Goose

Excerpts from my last entry in my journal for MIND class.



Well here it is.
It is no other.

Someone came up to me in the library today and asked me about this thing. This journal assignment. I can't say I was surprised, but still. Damn girl, weren't you paying attention?

Not just to the assignment thing, but to life.
Even just life in this class.

I have said it before but I can't remember if I said it here: I certainly didn't need this class. Not in the same way as the others did.



And so they needed this, even if some of them wrote it off as an "easy" non-conventional class.

And I do think there were boundaries pushed.
I hope they grew from it.

I needed this class in a different way.
Because even when I dreaded it, it was a re-awakening. Because at the end of the day, this was the first art taught to me since freshmen year. Because at the end of the day, my soul needed this.

I hope other people were able to learn from me.
I don't want that to be prideful or smug.
I just really mean it.

Because evidently, art doesn't MEAN anything to those who have always had it.

Art was taken from me.

I know what that feels like

I know what it is to have your

life

heart

soul

mind

deemed

NOT. GOOD. ENOUGH.
NOT. QUITE. "US".

And what it feels like to do plan B

And wander the halls without a voice

without a mind

without a way to talk

without a way to emote concisely enough

to anyone.

I know what it is to not let that stop me.
I know what it is to be told "no"
by a department
again. And again.
I know what it is to take 16 English credits
work 20 hours at a desk
and use the remaining 4 hours of daylight to sit at my easel
and "paint like no one's watching."

because they aren't.

There is no audience.
There is no class critique.
There is no feedback.
No opening Friday with free food.
Nothing.
Not for me.
Duchamp had a scornful audience, something to react to.
I have a handful of emails from the Dean.
Memories of meetings.
And then mental image of my portfolio on the "no" pile.

And that was it.
In my dorm filled with paintings instead of posters,
I was an English major.

Art is my life any way.
It was then, it is now.
That could never change.

So to watch these musicians, actors, painters be so complacent is a wrench in the gut. A duck to the face at 250 knots. [link]

You HAVE it. The establishment is on your side.
You have the funding, the nurturing, the equipment, the peers.

DO. NOT. WASTE. THIS.

Above all, appreciate it.
Relish it.