I think that many times our rectangular frame through which we view the world is happiness. Someone said to me yesterday, "Isn't it better to always be happy?" or no, maybe it was a statement, "It is better to always be happy." I don't like this frame. Even in my quest for happiness I have a deep notion that there is much more to life--that the truest beauty is always found in the midst of the deepest sadness and despair. How can beauty and happiness ever be separated from the ugliness and pain that are assumed to be their opposites?

Symmetry

"What if I'd been born fifty years before you
In a house on a street where you lived?
Maybe I'd be outside as you passed on your bike
Would I know?"
-"The Luckiest" by Ben Folds

It makes sense that one would find Van Gogh's Sunflowers in an electron microscope image of Spanish moss, and it makes even more beautifully awful sense that Starry Night is found in the microscope image of melanoma. It makes sense that all of life would be symmetrical because it is all the same--all one.

The powerful video by Samuel Beckett, Come and Go, took this idea of the symmetry of life and related it, for me, to the allness of life.

The opening quote is from one of my favorite songs. I think it perfectly portrays this idea of allness through the greatest symmetry in life--love.
The Luckiest

Symmetry

The urge, to sit directly,

perfectly in the center of my bed

knees hugged to my chest.

Smoothing the sheets out from me—

slowly, precisely

with the palm of my hands.

This is how you make

the world go quiet.

An image, of a small boy

with little hands clasped over his ears,

rocking back and forth,

slowly.

They say he’s autistic.

He just wants the world to quiet down

a little bit.

We discussed falsity today in class and it made me think of a controversy that took place over James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces. Read about it here. I really liked this book when I read it, and I couldn't believe when all of these issues arose with it. I don't believe that you should lie and say that details are factual when they aren't, but I also strongly believe in literature as art. Falsity is part of art. The exploration of truth is part of art. The blurring of this boundary might be what makes art wonderful. What was important in this novel was the emotions presented and the feelings created, not about dates and facts. It is often necessary to create details or images or experiences in order to give a reader the "truth" about life, the truth of the emotion. Creativity should never be stifled with the regulation that stories must be told exactly as they happened. Who is to say exactly how an event happened anyway?

...and if one door opens to another door closed...

In a wonderful way I find myself overwhelmed with the ideas in 340--so many thoughts coming in every direction and I want to be able to grasp them all at the same time. I read about Zeno's paradoxes (refer to First Fork's blog) and I laughed and said, "Yea, sure why not 'all is one.'" I like that because then all these thoughts are one.

I think with art, like with life, we have to find our own doors and windows in. I think they exist where we want to find them. In fact, they only exist at all if we want to find them. It is like they say--that art is truly a unique experience for each person. Maybe we will only experience any piece within our realm of possibility, in the ways that are possible for us. So then if I am the maker, I may try to provide windows, but you will only see into them if you are looking. If you open it up and come in, then it has become a door.

I like the idea of the piece of creation itself as the door or window--it is letting someone experience it as a way to see something, or a way to feel something, or a window/door in to the maker herself.

I found my own door into this song (I didn't write these words, but used them in my creation)...


This is also something that is not a new creation today, but I think when I wrote this poem I wanted someone to read it and find their own door in.

One Two Step

A wild Thursday night party,

she’s dancing, belting out the lyrics

to Ciara’s “One Two Step.”

Wearing her russet boots, the tall ones

that give her 5’2” a little dominance.

Sweaty bodies push up against her

in the teeny room, but the lights are off

and everyone’s been drinking

so no one seems to mind.

Some guy in his standard,

slightly flamboyant, fraternity boy

button down comes up behind her

putting his hands on her waist.

His bucking bronco dancing needs a harness

but she laughs it off.

Breathing Natty Light down her neck, creating

his own beat he pulls her closer, forcing

his right hand beneath her pale blue rhinestone belt.

Clutching at the inseam of her American Eagle jeans

as his right hand prowls her abdomen,

grabbing her breasts.

Suddenly he is not just some guy,

he is that one.

He is every man we will never trust.

She’s stumbling over the futon

and tearing out the front door

as his friends, in matching collared shirts,

shout taunts. The narrow path worn through

the trees on the side of the house

is melted snow, refrozen, uneven

and her 3” Steve Maddens trip her repetitively

as her fair blond curls beat the back of her neck.

Reaching the pavement she slows down,

staggering, she throws her head back

to the navy 1 a.m. sky, then reels

forward and catches her sobbing

in her freshly nail polished hands,

collapsing onto the stone base

of a bare church fountain.

Huddled against the freezing granite

she is fourteen again,

belt hanging,

ripped from it’s buckle.

This officially marks my first post in a blog... ever. Should we toast to this or something? So, after I decided to get over my irrational fear of blogging and chuckled about being able to call myself a "blogger," I started thinking about surfaces. And then I immediately thought about buffalo. You'd actually be surprised to know how many things in life bring me back to buffalo. I will explain... but first...

My skin is my main surface. Not only is it what everyone sees when they see me, but it is what I see when I look at myself. It literally holds me together. People often talk about "looking beneath the surface," but this is meant in a figurative way. What about literally, in a physical way? I've seen what is beneath my surface, beneath my skin, and it is fat, muscle, bone, and blood. Let me tell you that there is a long, motionless, silent period between the moment that skin (surface) is punctured and the blood begins to flow. And in that period... I literally looked into myself--into the hole in my arm and under my surface.

It was a buffalo's (yes, a real, live buffalo) horn that went into my arm in a crazy, freak accident. Nine stitches fixed my surface, but what was underneath took much longer to heal.

Picture of me about one minute before that buffalo behind me decided to battle. I lost.

Here's the buffalo.