3-30-17

Yesterday’s dream (again) was about rolling black and grey earth- soil. 

This morning’s dream was centered around Ringing College. What a strange place. Carl Johnson’s facsimile said something along the lines of ‘how fortunate we are that in the morning, the bright red door is not red at all- it’s pink.’  And Patrick Lindhart’s facsimile expressed joy in my half drank opened beer. My mother and I went to New York, with some classmates maybe, to some industrial yuppie-ilex, which I’d seen on my timeline on snapchat and thought ‘those kids are lame, and those shirts, etc.’. the Yuppie-plex was brimming with designer junk. Screen printed Japonisme shirts abound. My mom, I told her to watch her things, because she’d left them out on some table of accessories and they blended in. She went over and sought to pick up her wallet, while another woman, a trope of the fingerey shopper, picked up her purse and began to open it up. My mother intercepted the purse, breaking a social rule by taking it from the woman’s hands. There was a cute heroine figure, who came through. She had a roommate that was lesbian, and she herself was one to hold her cards close. I knew I could get her. I played the game some. Meanwhile, there was a real game going on too. My heroine figure was in fact a cheerleader/ competitor. The  game was a ring-hip game like that of the ancient Aztecs, though in the dream there appeared no players or action. The world toggled between completely submerged and a still like in a De Ciricho painting. I stayed on a red-clay roof, doing some asinine job of some kind. There was a teacher figure dictating my instructions. I had to clean gutters it seemed. Also present were an army of students, ready to become players in the game-to-be. The heroine had outlines on her face that came off and transcended her, like a Picasso cubist composition.  She seemed to mean everything. 

It’s not been easy nurturing this fire in my heart. Something’s changed. I wonder if it is because I feel sick, or because I feel no longer tied to Ringling that I find it hard to get moving on assignments. Last night, at 2am, I thought ‘it’s probably these eighteen hour days, though in the past it was more like an event than a chore- now it’s like a chore. Here’s my schedule:

M- 8a-6p Printmaking, Illustration, Figure Drawing, out at six

T- 8a-10p Digital Ill, Glass Casting, FEWS

W- 8a-12p Painting, Painting, (painting), lab monitor 

Th- ditto monday

F- ditto tuesday, studio time into late

Sa- day off, Fews

Su- Clean up, reset, studio time into late. 

This is the way I can do school this semester, and there’s hardly room for breaks. I love it when I’m manic. I feel like school has given up on me, or I on it. Both really. Yesterday I explained why I wanted to go to PAFA- it seemed to get at some new thoughts- “it just seems to make sense. I’m 26 now, and Philadelphia, I think will be a good spot to graduate from with a bachelor’s, at 28- I’ll already in a way be somewhere. The museums are good, the lineage is good,” (I didn’t say that lineage part, but it’s there) ,”New models, new teachers, different teachers, different techniques, a good big library, that kind of stuff. Also, we’ll always be friends, especially if you keep painting- the connection’s been made- we’re going to see each other again and I can’t wait! I see the groups here at Ringling, and I know what jobs we’re competing for, and I would like to work for one of these places too but, it’s like, the factions have already been made, and I don’t feel really ‘in the club’, you know?” So, in that regard too, it might be good to move away. 

Yesterday's dream

Last night’s, or rather this morning’s dream:

P. 1
I went to bed with an old friend, and I had an outbreak of herpes on my lip. (which I do now, in real life). And I wouldn’t kiss her, and in the morning my guy friend asked if everything was alright, because he’d found so;me condoms with a lot of blood in them. Me and my lover-friend went to see and I looked at my penis., which had a cut in it. I’d done a poor job love-making, too forceful- I’d brought open wounds.
____

Real life:

I was reading Jung’s Man and His Symbols yesterday and it was interesting that dreams could be an upside-down version of reality. I so happens that two nights ago upon receiving a text message from a friend, that we’d agreed to hook up. I was still feeling a little under the weather, so when it came time, I explained my history of oral herpes and adamantly expressed that there be no kissing. My mental health unravelled before her. Probably the weed that we smoked had something to do with that. There was no hooking up, and thus no transmission. That night I fell asleep right after I’d scared her out, with my clothes on and a lamp on too. I was sick and I felt it roll in heavy. It took over. I woke in the morning with a sensation that I had a cold sore, and it was not ill founded. One of those suckers had manifested on my bottom lip, classic. So I’m grateful that I scared her away instead of hooking up- I may have been in a phase of infection. 

____

Cont.

Then a potential punk house move-in.. They seemed so cool, until I got a vision realizing the difference between living there and visiting- there was an exoticism that wore off, and the charm and stickers all over and punk references began to trigger claustrophobic notions in me. We were about to form a band, they asked if I played drums. I stirred in my bed and hit my high hat (in real life), breaking me from sleep, in a sad-funny way. A melancholy funny, the bridge between waking and dreaming, blurred. It  makes me wonder if the dream is pulled from the subconscious only before waking, to justify the loss of consciousness. 

Dream 3-23-17

Falling from a dud plane, I was so enamored by the composition of falling debris- a locomotive, in parts- I fell through the air, swimming and falling. I had a wasp as a fellow. It became too late to open the shoot. I became fascinated with the edge- the moment at which it would be too late to deploy the shoot- a game of chicken. Dreamlike, I slowed as I came close to the ground, silent and there like a watercolor painting, landing even on my feet. I did die. I think this was a death, touching down. but it was a natural thing, and I remained present throughout. The wasp in a vignette, stung me all over, crawling and stinging in a circle around my wrists, and mid-thigh, and I told the story from an armchair years later, and I had a terrible redness at the ends of my two last fingers, and also from the middle of my pointer down to it’s tip. It reminded me as a viewer (outside of myself) of frostbite- utter death of the appendages. The wasp stung me and crippled me; I imagine because it was a wasp. The takeaway symbol of the morning is the hand with the shocker fingers, red from the knuckles to the tips, useless, like dipped in chocolate syrup. 

Archives

Tastes like the smell of my grandpa’s old trailer- full of slides and old records, and crystal glasses and little unwashed yorkie dogs, and this grey cat, so indistinct, like a living animal cracker. An estate sale is in order! Second sip, third sip, and it still tastes that way. What are these breweries thinking in Panama City? 

A swim

Late entry today:

It occurs to me that even in the subconscious are we conscious. 

There’s a memory of bonding with a model- ha- I remember now- it was last night. She said that most of her clothes are gifts- and that she trusts the taste of others over her own. This has broad implications. I related about my framing up a composition- I kind of hold onto my seat, and work with the picture as it develops. Sure, I have developed an eye, but I am a big proponent of not overthinking it. She said plus, that she preferred used clothes, and things. I relayed this memory too, about my preference of used things. It turns out, my parents must have picked up on it. Once, as a young adolescent, my dad picked me up from school with a gift of a football. He said that he’d found it in the ditch, while clearing weeds that day. It had some topical scratches, which I noted, saying so, and that I believed his story. I loved the gift. We threw the ball and it was a true joy, not separate from reality. Later on, by a few days, I found the box and the receipt for that very football. It would seem that he made the effort to rough it up, so that he could tell me the story of his ‘finding’ it. My model friend said that that was such a sweet story- and I had a flush of realization that it truly was. I thought later- wow- what is having a good dad relative to my social relationships? What about telling the good? Or seeking to tell the good, again, not separate from reality. 

I have a pair of shorts that appeared to me in the same way. Upon a visit to my parents house, a pair of newish (but it looked that they were washed a handful of times) little shorts. They were suspiciously small- they could not fit either of my parents. My mother asked if I wanted them, and I said yes, They were exercise shorts and at the time, I was not taking good care of my body- I digress. 

This morning, rather than waking very early and running (my calves are so tight, it would be a bad decision (and mostly very very painful) to do so, I slept in till 7:30, which felt not-good. I ate breakfast, then in class during critique, became very tired, and laid down and took a nap on the floor. Today was field trip day, and after critique we found our car-buddies, (mine was Aaron, who has a bachelor’s in Psychology and likes to talk heady art concepts), and went out to Bird Key Park. I’d thought ahead and brought swim trunks (procured on last Wednesdays field trip, after visiting the Ringling Museum). Aaron and I walked out to the cape of the park overlooking the bay, and I set my things down, and looking around, stripped and slipped into my swim trunks. I took a quick walk to survey the scene, checking entry and exit points, and I was asked what I was doing, and I said going for a swim I think, and some other students arrived too, just in time for me to make a great leaping dive from the apex of the cape, and out into the bay I swam. I’d mentioned to Aaron that it would be a good idea to swim across the bay and back, and he agreed. In the water, I turned to my classmates, who seemed in good spirits, and said “Call me Lieutenant Dan!” as I did a back-reclining breast-stroke, and out into the bay I swam. I turned over and breast-stroked most of it, with some freestyle mixed in, and some backstroke. the water was brisk, and the colors of the great sarasota bridge reflecting into the bay were marvelous. I’d seen dolphin in here two weeks ago. They tend to come through around sun set. I thought about sharks a fair amount, but also of their relatively small size. I was more worried about being worried, than regular worried, so I swam, because that was a thing to do to get through, or across respectively. Another concern was boats, and I kept an eye out for them periodically. One passed by- through the columns of the bridge. I estimated the trajectory, and understood that I did not need to slow down, or break pace, but we would be close. As they passed they turned around to look, and asked in a sheepish tone if I needed help. They half-understood that I did not want to be bothered, but for courtesy’s sake, they asked. I said no, without a thanks, for I was in mid-swim. Toward the far end of the bay, reaching the other bank there was a fair amount of sound in the water from propellers of boats. What havoc humans wreak with recreational boats. I approached a seawall, and wondered how I was going to get out of this water. I saw a Quaker family on the sidewalk by the seawall, and to my left by twenty feet, a couple big rocks jutting out of the water near the wall, so I swam toward those to climb out. Before getting to the rocks, the bottom came up, and I could stand and walk. My breathing had been regulated and my whole self vibrated at a new attunement. The eldest man of the quakers, with a big white beard met me as I waded up to where the concrete wall met the water, extending a hearty outstretched palm to me. What a poetic solution! I grabbed hold of his hand, and he hoisted me out of the water. I stood with the family. There were two little kids, in quaker head-wear, big sparkly eyes looking up at me, and two women, and a younger man. They gathered around me and asked if i’d swum all that way, and if I was scared of the boats, which I said yes and no, and then I saw Aaron! I said “gotta go, there’s my friend”, and went to Aaron, who’d told the painting class teacher that he had to ‘get something out of his truck’ then drove across the bridge to come pick me up. My whole self was ringing with serendipity and bliss, as I rode in the back of Aaron’s truck back to painting class, where I receive a good-humored welcome. 

Runner's digest

This is morning number two waking at 6, and running. This one I was sore and tired for. I went a little less far. I had breakfast afterward too, eggs, oatmeal, a pancake, a hash brown, and a cup of coffee. That'll probably be too much for me. I've got an appointment today with my student advisor so that I can drop a class- thing is I don't think (anymore) I'm going to drop a class at all. It's an 'I got this'. kind of thing, and I think I really do got this. I'm sick, still, somehow. After the run this morning, I went to the gym and rollered my calves out (though not all the way out).. I laid down in corpse pose, and fluid came into my windpipe and I began to cough a lot. What's wrong with me? It was funny dying there on the gym floor because not a week before I was in the same pose, hungover, looking at the ceiling in a parallel, but different altogether state. How funny life is, and how great that we have the control to 'change'. Peace for now.

Switching gear

Rough bedtime, thinking of lonesomeness, too much caffeine, sickness, coughing up yellow. 

Wrote a list- to go into 'super-sayan' mode. Fuck healing, I'm too behind.

Morning run in the dark. Like a quick little fox, a remnant of the night. 

No food yet, listening to my body- clear mind, stuffy nose. A vitamin. 

Class- I stand in the back for the demo. In the computer labs I email. 

Out to run errands. My transcript goes out to PAFA in the mail.

I take a picture of a stump, for reference for a linocut.