Leave

This imminence is almost unbearable. Everything is in bloom and waiting for me to move. Less than three weeks until everything will be released, and my eye has subsided to half-hearted reminders I am stressed. 

One more critique and one more research paper left in my undergraduate career. Several other things due soon, but enough in due time. I am more than ready to tackle my reading this summer, helping others and hopefully moving east for the first time in years. For now, I will work on learning to stay present. But this future has so much weighting potential—

Of The

And after two weeks of complete sprint, I find myself staring and waiting more often than naught.  An internal image of being caught between heaven and hell, and my horoscope explicitly tells me how this is all a choice (like the stars know anything, anyway). Like my worries are decided lightyears away.

All this time feels the same. Two days feels like four weeks feels like a few hours from now, and it is all I can do to stop twitching, let alone fall back into psychosis. This wind that keeps pelting me with debris from a leftover thunderstorm doesn't help.

This cycle of manic high, anxiety-induced movement to absolute withdrawal is unfair. I constantly feel a pull of deja vu, this vibrating of two selves colliding against each other. Is this the critic-artist I keep blaming my identity on? Is this the left and right hemisphere of my brain? Is this just me, fighting to stay present, when everything else begs to stand perfectly still?

Water

Hard labor toward Three Days of Moonyman this past weekend; three days devoted, she reigns.

I collapsed last Friday. I woke Saturday—this prayer to be put to death and raised again. It doesn't help my limbs have taken life of their own. First an eye twitch, then a corner of my mouth, then a spot next to my nose, my fingers, my knees, my tongue... I thought my eye was only begging tears. I see now that there is anxiety beyond my control, that I can feel my nerves shift when I sleep. So what happens when the subconscious is hiding from itself? That I can't even intuitively sense this stress?

I think that is what scares me. That my body is reacting to something I am not receptive to.

State of Grace

And like this, the first spring storm opens me. I was torn from complacency. The sorrow nearly suffocating me, and I strangled paper for release. I drenched it, scratched it, savage in form and it responded. I left it on a white wall, blinked, and took it down; graphite smudges the only remnant. It sits like a dog at my feet.

Or a child. And like that, I moved my chin up and parallel to the ground. I talk unashamedly, no apologies in sight. I am here, on this strong earth, so let the flood come. A month ago I taunted the universe, calling insults and begging to hit me harder the next time. Sometimes being human goes to my head and I forget the universe always answers. 

Yet I am here, surviving. A colleague asked me why the "point of no return" is my favorite idea to iterate in my work. My heavy lids only let me sigh at the time.

I know now that the changing event, the pivotal point of any story, is always the time one learns and grows. It is my first love, this passion for learning. I know only life from it.

A Field

My apologies for the week of silence; too many things have changed for me to make comment.

Currently I am away to help plan the set for Three Days of Moonyman; I am "the artist" and will be drawing lines in a field for this film. It is exciting to remember the film when it had just budded, the faint idea of a wide angle lens witnessing a boy in the middle of nowhere. 

Instead of leaning on tea and coffee in the late afternoons, I have more than enough energy to stay up well past sundown. There is no question I have needed a break. So many looming deadlines, like any human being, and it is hard to remember my brain cannot be "on" all the time.

I stood, dust to dust, in a field all afternoon. I remembered about snakes and tried to find clouds in the sky. There is no place like home, there is no love like this... So here I am, daydreaming and making dinners and burning all my car's fuel to support someone else's dream.

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.

Mark Time

Mercury is in retrograde for the next month, and as a sun sign ruled by this planet, I will blame every "misfortune" on its movement. Minor annoyances have become highlighted, is all.

Spring semester is now begun, and I start each week with six hours of work study. I open doors for people and shuffle papers and smile at unsure freshmen. I choreograph my own thought patterns and research within the small bustle of this office. 

I have a blank wall waiting for notes; begging, you see. I have finally received Random Access Memories, so "Daft Punk Syndrome" mapping is in full attention. As is Taylor Swift and her mirror-like quality.

Moving is easy. Hand over hand is a predictable way to know the world is moving forward. It is under my control, this situation, and it will soar because I am giving it attention.

But waiting?

Stress Dreams

I found three cliche stress dreams due to school starting next week, cleaned up my reading list and made an enormous pot of chili to cover next week's meals. Still yet to take down the Christmas decorations or finish the organizing painting. I washed all my clothing and promptly discarded a quarter of them. I will buy more Precise V5 pens soon.

I began a sketchbook last week. It is a sequel to the hand bound Life China book. So far only words fall on the pages, but I'll loosen up once this semester begins.