Encore

Here at the end, we know. It's another shoeless spring entrance. I've already compressed and added it to my timeline. Four years ago bought exact tears and I've yet to collect more.

It's both sad and strange to know another human that holds an incredibly similar trauma. I knew the signs but I left her be and re-read Beloved for the third year in a row instead. I am blessed to know her. The past eight years are justified simply because I can connect to the broken parts and know.

I knew when a different girl was stuck on one word repeats, stamped in a row to make an opera. I knew it was because the brain needed a rut to control and couldn't be moved just yet. I have obsessed over one word for days and weeks, meditating on it. Leaving it alone only finally when my body healed that spot for me.

I knew the condescension toward naiveté wasn't out of hatred; rather, it was out of missing and needing love. It was about "when will it be my turn," and "when will I be redeemed." 

Maybe this is why I made a map, because I needed to take inventory to learn how to be redeemed. That really inventory doesn't define me, my identity is not school or my work or the people I know. 

Knowing my identity isn't confined to a label is the most freeing thing.

"Neon Cathedral"

Smells like summer in the dead of spring, and how can I pine for a place that has never been mine.

All my energy used up to organize an exhibition and feigned importance. 

One day I won't have to smell the summers my childhood consisted of.

Air

I've suffered from "artist's block" since October 2013 (over 6 months strong). I made work to make work, stuffed my face with Deleuze and Breaking Bad, hiding and running and ignoring.

All actions as "away" and not "toward."

Easing back into spring semester proved a mountain of forgiveness and I was not ready to walk through blinding snow a second time. My teeth held so much disappointment, jealousy, greediness and arrogance, and yet the spiritual high came anyway, the love flooded me anyway.

Caught between sprinting and holding, giving in versus giving up, I fought my way through.  I was asked if I hit a brick wall in a project and there was no way through it, what would happen?

I knew I had to make a map. It was time enough to set the ideology in total motion, to forget studio work isn't necessarily rewarded immediately. I set up an impermanent workshop, falling back in love with moving hands instead of holding wrists to cope. I grasped wrong ideas and faltered breaths, dropping the failures once I learned from them. I grew. I encompassed the wall and allowed it to fuel my actions, toward.

Toward the ideology I began to know, letting go of superimposed pre-set labels of What. I am knowing How, translating it into a new What. I am making a manifesto and not a conspiracy theory. I am an artist researcher, hold the hyphen and quotation marks.

This is the true thing I know I am called to do.

Workout Routine

- 30 minute moving exercise: moving hands with mild editing to create forms
- 30 minutes writing exercise: writing with mild editing to create forms
- 2 hours studying: actively moving with no hindrance, rearranging the environment to bring life to forms

24-Hour Day Trip

An escape left samples undone, a slight decay in productivity. Sleep heals all, and again I am on a spiritual all-time high. 

After avoiding my studio practice for two weeks, it is time to jump back in and read Deleuze's The Fold, revamp my resume and start making objects instead of reorganizations.

Running

Completed the research paper-project in 26 hours the past 4 days (writing, only). 

Inventory day today, meeting later and taking time this morning to try and breathe. Still on adrenaline from finishing last night...

It's time to start organizing for the show in May

(and actually making things for the show…)

Timed Schedule

Set time constraints for working instead of tangible goal posts—it's a time for skipping sleep and finding love in over-working. Writing lists so as not to forget things. Listening to Joan of Arc soundtrack. Drinking copious amounts of chai tea, black.

A ponytail is the only working haircut these days.

Addicted to Working

Still wavering between three rows or four rows in my modern quilt, still on edge about designing a project for the "show," still writing the last paragraph for the book report due in five hours.

Still holding my breath about the weather, pending

Spiritual High

Went to see Noah. It is not word for word the story in the Bible and I had no expectations. I disagree with some decisions regarding taste, but I know it is only because I am a creator.

I know the water will charge me for the weeks to come; flood stories are always perfect for the spring. This flood story will be misinterpreted by many and misunderstood by few, but I know it will influence a large number of people. Good or bad impressions do not matter because I believe it will change taste.

I believe it brings us closer to Cinematic Realism as a complete, whole style and not fractured glimpses.

Wiped

Enormous blow two days prior and still reeling from the impact. Furiously scribbling anything down, everything down when working through projects.

All is being reorganized and I am begged to question the bits.