"blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly."

Ah, familiarity. By which I mean: Ah, the familiarity of being up way too late for my mental health working on papers and projects. In one way, this familiarity is actually reassuring, because I finally feel that I am doing my utmost at my work. I can apparently only last so long at subverting my perfectionistic impulses.

On the other hand, there is the pleasant unfamiliarity of having someone help me with my work. For my Advanced 2D Studies midterm, we had to prepare a piece we made this semester for presentation with some kind of shadowbox or frame. Since I'm working on a gigantic installation, it's kind of hard for me to frame something and just stick it up on the wall. But I printed into a shadow box and lined the back of the box with a nice cream paper. I wanted to spray paint the shadowbox black, but because of a 6-8 page paper also due today (which I only started last night), I didn't think I would have time.

Enter Greg, who paints the box black after multiple rounds of problem discovery and solution at the ungodly hour of somewhere past 1 a.m. (I forgot that the inside of the box would have to be painted black, too. But the ink from printing was still wet, so we couldn't lay newspaper inside and spray paint. But we had acrylic paints. But not at the Warehouse. So we went back to the apartment. Then I didn't have a pallette. But Katie had a pallette. The box got painted.)


He probably won't like me talking about it on my blog. But I just wanted to point out how much circumstance affects our vision of a piece. This midterm thing was ugly before it was painted, and much better afterwards. Still, all things considered, it's probably not the greatest midterm presentation ever. I'm just very attached to it because it means that sometimes people will help you out when you really need it (I was able to go to bed at 3 a.m., rather than spending another two hours working on this shadowbox thing or turning in something I strongly disliked).

Also, I am sorry I missed the Chicken Run viewing last night. I hope that it was fun and I wish that I could spend more time just plain hanging out. But apparently I'm sort of bad at time management (in Soviet Union, time manages you).

I'll close with these quotes for your amusement:

"Occular Dalliance"
-Lucy's interpretation of eye flirtation

"sexy chompers"
-an anonymous interpretation of teeth

"we float like two lovers in a painting by chagall"

Hey my loves,

Guess what! It's Friday, so that means another Jesus College blog post.

Also, I have a headache due to not enough sleep and too much late-night roommate fun designing halloween costumes -- I won't be able to make the art league party, but at least I get to design costumes and have fun with the preparation. I was even involved in deciding the big group theme for seniors this year, so I was very happy. It's so rare that I'm in the thick of things.

But last night, for once, I felt like I was in the right place at the right time. Maybe I needed more sleep. But I don't regret being up late. I have, apparently, an inability to be at peace with being where and when I am at any given time this year. But I'm trying to be better, and last night was a good occurrence. I do not normally feel so connected, so included, so accepted, so it was a VERY good occurrence.

I think I'm adjusting to being back in the U.S. and to college. At least, I am more happy on a regular basis than I have been since the end of summer. Maybe I'm hitting my stride and making peace with my choices of what to privilege and what to ignore? Or maybe I have just begun the hallucinatory phase of college life, where I believe that I am competent and capable and not as socially awkward as I've been led to believe.

'Kloveyoubuh-bye

P.S. Have you guys heard the Weepies? I feel like some of you might like them. . . I feel like Dad might actually like them. They are lyric and light music. Katie & Elena are obsessed, and while I never expected to like them, they are very much growing on me.

"the glove compartment is inaccurately named, and everybody knows it."

I will not post until I have a specific story to tell, I told myself. The other kind of general catching-up posts are heck of boring.

Well. I'm not sure I have a specific story to tell, but I will tell you something specific:

Sleeping is my favorite. I may not do as much of it for the rest of the semester.

Also, I think I could be a professor. I'm not sure I would be great at being relational with every single one of my students, but I think I could be an English professor. Dr. Dzaka asked me to present a paper for him in chapel this morning, and I wasn't even that scared, although I think I read too fast some of the time. So, not-fear. Good. I can do that in lectures someday. Also, I can write well and I feel like I could teach other people to write papers good (note intentional bad grammars in this sentence, as if to defy everything I'm saying). I could maybe get people to be enthusiastic about my subject.

So. . . not giving up on my professorial dream prematurely? Priceless.

Also, here's to hot chocolate and much caffeine to keep us awake on gray days. Hip hip hurray.

tabi ni yamite yume wa kare-no wo kakeme guru

- Basho
("Sick on a journey,
as for dream,
it wanders the withered fields")

Supposedly that is the last haiku that Basho ever wrote -- he dictated it to his assistant and then fell asleep and died. Or maybe I'm confusing him with Buson. When I am tired, all poets sort of seem to run together.

I highly recommend the book Art and Fear. I'm not a crazy nutcase when it comes to making things. The pull between needing to make and fear of making? Totally normal. The fear which manifests itself as fatalism about the outcome of the work or the quality of the work? Also totally normal.

I guess part of my problem this year (besides the creative process in general, which is, let's admit it, problematic) is that I'm approaching that place where no one can tell me if I'm doing a good job. That is, no one can tell me if I'm where I ought to be, because there's now something innerly rather than something outward which determines where I ought to be. Nobody else is going to know that. And really striking out on my own into that territory is quite frightening. Really. Nobody's made my art before, so nobody else but me can tell me if I'm making it or not.

Anyway. I'm feeling better, not about my abilities as an artist, but about my abilities to get things done in general, which is pretty good.

Did I tell you Jeff, from Orvieto, is coming to visit this weekend? Yep! He'll be arriving tomorrow night, and will be around until Sunday. Then I plunge into the week of doom, with 4 midterms and various and sundry other work, plus a wedding. But I'm really trying hard not to think too far beyond the end of this week.

'K. Night. Don't let the existentialist philosophies bite.
(Yep, we're studying existentialism and Nietsche in world views right now -- no wonder the world looks grim!)

"the time for sleep is now. it's nothing to cry about."

Hello loves. My blogging fell by the wayside over break. I do not regret it.

I do regret my lack of motivation.

I do not desire to do work, I desire sleep and fun. I do not feel that my work will ever make a difference. I do not believe that my work can touch another mind or provoke another's emotions the way these examples do, the examples held up by my teachers. I do not even think I can be as real as the people I saw in the diner this morning.

Before, I was tired, but I hardly ever doubted the worth of doing my work and doing it well. I still do not doubt the worth of doing work well -- but I most emphatically doubt the reason for doing work at all.

Maybe this is a symptom of just coming off of a break. Maybe this is a symptom of something else. Maybe Camus is right and the whole thing doesn't matter a bit.

Do you have any cures for burnout? I am so tired. I am so tired of thinking and of pushing myself and of following rules I don't agree with and of displaying the right attitudes towards learning and even of making things.

I ask myself, OK, so this situation is unlivable. What will you do to change it? What needs to happen so that it's livable? I can't answer.

This is probably really angsty. But I'm not. . . upset, so to speak. Although I guess I am just plain overwhelmed by remembering how I have not lived up to my expectations of myself, and of all the obstacles ahead in this week and semester and year. But I suppose those things are not important. What's important is now, this moment, the work that needs to be done by tomorrow, only these.

I hope.

And now I will show you the most excellent way:

"and the soles of your shoes are all worn down, the time for sleep is now --"

"Poetry should be as unconscious as possible."

"One of the few good qualities I think I have as a poet is patience. I have endless patience. Sometimes I feel I should be angry at myself for being willing to wait 20 years for a poem to get finished, but I don't think a good poet can afford to be in a rush."

-- Elizabeth Bishop

"Take off, take off your glasses. . . . Let me see your sightless eyes? I will be beautiful then."

-- Brigit Pegeen Kelly

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I realized something funny the other day. Daniel Finch reminds me very strongly of Robin Pettey, my violin teacher. They are both relentless in their demands of competence from their students, and in their demand for genuine effort. Both prized tenacity and persistence. They're both hardcore, which is an undefinable quality that you know when you see it -- it has to do with passion for their subject matter, and it has to do with their willingness to send you back to the fifth grade, so to speak, and tell you to start again if you've missed something along the way, but it also has nothing at all to do with either of those things. Realizing the similarities makes me suddenly understand a lot more about why I gravitated towards Daniel Finch as someone I would like to be my mentor.

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"It always seems impossible until it's done."
-- Nelson Mandela

That's a quote for Liz, who read it out of my day planner today in World Views.

I also understand, this week, the urge to send characters back into the valley for their happy endings. Do you know what I mean? The protagonist ventures into the wild hills, finds and fights evil, and returns to the valley where he began in order to complete his happiness. Why? Returning to the valley at least provides some semblence of order and control, some semblence of a circularity that the protagonist chose. The protagonist did, after all, defeat the evil. . . they are quite capable of going anywhere, but they return to teh valley, the safe place, the bounded, the familiar.

I have to read Nietzsche for my World Views class. Imagine my surprise -- Nietzsche is not what I thought at all. He is so vehement, passionate, vindictive, not giving up or giving in or reductionistic at all. In his mind, he seems to be fighting against reductionism -- he wants to get rid of all the head-fluff going through culture (particularly Christianity) and return to the vital, forceful, pervasive, complex & complete natural world. At least, that is what his first 30 premises tell me. We shall see more as we go along.

There is a peculiar kind of intelligence that I am just catching glimpses of in this, my senior year of college. It is the kind of intelligence that is self-aware -- how could one critique or present one's own work without a measure of self-awareness? -- And it is also the kind of intelligence that is framework-oriented. Let me explain that a little bit more. It is the kind of intelligence that, when presented with an argumment, could argue the points presented, but instead goes straight for the assumptions behind the points presented -- it questions the very framework on which arguments are based. I kind of like this intelligence, even though I lack it. It's the part of intelligence that asks "why?" to the complete degree, and it is the part of intelligence that is always seeing & seeking possibilities. I hadn't gotten much past recognition. But I think it would be fun if I could be that sort of smart someday.

at your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses and this fragile earth, our island home

"i'm the new chicken clucking open hearts and ears"

Do you know what I wish? I wish that healthy sexuality within marriage was a more widely discussed topic in the church. I wish that we, as young people, were provided with more models of what that looks like, because I think that determining dating boundaries would be much easier if we knew what the ideal end-goal looked like. You know? Is that an unreasonable idea?

It's difficult, I realize, because that's a highly private thing and possibly even highly-individualized (that is, each couple may have a different way of defining healthy sexuality). However, if such a thing is highly individualized, then it becomes more important that we have multiple examples of healthy sexuality. I mean, how are we supposed to achieve it, the way I assume we're supposed to, if we don't know what it looks like? Did your churches navigate this more successfully than my churches did?

Also, I disapprove of the idea that sex should be discussed as little as possible inter-generationally. That is, there is this perception within at least my age group that one does not discuss sex or sexuality or anything else beyond one's own peer group, and that one should never honestly discuss sex within a religious setting or with religious people. Well, if someone is seeking wisdom, that really doesn't help them much, and as a result I feel there is a lot of misinformation and strange attitudes towards sex being diseminated.

I understand the reluctance to talk about sexuality in a religious context, however misguided I think it is. I mean, heck, I am even nervous stating that I want people to be more open about that kind of thing sometimes, because I know that family members and rather religious individuals peruse my blog. And I'm not even TALKING about sex, I'm just talking about how we might talk about sex and sexuality more openly.

Let me give a concrete example of what I'm talking about: I was homeschooled. That means I got sex ed from my mother, and as awkward as that was at the time, I feel like it later set an attitude in my head that that is an open topic between us if I ever feel like I need wisdom (I haven't tested it, so this might in actuality be an erroneous perception). Why haven't I tested this hypothesis, though? Because talking to my mother about healthy sexuality in a marriage would be such a weird, counter-cultural thing. Sex is not discussed inter-generationally, and if I were ever to be like, "My MOM says," then I feel like I would immediately be ostracized.

OK, my peer group, it's time for you to speak up a little about what I'm sure is currently being perceived as an extremely awkward blog post. Do you feel the same strictures in talking about sex and sexuality that I do? Do you think that these are ridiculous rules? Do you think that they are ridiculous rules only sometimes?

Do you think there ought to be more inter-generational dialogue about this kind of thing? Anybody?

Does anyone think that I should never discuss healthy sexuality so openly on my blog ever again?

P.S. New Jesus College Post. Twice as much Mackenzie, every Friday!

"don't take it too bad, it's nothing you did--"

People have been commenting on my work blog lately. It kind of makes me nervous. Now I feel like I have to live up to the good posts. My hope, however, is that I will post enough that the bad posts will be evened out by the mediocre ones, and maybe the alright and excellent ones will erase the mediocre and bad ones. Do you think? Maybe?

Can I vent for a moment? Sometimes professors can be extremely inconsiderate. My art seminar professor assigned us reading over the weekend - OK, no problem. I expect to do reading for classes, much less my senior seminar class. So I did the reading. Today I get an e-mail from him giving us discussion questions prepare from the reading and giving us another assignment. Excuse me?

I'm carrying eighteen credits, I'm working two jobs, and I've been doing a darn good job of it thus far. But you know, getting all my work done (yes, I've even been doing all the reading so far. I've done every bit of work assigned in every single one of my classes) and keeping up with two jobs -- oh yeah, and maintaining some kind of social life AND getting enough sleep -- without going insane requires good time management and planning ahead. That means that when professors throw random assignments at me, my carefully-constructed plan of action is totally screwed up.

I simply don't have time to humor professors who don't plan out their classes in advance. If they expect us to be professional and do our work before the appointed class period, I expect THEM to be professional and give us a reasonable period in which to complete the work.

If that sounds bitter, vindictive, and extremely angry, that's because it is. I'm pissed off and only supreme self control is preventing me from dropping a few swear words.

In other, lighter, funner news, Elena's new boyfriend is currently setting his hand on fire in our kitchen.

That's an exaggeration. He is currently setting the air inside his hand on fire. Don't ask me how it works. It's freaky and strange. But also kind of hysterical.