a very strong structure of achievment. In this edifice, maintenaince is the most important thing. I have done a lot more recently to get beyond that, but in many ways I can't wait to be free of the directives of homework, tests, projects. To read for fun again, and to have time and mental space to volunteer and learn how to make soap.

Yes, learning how to make soap is very high on my list of things to do. So is re-dedicating myself to my yoga practice and (if the logistics work) completing a teacher training course in the next few years. I am trying to build myself goals outside of careers and academia. (This is of course possible for my psyche because I already have a career-building internship position, but my psyche is slowly learning, piano piano).

Cassiope wants to know how I am going to meet men in Santa Fe, what my plan is. I don't have one, and I don't want to think about that right now. I mean, I think about it anyway, drama with men has been a kind of theme for this year. (at least more than it usually is for me). I could write a lot more about that, but I won't just now. Suffice it to say that love, sex, and friendship (and their intersections) are very complicated and only on certain days do I feel equipped to deal with it. More on that perhaps another day, (when I sit down to write intentionally, see, there's a project!)

A questo punto, scrivo qualcosa in Italiano, perche' oggi sono andata all'ultimo reunione del corso del teatro italiano. Mi manchera' quel proggetto e tutto che abbiamo fatto. No posso credere che abbiamo fatto e scritto uno spettacolo completamente in italiano. Un'esperienza bellissima. Cassiope e io abbiamo parlato di come posso continuare, perche' non voglio perdere tutto che ho imparato quest'anno e mezzo di studio (soltano questo, non e' tanto tempo!). Voglio ancora ricominciare a studiare spangolo, specialmente che abitero' in Nuovo Messico. E' importantissimo! Ma, amo l'italiano e sarebbe un pecato dimenticare. Ryan mi ha detto, "hai un ragazzo italiano, no?" A che punto non sapevo quello che dovevo dire. Ho detto, no, ho un amico, e parliamo qualche volta. Che potevo dire di lui? Che vado in Europa per quasi un mese e non vado a trovarlo? Che lui mi sembrava molto triste quando gliel'ho detto? Che era un sogno che non avevo il coraggio di seguire? O che solo era un'esperienza bellissima che non voglio neanche perdere. Veramente ho deciso du mesi fa se non mi avessero offerto quel posto a Venezia che avrei andata alla fattoria di nuovo. Ma al momento di decidere veramente, di comprare il bigletto, avevo paura. Paura di arrivare e rendermi conto che quegli emozioni erano sparitI, paura di essere enamorata e dover fare una decisione dificile. Paura di andare solo perche' lui voleva che io venissi...tutto. Un giorno forse scrivero' un racconto, il racconto di che cosa avrebbe succeso se gli avevo detto di si.

Basta cosi! E' un giorno bellissmo e non rimango qui dentro di piu.

My new computer shipped!!!!!

From Leo Babauta's Zen Habits, 9 March 2009

When my grandparents were young, none of the appliances (let alone hi-tech gadgets) in our homes were in common use — not the refrigerator, electric stove, dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, toaster, television, computer, air-conditioner, microwave, etc.

None of it. They had cars, but they walked far more often than we do today. They had telephones, but not cell phones or Blackberries or iPhones, and they weren’t using phones all the time. They had stores, but they didn’t order things online and they didn’t buy all the time. In fact, during their Great Depression childhood, they bought very little and used very, very little technology.

And while the last 70-80 years have advanced our lives in amazing ways, and there’s no doubt that the comfort and convenience of our lives have improved tremendously … we rarely stop to consider whether technology and consumerism have always changed our lives for the better.

I mean, I am as big a proponent of the miracles of the Internet as anyone, but have we given up too much of our lives that used to exist offline and outdoors? It’s great that we have such comfortable cars that can drive incredibly fast and take us anywhere we want to go in minutes … but have we thrown away the joy and the health benefits of walking places?

It’s great that we can communicate instantly from anywhere with our mobile devices, but have we given up personal face-to-face conversations and the pleasure of being outdoors, disconnected from the world?

It’s great that food is so convenient these days, but have we given up the pleasures of slow eating for fast food, the joys of cooking for microwaving, the wonders of real food for processed food?

It’s great that we can buy pretty much anything we want these days (and often do), but have we allowed the abundance of cash we’ve had (until recently, but even now we’re still pretty rich) to force us to have bigger houses just to store all our stuff?

I propose a life of less. A life that’s more sustainable.

And yes, some will wonder if that will hurt the economy even more — buying and consuming less will mean people will lose jobs, no? Not necessarily. Scaling back our lives means we need to find jobs for people that are based not on producing more goods, but on producing more value — valuable information, valuable inventions that require fewer resources, valuable contributions to the community. But how will all of this be paid for if no one is buying stuff? There will be less wealth produced because less is being consumed … but if we consume less then we actually need less wealth. We just need to get off the escalating cycle of consuming and producing more.

We work more than ever before, despite advances in labor-saving technology that mean we should be able to work less. We do so to support a lifestyle that has become more expensive than ever, because of the new levels of convenience and abundant consumer goods that we’ve become accustomed to. We can break out of this trap, by consuming less and then needing to work less.

I’ve thought these things for awhile now, but it struck me most as I was walking to a meeting with a friend and business partner. Most people where I live don’t walk — cars are used all the time, even if the destination is just a few blocks away. I’ve been getting into the habit of walking places — for traveling, not exercise — but I’m a weirdo for doing so. And it struck me that only 50 years ago, I would have been normal — everyone walked back then.

And I wondered how we lost this valuable activity — walking to get places.

We lost it because convenience and speed have become more valuable to us than health and frugality and the enjoyment of the world around us.

I propose a life of less. A life that is more leisurely, a little more spartan, a little less expensive, a little less heavy on consuming the Earth’s resources.

I don’t think we can change the economy overnight. We can’t even change our lives overnight. But we can make a gradual change in that direction, with small steps.

Here are but a few ideas — I’m sure you could contribute some of your own:

• Can we walk to more places and drive less? We’d get fitter and use less fossil fuel. We’d have to loosen up our schedules to do this, but I think that’s a good change anyway.
• Can we start building more livable communities, where things are less spread out, so that we can walk more instead of driving everywhere? Where everything we need is a 10-20 minute walk away, or at least reachable by bike or public transportation? You might already live in a place like that, but not where I live, and not in lots of places. Even work should be close by. Again, this is a long-term change, but I think a good one.
• Can we start living in smaller houses, so that we need less heating and cooling and land and maintenance and cleaning? We can if we buy less stuff, which leads to …
• Can we start buying less stuff? We don’t need all the stuff we buy.
• Can we start celebrating things like birthdays and Christmas without spending sprees? We could do nice things for each other instead, or make things, or bake something.
• Can we start buying locally more? I know a lot of people already do this, but it would be great if this trend continued. It supports local farmers and drastically reduces the amount of resources needed to get food to our homes.
• Can we start packaging food less? Even non-food items (like toys) come with ridiculous amounts of packaging these days. I’d like to see a return to olden ways, when you scooped flour out of a huge bin into a container or something like that. Packaging we throw away (or even recycle) is so wasteful.
• Can we stop buying so much processed food? Real food is so much healthier, requires fewer chemicals and resources, and tastes better once you wean yourself from the addiction to processed foods.
• Can we eat slower, and enjoy the food more, instead of rushing through meals?
• Can we stop our addiction to mobile devices and being connected all the time, so that we can enjoy the pleasure of other people’s company without interruptions, or enjoy solitude or a nice quiet walk without being connected?
• Can we design cities and towns so that they aren’t based on the automobile, so that perhaps private vehicles parked at the outside of cities, and then people used public transportation or walked within the cities? We’d reclaim the streets for the pedestrian, make them alive once again with street markets, cafes, parks, children running around without fear of death, people exercising and doing tai chi and jogging and walking and enjoying a fume-free outdoors.

Again, these are just a few ideas. There are thousands more.

And I’m not saying we should give up techonology. I love connecting with people from around the world! I love being able to access information instantly that I would never have had access to just 15-20 years ago! I love the ability to express myself online that is unprecedented in human history!

But I also think we need to keep the good things that have come with the advances in technology, and throw out the bad, the things that have made our lives worse.

It's amazing how draining frustration can be. Drawing class is so good for me, my ego, my right brain, and my frustrations. It's hard, it's really hard. I don't really know what I am doing, and I don't know for sure when I am successful. All I can do is keep trying, keep flipping the page and moving that conte crayon across it. (I am learning that at least for now when detail isn't important I love conte crayons and sticks of compressed charcoal, it's amazing. Freudian, yes, perhaps, but also so very satisfying.) I have to tune Andy out because his semi-vague, semi-useful classroom monologue drives me crazy. Only because he keeps making more and more suggestions and I don't feel like I have any kind of grasp on last week's. But at the same time, he does say a lot of the same things over and over again, "don't be afraid to throw down lots of material, really exaggerate those contrasts, think about what kind of decisions you are making and be conscious about them, again, think about using that expressive line, where does it need to be faster, what are you trying to convey, how are you placing the figure on the page, what kind of information are you putting on the paper, keeps your eyes on the model and let your pencil be your eyes on the paper....." It's overwhelming and my brain can't take it all in and utilize it at the same time. So I feel like I am sucking it up, but just gotta keep flipping the page for another gesture drawing, try again, (and knead the rubber eraser in my left hand as much as necessary, it's best for physically taking out frustrations). But then he tells me toward the end that he hasn't said much to me all of class because I am really getting the hang of it, I tell I don't feel like I am. So he points out what is good, and I move on, a bit more encouraged and less frustrated. Then just annoyed that I need that nudge to justify my work and make it all okay. I was satisfied with the last two things that I did in class today, though, and it really made my day.

He says that drawing, making art, being in art classes, it doesn't make us better artists, it makes us better people. Tells us that the whole process is about problem solving and finding what our challenges are. Line use? Being too detailed? Bad proportions? Not enough variety? Last week in my chair-drawing horrible angry angst frustration, I realized that perhaps the best thing that I will get from this class is learning how to struggle gracefully, and how to push past not getting it right. Not just the first time, but over and over and over again. I will learn to channel my frustration and to not give up. And in the end, to accept the fact that sometimes the curve of her hip just doesn't quite line up with the line of the bottom of the thigh. I can do a better job next time.

It's a good lesson, especially for its potentially endless applications. I didn't get the post in Venice I was hoping for. I think it's okay. But with my PMS today, it was rougher than I would have liked. Mostly because that would have allowed me to postpone any kind of decision about what the hell I am supposed to do next. Now I have no idea and that period of limbo, of waiting is over and the possibilities and related anxieties are all rushing in to swallow me up.

But only if I let them. I have so much to do right here and now that I can't let worries and preoccupations about a future that is several months away completely eat my soul. It's only a few months, but in that time I still have to write and give my Van Gogh presentation with Cassiope, do several weeks of intense figure studies, memorize my Italian play lines, write the rest of said play, plan and make all the scenery, write two religious studies projects......etc etc etc and love Boulder for my last few months here.

I was thinking about omens the other day because someone in my religious studies recitation brought up The Alchemist by Paolo Cohelo. The book is built around Santiago following omens, but I was wondering what we do if we don't see them. If perhaps we see them, but can't recognize them for what they are....or if we do see them, how do we know that we properly understand what they mean? 

There probably aren't real omens, because I don't really believe in fate. It's a nice idea though, takes away some of the burden of personal responsibility. Blame it on the universe if things go wrong. I do still believe that things always work out as they should, but as for the rest, I won't read into it too far.

Just to clarify: I am crazy, and the date for notification is actually 15 February, so I can stop checking my email compulsively for a week or so.

Ah! Perche' non mi hanno mandato niente?! Mi fa impazzire! Solo voglio sapere se avro' un posto o no. Con questa informazione, posso pensare nell'estate, nel futuro. Sapro' qualcosa. Il problema e' che le notizie dicono che ci manderano una risposta alla domanda fino al 1 febbraio. Beh, forse domani perche' sabato e' ancora feriale in italia. Ma non voglio aspettare di piu'!

Faccio tutto in italiano oggi, perche' mi fa tanto bene. Perche' tutto che volgio fare questa settimana e' parlare italiano, e' andare via da qui. E' una cosa strana, la capacita' di parlare a me, di scrivere, pensare, in un altra lingua. Si, mi fa bene.

Aiuta che Chiara e' la professoressa piu' brava con cui io abbia mai studiato. Parla di tutto con l'entusiasmo, ma con anche la compassione. Se io diventassi un'insegnante, vorrei essere come lei. E' come dev'essere l'educazione.

Mi dispiace a tutti voi, perche' so che non potete capire tutto questo, se capite un pezzitino, tanti auguri!

Mostly I am frustrated that the Peggy Guggenheim sticks to the letter of the law. That "we will notify you by Feb. 1" means that you won't hear anything until then....I hope that they got my application. That's a stupid worry, I know that someone signed for the packet, that's the beauty of international Fed Ex. But blast! I want to know! Grrrrrr. I can't think about other things or plan or even properly daydream until I know if I am spending the summer working in Venice or not.

And the Italian is for my love of the language this week. All I want to do is speak and read Italian. She said read one or the other of these two stories for Wednesday and I have already read through each of them twice. Mixed up fairy tales are fun, but they are even more fun when you read them in another language. And we are doing phonetics, so I am speaking more clearly, and (slowly) with more confidence. When I was there I ran through my grammatical mistakes, just talked to get the point across. Sadly, Marcantonio's class last semester made me grammar paranoid and the lack of constant linguistic stimulation made my speaking skills take a serious nose dive. It's beautiful and so much fun to read ridiculous children's poetry in Italian.

Per esempio: 

Giovannino Perdigoirno
viaggiando in carrozzone
capito' nel paese
degli uomini di sapone.

Gli uomini di sapone
e le loro signore
sono sempre puliti
e mandano boun odore.

Sono bolle di sapone
le loro parole,
escono dalla bocca
e danzano al sole.

Fa le bolle i l papa'
quando sgrida il bambino,
fa le bolle il professore
mentre spiega il latino.

Nelle case, per le strade
dappertutto, in ogni momento,
milioni di bolle
volano via col vento.

Il vento le fa scoppiare
silenziosamente....
e di tante belle parole
non rimane piu' niente.

Giovannino Perdigiorno (a recurring character) traveling around finds this village of men made of soap. They are always clean and give off a nice smell. Their words are bubbles of soap, leaving their mouths and dancing in the sun. Fathers make bubbles when they yell at their children, as do the professors teaching Latin. In houses and the streets, everywhere and always, thousands of bubbles fly on the wind. The wind makes them burst silently and of those many beautiful words, nothing remains.

I love it!!!!!

Ok, basta cosi'!

"Through photographs, each family constructs a portrait-chronicle of itself - a portable kit of images that bears witness to its connectedness. IT hardly matters what activities are photographed so long as photographs get takebn and are cherished. Photography becomes a rite of family life just when, in the industrializing countries of Europe and America, the very institution of the family starts undergoing radical surgery. As that claustrophobic unit, the nuclear family was being craved out of a much larger family aggregate, photogrpahy came along to memorialize, to restate symbolically, the imperiled continuity and vanishing extendedness of family ife. THeose ghostly traces, photogrpahs, supply the token pressnce of the dispersed relatives. A fmaily's phtogrpahy album is generally about he extended fami y0 and, often, is all that remains of it."

"...photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal..."

From On Photography by Susan Sontag p.9

(Drawing upon other parts of Sontag's argument, as well as discussion from class last semester)

Who doesn't have that picture of themselves? You know, it's your fifth birthday and you are wearing one of those paper cone hats. About to blow out the candles, you are making some kind of face, be it a huge grin or the evidence of howling tears. It's part of growing up, boxes and albums of old photographs. 'Quick the baby is standing for the first time, where's the camera?!' We don't want to forget this moment. So instead of enjoying those first steps, one or both parents are searching hopelessly. By the time said machine is found, baby is back on all fours, the adventure over a done with.

My only complaint about a lot of photographic criticism in this vein, as well as more general cultural critcism is the cynical outlook it gives about our approach to life. But at the same time, there are a lot of valid points to be made.

Take, for example, the construction of memory through photography. To take a photo of something is to rip a single moment from the continuity of time. In doing so, the image becomes memorialized. By taking this particular snapshot, that moment suddenly bears a great deal more weight and responsibility than it did before. It's akin to how journaling can work. There are certain experiences that I am wary about writing down because of how that process commits that particular version of the event to the archives of my time. The narrated version I type or scribble down in a book becomes the way that I remember. It's both the process of writing it down and the experience of reading the entry years later. It's dangerous, and a photograph does the same thing. It creates an image of the past that is more like a punctuated equilibrium than a continuity. Additionally, as part of what Alan Sekula calls the "myth of bourgeious folkculture" (I don't agree with this so broadly sweeping terminology, but I kind of like the way that it rolls off the tongue...), there is an inherent belief in the veracity of the photographic image. It's a debate the has plagued photography since its inception and I won't get into here, except to say that because of this understanding, by taking pictures we construct a history that becomes more real in its tangible form than any memory could be. Photographs overide, but also reduce, what the brain recalls.

And what does that particular photograph really tell? What kind of information does it convey? Social codes and habits ensure that the vast majority of family photographs don't reveal dysfunctionalities, only the kind of information we want to see. My mother and her four siblings (that particular Christmas there were five of them) lined up in two rows in front of my grandfather's picture window. I see the early echoes of faces I recognize. She sees so much more, her brother's torturing her with garden snakes, fighting with my aunts over peeling potatoes, fighting each other for seconds of those same potatoes, fainting in church every Sunday morning, my aunt Jeanie's mysterious childhood illness and death, and a myriad of others I can never begin to see or understand. What might you see there? Five awkward children, somewhere around the end of the 50's. You see the parents smiling, the children rolling there eyes as they are lined up for the yearly ritual....and what is this sense? Yes, it's nostalgia.

Sontag calls them "melancholy objects" for every photograph is inherently a memento mori, a reminder of death. The 14th and 15th century German's knew what they were about, their memento mori manifested as skulls in the corner of popular engravings or skeleton's lurking behind the tree, unbeknownst to the young couple walking the countryside. We surround ourselves with these images, evidence of an irretrievable past. And so every photograph, it doesn't have to be black and white, is steeped in nostalgia. Why else do I find such joy in sifting through boxes of my own childhood photographs or my grandmother's stacks of photo albums?

Though I am not sure what my arrival point is, I want to say something about facebook. Although the issue is, of course, much more complex than I want to get into here, the photo section of facebook is a lie. It's a lie by omission, a construction of our lives that we show to people who can't even begin to understand what the images mean. Try it sometime, take one of those innumerable images of yourself on your profile and really think about it, what it means, what it reminds you of, how it makes you feel. It's funny, how we self-advertise so blatantly. Yet, I can look through my own albums, and the images that other people have posted of me, and there is a depth there that none of my "friends" can begin to see.


 

Bella come il fortuito incontro di un ombrello e di una macchina da cucire su un tavolo anatomico....


I love it when knowledge overlaps, when in an essay on creativity through free assciation of words, Gianni Rodari quotes Lautreamont and one of my favorite surrealist photographs.

So I feel like I lifted tons of weights, my body is so sore and I took some asprin to take the fever down. Mamma mia, sick for Christmas, booooo. Mom is getting something else, Dad has been sick since before I got home. It's lame.

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. One star for the ones you've read, two stars for the ones you read for school, three stars the ones you started but didn't finish, and a # for ones you own but haven't read.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina*
Crime and Punishment**
Catch-22 **
One Hundred Years of Solitude**
Wuthering Heights *
The Silmarillion#
Life of Pi *
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses #
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey **
Pride and Prejudice *
Jane Eyre *
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov#
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma ***(I hate Emma Woodhouse!!!)
The Blind Assassin
Zatoichi
The Kite Runner *
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations **
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius *
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran *
Quicksilver Exposition
Wicked *
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man **
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World *
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo *
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King *
The Grapes of Wrath **
The Poisonwood Bible *
1984 *
Angels & Demons
The Inferno ***
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility *
The Picture of Dorian Gray ***
Mansfield Park *
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest #
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels ***
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune *
The Prince **
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes *
The God of Small Things *
A People’s History of the United States
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces *
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners **
The Unbearable Lightness of Being *
Beloved **
Slaughterhouse-Five ***
The Scarlet Letter **
Eats, Shoots & Leaves *
The Mists of Avalon *
Oryx and Crake
Collapse
Cloud Atlas *
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion *
Northanger Abbey *
The Catcher in the Rye **
On the Road #
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance#
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit *
In Cold Blood
White Teeth ***
Treasure Island #
David Copperfield


 

A brief note on finals time and why it drives me crazy:

It might be the classes I take, or just my general semester-long work ethic, but I always find myself at finals time with very little to do. It's a huge time vacuum, this sudden disappearance of academic imperatives from my daily routine. But I can't quite do nothing yet because I still have three tests to take. It's sickeningly funny to me, because I do love taking tests. It's just the waiting for them that makes me crazy. If I could only just sit down this afternoon and do them, boom boom boom, in a row, that would be just fine for me. Then I could actually do things with my day instead of feeling like I should be reading over things until one o'clock. (Which I am not actually doing because I know my shit and am going to get A's on all my tests anyway). I wish it were not so freaking cold! It's ridiculous and my room is freezing. Then I would go out, go walking on Peal and maybe start Christmas shopping. As it is, I didn't get out of bed this morning until I absolutely had to pee so bad that I couldn't stay there any longer. It's a silly time of year, but my brain is starting to run on overdrive again. Mostly, I just want it to be Christmas but I have to sit around and not study for three silly tests before that can happen. Le sigh.

In other news, I have started making books again, which is very satisfying and gives me something to do. I grow tired of constantly being in this intellectual, abstract world. It's what happens when you study art, but then there is also the actual materiality of the stuff, and folding signatures reminds me of that and makes me feel much more grounded.

I didn't sleep enough this weekend and didn't have any caffeine yesterday. Thus when Cassiope came home I was completely passed out on the couch at 9pm. (I stopped reading to rest my eyes at 730, but then it was game over). Needless to say I slept almost 11 hours last night and had coffee this morning, so I feel like a real human again. Sad, I am a coffee addict, but again, le sigh, I could be addicted to a lot worse things.

"Painting words taking walks with grey kittens and red foxes staring me down around street corners and trees strung with twinkling holiday lights. Domains of functions and rose-scented perfume. It's a painfully beautiful moment, watching you stand there with dew drops in your eyes. How phrases become repeated tracks, continuously rolled over in an unconscious consciousness. Deconstruction of personal history and floating photographs, images fragmented and wrested from continuity. It's an illustion of truth that is forever a protected fallacy. Alan Sekula's 'bourgeious folkculture'. So let's be critical of postmodern society. Baking postmodern pumpkin pie and living anachronistically. Quality in handskill. Do we know how to do anything anymore? Baudrillard calls it hyperreality. To call it tangible instead, silently grasping, clawing for something on this skide of the hyperreal. Changing defitions of truth and fiction. Yet fiction is a beautitul escape, to flee the indecision of what lies in front and beyond. An Orison of Sonm-451. Don't read ahead, no peeking! Vertex beomes vortex, singularities where logic looses meaning and previous definitions unravel. A Cartesian expectation dissolving as humanity is losing objectivity. Fighting subjectivity as a standard, holding onto that folklore, the myth of the real not so easily let go. Myths are culturally constructed stories, narrative truths to confer order on disorder. The scientists won't care for this inherent disarray of reality. Maybe they have their own myths, believabe truths, never quite provable. It takes only one counter-example to prove a theory false. Further support is just that, so we can never prove that theory true. So Descartes has posed us an impossible task and adhearance to that assignment will inevitably become a sisyphysian endeavor."

"In fact, I cannot move a finger without disturbing all the stars"

Man is the Measure

Writing Wallace Stevens on the white board this morning, somehow I feel it's a sense of the day. I don't hate November anymore today. Thanksgiving doesn't seem so far and I feel less like the Death today. All the frustrations and moments of despair for the week have faded. While my mind isn't running on full again yet, I managed to write a paper draft and clean my house again already. Little by little, one thing at a time. I really think it was the surprise call from my mom last night, and being able to tell her most of everything. It feels good, to have support in my lost-ness. I wish sometimes that I could be fully lost, and thus just throw myself fully into it. But I have to be at least half grounded in this life right now. Today that's okay. 

Daoist immortals are actually pretty neat, I am going to have to admit. Though i am tired of photocopying things and of going to Denver. 

I need to get back on the ball when I am feeling better. Back to being dedicated to yoga and being more active. I have been so lazy these past few weeks as it is getting cold, and then being sick and super busy. But the super busy is over and soon the illness will be as well and I can treat myself better.

I love supper club. I have gotten to meet new people, and even though we aren't best friends, we all hang out and it works. (As long as it isn't Monday night at my house, because that is too much for me). I felt like a grown up on Thursday night at Jesse's. She has a real job, a real fiance, a really nice apartment. It was like a flash to my parents and their friends and their dinner parties. Weird. I mean, I know that Greg, Jessie, and I are all still students. But it really didn't feel like we were.

I see shades of things to come today. And either way, it's okay.

Professors procrastinate more than students, btw, and they had better have my reccommendations for me next week or there is no way I am getting this internship application to Venice in time!!!! Fie!

Enough, to rake the leaves or format citations, or something like that.

The sound of one hand clapping in a specifically defined infinity.

http://www.parkeharrison.com/

One of those Sunday evenings in October that feels like late December at Wellesley. Libraries feel the same no matter what time of day. A feeling akin to an afternoon at Clapp, holed up in a study room with a mountain criticism I don't understand, words and cadences of a Keats poem that I can't seem to shake.

On life and the length of October, the month that never ends soon enough, yet never I am never ready to finish. I honestly don't care about my birthday this year. Not sure why, just doesn't seem to be that big of a deal.

It's homesickness for something that doesn't exist. opening a jar of jam and a wave of nostalgia for a house on Somers Road washes over me. Step back for a moment while words float detached on the screen in front of me, somehow impossibly disconnected from the fingers that bring them into being.

Somehow I seem to go crazy in the autumn. It's not the potential depths of a November, but an aimless wandering somewhere in October. Just a mind going in so many disparate directions that I can't seem to fully grasp any single one of them.

Like I told Cassiope today, it's not that I don't like learning, quite the opposite, in fact. Only today I seem to be unable to synthesize or coordinate information in any useful fashion. Let me be a sponge, I say. I'lll soak it all up and love it, just don't squeeze me because I can't make any guarantees about what I will release.

It's a silly metaphor after all, sympotomatic, you could say. But somehow, I like being crazy once in a while. I think a lot of everything and a lot of nothing. It's one of those times that I can say things to myself that I won't believe I even considered when I look back. (se quello ha sentito, non lo so.)

I told Antonello about how Marcantonio told us the other day not to think too much in the trapassato del condizionale. "It's the tense of great regrets," she said. Things I would have said, could have done, should have not forgotten. I hope he doesn't take it the wrong way. But I don't know what to say to, "Sarebbe stato bello fare un piccolo viaggio di qualche giorno quando stavi in Italia. Mi sarebbe piaciuto molto." Because it didn't happen, there wasn't time, and there is nothing to be done about it today. It's something, an idea constantly recycled that I might someday fully grasp myself. I screwed myself my one chance for highland national championships and Sarah Gillette told me that "should, could, would, represent the worst verb tense." Eric always said "no regrets" and we kept that one in constant circulation. My zen blogger says to live in the present, so I try to leave the past conditional for specific purposes. Again, I hope he doesn't think that I was chastising him, I just don't want him to spend his time thinking of me with that tone of regret. I don't want him to be sad.

It's all about tangents afterall, tangents and non-linear thought. Perhaps it's the only way to make sense tonight of the failure of sequential narratives.

It's all nonsense really, but to revel in nonsense as some kind of expression of the subconscious. Call it an exercise in surrealism on a Sunday evening. "Pure psychic automatism" to quote Andre Breton in translation. However that actually works.

To put words together simply for the beauty of that cadence, or the flow from one syllable to the next without regard for the truth of a statement. I don't take myself seriously tonight, except maybe to sense the potential on the other side of an constructed self. Wishing this afternoon for a different mode of life, for a different set of expectations.

BUT THAT'S SCARY! Who are we if we try to go beyond? To stretch in different directions to to take a leap of faith. I always say that I will, but the result is never so drammatic. We are not completely free and we are kidding ourselves to think we are. It's just a matter of recognizing the ties that bind, the inhibitions and insecurities that limit, and where the line between truth and construction lies.

But the Buddha would say that there is no essential soul, nothing inherent and true buried somewhere deep within. That's one way to think about it, I suppose. It's sad in a way, I would like to think that there is something about me that is mine and only mine. Something that no one can touch and no one can share. But on the other hand, that sounds so lonely.

It's the consequence of a distinct overload of information, of ideas, and of some intangible sensibility that I don't know how to process. To tell Alan that maybe I'll move to Albuquerque or Santa Fe after going to Europe next summer. But really, who the hell really knows? 

I am afraid of mediocrity, of normality, of the potential banality of life. But perhaps I can find freedom there, freedom from a myth constructed by personal expectations. Freedom to make mistakes without this Platonic ideal I have slowly and carefully let surround me over time. It's part of the difference between reality and abstraction, between the phsyical, and the mental. So where flies the spirit?

Through layers of oil paints, built up over time, one over the other as glazes shimme to trick the eye. Soaring on the swells of a cello sonata, crescendo, return. It flits between the smiles of shared secrets and weaves itself through iambs of sonnets.

Life is fucking beautiful, and I hope we never forget that.

Follow the link and perhaps the title will fall into place.

It's a reduction of something never quite established. A poem he composed on a night ride to the harvest moon. And for three tenths of a second, I though I knew what you meant, standing there with dew drops in your eyes. It's a a painfully beautiful moment, staring out the window of a train as the world races past, like something from a film that I have since forgotten. And so when you sit beside me, holding my hand, I can't help but wonder at the stillness of a morning in July. How the crisp chill of dawn can quickly fade into a sweltering afternoon. Somewhere in August on a different continent all together. And so It's a distinct awareness of something not quite tangible, beyond the reach of autumn leaves and warm October afternoons. Somewhere at the bottom of November or nowhere at the start of May, I'll find you again, in a dream of a moment never realized. And so to avoid the aimless well of sentimentality, I'll laugh at you through another gin and tonic. Let you wrap an arm around my waist, all the while knowing (or at least pretending) that it's nothing but a game. So it's a search for an impossible resolution. But to just be a drop in an ever-rushing, flowing mountain stream. Even the inevitable arrival at open water brings and constantly dynamic and open infinity.

Apparently it's biological to fall in love in October.

'The constant misalignment of reality with a Platonian-type ideal. To misrepresent the world in mental constructions. It only works of you remember to check back and if I know how to recognize the abstraction for what they are. Abstractions blur details, erase contradiction, an reduce the complexity inherent in reality. I don't think I live in reality, I live mentally in a nice cushion of formal abstraction, ideal forms that simplify. It makes things easier to sort out, on a theoretical basis. But it doesn't work when applied to tangible reality. Because that which is real is contradictory, complex, detailed. That's what makes it beautiful, hard, and ultimately worthwhile.'

'To people, to relationships. To try to understand things like love.'

I don't know how to get out.

'The end of September already and it's true that the older I get the quicker that time passes. To grasp a search for something. The problem of the expanded field, the constant exponentialexpansion of potential is the overwhelming depair that sometimes crashes down around me. Because it's wonderful in theory, and brings hope. But once I attempt to contemplate reality, I can't make sense of it and I can't fathom the depths of the uknown.'

To make sense of the coming storm.

'I too am pretending.'

'I line of bloody footprints across and central American capital. The cries, the voices of those who lost their lives. Arrival, set the bowl of blood beside the final prints on concrete and walk away. Statement standing. Fighting those fights that we know we cannot possibly win. But we fight them all the same. A tiny Guatemalan woman beaten bloody by a champoin fighter. It's not a mockery, but something more intuitive. To stand again and again, to face the falling blows even as we know how hard they will fall upon our bodies. But then she sits, beaten, but not broken. So there is perhaps and clearer side beyond the battle. It's a quiet, humble hope.'

Like it sometimes happens in dreams.

'Crazy, just crazy.'

'The difference to be found between 'ands' and 'ors'. Are we exclusive or inclusive? A big group hug or a close cliquee of elitist modernists? Let's even overlap knowledge here, call the modernists 'ands' and the post-modernists 'ors'. But perhaps not to be so dual, set up histories in diametrically opposed, mutually exclusive pairs? Properties of intellectual responsibility, accuracy of analysis and creation of models and paradigms.'

'Done and done. Thank you, come again. Don't be cute! White walls, cement, tile floors. Let's fight against suffocation this morning.'

A return to an earlier Time
Thought patterns re-cycled
And a sense of something
Temporarily forgotten
Writing fast, the wrong
Answers in scratch handwriting
That carries some kind
Of personality.

'I wish that any of this made sense.'