Whine and Leaping
As Ben in class today so eloquently put it "if you want to read a good whine just read someone's blog or livejournal."
In that spirit then, here is a nice long "whine." I am so depressed. The competition, aggression, and attitudes my peers constantly bombard me with is endless...today I was such a failure. Murphy's law was in full swing today. It doesn't matter how hard I try because I just mess it up. Today was thesis seminar. So I was up til 5 am writing my thesis for the sixth time. I finished it and printed 40 copies so that I'd be ready to go. I get to class ready to hand out my paper when I look down at it I realize that I printed out the first rough draft. AH! People walk all over me. The people who are supposed to show with me tried to get rid of me this afternoon. No one listens to me. I am always wrong. People always have to go out of their way to correct anything I say inaccurately. SO ANNOYING. I am sorry I am not a walking encyclopedia, that I cannot recite definitions verbatim from the dictionary off the top of my mind. I am sorry that I am not politically correct every second of the day. I am sorry that I generalize and stereotype when I speak. I am sorry that I am human. I am.
I am so lucky. A bouquet of red and purple flowers, chocolate covered pretzels, licorice. This girl is so spoiled, so undeserving of such gifts. This girl throws temper tantrums, acts like a 4 year old most of the time, and rarely connects with the rest of society, yet here against all odds she is presented with gifts that greet multiple senses--smell, taste, color, touch. She appreciates them. She appreciates the surprise. Is reminded of memories and excited by this new one. This miserable invisible girl has been blessed, someone sees her. She doesn't understand how or why.
Undergraduate college has been the most perplexing experience, a tightly woven basket of contradictions tied together, forming a thing that I am not sure if it will hold what it is meant to encase. My college journey which began for me in a rural Pennsylvania campus surrounded by farms and open rolling hills later shifted to the mountains and ice of Ithaca New York and eventually to the chaos of Rome and now here I find myself back in the ice of Ithaca, before I must head full circle back to Philly come May, where everything started. What happens after May 2008? What will become of me? Why do people ask this question constantly? Should I answer them truthfully? Or give them something unexpected? What will you do after college? This question haunts me. Impulsively I want to scream the cliches that every undergraduate senior says: Grad school applications, GREs, real world jobs, internships, interviews, resumes, career-building blah blah blah. I feel angry when people ask me this question. How on earth am I supposed to know? I can't look into a crystal ball and predict the future. The questioner's guess is as good as mine. How dare they ask me this question. Why should I devulge my deepest dreams/ambitions to them? Who are they to question my inner most desires? What gives them the right? Them. Who is this "them" I refer to? Them is the relatives you never see at holidays, and only read about in occasional season's greeting Halmark cards, and them is the friends of your parents, old teachers, and acquaintances you've shared classes when you run into them awkwardly at the grocery store on an errand. Them is your friends from high school, who you were once your BBF and have now long forgotten you ever existed. Them is your professors as they bite the bullet knowing that you'll come knocking on their door asking them to write a recommendation letter for some graduate program or job application. Them goes on and on. At the same time I don't want to answer that question "what will you be doing after graduation?" I don't have to give them anything to go on. It's none of their damn business what my ambitions are. I refuse to regurgitate the cliches. If I am an artist, whose responsibility is to shift the world with value of some sort, then how will I do so? Give them what they don't expect. Make up a story. I tell them I am moving back home to 'work.' Work what? I dunno. My inner most desires are not my job aspirations. There is a very clear line between my 'working ambitions' and that of my interests and dreams. I am a human and as such desire horses. Horses are my life, even when not physically present in my life. Horses are my obsession. Horses are my motivation, my reason for getting up in the morning. I make my answer to that question based on the things of what I will not say. Process of elimination! I've tried to let art be the vehicle for my education and to see where it would take me. And taken me places it has! Maybe not, its not like the work is a living thing that takes me places and is my friend and talks to me. Horses are my friends and they can take me places. Horses are the things I seek out in the world. Horses cause me to explore places both literal and figureative that I would otherwise not have. The obsession helps to explain I guess why over the course of four years I would find myself in one moment leaping over 2'6" verticals on Music in the ring at Carousel Farms under a huge open sky, or standing at dusk in the snow on an empty country road staring longingly through a chain link fence at the horses grazing quietly in the Vet school paddocks at Cornell, to sitting on the pigeon packed cobble stone piazzas sketching 'new interpretations on antiquity' in the shadows of some of the most profound and enduring equestrian sculptures in the citta eternale, to even writing about them in my lame blog in endless run on sentences. In comparison to the descriptions of my parents' childhood recollections of growing up in urban ghetto neighborhoods and working through college twice and fighting a difficult job market, my childhood and education seems almost surreal--quiet surburbia, box turtles, cocker spaniels, rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels, chickadees, cardinals, fat cats, foxes, summer camps, summer school, childrens' books, concerts, music, theater, illustration, slumber parties, lightning bugs, chamber ensembles, commuting on Vine Street and Fairmount Park, museums, car trips, long walks, swimming, tennis--one example of the American dream. What should one make of this? What's next? Repeat the tradition or shift the value? Or both? So to those of you getting ready to leap into the big ocean with all the other fish, when faced with this dogged question, what will you not say?
In that spirit then, here is a nice long "whine." I am so depressed. The competition, aggression, and attitudes my peers constantly bombard me with is endless...today I was such a failure. Murphy's law was in full swing today. It doesn't matter how hard I try because I just mess it up. Today was thesis seminar. So I was up til 5 am writing my thesis for the sixth time. I finished it and printed 40 copies so that I'd be ready to go. I get to class ready to hand out my paper when I look down at it I realize that I printed out the first rough draft. AH! People walk all over me. The people who are supposed to show with me tried to get rid of me this afternoon. No one listens to me. I am always wrong. People always have to go out of their way to correct anything I say inaccurately. SO ANNOYING. I am sorry I am not a walking encyclopedia, that I cannot recite definitions verbatim from the dictionary off the top of my mind. I am sorry that I am not politically correct every second of the day. I am sorry that I generalize and stereotype when I speak. I am sorry that I am human. I am.
I am so lucky. A bouquet of red and purple flowers, chocolate covered pretzels, licorice. This girl is so spoiled, so undeserving of such gifts. This girl throws temper tantrums, acts like a 4 year old most of the time, and rarely connects with the rest of society, yet here against all odds she is presented with gifts that greet multiple senses--smell, taste, color, touch. She appreciates them. She appreciates the surprise. Is reminded of memories and excited by this new one. This miserable invisible girl has been blessed, someone sees her. She doesn't understand how or why.
Undergraduate college has been the most perplexing experience, a tightly woven basket of contradictions tied together, forming a thing that I am not sure if it will hold what it is meant to encase. My college journey which began for me in a rural Pennsylvania campus surrounded by farms and open rolling hills later shifted to the mountains and ice of Ithaca New York and eventually to the chaos of Rome and now here I find myself back in the ice of Ithaca, before I must head full circle back to Philly come May, where everything started. What happens after May 2008? What will become of me? Why do people ask this question constantly? Should I answer them truthfully? Or give them something unexpected? What will you do after college? This question haunts me. Impulsively I want to scream the cliches that every undergraduate senior says: Grad school applications, GREs, real world jobs, internships, interviews, resumes, career-building blah blah blah. I feel angry when people ask me this question. How on earth am I supposed to know? I can't look into a crystal ball and predict the future. The questioner's guess is as good as mine. How dare they ask me this question. Why should I devulge my deepest dreams/ambitions to them? Who are they to question my inner most desires? What gives them the right? Them. Who is this "them" I refer to? Them is the relatives you never see at holidays, and only read about in occasional season's greeting Halmark cards, and them is the friends of your parents, old teachers, and acquaintances you've shared classes when you run into them awkwardly at the grocery store on an errand. Them is your friends from high school, who you were once your BBF and have now long forgotten you ever existed. Them is your professors as they bite the bullet knowing that you'll come knocking on their door asking them to write a recommendation letter for some graduate program or job application. Them goes on and on. At the same time I don't want to answer that question "what will you be doing after graduation?" I don't have to give them anything to go on. It's none of their damn business what my ambitions are. I refuse to regurgitate the cliches. If I am an artist, whose responsibility is to shift the world with value of some sort, then how will I do so? Give them what they don't expect. Make up a story. I tell them I am moving back home to 'work.' Work what? I dunno. My inner most desires are not my job aspirations. There is a very clear line between my 'working ambitions' and that of my interests and dreams. I am a human and as such desire horses. Horses are my life, even when not physically present in my life. Horses are my obsession. Horses are my motivation, my reason for getting up in the morning. I make my answer to that question based on the things of what I will not say. Process of elimination! I've tried to let art be the vehicle for my education and to see where it would take me. And taken me places it has! Maybe not, its not like the work is a living thing that takes me places and is my friend and talks to me. Horses are my friends and they can take me places. Horses are the things I seek out in the world. Horses cause me to explore places both literal and figureative that I would otherwise not have. The obsession helps to explain I guess why over the course of four years I would find myself in one moment leaping over 2'6" verticals on Music in the ring at Carousel Farms under a huge open sky, or standing at dusk in the snow on an empty country road staring longingly through a chain link fence at the horses grazing quietly in the Vet school paddocks at Cornell, to sitting on the pigeon packed cobble stone piazzas sketching 'new interpretations on antiquity' in the shadows of some of the most profound and enduring equestrian sculptures in the citta eternale, to even writing about them in my lame blog in endless run on sentences. In comparison to the descriptions of my parents' childhood recollections of growing up in urban ghetto neighborhoods and working through college twice and fighting a difficult job market, my childhood and education seems almost surreal--quiet surburbia, box turtles, cocker spaniels, rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels, chickadees, cardinals, fat cats, foxes, summer camps, summer school, childrens' books, concerts, music, theater, illustration, slumber parties, lightning bugs, chamber ensembles, commuting on Vine Street and Fairmount Park, museums, car trips, long walks, swimming, tennis--one example of the American dream. What should one make of this? What's next? Repeat the tradition or shift the value? Or both? So to those of you getting ready to leap into the big ocean with all the other fish, when faced with this dogged question, what will you not say?