Motion.

I cannot write lists they make me anxious I am so buzzing at this moment that I believe punctuation will be neglected for the entirety of this post I want to want and I want everything I see myself distinctly in one place then another and still even yet everywhere I catch glimpse of a fastforward five year I have continued trying my hand as an artist and have been holding the bow of my archer's arm increasingly steady I still move with the same momentum as before the same velocity and I have been to two more continents and several more countries seeing and remembering everything unfolding before me Germany Italy Iceland I have been accepted into a couple medical schools and stand before a great decision here or there I have been more on my own and less in a permanent home I have given much of my time to sleeplessness and the realities of the world serving people and meeting needs with all the humanity I can give I have gathered infinite memories of the things and people and places I have seen in my travels and they are scattered and pinned in a space that can only be mine I have never stopped moving and have completely the less staggering of my desires I have read more and spent less of my time and eyes gazing upon computers and ten years still ahead I am breathing more fully and fighting to seize that which I have dreamt medical school consumes hours days months and I still manage to find time for my art myself and the world

Suffice it to say, I want the world

For sake of the practice of this assignment, I will place my answers in organized structures as well:

Five years from now

• embarking on the journey and struggle that is medical school
• living on my own
• have greater knowledge of African history and culture
• traveling, seeing, giving, and remembering it all in film and memories
• expanded body of work
• overseas missionary work

Ten years

• tackling the necessities of medical school
• beginning practice
• extended missions work
• vast library of books and knowledge

This is how I see myself. I cannot say I am practical, only real and not wholly realistic. To see the things I want broken down is almost too much and never quite enough.

Soon:

• taking additional art classes to branch out more artistically
• learning the entirety of the human body, in a scientist's as well as artist's eyes
• resuming swimming on a regular basis
• finding a psychiatric hospital to volunteer at
• experimenting on my own with different media and new techniques, etc.
• attaining a healthy routine that is not entirely predictable
• learning more African history
• learning a new language (to read, preferably German)
• applying for more scholarships to study abroad and save up for medical school
• writing more, reading more
• more piano

Later:

• spending several weeks serving in another country
• learning a new language (to speak)
• applying for medical school
• leaving Florida
• finding the means to travel more
• creating a space to call my own
• adopting a child from overseas

and so it goes.........

Transformation: The Completion Delay Constant

Everything in its proper place, made immobile by epoxy, the construction is finished or very well ought to be. The kettle fell last night and now I gaze upon glue falling messily down glass. There is still work to be done, but I will abandon it for now. Let it lie.

Half-stumbling, half-gasping I realize I leave nothing unless unfinished. I allow the endless tension to drive the want, the thirst, for never a found idea, only seeking all in a staggering climb. My life, my work is constantly building, rebuilding. I destruct and move forward with everything and the "I".

and so it goes.........

Day.

The day she died no one looked, realized. Some bleak Tuesday in a season that did not matter, the unchanging wind greeted her as she crossed the threshold into the unordinary street. Her destination was no great concern; everything attempting to surround her was extraneous. Details meant nothing except to her eyes when they were held in her hands and carefully composed in etchings of memory. The events following and shaping what may be considered her life have been specifically and carefully eliminated from the words "Remember me". Her death went unnoticed because her presence was that of the Immortals. She had spent her minutes and hours as nothing other than wholly herself. The courage to speak the word "I" in a world that had forgotten painted her entire being in light and gave her eyes the flickering of seeing. It placed her in the sphere of the living and the vanishing of the vessel containing her soul and being did not throw her to the dead and lost. The pieces to which her thoughts and frail hands brought shape brought her no mention. An ordinary man would scream if his life work went unseen, but her art was infinitely more than enough because she could say 'I made it. Mine.' Not a soul had set foot in her studio or laid so much an eye on her work. And yet, many years following when her work was released, all felt they were looking upon what they had always been seeing. All the beauty and scenes she had drunk in with eyes of complete conscious appeared as explosions upon canvas. Her soul had cried out for humanity and in the endless waiting for the world to be as it should be. Critics mouths were cemented for the art gave form to the words and thoughts they had always failed to shape in their mouths. They gazed upon eternity and realized she had always been. Her name was phantomesque in books, yet her lifebeingart was forever written in ink and mankind.

Upon that which indicated mortality in view of the world—a single tombstone in a cemetery sea—her name was absent; she wished not to be sought. The word Glósóli interrupting its smooth surface was the only sign the stone was not merely stone. Nights saw the cold gray illuminated by a strange radiance, and, beneath Glósóli additional writing appeared: And now you're here, Glowing Soul.

and so it goes.........

Transformation: Inbetweens

Watches. Unused, untouched lightbulbs. Mirrors. Remnants of forgotten newspaper. A tea stain as sign of where one had been before.

Circularity in the shape of the original pieces of the tranformation, the broken time pieces, the mirrors points to the idea of infinity. Reflective surfaces are the endless span of time intertwined with life. All perception of time is lost when one leaves reality for the complacency found in artificial constructions of "happiness".

and so it goes.........

Transformation: The Beginnings

A copper teakettle. Generic white ceramic mug.

The impetus of the idea of the transformation and transformation of such ideas has been the constant and simultaneous frustration and compassion I feel toward humanity. Memories, connectivity, and the utter brilliance attached to untouched happiness—the pure and simple essence—collide with the motion of the world (or, at least, the world as it seems). Technoculture is pulling mankind in the way of perfection, while sacrificing any and all possibility of reaching such heights. A realm in which perfect happiness is attained has a void where the very form ought to lie. Synthetic happiness and mechanized hope lack.

The world feels stagnation because invention is securing that which it once sought. The departure from the search for simple pleasure in life has led to inaction as men participate in the monotony and endlessness that is a virtual world. Time is being poured into an infinite space. Ideas are spilled forth before they even yet come to be. One asks why humanity has fallen; it is giving to and loving the machines it creates and abandoning a sense of momentum.

Selection of these found objects lies within the cosmic sense of time. Time passing, time standing still before unblinking eyes on blank screens, behind which viridescent motherboards lie. Human contact and traces of the world as it once was have been replaced in favor of the convenience of the immediate synthetic connectivity given by the stretches of computer networks.

and so it goes.........

On crowded rooms and blank spaces.

I have been neglecting a blog. I never thought I would find myself in such a place I felt I must force myself to write, urge myself forward. I with my endless thought, stream of consciousness way of narrating my own existence. The hesitation was, perhaps, my desire to always wait until ideas spilled forth and words fell from my tongue; all the more while I sacrifice the boundless capacity found in the act of pouring. Limiting my own infinity and letting it fall prey to the world of lines, sticks, and bones. Letting my own resonance go unheard. Soon I will allow the maddening spiral in which I dwell, thrive, exist to run dry at the roots. I cannot continue like this.

We are, before all things, beginners. Stumbling into an accidental discussion—the smell of oranges penetrating my olfactory sphere—I found all staring at a blank canvas upon an even barer wall. I realized I was awakening once more to my own identity as an observer, a listener, a seeker of things. All that could be of seemingly nothing before my eyes in words and three dimension. The white square was skin and world and windows and beginnings. It was simultaneously not yet being and ceasing to be. Nothing and everything. We were seeing.

Sarah Sands.

The repetition of the sounds within her name brought with it the continuity and mess of all things. She posed the question 'what is it to see?' How much time do we spend looking, and when are we seeing.

Sarah began in a haze, finishing undergrad wandering to Spain. Her paintings were exactly as placed before her eyes. A series of windows revealed the act of seeing: through, into, past windows or mirrors. Realities reflected; realities seen. Yet still there existed a blur of edges and the potential motion accompanying. Soon Sands herself, now close to thirty, decided she must then go, if at all. Yale, grad school. The representational push of her work, sterile. Interest near vanished. Her labor of love, she claimed, had descended to the laborious, constant act of finishing. It was in composing, putting in time and self to a canvas, that she was moving. Experiencing. The art of experience and the experience of art in and of itself were intoxicating; she felt herself completely being just and the paintings simply were and are. Paintings are meaningless, she said; they are such that they passively sit upon walls. It was the actions themselves possessing gravity—creating and, its parallel, looking.

Some time away. A move to Indiana. She resumed painting, envious of the freedom of the explorers she taught and holding on to self-imposed rules. Her work took to a messy entanglement akin to the woods area through which she passed each day. The thickets in her memory and recorded on canvas were a nesting period; they comprised a series revealing the constancy of broken lines and the feeling of lost.

Later and her latest work grew as branches. The still forest she remembered so well was arrived at from elsewhere. The interwoven pattern of looms emerged in her paintings. Straight lines she painted as she told a story to herself. And then the phenomenon of stepping back and the continuous act of to-and-fro: walk up, paint, walk back, look, repeat. This was the connectivity of all artists.

Anyone watching the proceedings of the evening might have permitted fear to take hold of them. Ninety minutes spent on a thirty-six square inch panel and technical discussion. The intimidation of a perfect blank canvas before their eyes was too much. It is the conscious choice of the artist to exist. To settle for nothing less than being and to always begin.

and so it goes.........

To repeat.

Repetition may exist apart from monotony, each pattern becoming a series of infinitely changing pieces. All art is remnants, however unbroken; it is memory and soul on paper, on canvas, occupying three-dimensions of space. The immaculate blank page becomes both a looking glass through which one views the world within the mind of the creator and, yet even still, a world of its own.

The generation and regeneration of the fantastical worlds were neither kin to a genius nor madman, only a man. Franklyn Evans exposes imaginings in his exquisite watercolor work. A fragment of one became the start of another, each reuse bringing with it a refreshing newness.

This practice of recycling became an integral part to Evans' body of work. And, extending upon the idea of coming back to where one has begun, circularity was an ever-present fixture in his space.

and so it goes.........

Pursuit.

To me, becoming an artist and remaining as such has always been a pursuit, and the highest one at that. I have never regarded the form as a career, merely as an idea and an ideal in and of itself. That which I hold above all else is the infinity of seeking. To seek and seek and seek, always climbing and never remaining constant. It is to accept no other reality than one's own. Mankind, I believe has lost its consciousness of self, accepting other worlds as its own instead of hunting what they know to be true to the core. The road to artistry, at least in the sense of a profession, is continual progression—continual falling, stumbling, and reaching—but always forward motion. The existence of the artist is much the same; the pursuit of the vocation and the perfect form of the idea hinge fully upon the drive--the choice to be wholly your own and the momentum to push toward the things and times and places you desire beyond all others. Society does not exist except in the realm of necessary connections. Practicality and the gross idea of "normalcy" vanishes; reality and success are self-determined. An artist never bends their sphere to the world, never to another. To be molded to fill the form of another is to compromise the oneness of self and the cosmic sense of integrity. It is then and only then the artist has failed. And folded their hand.

and so it goes.........

"How beautiful you are, Earth, and how sublime!

How perfect is your obedience to the light, and
how noble is your submission to the sun!
How lovely you are, veiled in shadow, and how
charming your face, masked with obscurity!

How soothing is the song of your dawn, and how
harsh are the praises of your eventide!
How perfect you are, Earth, and how majestic!

I have walked over your plains, I have climbed your
stony mountains; I have descended into your valleys;
I have entered into your caves.
In the plains, I found your dream; upon the mountain
I found your pride; in the valley I witnessed your
tranquility; in the rocks your resolution; in the
cave your secrecy.

You are weak and powerful and humble and haughty.
You are pliant and rigid, and clear and secret.
I have ridden your seas and explored your rivers and
followed your brooks.
I hear Eternity speak through your ebb and flow,
and the ages echoing your songs among your hills.
I listened to life calling to life in your mountain
passes and along your slopes.
You are the mouth and lips of Eternity, the strings
and fingers of Time, the mystery and solution of
Life.
Your Spring has awakened me and led me to your fields
where your aromatic breath ascends like
incense.
I have seen the fruits of your Summer labor.
In Autumn, in your vineyards, I saw your
blood flow as wine.
Your Winter carried me into your bed, where the snow
attested your purity.
In your Spring you are an aromatic essence; in your
Summer you are generous; in your Autumn you are
a source of plenty.

One calm and clear night I opened the windows and
doors of my soul and went out to see you, my
heart tense with lust and greed.
And I saw you staring at the stars that smiled at
you. So I cast away my fetters, for I
found out that the dwelling place of the soul is in
your space.
Its desires grow in your desires; its peace rests in
your peace, and its happiness is in the golden
dust which the stars sprinkle upon your body.

One night, as the skies turned gray, and my soul was
wearied and anxious, I went out to you.
And you appeared to me like a giant, armed with
raging tempests, fighting the past with the present,
replacing the old with the new, and letting the
strong disperse the weak.

Whereupon I learned that the law of the people is
your law.
I learned that he who does not break his dry branches
with his tempest, will die wearily,
And he who does not use revolution, to strip
his dry leaves, will slowly perish.

How generous you are, Earth, and how strong is your
yearning for your children lost between that which
they have attained and that which they could not
obtain.
We clamor and you smile; we flit
but you stay!

We blaspheme and you consecrate.
We defile and you sanctify
We sleep without dreams; but you
dream in your eternal wakefulness.

We pierce your bosom with swords and spears,
And you dress our wounds with oil and balsam.
We plant your fields with skulls and bones,
and from them you rear cypress
and willow trees.

We empty our wastes in your bosom, and you fill
our threshing-floors with wheat sheaves, and
our winepresses with grapes.

We extract your elements to make cannons and
bombs, but out of our elements you create
lilies and roses.

How patient you are, Earth, and how merciful!
Are you an atom of dust raised by
the feet of God when He journeyed from the east
to the west of the Universe?
Or a spark projected from the furnace
of Eternity?
Are you a seed dropped in the field of the
firmament to become God's tree reaching above
the heavens with its celestial branches?
Or are you a drop of blood in the veins of the
giant of giants, or a bead of sweat upon his
brow?

Are you a fruit ripened by the sun?
Do you grow from the tree of Absolute
Knowledge, whose roots extend through
Eternity, and whose branches soar through
the Infinite?

Are you a jewel placed by the God of Time in the
palm of the God of Space?

Who are you, Earth, and what are you?
You are "I", Earth!

You are my sight and my discernment.
You are my knowledge and my
dream
You are my hunger and my thirst.
You are my sorrow and my joy.
You are my inadvertence and my wakefulness.
You are the beauty that lives in my eyes,
the longing in my heart, the everlasting life
in my soul.

You are "I", Earth.
Had it not been for my being,
You would not have been."

and so it goes.........