death and rebirth? lord-a-mercy...

yes, it appears that it's going to be that kind of a post. alison was rather introspective in her last writing, and it appears that i'm gonna carry on in that vein for this one.

i've woken up this morning too early. about 5:40 a.m. I realized i was up because, just like a kid waiting on opening gifts christmas morning, i was anticipitory for my review. "review" is the word for the twice-a-semester check-in that art students have with their faculty. (i explain that because i'm not sure it's widely used nomenclature--i don't remember what alison called it when she met with her faculty.)

this review is a particularly big one, the next to last one i'll have with my committee before the mfa thesis exhibit. in other words, this morning, come a few hours from now, these guys could say "man, i just don't think this stuff is cutting it." of course, i could claim that'd be bad style on thier part, but they could still do it--i haven't really let them know exactly what i'm up to. i made the decision a few months ago that--damn the torpedoes--i'm gonna do what i want--if they don't like it, then they don't have to give me a degree. come to find out, that's kinda what i'm supposed to be doing. when it comes to something as subjective as art, sometimes the personal commitment to one's own vision is the thing that carries the idea through.


anyway, I was up at 5:40. I noticed the sun had just started to creep in the windows and i had the same thought i've had about seven times now--i gotta go up to the widow's walk and talk a picture of the harbor. you guys think that every now and again, don't you? Gotta go up to the window's walk and take a picture of the harbor? (the house i live in here has a widow's walk--a cupola of sorts--that overlooks the harbor. back in the day the merchant's wife could look for her husband's ship sailing in from up there). so, seven or so times now, i've woken up early enough to catch the sun coming up over that harbor, and seven or so times i've stayed in bed thinking the world doesn't really need one more picture of a sunrise, or, like this morning, it sure is warm in this bed, and it sure will be cold up there on top of that roof.

instead of the picture, i just lay awake thinking about stuff. my impending review, the end of a big semester, widow's walks, my beginning of christmas holidays, ships coming in to harbor, the winding-down of another year.

i don't think that's it's any big surprise to most readers of this blog to hear i don't drink alcohol. i don't do this--or rather i do something a lot more positive--by going to meetings with a group of people that shall remain nameless here (i'll give you one guess). anyway, every year about this time, those meetings start to get a kind of "christmas pall" cast over them. nervousness over having to encounter skewed family realtionships, projecting about requirements for role-playing a certain amount of joy, worrying over feeling too much joy, feeling guilty because some people are hurting so badly right now, while some of us are so blessed.

what with this, the sunrise, the end of the semester, the fact that my work i'll be discussing today is about the death of neighborhood people, realizing that by the time i come back to school it will be another year...hummm...and finding, that like a bad cliche, i, too, seem to get a little down around this time of year....

sometimes i get the feeling that i'm just existing between the spaces in life.

when alison wrote about being in her parent's house i recognized i could smell being there. i could count on too many lights being on, a little too much activity and clutter for me. i wished i was there, but instead i'm here, waiting to finish something else up. i could feel my own parent's house--a space as big as the whole world--and recognized a sort of pit in my stomach, a feeling of dis-satisfied butterflys. a feeling of unknown things, an awareness of how things should be, of expectations, of a happiness and a sadness i'm never sure what to do about.