these are the things i think about while cleaning the kitchen sink
i've been eating a lot of junk lately my roommate had baked a delightful chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting for a friend's birthday, and there are plenty of cake shards left in our fridge & freezer, so for the past few days i've been subsisting/gorging myself on these leftovers, and...well that can't exactly be healthy, right? last night, i started getting weird cravings for an italian hero (here's a visual aid, for those of you not familiar with the term hehe) -- i think maybe because my body realizes that it's being deprived of many nutrients...haha, sorry but just now, when i thought "hey it's getting to be around dinner time, maybe i should head out to the deli and fetch myself a sangy," i suddenly stopped myself short and with a mix of dread at the prospect of stepping out of doors for the first time since tuesday (when i went to pick up my online-ordered domino's pizza, on my block) and what can only be described as a shocking spurt of genuine melancholy, i began to ponder the heartbreaking temporality of all things
...i mean, what?????
my thinking was: that sandwich, however delicious, won't last forever there will be a first bite and, after several minutes of "om nom nom"ing, spilt dressing, and loud & messy chewing there will inevitably be a last bite and what then?
nothing
just an indefinite void to remind you of what you once had but has since been devoured and is now starting its gradual descent into digestion, decomposition, and decay.................. (wow, move over Baudelaire, there's a new emo kid in town, geez! O_O)
never mind that the "void" would actually be a full-to-bursting stomach never mind that "indefinite" means ONLY UNTIL THE NEXT MEAL, IDIOT!
nevertheless, i decided against going out to buy the sandwich, which is obvious, as i am now sitting here clickety-clacking out this entry as though the lives of orphaned baby pandas depended on it (well, it's only 6:34pm, there's still time...oo0o0ohoho twist~!)
but what is it with this apparent sense of urgency that i have about temporality and there never being enough (time, food, whatever)?? i always always want more and absolutely dread when good things finish i remember thinking about this as a child, whenever we went to get McDonald's, or when we were heading to a friend's house for a holiday gathering i really don't get it, i was never deprived of things as a child—i always had more than enough food, toys, clothes, time to myself, whatever you name it i never lived through like, a war in my homeland or some other devastating phenomenon that power-hungry men decide to unleash on others but for some reason, i always find myself lamenting here and there that things don't last forever and won't always be as you remember them, as you want them to be that "~all good things must come to an end~" yadda yadda...but really! they do! whyyyyyy????! sandwiches are finished (lulz, my priorities: let me show u dem), parties end, the sparkling romance of childhood clatters to a depressing halt at the onset of Real World Responsibility, and with it come Stress and the loss of illusion that life is forever suffused with this effervescent elixir of joy and warmth (lol ok i know that's extreme, but I'M EXTREME!!1!111) *eyeroll*
in a sense, we all know that there is no stopping time: mortality is a force felt by all who are subject to it, and we are distinguished only by how we handle its non-negotiable stronghold over our petty, powerless lives there are some who panic and overdose on Botox and plastic surgery, desperate to discard any and all traces of this passage of time, as though by injecting things into their bodies they could stopper the sand itself from spilling through the hourglass like the sagging pouches of skin folding softly over their jeans and then there are others who perhaps choose acceptance over resistance, merely meditating on the insurmountability of this aspect of existence, as they recognize that electing to create friction would only hurt them deeper and take up more of whatever time is left, time which is forever trickling through their lonely fingers, answering to no one's pleas to slow down or halt
i think when we are with people (in both the casual and the biblical sense), we notice the passage of time less, because we are too busy enjoying the company of others and making the most of the concreteness of our existence and the immediacy of our bodies, for in radical close ups we lose a larger perspective of the world and no longer feel our own mortality due to more cheerful distractions
maybe this explains my deep-seated affinity for old-fashioned arts, like oil painting and black and white photography taken on film with a clunky old wind-up camera and developed in a darkroom using funky-smelling chemicals (or maybe i just want it to) in our art history/theory courses, we were introduced to these schools of thought separating traditional/modern art and postmodern art, and one of the things i latched onto the most was this distinction posited by Michael Fried between "art" and "objecthood" in his essay, aptly titled Art and Objecthood (god i love the internet sometimes) of course Fried, being a diehard Greenbergian scholar, aggressively insisted on the difference between 'high' art (painting, sculpture; of course jumping on the Abstract Expressionism bandwagon) and 'low' art (here, Minimalism), which he dubbed 'literalist' art and pretty much condemned it to a level of 'theatricality' blah blah blabbity blah BASICALLY: ~high art~ is present all at once, ignoring the outside world completely and encapsulating within it an entire otherworldly realm in which goodness, beauty, truth, wholeness, and purity reign supreme and radiate unto the viewer, lifting him/her gently above the cruel continuum of existence and bestowing upon him/her a state of "grace" (yeah...i know) 'low' art, on the other hand, incorporates the world and thereby obliges the viewer to experience temporality, incompleteness, subjectivity, etc. -- values which already exist in the real world and which, Fried argues, basically do nothing for Art and essentially drag art down into the gutter, reducing it to mere 'theatre'
lol okay. of course i don't support the Greenberg/Fried camp, as i am fully in favour of a Postmodern practice and praxis which RECOGNIZES that all vision is subjective and gendered, that the world and its experiences and opinions are inherently incomplete and therefore open to debate—views which, in MY opinion, are far more TRUTHFUL than any ~otherworldly realm~ of idealized 'truth' and 'beauty' and cat piss peddled by The Man Disguised As Artiste~
BUT this isn't about my artistic beliefs this is about time and how we all tend to panic a little, every now and again, when our wandering consciousness catches us in an idle moment to remind us that we, too, shall expire someday, just as everything does (or maybe i'm the only one who panics? do i even really 'panic'?? maybe i just like that word :> ah who cares) as loathe as i am of these egregious claims that High Art ought to renounce the painful, harsh realities of the "outside world"—the very world from which all art comes—i cannot help but retreat sometimes to these same faulty illusions and partake in some secondhand nostalgia (because hi i didn't live through turn-of-the-century Paris, no matter how hard i wish otherwise) even though i know there is no use in trying to arrest time by capturing a moment or an ideal on a pictorial surface, i take comfort in the pantomime
which reminds me of one of my favourite quotations, this time taken from an essay i quite like by André Bazin, entitled The Ontology of the Photographic Image:
for photography does not create eternity, as art does, it embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption
haha, yes i guess this was mostly just a writing exercise, to get me to start THINKING again man i am full of pretentious wank, i know but sometimes i do miss being in school :{
Dobbs Ferry High School is about a 50-minute drive from Manhattan. A Dong-A Ilbo reporter visited the school Wednesday, seeing banners reading, “Today, October 7, is Hangeul Day” at many locations, including the entrance to the library, classrooms, corridors and steps.
Posters on the wall also promoted events to introduce Korea and teach the Korean alphabet on the occasion of Hangeul Day.
The school observed the day for the first time this year ahead of Hangeul Day, which is today in Korea. Dobbs Ferry is a small school with around 460 students, most of whom are the children of middle class whites. Less than 10 of the student body are ethnic Koreans.
Nevertheless, the school is observing Hangeul Day through commemorative events due to Dobbs Ferry Principal Keith Ki-dong Yi, who took over the school four years ago, and Marion Halberg, a teacher of English.
Lee and Halberg led the effort to observe Hangeul Day at the school in the hope of teaching students foreign cultures in a natural fashion.
Around 9:50 a.m., the Dong-A reporter was guided by the principal to a classroom where a Hangeul Day event was about to start. Students began to move in and some 30 filled the classroom soon after.
The event was hosted by the Dobbs Ferry International Club, a group of students studying foreign cultures, and Halberg, the club’s adviser. On display at the entrance to the classroom was a map of the Korean Peninsula using the term “East Sea,” booklets on legendary Joseon Dynasty admiral Yi Sun-shin, Korean foods including kimchi, and 5,000-won and 1,000-won Korean banknotes.
Halberg introduced hangeul vowels and consonants to students, and instructed them to repeat the Korean words for car, school and classroom.
Principal Yi helped out, saying hangeul was developed by King Sejong the Great of the Joseon Dynasty around 560 years ago to allow laypeople to easily communicate with each other.
Afterwards, three ethnic Korean students taught their classmates how to write their names in Korean. Students participating in the event included not only Americans but also the children of immigrants from around 10 countries, including Mexico, Ecuador, China, Iran, India, Pakistan and Russia.
Sarah, a 10th grader, said, “I wrote hangeul for the first time and it’s very different from English but beautiful,” adding, “I will repeatedly practice writing my name in hangeul at home.”
Halberg said, “I organized the event after hearing about Hangeul Day from the principal, and we had far more students coming than I expected.”
“Students who attended today’s event will have more friendly feelings toward Korea and hangeul.”
awwww haha, i was flipping through my planner and saw that I had written down "Alphabet Day in Korea!" for Oct. 9th :P
i often like to remind myself of who i am, in little bits & pieces i'm not sure why; i don't care why, and you shouldn't either the perennial questions: what do i want to be today? what do i want to tell others i am today? how do i want others to see me today? (fairly certain that's redundant) the internet allows us the luxuries of self-censorship, filtering, manipulating our image to make our imperfections more palatable and perhaps more interesting than they might be otherwise (but then again, what are 'imperfections' really...?)
i don't like to sleep (in fact, i hate it) because i often have nightmares: irritating at best (being bullied by my father) and downright gruesome at worst (being kidnapped and tortured to death)
i don't let myself experience life to fullest extent that my circumstances would allow because for some ridiculous reason i don't think i'm good enough for it and don't deserve it...yeah what the hell is that about?!
sometimes i feel that the pain of heartbreak is the most beautiful, delicious, deepest cutting and most provocative pain in all of existence—to the point of my seeking it out in some instances and sort of encouraging myself to be perpetually mired in such a (falsely recreated) state, because i believe that some of the most honest, explosive and powerful art is borne of nothing other than this phenomenon
i also enjoy envisioning and—obviously—romanticizing my own death; i spend many hours wondering when it will arrive and how much it will hurt
i really, really love to laugh, and i often bring myself to hysterics with naught but a thought or memory
lately, i've come into the habit of latching onto one film and watching it over and over again, sometimes for a month straight
i'm suuuuuuch a sucker for ambiance omg
i'm prone to short bursts of intense violence, but i never carry out any actions on others; that would be wrong
