The Cuckoo Bee

So. As everyone keeps saying. Truth can’t be numbered, dumbed-down, and remembered.  It’s an act of faith or trust in what is there everywhere all the time.  I suppose that’s all that stuff about being right in front of you, but it’s everywhere, not just in front of you.  Me.

And: it doesn’t matter.  If we are interested in being aware of that, it’s a preference just like liking football.  Everybody has exactly the same stuff.  Also I don’t think it’s a process of annihilating one thing, finding another, going deeper and deeper, and finding union.  I think all those steps happen all the time to everyone but in general we’re in a fog–we’re always in a fog because that’s life here.  So there’s no enlightenment.  No one is enlightened.  We’re all the same. That’s just one more distraction we hold up in front of ourselves so we forget about the truth–for whatever reason our brains do that, who knows why.  Just like all those stupid rules of religion and things to achieve or want.

All that other metaphysics–time and things passing–I don’t know.  That’s part of everything but who the hell knows why?  The only thing we can do is try to free ourselves from the stupid things we tell ourselves.  Namely, fear.  That’s all.  Nothing to explain because we all understand.  Nothing to remember, except to stop hurting ourselves.  Quite easy, really, reader.

Did I already have one with that title? Or is that only the subject line of every email I send? Anyhoo, Geez.  I listen to those old doo-wop songs, and, you know? What the hell.  Is it the same old thing? Or the same old new old thing? Or nothing? Just more college basketball? What else is there to do anyway? Okay, let’s move on. I do love all that moonglow though, and doesn’t it hurt? Well.

Oh, Donna.  I think there’s 35 pictures tonight. And it’s only a selection.

Okay, first on the block we have a teapot done in copic markers.

Next we have a study for the new figure sculpture class I’m taking.  Instead of being fine arty this is illustratory, ie no model but monsters.

I’m not sure why I even took a picture of this but I did so there must be a reason.  Below is the first page of my new sketchbook.  It’s ink and watercolor pencils. (I like Caran D’Ache.)

Next another page out of sketchbook.  I like the top one.  It’s my husband at his desk.

Okay, we are entering a new era with the one below.  I’m in this drawing class that is getting where I wanted to go in terms of stuff.  Thingness and reality and emotion. Here is the first homework I did. (Much) m0re on this below.

Watercolor class homework.  Ingres.

Watercolor study done in park while children were beating each other.  Sigh.

Another homework for our first drawing assignment.

For second drawing class I did this but didn’t turn it in because I wasn’t sure about it.  Did turn it in for third class but I was too busy with other things to discuss it with teacher.  I do like it though.

Another watercolor study from park.

Below, ideas for the action figure we are going to make a latex mold of in sculpture later on this semester.

Okay.  So last week I put this on the wall in drawing class and the teacher got all excited.  I couldn’t talk about it though.

Out of sequence here we have my first painting homework, inspired in some way by the movie Pina, which was great despite having zero car chases or explosions! if you can imagine that. I couldn’t before I saw it.

This was part of the series I showed last week in drawing. This is more of a doodle to make me feel better after doing that other ink one above, which made me feel awful.

Close-up here.

All right.  Then the big thing for me was this drawing below.  I don’t know what, or something, but this is something different and important for me.  I put it up in class and the teacher just sat there staring at me.  He understood it.  It was indescribable, actually.

And because it means more to me than real life, in general, here are two close-ups.

All right.  Moving on to something less meaningful, I’m taking another class in the illustration department.  We had to do three studies of scenes from a fairy tale, all in silhouette.  Behold:

Below is St. Francis, making me feel better as usual:

And then the Prince in Rapunzel.  Me/you/you/me?

This week’s watercolor homework.  One object, four views, complementary colors.

This week’s watercolor class.  Ten and twenty minute poses.

So, back to my drawings, in general they are just sad in some way, maybe nice and sad but that’s the general direction.  The one below didn’t feel like that though, it was full of hope.  I like this one very much too.  I used a fabric spray bottle and white charcoal, whatever that is, pencil.  I did that at 3:00 this morning.  Can anybody help me? I’m out of plans.  Guess I left my world in somebody’s hands.  (David Guetta is playing right now, reader) Anyway, this picture below is about The End.  Everything comes together at the end of the fairy tale.  Cosmos rejoices.  Happy forever.

In other news, making an armature out of random detritus for sculpture.  Not so fine arty, are we!  The thing already looks like Frankenstein to me, quiet and joyful.  At least for the minute where he’s got the flower and before he throws the little girl in the pond and stumbles away in horror and confusion.  Does that sound familiar?

Totally out of order here, we had critiques at the end of last semester and one of the dudes told me to do some homework, which was to do a copy of a painting and then turn the copy and the original to the wall and do it from memory.  Both half hour painting, quick, you know.  In oil.  So here’s the memory, which I like.

 

Okay, reader, once again this below does it for me in a big way.  I don’t know if it communicates at all or if that makes any difference. Probably unreadable over the internet.

Below I did last night around midnight when I woke up.  It’s physical love, or love as we experience it in our physical world. Uh.

Another page out of my sketchbook.  96 tears.  Does that song go through your head all the time? Oh. It doesn’t? I’m sure it does sometimes.

More sketchbook.  It says, “little bunny, you are more like a flower,” paraphrased from the ee cummings poem about the Christmas Tree.

Below is an oil painting I started over Christmas break.  An illustration, I suppose.

And below may be my favorite painting, aside from Morgan’s back and maybe the very first couple I ever did.  This one is special and full of trust and faith, like my drawings. I did it in class two weeks ago.

And there we are, reader.  It’s all so curious and paradoxical.  Shalom, reader.

 

I’m just going to note some things for myself.  Ignore me, reader.

1.  All this love. It’s the same as any other thing we experience.  It comes and goes and there’s nothing we can do about it.  Reality is something beyond that, something we don’t have to worry about leaving and we don’t depend on for our happiness that way–it just is all the time.  So:

a. ) Just like the way to get over bad feelings like anger and jealousy and so on isn’t to ignore them or struggle with them, but just to acknowledge that they exist and let them do their thing and note that it has nothing to do with our real selves, when the euphoria of love goes away we don’t get it back by chasing it down and forcing it into our brain.  We get it back by letting it go.  I don’t know how that works, whether it’s just that the empty space is the flip side of it, or that in the silence there is everything, or both.  Probably it passeth understanding.

b.)  I used to wake up in the morning and feel something, first thing, the first thing I knew when I remembered I was me every morning.  Now I don’t, in general.  I don’t know.  Sometimes it felt forced.  What is the emptiness? The emptiness is maybe its own thing, very important and beautiful and I’m just ignoring it (or not).  Very much like how the lines I made in drawing were always beautiful but I never, ever saw that, and now I do.  I never saw how joyful it was to be really horribly bored during summer vacation, because it sucked, but there is that other component to it too.  Everything has that being quality about it so it’s positive in some way.  So how much of life is just what we allow ourselves to acknowledge? I used to say, how much we allow ourselves to believe, which is the same feeling, but belief implies that it’s not really there, maybe.  It’s all there, it’s just that it’s so painful to feel good stuff and then let it go that we’re afraid of feeling really good stuff.  But the only thing that goes is the earthly love.  Just like everything else it starts to decay and change.  It’s always there, underneath, in that fundamental way.  Leading to next point.

c.)  Is love some kind of indicator of reality?  There is no physical thing as coldness or dark.  There is maybe no reality to fear and darker feelings–they are as real as coldness or darkness in what they do, but they’re just nothing in some other sense.  So since the universe tends in a positive direction–stuff is–then isn’t love really real in some fundamental way? Isn’t it a taste of the platonic love, but it’s tainted by our humanness and that’s the part that decays?  But whatever is real about it is the larger truth.  Right? Sure.  So then it must be that when the earthly part goes on its way, whatever is larger is still there. But I don’t believe that.  I know it, but it’s not in front of my eyes. I believe in the part that leaves–even though what we experience can’t be real, just by the fact that it goes.

d.) So what we believe, ocular proof, is actually backward.  What we think is real must be false, since is is impermanent.  We think it’s real and we’re afraid because there’s so much pain and loss–that is what life is composed of, things leaving all the time.  Then we’re afraid to acknowledge the real joy that exists every moment because we don’t want to lose it.  And we need some overwhelming ocular proof to open our eyes and say “oh right, that is actually the way it is all the time,” but there is no ocular proof for reality the way there is on the material plane, because…why? Because we don’t need proof? Because things just are? Because we already believe it? Interesting, reader.  Of course my heart is still sad half the time because of earthly stuff but what else can it do? That’s (sucky) life.  And of course children don’t know that yet, and they don’t give a f***, which is why it’s so pleasant to be around them and hear them getting so upset about missing one coin in Mario.  Um.  So the point was, really, that the main thing is not to be afraid.  Fear is what keeps us from seeing everything.  I’m afraid if I find it, it will go away, than which there is nothing more painful, is there? Even if it’s painful in a good way, I’m afraid of that.  But it can’t go.  It’s a matter of trust, just like drawing and painting is a matter of trust, because who knows where all those lines come from? But they come from us, deeper us that doesn’t talk but is there, waiting, all the time, just like everything else, and I always feel it but don’t acknowledge it.  Why not? I’m afraid.  Why? Because of life.  So what do I do? I don’t know. Is that hope? Faith? Extravagant trust in the generosity and goodness of stuff? Hm.

So people.  My hard drive is full.  You know? So I can’t download any pictures.  I don’t know what to do about this.  I have so much stuff to show you too.  I’m taking six classes, and I have homework in all of them, and we actually do stuff in class in all of them, and it’s all very conceptual and intense.  We spent six hours painting the sound of the room, for example.  In other news, I realize it makes me feel better to be really mean.  That’s stupid, but it’s the way it is.  Ask God why. Bye reader!

Cause I ain’t been nuttin but bad.  Ha, ha.

I was wrong about what is in the throneroom of the mind.  I don’t think it’s matter.  I think it’s something splashy.

So all this about joy and stuff…sure, whatever. Everyone likes joy n stuff, love.  What about fuck that, though? What about it?  That’s good too.  They’re both good.  Or good/ungood.

 

 

I painted a picture of bunnies for my mommy for Christmas.  I just did it this morning and I didn’t have a precut hot pink mat for framing it so I got one at Target and covered with two layers of ink wash.  I mixed a couple different reds and some water and then applied with a two-inch paintbrush and it turned out totally spotless.  I mean the front part, the back is a m*****f**** mess.

 

 

Below is your mushroom watercolor, special reader. Special.

 

The sky outside is beautiful right now.  It’s 5:00 pm in New Jersey, and the sky is beautiful.  I am listening to three songs on youtube:  A long time ago we used to be friends, Twilight time by the Platters, and The Caravelles singing You don’t have to be a baby to cry.  I have been reading a Victorian natural history book which starts with the origin of the solar system and now I am getting to carbon-based lifeforms.  It is a lot simpler than science nowadays although the author is occasionally concerned that the reader won’t be able to follow.  Maybe we are generally a lot more educated in math and science than the Victorians?  Well.

It just occurred to me that life is the process of making and losing friends.  Whatever we’re friends with, cats and trees and particular situations or moments or of course people.  And rocks, what is going on with rocks? Anyway! Keep going, brain, don’t get distracted now! Oh fine, I was also feeling how great it is to say f*** you to everyone else’s ideas because they’re inevitably lies.  The people, of course, are swell.  The immediate strangerness of them, the fact that they look weird and say weird stuff, is only another tool of the mind that I don’t like grabbing, like hating those strange qualities.  I prefer not to use that tool because it feels bad.  Damn what was the initial point now? Oh, same thing, of course.  It has to be a paradox–that’s how you know you are nearing the truth.

So the thing about rocks.  The thing about strangers.  The thing about friends, and me.  All that.  Whatever is most me is what is in friends, whatever they may be.  Other stuff is illusion, is coarse crap.  But still meaningful, all of it is important to carry things, thank you, containers.  So then, making and losing friends…losing because the container parts go away.  The good parts just keep coming, changing subject matter, remaining the same inside.  Right?  Simultaneously all over.  Funny how the words of things are so unproductive, counter-productive, and then when you arrive somewhere the only way you can describe that place is with the same words. Joy and pain.  Happiness.  Right, reader?

For me, anyway.  I am always chastising myself for saying some thing or other, and then I’m like, Calm down, self, it’s okay, no one cares.  But the instinct with me is to be like “why the fuck did I say that?” Meanwhile at the time I very determinedly want to say whatever it is.  Two different aspects of me, I suppose.  I don’t like the uncomfortable feeling that I said some wrong thing.  However, I think ignoring or suppressing that part is not productive, and now I’m going to tell you why.  It’s very important, in fact it’s of the utmost importance, that I make and am aware of making socially inappropriate comments all the time.  That’s my job as a human being, to just say and do crazy things constantly and then be like, oops.  Everyone else does it too.  The only thing that would be bad would be to pretend it didn’t happen or ignore it.  So that’s why.  It’s fine to say dumb things, but what is bad is being afraid of saying dumb things because I will be hard with myself.  So like everything, it’s the negative outcome that makes the real positive one possible. It’s only in not being afraid of saying dumb things, and actually saying them constantly, that I can be comfortable all the time because then I know no matter what happens I’ll be fine.  It’s not a matter of hoping I don’t say some dumb thing but just dealing with the dumbness that will and should inevitably occur.  And then recognizing it but not feeling too bad about it.  Because otherwise I start hiding from people to avoid that, and that is good for no one, that is bad, that is terrible.  I like people.  They are important to me.  That’s all.

 

love is something simple that we can have all the time, with our bodies, feelings, and minds, and use all our parts.  Having that and allowing it because we know it’s reciprocated is the feeling of joy.  And then going outside our smaller selves, letting go of that particular joy, is when we can have the total undifferentiated existence and have real universal joy.  It’s simple, reader, as it should be, isn’t it?

I notice that one of my main problems is trying to keep everything in front of me all the time.  I like to take all my clothes out and put them all over the floor so I can see them all, and that seems to be what I want to do with all my friends and feelings too.  If I start feeling happy I’m like “wait a minute, isn’t it fun to feel sad? or feel nothing? or mad?” or whatever.  Whatever other feelings there are, when I have one I’m like, wait! And it’s kind of like people, when I’m with Ira I’m like what about Matt? and when I’m with Matt I’m like, what about Moira? You know? That’s stupid.  I have no idea why everything is all different, and why we focus on one thing at a time, but that’s, apparently, the way it is in the material world.  And feelings seem to be part of that even if immaterial, so maybe just don’t do that, right, self?