When You're Loved Like You Are: Spike the Senses, Disconnect the Dots, and Climb the Ladder

This Monday a few things will occur. At 1:17 pm on this monday, November 16th, I will turn the age of twenty. No longer a teenager yet confused to all hell like one. I will also be displaying the fourth project of my Methods & Concepts class at the Contemporary Art Center in downtown Cincinnati. It was a group work that I will not attempt to explain other than it had to be a response piece to the contemporary artist currently showing there, Anri Sala. Our project involves an eight-minute video that will loop on five screens in rounds for two hours.

here is the video: Love & Communication.

This past weekend was one of the best in my life thus far. I experimented with the depths of my perception on Friday with Lauren. The large walk in "closet" in our apartment contained stacks of cardboard boxes thrown in there after we moved in. Each and everyone ended up covered in paint. My abstract eye took over, my appreciation for line weight and color has never been so immense, and i made prints with orange halves like a kindergartner. It was magnificent! I don't think I have been that creatively liberated or productive in my entire life!

"But what if one of these days your heart just stops ticking and they sorta don't find you til' your cubicle is reeking?"

On Saturday John and I went to the middle of no where in a park in Kentucky and set up camp in the woods. We built a campfire together and crammed our bodies together in the smallest tent known to man for warmth. Sunday, we woke up and did yoga on flat rocks in a creek nearby, then went hiking back to civilization. Afterwards we made it back just in time for our coed soccer team's (the obsequious sycophants) first match. We lost, miserably, but it was great exercise and tons of fun.

"The world that has made us can no longer contain us and profits are silent then rotting away."

John and I had grown up talk next to the campfire and on the rocks just before yoga. I have concluded that I do not want to finish art school. In just the first quarter I have watched many creative souls be crushed and squashed and become humiliated and debilitated. I have watched art being butchered. It is not a very practical degree in the first place and I do not feel I need the schooling to develop myself as an artist. Instead, I would like to go to school for something that will require training and be somewhat of a challenge rather than somewhat of a clusterfuck. I'll finish out the year but by next fall I hope to be attending Cincinnati State for the culinary institute, specifically the pastry arts. I'm gonna get a degree in baking, gosh dern it.

"Imagine you go away on a business trip one day. When you come back home your children have grown and you never made your wife moan."

I simply want a degree as soon as possible so I can get out of this city and start venturing around this beautiful country, and possibly some other parts of the world. I dream of organic farms in Arizona and Alaska. I also dream of more schooling later on, around the age of 24, when I have become an independent so I can receive a full ride to Marharishi Univeristy of Management in Iowa. There, I hope to study for a bachelor's degree in sustainable living. and study abroad!

"And everything is plastic. And everyone's sarcastic. And all your food is frozen and needs to be defrosted."

I may not be getting much from my books and power point lectures but I am certainly learning about myself this year. I have never felt so in tune to my passions and desires. I have never been so at peace with who I am and what I am growing in to. Simply put, I have never been so happy.

Currently:

Reading The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Listening to Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust by Sigur Rós

Munching on a banana

Snuggling with Mr. Morris