You let the children know your weakness? Foolish.

The title of this post is the last comment I received. It's over a month old now. It grows stronger with every passing day. I open the blogger dashboard and see if I have any new comments. At the top of the page, every time, is this comment--staring back at me. It rests upon a pile of over 2,000 comments--king. "You let the children know your weakness? Foolish." Foolish. A fool. Top of the heap. An offhand, morbid remark that has yet to be overtaken and, at this point, may never be felled.

And every day I feel a little less confident and a little less powerful. As if the children are using my weakness against me. As if they are dissolving me from the inside. Victim of my own brash and prideful ways.

please help. please.

let me tell you

I think it's possible to have a totally ordinary dull day if you never once used your imagination. If you don't use your imagination how is anything magical or good going to happen. You gotta turn the faucet in to fill the water bottle.

Well, consider this faucet [on]. Stand back everyone, I'm going to imagine something.

I'm imagining a big crowd of people. They're all standing around on a golf course. There is a big mass of people and they are all looking at a book. A large leatherbound book with old wrinkled pages and menacing gold lettering on the cover in an elegant swirly script. A squirrel runs along and darts through the legs of the people gathered and sprints directly towards the book. The squirrel stands atop the book and stands up on its haunches. The book flings open, catapulting the squirrel high into the air, never to be seen again. The pages flip madly with a life of their own before settling on a page near the back of the book. Light emanates from the book and a sinister glow rises from beneath. The people are stunned. It is a summoning ritual. The thing that is summoned is me. Andy. I am summoned from the book. I crawl out out of the book and say, "hello, everyone." And the people, they are not happy. "Boo!" they yell. "Boo! and Boo forever and ever! We scorn you book man. Go back to our nightmares and never emerge from print in the future again." I am disappointed. I am unable to return to the book because of unidirectional magic and must walk away and then try to get my bearings and regroup. Such is the life in imagination.

a free write

I think the tree in my front yard is dying. I think I might have killed it when I was trying to get all the ivy off of it. I probably didn't kill it by doing that. But then I was thinking about how I would rather attribute my own actions to something bad happening than for the tree to just die for no reason completely unrelated to me. So it's like an example of the feeling of control being more important than outcome.

Which also explains a lot of behavioral issues in children. And also people in general. CONTROL!

 This kid at afterschool started an imagination mural and one of the first things I drew was this horrible fly/hornet insect with big flappy lips and globs of drool hanging out of its mouth. And had it a bag around one of its arms as if it was going around collecting flower juice and who knows what else in it. I liked it. I liked how horrible and ugly it was and the fact that it had a bag to collect instead of whatever elegant design nature would provide. Bags are funny. Just how utilitarian but also clunky they are. Bags. Just more bags. Animals with bags. It's comedy gold, baby.

Coffee Thought

In the past 24 hours I've written about 6,000 words, writing a paragraph each about my 50 art students. What did I learn from this?

I learned that you shouldn't wait until the day before the deadline to try to write a summary of each of your students. It will take longer than you expected. You'd think I'd know this having been through school but I guess being out of school for so long has left me a little rusty.

What else?

Nothing else. I learned nothing else from this process. I have never learned anything in my entire life. All I am is a spontaneous reaction of matter and energy to random stimuli that bursts from nonexistence into the present and the only continuity is merely an illusion brought on by the rapid refresh rate of reality.

yeah. that's the good stuff.

I used to write about pretty things

I'd like to go read something I've written out loud.

I hope for things to be as they are. I hope for the leaves to die and the trees to be bare. I hope for it to be dark and cold. I will sit in my car for upwards of 30 minutes not wanting to move as the heat dissipates. I hope to stay in bed for too long. I will be sad. I will be productive. I will be cold. I will get to spend weeks at home and feel good. I hope for snow days. I hope for inclement weather. I hope for things to strain and fall apart. I hope for quiet. I hope for revelations and different states a mind a feeling of something new entering and happening and a place not yet visited appearing. I hope for winter. If any of these things happen I will be excited for I will have called it and will have been right and that is more important than happiness or comfort. Just kidding.

A dull bell slaps wetly against a leather heap.

I need to get started on my work for my art class

I need to get started on my work for my art class. I also need to get groceries and do my laundry and it's starting to get late and it's already dark. Oh well. I was at kind of a low this weekend. I think because I was thinking about the work that I should be doing right now. But also I had a lot of fun last night playing with some acrylic and alcohol inks that I bought.

I want to write something here first though.

I've been trying to get better at rock climbing and so I really need to work on my grip strength. I put a tennis ball in my car and I squeeze it as I drive around. I think it's helped a lot. And lately tasks have been coming up in life that have required gripping things and I've noticed that I approach them with a little extra enthusiasm because I think my hands are stronger than they used to be. I know, right. Can you believe it? How could one man's life be so exciting. But it won't stop there. My grip will keep getting stronger. Stronger and stronger. They'll call me Grip Man and I will travel the globe in a cowboy hat and cowboy vest and cowboy shoes and all cowboy. Back in time I will go to the Wild West where grip strength was essential and the most profitable skill to possess. Jar Opening Contest. Hand Shaking Contest. Rock Climbing. I will be the #1 Cowboy and make my fortune in past money before returning to the future present and seeing how rich I will become with accumulated interest. It is a foolproof plan based on the good habits that I have been growing within myself. One need only look to the proper use of time to find a respectable gentleman such as myself.

yes, that is what I have to say about grip strength. They say an old dog can't learn new tricks. That is because as we age it is more difficult to learn new things.

Yeah. Hey. Wait. What a dumb phrase.

Can't teach an old dog new tricks. Can't do something ever if it becomes harder than it used to be.

Dumb. Grip Strength. Car Tennis Ball.

all I can think right now is that it's great to be alive. on a planet that's so full of amazing things. in an enormous universe buzzing with energy and emptiness. 

I don't know. sometimes you can say all that or hear it and it means nothing and sometimes it really means something. right now it means something. 

it makes me want to care about people and have good moments with them. which is my job. so that's neat. 

check out this gif I made

it glows!

it turns out that it's really easy and fun to do free form nonsense doodles in pixel form. you can fill up a 64x64 grid in no time while aimlessly making lines. then with a paint bucket and a little bit of patience you can make the whole thing glow an eerie glow.

like some ancient machine that dropped from the cosmos and is coming online after a series of power outages swept through the county.

this was really fun to make. I think I could tile a whole bunch of them together and make this massive wall of machinery. go ahead and imagine that now.

I'm a pixel dude now.

a quick write

the past 3 days I've just been doing a bunch of pixel drawings and animations. it's been really fun. this morning I switched to a different app and it works a lot better than the first one I was using. So that's interesting to everyone and not just me.

Let's see what I was doing 6 years ago today.

That would have been 2013. I would have been working at Matthew Whaley before and after school. Just graduated from college that Spring. Oh how things don't change.

11/5/2013

The closest I could find was the 5th. Oh man, I'm still proud of that drawing of The Maxx. I used a reference and it's pretty sweet! I think I've lost it...

maybe I'll do a pixel version of the Maxx.

The other thing I was doing around this time was making a lot of snack menus. The early drawings were not very good at all. I remember that I got a lot better as the year went on. I was probably not very good at my job in a lot of ways back then. But I know I engaged with the kids and tried to do things. I'm proud that I've gotten a lot better at my job now. Maybe close to the level my supervisor was at, at least in terms of group management and engaging with the kids. Mr. Richard is so cool.

N2ndmber Ove

I bounced back from being sick with a lot of momentum. I was playing around on my iPad and I downloaded an app for making pixel art and then I realized you could animate with it so I've been making lots of little animations on it that I plan to post to instagram. So that's exciting.

It's really good to enjoy being alive after 2-3 days of not enjoying being alive very much. That's great. A lot of it must have to do with sinus pressure.

How I experience such euphoria after getting over being sick?

The key is to refuse all medication and anything that could alleviate your symptoms. You must experience the suffering to the fullest. Build a stack of pillows in the corner of your bed and prop yourself up on them like some sort of lazy scarecrow man. Shove toilet ball up your nose and breathe out of your mouth and have circular thoughts about your hopes and worries. Feel sorry for yourself and talk to no one. Wear your sick-time beanie. The beanie that confirms sick time is in session. Lament the loss of breathing out of your nostrils. The time is ripe and heavy with discomfort and malaise. This is the layer of darkness that you submerge into it. Yum yum yum. Appetite is suppressed and the senses are dulled. Ponder past versions of your sick self. Are you stronger in the face of illness now? Weaker? Remember the time that you had a fever and ran a track workout and through up the mozzarella sticks you had for lunch on the side of the track. Then you'd go home and be miserable in your bed then eat dinner while crying and doing AP History homework.

Hahaha, high school was such a miserable time. Oh man. If I'd truly known how ridiculous it was I would have been so much more upset.

...could that be true of right now as well?

Nah. Probs no.