okay, i know five cubed is 125, but we aren't actually making one hundred and twenty-five of these little interlocking cell things, right? math doesn't win, right? tell me math doesn't win.
mood drastically improved by a long shower, a long walk, acquisition of aforementioned required materials, some writing and the impulsive purchase of a cute t-shirt and black dress. :: 15:39
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...
i feel all heavy and irritable.
things that don't help:
1. my wet clothes heaped on the dryer. i didn't move them over because someone else's clothes were in still in the dryer when my load was finished. someone else came and took out those clothes and piled them, with mine, on top of the dryer so that they could put their load in.
2. my design work. mostly, the fact that i have no idea what i'm doing and i don't have the materials i need. for either of the projects.
3. everything else.
(sorry, no more idiotic lists, i swear.)
(og nej, min fugl, gør ikke bekymre. jeg er bare sulten.) :: 11:22
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...
:: april 5, 2002 ::
dishes from three days ago: washed.
ivy plant: watered.
bed: made.
overflowing garbage: emptied.
paper about the end of the world according to ancient germanic tribes: written.
paper prospectus about my environment's effect on my writing: written.
286 pages about the end of the world according to eugene burdick and harvey wheeler: read.
one page about the end of the world according to stewart alsop: read.
ten pages about the end of the world according to herbert gold: read.
twenty pages about the environment and man's place in it, according to suzi gablik: read.
paper relating aforementioned twenty pages to my educational experience: written.
one page about kepler's law, newton's version of kepler's law, escape velocity and planetary orbits: complete.
28 pages about, well, the universe: read.
it was vaguely cool on the way to art history, and afterwards just cold enough that he gave me his jacket. we ate breakfast (well, okay, lunch) and then climbed the stairs to leave the dining hall. i stopped short on the landing.
snow.
big, fat, tumbling flakes that smeared up my glasses and tangled in my hair. walking beneath a tree, resplendent in full bloom, i couldn't tell if the delicate white shapes were snowflakes or flowers. :: 13:14
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:: april 4, 2002 ::
i'm a design student.
i'm a design student at an engineering school, though i'm sure that's not an excuse.
sometimes it's hard to remember that there's a difference between an artist and a designer. that we're being taught to be designers and they have no interest in our artistry beyond that it furthers our design work. i think one of the most important things we learn is to separate those two. because i don't think art can be taught and i don't think creativity can be forced. but we are learning a creativity that has nothing to do with inspiration or expression.
we are learning to take the light that is the creative pulse, and put against it a magnifying glass made of expectations and deadlines and regulations, and focus everything on one poor ant of a project.
i've always seen art as a feline thing, subject to its own laws and its own judgement.
sometimes, these classes feel like taking a leopard, putting it in a harness and hitching it to a plough.
and while i'm sure a leopard could pull a plough pretty damned well, i'm not sure that it would still be a leopard if it did. :: 22:36
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the room looks vaguely like something out of brazil, all exposed heating ducts and rough white walls. the professor is definitiely not innocuous in any way, shape or form. the assignment is daunting to say the least. my brain hurts.
but i did laundry yesterday.
there's a feeling peculiar to clean towels. clean sheets have something of the same effect, but towels are a texture unto themselves. it's a pure, deep softness made sweeter by the rough edges of each little twisted, loopy strand. the slight crunch of philadelphia water paired with a glaring lack of fabric softener, giving way to the simple comfort of something soft against wet skin. almost inherently warm. reminiscent of five-year-old clamberings out of a tub long since gone lukewarm, pruney toes burrowing into the bathroom rug and a total envelopment in detergent-scented darkness.
mmm... :: 19:46
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...
yesterday we walked sweltering down to utrecht, making an emergency stop at wawa for cold, caffienated beverages.
today, eachofus was (were?) somewhat skeptical about the 40-degree forcast. especially with the sun screaming in through the windows, and the fact that, despite somebody waking around eight and turning the air conditioner on, the room was still disctinctly overwarm.
walking back from astrophysics, however, the wind ripped down the corridors between buildings, and in the shade we shivered and hugged our elbows.
and my hands are shaking. little fault lines running down my veins, turning my hands to strange landscapes where the sidewalk splits cleanly into two disjointed pieces, and i hit all the wrong keys as i try to type. :: 12:44
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...
(oh, and about that blonde thing...
well, she describes it pretty accurately in the middle of this.) :: 00:18
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...
design III.
three-dimensional design.
design from hell.
the professor seemed innocuous enough. balding and paunchy and wearing thick glasses, he speaks with a kind of rapid passion that made me think that maybe, maybe this time the professor would contribute to my learning.
which i'm sure he'll do.
what i know he'll contribute to are my levels of stress, insanity and blood pressure.
it's not so much that i can't do what he's asking in the time he's asking us to do it in, it's just that if i do, i'll never have time to do anything else. as far as i can tell, that includes eat, sleep or physics homework.
lots of chocolate.
lots and lots of chocolate. :: 00:13
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...
:: april 2, 2002 ::
horray for astrophysics.
i spent an extra twenty minutes with the professor after class, discussing orbital perturbation and the death of tycho brahe.
he blinked when i responded to his query about my major, then again when i replied "freshman" to his next question. we chatted breifly about the physics major who lives upstairs and the difference between an artistic and scientific mind. he reminds me of the "inconceivable" character in the princess bride (and no, i don't remember the name of his character, which i understand is unforgivable).
"if the blues are dead, they have at least been nicely embalmed." - eddie dean
i highly reccomend this magazine.
my hands are a strange chemical soft, battered by three successive (and largely unsuccessful) waves of ammonium hydroxide and hydrogen peroxide and various other multisyllabic substances. i cringe to think of the condition of my scalp. the majority of my hair, evidently, has little or no desire to be any type of blonde, much less champagne.
the third (final?) of those aforementioned chemical attacks is currently setting, as it will for the next 35 minutes.
if i'm not bald by morning, i will by god be a blonde. :: 00:45
(speak)
it's pouring invisible rain outside.
looking straight out my window, i can't see a single drop. but on the ground, seven stories away, puddles quiver disconsolately and the streetlights show glimpses of shiny, shuddering ground.
however, working on the assumption that she's still alive somewhere out there and will eventually return, i suppose i'd better hold off for the time being, and wait at least a day or two more before plundering her cheez-its. :: 15:59
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...
how can a teensy-weensy, one-sixteenth-shy-of-two-inches-tall mass of poorly cut illustration board loom so completely over my room and, not incidentally, my weekend?
berloody design projects are going to be the death of me. :: 14:06
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...
i think there is nothing in the world quite so abjectly unnerving as the rush of adrenaline a hapless sleepnumbed body recieves as it is jolted awake from a nightmare. :: 11:07
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