That's it. My thoughts run wild all the time. From class to walking down the street to solitude to the caffeteria to everywhere. My mind has become a flow of thoughts that are begging to be let out into words.
"I want apple pie," is the first. I have a bottle of ground cinnamon opened next to me. I sniff it sometimes in order to satiate my desire for sweets, like chocolate. It works. But I still imagine apple pie, the tasty crust and the scrumptuous innards.
Second, "eggs." Mixed eggs cooked scrambled. My grandparent's food is the best. They make lemon chicken and noodles and have crab and rice cake prepared for us, I remember on church weekends or SDC nights. They make immpeccable dishes - like none other and there will be no other like them and their dishes.
Third, "Is college really all this?" They say that you have the most and your last free time in college. Why is art college so difficult sometimes, long studio hours, relentless creativity... And I see breaks like fall, thanksgiving, winter, spring as the highlights or look-to parts of my semester, the light at the end of the tunnel, the hope for a satiating rest and time of tranquility and pleasant and earnest time spent with my family. My thinking is nothing special concerning this, but words and memories can puff up sometimes. For example when we move on, we either leave in our memories things we desire to see in them or simply we see the essence of the memory where details and likely the argumentative flaws and pricks really fade into the abyss.
In the class, I've mentioned before, Creativity and Genius, taught by Michael Sizer, I've picked up the book "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," by James Joyce, and "The Creating Brain, the Neuroscience of Genius," by Nancy C. Andreasen M.D.,Ph.D. What I've read in these books is life-changing. I finally am released from the notion that I am really alone in my problems when really, I am what Andreasen describes a creative person, and not necessarily in terms of the adjective, but in terms of the noun. I am a creative person wired differently from the rest of society, but I am not the only creative person, which is the more liberating idea.
Andrean describes the creative person as one who is open, adventurous, possessing an intense curiosity, sensitive, and therefore likely to percieve the world and its situations with greater intensity. That explains why when I was young and I observed my family and got into arguments with them, I was speaking about a point of view ungraspable to them and rebutting became a useless endeavor because I was always criticized and shut down. I also saw a reality that could not be articulated at the time, which prompted me to always turn to God for help and perseverence because He was the only one who understood me thoroughly and truthfully. Consequently, the incessant flow of thoughts in my mind barricaded by a fear of being shot down again if spoken of swelled into a spot of bitterness and resentment. I could only vent to God, but He, too, seemed to provoke some psychological disorder in me, because He is literally invisible and the human was made to seek out a community, except I became an alien to that.
Now, I sit here looking back and seeing the struggle of a creative person through the chains and restrictive manners of societal conventions. I was a person with insight trying to break free, find a place of nurture. And here I am in art school, the best art school in the nation, MICA, and I could not have asked for a better community of creative people who are with me in this respect. I am where I am supposed to be and I am thankful that God has led me this far. I fit, and that's all despite my mere struggle to define my career path by facing the indimidating vastness of college choices like majors and everything else considered. But here I am, a declared Graphic Design major with a possible concentration in Video or Photography. I feel like I'm here for a reason, I'm not supposed to be anywhere else. I was wired and molded to become who I am today, someone I am sympathetic towards and proud of for making it this far.
I can't fully imagine what other creative people had to go through, the kind of trouble, rebellion, and especially the stakes they took to get here to MICA, whether it was leaving home with or without their parents or family's consent or approval.
I know my college years won't last forever. It's an experience that passes us by just like the quickening of everything physical transformed into a vaporized image in our brain somewhere, we call memory. Everything is fleeting, Time is never still. And that's why perhaps I grab on tighter to God who is everlasting, true, sovereign, an undefiable force that maneuvers at the deepest level of every living thing, like a current.
I am petrified, awed, humbled, completely relieved every time God testifies to his faithfulness. When I arrive to this conclusion, I understand that I've been here before, but I ask myself how possibly easy it was for me to slip into the curve of a loop only to arrive at the same destination. Blindness. Complete and utter blindness - towards God's love, because we lose trust in God, we lack faith. Faith that defeats fear and nourishes courage. Faith that is covicting and forward marching. Faith that is gracious and self-sacrificing.
I admit. Fears have been getting the better of me these past few weeks. Do I still fear sin? Do I fear provoking lust in men? Do I fear my own sin? Do I fear the revealing of my sins? Sin makes me like a blown up glass, I am empty inside but my shell is as fragile as cracking at the mere notion of criticism. Instead, I shell up, barricade my heart and everything about my face shows that I am closed and bullet-proof.
This must be my hearts natural response when it knows it's been hurt many times before this way. But my heart must have suffocated in order for this reaction to stem from the subconcious. I lay inert in bed, lying on my side, eyes wide open staring sideways at a blank wall. My arms bent, tugged closely to my chest, and knees are bent, brought up to my arms for warmth and comfort. I stare blankly and wonder why I think the way I do, I am so alone because I think this way. If only they could see what I see... I told myself these things.
I look at the bags under people's eyes, the young adults. And I wonder if the bigger the bag, the more sadness had touched their hearts. The deeper the grooves meant these young adults weren't smiling enough for their cheek muscle to be pushed up, so instead there's a gap. A gap reads pain and the piercing of reality in that person's life, the loss of innocence. I try to smile more often. I realize that when I smile, it'll not only perk up my cheeks and give me smiley eyes, but it'll make others feel safe to smile too.
The thought of insanity has grappled my mind once. Reading Andreasen's "The Creating Brain - the Neuroscience of Genius" relieved me at the same time it fortified my anger towards my family who, I believe, brushed away the many signs that pointed to a mental problem, a surpressing problem instigated by them, grudgingly caused by self. I admit to going through many episodes of depression, and saying out loud the desire to kill myself. I remember standing in the kitchen on a Sunday morning in front of the microwave and rebutting my parents who said that it was time for church and there was no time to 'go through this.' I told them I was depressed and that sometimes I wanted to kill myself because they weren't listening. But I didn't receive the care or the attention I truthfully deserved. Otherwise, I wouldn't be writing this right now.
Our past comes up in the present and will come up in the future inevitably. Unless we confront our past, because no parents or family or any person who has affected us during our childhood is perfect, we will constantly relive a destructive and ultimately useless cycle of impulsive or instinctive reactions to things that don't deserve to be affected by our past. I realized that I wanted to hurt people so badly, the way I was hurt. I didn't care anymore, I thought. I'll be who I'll be and be upfront about it. No more sugar coating or hiding. But I discovered that if I don't care about hurting someone, I might as well not exist, because hurting someone is a profound virus that has the potential to effectively spread through society and decapitate people's ability to shine and hope, as a result, begins to dwindle in their mind. I can see a light fading into a spec in their heads. When people get hurt for being vulnerable, honest, good-willed, or just being, it is a contagious laziness to drop their efforts to respect others as well, and you get this network of heart-stabbing people who demean the human potential and usher forth the negative and evil thoughts in people which coasters down to a digressive society. We want a society that is bright and a society where good dominates evil and that there are enough good people in the community to help the people in need of love, care, attention, hope, and someone to believe in them. Everyone needs a good supporter.
However I see it, life is also a blessing. I'm thinking about eating crunchy spring rolls from a chinese buffet and I am instantly happy and craving and wanting to go back to new york to have it with my family. Things like these make life even better on top of the kind of deep relations we make with people. You've gotta love chinese food.
As I am nearing the end of this post, I also look at the work I have to get done right before I go to sleep and I think about the worth in my work and time and energy I spend in gaining knowledge and aquiring skills. I think about the joy and excitement in the life that awaits tomorrow, not even Christmas (even though I am psyched for it). I think about the beautiful leaves I will walk through tomorrow morning, and their sweet and lovely voices that sing a harmony in the air. Fall is always breathtaking. There's also nothing like walking towards my 19th birthday. Next Monday, I wil commence on my last year as a teenager, whatever a teenager is, or what constitutes a teenager - freedom, flexibility, sponteneity, youth, fearlessness, energy, spark, limitless, influential, growing potential, fun, lively, and so much more. It's my last year. It doesn't scare me more than it disappoints me. I wish I had known that my creativity was normal and I wish I embraced my knowledge earlier on so that I could enjoy life and sustain more meaningful relationships that would enrich my youth and invigor me to love more and more passionately.
I hope my passions stay with me. I hope that they don't go with my innocence, which left descretely, without a moment's notice, disappearing like a silent wind carrying the fumes of an extinguished candle flame. I hope I am passionate all throughout life.
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