Keep/Up

This heat is exhausting and relentless. I've resorted to freezing pans of water and placing them in front of the fan, a sort of air conditioning. The air lacks so much water here that everything dries within a couple hours, unlike in Kansas City where silkscreen filler was always an overnight deal. 

School has such a force on society, the energy in the city has become charged and more eager. I am grateful because more opportunities have begun opening up for me (I do dread Mercury's retrograde in a couple weeks...). 

A couple days ago the heat swelled into heightened anger, and I drove us to the beach. A rock chipped my windshield on the way, but I recieved two phone calls I was awaiting. Strange that this pace of life also demands interlude. 

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.

Just

And another week in this final semester waits to be filled. I've begun Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. When the cold death house was being torn apart and abandoned, I took my father's books and adopted them as my own. This book especially sat above his desk, nestled in with outdated books on C++ and Java.

It is this severe reminiscing that is causing me weight. I can't help but gather my memories and count them, like Baby Suggs and her colors. I am desperate for spring imminent, like everybody else. Like everybody else, I am wanting a "next step" to be visible.

This right-between-heaven-and-hell breeds sickness. I've self-diagnosed to clean up my computer's filing system and drink copious amounts of Earl Grey.

Some

Apologies for falling so far inside myself that it hindered my updating.

I am in the middle of my important research paper, dreaming about organization and waking up to act on it. I have printed an outline, revised the outline, printed half of the first draft, revised that half. I am working toward and not away, like my mind is begging.

I have a wonderfully choppy first draft for my purpose statement and a gloriously short artist statement as of late. Attention to both of these want the next couple weeks, but I am unsure if I will have milk enough for all.

I do have beginnings for my solo senior thesis show and a two-person show for this coming spring. Hold your breath the plans sustain and will unfurl soon.