(no subject)
I ran into Margee Morrison yesterday, my Critical Inquiry teacher from last year, and she smiled from about twenty feet away, and actually stopped for a minute to ask me how I was. She has a very bright smile. And she said it was very nice to see me, and I replied, truthfully, "likewise." And then I ran into Mr. Mann again (I saw him last week as well), and he was very nice too. Its sort of strange. I mean, he does teach here and all, but he was going home that very second. He had a little rolling bag with a handle, and I assumed he'd be going to Penn Station to take the MARC to DC. From there probably either to Silver Spring or one of the stations after it, whereever he left his car.
And then I finished up class...I stashed my new masonite boards behind the partition. I came back a little after midnight. Painted till I was almost unconscious... Someone forgot to lock the nature lab, so I took a tour of their treasures. There was a jungle air in there, for some reason, a wet humid sort, and I guess the plants, growing with large and long leaves out of pots,and the yellow ape statues, and a coiled snake in a jar, and tons of seashells and rusty things and bones, only enhanced it. The fluorescent lights kinda flickered, and ,when you looked right at them, were bright but dead. And in the middle of the room, among the mess, there was your usual art school headless skeleton. I've seen them all over that day, because a bunch of people were apparently doing their Life Drawing homework. The thing about this one is that it looked real, like actual bone, with corrosions and marks of age and all...the only obviously false aspects being the metal stand and the bolts that hold it together, and I guess the cartilaginous part of the ribcage, where it caves inward a little, the part that expands when we breathe. So I assumed it was real. I assumed, and still assume, whether correctly or not I don't know, that they used to use real skeletons at some point, like they use animal bones, and this one was just a well preserved specimen from that time. I might be completely wrong, and this was just a very realistic imitation, or my late night madness got to me. But thats beside the point. So there I was, standing face to nothing with the earthly remains of a once living, breathing human being. I tapped the bones, just to see if they were plastic or not, and assumed again that they were not. So there I am in the same room with lots of dead bodies now, one human, one snake still with its eyes open in the mysterious, angry way, and cow heads and all sorts of things. I felt no presence and no life in them. They were inert, lifeless matter, beatiful shells. But, I thought, the meat and muscle and blood that hung on this guy (I assumed he was a guy, since it didn't really occurr to me to check the proportions) were a person, and this person, no matter who they were, was just as tremendously important as anyone else. (Radiating points of microcosmic awareness or something like that?)And so me and him (maybe her) stood around and had a little moment together, and I figured that the guy who used to be that skeleton is somewhere else now, and he doesn't care for the skeleton, doesn't need it. It's like an old suit of cast off clothes.
Well, I took advantage of the oversight, and I borrowed one of their mirrors and took it to the studio. It was heavy as hell. And today we studying the Egyptians, and I remembered this Mummy book I had one of my Brown Memorial boys read, and was all about the Ba and the Ka, and how the Ka flew all around the place, but would always need to get back, and since all skeletons looked the same, it would get lost forever if it couldn't recognize the body. Thats why they preserved them. Maybe thats just so they could have a home to come back to.
There is a big universal wow going on, some sort of show with some sort of point. And we probably won't figure out what that is. And maybe thats what it is.
I think I won't go to the studio tonight, and give my universal wow a rest. I'm gonna do my reading...I'm just gonna sit in my chair and do my reading.
And then I finished up class...I stashed my new masonite boards behind the partition. I came back a little after midnight. Painted till I was almost unconscious... Someone forgot to lock the nature lab, so I took a tour of their treasures. There was a jungle air in there, for some reason, a wet humid sort, and I guess the plants, growing with large and long leaves out of pots,and the yellow ape statues, and a coiled snake in a jar, and tons of seashells and rusty things and bones, only enhanced it. The fluorescent lights kinda flickered, and ,when you looked right at them, were bright but dead. And in the middle of the room, among the mess, there was your usual art school headless skeleton. I've seen them all over that day, because a bunch of people were apparently doing their Life Drawing homework. The thing about this one is that it looked real, like actual bone, with corrosions and marks of age and all...the only obviously false aspects being the metal stand and the bolts that hold it together, and I guess the cartilaginous part of the ribcage, where it caves inward a little, the part that expands when we breathe. So I assumed it was real. I assumed, and still assume, whether correctly or not I don't know, that they used to use real skeletons at some point, like they use animal bones, and this one was just a well preserved specimen from that time. I might be completely wrong, and this was just a very realistic imitation, or my late night madness got to me. But thats beside the point. So there I was, standing face to nothing with the earthly remains of a once living, breathing human being. I tapped the bones, just to see if they were plastic or not, and assumed again that they were not. So there I am in the same room with lots of dead bodies now, one human, one snake still with its eyes open in the mysterious, angry way, and cow heads and all sorts of things. I felt no presence and no life in them. They were inert, lifeless matter, beatiful shells. But, I thought, the meat and muscle and blood that hung on this guy (I assumed he was a guy, since it didn't really occurr to me to check the proportions) were a person, and this person, no matter who they were, was just as tremendously important as anyone else. (Radiating points of microcosmic awareness or something like that?)And so me and him (maybe her) stood around and had a little moment together, and I figured that the guy who used to be that skeleton is somewhere else now, and he doesn't care for the skeleton, doesn't need it. It's like an old suit of cast off clothes.
Well, I took advantage of the oversight, and I borrowed one of their mirrors and took it to the studio. It was heavy as hell. And today we studying the Egyptians, and I remembered this Mummy book I had one of my Brown Memorial boys read, and was all about the Ba and the Ka, and how the Ka flew all around the place, but would always need to get back, and since all skeletons looked the same, it would get lost forever if it couldn't recognize the body. Thats why they preserved them. Maybe thats just so they could have a home to come back to.
There is a big universal wow going on, some sort of show with some sort of point. And we probably won't figure out what that is. And maybe thats what it is.
I think I won't go to the studio tonight, and give my universal wow a rest. I'm gonna do my reading...I'm just gonna sit in my chair and do my reading.