Time.

Time moves.  It is a continual force that cannot be stopped, and we shouldn't want to stop it.  Living, growing, aging - these are all beautiful things that require the movement of time.  Sometimes I want time to slow down, and sometimes I want it to speed up.  In all these wishings, it remains constant, it continues to move at the same pace it always has.  There are some moments I want captured forever and others I wish I could quickly forget.  Still other moments leave me bewildered - I'm not sure what to think.  Life is rarely as simple as we would like it to be, or as complex as we can make it out to be.  Sometimes, sometimes I just have to wait and see.  Patience may not only be a virtue, but a key.

to be stunning

Wow.  My 101st post.  Maybe I'm actually getting the hang of this blogging thing.

This morning I'm thinking a lot about something I don't really talk much about because it's a sensitive topic for women... or maybe people in general who face any kind of struggle with it.  I've always had some issues with body image and weight - particularly weight, because I think I look frickin' awesome, I would just look frickin' awesomer at 135-140 lbs.  I've decided that one of my goals in life is to be absolutely stunning.  Stunning personality, stunning looks, stunning life -- to be someone that others look at and have to take a half step back (almost falling) and go "woah!".  Well, college totally ruined that with the freshman 15 that for me became the like freshman 20 or 30 (I don't know, I didn't have a scale)... and then my sophomore year I got up to 200 lbs.  (actually probably 205 or something, but I was completely horrified by this)  Basically, my life was a whirlwind of crazy and I didn't know how to cope with it.  And we had a fully stocked buffet style cafeteria where I was required to have a meal plan.  You know, living on my own and having to buy all my own food would do wonders for my waistline.  Moving home has done wonders.  Having a job that keeps me busy has done wonders.  Leaving the stress of school behind has helped, too.  Anyway, I write, because in the last two or three years, I have lost about 20 lbs - a little more possibly depending on how high I actually got in 2009/2010 - maybe even 25 lbs?!?.  I really don't like weight to be a main life focus so I rarely admit to people that I actually think about it, but I would like to be a fit person - it's part of the stunning goal.  In the last couple weeks I finally broke 180 - in the lower direction. (I dropped to 179.8)  Today I reached a new low.  I am excited to keep seeing the numbers drop.  It's a slow process, but thankfully it's been a steady one, and with this sort of thing to actually be a real life changing forever thing, it needs to be slow.

questions

I know this is a stupid thing to say because it seems so obvious, but it can also be obviously overlooked.  If you want answers to questions, they have to be asked.  If you aren't sure, don't ask.  There are some things I have thought about asking recently that I haven't because I'm not sure I want the answer, and other things that I am glad I found the answer or at least some answers to.  Asking questions also happens to be the best way to get to know someone.  I'm kind of a volunteer of information myself, but I'm discovering that most people require that we dig.  And sometimes it's the digging that says that we care, because if I'm willing to ask questions and listen to the answers, then not only do I find interesting insight into someone's life, but they feel valued.  Life is about living and valuing people.  That's hard when we spend so much time living for and valuing only ourselves.

Edit: I may be good at volunteering information about myself, but I love it when someone cares enough to ask me about stuff.

blast to the future of the past

I have this weird urge every once in awhile to try to find people from my distant past - like that I knew when I was six - who I've fell out of touch with.  I think it's a desire for closure that I was never too good with.  It seems like goodbyes were always "see you later" and more often than not, that later never came.  I have kind of a mental list of people I remember from school that have just disappeared from my life, and I kind of like the challenge of going off very little information in a great big cyberspace of an internet.  Tonight I finally tracked down my crush from kindergarten.  He got married last summer.  Darnit.  Not that that really matters, I never really knew him.  He left in elementary school -- initially I was thinking second grade, but I think he may have been there in fifth as well, and we weren't even really friends.  It was more of an admiration from afar, though I feel like we maybe would have been friends if we lived in the same place for longer.  It was haunting to see a photo of him again, all grown up, and to still vaguely recognize his face.  It seems like it's probably creepy of me to look random people up, but I genuinely wonder sometimes about people who just seem to have fallen off the face of the earth.  You know, what ever became of them?  Sometimes it's nice to have questions answered even if only partially.

yes no wait

Yes no or wait
Some simple words
Determining fate

I don't like no
For it seems the end
Of to and fro

Unbending and
Intolerant of
Each demand

Yes, of course, would be
The pleasing end to
This eternity

Not having to wait
But jump in quickly
Nothing to anticipate

Wait is forever tough
Because it requires time
Which seems harsh enough

Developing patience
And waiting, anxious
Meanwhile becoming an ancient

Yes no or wait
These simple words
Determine my fate

And if wait I must
Then that's what I'll do
Though it feels so fully unjust.

developing a studio practice

After being out of art school for a year, I still make stuff sometimes, though not as often as I would like.  I keep thinking back to my senior year classes where we discussed the development of a studio practice and how to continue being an artist outside of school and requirements to create.  I definitely would like to continue to make art.  That is really all I ever wanted to do.  If I could shut down the rest of life's requirements and just create all day that would be grand.  I have a lot of ideas but haven't had the patience or organization to sort them all through.  And I think I am also afraid of failure.  I wish that was a fear I would dismiss more easily.  Making bad art isn't failure, it's just learning what not to do next time.  But I think the problem is that I want to skip the process and get to the product.  I've always kind of been that way.  I need to learn to sit in the mess a little longer before something interesting emerges.

Tonight I spent a fair amount of time looking at art supplies online after perusing a Blick catalog - one of my favorite sorts of mail besides personal correspondence - and almost made an order until I looked at my balances and freaked out.  Darned automatic loan payments and the beginning of the month.  It's ok, it just means I have to wait a bit longer and think a bit more carefully about my purchase before I make it.  In the meantime, I have a lot of art supplies already.  In my room.  Begging me to use them.  I just have to wait for inspiration to strike.  I did start a small 8"x8" panel painting tonight on a cradled panel, the way panels ought to be.  I've been thinking a lot about the sky, so at the moment it is a yellow, clouded sky.  A sunset may be predictable, but it also may end up being one.  There is something lovely about sunsets, and something fitting about them for my current state of semi bliss.  It's a layer painting.  I'm thinking of adding pinks to it, I'm just hoping I don't go for overkill this time.

I need to work on organization.  In general.  Not messy organization, but organized organization.  Just because I know where in what pile something is does not mean that the place is organized.  I need to work on organizing my art stuff so that a studio practice is actually a plausible thing in my little space I call my room.  I have a desk and table easel... I just need to have space on the desk to use the table easel.  But I guess life is a continual work in progress.

sketches and notes

I was looking through my iphoto images and found this photo I took of a sketch and some musings of mine from around 2010/2011.  I kind of had a fascination at the time of drawing mundane things -- like umbrellas or still lives, and I think I still have that fascination sometimes.  It's interesting to draw something and in drawing and delighting in the details really realize how beautiful even simple things are -- like the folds of the fabric in partially closed table umbrellas.  The top comments on the page - "Drawing is about learning how to see - for me it is a recording of things I find somehow stunning in hopes that others will be able to find beauty in them as well, even if they are normally found to be simple, common, commercial, mundane" - speak to this delight and fascination.  The bottom part deals more with something I was processing, which was my desire to draw things from life and as they are rather than drawing in a comic style or from my imagination, though both of those seemed significantly more popular to audiences at the time.  I still would like to develop more of an illustrative style that would be less directly derived from life, but it isn't something I have put a lot of effort into yet -- something I ought to put more effort into.

Reprieve

I'm told my eyes smile
When certain thoughts cross
My mind
I know it's been awhile
But this isn't loss
Of any kind

I'm storing these memories away
In a mental file
Filled with many things
For a rainy day
Get past this denial
That distance brings

And maybe someday when the sun shines and the clear sky glimmers blue
Memories won't be my only reprieve.