today's the last day of classes before my senior year of undergrad & i'm feeling incredibly calm for such a ridiculous day.
pretty much, i woke up at 430 to finish some work for my class today, already going off of sleep deprivation.
i forgot my wallet & couldn't print anything for my final crit, so i have to put all my work in my teacher's mailbox by next friday (no big, but stressful & embarrassing)
i had to say goodbye to tj
a red line derailed over red & brown tracks, so i had to take 2 different trains to a bus just to get home. it took over an hour and a half, when it usually take me about 30 minutes to get home. frustrating.
then i slept from 2-7, at which point i went to lakeview to get art supplies & work. i didn't end up leaving the area until 3am, at which point i had to get a cab because the brown line was closed for the night.
since 3 i've been finishing up this project, and after fighting with my dumbass printer for the past hour, i'm finally just a few quick steps from being finished for good. and that's super exciting.
the sun is coming up right now & i don't have to be at class until 10, and although i'm tired and have a lot to get done before i leave my house, tomorrow is Summer. like, SUMMER. summer in the city. i can ride my bike and walk gitsy and do art for fun.
i'm just really ready to be able to process this semester, do fun stuff, relax. and to get a break from daniella for a bit. things are just stressful with school, but hopefully that will be fixed after tomorrow!
anyway my prints finished so i have to go work now!
Friday, May 10, 2013
Sunday, May 5, 2013
love's not punk (first draft)
sometime in the last year, something within me changed. i find myself overwhelmed with love for the people in my life. i cried all day at a friend's bridal shower a few weeks ago. i can't even make it through an episode of grey's anatomy without choking back tears.
when i told my mom i thought i was broken, she said you are not broken, you are grown up. you are looking at the world around you and seeing the possibility for your future. you are appreciating the human experience.
emotion is described on dictionary.com as an "affective state of consciousness." feeling is a form of consciousness, something that lets us know we are human. we fear pyscho- and sociopaths because they lack empathy. horror books and movies villainize the rise of unfeeling robots and computers. almost every romantic movie delves into the pitfalls of unspoken love between two people. stories of people like kitty genovese, who died because of social indifference, are widely televised.
and yet every day, i am amazed at the indifference i see in the city around me. by the time we are teenagers, we have been trained by society not to show people that we care. it's cool to not give a shit about anything. it's easy to numb yourself to pain, to keep others in the dark about who you really are and what's going on inside you. when i was in high school, i wanted to be blase. in training to be indifferent, i didn't tell anyone i loved them or permit myself to hate. i learned to love in the dark.
but when you are 16 and your mom gets her own room in the ICU of Mayo Clinic,
when you are 17 and your best friend gets so guilty she stops eating,
when you are 18 and you are alone, hundreds of miles from home,
when you are 19 and the only boy you've ever loved puts a gun to his head,
you have to stop loving in the dark.
eighteen
i held the bloody hand of a boyfriend after he punched a hole through his door big enough to match the hole in his heart. i watched friend after friend break down, drop out, lock themselves away. i saw family members betrayed and stomped on by people they trusted. i witnessed my mom cry for the first time. these experiences taught me that telling someone to chin up, to feel better, to stop crying, denies the right to having that emotion, the right to humanness.
your emotions are important and relevant. you are not less valid for waking up crying or pissing yourself laughing. you are not stupid or childish for being so happy you could scream or being mad enough to break an entire china set. cool indifference is bullshit. letting yourself become numb only works for so long.
i never saw my best friend cry until she fell in love with someone her parents hated. somewhere between putting her family relationships at risk and knowing it was the right thing to do, she grew up, became secure enough to be vulnerable. she was 19.
the summer before i moved to chicago, my mom covered up her sorrow so severely that i thought she didn't care that i was leaving until she broke down a week before i left. she was 44.
my great-grandma spent the better part of her life spewing disdain and dressing herself in callousness. when she got dementia in old age, she forgot how to be indifferent. she cried, told us she loved us, asked us to stay with her. she was 92.
it has taken me 20 years, a lot of heartache, and my best friend saying, "i am so glad you wrote this" to get here, to this paradigm shift. to realize that apathy is overrated. to appreciate my own very human experience. to bleed compassion. to let love in.
i always used to stress out about whether or not i was happy, whether or not i was still a good person, whether or not i was whole. in the last year i have come to recognize that as long as your emotions aren't permitting you to harm others, you are still a good person. that the point of life is not to be happy or whole, it is to be chipped and broken and real. to appreciate the ups and downs of being a fallible living creature who has the very special privilege of experiencing emotion.
following is a collection of quotes i have found relating to this topic as well as lyrics, art, stories, and poems that were submitted to me by my friends and colleagues for use in this zine.
when i told my mom i thought i was broken, she said you are not broken, you are grown up. you are looking at the world around you and seeing the possibility for your future. you are appreciating the human experience.
emotion is described on dictionary.com as an "affective state of consciousness." feeling is a form of consciousness, something that lets us know we are human. we fear pyscho- and sociopaths because they lack empathy. horror books and movies villainize the rise of unfeeling robots and computers. almost every romantic movie delves into the pitfalls of unspoken love between two people. stories of people like kitty genovese, who died because of social indifference, are widely televised.
and yet every day, i am amazed at the indifference i see in the city around me. by the time we are teenagers, we have been trained by society not to show people that we care. it's cool to not give a shit about anything. it's easy to numb yourself to pain, to keep others in the dark about who you really are and what's going on inside you. when i was in high school, i wanted to be blase. in training to be indifferent, i didn't tell anyone i loved them or permit myself to hate. i learned to love in the dark.
but when you are 16 and your mom gets her own room in the ICU of Mayo Clinic,
when you are 17 and your best friend gets so guilty she stops eating,
when you are 18 and you are alone, hundreds of miles from home,
when you are 19 and the only boy you've ever loved puts a gun to his head,
you have to stop loving in the dark.
eighteen
i held the bloody hand of a boyfriend after he punched a hole through his door big enough to match the hole in his heart. i watched friend after friend break down, drop out, lock themselves away. i saw family members betrayed and stomped on by people they trusted. i witnessed my mom cry for the first time. these experiences taught me that telling someone to chin up, to feel better, to stop crying, denies the right to having that emotion, the right to humanness.
your emotions are important and relevant. you are not less valid for waking up crying or pissing yourself laughing. you are not stupid or childish for being so happy you could scream or being mad enough to break an entire china set. cool indifference is bullshit. letting yourself become numb only works for so long.
i never saw my best friend cry until she fell in love with someone her parents hated. somewhere between putting her family relationships at risk and knowing it was the right thing to do, she grew up, became secure enough to be vulnerable. she was 19.
the summer before i moved to chicago, my mom covered up her sorrow so severely that i thought she didn't care that i was leaving until she broke down a week before i left. she was 44.
my great-grandma spent the better part of her life spewing disdain and dressing herself in callousness. when she got dementia in old age, she forgot how to be indifferent. she cried, told us she loved us, asked us to stay with her. she was 92.
it has taken me 20 years, a lot of heartache, and my best friend saying, "i am so glad you wrote this" to get here, to this paradigm shift. to realize that apathy is overrated. to appreciate my own very human experience. to bleed compassion. to let love in.
i always used to stress out about whether or not i was happy, whether or not i was still a good person, whether or not i was whole. in the last year i have come to recognize that as long as your emotions aren't permitting you to harm others, you are still a good person. that the point of life is not to be happy or whole, it is to be chipped and broken and real. to appreciate the ups and downs of being a fallible living creature who has the very special privilege of experiencing emotion.
following is a collection of quotes i have found relating to this topic as well as lyrics, art, stories, and poems that were submitted to me by my friends and colleagues for use in this zine.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
groove
i told a friend earlier this week that i would cut her hair tonight & we could watch grey's anatomy together.
somehow more and more people heard about it & wanted haircuts/to hang out, so tonight emily, alea, sam, leah, dan, juan, and tj all came over. we got 4 pizzas and a couple 6 packs of mike's hard & just sat around talking. i cut emily's, dan's, and leah's hair, and then we watched tv and played mario kart.
it was probably a stupid idea and a waste of precious precious time to get this zine done, but i don't care. i missed my friends. i did the dishes after, piled up bottles and boxes and took the trash out, and i just kept thinking about how i feel really fulfilled in my relationships here, which hasn't always been the case.
sometimes going to art school it's a little hard to maintain friendships because artists and designers are usually very introverted and somewhat selfish. but i'm so proud of my friends, and nights like tonight when my friends need and want me, i feel really good about myself. everyone just kept saying how much they love how we've decorated our apartment, asked to see my portfolio and told me they were super impressed, told me they liked my hair and the way i was dressed, sought me out to consult them on how to cut their hair...it was just a good night. i'm so happy that i have friends who lift me up, especially lately when my life is a giant ball of stress and emotions.
somehow more and more people heard about it & wanted haircuts/to hang out, so tonight emily, alea, sam, leah, dan, juan, and tj all came over. we got 4 pizzas and a couple 6 packs of mike's hard & just sat around talking. i cut emily's, dan's, and leah's hair, and then we watched tv and played mario kart.
it was probably a stupid idea and a waste of precious precious time to get this zine done, but i don't care. i missed my friends. i did the dishes after, piled up bottles and boxes and took the trash out, and i just kept thinking about how i feel really fulfilled in my relationships here, which hasn't always been the case.
sometimes going to art school it's a little hard to maintain friendships because artists and designers are usually very introverted and somewhat selfish. but i'm so proud of my friends, and nights like tonight when my friends need and want me, i feel really good about myself. everyone just kept saying how much they love how we've decorated our apartment, asked to see my portfolio and told me they were super impressed, told me they liked my hair and the way i was dressed, sought me out to consult them on how to cut their hair...it was just a good night. i'm so happy that i have friends who lift me up, especially lately when my life is a giant ball of stress and emotions.
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