Trincessity Tales

This is a beginning.  A beautiful one.  I’m sitting in the dining room watching the sunset through the bay windows, and I feel like I have never known such freedom.  The room slowly turns to gold, sunlight lining the edges of couch cushions and tabletops; the sky is a watercolor wash of purple, blue, orange, yellow.  The evening is stretching out languorously before me like a contented cat. Just the other day it seemed like this quarter would never end, but here I am, done done done DONE.  Where to start?  I can do anything now.

The past few months were definitely the busiest at my time at Western so far.  I spent hours in the studio after class time, desperately trying to meet deadlines and still keep up with my work schedule.  Now that I’m done, I’m not even sure what exactly I learned. It was a lot, that’s for sure—but probably not anything that you’d find scribbled into the teachers’ lesson plan.  In a lot of ways I guess I’m pretty disillusioned about the whole art-making process, or system, and the way we’re approaching it in today’s world.  In other ways I’m realizing how much I’ve barely skimmed the surface, and how much I have yet to learn.

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The sun is bright this morning. When I turn the Olds’ key in the ignition, the frost has already begun to melt in long teary streaks across the windshield. Later, I leave my coat in the car, and walk across campus bare-armed and windblown. My breath comes in white clouds, but the sun is warm on my face. I look up at the sky. Spring?

The weather plays tricks on me. I’ve always wanted to catch that precise moment when it changes from one thing to another, but it’s like falling asleep; one moment I’m perfectly awake, and then I’m waking up, and I can’t quite place when or how it happened. I’ll think I’m paying such careful attention, and then somehow my mind slips, and everything’s different. The leaves left the trees, there’s snow on the ground, and summer’s just a hazy memory of sunshine and shadows that stretch long across the lawn until they tangle with the woods.

These days my life mocks the season. Things change so quickly, I barely have time to even notice. I just accept and move on. School fills my days with a vengeance, midterms and assignments piling up every weekend, and I find myself scrambling to keep on top of it all. Read the rest of this entry »

For the record, Em put me up to this.

• I need and love God!!
• I can only wink with my right eye
• I’m very moody.  I have drastic emotional highs or lows for no apparent reason… that I can figure out anyway
• Giving public speeches practically paralyzes me :D
• I over analyze life all the time
• The ocean and wind make me dreamy
• I can’t roll my tongue
• I love prayer
• I can’t stand pudding
• I take myself–and everyone else!–much too seriously
• I have a habit of mentally narrating life as it happens, especially if I’m trying to get through something tedious.  Ex: “It felt like the rug would never end!  I was sewing for hours and hours….”  It actually helps.  Just don’t go as far as talking aloud to yourself about it, because that gets embarressing if someone walks in.  Heheh.  Not that I would KNOW anything about that of course….
• I still tell left and right apart with the mole on my chin
• I love traveling.
• Oh, chocolate…
• I have an annoying tendency to get stuck on certain words and use them all the time; like “anyways”
• I love my sisters too deeply <3
• I love people in general too much.  I tend to idolize and then get majorly let down by their faults.  Then I start loving them for their faults.  Whichever the case, I’m much too attached in general.  Must be something bad about it. :P
• Sometimes when I’m nervous I actually forget my name… or can’t pronounce it
• I hate my nose, but love my hands and the color of my eyes
• Music… oh yeah.  Speaks to my soul. (:P Forgive the cheese)
• My deepest desires are probably the ones I think the least about, and spend the smallest amount of time working towards.  They’re so simple it just seems like they should be a waste of time.  Complicated career-oriented stuff is much easier to handle somehow.
• I’m addicted to words.  So wonderful. :)
• I suck at most sports
• I think the human body is one of the most beautiful amazing things in the world
• I alternately crave and loathe routine
• I’m naturally shy, something I’m constantly battling to overcome
• I can mentally guilt-trip myself into doing just about anything
• I love color and shape; creating color schemes makes me giddily excited (it’s really idiotic)
• Tags on clothing drive me nuts
• Sometimes I love being alone.  Sometimes I can’t stand it.
• My hair is board straight–forget the straightener, that’s natural.  It changes color depending on the weather and time of year
• I can’t tan
• There’s nothing more exciting to me than starting a new project.  Blank page, pencil, great idea… yum.  Now finishing, on the other hand… heh
• I can stay up all night straight and into the next day, if it involves a good book.
• I love intricate, beautiful detail–in anything.  Fabric, words, pictures, objects.  I’m always attracted to the same sort of thing, without really intending to be
• I dream about distance but at the same time adore familiarity
• I’ve spent years trying to be older than I am, and now all I want is to be a kid again
• I think I’m really only beginning to know myself for the first time, just over these past few months.  Scary!  But so exciting.  Life is full of so many possibilities.

I’m twenty!

Self portrait.  (Obviously :P)  16″x20″, oil on canvas.

Still life.  18″x24″, oil on canvas.

From David’s Oath of the Horatii.  36″x36″.

This time, I’ll be sailing
No more bailing boats for me
I’ll be out there on the sea
Just my confidence and me

And I’ll be awful sometimes
Weakened to my knees
But I’ll learn to get by
On little victories

This time, I’ll have no fear
I’ll be standing strong and tall
Turn my back towards them all

And I’ll be awful sometimes
Weakened to my knees
I’ll learn to get by
And I’ll learn to get by
On the little victories
And if the world decides to catch up with me
Still little victories

“Little Victories” by Matt Nathanson

If there’s one thing that captures our trip to CA, to me it’d definitely be listening to Matt Nathanson on repeat. What an awesome time. Sigh. And I’ve got to get some more of his CDs. This song in particular is so great–represents a lot of what I’ve been thinking about these days. Yes, I know, I need to write something mooooore…. How bout just this for now, though? :P