First and Last Lines

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

1984 (published 1949)
George Orwell
Born: June 25, 1903, Motihari, India
Died: January 21, 1950, London, United Kingdom

Orwell was educated in England and joined the Indian Imperial force in Burma when he completed school. After he quit the military in the late 1920's he moved to Paris to be an unsuccessful writer. From 1930's onward, he considered himself a socialist and a devout anti-Stalinist. His best known works are Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949).

1984 is about a character named Winston living under repressive government ultimately ruled by Big Brother. He experiences a brief rebellion with another civilian named Julia even while Big Brother and his minions are monitoring their every move.

I read this book at around 13 or 14 years old, admittedly only because I knew that David Bowie had written a concept album based off of his admiration for the novel. The album itself becomes much more dimensional with the context of the book. The book remains one of the better, poignant dystopian novels I've read. I probably wouldn't reread it, but I remember the excitement of wanting Julia and Winston to escape and work out somewhere new. I remember the sad ending, as well. Everyone needs to read this book, even if they end up hating it.

"She sat staring with her eyes shut, into his eyes, and felt as if she had finally got to the beginning of something she couldn't begin, and she saw him moving further and further away, further and further into the darkness until he was the pin point of light."

Wise Blood (published 1952)

Flannery O'Connor

Born: March 25, 1925, Savannah, Georgia

Died: August 3, 1964, Milledgeville, Georgia

O'Connor was a southern essayist and writer and mainly stuck to her Southern Gothic style. It is said that many of her characters are grotesque in nature and reflect her Catholic views as well as southern issues regarding race and morality. 

Wise Blood is about Hazel Motes, a 22 year-old war veteran struggling with his faith. He meets an array of off kilter characters like a self-blinded street preacher and his daughter (Asa Hawkes and Lily Sabbath), a crazy 18 year old zookeeper with "wise blood", and a mummified holy child. Hazel encounters false prophets, redemption, and retribution. 

I don't personally foresee this book being one that I would particularly enjoy. Characters based around the absurd spectrum of religion have a way of stressing me out to the point of not being able to read the book for what it is. 

Future Legend

A few interesting things I picked up from the 417 trip was their willingness to collaborate with each other as colleagues and that is always something I enjoy seeing. Although, I noticed how restrained the look of their magazine was, so that makes me wonder about their separate personal approaches to the elements of design. How different are their ideas about the design of different pages? 
As they grow along with the city of Springfield, I hope their diversity of subjects expands to meet the needs of the larger crowd of people who are interested in the life of this town.

A few magazines I would take pride in working for...

• Aesthetica
• Juxtapoz
• Art News

All three are centered in art and culture on the edges of the norm and I would love to be the person that gets to search people out and communicate with the genius behind the featured work. The whole industry is a little too fast paced for me personally, so I'll just follow my nose.

Ideally...

In one year, I'm rooming in Kansas City with my best friend and going to a school that works with our creative energy. The state of our home is an artist's kind of tidy with the smell of coffee grounds and open bottles of paint. There are scattered school projects in various spaces, open sketchbooks, and a book shelf with our respectable libraries combined. Most of my possessions are still at my parent's house that I visit a few times a month. I have a job somewhere on the Plaza making just enough to scrape by. Paintbrushes are all around the house and I always have some kind of art supplies under my nails. We have a dog and a cat. I still communicate with a handful of teachers from High School and send them snail mail with Polaroids of my adventures (if I have the money for film) and cheesy stickers.


In 5 years, I will know another language and have piles of stories to share with the people I meet through the job that I have. I work in the community through my social practice certificate. I'm still in Kansas City with Niki and the friends I made in college but we are all wondering about other possibilities in other locations. We have more pets and a garden that produces more vegetables than we can handle. Our house has lots of windows that are open as much as possible in the summer. The library is bigger, I have a few tattoos.

In 10 years, I will live in a different country where I know the language and culture. It's exactly the kind of place that I need to be and I get to support myself and the person I'm married to/plan on marrying. My family visits me once a year and I get to show them tons of exciting places and the people who know me.

In 50 years, my student debt is payed. I support young artists and buy their work regularly to add to my private collection. I'm married and have the space for a lot of shelter animals. I live somewhere near mountains and it's very green. I still paint and share music with people.

It's hard for me to plan so far ahead into the future, but these are the fun possibilities.

Six Word Memiors

"There is so much unfinished work"

(work space of John Kurtz)

"You can't have too many dogs"

"let's get coffee and go longboarding"

"...but would Brian Eno like it?"


"There's a whole lot to notice"

" Quotations "

"Just do your work. And if the world needs your work it will come and get you. And if it doesn't, do your work anyway. You can have fantasies about having control over the world, but I know I can barely control my kitchen sink. That is the grace I'm given. Because when one can control things, one is limited to one's own vision." --Kiki Smith

"Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into a boring life" --Donald Miller

"I have been made so you can use me again and again." --a plastic bag

"I know for an honest to goodness fact that life can kick you to pieces, break you into a thousand little shards, and that you can get up again and mend yourself. I promise." --Nick Lake

"I guess I even feel more freewheeling these days. I definitely feel more philosophically freewheeling. I’m just not so certain that anything I learned or was taught is right. I think experience has made me really scared of absolutes – absolute systems of government, absolute religions, absolute life – all these things I’m incredibly wary of now...I’m just a curious old sod. I just want to know how everything works. I’m a nosy old bastard. I just have to know about things, and I can’t see how anybody can live on this planet and not want to. I get so despondent when people seem to curl up and die. They just don’t have any interest in living anymore. I want to shake them and say, “Look, it’s still great out there!” Every day is great. And to let these days just go by you is a waste of a gift you’ve been given. Life is a gift from God, and to waste it is a great sin. Go do something for somebody else, if you’re bored. Just don’t sit there being a lump." --David Bowie

"Of course, play is equally as important to your education as work. And in the fine arts, play is work, isn’t it? What other field allows you to deduct as business expenses from your taxes gangsta rap, Gaspar Noé’s movies, even vintage porn as long as you use it for research? Remember: You must participate in the creative world you want to become part of. So what if you have talent? Then what? You have to figure out how to work your way inside. Keep up with what’s causing chaos in your own field.
If you’re a visual artist, go see the shows in the galleries that are frantically competing to find the one bad neighborhood left in Manhattan to open up in.
Watch every movie that gets a negative review in the New York Times and figure out what the director did wrong.
Read, read, read!
Watch people on the streets. Spy, be nosy, eavesdrop." --John Waters (read the rest of his commencement address here.

Memorable Passage

"My mother said it was like a cassette tape you could never rewind. But it was hard to remember you couldn't rewind it while you were listening to it. And so you'd forget and fall into the music and listen and then, without you even knowing it, the tape would suddenly end." --Tell the Wolves I'm Home.

Yet, another passage from this book that has its roots so deeply plunged into my every day life. I've always had such a hard time staying in the present. It's really not much of a surprise since I'm at such a transitional point in my life, but when I'm caught up in the past or future it makes me wonder what I'm missing out on in the present moment. I worry about not being able to look back on something the way I'd like to, and while I'm worrying about that I'm absent from what's happening around me. I always like to make sure that I can enjoy details of a memorable event with crystal clarity when it's possible, but while I'm worried about what I'm going to remember, the present will be flying past me like a train that I have hop onto. Over the summer I learned that creating and analyzing are two separate processes. While that is certainly true for making anything in the fine arts, I'm starting to realize it's the same for memories in a way. I just wonder if it helps to be completely saturated in the moment and then go back and remember what you think affected you whether its seconds, days, or years. Is there even a way, an algorithm, to remember things the way you'd like to or is each and every second different than the last?

Writers as Readers

My ideal reading spot is on a blanket in the shade when the weather allows. If that's not possible or I'm not feeling up to going outside, I can manage to accidentally read half of a book just stretched out on the couch with a particular blanket and my cat tucked away in the crook of my leg. Candles are usually lit and it's mid morning on a lazy day. Ideally, the house is empty and the blinds are open, but I enjoy it just as much listening to my family cook. I would seriously not complain about a hammock on the beach though...

My sophomore year I went to New York City in the springtime. I returned a week later with half of my suitcase loaded with books. One is from St. Mark's (How Music Works by David Byrne) and the others are from McNally Jackson. 

 When I came back from my trip, I was having a pretty rough time with anxiety and the usual residual PTSD junk, so I would just finish up my useless geometry homework and run out to the yard to try and hastily throw myself into the hundred dollars worth of books. Since then my best reading days have been spent in my house alone on Saturday mornings. I'll wake up at 9 a.m., read until 2 p.m., get to work by 3, and come back at 11:30 p.m. to pick up where I left off until I fall asleep. 

Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt and The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith were the recent page-turners for me. It's a magical thing for a book to keep my attention longer than half an hour because I usually skip around and dip into two or three different worlds at a time. I invested so much of my interest into the characters in The Price of Salt, I just wanted to see what trouble they would find next and the way Highsmith writes is like shopping for little romantic snippets. Every page is an isle. Tell the Wolves is the same way but it was something I could closely relate to. The main character is going through the day to day function/cycles of loss and happiness just like I am. It was just nice to read that I'm not just being a big baby.

I haven't had a chance to invest my soul into a book series since I was around 12-14, but there are two that remain with me. The Warrior Cats  series by Erin Hunter really kept me reading from 5th grade up until I was supposed to start high school. I really had a thing for wild animal books back then. Warriors led me to The Sight and the sequel Fell, by David Clement-Davies. I never actually finished Fell, and I don't think I ever will because that's something I never wanted to end even though I skipped around in the first book. But I mean really, what could be cooler than prophetic wolves with scary paranormal powers? Talking deer, which is why I also became obsessed with Fire bringer, and could be part of the reason I have such an affinity with antlers.


When I finished reading The Price of Salt I was thrilled that I'd finally found a romance novel about elegant women that didn't end in tragedy or something enforced by the publishing company. I don't want to give too much away, but this book had a very satisfying ending that can probably never be topped, in my opinion. 

Comfort at the Bottom of a Swimming Pool

If you lay on your back and gaze up from the bottom of a swimming pool, the real world appears to bleed away. It's the kind of dream you don't have to go to sleep for. It hardly qualifies as tangible, so time turns soft and slow. The fragments of the sky and the shapes of the clouds will make the underwater world almost too comfortable. You can't stay here, your lungs will remind you. Whenever your head surfaces and you gasp for breath it's like you'd never even been away at all. The kiddy pool is still calm and empty. Your mom is still talking on the phone in the shade while your brother dives for pebbles in the deep end. Each time you dip under the ripples, it's a comfortable 51 second trip to a different planet. muffled surface noises cannot penetrate the solid intent of getting lost again. What is there to think about at the bottom of a pool? For the time being, you're not being asked to think certain things or throw your time away for something else like the next load of laundry or polite, thoughtless conversation with a boxy stranger. You are undisturbed and not pressed for anything except a quick breath of air. The sun rays break into pieces and roll against the marbled cyaneous ceiling that you admire so well. Something about that makes you wonder about nothing and everything all at the same time. On the car ride home, aside from memory, the only sign that the underwater daydreams actually happened was the puddle of water leaking from your ears and the stinging high up in your nose. It's nigh on impossible to find that kind of physical escape in many other places, but that's the best thing about it.

blue feathered bird

That blue feathered bird
was making a song,
but they uttered no word
when something was wrong.

"I'm leaving soon," they said,
with a suitcase half packed.
"Atropos wields her shears to my thread
and the odds are quite stacked!"

their fragile pen shook
the door was closing
as they strained for a look, 
they carried on composing

their feathers fell dull
but their body was light
the suitcase is full
it's their time to take flight.

if i were in charge of the world

If I were in charge of the world
I'd cancel hot dogs
I'd cancel head colds
I'd cancel gym class
and I'd cancel Sarah Palin, too.

If I were in charge of the world
there'd be longer naps
there'd be bigger clouds and
there'd be brighter stars in the city.

If I were in charge of the world
you wouldn't have "wisdom" teeth
you wouldn't have paper cuts
you wouldn't have tuition
or "only six months left to live"
you wouldn't even have Fox "News"

If I were in charge of the world
a donut milkshake would be a vegetable
all math tests would be a form of cruelty
and a person who sometimes forgot to sleep
and sometimes forgot to eat
would still be allowed to be
in charge of this world.

Writers Dreaming

Talking about any issue is an important part of getting through it. At the very least, communicating to some extent is the next best step. For me, it's purely a matter of whether I let myself dwell on it and let it swallow me up. The significance of the matter also needs to be put into perspective. Validation of certain negative feelings is the first step of getting over them, after all. I've recently been battling with this concept over the past few weeks. Recently losing someone that I felt very close to has been excruciating on certain days, but more than often those feelings are beaten back best with a baseball bat made of only the happiest memories you have, even if they're unrelated to the issue at hand. Giving in to a bad day and getting into a rut can certainly give the negativity the power it requires to keep beating you. I certainly hate the numb days that could have been well spent feeling every single emotion that climbs aboard the train of thought.

The unconscious imagination tells very little of me (at least to my knowledge) and more about other people in my life. It always creates images in technicolor realness like a Salvador Dali painting. Sometimes they are so lifelike that I often confront people about something that they did in my dream thinking that it had actually happened. Symbols and very real feelings and sensory details, mostly of dread, are a substantial thread weaving through my dream world. I've had nightmares of teeth falling out, of huge decrepit mansions, getting shot, and dead animals hung on walls. I can recall the events and reasoning as to why I might have dreamed up such a dark, peculiar concoction for someone who's so positive in their waking life. The majority of the time, I wake up feeling more exhausted than I was when my head hit the pillow, but it's just something I've learned how to get used to.

I enjoy talking to people so much I don't know if I would be extremely happy living without being able to speak, but if I had to then I would certainly make the best of it. Conversation and observation are on the same level of importance with me, but usually I'm doing a fraction too much of one over the other. 'Enjoy' is kind of an odd word to use to describe my feelings about talking to people. I guess I just know who to talk to in order to get that enjoyment. I've made my rounds through the people who don't particularly like to talk about anything beneficial so they're the ones that I never seem to speak around unless it's sarcastic.

When it comes to taking an exam, I can seem to have total recall of every place that I've ever been. This is nice, except for the fact that I'll never really be graded on my ability to remember what the Metropolitan Museum smells like. I can only seem to remember the most vivid memories at inconvenient times. The rest is either "filled in" with what I prefer to remember, or just glazed over. Memory recollection comes fairly easy for me, but the ages of around four to eleven are crystal clear. I only vaguely remember the year 2014, but can seem to totally relive 2005 in my imagination.