me

Portrait of an artist as a college kid

beach

Yesterday on a bench outside on the most beautiful of all fall days, I asked J what I should do when I grow up. He tried to avoid the question and then with some hesitancy, said: an artist of sorts.

Later, I got this email:

When we talked today, I didn’t mean you should be an artist. Rather, you are an artist. I think it means seeing the world a certain way. With your own eyes. With eyes that are uncertain and curious.
. . .
“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what’s next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.” – Agnes de Miller

I’m currently working through my third year here . . . And, if I had done things right (* er, not abandoned school for a year), I’d be graduating in May.

Happy and thankful right now I’m only doing school // work // relationships // making life plans . . . but I find that within me there is this growing pressure to know what I want out of life after this. After all, so much of our college careers are wrapped up in that question. Sometimes, it is hard to ignore.

I find that all I want, all I’ve ever really wanted was to be an artist. I want to create. To feel. To be curious (always). And to not shrink back from challenges.

If college has done one thing for me, it has given me a sense of possibility. Each and everyday, us kids are bombarded by possibility and just all we could do if there were more hours in a day// if we were more talented//etc.

I find that I’m dissatisfied by my work and how I spend my days unless I’m touching // molding // and creating things with my mind // my eyes and most of all, my hands.

I find that I want to do. . . I want to do everything and cannot comfortably (*just) learn without actually doing.

I’m certainly a work in progress, but I’m enjoying the process for the most part. . .

[Photo: Swallowed in the sea. Depock beach, Indonesia//Grace Farson]

running away

“ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: ‘you are in the process of being indoctrinated. we have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. we are sorry, but it is the best we can do. what you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. the slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. you are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. it is a self-perpetuating system. those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being molded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”

– doris lessing

{photos from that day paige and i ran away}