Daunted: the act of looking forward wrongly
The truck broke, which seemed like the perfect harbinger of the exodus of my lady. Giddy-Up galloped off to points East. Depressing to watch her go, my house seems so much smaller without her in it. That should be the other way around, but its not.
I'm desperately clearing house, email in-boxes long neglected, back of drawers backstopping front of drawers, and of course the clearing of my mind. Money is not the only struggle, funny how I focus so completely on it. I imagine I should be more concerned with the level of work I will find myself making in grad school, or struggling to understand the delicate network of this here "Art World" which I purport membership. How tangled it all seems, how filled with missed connections and small slights, as if the art world requires you to be friends with everyone and yet rivals to the bitter close of the show.
I can not really vision myself as an artist referenced by my current colleagues during one of their high school port reviews. Which is a lie, that specific thought occurred to me while crossing the railroad tracks on the way to work. I was driving down 15th ave, which has an old iron track down the middle, and as my car tire hopped up and straddled the iron and the whole car began a slow-dance-like sway down the road, I thought about Trevor Amery (new to the blog). I wondered if my friend Trevor while deep in a portfolio review would find himself recommending to the student the review of my work as a guide to their own interests. Sometimes I see these outcomes as my true goals.
Its hard to imagine where you might land once you let go of the rope swing into the river, the water is moving, you are moving, and its hard to judge how high this cliff is, I do know how hard it was to climb from the river up the slippery rocks to the top of the cliff. There it was no small feat to retrieve the rope from its dangle, and gage it for sturdiness. Will the branch hold, will the rope hold, will these ten hillbillies in bikinis and cut offs be impressed or will they cringe as I slam into the one water hazard they know to avoid because of location of birth. The best I can do is try to enjoy it, and realize at the end of the day I did it for me, not for the cliff or the tree or the giggling gaggle. I did it to feel it. So now I have the rope in hand and it is a grad program and right now is the hardest part so far, because that is the way it always is, the hardest part is the anticipation.
What if I can't get the rope, what if I can't make it up the rocks, what if I can't pull myself from the water, what if I can't find my bathing suit or my keys or the gas to get to the river? What if I never knew the river or the rope swing was there, what if I stayed home and just imagined the adventure, I bet I would be completely wrong as to how it felt and what the actual scariest part was, and I would also be wrong as to what the best part would be, and I would be completely unable to tell you where I would hit the water after letting go. I would very totally and completely not be able to tell you what it feels like to hit the bottom of that cool river and push off with my toes in the silt and rise lungs popping to break the surface and find the air to scream the mad joy of childhood, the shear pleasure of coming that close to "not doing" and still leaping. Yeah my life is mostly a rope swing on a river and it seems the cliffs keep getting higher the current faster and the hillbillies cuter.
Trevor Amery explained: I met Trevor on the worst weekend of his life to that point. He and I were recruiting for separate art colleges, he MICA and me PNCA. Trevor and I found ourselves locked in a snow storm in Albuquerque NM after a portfolio day. We had lame hotel rooms and no chance of anything interesting, we just had to gut it out until our flights the next day. Trevor was raw and exposed from a very recent break up. He was frustrated and hurt and mad, and I mostly let him. We talked for hours and drank at random bars all night, we tried so hard to find a decent place to eat but every restaurant was booked for Holiday Parties. We ended up at a Texas land and Cattle, read Applebeas its Friday Chilly!
Trevor kept his mind up, his attitude forward and never expressed any doubt about his future success. I had met him a brief few hours prior and it would be fair to say, I trusted him right off, if this was Trevor on his worst day, than I very much intended to be on his side come his best day.
Patrick Melroy
I'm desperately clearing house, email in-boxes long neglected, back of drawers backstopping front of drawers, and of course the clearing of my mind. Money is not the only struggle, funny how I focus so completely on it. I imagine I should be more concerned with the level of work I will find myself making in grad school, or struggling to understand the delicate network of this here "Art World" which I purport membership. How tangled it all seems, how filled with missed connections and small slights, as if the art world requires you to be friends with everyone and yet rivals to the bitter close of the show.
I can not really vision myself as an artist referenced by my current colleagues during one of their high school port reviews. Which is a lie, that specific thought occurred to me while crossing the railroad tracks on the way to work. I was driving down 15th ave, which has an old iron track down the middle, and as my car tire hopped up and straddled the iron and the whole car began a slow-dance-like sway down the road, I thought about Trevor Amery (new to the blog). I wondered if my friend Trevor while deep in a portfolio review would find himself recommending to the student the review of my work as a guide to their own interests. Sometimes I see these outcomes as my true goals.
Its hard to imagine where you might land once you let go of the rope swing into the river, the water is moving, you are moving, and its hard to judge how high this cliff is, I do know how hard it was to climb from the river up the slippery rocks to the top of the cliff. There it was no small feat to retrieve the rope from its dangle, and gage it for sturdiness. Will the branch hold, will the rope hold, will these ten hillbillies in bikinis and cut offs be impressed or will they cringe as I slam into the one water hazard they know to avoid because of location of birth. The best I can do is try to enjoy it, and realize at the end of the day I did it for me, not for the cliff or the tree or the giggling gaggle. I did it to feel it. So now I have the rope in hand and it is a grad program and right now is the hardest part so far, because that is the way it always is, the hardest part is the anticipation.
What if I can't get the rope, what if I can't make it up the rocks, what if I can't pull myself from the water, what if I can't find my bathing suit or my keys or the gas to get to the river? What if I never knew the river or the rope swing was there, what if I stayed home and just imagined the adventure, I bet I would be completely wrong as to how it felt and what the actual scariest part was, and I would also be wrong as to what the best part would be, and I would be completely unable to tell you where I would hit the water after letting go. I would very totally and completely not be able to tell you what it feels like to hit the bottom of that cool river and push off with my toes in the silt and rise lungs popping to break the surface and find the air to scream the mad joy of childhood, the shear pleasure of coming that close to "not doing" and still leaping. Yeah my life is mostly a rope swing on a river and it seems the cliffs keep getting higher the current faster and the hillbillies cuter.
Trevor Amery explained: I met Trevor on the worst weekend of his life to that point. He and I were recruiting for separate art colleges, he MICA and me PNCA. Trevor and I found ourselves locked in a snow storm in Albuquerque NM after a portfolio day. We had lame hotel rooms and no chance of anything interesting, we just had to gut it out until our flights the next day. Trevor was raw and exposed from a very recent break up. He was frustrated and hurt and mad, and I mostly let him. We talked for hours and drank at random bars all night, we tried so hard to find a decent place to eat but every restaurant was booked for Holiday Parties. We ended up at a Texas land and Cattle, read Applebeas its Friday Chilly!
Trevor kept his mind up, his attitude forward and never expressed any doubt about his future success. I had met him a brief few hours prior and it would be fair to say, I trusted him right off, if this was Trevor on his worst day, than I very much intended to be on his side come his best day.
Patrick Melroy
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