ebb & flow

It's funny how avid a blogger I was when I created this thing, and now my posts have tapered off. When there is a lot going on, it seems overkill to delve into every part of it. This quarter things have expanded and contracted in ways I never could have imagined one year ago. I say a year ago because May third was the anniversary of my dad's death. Now, twelve months later, I am going through another time of extreme transformation. I don't believe it's related to my dad, but it's strangely ironic these changes are happening at this particular time.

Sometimes I wonder how we can feel so many different emotions (opposite, even) so very intensely, and for such an extended period of time. There are days when I am numbed by everything circulating around me. It's so thick, all I can do is let it be. Holds me in a lock. Other days each emotion waves through quite clearly and vividly, as if every moment is saturated. Even the simplest actions hold weight and meaning. Yesterday I watched sunlight illuminate the leaves of a hanging plant in the kitchen window. I loved every part of that moment, I stared at those leaves for five solid minutes.

I catch myself believing there is something quite intense moving in the air around me, something larger. I can't name it, but I feel it. My sister in her Chinese medicinal ways, ever interested in how energy moves through our bodies and the world, informed me that now is a time for big decisions and change to take place. That this summer things will be "lining up" in such a way that it will be a time for great creativity and passion, followed by a period for more directed decision-making and focus. This is hoo-hash to some, but I believe in these things. I don't call it believing in "fate" (I don't think things are predetermined in life). But I do believe in things larger than us, that we don't always know, and that these things (energy, whatever it may be...) have the capability to set stuff in motion, or vice versa.

This weekend there was a vice-versa, unrelated to me, but still related enough that it affects me deeply. An acquaintance, a person I've only recently met but one of those people who immediately comes across as amazingly genuine, and his girlfriend, another genuine person with abundant life and energy, were in a tragic accident. She did not survive, and he did. The shock waves this kind of experience emits are so incredibly strong. The finality of death, especially of someone whose life was cut so abruptly short, just sits like a giant rock. You don't know what to do with it. Every trivial matter is blown out of the water.

oregon trail

Currently I am cruising at an altitude of 35,000 feet. And why not write a post when soaring this far above the earth? We are en route to the heat-trap of Phoenix, where we will land in a city of six million, file off our plane and lemming over to a connection gate, only to hurtle our way back up into the atmosphere for four more hours before we dive bomb the East Coast once again. In fact my bottom will be gracing PC's sad excuse for a cushioned chair in less than twenty-four hours.

Well, I have emerged from the sunken depths of the school submarine, seemingly alive although my lack of posts might indicate otherwise. I find myself mostly unscathed, albeit a bit blanched, my old lady man-hands garnering more wrinkles. When I catch a glance of the back of my head in the mirror, I notice a sneaky army of silvery hairs staking camp. Tweeze though I might, they have an unwavering plan of attack. I don't doubt that I'll turn prematurely gray by age forty, not unlike my grandmother. She's been snow-haired since my birth, and in her Southern drawl ("cool" is abbreviated to "coo" with an ascending lilt), she loves to tell me how her nearly black hair retreated so early in life. That, and how proud her mother is of their Virginian heritage (swearing up and down our lineage traces back to Robert E. Lee).

After breaking away from the incestuous PC bubble for two weeks, I've found time to slump in my desk chair and do nothing. Though often I discover myself staring at another Family Guy episode without even realizing Peter is waddling around naked again. The end of every quarter always seems less like a conclusion and more like a split-second train wreck on permanent repeat. My brain waves don't blip much faster than sleep mode--always its intoxicating cloud threatens to render me useless. So I've re-aquainted myself with the brilliance that is my bed. And knocked back several pints of Oregon-brewed beer for good measure.

Yet here we are, bumbling back through space toward the life-sucking amoeba disguised as school. The in-flight beverage service with its head-count of nine miniature pretzels has arrived just in time.

Hot Tea and I toted our black caterpillars of luggage out to Oregon for the week, to escape the ever-warming spring of Atlanta and enter the most confused seasonal transition I've ever experienced. In a matter of one day, in fact, we trudged (ten miles backwards) through rain, hail, sunshine, snow pellets, blue sky blue sky, dry desert wind, and a little more snow sludge. While I can't attribute all this meteorological glory to Portland alone--as much as its mix of rain and shine liked to thwart our seratonin levels--the experience was mostly owed to a three-day trek over the Cascades to central Oregon. And indeed, crawling just south of Mt. Hood along the highway pass, we drove through the snowiest wonderland I've ever seen. An hour later the evergreens disappeared and dusty red rock mesas took their place. Now were you to drive this same distance in Georgia in late March, you would simply go from one pollen-dusted humid city to another, the mosquitos slowly beginning their nine month rampage.

I'll take Oregon for $400, please.

Despite the Northwest's unending beauty I do not believe we could settle there until retirement age, though half my immediate family will soon be situated in Central Oregon's little dry pocket. As much as I love a fifteen minute (traffic-free) drive to reach pure wilderness, Hot Tea and I are big city dwellers. And it will take many years for this urban itch to wear off. Fortunately we now have a valid excuse to make multiple trips to said wilderness throughout the coming years. My sister is close to purchasing a piece of land just north of Bend, where on a clear day they can gaze at snow-capped peaks that lie mere miles away. Considering they currently reside beside a five-lane thoroughfare in Portland, they are ready to exchange the car fumes and cement highway divide for a less polluted, scenic air.

(My brother, on the other hand, will remain with his brood on the suburban outskirts of Atlanta. That is, until we tempt him and his boys with the chance to hunt elk in the Northwest--this being the only viable incentive.)

After two weeks of school denial I am plunging headfirst into my seventh quarter, six months shy of graduation. Currently my forecasted schedule calls for five classes and one internship. Laughable. With a little revamp, I'll take the internship and a smattering of classes (three being most appropriate). I'm set to join forces with the Boy Brigade that is Armchair Media's creative department, and a rollercoaster ride it shall be. And an enjoyable one I'm sure. My boss will most likely be my teacher, too, as I've requested his logos class. He hails from Iceland, enjoys a good vodka soda, and never fails to tell you if your design skills suck ass.

But fortunately in my favor, said Icelandic Man was on my crit panel, and emerged from my critique only to tell me that my work was better than his. How about that for constructive criticism?

Sweet.

happy luv day

While I attempt to piece my brain back together after a week of nonstop Cowboy classes and philosophical bludgeoning, today I found a bit of bliss in this video. Shared by Bruce Crocker of Modernista up in Boston, his agency created and edited the video in-house (and, ohh, the licensing nightmare it was). He came to speak with our school today, a very enjoyable person with entertaining hitchhiking stories. And on top of it all a great attitude and great work for such companies as Cadillac, Hummer, Gap, Napster, and Business Week. This video was an extension of the (RED) project, and how appropriate for this red-heart day. (Look close enough and you'll find the members of U2 hiding out in the crowd...)



And if you're interested to learn more about the intellectual debates going on in our Chair class, check out our big table project.

my main squeeze

The Orange and I. Remember that dried-out carcass feeling? When life gives you school, school makes you into marmalade. Ah, but it feels good to be writing again, I've been homesick for my blogosphere. I let school suck away my life force and at the end of the day I can only manage to crawl whimpering into the corner. But this morning I am defiantly striking back. I'm still sipping my coffee, I got nine (9!) hours of sleep last night (we'll skip the mildly creepy dreams part), and I continue to make a mean face at my homework. But it knows its power, and will soon, as always, prevail.

Where to start?

Well I thought it might be time to introduce you to The Cowboy:




Now you have a better grasp of what I'm dealing with.




Four (five?) weeks into The Chair Class and we're already thick into two projects. The Chair, obviously, and a second regularly unfolding assignment (Cowboy likes to keep us on our toes) elusively entitled "Poetica." That project has already whipped my butt on several occasions, as it required two full weeks of nonstop research. Each week culminating in at least 20-30 pages of typed notes (hurrah for scanner text conversion software...on the 2nd go-round I got smart and my little fingers didn't have to do so much darn typing), as well as a collection of 75+ images for both weeks. Each week was a different topic, the first centering around the Bauhaus (Big Bro, that link's just for you and your limited knowledge of anything beyond Munch's The Scream), the second was more abstract: "Collaboration and Integration of Media." I picked both out of a hat. Unfortunately, not the red beret.

Now we have to muster up the math skills we so quickly blocked out, plot these two topics on an X and Y axis, and discover a point of intersection, or conflict. Herein lies the "new environment" we will discover and explore. And it will be orginal, unique, because we've created this intersection. Have I lost you yet? In layman's terms: Find a common theme between these two topics. This is the third narrative that I will develop, eventually, into some form of a book. And along the way a story is involved.

Personal storytelling is The Cowboy's favorite topic. He can't do much more than write it in Sharpie across our dumb foreheads, as he drills this concept into our brains. Often if you were to step into our class (and anyone can, as we hold class in an "open forum" environment...in the basement of our school where students constantly crisscross, mill about, and go to buy Cheese Doodles out of our sad vending machine). For the past week we've endured the Storytelling process, where we've each had to tell a very personal story that will feed the concept of our chair. Again, recall "Open Forum," i.e., this ain't your therapist's office. All twelve of us sat there in turn, digging through a personal struggle, tears and red hives flushing our skin, while Joe Schmoe wanders by, and stops to listen in while licking processed cheese flavor off his sticky fingers.

But the point is that everyone has a story. And it's really personal, life-shaping, often traumatic. But once you get the down-and-dirty out in the open it's not so scary anymore. And the more you share it the more you realize it doesn't define you, only YOU define you. So it's cool if Joe Schmoe wants to stand there crinkling through the last of the Cheese Doodles and listen to you wail.

My story obviously revolves around my father and my family. And with my dad's death being such a fresh experience, it is something that I'm still in the thick of. The Cowboy will continue to make us push through our stories, until we get to the heart of the matter and it becomes a statement so concise I could write it on a matchbook and slip it in your pocket. And while the experience of my father's death and all that led up to it is an incredibly powerful story, below it lies something more that is about me. There is a personal conflict going on, one that expands beyond this very recent experience. The Cowboy is asking me to tread this fine line and discover how to balance across the tight rope. Because if you can get to the periphery, as scary as it might be, your perception, your environment, changes. You're able to see in and see out, and not get swallowed by your immediate world. I have many diagrams in my notebook for those that need further clarification.

I will write more about my other two classes later. But in brief I am creating a 30,000 word book based on the writing of Lewis Carroll (i.e. Alice In Wonderland, you dopes), and designing a perfume bottle for a scent called "Haru" which means, literally, "spring" in Japanese (metaphorically "renew"). The bottle concept is based on the Japanese mindset of "wabi-sabi," and serves as a reminder that each day begins anew, offering us a clean slate in which to become more mindful, more present, more aware of ourselves and our environment (and that isn't tree-hugger speak). Wabi-Sabi is completely opposite a Western view of the world: it means to slow down, to pay attention to the details, to remain aware. I will try to post sketches of everything in the very near future. When it's no longer now-now.

for my brother

I couldn't resist.

And I am sure in due time a "democratic" rebuttle will commence...

ride 'em

Dearest friends (and family) whom I constantly break contact with due to the social malfunction that is school, here is a new post just for you. Consider it like mass email, only you get to feel more important knowing your name is not attached to a ridiculously long list of Those Other People Who Also Claim My Attention.

You should note here that I do love and think of each of you, despite my inability to pick up the phone or set aside the time to draft a lengthy missive. This is my pitfall, perhaps...this guilt I always feel at not being able to stay in touch with many of my closest kindred spirits. But, alas, I must accept the very un-perfectionist fact that I am human and very much without ten thousand arms, ears, and eyes. You probably wouldn't care for such a monster to talk to you, anyway.

So, to update you: I've officially experienced all three of my Excessively Challenging classes, each met with excitement, adrenaline, and complete and utter fear. The balancing factor this quarter will be the ever bigger challenge, as each teacher is currently demanding I make his or her class the priority. In fact, The Cowboy states he doesn't (in his words) give a fuck about our other classes, even if he did indeed create these schedules for us. And he follows this comment up with "And if you try to tell your other teachers what I said, I will deny it to the grave."

Ah, so be it. I guess I will have to grow those ten thousand arms and become the monster you never wanted to meet.

This morning was the 5:30 am Cowboy affair, which surprisingly did not last until the wee hours of the afternoon. We ended promptly at 9am, with said Cowboy amazingly sticking to this schedule, despite the absence of his typically ever-present worker bees (the ones that keep him task-oriented...) But lecture away he did, for a solid 3.5 hours, and fortunately I was able to keep the toothpicks tucked away in my bag, to be used on a later date when my eyes really can't face the world. Now it is mid-afternoon, although I have successfully lost all ability to tell time, seeing as how my alarm went off at 4:15am, and I begrudgingly awoke, having not gotten a good night's sleep.

Oh, I tried though. I told myself I'd be in bed no later than 10pm, and promptly at 9pm I shut down my computer, packed a lunch I ended up not needing, and finally turned off the light just after 10. I tossed and turned most of the night, feeling unsettled, like the hours were flying by (they were), and never getting quite the darkness I probably needed, as Hot Tea's night-owl self decided to work well into the dark hours. As in, he came to bed when my alarm went off.

But today I realized I was not the only Cowboy student that experienced this race for the biggest under-eye baggage. Most of my other peers fretted through the night as well, so we now face the remainder of the day as zombies in a Chair Class fog. My brain is still ticking from all the tangents the Cowboy took us for a ride with, knowing in the back of my head that I need to focus, make a schedule, chart out my time. It seems as though whenever I do this I'm unable to stick to it. I don't know why, perhaps that is my creature habit.

Last night I began working on my first Type & Image assignment: to design two posters about a person, place, or thing. One poster will follow a conventional, more rigid grid. The other, an unconventional grid (as in, break out of the mold). I chose to make my topic about Gretchen, my college professor I posted about back in September. She was so ordered in her art, yet dealt with such chaos inside, that I felt the two different grids could really mirror her personality and struggle. Plus I am excited to do a project about her, even if it is simply an exercise. I am using her photographs as visuals, but the posters must be mostly type-based. I went in search of said content for too many hours yesterday, and finally settled on pulling sections of the Felicia Feaster article. But I'm not sure I've presented much emotion or really communicated anything just yet. By this weekend, I will probably be ready to post the first go-rounds. So stay tuned, my lovelies.

fire and brimstone

Pick a door, any door, doesn't matter because they all lead to hell hell hell. I've officially descended, although my classes do not begin until Monday evening, so fortunately I've been blessed with a few more days of avoidance therapy. My new class schedule is as follows: The Cowboy's chair class (no Type 4 curveball like I suspected), a fragrance design class (packaging/bottle design), and Type and Image, where you basically design the layout for a book as dense as the Bible. All this for a teacher who literally runs an exercise boot camp on top of teaching and working for an impressive design firm. Intensive? Nah...

I wanted Type and Image and am glad to have it, it is just going to majorly bruise my butt. We'll probably start off the quarter with two poster designs, focusing on working with a broken and unbroken grid system, then we move to The Book. Last quarter The Sauce created a gorgeous book on Jewish folktales, and it ended up being about 150 pages long. Meaning she set the type and all the illustration for every one of those pages. I will soon be doing the same....The perfume class will be a new and very different challenge. I need another packaging course, and this is a big one. You create a new fragrance, design and build the bottle and package for it, as well as a whole advertising campaign. Some other package projects may get slipped in, too. The cost of this class is going to be up there, as having a bottle manufactured ain't cheap. Then there's the chair class, which I've already explained. The Cowboy likes all of his students to have their chairs manufactured as well, and this can cost thousands of dollars (I will be putting this off for as long as I can muster). Needless to say, I will be a broke little cookie...but all the smarter for it, somehow...

As I relish in the short unexpected extension of my holiday break, I shall attempt to finish cleaning the house, writing thank you cards (a resolution this year), and try to mentally prepare myself for what's to come (in most cases, impossible). I've been reading a book that some may call corny as it brings to mind the self-help and/or New Age section of the bookstore, but it's a good one to read right now. I should probably spare everyone the title, as it will make most immediately shut down and not want to hear anymore (my brother comes to mind...), but it's called Emotional Alchemy. There is a mild cheese factor, but I find a lot of truth and relevance in Tara Bennett-Goleman's writing. She's a psychotherapist, has studied under numerous Buddhist and Zen masters, and has held her own mindfulness workshops for many years. She focuses on the art of mindfulness, and at the end of each chapter explains ways to meditate and work on achieving this attentive state. This is something I want to work toward, as it can help me focus my worried brain and remember to not get carried away with my emotions, anxieties, and self-criticisms.

I enjoy how the author connects her writing and meditations back to Buddhism and Zen teaching. Buddhism is a religion that has always intrigued me, particularly in the way it focuses on the self, and achieving happiness and peace through inner work. You might call me a spiritually private person, meaning a) I keep a lot of it locked inside and b) I enjoy personally working through these issues on my own time. I'd rather sit in a quiet room and meditate, with or without others, versus be preached to. Achieving a better understanding of myself, my personal issues, and how to redefine and accept them is a big goal of mine, but not something I often speak about. I am not so much moved by group ceremonies, church services, and Bible studies (definitely not for me) as I am in my own personal growth that I take care of when I am ready. But this is I topic I could dig into deeply, and I don't think I'm quite there yet. At least at this very moment while I'm freezing my ass off in my own apartment (I'm wearing fingerless gloves...) I love how as soon as the heat reaches it's supposed "correct" temperature (our heating system sucks), in two minutes all of that heat has been sucked out the windows.

Make way for the January gas bill, it's going to be a big fat hairball.