It’s been a long time, but I didn’t do my morning pages yesterday and I think it calls for some restructuring. Winter teases out some laziness as we tend to hibernating. I was considering myself lucky if I got through Winter without gaining a bunch of weight, but I think we’re going to start to see temps rise and I’d like to get back on track. I’m writing my morning pages in the morning like the name intended them to be; a habit I’ve fallen off of for awhile.. I’m going to see what I need to get back on my diet. As a side note, I can see why New Years resolutions fail because at this point in the year I have this, “I don’t care about a month ago” attitude and just want to survive the cold. I thought about sleeping on the floor to readjust myself to temperature and comfort, at the very least I went on my walk without gloves to expose myself a little bit. It’s funny how quickly we go from fighting for warmth to cranking the AC. That’s the root of some problems I tell you what. What I was saying was I’m gonna get my diet straightened out because without planning it I feel like I don’t eat enough all day and then binge at night. I haven’t blown up like in the past, but my biggest complaint is I feel an inconsistency of energy that one would expect. I’ll try to do a bit of a dopamine reset this morning since I’ve got nothing going on until my painting class tonight. That means the only other thing I have to get done today is write this. It’s also raining all day and that’ll be a treat, now I’ve gotta figure out what I’m eating today, hopefully I’ll see you tomorrow morning.
McDonald’s is great
I was talking to my old friend Thunderclap today and boi did he let the truth fly. Get this, he told me that professional philosophers are rarely if ever significant philosophers. I’m sure there’s some sort of grey line and what comes to mind is the idea that often philosophers will have a preface to their book that’s singing the praises of a king or aristocrat that was willing to give them free money. With that money they wrote a book. Is that artist a professional or did they happen to be in a place in society where they’re sitting at a table with a king. I suppose it’s what’s meant by selling your soul. Everyone must answer to at least one master, we’re lucky if we’ve moved past taking orders from our appetite.
I think that last sentence was pretty good if I do say so myself. That was really enjoyable talking to TC today, talking to him is similar to how that old man spoke to me last week. A lot of thoughts flying all over the place and nothing is off limits, you wanna riff about LL Cool J for 8 minutes, or talk about the physical healing powers of praying 5 times a day, I’m down. I suppose that’s why we shouldn’t be co-workers, we don’t get a lot of work done, but I had fun being there. Oh he even reminded me of this Kierkegaard book I have. The book is filled with parables by him and I’m on a huge parable kick right now. Reading the Bible, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and throwing in some Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to keep things grounded. Now that I have a new found respect for Kierkegaard’s style of writing, I want to add that book to my heap. That’s a man I can learn from. Would really love to read some Shakespeare too, but where do you find the time?!
Loosen Rigidity
Rubberband man can’t stand. His bones have turned to gelly and he’s cascading to the ground. Concentric circles forming a rubber volcano. I feel like that last sentence needed a primer to hibachi because I’m thinking of when they stack the onion rings and make it shoot steam. I saw my therapist today. I suppose everything is going well. I told her I’m going to stop going to group therapy and my boss neighbor said he finished my portrait; that will be fun to see. There’s a line I’ve been holding on to for awhile now and figured I should try to flesh it out to let it go, but there’s a larger throbbing on my brain from the idea of living as a good person. A line I read today was sort of a pep talk from Zarathustra to a fool on a hill, “Don’t give up the holy fight, hero.” The question is how to be good. Obviously I’m good by not wronging anyone, that’s not real good, that is what Nietzsche would call a cowardice morality, they do it because they’ve been told it’s wrong without ever decided for themselves what is wrong. I want to play a larger game with the highest stakes imaginable, I’m talking about my life, hell my after-life. We’re given one chip to play, and sooner or later it has to be cashed in. Who the winners and losers are has yet to be revealed.
The line I’ve been holding on to has to do with the individual weary from being “battle and battlefield” of virtues. I hope it explains my past and I’m only able to see what that means because I’ve moved beyond. If I settle on one virtue above everything else and that virtue is proven to be wrong, could a man recover from such devastation?
Who will be at the helm when the winds shift?
I took things easy the last two days and will probably stay easy over the weekend because I was starting to get overwhelmed with everything I have going on. I was still looking to add more before this feeling took hold of me, so it’s good that I was able to have this break otherwise I could have kept going and increased the pace, putting myself into a dangerous situation. I’m back into a good situation now, but it means I need to look around myself at what happened. Whatever I was doing didn’t work, at least for the version of me that I am right now, so I have to first figure out what I was doing, then I can ask why it didn’t work. My first answer is that I was adding too much, that’s very common of me and almost always the cause of a setback. I had lost focus on what I was doing and that led me to take on new objectives.
I was trying to think of an example and was taught why The Odyssey is so important. He has a goal and the story isn’t about the destination, but the journey. Anyway the example from The Odyssey, and I don’t know the text very well, but I believe there is a part where he lands on an island filled with beautiful women. The men are invited in to clean up and feast. They’re having so much fun that years go by and they’ve completely forgot about what they were doing in the first place, that was part of their magical spell. The parallel I’m trying to draw is that I forgot what I was doing, so I started doing other things too. I need to draw. I repeat that to myself and I made it simple so I can remember, but I still forget. It goes to show how easily we can fall asleep at the wheel. I will work to lighten the load and maintain focus on art.
See a drop of water taking up the hole in a piece of mesh
I’m writing this outside because I just remembered to do it. It’s been raining for the last two days, but let up and is surprisingly dry now. The warmth is nice and makes me think that winter is almost over. Soon I’ll be able to go outside again. I do have to worry about allergies. Spring was rough last year, but not as rough as the first year’s fall allergies. Second year fall allergies actually were pretty mild, I like to hope my body will just get used to the location, but we’ve also gotten into a good routine of medicating through allergies. I started taking meds yesterday and I suppose if I have to do it daily for the next two months to have a normal life, I’ll put up with it. My eyes are on fire when I wake up. I better not let my wife see this because she’ll tell me I should use eye drops. Eye drops are such a pain because you have to land it on your eye. Do you know how many times I’ve missed my mouth when taking a pill? Very few, but I screw up eye drops a bunch, at best I have to waste like three seconds to make sure I do it right. I can’t live in the same world as eye drops. I was talking to some new friends about planning a friends vacation. That will be really exciting if it happens. My boss neighbor said he started the painting he’s going to do of me. I had a really exciting idea about it if he lets me keep it with my tiger painting. I don’t think I’ve shown you my tiger painting yet, but it’s pretty cool and I’m already in the works of a fun idea with that.
This is what I deserve
I know, I know, I missed another day. Yesterday was a mistake. I had a good routine for when I would write my morning pages and yesterday was the first day of my portrait painting class. It was the focus of a lot of my attention and this slipped through the cracks. I’m getting weary of myself because I feel very tired as of late and I have to be sure I’m not pushing myself too hard. There are somethings that I’d like to do that lately I haven’t been able to. It’s possible I’ve been struck by allergies recently because I know to expect them around this time of year, I thought it was a little early for pollen to be spreading though with the arrival of my trees last week, that does sort of mark the beginning of spring. Anyway, I’ll be trying to do less so I can do more. The feeling I’ve had lately is I feel so exhausted in the morning that I think I need to go back to bed, but I can’t sleep because I’m fully rested. That’s what makes me think allergies, that I’ve got odd exhaustion.
The painting class went good though, I felt pretty comfortable there and that’s what matters. There are people who are newer to the art form and it’s interesting to be made aware of all the information I had to learn to get to this point that I don’t think about anymore. One guy had a tube of acrylic paint with his oils. Sure acrylic or oil is easy to see, but to someone new it’s just paint. Then there’s brushes, mediums, supports, pallets and this is all before any painting happens. I’ve learned a lot of that stuff, so I can have the opportunity to paint. Now it’s about doing it enough times that with each instance I’ll get a little better and if I do it regularly for decades, I’ll hopefully be in a different sphere.
Piety Indeed
Alright morning pages, I’m back after my monthly day off. Today is a good day to come back to/too because the date has four twos. 42, what more could you ask for? I hope there’s a word for when several numbers are in a row, 777 being the famous slot machine or if a person would say, “It’s 11:11 make a wish. I just made a wish right now. Anyway yesterday was my day off after completing 30 days of doing a hour of drawing a day, today was the first day of doing an hour and a half of a drawing for 30 days. I actually spent most of that time doing a little painting for a friend of mine. I might have told you before but I have these canvas sheets that I’d like to put a painting on one side and then write a letter on the other, then I can mail the painting/letter to a person. I still have to test the concept that I can even write a letter on the back without destroying the painting, but one step at a time. I did a painting today because tomorrow is the beginning of my portrait painting class. The class runs every Monday in February. I want to losing up the painting muscles because I haven’t used them in awhile. It felt good to paint, drawing is obviously monotone but in the repetitive sense as well. The variation of strokes I can make with a brush is practically unlimited compared to a pencil. I hope the class goes well, I don’t have any sort of expectations except to listen to what my teacher says and try to use it to make a painting. The teacher is one I’ve had twice before, so there shouldn’t be anything too surprising.
That’s gonna do it for me
Well that’s interesting. I just looked at my hand and it was glowing red. Now that could be from sticking my hands inside some burning coals earlier, or the red shift from my screen could be really bright. I guess I’ll never know. I told that stranger yesterday that I was born again. He spoke my language and knew what I was saying, shoot he was probably surprised that I could understand him. I’m only barely convinced that man wasn’t a ghost. Who says those sorts of things. He was in jail for a couple months and was also in some sort of psych ward for a month where he said they drugged him. That man was state certified crazy and I’ve never met someone speak more truth. What does that say about me? I know I’m not wrong, but how do I get people to listen. An argument I thought of was Kanye West. That man has access to another plane of existence and anyone can see that. That’s what makes art, the greeks called it muses; the spirits would work through you. It doesn’t make sense to science though. Of course it doesn’t, no one would try and solve art with science, or at least they should be laughed out of any university. There are problems that science can’t solve. What is justice, beauty, love? Seeing an MRI doesn’t begin to explain what it means to be alive. Here’s my problem, I could convince anyone of this and it would probably be of benefit to their life, but no one’s listening, I have to just shout it out into the void. You know what they say, “Stare into the abyss long enough and the abyss stares into you.”
Ye Sea of Vipers
You’re looking at a banana without the peel. I’ve been exposed and stripped down to my fruits. Now I’ll be easier to digest. I spoke to a stranger today about many thing, so many things I’m still trying to wrap my head around the whole incident. In my life I have not met a lot of people that know how to speak this certain way. To explain how we were speaking, just about every sentence was true from at least three different levels of analysis. That sort of thing becomes hard to keep track of because the conversations can branch inside of those meanings and you have to look for certain wording to know the position a person takes on one particular level, but it might not have any effect on the other, and it still has to make sense on he surface level as a grammatical sentence. I know this sounds like I’m just describing any conversation, but it was a wild ride, a genuine work out. I wasn’t prepared for it either, I was just taking the dog for a walk, then blam, “What are your values on everything and how can we know these are our values?” sort of thing. An interesting argument he introduced me to was, “Can ‘not so’ be voted ‘so’?” If you’re wondering, it can’t, but it’s what our society attempts to do all day everyday. Imagine saying that to a stranger and then talking to them for 20 minutes. There’s no limit to that sort of conversation, and it’s the response to it that lets the other person know what sort of mind they’re dealing with. What most people don’t realize is that their thoughts put things in boxes, which they need to be put into boxes because if you have thoughts strung all around, it’s hard to get anything done. I’ve spent a lot of time in the primordial soup though and have gotten decent enough control over thoughts without prescribing them meaning, but it’s exhausting.
I’m trying to do something here
Good evening, everyone please take your seats, the lesson is about to begin. First off I’d like to start by thanking our esteemed guests for joining us. We have some of the best and brightest, coming in from all over. I can’t even begin to start. Today, I cleaned a lot for some guy that lives on a mountain, it was pretty fun. We talk about all sorts of things and I’m helping him clean up the space around himself because frankly I don’t know if he’s ever thrown something away in his life. He makes lots of paintings though and they’re nice to see and occasionally talk about. I also don’t mind the work. It’s slightly physical and mental in figuring out how to clean this place up. The “one” room we’re working on is larger than the entire house I’m living in and there was barely more than standing room in it before today. We got a nice chunk of that cleared out to where a couple chairs could lay out for people to sit and talk. I get to feel a little accomplished and come home to my house where I can pretty much see 100% of my floors. Other than that it’s just been business as usual, I’ve got live drawing coming up tomorrow, a painting class that starts Monday, and February is figuary where I’ll be practicing figure drawing everyday. I’ve got to sign up for this painting conference I want to go to. That will be a wild event if I attend. We could be looking at some major shifts in my personality this year. Not to mention this will be the first full season with my plants in the ground. You better bet you best bottom biscuit we’ll be blooming beautiful bounties.
Chris' Morning Pages 