Paper art.

…so too, the many levels of consciousness are just successive stages in the unfolding of a single thrust, the eros of the human spirit. To know the good, it must know the real; to know the real, it must know the true; to know the true, it must know the intelligible; to know the intelligible, it must attend to the data.
So from slumber, we awake to attend. Observing lets intelligence be puzzled, and we inquire. Inquiry leads to the delight of insight, but insights are a dime a dozen, so critical reasonableness doubts, checks, makes sure. Alternative courses of action present themselves and we wonder whether the more attractive is truly good.



Bernard Lonergan, Method

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!”
- Jack Kerouac



Sometimes I agree. Usually I am the yawner saying commonplace things, and I like other people who yawn with me. But deep inside me there is the blue centerlight, desiring sometimes to pop and make everybody go 'awww'.

No longer a survival-culture, we live in an identity culture.
Case and point: blogs.

Forbearing one,

Your new morning mercies have to sometimes be militant with me, it seems.

I am finishing a report that is overdue so I can sit in class tomorrow happily, without the knowledge that I am not on schedule with my work.

But I really just want to keep reading my borrowed biography of Henri Matisse. Technically it is research for an art history review paper, so I have good reason to read it. It's taking alot of self control, which I am somewhat short of right now, to leave it on my bed.

I tried to force myself into reading biographies and watching documentaries at one point, but I really hated them. I suppose to really learn from them it just has to be the right time. Wait for a spell, you'll probably reach a time of curiosity again, then all such histories will slide into you easily like liquid.

We need a little more time and space to be curious at Gordon I think.

...for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two.

Raining, in a beautiful library, books shelved in aisles on either side of me...

Life written down onto pages and pages; from pregnancy to literature to public administration and law.

We are about to relocate ourselves to a café, where we can eat and continue our studying. I feel embraced and safe by my place right here though, flanked by all these books and physically un-present people. Goodbye botanists, carpenters, feminists, Buddhists, war historians, chemists and travelers. Enjoy this afternoon.

When I woke up this morning, I laid in bed thinking about the class assignments I should be further along in, the usual kind of dreams which I had to sort out a little, my need for a shower. And somewhere in the middle of that I wondered about it being saturday. I imagined Christ lying dead on a dark slab, his mutilated body finally left alone but lifeless, because it was both murdered and self-gifted. I imagined his friends and followers, the ones who philosophized and the ones who thoughtlessly believed him, walking around their houses and slowly making another meal with disappointment thick between them, weighing down any talking. I wonder if it rained like it is raining today.

I know now that tomorrow something will have happened in the greying body on that cold slab, something electric and scientific and completely new. The self Jesus was would return to the scarified muscles and skin, he would get up, and somehow his real and hot death would be pushed back into a memory of his history. He would be alive, untouchably so, and he would go in search of the ones he knew were sad and hopeless without him.

Today is Saturday though, he is still a body without a person inside of it wrapped in linen and preserving spices.

Oddest to me is that my next thoughts shifted seamlessly into breakfast and the decision between wearing a green or coral shirt for the day.

Found a book of children's story illustrators with Edmund Dulac, Arthur Rackham and Kay Nielsen's work in Gloucester on Saturday, and I keep wishing I had bought it!

Sleeeepy.

How did I ever manage to stay up all night last year?

I'm looking back now, and how good it feels to know the heavy creature has finally rolled off my chest.

I forget that God has gone before me, his feet tread somewhere ahead so I could follow in them if I didn't have the bravery or the strength to strike out myself.

Even when I haven't forgotten, sometimes it just doesn't stir me. The truth knocks off my bones like a dull rock and I just sit there, wishing it could crush or even just dent me, but it doesn't. I sit in a sermon and feel like I'm almost lip-synced with the pastor, I know the right answers so well - and I believe whole heartedly in the answers. But no one fleshes out the meaning that I really need at the moment. They explain for an hour and a half that Jesus was the Passover Lamb, which means that he was killed so death would pass over us. Jesus died to save us from death, yes! But here I am dying, and I need him to save me like I know he was sent to do, and no one goes there. They show me the spread on the table, the explain what the feast is for, but I have no utensils to begin eating and I know there isn't anywhere else I can (or want to) turn to sate my hunger.

My joy is even greater to see emotion restored now, to see feeling blossoming inside me again at the sight of something natural, or the sound of another happy voice rejoicing in good things about the world - but only because it would have done nothing to me a few days ago.

I want to know more about depression and become a good responder for others, because to walk around in it is a horrible thing. To sense that your real self is a stagnant, black bathtub of water bleakly filling the inside of a shell - a shell that knows how to smile and sound normal and participate in the vanity and pointlessness of the world alongside everyone else who are happier but no less vain in their doings. Not paying attention to the pointlessness of what they are doing maybe, not aware, or just not bothered by it at the moment.

It's a perspective that feels like death and I am fully aware of my lack of power to fight it. You just have to wait it out and trust in a different kind of way.

I laid in bed this morning, knowing I should have been up long before to get to work on all my tasks, but a twisting started in my stomach and my whole consciousness pricked with fear. Not again, go away! I knew the physical sense of panic very well by then and was so scared to watch all my emotional progress ruined. But something assured me of God's over-knowledge. I've made a safe place for you to suffer through this, I thought I heard him whisper, and it comforted me.

You'd think I would want to hear that my sense of the world's vanity, my dissatisfaction with it and my despair about the whole endeavor was unfounded. That I was just seeing things wrong and now I'm corrected...instead it was good to know that my experience is honest and right and that I am still safe in such a place. Even if I felt no actual comfort and still knew the grip of bleak, plain existence, I could still know I was being watched and guarded.

I'm guarded now, the sun won't harm me by day or the moon by night, and eventually this valley of shadow will give way to another kind of topography. I'll get the chance to lie down next to still waters and really be satisfied by the pasture. For now all I need to know is that the valley is a real place, but he is just as real and his rod and his staff are there.

I miss California.

I miss the sunshine, the way it used to make me feel, the way I used to dress, the things I used to do there on the weekend. I miss everyone's attitude, I miss the food and my family and driving my car along the ocean. I wish I was going back.

I need at least a camera to document my pieces - this is the only thing of mine with a digital copy and it is just a sketch of the actual painting. It won't be a good situation to be in when I actually try to do anything in the world!

I was feeling the guilt of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars being poured into my life, just me.

There are people dying tonight, frozen or starved or watching their babies shrink to nothing but bone and I'm reading a book about art history, the book with a price tag above forty thousand dollars.

And I remembered the parable, and I took the silver talents literally. The master puts real money in their hands, goes away with the clearly stated intention of returning, and even without his explicit instructions as to where it should be invested they know what he wants.

One is given five pieces, more than all the rest.

One, even with a single piece, is afraid.

The servant who feared buried the money, and at the master's return was called wicked and cast away from the house. Imagine if she had pushed it away in the beginning and just said, "No, I can't take this. Keep it master, let someone else increase your wealth."

It was the servants who accepted the amount given to them and increased them without fear, who pleased him.

I wonder if my guilt is the same as the first servant's fear?

For some reason when I saw this, I thought,

"Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground."

Excerpts from my study guide

Baroque –

Jeweler’s term for an irregularly shaped pearl, ‘barocco’ // Evoking emotional response, dramatic lighting, theatrical compositions, often multimedia

Classicism

genre paintings

still life

role of viewers

Caravaggio

di sotto in su

Vermeer, painting scenes of home and kitchen

etching, drypoint

vanitas

laurel leaves, honey bees, and suns

I shall die, but that is all I shall do for Death.

Conscientious Objector,

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I have little to share but other people's great art these days. Much like what Jess and Tala were saying here. (: Twice at the MET and once at the MFA within the space of a single month - what other situation could I find myself in?