SO here I am again back in Jacksonville. It feels almost embarrassing to be back. I only said goodbye two weeks ago and each time is like another round of "see you on the other side's". I am working on a commission from my mother of four abalone shell paintings. One of them is a triptych to go above her bed and the fourth is a three by four footer to go above a couch in a beach condo. I have been instructed to hold the purple on the beach condo painting, but to let 'er rip on the triptych. Four days or so into the paintings, I was ready to call it done on the couch painting and destroy the triptych. I painted over the triptych with exception to a vertical element that I though was working well. The idea is to blend the elements together now. I stayed up all night last night. I felt very restless come bedtime, in part from the fireworks. It was the fourth of July, and the riverside neighborhood seemed dangerous. I took a walk to see if I could festive up, but walking out of the door of the warehouse where I was making the paintings was like landing on an alien planet. As a human, raised American, I had pretext to the 'celebration', but did not feel any benefits. Walking through neighborhood streets, I would round a corner to witness a firestorm.
I felt sad. Back at the studio, I hunkered down and read through The Catcher in the Rye, and a little bit of Night.
I feel that in this commission I have stepped out of the frying pan and into the fire. That is, I have liberated myself from responsibility and then... God, my writing is terrible today. I can't help but think of J. D. Salinger's cadence while I write now.
I don't like the feeling particularly of being away from Meghan right now. I think it is silly to put this commission from my mother ahead of my connection to this wonderful woman that I feel. I think about how this falls into another string of occurrences of my mother getting in between not only my love life, but also my spiritual path. I'm not trying to project this, it's just that it's on my mind. I'm in love. It's a miracle. But I have this commission for a bedroom triptych for my mother that's holding me to Jacksonville I feel. I don't know or care what goes on in my parents bedroom, though once I heard them doing their thing the night we moved into a house in Tallahassee. I had school the next day. I felt happy for them in a way. At one time, I thought they were going to get a divorce. Maybe they should have. Here I am, their son saying these things. But there's a perpetually unacknowledged thing between them I feel. Like on the first date I imagine it was there. This I think it what is called 'chemistry', 'our chemistry', 'their chemistry'. Its a dynamic, perpetually in check but unmoving. The light at the end of the tunnel is a train departing tomorrow night, after I postmark the paintings, in whatever state they are in, to my parents house.
Right now I am thinking to not go to school at Ringling. Reading Catcher in the Rye last night was enlightening but like all great arcs of thought, in my experience, left me with the same problems in the end. Does Ringling represent the school in which Holden Caufiled came from, or that which he writes from? The alternative plan (or the placeholder plan for now) is to learn German in Berlin, then apply for a visa to attend German art school on staat money. I have been reading German for the past couple months and starting to tooth in. Mostly, somehow, I want to be anonymous. Actually, the Catcher in the Rye book was dangerously close to how I feel about, everything. Maybe I'm just easily influenced. But his running into the woods plan sounds right to me.
I talked with Shaun today. We went out to lunch. He's funny because he will tell you that art is useless, or in the long run, not necessary. I agree. Here I am making couch matching paintings, though mostly complaining about it. Library's closing. Long story short, art is a product of excess. It is beautiful, like religion, but calorie for calorie, a waste.
Love y'all.
So simultaneously, I want to just pay off Ringling, just to have someone else holding on to my college money. But there, in the middle of the sentence, though I finished it for continuity's sake, is where I get hung up. Ringling, it feels like an arranged marriage, and I the dowry holder. I am unsure of what I am paying for. But to go would be to know.
