This is the Beginning of the Rest of My Life

There is always something refreshing about coming back to school from a break. Despite the fact that my Spring Break was neither relaxing nor warm, I've come home feeling energized, ready to work and ready to learn. The weather is warming up, and blades of green are poking up through the brown.

Today I have gotten things done I should have done months ago. Things are piling up around me, but I am not panicking, although I am shaking (which may be because I drank too much coffee today). I met with my interim adviser today, and told him about my internship with the American Scholar magazine this summer. The 15-minute appointment turned into a 20-minute discussion about the future of printing, the future of journalism, and my own future. Everything began to sink in: I will be living in D.C. this summer, and I will be working at a real magazine, in the real world. No more college coddling; I'm playing with the big boys now.

To be honest, I'm terrified.

I feel incredibly grateful to be given such a wonderful opportunity, but I'm worried something might happen and the whole thing will fall through. That may partially be my paranoia, but it may also partially be the fact that I have never played this high in the rankings before. My biggest question to myself is: Can I handle it?

Of course I am afraid I will fail. That's just how I am. But I also feel rejuvenated, powerful, like I am taking the first steps toward a life I can't imagine but know is there. The feeling is quite foreign to me.

First, I should have been a chemist.
Then, a politician.
Now, an environmental engineer.
I should have been many things.

Titus fought the law and the...law won. :(

Wow, I think I just took the longest shower I've taken in two years. Probably because A: it actually had hot water, B: there was no stuck window that let all the cold air in from outside and C: there weren't any bugs living in the shower! Hurrah for clean bathrooms.

In other news, I was invited to talk at the Creative Writing Minor meeting today, to dispel the horrendous myths the freshmen have been spreading about it. I personally haven't heard of any of those rumors, but whatever, I'll go with it. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. Most of the freshmen just stared blankly at the three of us speakers, and I felt a little out of place considering I had been debating whether or not I was actually going to fulfill the creative writing minor for a while now.

It was cool to talk to my poetry professor, though. There are many things about her that remind me of myself, which is maybe why I thought I didn't really like her at first? I suppose I wouldn't say "dislike" but more... threatened? Intimidated? Scared? Those seem like more appropriate words. My meeting with her earlier today probably helped too. She, much like my fiction professor last year, really inspire me to work harder on my own writing. It makes me feel a bit guilty for being so lazy. Well, maybe not lazy (I was accused of being a workaholic this week!) but more... scatterbrained. I want to do so many things, I feel like I don't have time for all of them. But that's an age-old story that everyone's heard before.

My art professor complimented me on my eye make-up today! I've sort of resigned myself to the idea that I'll look weird no matter what I do, so I've gotten a little more adventurous with my make-up and fashion. Today I wore a monochromatic ensemble with seafoam colored shoes and inside-out eye make-up (as in I only lined the inside V of my eyes and left the top lids blank).

It probably didn't help to be dismissed by a professor a few weeks ago for not being "fashionable." Oops, there goes my self confidence!

And now I should go work on my Shakespeare paper: How Titus Andronicus is a critique on the failure of Law in both Formal Law and Vigilanteism. Sound interesting, right? We'll see...

A New Chapter for All

It's getting to be that time of year when I feel giddy and excited about the cooling weather, the bright blue skies and the changing leaves. Fall is (and will always be) my favorite season. Maybe it's because that was when school started, and despite my utmost contempt for it most of the time, I loved buying new school supplies. Well, new notebooks, anyhow. Most of the other school supplies my mom just recycled from my sister, which used to bother me when I was young but just makes sense to me now.

But those notebooks... crisp, clean and shiny white pages, a brand new chapter, a sweet blank slate. The idea that maybe, just maybe, I'll do better this year. New notebooks and sketchbooks also instill in me a sense of great potential... that I am somehow on my way to doing great and important things. It's only until I start filling them up that I berate myself and regret wasting paper and all of those forms of self-chastisement.

Fall now leaves a trace of melancholy in amongst its reds, yellows and oranges. I remember my junior year of high school, when I visited the east coast. Fresh and bright with my first love, thoughts of potential finally found, of great, grand cities bustling with stylish students swirling around my head, I came to Washington College with such a profound sense of hope, of at last pursuing my dreams. The college seemed large and wonderful, and the anticipation built up in my limbs like electric shocks. I knew that life would finally be different, better than the tiny town and smaller school I had called home all of my life.

But these last two years have been a nightmare if they were anything dream-like. I fell into the wrong group of friends, gave myself away in desperation to abusive, insecure people and in turn, became insecure myself. I'm struggling with my own sense of identity now, and what I really want to do with my life.

About an hour ago, WAC's presidential inauguration of Mitchell Reiss ended. I sang in the Vocal Consort that accompanied the ceremony, and I am lucky enough to have my name in the program. It was interesting to attend the long ceremony since many of the speakers were former senators, governors, and congressman. President Reiss is an important man, and I was struck by how much influence he really has, not only here in Chestertown, but in Washington D.C. too. I was struck by how superfluous my interests are: English and Art. Yes, I do believe they are important in some ways, but fiction or fine art are rather elitist things--someone living paycheck to paycheck is probably not going to have an interest in either. President Reiss was out negotiating with terrorists in North Ireland and North Korea. What will I end up doing with my life? Write a quaint number of books and collections? Maybe eventually sell a piece of artwork, if I'm lucky?

I know this existential moment is born simply out of my desire (or desperation) to be known, to have the attention all to myself, to be seen as a great person of... something. There are times when I wonder if I have become too ambitious, set my sights too high. It's the characters with too much ambition who are the ones who tend to fail in the end.

31 Drawing Challenge

I'm trying my luck at a 31 day drawing challenge, to see if I can really keep up my goal of "drawing every day." It's sad that I have to make that a goal... especially because I consider myself an artist but blah, whatever. I'm going to try and post the drawings I do up here, but we'll see if that actually happens, not because I haven't done the drawings but because I'm so damned ashamed of them. The first day challenge was "draw yourself" and goddamn it was awful. I think I either draw myself waaaaay too inaccurately buxom or waaaay too ugly.

So you're gettin' nothing, folks!

Talk Fans the Flame

Paterson, Book Three, The Library, Part II

Fire burns; that is the first law.
When a wind fans it the flames

are carried abroad. Talk
fans the flames. They have

manoeuvred it so that to write
is a fire and not only of the blood.

The writing is nothing, the being
in a position to write (that;s

where they get you) is nine tenths
of the difficulty: seduction

or strong arm stuff. The writing
should be a relief,

relief from the conditions
which as we advance become--a fire,

a destroying fire. For the writing
is also an attack and means must be

found to scotch it--at the root
if possible. So that

to write, nine tenths of the problem
is to live. They see

to it, not by intellection but
by sub-intellection (to want to be

blind as a pretext for
saying, We're so proud of you!

A wonderful gift! How do
you find time for it in

your busy life? It must be a great
thing to have such a pastime.

But you were always a strange
boy. How's your mother?)

--the cyclonic fury, the fire,
the leaden flood and finally
the cost--

Your father was such a nice man.
I remember him well .

Or, Geeze, Doc, I guess it's all right
but what the hell does it mean?

--William Carlos Williams

Infintesimal Things.

You know, it's really the little things that can make or it break it for you.

This past week I've been stressed myself out needlessly (but hey, it's what I do!) over my independent study video project; I'm creating a visual interpretation of Verse I of East Coker by T.S. Eliot. Despite the fact that it's nearly impossible to render a poem visually, seeing as the words of the poem itself are a beautiful and complete mish-mash of phonetics, imagery and pacing, I've gone ahead and am attempting the impossible. Hoo-yeah, I know I've picked probably the most stressful thing I could have taken on, but I'm really trying to push myself hard.

Prof. Castro has been trying to get me to realize my potential, and has been talking about me pushing myself harder and working further in expanding my artistic pursuits. I feel like he's been telling me this for the past year--and either I've been stupid or deaf (or both) and have yet to completely listen to him. I think I've also taken on this behemoth because of the fiasco of my art endeavors last year, specially that in my Creative Process class, in which I came upon a tar-pit in my artistic path and promptly belly-flopped in. Earlier this summer I came upon another tar pit, and this time I tripped and awkwardly cannonballed in. I've never really thought of myself as a perfectionist, but a few of my friends have been telling me I've been too hard on myself, expected unrealistic results and it's been causing my anguish.

I'm starting to think they are probably right.

I've never been okay with my own limitations, I want to be the best in everything all the time...how unrealistic and juvenile of me! It's okay for me to have limitations, and it's okay for me to work hard at trying to best them. To be honest, I think I am a perfectionist with a lazy streak, I whine and whine and whine about how much I hate the things I create, but hell, I don't produce all that much, and it's hard to bat a 300 when I refuse to step up to the plate! I need to clamber on top of this fear of failure. So what if I fail...what's that going to do? Sure, I don't want to just throw myself under the bus or anything, but what's so bad if I'm not perfect all the time? (Because let's face it... I am pretty perfect every once in a while...)

An anecdote from my fiction professor, Prof. Mooney, comes to mind when I talk about this. He told us in class once, that there is a brick wall of shitty ideas in our heads, one long and tall and wide. The only way to get past this brick wall is to take it down, brick by brick. You need to write out and through those shitty stories to get to the masterpieces behind it.

I've always liked that story, because it brings everyone to a similar level--everyone has the capacity to make something great, but they also have the capacity to make something god-awful.

In other news, I'm moving along in my Infinite Summer endeavor, although I am sorely behind. I'm not worried, though, I've got a few days vacation without TV or internet, so I think I'm just going to plug through that with IJ.

Something I wrote April 7, 2008

10:22 PM

These motions we take with smiles, these waves we willingly let crash over us, desiring to fill our mouths with tingling anticipation. How we sit, the sand rolling and moving and washing over us until we are buried alive under our own fantasies; we inhale all of it with shaky breaths that drown us steadily in our sheets. What else can we do but lay and shiver as we are immersed in endless droplets of water we cannot drink, cannot feel but only in expectation? Why should sparks lend themselves to the road of my spine, petering out into a firework display of my shoulders? My head, bent so low over tumbling words, does not lay heavy upon any chest; who can heave under its confusion and fear of the future? Can it willlingly place itself on sticks planted so high in altar-grounds of words and emotions and nebulous feelings that blindly grasp a dull, metal medallion?

A vision of what could be passes its tarnished features weeping through my fingertips, if how tiny fingers cling to belt loops and tiny thumbs stroke strong hip bones all the while shaking under cold skin. Anything is truly possible when they trace such doubts and fears and veins of self-depreciation, of unworthiness, of uselessness. Greatness, the ever-elusive word. The angry, green-eyed snake coils around the neck of the ever yearning, the ever hopeful, the ever useless endeavors of beating muscles behind closed bars. Once-new shoes stand steadily in muddy puddles while green, green hills roll happily by, hurling themselves onward, forward. What comes of childish attempts but realizations that hills are more than mountains, more than glaciers hungrily eating at your toes and icing your fingertips.

And when this body is gone, when all of the visions and dreams and shameless attempts are chewed up and swallowed up into the cold permafrost of slow-moving rocks and dirt and grime, will it still produce warmth? Will it hum and tickle your feet when you walk over unmarked graves of hummingbirds and albatrosses and shoes never worn? Can it still grow poppies to will to you sleep in a gentle caress, if only for a while?

Can a grand old oak ever enjoy the company of a wilting dandelion?