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Viernes, 10/03/06

Happy birthday to tami and grace.

Class today was partially a fieldtrip to a small church just a little to the northwest of town. Walked over there with alejandra and a couple other groups of students and teachers. It was a nice walk and through a section which I had missed previously__ I thought I had just about covered everything. The walk took us past the men’s prison, and on the way back we saw the crowd of women waiting their turns for visiting hours, muy interesante.

The church was interesting too. It was small and damaged, but not apparently as old as the big colonial churches in town. Might’ve been within the past century even, but none from our group knew. This is a special Friday for this particular church because the procession on Sunday will leave from there, so there were lots of people, school children, and even a tv crew and a print journalist with a still camera. Also, outside the church were all sorts of food venders selling everything from avocados to domino's pizza.

Inside the church a scene was set up with painted figures and a full-sized Christ mannequin in the middle. In front of this, on the floor was a beautifully ornate dyed-sawdust carpet, surrounded by offerings of fruits and vegetables. placed directly on the carpet, was a duck(?) sculpted out of a watermelon.

We returned to school with enough time left to cover the presente progresivo tense, which finished out our week on the present tense verbs. I believe that next week we move on into the past… if you see what I mean.

My cold’s probably getting a little better, but it still hasn’t gone away, and despite the fact that it’s Friday night, I really just want to go to bed early… so I will, because I can. Maybe tomorrow I’ll see if I can find nyama and jaron once more before they skip town. My real intent for the weekend though is to study and get healthy.

Geez! I’ve only been here eleven days. Seems like ages, and yet it’s flown past. Tiempo vuela, you know.

Sabado 11/03/06

I’ve felt much better today. Got ten hours of sleep last night, and it felt great. The past few days when I’ve had to drag myself out of bed to go to class, I’ve felt like I could sleep all day, if I just let myself. This morning I was determined to last as long as I could in bed, and I made it until 8, which was only an extra hour, but it made a world of difference. I slept all night, straight through and comfortably on my stomach with clear sinuses, so that was an improvement.

I guess it wasn’t quite straight through, because I remember waking up at one point (or maybe two points) from dreams, but getting right back to sleep. This change of surroundings seems to have really jumpstarted my dreamworld. My dreams have been utilizing a whole new cast of characters since I got here. Friends from LA show up everynight as do family members. It’s interesting to me to see what archetypal sorts of roles my unconscious mind assigns to my various friends and how many different, and sometimes contradictory roles, to one of them in particular… I’ll leave you hangin’ on that one. I suppose that while it seems like I’m making the adjustment to being here pretty smoothly (and probably more importantly, the adjustment to not being in Venice) I guess that maybe my unconscious mind is frantically working to cope with the uprootedness of it all. Maybe the reason that I seem pretty relaxed consciously is that my unconscious is keeping so busy. Hmmm…

Anyway, weirdly enough had two dreams about gerri last night. Haven’t dreamt about her for a longlong time, as far as I know. But there she was. I don’t remember it all, but the first had something to do with us being together, we had a baby and I had just gotten out of grad school. We were loading a suburban with our stuff in preparation for a move to someplace where I was going to have a job. Hmmm… The second dream had us in a store. Gerri wanted to buy a coffeemaker that I didn’t think we needed, but she wanted it, and I couldn’t talk her out of it. We got to the counter and she discovered she didn’t have any money, so I paid. There was a man standing next to the counter asking for a handout, I reached into my pocket and found my orange spray painted pen. I thought it was a different pen, one that I wasn’t so attached to, so I handed it to him, realizing too late that it was my favorite one instead. I briefly thought about asking for it back because my heart ached at the thought of losing it, but then I realized it didn’t matter and I just let it go. As we were on our way out of the store, I saw Joni.

Well, at least my unconscious seems to have remained consistent on the role it’s assigned to gerri___ although I’m not at all convinced the dreams had anything to do with her… perhaps just what she’s come to represent. Dream interpretation is tricky stuff, you know.

So I spent the day taking a few walks around town, in between which I studied Spanish verbs. went to the market, which is even bigger than usual on Saturdays, went to some stores, looked for interesting books to read, wound up at café no sé around five for dinner. Had a couple beers there and then headed home.

It was a good day. And I feel almost 100% healthy.

Domingo 12/03/06

Woke up feeling great! I’m almost glad I had the cold, just so I can revel in my health now that it’s returned. I feel great! I took a shower first thing, which was kinda brave of me, because usually I like to wait until the afternoon sun has heated things up before getting drenched with cold water, but I’d skipped a shower yesterday and really felt like starting the day off right. It was invigorating and not as bad as I might’ve feared. I’d slept in until 8 again, and so the sun was that much higher in the sky and the night had been warmer that others we’ve had lately.

Did my homework and wrote an email to aliza and then went in search of breakfast. Found a really nice little restaurant and ordered a spinach omelet. They were out of espinaca though, so I wound up with huevos rancheros, which were agreeably different from the huevos back home. Yum!

Took a long walk back, snapped some photos on the way. Fuego looks like it wants to erupt again, there were clouds around the cone that might’ve been smoke, but I’m too much a novice to tell, either way, it’s kind of exciting being around volcanoes.

Later in the afternoon, I headed off toward café no sé but ran into the procession on the way. I snapped a bunch of photos as it went by, and then decided to walk home and upload them, so that I’d have more room left on the camera if I ran into it again on my way home. I’m glad I did, because I did run back into the procession a few hours later, and I had wanted some shots at night rather than daytime, so I was able to get some of both. So after clearing off my memory card, I headed back out to café no sé.

Once there, I read for awhile, until it got too dark and then I just sipped my beer and wrote some thoughts/plans/intentions down on notecards. Most of the things I was writing were focusing on the next group of paintings/artwork… what I want to aim for, how I want to do it… where I want to head and what I hope to accomplish artistically. The plan that has begun to form, which isn’t really that surprising, because I was leaning this way even before leaving Venice is that I’ll head back to Cincinnati for a few months… maybe four or five, and work on another group of paintings/sculptures/writing. The only new part to the thought is the realization that after that, I can still return easily to Venice for awhile or longer. I’ll definitely come back to exhibit the paintings, but I don’t need to disallow myself from living in Venice again just because settling there seems hard. I don’t really know, I guess, but it seems likely that maybe heading to ohio for the summer might be the way to go. There are a lot of things I’d like to do and a lot of places that seem attractive to be in.

The paintings themselves will maybe be historical, maybe illustrative, maybe more broken apart and simple of form… maybe more poetic and … hmmm, I don’t have the word, but I think I sorta know what I’d like to shoot for. I’d like to look to humanity and try to understand our motivational force… what drives us/ has driven us to do the things we do/live the way we live? What distinguishes those who seem to succeed in attaining fulfilling existences from those who don’t? what will the future hold? And is this another cycle of civilization repeating similar historical precedents? Or are we living in a time with enough novel features that it might lead to a novel future. And is that future a hopeful one or not? And is it up to us to decide___ and if so, how can we best choose hope? I’d like to look for lessons from the past, and I’d like to try to determine some sort of believable value/belief system to fill the lack I think many of us feel. I suppose that’s a tall order, I’ll aim high and settle for what I can do, but I would like to give some thought as to why many people live in a manner at odds with fulfillment and joy. I’d like to give some thought to the root causes of anger, frustration, and violence. Is there a better way of managing society than the ones we’ve tried?

Big questions and too early in the process to narrow them down, I suppose the theme is growing pretty naturally out of the eve paintings, but I think the form will be a departure… I hope so, I feel the need for a change.

Anyway, I had a couple beers at no sé, and then walked home, finding the procession on the way and getting my night shots. Now I’ll read and get some sleep.

G’night.

Lunes 13/03/06

Back to school today. Didn’t start past tense but briefly covered the futuro idiomatico, which was pretty straight forward and then spen the rest of the day with fifteen different “palabros interrogatives” which also were not real difficult, but it seems like maybe they’re more difficult than they need to be. I think I’m ok with them though. I just finished reviewing them… all of this stuff requires a lot more practice than I’m giving it, but there’s always time for review.

After class I was gonna go up to the bagel barn to upload these blog entries, but I ended up skipping it. Instead, I went for a walk through the market and around the southeast part of town. Took some photos, picked up a couple books from the free place, dropped the one off that I’sd finished. One of the ones I got today is called The Fall of a President, put together by the Washington Post staff in 1974, pretty interesting so far… I can’t believe they were able to get rid of their president for one little B&E, and we can’t get rid of ours for outright lies and deception. Oh well, people do their best, even when it turns out bad… or something like that. I’m not sure that people want to be saved from the suffering, I’m pretty sure saviors don’t get thanked… or something like that.

Bought some paper, bought some colored pencils, bought an ice cream cone, checked my email, sat in the park, watched the highschool kids making out, continued my walk, came home, did my homework.

We’re still out of drinking water here___ ran out maybe Friday, maybe Saturday, but I think Friday. I don’t know why it hasn’t been replaced. Last night I was really thirsty in the middle of the night… realized that I don’t know when I’ve been really thirsty and unable to quench it like that. I didn’t like it, but it was a good experience.

Went to ceviches mex for a burrito and a cerveza. Read the Nixon book.

Wondered whether art is really an appropriate method for what I want to accomplish. Wondered what can art accomplish? Wondered if there is a better method/medium. Wondered if it’s possible to provide hope in the face of despair. Wondered if there is a realistic hope, a believable hope… something that can actually be believed by rational minded children of the scientific/digital information age.

I wondered what leads humans to violence. And I wondered some other stuff too.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll post this. Goodnight.