i thought i did that already

Strangely enough, I've had a lot on my mind lately but haven't felt like writing or drawing or doing much of anything outside of sitting around and knitting or trying to learn to sew (yes, still - I refuse to be bad at this craft). The previous art school student snob in me used to sort of scoff at traditional art/craft things (ie - knitting, sewing, most textile skills, etc) as quaint. Within the past three years I've realized that making something useful is waaay cooler than making something that is just aesthetically pleasing (and even then, the "aesthetically pleasing" part is often up for debate). Also, the exceedingly stubborn part of me absolutely refuses to be bad at anything that remotely requires an iota of crafts skill. I think I've endlessly annoyed my friends and family with my tendency to take classes and/or become hopelessly devoted to one particular art form for a period of time (the length of this time is always variable, spanning from maybe a week to years).

Let's go over the list:

• Musical (in order - piano, violin, sax-a-mo-phone, guitar, and currently the drums)

• Traditional medium drawing

• Graphic Art

• Poetry/Prose writing

• Origami

• Sculpture/Pottery throwing

• Painting (various mediums - oil, watercolor, acrylic, etc)

• Jewelry making

• Screen printing

• Knitting

• Sewing

• Photography (including but not limited to - making my own pinhole cameras, modifying broken/toy cameras, and turning my bathroom into a darkroom and learning how to develop my own film and make prints)

• Graffiti/Urban art

• Fontography/Typography (both making my own fonts and creating design based around text only)

• Website design

• Videography

I honestly attempt all these things just to prove to myself that I have anywhere from an average to above average skill and knowledge in them and then abandon them after a specific level of mastery has been gained. I have achievement issues.

Fall is here. This season has a tendency to kick my thought processes and creative streak into overdrive. Something about everything around me dying. I don't say that to be dramatic or maudlin, but as the days grow shorter and everything starts turning brittle and brown, something inside of me goes a bit mad and I can't stand not having something to show for my time during these months. I do weird things and count the days by what I make - September becomes the "month I made that pair of gloves and a scarf and those socks" and October is "the 1000 paper cranes" month and November is always the month that I can't accomplish anything because I'm too busy trying to do everything that my brain is thinking of. I might get a couple of good concept sketches on a napkin or something. Truly productive.

This is one of the purposes of this little blog by the way. I'm supposed to keep track of my thoughts on here; day to day I think of many things I'd like to write down but instead during this time of year I decide to fold paper or make a hat or come up yet again with another comic character. I stay up until 3 am trying to finish something I have no deadline for. I forget real time on occasion.

My friends are good friends. They know the seasonal me and stay out of the path of my spazziness and remind me to go outside or, if they're so inclined, think up and collaborate ideas with me. I never really sat down before and thought about the motivations as to why I get so antsy the time of year or really acknowledged my tendency to go through art mediums like water. It's this strange knowledge that I keep in the back of my head and I feel like instead of an explanation, I should just accept this as a personality trait. Or a fault. I guess it depends on who you ask on how that should be classified.

Ironically, I'm taking a creative writing class in a few months; I'm going to try to write more this Fall as a warm-up and to hopefully save myself some starting embarrassment. I'll be dedicated for at least a set amount of time.

Yea, I managed to type that with a straight face. Maybe I should look into acting, too.

oh you've got the darkest eyes

I feel less than healthy right now. I'm really hoping that it's something my body can get over within the next 5 hours because I have many things to today. Speaking of today, happy birthday to you. And to all those that does not apply to, happy International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Ahoy, avast, scurvy, and the like.

I did mention I do not feel well, right? Like at all. Seriously though, happy birthday. Even though I have a feeling that you still might not like them, I hope today is a good one.

with everything

Here is the way things things work.

She was always interested in the how of things. Knowing how stuff operates is essential to understanding. If she knows the "how" behind things, then life is relatively easy to figure out from there. Knowing the theorized chemical composition of the universe and the amount of energy it'd take to spark it into being is useful. As is knowing the workings of our solar system and Sun and the precarious balance between a million factors that lead to the creation of the human being. Even more so is knowing the workings of our body and how it functions and some basic genetics. Knowing these things is immensely useful when faced with typical existential questions like "how exactly did I become to be here" and "what is it in me that makes me operate the way that I do?". These things can answer a great many questions - the reason things grow, how the sun rises, how the climate changes, how we survive from a day to day basis and how humanity hasn't managed to meet it's end in some great cosmic cataclysm (though statistically we should have by now).

Knowing how things work is not knowing why though. And at the end of the day she still didn't quite get it. There's no comfort in knowing how things work; it's sterile knowledge. Without the why, there's nothing more than what she can see. And what she sees, honestly, is not all that great at times.  She didn't get it.  She couldn't stand it. And finally, after a lifetime of running, she stopped and finally asked:

"Okay. Why?"

this is a post about cynicism and art

Once upon a time she was depressed. She's talking like major, suicide attempting, physically self-harming, property destroying, life-has-no-meaning, illegal drug using, therapy enrolled, Wellbutrin prescribed sort of depressed. She would sleep only because it provided respite from the constant, pervasive, vapid nothingness that was her life and she would wake up literally crying at times because some part of her knew she was about to re-enter the world. Relationships (romantic or otherwise) were a weird form of self-medication and highly co-dependent - she based her esteem and self worth on how happy she could make the other person and, because she was human and her, would always fail miserably no matter the effort. And behind her she left a trail of horribly broken mess, some things smashed beyond all repair and some only cracked in two but no matter if she tried to piece whatever it was back together, she would inevitably and always cut her hands on the edges.

On rare occasions, things were okay. On some days she would wake up and feel warm - these were what she called "good" days; days where she could taste the food she was eating and smile at people and it not be amazingly contrived and she felt like doing things that she managed to enjoy - drawing or writing or reading a book or maybe even going out with friends. Things didn't seem to break whenever she touched them. Good days were what kept her sane; there was a merciful god that managed to not hate her at that particular moment. But this almost-happy feeling was fleeting; she knew feeling like things were okay were not for her and be it a matter of days or weeks or maybe (on the very few occasions) months, things would go back to the status quo. These were the worst of times - when everything was on the cusp of going back to the grey; there was no currency to bargain with, no words to persuade the universe with . She belonged to a half-waking existence that she could not get out of - it was exactly as she described it before. A pervasive, vapid, nothingness, except she was in withdrawal now from almost being happy. Almost feeling like there was a point.

These were the worst of times. The times where she would do almost anything to feel normal.

And when she had absolutely nothing left - no drugs, no relationships, no creativity, nothing left to destroy, nothing left to hurt, nothing left to burn - she would scream. She would scream as loud as she possibly could, louder than what should be possible out of a human girl, because she was sure no one was listening. She would scream until her voice literally gave out. She would scream until she literally coughed up blood. She was sure she was disturbing no god. It was just her. She was alone. There was no meaning and nothing more than what was and what is - and what was and is was her. And she, despite trying with all her strength and all her will and all her effort, failed. Awfully.

This was her life. Her hour by hour existence; every second was the above, from as far back as she can possibly remember until twenty-two years of age.

She was made inherently to be utterly and completely broken. She was faulty by design, from the start.

This story does have a happy ending.