I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. - The Beatles
i've been sleeping to dream a lot lately. but my dreams, they are becoming dangerous to me, you see. they are more alive than i feel when i'm awake and wandering around.
not all of the dreams are almost elating and none of the bad ones have gone and transformed into nightmares. some days i wake up with foreboding. some days i wake up feeling like i lived a whole lifetime.
one dream was about my art teacher who is slowly dying of cancer. it was very sad and i woke up wishing i could hug him. it's been recurring in my mind very much as of late. just today i learned that even though he is up and about and working, he's on a feeding tube and that just makes my heart ache. i've been thinking about him for a period longer than a week and i learn this. i feel so helpless knowing somebody i love is going through such a terrible thing.
another dream had phone booths made of old wood with peeling paint floating above my head. hundreds of them. the sky was filled with people making phone calls to one another and to people down below. i had to open my arms wide and look at the sky with my eyes closed. just to feel all that communication in the air and then it was disrupted by a chase of dark shadow people coming after me and my close friends.
one dream was about some really attractive jewish boy hiding in my backyard who wanted to marry me but was flustered and he was always hunched over while the backyard kept transforming and expanding and contracting. seeming bigger when it was smaller and smaller when it was bigger and cramming things into it that aren't there and taking out things that are.
there is a lot of old wood with peeling and chipped paint in my current dreams. things made of wood looking like they can or are falling apart. just looking like it, though.
i went to a seminar for the school i want to attend and i went alone. a big step for me, being in a room full of strangers all alone.
i used to not be this way. i used to be outgoing and loud and full of vitality. i wasn't shy, i wasn't reserved, i wasn't fat and i wasn't worried so much about everything. but now i am all those things and all the good things i wasted on youth. as mr corgan says "youth is waste don the young".
i went and sat alone with my folder full of information and a cheap pen which i promptly chewed on. i listened to every word that was said while i stared at the other people there to learn and ask questions. being in a city that is known for it's rich inhabitants and well off jewish neighborhood, i was the most underprivileged person there and big nosed jewish girls whining and rollings their eyes when parents asked questions. they were wearing the strangest of clothes, the children seemed so forgein to me. i couldn't feel any connection to them and we were all artists.
one boy made me happy, though. he had piles of books he drew in which i found impressive and then i saw his hands. he had three fingers total from the ten and he made all that art.
i asked a few questions and one being "i'm a bit older than all the other students here applying, i was wondering what the age differences in the school are" and then everybody turned to stare at me. i whimpered, lowered my head and pulled my hood down even farther and waited for the answer when i said "you all don't HAVE to stare at me, you know."
after the question and answer session, i had a few hours to kill before my session to help with my portfolio. i just sat and stared off into space and drank lots of water and peed a few times and stared off into space and doodled and looked at my pictures and stared off into space.
they never called my name so i told them so and they ushered me past everybody else and plopped me in front of a rather large black man wearing granola lover clothes. he looked none to amused with anything in life as of late and i took the lid off my box that i was using to hold my photos an my hands were shaking as well as my voice when i started talking. suddenly i wasn't shaky anymore and i started showing him my images. he talked about what i needed to have in there from a transfer student point of view and i admitted i don't have any of my old classroom art from college cause that was over 7 years ago.
he told me my photography was "off the charts" and i was beaming so hard i forgot to think and ask any questions. it was on my way out that i thought of all the things i should of said. i'm the queen of that land. after leaving something i know exactly what i should of done and said and i wear that crown almost proudly cause if i didn't wear it proudly, all my shame would be seen.
then i sat and waited some more in a glass enclosure to the front door and wait till i saw my uncle pax and my younger brother phil pull up to the door. it's always comforting to see somebody who'll instantly call me a fartface and still love me.
i'm lacking motivation cause i sleep so much and i'm lacking artistic inspiration because of lack of social contact and i lack social contact because i lack money and am way too shy. not to mention i don't like going out alone.
so the other night my dad calls my older brother and asks what he's doing. so i head over there and we paint giant dots on his walls. social contact and artistic inspiration go hand in hand.
somebody once posed a question to me:
would you rather struggle to make it and still create or what if somebody says you'll never have to worry again about anything as long as you create but you have to do it in the confines of their home and never leave.
always take the struggle. live the life. living life is what is the inspiration.
go out and do things. don't let laundry lists o things to do confine you. call your friends. be spontaneous. don't hide behind the excuse of your office job. don't say you're too tired after work. go out. not everything costs money. hold a friend's hand. laugh lots. go do it. don't take it for granted. it and they won't always be there.
be adventurous. i would if i could or had the means. nobody wants to be adventurous alone. eventually they'll want somebody by their side to share everything with. i WANT to be adventurous.
maybe i just need more exotic cheese sin my life and then i'll be okay.
now go kiss your lover and tell them thank you for being there when you go to sleep and when you wake up. don't take that for granted either.
don't take anything for granted. you life is too short, periods of loneliness are always too long.
it's okay to be alone, it's not okay to be lonely.
i'm tired and rambling. please excuse me. Living should be perpetual and universal benediction.
- Why Lazurus Laughed by Wei Wu Wei
