oh, I don't know what to do about this dream and you

oh I hope it comes true.

I realized today that blogging greatly improved my writing life. Something about the relentless practice of writing is, maybe, paying off. At least, I am able to tell quite a difference in my writing competence now that I have been blogging nigh on three years. I sit down with a thought and suddenly there are five hundred or seven hundred or sometimes even close to a thousand words that don't sound too bad when I look back at them the next day or week.

Has anyone else noticed a difference in their writing due to their blogging practices?

Blogging also makes me realize this: I think by sheer persistence it is possible to find your own voice, because after a while there is nothing else to try on. You have followed every style there is to follow, borrowed from your contemporaries, tried to write like the poets you adore, decided to be e.e. cummings-like in your punctuation practices, but in the end, what's left except to write exactly like yourself. True hypothesis?

Does anyone else have the sense that the semester is starting to close in on them like those comic walls in dramatic movies? Any minute now, this creepy garbage-eating creature is going to start strangling me and then run away as the trash starts to compact. That leads me to my next observation: It is starting to dawn on me that I am ready to be graduated.

Also that I have watched too many Star Wars movies if that is the first image of closing-in walls that comes to my mind.

thing-moments

Hello my loves. I am in a writing mood, so I am writing to you again, even though it has only been a few days since my last post. Remember when I used to post a lot? Those were good times.

I had the most fascinating discussions recently with several people about poetry. Professor Perrin and I discussed Milosz's idea of poems as thing-moments -- devoted to and embodied in things, evoking, eternalizing, memorializing a certain moment in time. This, she says, is what I privilege and do naturally in my poems, and beyond my poems in my actual life. "It's a simple thing, but it's beautiful. Don't be afraid of that." Lately Professor Perrin has been encouraging me not to be afraid; I should lay claim to more things in my poems, be more declarative and less obscure.

At the end of last week I had decided that poetry and art are commitments to the concrete things, at base level, commitments to the concrete, detailed world. So now I am obsessed with the idea of art (any art) as a composite of thing-moments. Also at the end of last week, I decided in my head that when Dad said (who knows, once upon a time) that his art is about things that are right in nature, maybe he was talking about this love and awareness and commitment and devotion to the concrete physical world. I say that, but when I talk about love and devotion, I'm also talking about love and devotion to the numinous aspects or layers to the concrete. Like in my woodblock prints - by loving this physical world I am loving what it embodies, which may in fact be spiritual.

And last night, after dinner, Liz said "I like the physical because when I move it means something. It's not something symbolizing something else -- it's action." (Sorry, Liz, that is a paraphrase as best I can remember.) That struck me as absurdly powerful. Art should mean something as an action, not simply as a symbol or allegory or metaphor.

And then I'm looking at my wall, and I see this picture that Greg gave me for my birthday. It says "Like a moment so overly abundant that it spills from your mind, through your hand, to the page." And yes, that's poetry. Thing-moments. A moment overly abundant and spilling from things through your hand to the page.

Also, I learned something today. Apparently addressing the beloved, an apostrophe to the beloved, began the lyric poetry tradition. I find it strange that any poem of mine is addressing the beloved in any sense -- but I am pleased to find out that when my poems do address the beloved, Professor Perrin thinks that they are very strong.

This is what I love about critique: people tell me what I am doing, and then from there I can strengthen it to go where I want it to go. Otherwise I find it impossible to step outside my head and understand what is weak and what is strong. But I am learning, through critiques, to ask the questions that may tell me the answers when I am alone and trying to still work. What is at stake in this poem? That is my primary question, the one she is always asking me.

Well. I am not always sure, but I will do my best to find out. But now I kind of wonder. What is at stake in this blog?

Let me know if you find out.

and if I knew the answers, then i would tell you now

Why am I walking around with nail polish on only my left hand? You might also ask me: why is there writing all over your right arm? And I would not really have answers for you. "It is just something that happens," I say. "It is just part of being busy and an art major who is always thinking but does not always have a sketchbook and an English major who is always tasting words but does not always have a pen handy. It is part of making my work and words as lively and dynamic as my own body is."

It looks more and more like my senior show will be a giant sculpture in Climenhaga, hanging through that triangular hole in the first floor and dangling (I hope gracefully and dramatically) down in front of Aughinbaugh gallery. By "giant" I mean possibly 15 feet tall, and I mean layers and layers of glass fleshing out this imagined tree of mine. I do not have the expertise for this, but I am going to do my absolute best to make something work. "That's the rest of your life," Don Forsythe, art professor of the funny stories, "you get this idea and you find someone who can help you make it happen and you learn -" and you just go for it.

Is it funny if I declare I believe in this glass tree? Because I believe in it. I believe that it could be awesome. I believe that it could be dramatic and beautiful and provoking, if I can get past myself and actually serve the idea and birth the image in my head - the vision? - if you will allow me to use such a crazy word.

If I am a grown up, I suppose it is time for me to begin making grown-up work, isn't it? And as we all know, being an adult is all about problem-solving. Maybe now that I am 21, I will be able to kick every problem right in the face. = D

P.S. Can I tell you how amazing my roommates are? And also Greg. And of course the family, even though they are a long ways away. I haven't had such an amazing birthday in quite a while. . . .

P.P.S. my advisor and boss at work are having a baby. . . yes, they are married to each other, they are rocking, and they will be having a childrens!

P.P.P.S. My Jesus College Blog is once again updated. . . . This time I went on a bit of an art v. intellectualism rant, and a brief look at Chris Fennell's new sculpture on campus. If you are interested in those sorts of things, it is there to be read.

"this is my dream, i dreamt it. i dreamt that my hair was kept, then i dreamt that my true love unkempt it."

- Ogden Nash

Somehow Ogden Nash is just stuck in my head lately.

I have blogged, once again, over at not as good as an ice-cream cone. This time I talked about the incredible sense of well-being I get from entering a classroom where some of my closest friends are located.

Is it odd to say that I got struck by a sudden pang of homesickness for my college people today? Even though I am at college and seeing them. I don't want to think of this ending.

So. That is the end. 'Bye loves - have a lovely stormy friday afternoon!

“in the mouth of the worm who grammars these woods into this world whose song is"

Movie screenings with friends, rather than going to a silly for-class showing in Boyer? Heck of much better. When the friends are utterly snarky? Even better!

It is very late, so I won't say much tonight. Only I will mention that I am mapping out a reason for this poetry project - a motivation, an audience to address. I've felt the need to address someone directly in the poems since the second college summer. I felt a lack in the anecdotal poems I was writing, and the way to take care of that lack, I found, was the address a reader directly. In this case, however, I might narrow "the reader" down even more specifically, according to Professor Perrin's reaction to one of my poems - whether in it I address the reader or address the beloved.

In any case, apart from school things, I am quite excited about the weekend. = D

"ptolemy may have had a difficult name, but he was no dummy."

Yesterday in art seminar - keep in mind that this is the capstone course for senior art majors, where we work on integrating faith and art - I sat next to Brian Behm. Because of a certain thought in my head that went something like "if I use my whole body as my sketchbook, will that make my art more full of vitality? Will it, in fact, be more lively?", I was drawing on myself. Brian Behm noticed, read my ring finger that said "concrete space/action" and then asked to borrow my pen. I was like, "Sure," and he proceeded to scribble on the side of his finger. "Um. . . " I thought to myself, really confused. Then Brian Behm held up his finger under his nose, and I realized, "OMG, that's a mustache!"

It was phenomenal. Weird, but phenomenal.

Today in world views, I decided to be Brian Behm. Somehow it was cooler coming from him.

I had an epiphany yesterday, too. Or maybe it was Monday night. I'm not sure. The epiphany went something like this:

I rank serving the viewer or even communicating something concrete to the viewer very low on the scale of purposes for art. Sure, art can serve those purposes, but that has nothing really to do with why I make art. On the other hand, when it comes to words, I rank serving the reader and communicating something concrete to the reader as of first importance. So weird. Do you think that has anything to do with why I continually cling to my identity as an artist despite the fact that I display less skill in general in that area?

I'm having kind of a guilt complex about my blog lately. I feel guilty if I do not post, but I feel guilty if I do post, because then I am asking people to read it. And Lord knows that I do not always have anything interesting to say whatsoever. Sometimes, I have no doubt, my blog is myopic and narcissistic (I just hope not all the time). Sometimes it is trivial in the extreme.

But sometimes people respond really well - get into thinking about a topic I posted about, in the not-internet world. So maybe I will keep talking anyway. Yes? Maybe?

I find myself less afraid of table saws this week.

P.S. Daniel Finch says that he will kick me if I doubt my critical abilities and higher theory thinking. Despite disliking threats, that made me kind of happy.

P.P.S. "I was bitten by a radioactive dandelion! It happens!"
- Scarygoround.com

the possibility of portraits

I've never been interested in the human face much. But I am thinking that sometime I would like to do some woodblock portraits. Now that I have decided to do woodblock prints this semester, I find myself anxious to teach myself everything about them. I am going to make awesome and sophisticated blocks of wood if I have to read every book in the library, search every website on the internet, and even learn to like Ashton Kutcher movies.

Okay, maybe not that last one. = )

I am full of pressure to make something, but also really nervous. Now that I have approval from Daniel Finch over my idea, I am very afraid that what is in my head will not be good when it is out in the open. I am filling myself with as much knowledge as possible so that when I really start to make, I can be as confident as possible that I am as full of visual language as possible. . . that maybe I can work something good out.

I really do love a slower pace of life. It is sad that I cannot fully indulge in sanity while still enrolled in school. But somehow it will work out, yes? This is what I tell myself.

Oddly enough, I am reassured to find that life as a senior is nothing like I expected. Life continues to be vibrant and unusual. Not any easier - it is always harder, there is always something new to cope with - but always fun and strange. Maybe someday I will be able to tell you that with images or with carefully considered poems.

But for now you can use your imagination. Picture the volleyball nets at 1 a.m. behind my dorm, still covered in orange light from the parking lot and cheering students cramming fun in before exams start looming. Imagine my roommates crooning over a chick flick at 1:25, and how much I love cappucino and the teal mug filled with M&M's next to my computer.

"don't wake me, i plan on sleeping in."

Hello my loves! I do plan on sleeping in this weekend. Oh heck yes I do.

I've realized that maybe running is too much to realistically expect from my life this semester. So I'm going to try and get some exercise, but maybe not running, and not necessarily every day. or if I do make myself run, maybe I will only run two days a week or something. We will see. I will figure my life out eventually.

Dave, my art advisor, was really positive about grad school and the idea of taking a year off before I go there. He noted that I already seem kind of burnt out, and grad school is too good an opportunity to waste by it being just a horrific task of a year. Also, grad school is a trial by fire in many ways. The professors are not there to nurture you as a person, they are there to critique your work, and it can be very harsh. His first year in grad school he spent thinking, "why am I here? They clearly don't like my work." I know myself, and I know that I am just now starting to have confidence in my artistic abilities. I think a year off might be good for me. I will have to see, though, I guess. A lot can change in a year and a half. I would have to work for six months somewhere anyway, 'cause I'm graduating at a strange time in December.

I'm really grateful that as things are coming up this year I'm feeling strong enough to deal with them. Going abroad? I found enough strength for that. Coming back and combining social circles? I'm feeling strong enough for that, little by little. The workload of 18 credits? I'm finding strength for that one little step at a time. And I guess that's all I can really ask, you know? To feel capable and equal to the challenges I posed for myself by becoming a double major and part of the honors program. And to find the strength to be the person I decided to be in a community sense, too, to serve the people I love in whatever little ways that I can.

Tonight is muggy, but somehow my apartment is an icebox. And hour ago Elena set the thermostat for 95 degrees. . . I am still wearing my sweatshirt! The ironies of Jesus College and their environmental policy but still-they-don't-give-us-control-of-our-thermostats is sometimes palpable.

"therefore similitudes drawn from things farthest away from God form within us a truer estimate that god is above whatsoever we may say or think of hi

So wow. School started. It's been crazy. So much has happened that I am not sure what to say to you, or even what my blogging schedule will be like this semester. I will try to keep blogging, because I think that it has been such a beneficial thing to my writing life.

When you're stronger, they ask more of you. I think this is my conclusion. But maybe that is also just my personality - to always push myself until I hit the breaking point and have to back off. I couldn't have possibly handled eighteen credits before this, but hey presto, the moment I feel strong enough, there I am, taking the eighteen credits.

I feel this on many other levels, too, but that is the obvious one.

Being a senior is kind of like experiencing senility. Or maybe that is the study abroad experience. In any case, I feel that everything this year is new - I am like a clueless freshman all over again, I am in my second childhood.

Maybe I will resent chapel less if I think of it as participating in the liturgical life of the college. That seemed to work alright in convocation the other day.

Thoughts I reacted to in Thomas Aquinas:
"The one precise formality"
"God. . . knows both hiimself and his works."
"Dazzled by the clearest objects of nature; as the owl is dazzled by the light of the sun."
"the slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge of lesser things."
"the whole Christ. . . head and members."
"the ray of divine revelation is not extinguished by the sensible imagery wherewith it is veiled."

I don't really like Thomas Aquinas, but as my mother pointed out to me on the phone tonight, I am in the habit of getting things out of classes and making my own meaning where I refuse to adopt the meaning or value systems proposed by the people actually in charge of constructing the class.

Good night my loves. I could write you ten essays, but I am determined to get enough sleep tonight and run tomorrow morning. = )

"in one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, china has banned buddhist monks in tibet from reincarnating without government permission."

Susan Getty sent me an article from Newsweek with that as the first sentence - it made my day.

So yes, it is the weekend, and I am posting anyway. But it is because it is my choice, not because it is something I need to do, so I think that I am not breaking my weekend resolutions. Or my sabbath-day resolutions, for that matter.

Several things I like about the catholic mass I went to this morning:

(1) The people helping serve the host brought it out to those in the congregation who were old and unable to stand up in line to wait for communion, or who were in wheelchairs and unable to walk down.

(2) in catholic mass in general, the emphasis is on emmanuel -- God-with-us -- and sometimes I just need to be reminded that other people actually believe that. I mean, that's why we kneel when they're consecrating the eucharist (or whatever the proper terminology is). Because as the priest is blessing it, it really becomes the physical body of Christ in our midst. And who wouldn't kneel if you knew the king of heaven was present?

You know, I had many things to say, but as I'm sitting down to type I find that they are not important. I will try and adjust well to the school year and to having everyone back on campus and to all of our changed social circles and patterns. I will try and not be a dumb-ass. That's about all the more I can say about my life right now. Oddly enough, due to the craziness of this weekend on campus without everyone working, I am ready to be in classes so that some sort of routine starts.

On the other hand, I'm havin' fun just eating and bumming around. That's the way the weekend should be, in my mind. None of that homework stuff.

Alright loves. I will see all you college peoples around on campus from now on. Still mental hugs to the rest of you.

P.S. I updated my Jesus College blog again on Friday.