Warm Abstracts

Two pieces of floaty art from a few days ago:



I will be glad when school starts again. My therapist says it's a positive development for me to want to do more than just hole up in the house for days on end, and generally I've got to agree. Perhaps I should order my textbooks immediately and get a jumpstart on the reading...

Tragicomedy

Snapshot of a cartoon by Mueller, seen in Funny Times. The flat-faced masks harken back to Thorazine stupor and Jack Nicholson post-lobotomy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, as if psychiatry hasn't progressed since the '60s. This makes me angry. I don't like seeing the myth perpetuated that psych meds will destroy your personality, turning you into a dull, emotionless husk. Sure, the medications are diverse and they affect people differently, but Prozac is not an automatic zombifier. In fact, it has the potential to alleviate crippling depression, bringing sufferers out of the undead mire of mental illness into regular life! My own pill du jour, Effexor, does the same.

"Theater on Meds" is a cheap joke. It's a joke at the expense of the people who are harmed by their prescriptions, as well as the ones who are too scared to find out.

Anxiety Scream

How do people cope? How do I cope, on my normal days? I'm shaking with how many things I can't control, with the vastness of the world and the many factors that are beyond my trembling fingers. God, I'm a cliche--"trembling fingers". Should I buy like four more domain addresses for all the pies I have my fingers in, all my useless curation-based accounts? Why do I feel like every interest has to be a blog? God, it's impossible. I can't be me. I need to be someone else whose life I don't care about.

// life drawing : scott richard (2005) //

// Anxiety scream by Micheal Saisi //

Arab Spring

[Inspired by watching half of The Square, a documentary about Egypt's 2011 revolution.]

I am not a revolutionary.
My feet are not
brave.

Running on dangerous ground,
surefooted because the martyr
welcomes every stumbling spot,
rejoicing in the dirt that
grinds the skin
of the martyr's knees.

I am not
a revolutionary.
I am falling to my knees
in my own bedroom.
When I pitch forward
the maroon carpet burns my face,
rug burn,
a friction burn,
the fibers creating abrasion marks
on my face.

I am not a revolutionary
because I am warm
with bare feet.

Status Report

Pictured: Button, the dog that I walk on weekdays, crushing somebody's poor patch of flowers. Bad, silly puppy!

I'm feelin' pretty good. This morning I went to school briefly to take my sociology final, and I think I did well. Then I came home to spend hours working on my own projects, blissfully. I wrote an article for the Richmond Pulse and Tumbl'd like mad. My hair is very dirty--I'll shower tomorrow, I swear--and the summer sweat makes it itch. So that's a little gross.

Tomorrow I'm planning to Do A Thing with Brianna, which is impressive because social interaction saps my energy tremendously. I drain like a syringe when the plunger is depressed. Probably we'll go to an open mic at Cafe International. Probably beforehand I will think that I don't want to, but then I'll have fun.

I'm Not Tryna Find Nobody Else To Beat

Despite the misogynistic gangbanger nonsense, I love Lil Wayne's latest track, "Believe Me". I love that the song officially belongs to Lil Wayne, but Drake has more verses, including the hook/chorus. I love that they're both going on about how they're the best ever--"I'm the only one to get the job done"--but that there's no conflict between them. Each dude is asserting his dominance, insisting that he is rap's alpha male, but the potential for cognitive dissonance doesn't seem to bother them.

I love this about hip hop in general: just about every artist makes a lot of noise, saying that they're unbeatable, top of the game, but they all collaborate musically and get along (for the most part). Rappers understand #VanityAsSelfCare. Being obsessed with yourself and thinking you're great doesn't mean you can't appreciate someone else's contribution. But then there's Kendrick Lamar...

Attempting Literary Self-Esteem

// Sebastien Wiertz //

My daily writing goal is 200 words. I add a minimum of 100 words to each project. Usually it works out to about 150 words. And then almost every day I write a blog post, roughly 200 words. All told, I write close to 500 words per day. Well, THAT'S NOTHING! It seems like I'll never reach the ~60,000 words in a full-length book, especially since my efforts are shared between different projects.

I should congratulate myself for making any progress at all. I should admire that I've established a sustainable writing practice, that it's part of my daily life now. But instead I chastise myself for not performing as well as some vaguely conceptualized other writer who I have in my head. It's counterproductive, and it's mean.

I'm not the kind of person who does things for the sake of doing them. I write because I want people to read my thoughts, and because I crave the sense of accomplishment that comes with a finished project. Somehow I look down on myself for that; perhaps I think that I should have purer artistic motives. But I don't. Does anyone? Did Hemingway? Perhaps it was some other pithy chauvinist.

// Paul Carroll //

// Logan Campbell //

Carpet Shenanigans

Our dog Marcus has been slow in recovering from a recent visit to the vet. For one thing, they shaved him, so he looks totally different. It also appears that he has gone deaf. Poor baby! He's so nervous and confused. But he still enjoys cuddling.

Tangled Leaves

My uncertainty comes with a plethora of options. It's a fully stocked-up future, displaying more possibilities than I want to choose from. Patches in clear focus and intriguing blur around the edges.



I resort to bitterness when I write about myself. It's easier. Holding myself in the space of optimism requires more resolve than I can dedicate to my fingers. Does that make sense?

I've been writing every day, 200 to 400 words, expanding my projects piece by piece. It doesn't feel like enough. I have a romantic idea(l) of myself drinking watered-down orange juice and loving the heat that comes through the window, pounding my dreams into a Word doc. I can imagine keeping this up for hours, pouring out my history and poring over my present, for an entire arc of sunshine, not noticing how the Earth is circumscribed by light.

I think I just accidentally took the Catholic Church's position regarding Copernicus.

Self-Esteem Mosquitoes

I don't have it all figured out. They keep telling me that it's okay to be unsure of the future. It's okay to be confused, and to mess up. I'm learning to believe; I'm trying to believe.

My therapist tells me, "When you were a little baby, you deserved love, simply because all little babies deserve love. If a person learns self-worth from early childhood care, it makes a tremendous difference." Well, I must not have learned. I wasn't paying attention in class. She presents the paradigm now and I like it, but it doesn't feel true. My therapist is so kind and earnest. I wish she could pass her faith to me, the way she passes me the tissues when I do a bad job of suppressing tears.

I have bug bites on my forearms and lower legs, from Oregonian mosquitoes. I can't stop scratching them, so they're getting hot and swollen. Of course, the bites don't itch less. Intuitive logic says, scratch the itch and it will go away. In reality, irritated skin gets more irritated when you drag your fingernails over it. The poison is massaged into a greater area.

Curling Succulent Against White Wall

A trio of (conceptual) self-portraits featuring the pretty weeds that grow on the periphery of a neighbor's garden:



The artist's shadow is always visible. (Yeah, I think I leveled up in terms of pretension.)

Quality Of Life

I've seen these glasses a few times while walking the dog. They've been lying on the concrete, crushed, for a week or two. I assume that a car rolled over them. The driver probably flinched at the bump. Now they're useless, except as snapshot fodder. When I get depressed, I'm like those glasses: misshapen but recognizable. Anyway...



Quote from Working by Studs Terkel. I believe the interviewee who voiced these insights was a baker at an organic co-op, but I'm not 100% on that. Regardless of the person's profession, their sentiment strikes a chord with me. Although maybe it's not true for everybody?