Break

I took a bit of a blogging break. Continue to expect sporadicity.

One

You know it's finals week when you're on day three of only having one contact in because you can't remember one more thing in the morning. I just finished taking three of five and the little engine who could mentality is keeping me chugging through everyday. I'm thinking that the last three days of the dull headache I've had since December started maybe be contact (or lack of contact) induced. We'll have to see how my head fares after putting in a fresh pair.

The best part about forgetting about my contact is that I just remembered that only have one in. And I painted my final project this morning. Problem? I hope not.

In other events, I felt vindicated for years of studying roots while playing this today. I'm basically a vocab master.

I thought I was done posting until the boy across from me in the terrace blew his nose into his used taco wrapper, and then followed up with a nice piece of tissue/wax paper. Maybe I should offer to walk 28 steps to the restroom to grab him a tissue. Or maybe he'd just prefer my sleeve.

Santa

It hasn't felt like Christmas yet. With finals in full swing, it seems too hard to even think about being festive and cheery. But today I witnessed a Christmas Miracle. We were in the car, taking Southern Belle here when we realized the CD player wasn't working. This was odd seeing as it was working just hours earlier when I dropped OlderAndWiserToo off on campus. We got to the top of our street and were waiting for a lull in traffic before turning left when a large white van drove by and a man put his arm (donned in bright red) out the window and waved is black-gloved hand at us. Just then the CD player turned on suddenly to the climax of "Hark the Herold Angles Sing."

We're pretty sure he was Santa.

Massasoit

When even I walk by him, I can't help but think how cold he looks. And it's my immediate reaction to want to throw my scarf around his neck (it would double his total coverage).

Newsflash

I have posted 360 times. That's as many degrees as a circle has. It's also an area code in Washington. 360 is a gaming system as well as a Ferrari. It is the debut album by British band Dreadzone. Finally, 360 is the number of days until December 10, 2009, which is the day that Bobby Flay was born.

Patriarch

When we pulled up in front of the house I was flooded with the memory of the last time I was there. The outside looked much the same, with the round driveway, the frozen lawn and rose bushes, the ramp leading up to the front door. Sometimes when I go places that seem so fixed in time, it reminds me how much I have changed since last being there. His house was a lot like that. I feel like I take up more space now. Intellectually. Spiritually. Physically. Emotionally.

It has been nearly five years since I've been back. He's now too old to open the door himself, but everything else is just the way I remember it. The piano covered in music. The low hanging chandelier. The wheelchair by the door.

We walked in and saw him sitting there in his recliner, the same one I saw, but it was moved now, closer to the piano, to make room for the Christmas tree. I think it was a real one. Ambitious for someone who can't even stand to get the door. He didn't look to me like he had aged, but maybe once you hit ninety, you've already hit the peak of wrinkles and hairloss and graying, so you stay suspended in a fixed age. Old age.

His mind was still as sharp as I remember. Though some of his hair had gone, no loss had occurred within. It stunned me when he knew my name, and nearly all the others, at least those who he had blessed or written or both. He seemed like an old friend. His eyelids were stretched with age, held out of his eyes by his stiff eyelashes, but receding when he laughed and crinkling at the edges. I sat next to him in a chair at his side and looked at his silhouetted profile in front of the large glass door, white with southern sun.

After I accompanied our first number, I returned to his side to listen to the second. As the words and music filled the living room, my eyes crawled all over the space, remembering.

The brown, orange and green floral couch matched the sculpted pea-green carpet, both of which held in the smell that will forever remind me of the Sacred. The equipment he used to record and transcribe sat exactly where I remember them, the large headphones and remotes gathering dust from over a year of disuse. The magnifying glass he held up to the papers he read to first learn my name was still at his side, and his hand that were folded across his chest looked just as they did when they were laid on my head years ago.

My eyes finally came to rest on him; the man who helped me understand a little more about what I'm doing here, and what needs to be done. His sage-like eyes, that have no doubt seen things of great glory, were filled with tears as the song summoned that sweet spirit that has swelled within that room many times before.

As we were buttoning our coats up to head back into the cold and carol our way back home, I took one last look around the room, taking in the sights, smells and feelings that I so strongly associate with that space. It was a special experience of love and gratitude for the service and sacrifice that one made for so many.

Chickens

Chicken: A Provo Story opened on December 5th here. BrightBoy and I met up with his family and strolled downtown and took a peak at the show. I contributed about 50 pieces to the show. It was a great success. The show was built around the concept of consumption. We took the average number of pounds of chicken eaten by an individual each year, divided that by the average weight of a chicken, multiplied that by the populatin of Provo, and divided that by the number of days in a year. The figured that on average, 5,326 chickens are eaten every day in Provo. In light of this, we (as a group of over 100 students and a few faculty members) put together a show of 5,326 chickens that are "5 x 5 1/2" and displayed in plastic baggies. Each chick was sold for one dollar and proceeds will be donated to the Provo Food and Care Coalition.

I got a call two nights before the show was to go up asking if I could do a few more. They were considerably short and so I gladly took on the task of doing 15 additional chickies. Wednesday morning instead of going to my class I spent the AM hours with my brush in hand, thinking about art, my art, and letting the words I have been hearing over the last semester swirl around in my brain for a few hours.

Nearly all the art I make is spiritual in nature to me. It is filled with patterns, circles, parallel lines. . . I think about these symbols as ones that connote eternity, endlessness. I love linking circles, referencing the links between people that stretch forever in both directions. I believe that we are so much more connected than we even realize. I use threes often, or fill my canvas with personal symbols that have taken on a role in my art, like chairs which reference family.

As I was doodling these patterns on the 5 inch square chickens, I was thinking about these symbols and how they apply to me. I was thinking about eternity, spirituality, family . . . and I realized that the margins of my notebooks that have been filled with circles, lines, shapes, and patterns for the last six years of my life is evididence of my contemplating the beyond. I felt really connected to my Savior and His plan as I let my paint brush trace the lines of the Divine.

As I was thinking about this, painting and (true to form as a self-proclaimed multitasking master) listening to this, a program on spirituality and chickens came on. I felt like my morning came full circle. It was almost creepy, in a nice way.

Here are some pictures of the show. Eat up. And if you haven't yet, check out the show in the flesh.

Kissing

Mr. Apple and Fiona = library lovers. Skanky little computers. Now that the library is open late, the four of us are there every night (and morning). Carpe PM!

She

I know a girl who never thinks a selfish thought. Who looks to help others. Constantly. And who always strives to be the person that He would want her to be. I know a girl who studies and strives. Even though sometimes the pay off isn't so great. I know a girl who loves to cuddle. One who gets a charge from being around people who love her, because she loves them ten times more in return. I know a girl who, at times, feels small, and insecure, and lonely. But I also know a girl who is empowered by the things she knows to be true. I know a girl who shares. I know a girl who sings and strums and serenades. I know a girl who dances. I know a girl who has an eternal perspective and inspires me to do the same. I know a girl who loves getting eight solid hours of sleep. And will sleep until she gets it. I know a girl who reads diligently (and maybe sometimes obsessively). I know a girl who laughs at lame things I say, but tells me that she likes me all the same. I know a girl who loves so much, sometimes it hurts. I know a girl who turned twenty-two today. And she deserves the world.

iSpent

Six-Hundred Eighty-Two dollars and Seventy-Three cents on art supplies in three months and six days. There must be a less expensive major out there.

Harmony

Harmony is a give and take, a stop and go. Moments of dissonance, the vibrations that grind uncomfortably against each other, resolve into chords that vibrate in unison. The discordances make the harmony more sweet. And the melody sings.

Lasagna

I spent 12 hours in the HFAC today. I kept getting wafts of lasagna smell. It made me hungry all day.

Granted

I have become mildly obsessed with this lately. I subscribe to the podcast and get a weekly audio treat for free. It's fantastic. I have listened to stories about baby switches, inmates performing Hamlet, break-ups and even some more serious pieces on the War on Terror and the plummeting economy. We usually get about 2 and a half episodes in during her class each Monday and Wednesday. Today we listened to a story about "going big" that features a new approach to ending urban poverty. The thought lies in bettering the children's future by teaching their parents to be parents. (It reminds me a bit of this song. So. Classic). It was not only inspiring to listen to these parents sacrificing so much in an effort to prevent their child from leading the life they had lead. It also reminded me of Obama's early education plan which, when I first looked at it, looked like a lot of hooey to me. Early education? Can't parents do that? I mean really, do we honestly need other people to sing to babies for us? But in listening to the show today, I learned that so many children had such a different upbringing that I had.

Of course cognitively I realize that my childhood wasn't like an inner city kids, but it just didn't cross my mind that they weren't sung to, or smiled at, or read to. Those just seem like intuitive things to do to a child. But many of the children growing up in inner cities can't read, many of them because no one ever read to them. (Speaking of books, another thing that reminded me of the program was this book. Thanks OlderAndWiserToo for the recommendation).

I realized that I had taken so much for granted, and that so many do who just assume that our life pretty much mirrors the life of most of the general populous. It just isn't so. It is everyone's job to make sure they're doing their part to take care of America's children; to create a safety net woven so tightly that children simply can't fall through. I'm just glad that people like him are willing to take a stab at such and overwhelming problem.

I took a moment today to be grateful for my parents, for my childhood, and days filled with wonderment and sing-song games. Who knows, maybe without it, I wouldn't be a Coug.

Helicopters

Things I thought about while walking from the JFSB to the HFAC:

• I walked through literally hundreds of spinning helicopters which made me think of butterflies which caused my mind to jump to this event (which I still think about several times a day) which made me think of them which made me think of him.
  
• It got warmer this afternoon which made my scarf and coat seem more like baggage than protection from the cold. As I walked, my fingers undid the 5 black buttons that fasten my coat and when I was finished putting the fifth button back through the buttonhole, my coat was flapping open in the breeze created by a combination of my fast pace and the blustery day. I felt like Neo from the Matrix. It was like a power trip.
• Some girls have bigger derrières than other girls. Duh. But bigger girls need to know that when they wear skirts, they are a good six inches shorter in the back if they've got a honky tonk-badonkadonk. So when these darling girls think they are innocently abiding by the Honor Code, they're really giving everyone behind them a slightly flashy show. What's worse, pretending not to notice? or telling them outright?
  

Rocked

We rocked the Facebook world. Hardcore.