Is this art?

I went to an art museum with a friend, and some of the exhibitions made me wonder.

For instance, this spiral. It looks sort of cool, but is it art? In case it's illegible, the sign reads "The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths". Is the artist being ironic, talking about mystic truths by way of the neon of strip malls and 711s? Is he serious, with the whole "life is art, art is life" mentality? Does he consider himself an artist? Is he being pretentious? I don't understand, which is why it's probably good that I'm not an art critic.

The lights in this photograph can represent either isolated surges of hope surrounded by the bleak loneliness of existence or the short clarity that is human life as compared to the vast stretches of infinite time that surround each lifespan.

Or maybe I accidentally took a picture while watering my plants at night. You pick.

This is my last Monday

of compulsory schooling. From now on, when I go to school on Mondays, it will be because I want to, and because I'm paying for it.

This realization makes me painfully aware of how far I have to go to become self-sufficient, and it's making me feel ridiculously inadequate.


Incidentally, the word Monday gets its name from the moon, because calendars were set by lunar cycles at one point. In Indian languages, Monday is Somvar. Soma is the moon. Soma is also the drug in Huxley's Brave New World. This fact makes me chuckle with its strange interconnectivity. Monday, drugs. Drugs, Monday. Yes?

The Russians, meanwhile, named Monday понедельник (transliterated as poniediélnik), or "the day after the day we don't do anything, that day being Sunday, which is the day of rest, which is the day of no doing". Most of the Slavs followed suit, I guess, since in Czech it's pondělí, which also translates as "the day after Sunday".

Linguistic lesson courtesy of Wikipedia.

ho hum. life.

I should be thrilled about life right now, and to an extent I am, but I can't help feeling a sort of lethargy. To an extent it's a switch in schedules - I'm no longer beating myself up two hours a day, which in turn means my endorphin levels aren't at their normal through-the-roof status. I keep having epic plans, like writing down my life dreams, trying to do fifteen pullups or going for Buddhist meditation at six in the morning, and then deciding that laying in bed and reading Terry Pratchett is a viable alternative. So it happens that my greatest accomplishment in life has been outsmarting iTunes and burning my music. Fight the man, people.

Thus it came to be that I found old Donovan. Donovan is fairly awesome. Unabashedly poetic without wearing tight pants, clearly not exactly cutting-edge at this point, but why would that matter? Our culture judges people rather harshly by what they listen to, and I'm not exactly innocent of this- mention Rihanna or Panic at the disco (I absolutely refuse to put the little punctuation mark there) to me and I will scoff at you like the conceited snob that I am, but essentially I guess it comes down to music that you like and want to listen to, and I like and want to listen to Donovan right now. That said, I couldn't find To try for the sun on the interwebs, save this youtube version that some couple in calgary made for the birth of their grandson, but it's really not bad, and sunsets are kitschy because they're beautiful. Unabashed poetic, yes?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeqEnbxc3XM

why won't hyperlinks work for me?

And now I'm going to go lay in bed reading for pleasure again. Why? Because I can.

Candide and Huck Finn

Read Candide. Do it. You will laugh more than you thought possible and will subsequently be appalled at the things you are capable of laughing at. The story involves red sheep, syphillis, philosophy, biglugs, and unruly pirates. I am not going to pretend to be a literary critic or even literate, but as a complete plebian I had obscene amounts of fun reading it.

After I finished reading Candide, I went fishing for the first time yesterday. Illegally, with a stick and some line, kickin it old school Huck Finn style. I can understand the merits of sitting outside, contemplating the ripples and joking with one's compatriots about the utter pointlessness of it all. This is pretty much what life is supposed to be like, I feel. I'm grateful to have snatched a few halcyon moments to grin about when I'm a crotchety old lady sitting on the front porch knitting dishrags for the neighbourhood annual alfa-alfa pickling competition. Actually, that doesn't sound all too bad, and thus I venture forward into life with perennial optimism.

All is for the best.

Dear Random French Girl,

You are way cool. Be my friend?

Putting effort into writing things down is rather difficult of late, as I have these things called AP tests which require me to write copious amounts about subjects that I don't really care that much about. The fact that I don't really study means I'm not exactly stressed about them, but it doesn't mean I'm going to write anything here. And so, to conclude:

"The secret of eternal youth is arrested development."
-Elanor Roosevelt

Well...

that just about settles it.

A few days ago the Olympic torch passed through Pyongyang. As in, the capital of North Korea, sometimes known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. As in one of the most totalitarian countries on the planet, one that completely denies its citizens basic human rights or freedom of expression and just generally parties it up like it's 1953. Holding the Olympics in China is bad enough, but this kind of tops all. To acknowledge North Korea? To give it even the slightest nod of approval? I already bore my friends with my frumpy anti-commie rhetoric, but come on. Yeah, no Olympic-viewing for me this year.


Another guy, another suit, another pose, another photo-op, another strategically extended hand. At the risk of sounding like Good Charlotte, I'm a bit disgusted.

Keep your coins...

I want change!

Living as I do in this beautiful state of Pennsylvania, known variously as the Keystone State or the We-have-screwed-up-liquor-laws-and-a-conspicuous-lack-of-cool-stuff State, I felt it my duty to go take a stand for what I somewhat believe in on Tuesday. Being at the same time a great idealist and an incurable skeptic, I found the experience interesting but slightly futile. I really do want Barack Obama as the future leader of America, mostly because if he manages to do even a quarter of what he promises about lobbyists and open-book contracts, things will be considerably fairer over here in the good old U.S. of A, and because I agree with his stances on most of the social issues. My agreement is fervent enough to merit me skipping school to wander around a neighborhood handing out flyers reminding people to get out the vote, which is exactly what I did on Tuesday. I'm not sure how effective that ploy was, since:

-The Obama campaign seemed to have forgotten that people work during the day, making them unavailable to listen to me persuade them to vote.
-People who were home tended to hide from us under the kitchen table.
-My noticeable accent identified me as either a) a terrorist or b) a spokesperson for the Foreigners for Obama campaign
-My canvassing partner pinned his Obama button to his crotch.

Well, clearly we lost, but no matter. In three months' time I'm emigrating to our friendly neighbour up North, and in the meantime I'll pay attention to Czech politics, which are the kind of train wreck you can't help staring at. And anyway, who needs an excuse to go wander around in the sun for five hours?

Dear angry Jewish boy

Dear angry Jewish boy
from,
Duluth and Woodstock no less
the times well,
they have long since changed
And Maggie's farm, well,
it was bought by Smucker's Berry
so the employment dilemma you enjoyed
has become defacto
impotent
but the roads are still there
overgrown with ivy
and bypassed by the interstate
but after all isn't that better?
so let me follow
at the risk of becoming
another one of them
and meander with you
down Highway 61
with eyes wide open
and bloody fingers
and my glorious lack of rhythm
which doesn't matter anyway
let me follow
through the subconscious of Captain America
the seedy underbelly of a whale
an unknowing collossus
through school halls and living room gatherings
radio signals and nights that you remember
I'll be right behind you
we'll walk together through the
mining towns of appalachia
and witness the beauty that is
West Virginia in the spring
we'll stand together under the signpost to Albright
and then I'll take my leave
because some roads shouldn't be trodden more than once
and wave goodbye to you
as we both turn toward the dawn
facing in opposite directions

An Ode to West Virginia in the Spring

As luck would have it, I'm spending three weekends in a row in West Virginia, and I couldn't be happier about it. I'm in love with that place. Bruised and battered by Big Industry, it's still wild and open and ethereal. On a morning jog/ halfhearted bleary-eyed stroll I utterly failed to capture the beauty of that place in the following photos:




-old buses are the best

-I wish I had a name like that...

-the view from the road at 7:17 in the morning

-telegraph lines. I wish they were telegraph lines. wouln't that be better?

She conjugated her heart along the lines of Ferlinghetti

The title is an ungraceful translation of a graceful song that exemplifies how I feel right now. It's spring, and I'm gloriously happy, and the world is a good place. There is a bit of a haze around my head. I've started reading more Ferlinghetti, and although I've been chided by a cocksure friend that I act like I discovered him, I can't hide my rabid enthusiasm. Perhaps rabid isn't quite the word, but nevertheless:

A Coney Island of the Mind
# 10

I have not lain with beauty all my life
telling over to myself
its most rife charms
I have not lain with beauty all my life
and lied with it as well
telling over to myself
how beauty never dies
but lies apart
among the aborigines of art
and far above the battlefields
of love

It is above all that
oh yes
It sits upon the choicest of
Church seats
up there where art directors meet
to choose the things for immortality
And they have lain with beauty
all their lives
And they have fed on honeydew
and drunk the wines of Paradise
so that they know exactly how
a thing of beauty is a joy
forever and forever
and how it never never
quite can fade
into a money-losing nothingness

Oh no I have not lain
on Beauty Rests like this
afraid to rise at night
for fear that I might somehow miss
some movement beauty might have made
Yet I have slept with beauty
in my own weird way
and I have made a hungry scene or two
with beauty in my bed
and so spilled out another poem or two
and so spilled out another poem or two
upon the Bosch-like world

Bosch-like. What a thought.


I feel indescribable.