I’m having continuing stress-like feelings about one of my friends. It’s that feeling which informs me I am having inner conversations about whether or not I want this person in my life. That’s a harsh thing to be considering, but there you have it. I’m not angry. I’m not even upset. I guess I’m just disappointed. That happens in interpersonal relationships.

While I believe that even the best among us are capable of doing and saying and thinking stupid, evil things, I believe in forgiveness. I have forgiven people for things that … well … many other people wouldn’t, and I meant it. That doesn’t mean I don’t reserve the right to be angry or upset. I do. I am fully capable of knowing why someone did what they did and understanding their rationale for it. I can forgive them for doing it. They did the best they could in the situation, for their own reasons, and they failed to live up to my (or society’s) standards and expectations. We all fail at things … do the wrong thing … at least a few times in life.

Now for the parable:

When I drove a ratty old car, banged up and barely chugging along, large trucks that took up two parking spaces used to make the blood vessels in my temples pop. Selfish bastards! Assholes! Even though it made me angry, because I needed a parking space too, I was capable of understanding a few important points from their view: parking spaces are made way the hell too small in order to cram more cars in, large trucks are not easy to maneuver in a cramped parking lot, and many people in ratty old cars don’t take care not to leave dings and scratches on other people’s car doors (which they can’t really help too much, owing to the smallness of the parking lots). It still made me angry, and I still thought it was an asshole-like thing to do, but I forgave them. After all, I was generally driving rather large ratty old cars, and they are no joy in the parking lot department either.

Then I started driving a new and large truck, and I personally got to see the other side of the story. My hypothesis about the reasons that so many large trucks take up two parking spaces was correct. Not all people who take up two parking spaces are selfish assholes. I feel fairly certain I am not a selfish asshole, and yet, even I occasionally park the truck like crap, and I leave it like that. I did it today. I am certain it pissed someone off. I’m sorry. My reasons for leaving my truck parked like crap? The only parking spot available where there where two together, which is almost required in some parts of the lot in order to even get the truck into a spot (due to those tight parking spaces), is located in such a way that it requires me to turn sharper than my vehicle is able and no amount of point turning is going to make a difference. The truck just can’t get fully into either open space.

I gave it a try, and there was nowhere else to park where the truck would fit. I didn’t really want to waste a bunch of gas driving in circles or going home and coming back, and I didn’t want to walk a block with all my groceries. So … I got out and went and did my shopping. I felt bad about the fact that second space was going to be unusable by any type of automobile, but what to do? I have a life I am trying to get through too.

When I came out, the store had emptied dramatically. I must have arrived right at the end of the morning rush. The parking lot was growing bare, and there, all by itself, sat my truck … obviously parked like crap. It looked stupid sitting there badly parked, without all the other cars that had been around earlier making the proper parking impossible. I feel certain someone driving through that parking lot at that time called me an ass, or made a comment about people who drive large trucks. I might have.

I forgive them for hating me, as they haven’t had to park the thing in a cramped and crowded parking lot that barely accommodates large vehicles. After they walk a mile in my shoes, we can talk about it again. Though I do believe I have to amend my original theories as to why people who drive large trucks sometimes park like crap. It had absolutely nothing at all to do with keeping people from dinging my truck, and I suspect that might be the case for a lot of the others as well. This does not, of course, apply to people who consciously and willfully take up two entire parking spaces, as though they didn’t even TRY to park correctly, repeatedly and all the time. Those people are assholes.

Which brings me to my next point:

My forgiveness is not endless and bottomless. I am not perfect. If I were capable of forgiving everyone for everything, I’d be walking on water right about now … just for the fun of it. When a behavior that I feel is “bad” is repeated over, and over, and over with no growth, change or improvement, my patience and forgiveness runs out. I’ll still eventually forgive the person, but I won’t necessarily have that person in my life anymore. No animosity or anger are involved in that decision. That’s just the way it is. That person is doing/saying/thinking something that doesn’t sit well with me, and I may understand why, but I don’t have to keep being exposed to it and being made upset by it.

Go forth and be happy, but please be happy somewhere else. Or be unhappy. Your choice.

I have so much going on in my head these days. There’s more I’d like to say about this, but it’s getting so late. The situation is on-going, so it is bound to come up again soon. Eventually, I will have to decide whether or not I am seeing a pattern of behavior I can’t move past. Have my friend and I really grown so far apart? I hate that feeling. It always brings up additional questions, like … were they always like that and I never noticed before? I hate that feeling too.

This is probably a strange and rambling post, but I’m too tired to be bothered to proofread it. Forgive me?

Lin and I have been talking religion and philosophy while I am making dinner. This is hardly a post, but I said a few things, and I wanted to write down some reminders. Might as well post them for your general amusement.

Observation = Creation

We are all existing everywhere, at all times, forever.

We are consistently existing beings.

We are not aware of of our consistently existing at all times, everywhere, forever.

We are all connected in some way.

We may possibly me a universal consciousness, a single entity.

When we become aware of these facts, we observe our own demise and subsequent re-creation … and forget everything we learned.

Go ahead and chew on those ideas a while. I have to go poke the meatloaf, chop some broccoli, make some mac-n-cheese, and pay attention to some begging and attention-starved cats. Yeah, the universe is big, but my life is rather small and mundane, isn’t it?

I had to boot my old Win98 computer. Good thing I have been lazy about removing it from my desk, I suppose. What I discovered, while trying to find one particular thing I wrote some ages ago, is that I have a great deal of writings and other text files that only exist on floppy discs. I will be doing something to fix that soon. It took me 30 minutes to get the old computer to boot. It is very much on its last legs, and there aren’t any other computers in the house that read floppies anymore. Yipes.

I found what I was looking for though. Good thing I used to label discs. Too bad I have never named a file anything that might be useful for locating it. I have been using dates as names for files since … forever, apparently. It’s a pretty useless system, unless you want to reread snippets, quotes, scribblings, IM conversations, and emails covering decades one day at a time.

It was an interesting romp through another lifetime though, if not just a little sad too. Who the hell was that young woman with such fire and passion about everything? Who the hell am I now? What the hell happened?! I used to love everything and everyone so much more deeply. I have let my cynicism get the best of me. I’m hoping that process can be reversed.

It all ties in with that epiphany I had the other night (which I still need to explain further) about modern art being all about the artist, and how to understand it you have to understand the artist and in some way relate to them or their experience. I’ve been trying to find myself in any of the canvases I have worked on this last year, and I am simply not there, and that’s why I think it all sucks. My own art doesn’t move me, because there isn’t any me in there. I don’t know why. I am not even going to try to figure out why yet. What I want to figure out is why when I search inside myself, it feels like I am walking the halls of an empty building. There’s just nothing there, as though I am an empty vessel, a husk, a simple shell.

The really stupid thing is … that is exactly what I have been striving to achieve for the last decade or so: to be an empty vessel, a clean slate, devoid of desires and wants and baggage. So, it looks like I succeeded, and I now find I am not happy with the result. I am comfortable, and I would even say I am rather happy, but I utterly and completely lost my passions. Sure, I tempered the fires and cooled the coals, which I’ll openly admit has made me a much more stable person emotionally and mentally (and probably a better person as well), but … I lost so much in the process. I lost so much of myself, perhaps things that should not have been lost. I just swept it out like week-old dust thinking all along it was the thing I needed to do, that it was exactly what I should do, and now I am carrying a candle through the halls of my mind, and all I see are empty shelves.

How the hell do I fix that?! Up until an hour ago, I didn’t think anything needed to be fixed. Then I read conversation after conversation with mentors and loved ones and the writings these conversations inspired, and it made me cry to read the things I believed so strongly at the time they were written. I was a bonfire of passion and love for life and everything and everyone in it. Now I am just a flickering candle in a dark and empty room, if that.

I think I need to go through another goth stage. Perhaps it’s time to dig out the all black wardrobe, buy some eyeliner, dye my hair black, smoke clove cigarettes in dark bars while drinking large glasses of thick, heavy merlot … and feeling all the highs and lows and passions and desires … and the freedom to do as I please, hell be damned. Yes, I have successfully managed to treat my manic-depressive ways without the use of mood pills, and I have discovered I feel just as empty as I would have felt had I just popped the pills.

Is it possible to regain your insanity once you have learned to be sane?

We are defined by our limits. But what if you don’t have any limits?

Our strength is defined by our constraints. In fact, we require constraints in order to be strong … to be focused.

I’ve been thinking about something I said in a post a few days ago.

I am at that point in my life, when I need to choose the one thing I will do well for the rest of my life … the one thing I will devote myself entirely too … one skill that is the focus of my creativity.

Then I read the Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules, which caused me to reflect on being a young artist studying at college and my own experiences with same. Naturally, this caused a chain reaction and a long train of thought concluding with the statements at the beginning of this post.

This is where I spare you the hour I have been sitting here babbling internally by removing my hands from the keyboard and sitting back in my chair. Let’s just cut to the meat of the matter and least incoherent, shall we?

I have been floundering around in the ocean of art for too long. No limits. No focus. No constraints (other than monetary). It is time for me to move into one of the tidal pools and set down some roots, while still allowing the tide to come in on a regular basis bringing with it ideas, inspiration, and life. I need some artistic boundaries. I need to focus down from the limitless possibilities to a narrow band of avenues. In order to become the artist I can be, I am going to have to pose constraints on my creativity.

To begin with, I need to choose a medium to work in. One. One medium. Not pastels on Monday, acrylics on Wednesday, and digital on Friday. One. One medium all the time.

And then, I need to focus my ideas and find a cohesive path among them. One related set of ideas. A concept. Oh my god, maybe even a real artist’s statement just to keep my own attention deficit mind on mission. Won’t that be fun?

I’m going to leave this post as is now. I could go on, I am certain, but I probably shouldn’t. Something tells me it’s a subject that could rapidly jump of the cliff into the pit of incoherent babbling.

I think I finally get what they mean by a “mature” artist. It isn’t what I expected it to be like. It’s like coming out of a mid-life crisis single-minded about something when you have never been single-minded about anything else before. Or rather, it’s like realizing it’s OK to be single-minded about something, and you don’t actually have to be good at everything, but not yet knowing what that one thing will be. It’s a bit disturbing.

See … incoherent babbling. I’ll shut up now.

Last night as I lay in bed falling asleep, a verse popped into my head fully formed. I repeated it to myself as I drifted off, in hopes of remembering it today. I should have gotten my tired butt out of bed and written it down, because all I can remember now is this one phrase:

I want my feet to fall where footfalls have never resounded,
the unmarked path where true majesty lives.

Pointy stuffed kitty-cats are cute! You can find the free pattern to make your own right here (as well as some other cute free patterns), and look at the Wee Wonderfuls Pointy Kitties Pool at Flickr for inspiration.

I have GOT to make me some of these. Really, really cute … and who doesn’t need a bunch of cute stuffed kitties sitting around their house.

Of course, first I’ll have to make room for the sewing machine somewhere … and clean and oil the sewing machine … and then find all my sewing tools. Ugh. I wish I had a craft room. I was supposed to have a craft room, but for the last three years, my “craft room” has been filled with boxes of junk we apparently haven’t missed at all in the three years we have been living here. I swear, that stuff has to go. I WANT A CRAFT ROOM SO I CAN SEW POINTY KITTIES!