they say life is a highway
and its milestones are the years
and now and then
there's a tollbooth
where you buy your way with tears

(anon)

untitled

When I was about eight years old my "imagination was launched" (R. Serra) the moment I looked down from the mountain overpass in Hong Kong, way down below to the valley where the downtown city was located. It was dusk and the skyscraper with the needle and the changing colors was purple...then changed to blue. The vast space surprised me. The buildings large and small, magnified and reduced. I wondered why we paid so much to go to amusement parks or to do touristy things that cost 80 HKD when this was better. But maybe that was better left unaddressed. I wanted to be left alone up there. Watching. Waiting to be enveloped into that space.

i would spend days
explaining
if i could
it's not as if i don't hurt too
or don't feel it
maybe i get numb
every (1) once in awhile
and have to fight it back
or fight for my
goodness back
earning it only when he's ready
i go to cleveland
to "find myself"
but i'm not here
go to nowhere,
go to everywhere
the place i aggrandize in my wildest
past dreams
but it's not here either
i'm not here either
perhaps i'm sick of individuality
the only times i feel me
are when i am effortless and part of not me
but a giant, amorphous we
and i am lost in the drawing
on the page
takes me so long just to make a couple marks
but four and a half hours are gone and i haven't noticed that my first model
girl moved out of the picture
and i can't draw her tshirt perfectly
anymore
but i lost myself
and found
and lost and found and lost and found
in the water and the branch of the tree
there is no me
only specific concentrated energy
built to last for a few decades then blow back up into smoke again
you want to know why i can't contain myself
but i'm fully aware that i'm not built to last and when im drawing i'm thinking of the silver light
the silver light i let myself feel thinking it couldn't
possibly be real
but it was and all of a sudden i am here alone and

"
no one else can feel it for you
only you can let it in
no one else, no one else
can speak the words on your lips

drench yourself in words unspoken
live your life with arms wide open

i break tradition
sometimes my tries
are outside the lines
we've been conditioned
to not make mistakes
but i can't live that way,
no..

staring at the blank page before you
open up the dirty window
let the sun illuminate the words
that you could not find
"

When I was in high school---fresh outta middle school, just entering the scary world of 2000 plus people milling about in super small hallways, yelling things, bumping to music, seniors pushing past still snot-nosed fourteen year olds, scoffing on the way to their cars in the senior lot down at the bottom of the hill---I used to blog. Almost every day. I would allow myself to care, allow myself to bleed, to show emotion, to cry, to be sad over the people and the things and the places that I missed. I never felt apologetic. I never really worried if someone saw me crying.

I'm twenty now. I'm supposed to be moving into adulthood. Every one around me has a grown-up job. And I am ashamed to cry.

I am scared to show weakness. I am scared to grow up and most importantly, I am scared of being alone. Even as I pray to the god I choose, I am scared of being alone. My phrase this year has been "What's easy is not always right." The choices I've made haven't been easy. I don't know if that makes them right but I don't care to analyze data in search of regret fragments. Did I choose based on other people? Did I choose based on what I wanted?
How can you possibly separate out those things? But those questions I ask.

I think of her face. The fourteen year old girl...pensive, now, not because of the algebra but something she won't say and instead she hides behind slightly caustic, sarcastic comments, and she reminds me of my fourteen year old self. Perhaps that is what takes me back, or I'm just prone to nostalgia....

I write to survive and nothing less. I write to live life the way I want to live---both painfully and joyfully aware of all of the ups and downs it has to offer. How do you choose without looking to others? How can you stand on your own two feet, refusing to lean on anyone, without missing something? P.D. used to say you must avoid dependence, and independence, and work towards interdependence. He won't even meet with me now. I don't care. I will love him until the day I die--the professor who helped to show me the light of the world, helped me to believe that the written word can ignite the fire in the soul, can breathe life in God's words, and nothing less.
But only if they're written right.

I am scared to make bad choices. I am scared to give in. I am scared to not give in and let the outside make my choices for me. I only speak of high school so much because it's not where I am at right now. When I was in high school, middle school was where it was it. Fuck man...in middle school I was probably talking about how great elementary school was. Sentiment--it'll get ya.

You know that one Vagina Monologue? where she lists the memories?
"Memory: five years old. The pretty lady....."

I have those. that is the order in which I often think.
Memory: 17 years old. I am driving down the interstate I frequented every damn day. There's the bronze dome. Why do they say it's ugly? It completes this city. Bitterness ekes out the side of my beloved car. My runaway car. My escape car. My everything car. I live in him, think in him, dream in him. He is part of me. He can span a state in a day. With him I can go anywhere. Bitterness runs down the sides...becomes a part of the oil and the tire grease left on the road. It is nothing and of no comparison to what I experience now: a greed-less power. An effortless and want-less existence. And I zoom away knowing I have deep black coffee to look forward to and hours of mix cds. Goodbye. If you didn't want to say goodbye you didn't have to.

Memory: 17 years old. Three black coffees later. I am ready to see this new town. Village, as I think of it. Global wanderer, proudly stamped on my chest, but ready for a humble abode. It is nothing. All of a sudden...where is this place? Is that the mall? Is this it? a Meijer? Too small to be acceptable...but i'll wait...Flash forward to first day of school. Matching North Face backpacks. Blond, flowing hair. (why are they all blond?) pavement leading up to a beautiful glass structure. (how is this a high school?) Perhaps everywhere is like this. Small town midwest. Africa. Asia. Europe. Perhaps everywhere there is cattiness...there are hierarchies....there are people who'd rather blow each other off. There are structures you cannot disentangle. There are mean people, there are nice people, there is everyone in between, and there are only a few with whom you feel a spark in your chest and feel the need to latch on, sharing with them an invisible cord that you don't want to let go of your grip on.

Perhaps you cannot help it.

Like Carrie from Sex and the City...I recap my day by typing up a journal entry at 12:30 am.

Coming home from the cleaning products section of the grocery store at exactly 12:12 am, I'm eager to get started on the bathroom, the kitchen, and whatever else I can find to tidy up and clean. I have my new green products spray cleaner, extra sponges, and new paper towels. I get to the bathroom, finish the quick little cleaning it needs, then head back to my room....and plop down on my bed.

The thought of cleaning a community space excites me. I like doing dishes...(a new development) because I know that my roommates like to come home to a clean sink. Cleaning the bathroom...I mean...I wasn't able to do much because it was clean already, but, who doesn't like to come home to a clean bathroom? Who doesn't need a clean bathroom, actually? When I return to my own room, however, a different feeling settles over me. I try to coax myself to treat me as nicely as I try to treat others, but that proverbial horoscope wisdom doesn't last as long as I might like it to. I don't want to do work for myself. I don't want to. This is my problem, I've discovered. This is why I need a career goal in mind. Not necessarily because I need to know my five year plan and have every step mapped out, but because I need assurance that I'll actually be doing tangible THINGS for others and that I'll be able to see the results of that. Teaching was something I could latch onto and be like "hey, I'll be able to witness myself helping kids, kids will know me, every day will be....rewarding." Saying, "I might do something in art," is so vague, it's almost mind-numbing if you consider the scope of what that could be, not to mention terrifying when you look at alumni from art schools that are now just working for a simple branding company (gosh forbid one for cleaning products like the ones I just sifted through for a good hour while the stock boys looked on in confusion).

It's not that I don't believe in the work that I'm doing here. Or, the "process," I'm not sure if taking a couple of classes and spending most of my time wandering and pondering can be considered "work." I am enjoying art so much. Enjoying treating myself to new colored pencils. To a canvas. To a new tube of paint. I'm also being more materialistic, and more wrapped up in my own head....(have you noticed?) But since I am so separate from the rest of the world, currently, only seeing a few people and not my usual 1000 per day, I find myself enjoying the solitude but longing to create, to make an impact, for heaven's sake to come down here and BLOG at least instead of playing Xbox or watching American Pie 2!

Isn't that everyone's longing, though? To leave something behind in this world? To leave a mark, because we are impermanent and so we long to create something permanent? A legacy, a masterpiece, a legend, a history?

I have a thirst for a lot. I want to create art because I want to say something. Being around so many "liberals" or at least similar people to me on shallow levels at college, it's like, I don't so much feel my voice is completely unique but yet.....there is something there, you know? I think the space I occupy as a human being IS unique. I don't think there are that many people out there who are actually like me. And I think that's worth something.

Unsticky Resolutions

So. It's been awhile since my last blog post, though I promised myself that this (blogging regularly) would be a New Year's resolution that would stick. It's the start of my second month here in Columbus. I do not at all regret taking time off to explore my true interests and to take a break from large loads of work. Knowing I'm missing out on a semester with friends and friendly, familiar faces is hard but knowing I'll be back in the fall is a great form of security.

I ended up dropping my intense design course, so now I have the one Figure Drawing course until the middle of March. When the middle of March hits, I will begin an online 5-credit intensive Spanish course, and a course at OSU for beginning design principles. I'm happy with the switch. This means that I will be occupied with two 5-credit classes from March until June. On the very first day of June, I will be leaving to prepare to go to Brazil. Brazil will last for one month, then I will travel around South America for a bit. After that, I'll return to Columbus for the last month and a half, then move back into my house at MSU.

My Figure Drawing course is fantastic. It's everything I want art to be. Relaxed, intense, inspiring, natural, beautiful. I love studying the human figure. Actually, I thought it might be boring to like study anatomy and look up anatomy books and try to figure out how to draw muscle of the body...now, I feel, what could be better? Though people are all different shapes and sizes, the actual form of muscles never change and the general composition of the body, so there are ways to improve at particular body parts, or the like. I like the idea of that kind of mastery. Or aiming at it.

Officially, I have declared my majors and have mapped out a plan. It sounds silly, but last night when I couldn't sleep after driving back to Cbus from MSU, at first I was watching tv programs I've never seen before but secretely been curious about--(Dr. Drew's Celebrity Rehab, anyone?), but also, those ended and became mush or something and there was suddenly nothing on but infomercials and I stumbled across one for Tony Robbins, the motivational speaker and educator. I felt like--even though you have to pay 19.95 to actually get the deets--this quenched my thirst. Tell me, Tony! I wanted to yell out, though there were two people already asleep in this apartment, plus a hyperactive cat. Tell me how to improve my life!

Well, he did. Maybe I squeezed the already-squeezed orange to get out as much juice as possible, but hey. NOW, I want to change! No, I mean, really. I want to make a plan and stick to it. I want to accept that uncertainty exists but still make decisions anyway! So I've made decisions. No to Ecuador currently, yes to Brazil. Yes to going to OSU for a quarter. Yes to taking Spanish online. No to getting an internship right now. Yes to staying in Columbus until school starts in the fall. Finally, I have actually declared my second major as interdisciplinary humanities. This allows me to get credit for all the English courses I've already taken, credit for the public affairs classes in a new way, and finally, the ability to take art courses as part of my major. Aka, the perfect way to complete my glob of randomness in an organized fashion! My diploma will be two-fold. First, a traditional public affairs degree, and then another in art, english, and public affairs. In addition, this will allow me to work toward the specialization in design that I've always wanted. It may not prepare me directly, but my interests are so scattered and my experience so all over the place that it's obvious that I don't want to be funnelled down a particular tunnel anyway. Law school? (not really though)Grad school? Becoming a teacher in Teach for America? Volunteering abroad? Whatever! All are options.

I'm finding that the best, the very best advice I've ever gotten is "Be Yourself." No one else CAN be you. You already know who "you" "are," and you just have to tune into that and believe that you can't help yourself unless you just go along with what you already are.