My small world

There's something alluring about writing late at night. I've been thinking about how many things that are common to us in our everyday life are actually the result of poor solutions. Telephone wires. Electricity is amazing and brilliant (I couldn't be doing this otherwise) but figuring out how to get it to everyone was poor, still is, wires strung up on poles across every road in our lives. Suspended wires. Most things on a commercial level involve poor solutions at some point. Stricnine in icecream so it's scoopable... (I can't use the spell check function on my mac because it doesn't seem to recognize the path. Don't understand that.) Food involves most of them, poor solutions. Telephone poles are ugly but not depressing like chemicals being injested through our fruit.

So I'm going to start paging again. I've been almost inordinately excited about this. I get to make the call on monday that will probably solidify when I start. I've been struggling to answer the question of how I can make a small amount of money to pay for my recent investments, something very part time and low stress, and when I remembered paging I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it before. I was happy paging. I was happy with my small world, I left it for higher pay and to become more responsible and self-reliant. But that world was full of stress, anxiety and mild unhappyness which I supplemented by being a very active consumer and saving nothing.

I did a portfolio review with SCAD reps today, and saw a presentation. I was impressed, which I didn't expect. Not that SCAD isn't impressive, I just didn't think it would sway me at all back towards them and it did. Not enough to change my first choice, MCAD, but enough to put it back in the running. The rep who reviewed my work was great. He gave me a great recommendation which I will be using. My dad came with me, which was wonderful. We took the lightrail in. I really enjoy the lightrail ride and the view into Baltimore, it's very beautiful and gives me a special feeling. We had to get off at Lexington market which is a _very_ black area, white is rare, especially me and my dad kind of white. I've been told not to be in that neighborhood at night. We walked by this group of old men standing around a couple card tables covered in random things for sale and for some reason it reminded me of the side walk sellers that are all over the cities of Europe. New York is like that too. Tons of people with odd goods (usually knock-off names or gimmicky art) spread out on card tables. The oddest people were in France, in the Moulin Rouge area, they didn't have tables at all but ran around to all the obvious tourists and pushed bags of fake Lacoste polo shirts in their faces and spoke abbreviated sentences about cheap deals. John actually bought from them and in part because they were like an attack. He said he actually felt like he had just been raped.

I saw a play tonight at the navel academy that even if I had tried to remember the name I doubt I would have. It was about a colony of criminals started in Australia and this governers idea of trying to, well, rehabilitate them with culture. He had them be in a play. I think the acting was very nice, but much of what was said was incomprehensible due to pronunciation or because it was said quickly and passionately and all slurred together.

I like my little life, it's quiet and unanounced and mostly fulfilling. There are certain things I hope for in future. There is the dream of someone else. I like that line. I revel in the prospect of going about my business with out fuss or disturbance, with out notice even.

I realized something tonight. A big part of my infatuation with old things (treasures) is I have this deep yearning to assemble a material past for myself and it takes on a few different forms. One is the pleasure of collecting old machines, jewelry, clothing and furniture and the other is the vision of the old attic hiding wonders from the distant past, an old trunk with an ancient wedding dress, a packet of discolored letters bound in aging twine, old photos that connect to my history that I don't know at all, leather bound books with embossed gold titles... I long for a material past. Material past. A physical memory. I know it has something to do with our moving around and purging, our absense of cohesive objects that draw a line back. But to find that longing there, to know that it has been a small, strong, steady flame that has lived in me through the years, -that- I do not know why. Why do I long for a material past? Is moving around a lot and not having one enough, or is there a deeper need behind it? Fueling it?

It is strange that there are memories that have such clarity to us that the emotions we carry with them are just as fresh as that first moment we experienced them and that there are other parts of our lives, even as close as days away that are already lost... that for what ever reason did not, in any way, engrave themselves on our memories and were forgotten perhaps as soon as the moment passed. And then all the fuzzyness inbetween.

I should sleep...

Anxious

Hmmm, I had to totally rigg getting to my own blog. For some reason my computer doesn't think my blog is a safe webpage, urg. So I'm feeling very confused and wrong right now. The strange thing is I'm not doing bad, compromising or questionable things, I'm just having a hard time processing certain decisions right now and knowing how I want to respond. A guy at an art shop I go to scribbled a note about going to coffee on my receipt, I got a friend request on facebook from a total stranger and a note in my inbox from another. I've never felt so much internal pressure before about doing the right thing in any of these situations. On top of that this whole computer thing, my laptop and photoshop, having my illustrations scanned and buying a graphic tablet are sort of pushing me over the edge. I'm internally overwhelmed. (incidentally I totally love the band Islands, I've been checking then out on my ipod. Most excellent...)

So I finished my childrens book and am about to pay 260 dollars for high quality scans... But I still need a graphic tablet to be able to do anything with them in photoshop... Or just a bloody mouse. I don't know, I don't know... I feel lost on an endless ocean, suspended, not knowing which direction leads to land, if any. The thing, the one thing that is the true factor in this feeling of ill ease is that I have no income, I have a limited amount of money and my expenses so far have already exceeded what I have and these expenses aren't done. I thought psychologically I'd be okay with carrying a bit of debt for a little while- but so far I'm not! I'm really upset... I was also hoping investing in my kids book right now would be the right move, but I'm starting to have misgivings. Like I'm a fool, everything I do is foolish. And I feel irresponsible for sitting here blogging instead of cleaning my disaster of a room or picking up and paying for my very expensive scans which are ready. But I can't shut up the feeling, that irresponsible feeling. (creepy, the song on right now starts with a scratchy voice announcing that he is a murdered demon and that the world will end in 2007, something about a really cold endless winter.)

I volunteered last thursday at a MAP benefit and it was god awful. I was given misinformation about parking with their vallet and they refused to reimburse me for my parking fees, made it sound like the reason I didn't know what was going on was my fault and were totally disorganized, unhelpful and nasty. Then when she asked if she could count on me coming back I lied and said yes, because I was too chicken to confront her. There is an email in my inbox headed thank you from said person that I am avoiding because at some point I'm going to make myself have enough courage to tell her the truth.

I keep dreaming that I can do magic, lots of wands, some times it's in my hands- which is cooler. I killed Voldemort last night. But I also had a very darkly precious dream that involved living out a fantastical childrens book that a woman was telling and complaining that it was a dream that she had had one night and found it in a childrens book one day, she was flabbergasted that an artist had done this with out her knowledge, stolen her dream story. It starts with a little girl (a sort of middle class victorian one with a huge ribbon in her hair and a stylish but uncomfortable looking dress sitting at a desk with a chimney above it clasping too small tickets that become a portal when layered on each other correctly and held up in the chimney. The child is pulled up through the chimney to the sky and begins to fly like a bird. Soaring above the earth, which is like a vast savannah of grass land, large masses of water, and migratory bird patterns taking up the air creating the potential for many collisions. I was the little girl at the point that she ran into the birds and couldn't figure out how to stay up in the sky and pass the vast sea of birds with out pain. It was both wonderful and disconcerting. When the adventure ended I wanted to illustrate it myself, but I didn't want to upset the woman who originally had the dream, I wanted to figure out how to do it so she would be okay with it.

I feel like I always have clothes to hang up. It's one of those tedious never ending jobs (like feeding yourself and bathing). Some times I wish I didn't have any jobs that involve upkeep. I feel hugely inefficient as a machine. Washing clothes doesn't bother me because I keep the pile in a basket til it's big enough and then just toss it into the wash. Hanging involves dealing with each individual article, arg. Sometimes the basket just stays on the floor til all the clean clothes have been worn and I can just turn around and toss everything back in to be washed once more. I guess I just don't care at all about things like wrinkles. I'm a lot like my dad.

The other biggest problem I'm having right now is making my own decisions. That is eating me up because I have never trusted or believed in my own judgement and now I am using it and carrying all the responsibility for my decisions. It doesn't seem to be feeling any more natural, just painful because I am having to make some very big ones- because I made one core decision about what I want right now and these others are inherently flowing out of it. The run away urge is surfacing in me again. When things start to make me anxious I want to run to another state far away from them, somewhere where I am a stranger and no one expects anything from me where I can feel free and unimpeded. But it's only because I let these things here have dominance over me instead of taking charge of them and keeping healthy boundaries.

(I apparently can't spell check my blog on my laptop. God I wish I knew more about computers...)