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On the four-and-a-half hour bus ride back from Stratford-upon-Avon, I made a list of my goals for the next year:  


1)  Learn how to effectively use Photoshop
2)  Apply for a job with Americorps to pay off student loans
3)  Find a full-time summer job in North Carolina 


In my  "The Birth of 'COOL'" class, we are discussing post-modernism.  Every one seemed to think that post-modernism was this crazy-cool philosophical development that gives them the power to shape their world, but when I ponder post-modernism, I am just overwhelmed with how lonely it all feels.  The idea that we communicate through symbols--that was is "true" is basically whatever we all decide is true--that we have no way of really knowing how each person individually is interpreting the symbols, rhetoric, language, world around them--that we will go our whole lives being unknown, being unsure whether we have ever really connected with another person or not--well, that haunts me.  One of my classmates said that post-modernism is a philosophical tool that gives you the power to take concepts and experiences from the real world, break them down and transform them, then return back into reality.  I guess I have a hard time compartmentalizing my world like that; I don't know how to separate the idea from the reality.  


Another idea that I have enjoyed pondering recently is that art is about choice--that the artist's selection is what matters.  I've been thinking about my creative process through this lens, and I am excited by the ideas it inspires.  So much of the way that I think is less about making new creations and more about finding the connections in others--in picking out what I think matters in the pool of ideas and expression that exists all around me--and using this hodgepodge of thoughts and connections to fuel my existence and give me the energy to go through day, after day, after day.  I am a little bit drunk, so I am not sure if this makes sense, but let me summarize in a more concrete way.  I am terrible at drawing.  Horrible at it!  I have no patience for making straight lines, and whenever I color, it ends up looking like muddy crayon soup.  However, I have seen some artworks here in London that really inspire me, that--YOU know--move me.  I look at Picasso's "Nude Woman in a Red Armchair," and I somehow see myself in that, and I see the complexity of sex, and womanhood, and vulnerability, and life, and personality in that, and then I want to piece it all together, I want to take all of the symbols--me--Picasso's piece--someone else's words--a few parts of other people--and piece it all together, overlap that.  I have nothing new to create; I just want to show the overlap of all of these things running through my head.  Thus, Photoshop!  With Photoshop, I can layer photos and cut out pieces of them and add in quotes and do all sorts of things; I can select what it is that I want to include, and I am creating art by that very selection.  Or something.  Or maybe Photoshop falls under the category of creating.  Ah, brain hurting, too much Kronenburg.


I have a paper due at 3 AM, so I must keep this short (kidding, kidding, too late or that, obviously).  I love London.  I love being in London.  It isn't, to be frank, an exotic experience.  They have KFC here!  However, I am having this very strange experience here of feeling almost normal.  I have been able to leave much of my past behind me in the States, and people here are getting to known me on the basis of who I am at this moment, and it is a strange feeling.  It is less complicated here.  I feel bolder to do certain things; what frightens me isn't quite so overwhelming when I am able to remove it from the context of all that came before.  I am doing well in my classes, meeting nice boys, hanging out with disturbingly well-adjusted people, spending time with one of my best friends, and enjoying the fun of learning about a new place.  I know that, when I return to Chapel Hill, my responsibilities and issues will still be there; I know that this is more of a vacation from those things rather than a transformation beyond them.  Still, I am getting something from this, even more than just space to breathe and relax.  I realize that the entirety of my being is not just what has come before.  I am a person of the moment, too, and while I don't need to hide the past, I don't (to be very cliche) have to be entirely defined by it, either.  I don't have to give explanations for everything to anyone else or to myself; sometimes, quite refreshingly, the moment can just be the moment.  I have no idea what I am going on about here; this is like that time I drunk Facebooked SR that two page message once about how I hoped the Hall would maintain some of its openness or something.  Wow, that was forever ago.  For. Ev. Urr.


Okay, I have to go finish my paper right now.  PS I held an owl on my arm at an apple festival this weekend ITWASSOCOOL.  PPS I sign every guestbook here (e.g. at a B&B or museum) with my name and a TAU CROSS.  Sometimes, I quote Shakespeare too, mention a few well known hoops that we all have in our lives.


Take care Take care Take care 
and tell those rushees how scary I am!