Potato

Human being do not like pointlessness. We hate it. There must be a certain amount of satisfaction in working as a farmer. Every year your work, mindless, and grueling though it may be, produces. You have a potato, and that potato can feed somebody, or become another potato.

I see art like this. I may not produce food but I produce something new, something that wasn't there before. I produce ideas and concepts, I am a vessel for the dissemination of culture. Culture is a potato. Likewise as an academic I learn, not only because I want to, but simply to know because someone should know! Knowledge is a potato. A potato that can feed someone or become another potato (metaphorically of course). One idea inspires many others! That's what academic discussion is for.

Even on the very edge of "worth it", the fringe of commercialism, working for a salary produces potatoes. I work and I am given potatoes to eat, or place holders which represent potatoes that I can exchange for real potatoes. And the work itself, if it is productive, creates a sort of potato. When I make a latte, even though that latte is simply a luxury, nothing important, I have created a latte. It was nothing but component parts before I made it, perhaps the person who ordered it could not make one for themselves. I have given them a potato.

This is worth it.

When I am confronted with the abstract I become disheartened. We live in a world that is frequently devoid of potatoes. If I write a paper that I learn from, even if it is a bad paper I have gained a potato. If I write a paper that I do not learn from but teaches another person I have given them a potato. If, however, I have to write a paper that does not educate me or anyone else there are no potatoes, only a piece of paper, and you can not "eat" paper. An entire subset of our world runs on this paper. An entire population starved and potatoless, simply passing around pieces of paper, taxes, reports, burocracy. Things that are necessary only because we have created a completely artificial environment for them to mater in.

Yes, I must do my homework because I will get a grade. But that grade is paper. If I do not learn anything I have not gained anything really. There is no potato.

I don't know about you but I like potatoes.

. . .

The last week of school, two MAJOR projects due that I have hardly even started in on, (I haven't started one at all) and I have an inexplicable desire to watch The Seven Samurai.

. . . The Hell!?

Maru!

BEST CAT VIDEO E-V-E-R!

You have to watch it all the way through.

O_o

Creeeeeeepy!

Spreckels...

Spreckels is possible one of the most amusing street names on my commute. Along with Monkey Wrench Ln.

No... No I'm not making these up.

"Maria's Bed"

Human beings don't see the world, we experience it. Memory is not a recording device. It is a cask where memories sit and ferment infusing themselves with the colours and flavours from other memories and from imagination.

This is why people who are in love do not see the same things as people who aren't.

"In love" is a term with so much stigma attached to it I do not know if it is possible to use it without evoking certain connotations. I use it here in it's purest form. I am in love with the colour yellow. I am in love with the cello. I am in love with certain dancers when I see them perform.

The confusion of this feeling with the other feeling of "in love" is, I think, why so many people fall in love with actresses, or why artists have a hard time with marriage. I am a definately straight woman and I have fallen in love with dozens of actresses. I am still in love with some of them. When you are in love in such a pure way it doesn't matter because what you are in love with is an idea anyway.

I do not understand why anyone would ever need to "get buzzed" why anyone would ever need to go chemical thrill seeking if they could unlock their fermenting memories. If they knew they were there in the first place. Who needs a joint when there are phonixes plunging into the ocean at sunset down on Ala Moana beach? Or fairy turns in tandem flight in the banyan trees? Little bird shapes cut right out of the canvas of vision to the pure white underneath. Or the idealized concept of woman? Or music!?

Music and movement combined to counterpoint and compliment each other on the aural and visual planes similtaniously. I am in love with a dancer. I can not describe her, who she is doesn' t matter I love her on stage. And I do not love her all the time. I do not love her when she is dancing ballet. I do not love her when I see her back stage. I love her when she fills the stage completely with raw power and emotion that make me want to wrench something inside of me open and cry out.

Art! Should! Be! THIS!

I am a huge fan or Cowboy Bebop. The character of Julia is, I think, within the medium a perfect example of this sort of perception. I have heard people comment that they don't particularly like her, she's too bland, and someone spent too much time working on rendering her. She's too artisticly shiney.

To me that is the point. Because she is not real. She is just a woman. She is nothing special. Except Spike is in love with her, and there is no way to show that if she is just a woman. We don't ever see Julia. We see what Spike sees and that is something that does not belong on the canvass of vision, it's been cut out of the air. Because it is not being seen it is being perceived in memory even in the present.

I watched "The Lost Prince" and fell in love. And at the end when the two boys are running in the field I saw a screen filled with yellow, a sea of yellow with two small boys in the middle of it. I watched it again. And it is not that yellow. There is only a smattering of flowers among the grass, dusting it with yellow.

But that doesn't matter because I will always have an image that is completely yellow.

And I will always have my dancer who I love so painful I think I could dissolve, who is really just a woman.

Something for Nothing

Yes. Denny's gave away free breakfasts yesterday.

. . .

w00t!

. . .