Organized?

I have an intensive overview calendar I draw out every three weeks on white cardstock. This, along with with scraps of paper I use to write down class assignments and a notepad on my desk for regurgitating errands to complete. A printed calendar with important deadlines written in bold, black Sharpie hangs on my wall. A dry-erase calendar sits unmarked in the kitchen next to the sink, a rectangle for me to stare at while I wait for water to boil. Smaller sheets of dot-graph paper hold the impending dates for my senior seminar class; this I keep tacked to my studio wall and hardly glance at. I have a palm-sized black Moleskine for general thoughts and a suite of three Field Notes journals that organize my personal meetings, my finances and grocery list. A small John Deere flipbook denotes the immediate errands I must run on a particular day, and post-its litter my purse, my desk-drawer, my research books... Not to mention the obsessive calendaring I impose on Google Calendar. The alarm settings to remind oneself is an incredible feature.

It is all I can do to keep breathing. A studio visit with a professor revealed I must "keep my heart Chakra open," keep my posture from closing all my energy inside. And so I took the last two rolls of white butcher paper I had and cut sections out that were as large as me. I wrestled with them, using my entire body to fold and tuck and strangle and kick and tear. And then I tacked them onto a wall and decided it was An Exodus.

Love, like

Last week knocked me out; I dragged my feet from my afternoon class on Friday and fell into my bed, what gravity. And so I spent the next two days organizing rooms, learning all the "stuff" I own. Heavy work. Yet I continue to rearrange filing cabinets and art supplies and projects, these little things adding. A compulsiveness bred from waning control. It's sunk into my imagery. I put weights in this rice paper project, An Exodus.

After photographing it, I realize an exodus isn't a one-stop shop. It is a reinvention, a rebirth every time. The title isn't truly fitting; a power like that shouldn't be matched with quiet, manageable shapes. But I know now that the piece's title isn't An Exodus. My entire spring semester is an exodus imminent.

"What Kind Of Man"

I have fallen into fifteen-hour work days, what with projects and essays being due. This month-long intro to my last semester in undergrad has been lethargic. I am ready to be jolted out of that.

Florence + the Machine has released a new single, announced a new album. It woke me up, much like Swift's "Blank Space" did a couple months ago. This dry winter air has cracked my knuckles mercilessly, regardless of the lotion I slather religiously.

I am almost done with my first project, An Exodus. Cleaning up the edges on my paper forms was born of rage and confusion. I started a 6 feet tall drawing right next to it. I sob into my strokes, releasing the pressure I feel constantly behind my teeth. It is akin to those bursting cinderblocks four years ago that my tracing finger wanted. 

And this drawing lives next to my installation while I waver between sudden loss and complete domination. I wrote three poems under the title An Exodus before I started organizing these paper forms. I hope this love that cures blindness will be evident in my project.