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...