driving me...

I still have six more hours of work to go and I'm starting to freak out because shouldn't I be doing something productive with my time and I've already read my daily stuff from the internet and how am I going to fill six hours?

On another note my roommate left our front door open last night when she came home around 10:30. Not just unlocked, but actually open about a foot. Luckily I was having trouble sleeping and went to the kitchen to get some water, whereupon I closed and locked the door. My roommate was fast asleep in her room. Isn't that great? She's so trusting. Damn my cynical, fearful attitude. Why can't I be like her and just invite people into our home while we're asleep?

She apparently has a problem with doors. I already had to have a talk with her about leaving the refrigerator door open.

symbols and metaphor, I don't get them

Right now I'm reading The Courage to Create by Rollo May. Though I think some of his examples encompass a narrow view of art, he does make some interesting points. On Marianna's suggestion I'm going to explore my thoughts in relationship to his writings. It's this whole critical thinking kick I'm trying to get into, though it may be a bit circuitous. Let's see what happens.

Each person experiences reality differently. Understanding another person's experiences is difficult and often dull (I'll come back to address the dullness aspect later). This is not a discussion of a person's political or moral beliefs but of how each person actually experiences reality. How does a person makes sense of and bring order to their world? If we could experience another's order would we perceive it as illogical, pessimistic, irrational, beautiful? How can we experience another person's reality? Art is the medium, the language through which a person may reveal their world. The artist is able to translate his experiences, his personal world, into an idea outside of himself. This idea reflects the artist's subconscious, unconscious and conscious view of the world. Through art the spectator is offered an encounter with the artist's world. May talks a lot about having an encounter with art. The more intense the encounter the better we are able to perceive the artist's world.

I am enormously intrigued by the idea of perception and thought. This is the basis of my own art. I love art that pulls me into an unfamiliar world, art that offers an alternate reality. I strongly believe (I came up with this idea in college and it still sticks with me, who knew?) that if an artist is completely committed to their performance and understands the reality of the world they've created then the audience, no matter how perplexed they may be, will be engaged. If the artist is honest in their world view and strives to accurately portray that view the spectator will be engaged. Or at least, I would be engaged. And that's the point of my art, to give my perceptions life in a way I find fascinating. Of course, the hope is that other people will also find the result interesting but that can't be the goal. It is when we dismiss our world view that art falls flat.

Okay, that's what I have for now.

You know those times when you feel like your depression is really just brought on with your own thinking and really it's pretty pathetic but you just don't know how to interact with people and it just doesn't seem worth it to even try even though that's totally selfish and then you just kind of sink a little deeper because you are being so selfish and why did you even go out in the first place when you could have just stayed at home and furthered the development of your fantasy world where things are okay and it doesn't matter that you're never good enough or, to be more accurate, the best, and aren't you really just depressed because you don't have anything else to hold onto, though when you think about it you really do kind of hate your life and you think about calling people but everyone you know has their own problems so you try to call the most "stable" person you can think of but they don't answer so you call the next most "stable" person but they don't answer either and then you realize that depression can just feed other depression so you don't know who to talk to and your talking to anyone else would just be so self-centered and why can't you just be happy for other people for once and forget about yourself and your own damn problems and you notice that you're starting to do things similar to things that someone you used to be friends with did and when he did them you found them really frustrating and you wanted to tell him to just fix his frickin' life already but now you're doing the same thing and then you go home and write some ridiculous passive thing in a public blog that's probably also annoying and stupid?

Yeah, I never feel like that either.

Sincerity

You are a person who deserves to live happily, as all people do.

Something is wrong with the grammar in that sentence. What I mean to say is that you, being a person, deserve to live happily because all people deserve to live happily. I'm not saying that all people actually do live happily but the sentence can certainly read that way. What'a a better but still succinct way to say that? More to come as I figure out what sincerity means.

Dying Brain Cells

in my apartment
"Damn, this underwear keeps riding my asscrack. I'll just pluck it out...oh wait, I'm wearing a thong."

at work
"I've only been here for 2 1/2 hours. Why am I so hungry already? Oh right, Emer'gen-C for breakfast."

on the crosstown bus, heading west
"I'm glad I bought this."
waiting for the train
"Is this what I meant to buy? I think I bought the wrong thing."
on the crosstown bus, heading east
"I totally bought the wrong thing. I even thought about how I might be buying the wrong thing but I was sure I wasn't."
at the store
"I bought the right thing after all."
waiting for the bus
"God it's hot."
on the crosstown bus, heading west
"Why am I so hungry? Oh right, Gatorade for breakfast."
waiting for the train
"I should've been home by now."
at home after opening the purchase thereby cancelling any sort of refund
"I didn't even need to buy this. I had one in my closet."

walking downtown
"What was I just thinking about?"

A More Interesting Life

I just had a hot, sticky, sweaty (it was frickin' 98 degrees out) midday dream where I was in a sort of virtual reality movie that was weird and kinda dark but so very lovely. I was walking through this sort of shop when the director came into the movie with me. I turned to her and said, "This is one of my favorite things. I love it every time I see it." And then I started crying because I was so glad something so wonderful existed. I then woke up and realized that that movie doesn't exist after all. I got a little sad not only because it doesn't exist but because I sure haven't seen much art lately that's so good it makes me cry, particularly not my own. Art is always so much better in my head.

Just like any other person, I was having a discussion about grammar the other day with a friend of mine. We were talking about grammar pet peeves. One of his was the phrase "whether or not" since you don't need the "or not" part because the word "whether" already implies one thing or another. I recognize that "whether or not" or "whether or no" is also an idiom but it seems like one that's a bit suspect in its grammar. I was in total agreement with him and kept nodding my head while secretly thinking, "I need to remember to stop saying that." That brings to mind a little game that I think of just about every time I see or hear the words "weather" or "whether." And here it is:

What's the phrase shown below?

wheather

And then that puzzle brings to mind this one, again with the same question:

What's the phrase shown below?

ualls
now

I'm pretty sure I couldn't figure these out when I first read them and just looked at the answers. Of course, it didn't help that the answers were on the opposite page. Out of the four people who might be reading this (Ida, Laugher, Caustic and maybe Liz) I bet one of them even knows where I first encountered those puzzles. And she's probably annoyed that I, and not she, has the book.

And now I should clean my room. A task I am doing my best to put off as I'm already literally dripping sweat and all I've been doing is sitting on the couch. But I just realized that I can listen to wait wait...don't tell me! while I clean and that makes things much more fun. Better than a spoonful of sugar. I already have two rotten teeth.