Welcome to Finals Week

Snow on the ground outside.

Christmas music playing in my headphones.

Drinking some hot "spiced berry".

But

It is not yet over. 

Welcome to finals week.

No sleep. 

Welcome to frigid limbo.

"Gricks rise and Troysirs fall"

Oh, Nostalgia

Sixteen.

Mexico for a few weeks.

Living with a crazy huge family.

Ranch.

Mountains.

Tiny cabin full of scorpions. 

This was the night, the moment, that my brother Nathan and I created the "toothpaste monsters". It has been a reoccurring bedtime theme for years, and I will probably pass the great legacy on to my children. 

I wish I wish I was a fish.

Thanksgiving In London

  An ironic place to spend the holiday, but last time I was in this city I was celebrating the fourth of July. So I guess I just had to keep the trend going. I'm running out of holidays though.

  This was the first Thanksgiving I've spent away from family, and I truly felt it. I heard a lady in the tube performing an operatic aria (one that my mom used to always play when i was little) and I just started crying. Right there. Surrounded by a million people, underground, and swarming like ants. I love this city, and I love Belfast, but holidays were made for family. 

   Today, Susan and I are doing homework in the gargantuan British Library. Could this new scarf aid with my lack of concentration? I wish life could work like that. All I want to do is keep walking all over this city that feels like home. 

Limbo

Fishermen at Ballyshannon

Netted an infant last night

Along with the salmon.

An illegitimate spawning,

A small one thrown back

To the waters. But I'm sure

As she stood in the shallows

Ducking him tenderly

Till the frozen knobs of her wrists

Were dead as the gravel,

He was a minnow with hooks

Tearing her open.

She waded in under

The sign of her cross.

He was hauled in with the fish.

Now limbo will be

A cold glitter of souls

Through some far briny zone.

Even Christ's palms, unhealed,

Smart and cannot fish there.

Seamus Heaney, you make me want to be a poet too.

Old, New, Borrowed, Blue... and Far Away.

My beautiful cousin Amy was married this weekend. 

I have officially missed three cousin weddings now.

It isn't like hearing about the cousin who lives across the country getting married, Amy grew up a couple houses away from me. 

I think I am officially experiencing a bit of homesickness.

"They all say 'the ordinary reader does not want Theology; give him plain practical religion.' 

I have rejected their advice. 

I do not think the ordinary reader is such a fool." 

-Clive Staples Lewis

Soulmate In a Bottle

  Everyone has a secret, nerdy, interest. Or at least I think everyone does. Most are very adept at keeping it a true secret. For some people, it is an entire shelf of star wars paperbacks. For the more academically inclined, it's an obsession with prehistoric dinosaurs, the lives of civil war generals, or learning dead languages. 

  What is my nerdy interest? (among many) Well of course I couldn't bring up the subject without divulging this information. Let me preface it first. My childhood friend's mom always smelled wonderful, and it took me forever to finally realize that the wonderful smell was called "eau de rose" and it sat in a bottle on her bathroom counter. (note to Shakespeare, here is proof that a rose can smell as sweet by another name. Or at least without a name in my case)

  When I was eleven I visited a perfumery, and the whole wide world of perfume expanded around me. No longer was it limited to my grandmother's Coco Chanel, my mother's amber colored perfume that I never knew the name of (though it reminded me of white diamonds), and my father's musky cologne. 

When I couple these experiences with my already slightly heightened sense of smell, I know the nerdy interest blossomed here. I have been watering it since.

 I don't believe that there are human soulmates. But I do believe in a perfume soulmate. You can laugh. I'm sure it is funny. But, to quote my favorite elf, "I'm in love! I'm in love! And I don't care who knows it!"

Today, I stumbled upon what may indeed be my bottled soulmate. I confess I haven't actually smelled it yet (more nerdy confession: I read perfume reviews and in depth evaluations, much like a sports fanatic will watch play-by-plays and read up on an athlete's history)

To conclude: my soulmate may have been found. When I get home I'll order a sample, and then the rest is up to fate. Or just my nose, for in the end it always knows. 


That's enough melodrama for today. I have papers to write.

Satis eloquentiae, sapientiae parum.

Irritation

  Is a person who makes no effort to understand an artwork, and yet believes their criticism to still be valid. If you don't know anything, try to not advertise your ignorance. 

We Listened to This in Class Today- Ignore the Corny Photos

Big Sterile White Box

  I gave a long visit to the Ulster Museum yesterday. It is not solely an art museum, but I kept mostly to the upper art floors.

Art museums are so much more enjoyable to me when I can just pop in the headphones and not be dragging a boyfriend around. 
{I saw many couples out on dates. They always looked so bored. Go to a movie and end both of your misery. Having a date in an art museum doesn't make you more cultured, wanting to be there is where the culture comes from.}

But this post is not about that. Excuse my cynicism. 
   I am always perplexed as I walk through the pure white rooms, wooden creaky floors, and silence. Always an eerie silence, unless it is crowded. My disconcertion arises because of this; when you take artwork away from its day, its setting, its brother and sister paintings, and put it in a white box...well it's like putting an exotic or extinct creature inside a white cube. 

   It is no wonder that people don't understand art. Without the proper habitat and knowledge of current events (an ornate Victorian manor, a Grecian temple, a Frank Lloyd Wright building, industrialization, world wars, civil rights movements, etc.) the paintings become obtuse. Art is just as much a historical artifact as it is brush strokes, composition, and canvas. A simple card with a few sentences does little to help the uneducated eye understand the importance of what they are perceiving. I know the big white box setting keeps things objective, but the objectivity does little to aid in understanding the rows of paintings behind glass and barriers. But, sadly, it looks like I'm simply complaining. I'm just tired of being excited and enthralled by a piece of artwork, but only because I'm educated about the artist and the method. I don't think I'm special in this; any person with a basic education and interest in what they are looking at would have a much similar response.  
   I just want everyone to love art, to feel art. I want people to look at a painting and feel a catch in their throat. I want them to stand in awe the way people once did in gothic cathedrals, feeling closer to God.
And how can we do this if we don't understand it?
This rational, sterile world isn't good for me. I want a renaissance. 

If I could live in a book, I would.

When someone says this to me, I always want to say

 "My life is already a book; it just hasn't been written yet."

I guess that was just my fluffy way of saying;

 Be happy with what you've got, you idiot.

The Idea Phase

  It is my most favorite part of the creative process. In class I sit making the appropriate lists and preliminary sketches until my notebook is filled with possible paintings, clothing designs, blueprints for buildings, and drawings of a bunny rabbit that I will one day call my own. I've been in idea phase for much of this semester, and it makes me so excited. 

  I am most excited for all of the possible directions. Can I please live until I am three-hundred? That should give me enough time to explore every avenue.

  What is my latest idea? Well I don't want to sound too hopeful, but this one could be good. I'll blog about it if it makes it past the drawing board.

1918

“Art in its execution and direction is dependent on the time in which it lives, and artists are creatures of their epoch. The highest art will be that which in its conscious content presents the thousand fold problems of the day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week, which is forever trying to collect its limbs after yesterday’s crash.  The best and most extraordinary artists will be those who every hour snatch the tatters of their bodies out of the frenzied cataract of life, who, with bleeding hands and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time.” 

-Richard Huelsenbeck,  First German Dada Manifesto

   A name will define you for your entire life. 

At the moment of birth, you are stamped with your parents idea of what you should become. 

Three stamps. First, middle, and last. 

And you will spend your life being defined by what that name is or isn't. 

My name is common; I don't ever have to spell it to a Starbucks barista. But I do have to share it with the psychotic mother of the reverse mullet and eight half-asian children. 

   Kate is it to you, but what is it?

Two sharp consonants, one syllable. A shorter, modern version of Katherine.

Several possible origins, one being a Greek goddess (Hecate), one the Greek word for Pure, and one the word for torture.. 

Pure Goddess Torture? 

oh my.

What would I be like if my name were Anne, Emma, or Rose?

I don't really want an answer. I don't think there is a good one. 

This is just me thinking.

I am not competitive. 

I am not disciplined.

But I love, I am obsessed, with swimming.

I miss it. 

More than York Mint Patties.

On Clive Staples' Demons and Mugs for Golden-Locked Girlies

We read and discussed The Screwtape Letters. I remember the first time I picked it up as a thirteen year old, it scared me. Seven years later, and a bit desensitized to the idea of a demon on my shoulder, I devoured the book. My favorite line, 

"The best descent into Hell is a gradual one". 

Definitely one of those ouch moments. 

It says Goldilocks. Cheers.

And Lauren, you may be disappointed to find out that I haven't kicked the mug habit. 

There was a lovely woman, and she had lovely handmade ceramics, and it was a lovely day at a market...

All I can say in my own defense is that at least I didn't...borrow...this one.
Best descent into hell, eh?


fyi, I have every intention of undoing those wrongs. Goodness knows I'm digging myself a lovely hole. Time to be quiet.


Best wishes from the Vibrant Northern Marshland.

The Bravery Checklist

1. Swim the English Channel.
2. Open up my own small business. (probably a flower shop/art gallery/perfume boutique)
3. Become a missionary to women paralyzed by the rigid traditions of their culture
4. Get a dual citizenship, and live in a different country for most of my life.
5. Get a masters in art history
6. Become a nurse
7. Cut off all my hair
8. Join the Peace Corps
9. Grit my teeth and be a real life starving artist