THE RETURN

i dont want this blog to lose its function or become of no use to me.
it started as a coping mechanism for me after i decided to uproot and plant myself somewhere semiforeign. after i decided to move here, i needed to come to this place (however infrequently) and just say something about my life. i feel like i dont need to cope anymore. my craziness has subsided, and i feel at home here now.
but the desire to say something - whether for catharsis' sake or not - is back, so here i am.
i might just use this space as a place to post pictures ive taken. like this one

VULNERABILITY

there are certain moments when the veil cascades down, tenderly unmasking the inner beauty and divinity that connects us all, making us naked and intimate in the highest sense. where profoundly we have the ability to see the commonality of experience manifest itself in warm subtleties of human emotion. safely nestled in life's bosom, enraptured by the simple delicate things. we must not be afraid of being vulnerable, for it is by letting go of our inhibition that we are able to see each others hearts.

FROM MONOLOGUES FOR CALCULATING THE DENSITY OF BLACK HOLES

"...the next day my mom came over. she gave me a note and five dollars. she said: 'take this and buy yourself something nice'.

i would, but i'm not me, and so i don't know what i would want."


"i've never heard god actually talk to me, but he does sometimes call me up and breathe heavily into the phone"

that pretty much sums it up lately.

SIXTY

sixty is the sum of a pair of twin primes (29 + 31), as well as the sum of four consecutive primes (11 + 13 + 17 + 19). it is adjacent to two prime numbers (59,61). it is also the smallest number which is the sum of two odd primes in 6 ways.

my dad would have been 60 years old today, so i would like to talk about what a prime individual he was.

every positive character trait that i feel i possess - i took from him. he taught me how to be an honest, caring, and good man, and to surround myself with honest, caring, good people. men like him are in short supply.

and sixty is also the number of seconds in a minute, and minutes in an hour. i cant help but think about all the time that has passed without him here. all the things that have happened. about how the time we have is so precious.

happy birthday dad.

RESOLVE

in this place
at this hour
on this day

i remain unconquered.

it is this resolve that will see me through.

i must relearn to have faith. good things always come.

ATTENTION WOMEN

BITTERSWEET

i really wish i could take credit for this diagram idea, but im not a genius. i saw the happy/sad face venn diagram somewhere on the internet, and thought it was an amazing idea and decided to make one of my own.

MARCH 20th

i think i have a disease.

EVERYTHING FAILS

in my work and in my life as an artist (if i can really call myself that), i seek to express myself. describe how im feeling. tap in to my psyche. comment on the human condition. relate to people. share something meaningful. all those lofty, altruistic ideals that doe-eyed, naive, energetic forward-thinking positive artists shoot for.

thing is... art, by nature of itself, always fails. there's no conversion rate for emotion.

we've tried. really hard. that's why we created language, so we can convert these abstract, nebulous feelings into something concrete that can be relayed to others. but are they able to deconstruct that information back to abstract ideas? can anyone ever really and truly know what you feel, when you express it through something so flawed as language? ive used the word 'love' to describe my relationship with family, women, dogs, dr pepper and pens.

and i feel things that words havent even been made to describe! how can i get that across?

thats why we turn to art. music. poetry. dance. movies. architecture. screaming. punching. kissing.

but all that fails too, doesnt it?

thats why i love and hate art and relationships and conversation and religion and everything that is wrapped up into this beautiful beautiful existence.

THE TRINITY

IT HURTS SO GOOD

i am living off my savings.
i have no idea where im going or what im going to do.
i completely uprooted myself from family and friends.
i havent eaten this much ramen since college.
i dont know my way around this town.
i constantly feel intimidated.
i sleep in way too late.
i am nervous, scared, and anxious with the world out there.

but ive smiled every day since ive been here. i cant stay down being here. there are so many people here that i just genuinely enjoy. of them, there are people who:

-ive only known a few months.

-i havent seen or talked to in over 5 years.

-i used to literally see every day, and i never knew how much i missed them until i moved here and saw them again.

-are some of my best friends.

-WILL become some of my best friends. ive already decided.

sure, my bank account is taking a hit, and im living in perpetual uncertainty. but honestly, this is the happiest ive been in a long time.

ON DEATH

i do not get mad at death, much for the same reasons i do not get mad at sunsets.

it is true that the sun will leave us, and we will be alone in the cold darkness. but the time will come when we will see those glimmering tendrils of light slowly peek out from behind the horizon, and we will be united again. until that time, i must be content to see you only in my dreams. so for now, goodnight.

ON LOVE

several years ago i was posed with a question that i still keep thinking about.

it was right after my dad died. i was still at that point in the grieving process where you take everything that happens and somehow relate it back to the person you lost. i still do that every once in a while, but for different reasons. anyway - i was in a philosophy class. the jist of the discussion went like this:

we assign value to things based on functionality. example: a knife is a "good" knife when it does its function (cutting things) well. a good pen writes well. and so on. a knife loses its value when it no longer cuts well. a "bad" pen does not write well. easy idea.

so what about people? what function are we supposed to have? what makes a person a "good" person? when do people lose their value?

i dont remember all the ways the discussion went, but i do remember spending a long time talking about it and a lot of people had different things to say. it was hard to nail down one specific thing that defines a person's importance, especially since you can then break down people in to groups. what makes a good man, woman, child, catholic, atheist, american, etc. plus, whereas a bad knife does not cut well for anyone, a bad person can be a good person for someone else.

ive made up my mind that a good person loves well. that's what we're here to do. simple answer on the surface, but its hard to love everything all the time. i've certainly failed a lot.

so, a goal: love. just keep loving and keep thinking about loving.

i miss you dad.

JOBLESS

this is how i spent my time today. i think i need a job.

ART?

so, i did more life drawing last night, and one thing has become obvious: i do not have the patience for life drawing.

i still really like going, but if there's a pose that lasts more than 5 minutes, i really lose interest. plus, i'm honestly really sucky at life drawing anyway, so i get frustrated when im working on the same shitty drawing for 30 minutes or an hour.

but i like the challenge. i don't know if i'll ever feel like i'm good at it, but i really enjoy going. i've started a game with myself where i try to make every drawing fun: only use vertical lines, mess around with proportion, do blind contour stuff, whatever. since it's super informal and there are no grades, i'm really just paying 5 bucks to draw for a few hours. i don't even have to draw the model. i joked last night that i was going to do a 15 minute drawing of the sheet that was used for a backdrop.

i had a real positive energy about going last night, but i really, REALLY sucked. just didn't get it right for some reason. i've come up with several dumb excuses:

1. the model had hardly any figure and didn't do very dynamic poses because she had some kind of injury, so she wasn't fun to draw.

2. i've been mostly painting for about a month now, and it's hard to switch gears back to another medium, especially when you have completely different personal approaches to each one.

3. other than the 2 life drawing classes i've gone to here so far, i haven't done this in like, 6 years.

4. the music the guy was playing totally was not conducive to making art. jane's addiction is just fine, but not what i want to hear when drawing.

5. it's a night class, so i was hungry and sleepy. and right when i started feeling sleepy, dude busts out with johnny cash songs. again, not bad, but if you're sleepy, johnny cash only makes you more so.

6. i'm not buying a big pad of newsprint or charcoal or other "real" art supplies for this class, so i'm using my small sketch book and office pens and pencils. and sitting in a chair. you'd be surprised how different it is when you're standing up, using your whole arm to draw.

each of those excuses are totally true, but also amazingly lame. i just suck at life drawing.

that being said, i have been painting lately, and i like what i'm doing. getting excited about it. i got one painting finished, and 2 more in the works.

there is no beginning, and we are not trembling
oil on canvas
36x24
2010

just having fun here.

A HAIKU

i think i'm in love
shaun made steak and cookies, yum!
too bad he's a dude.

PERPLEXED

i faced it today, for the first time in a long time.

and, you know, it wasn't a big deal at all. in fact, i felt hardly affected.

now what does that mean?

ON INSOMNIA

the noise didn't help last night. still couldn't sleep.

i've been somewhat trying to ween myself off it, but i always think too much at night.

last night the topics ranged between "i don't think hell really exists" to "i really should have been nicer when she came over on sunday." there were other, more trivial ones... but i didn't spend as much time on them.

as far as hell goes, i've been pretty convinced it doesn't exist for awhile. or, if it does, it's not at all what we think it is. actually, i bet we get all of everything wrong. in my mind, hell is pretty much just separation from god, which could be hell enough. but the whole eternal damnation never sat well with me. infinite punishment for finite sins doesn't seem just. and really, i think the whole concept of evil is man-made.

blarg, a blog hardly seems the proper medium to write about the concept of hell. i don't even know what brought it on last night, really. its not like i just made up my mind about it last night, i've thought that for a while. but that's the kind of thing that happens at night when the world gets quiet.

it has gotten to the point where i have to bring my laptop with me if i'm going to be sleeping somewhere different. my mom makes fun of me and says things like "you just can't go anywhere without that computer. what would you do without the internet?" but really, it's so that i'll be able to sleep at night. i really need the noise of something so i don't go off thinking about things and keep myself up.

clock just struck 4. looks like a long night tonight, too.

most of the time i don't complain about it. i always thought there was something exciting and poetic about nighttime. i remember one day talking to my dad - he used to always wake up hours before everyone else. he'd wake up, go downstairs, make his coffee, get the newspaper and work on the crossword puzzle, toss on some light jazz music and smoke a cigarette in the kitchen. he said something along the lines of "i love that time of the day. that's my ME time. everything is quiet. the world hasn't woken up yet. its just me, doing the things i like to do."

i feel that way late at night. in fact, i used to sneak out of mom and dad's house sometimes after everyone was asleep and just go for a walk down the street. its comforting being the only person in the world sometimes.

but lately, i haven't been able to enjoy it. i guess there are too many things going on in my life right now that i feel scared about, and i don't necessarily like being alone in the world lately. i think i've found that i enjoy companionship.

LIFE DRAWING

so there's a life drawing class up here in austin that only costs 5 bucks to go to. i've started going there with an old friend i knew when i went to school here. since it was the first time i wasn't actually being graded or criticized or had anything to worry about with style, i just messed around and had some fun.

WHY I HATE TALKING ABOUT ART SOMETIMES

kind of ripping off robert rauschenberg and ralph steadman, but it's fun.

FLYCATCHERS

so, right before i packed up all my stuff and moved to austin, i went to an art show in houston. one of my good friends was working with the curator there, and she said it was a pretty cool show, plus i wanted to just see her before i left anyway.

i was planning this move for awhile, so i had been setting aside every little bit of money that i could. i had set a goal to have X thousand bucks saved up so that i would be able to have a little time off once i got to austin. i came into an unexpected amount of money thanks to a check from my grandfather and a nice bonus from work. so i decided that if i saw anything at the gallery that struck my fancy, i would buy it for my new place in austin - as long as it wasnt too expensive.

then i saw this painting called flycatchers by heather bause. i really, really liked it.

so i decided to buy it.

i talked to both my friend and the curator of the gallery, and they were both happy and excited to bring out the red dots that signify a painting has been sold. the curator said "if you like, heather is here and you can speak with her."

honestly, i didnt really want to talk to her. i sometimes fancy myself an artist, and personally i dont really like talking about my work. and most of the artists i know dont like talking about their work either. its actually pretty surprising how unpretentious most artists are. anyway, i didnt want to talk to her, but i didnt want to be rude, either.

so i said i would talk to her.

first of all, she was not bad to look at. so that made it a good decision right off the bat.

i started with the real general stuff. i told her my name, that i really liked her painting (all her work in the show, really), stuff like that. we talked about the formal aspects of it. the graphic quality of her style (turns out she was a graphic designer). the lines. the diagonal feel. the brown background (my favorite color, and i told her so). the linen she painted it on (special stuff thats apparently only found in germany).

then she started telling me "the story".

she had grown up in texas, gradguated, became successful, then met her husband, married him, and moved to germany (her husband is german, she told me). she quit working when she had her son. when he turned three, they decided to move back to the US. so her family packed up and came here. she still wasnt working. she started to feel a little upset. like everything was in chaos.

during this time, she studied birds in her free time, and her and her son would go birdwatching together. she said that birdwatching with him made her happy, so she decided to start a series of bird paintings. all the birds were native to north america.

she said, "then suddenly i had all these paintings that made me happy. and life didnt feel chaotic anymore. so thats what these are about. finding happiness amist chaos."

i was shocked. "wow. well, you arent going to believe this, but i quit my job and im packing up everything and moving to austin even though i dont have a job lined up there. so now this painting holds a special place with me."

THE POST ABOUT NOTHING

i was going to write something.

first, it was going to be something proud, proclaiming my masculinity and stubbornness.

but i don't really feel masculine or stubborn.

then i was going to write a haiku about how i miss her sometimes.

but who am i kidding? i don't really miss her. and i was having trouble thinking of a good 5 syllable way to start it anyway.

then i realized that sounded pretty stubborn.

but i still wanted to write a haiku, and that's really not that masculine.

my stomach started hurting, so i became preoccupied with that for awhile.

i want a sandwich.

no, i want to write something.

what i really want is to be able to go to sleep.

see, for years i've needed some noise to be able to fall asleep. i've normally fallen asleep with the tv on or my computer playing a dvd. i need the noise so i don't think about things.

thinking about things makes it hard to sleep.

not even deep things. sometimes i think about how old my nieces and nephews will be when i'm 40, or that when i'm 33, my mom will be 66. and when my youngest niece is 30, my sister will be 60.

sometimes i think that i've spent over one-fifth of my life without my dad, and i wonder what it would be like if i could talk to him now. i never got a chance to drink a beer with him.

so i need noise. so i don't think about things.

i didn't have noise tonight, and my stomach hurts. so i started thinking about stuff.

the only other times i've been able to sleep without noise is when i was sleeping next to her.

when i started out, this post was going to be called "ma jolie".

god, that's french.

and so pretentious.

it means "my pretty". it's a painting by picasso that i like a whole bunch.

its supposedly a woman with a guitar, but of course it doesnt look like that. but it doesn't have to, because it's beautiful.

i used to call her ma jolie.

it was supposedly love, but of course it didnt work like that. but it didn't have to, because it was beautiful.

i guess that sums up my thoughts about it better than anything else.

between a square and a cube

i am twenty-six years old.

26 is the only number that is between a square (5x5=25) and a cube (3x3x3=27).

recently i left behind everything i knew because i found it easy, comforting, flat, boring, and unsatisfying. i feared becoming complacent. i saw my life becoming plain and uninspiring - stifling, even. confining.

so i left it.

i now find myself in a spiritual and emotional sense of limbo, glad about what i left behind but still not where i want to be. i am trying to get to that one place where i feel free and good about what im doing. where my life has meaning and depth.

i have left behind the square. im waiting for the cube.