Think

“The worst of doing one’s duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else. At least that was the view that the men of his generation had taken. The trenchant divisions between right and wrong, honest and dishonest, respectable and the reverse, had left so little scope for the unforeseen. There are moments when a man’s imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level, and surveys the long windings of destiny.”

-Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence 285

La Mer

The rain…beautiful, cleansing, loud, incessant, rain. I stood beneath a tree and let it wash my hair, before I realized that I was standing in a lightning hotspot. I ran onto the porch and wrapped myself in a towel, grabbed my book, read a few pages and I haven’t moved since. It is funny, the things that people do when nobody is around to witness our strangeness. Funnier still, is the thought that not even our friends reveal this closeted side of themselves until they get caught.

…Lightening, and now the power is out. Back to my book! Arevoir.

Silver lights

My phone took a near fatal fall last night and the whole screen is cracked. Now it officially looks like a typical Katryna phone.

A few nights ago, a house full of room mates sat in their front yard while one of them tried to do a cartwheel. The rest of them stood up and attempted to do the same. One fell, the other almost fell, and the last one landed perfectly. After this, one of the room mates heckled at some of the stumbling drunks across the street, and tricked a cab into stopping. Then someone decided to make a people pyramid. Everyone consented. They flaunted their perfect pyramid before someone on the bottom burped really loud and made everyone laugh. The pyramid came crashing down in a tangle of limbs. Once everyone untangled themselves, they took their places on the sidewalk and played a game of hearts. FIN

10

Ten things that I learned about life through painting:

1.) Mistakes are very effective teachers.

2.) The toughest pieces often turn out to be masterpieces.

3.) There is nothing wrong with making a mess. Throw your paint everywhere and see what happens!

4.) Spacing out is actually a good thing; sometimes you come back to earth a little more enlightened than when you had left it. 

5.) David Bowie is awesome.

6.) Before you have something on your canvas, everything seems impossible. After the first few lines, anything is possible.

7.) Honesty is the key to everything.

8.) Anything worth something needs to be worked for. 

9.) When the going gets tough, keep on going!

10.) Just do it; over-thinking things won’t get you anywhere.

 

Oh I almost forgot!

This happened about three days ago:

I got home after a shopping adventure (work clothes) at the mall, only to find Jeremy snoozing lazily on the couch. After a cold shower, and a couple of cups of coffee, I decided that Jeremy needed to see my favorite place in Raleigh before he left. We walked the two mile walk to Bishop’s park, and watched the children playing with their dogs, while their chubby mothers chased them. We were talking about the meaning of life when my bladder nearly exploded. I was forced to use the (very clean) porta-potty. When I hobbled back up the hill to our bench, we decided to walk the extra half-mile to Glenwood South for a “couple of beers”.  On the way there, Jeremy stopped and chatted with nearly every passerby and said “See! Making friends is easy!”

We strolled along at a typical Carolina pace before we found a nice little Irish pub, The Hibernian (if you ever visit Raleigh, check this place out it’s awesome!) He insisted on buying me a beer, and I ordered a plate of delicious fried cheese. We sat outside, and before an hour had lapsed, everyone including the owner of the place, knew Jeremy’s name. Four free beers and a couple of cigarettes later (oops!) Jeremy decided that he was too drunk, or lazy to walk back home so he grabbed my phone and called Brian announcing that we needed a ride home. Poor Brian, he was fast asleep when his phone rang! He came and scooped us up, and we (Jeremy and I) decided that tonight was going to be a dancing night.

I changed into my ridiculous too-too skirt, and once the rest of the house had arrived, we announced the plans for the night. We ran out onto Glenwood and true to our typical form, stole some bar-hopper’s cab. We arrived in downtown Raleigh, and Jeremy (of course) stopped and chatted with a few people on the way to our favorite dancing place, Neptunes. Thanks to Jeremy, we cut to the front of the line and were let in in less than 5 minutes.

We all ordered beers and shots, and Jeremy and I made our way to the dance floor. After an hour, we were all drunkenly laughing and dancing all over the place, and somehow, I managed to find glow sticks and started raving to the Talking Heads. It must have been two o’clock when we hopped back into another stolen cab, and made our way back home.

Once we were comfortably situated on the porch, and I had chugged a couple of glasses of water, BJ gets a phone call from Rachel. She was having a dancing party at her house and she wanted us to come. Of course we all gladly consented! The four of us hop into BJ’s car and we burst through her front door five minutes later. The music was playing, but nobody was on the dance floor. After we all grabbed a beer, Jeremy (of course) happily hops onto the dance floor and starts wiggling around. We all followed him, and there it was! Our promised dance party had officially begun! BJ did his “Jangles” moves, and I twirled around and around, while Jeremy danced in the center of a dance circle. More people arrived, and the dance floor started to get crowded. Everyone was having a great time, jumping around with no inhibitions, beers in hand. It was awesome!

It was about five o’clock when we decided that it was time to head home. All of us squeezed into Rachel’s Honda, and made our way back home, to the porch. Jeremy played some music, and I drank more water, while BJ and Rachel snoozed on their folding chairs.

I woke up with a light buzz the next morning. Jeremy and I walked to the coffee shop, then to the farmer’s market, ate a giant watermelon, and watched True Life for the rest of the next day.

Success!

VCR

The house is back to normal, minus the giant porch mess. It was certainly an interesting week; a non-stop fun shop complete with dancing parties, music sessions, painting adventures, and an endless whiskey waterfall that got the better of us porch monkeys in the early morning hours. Now that it is all over (for now) I am dedicating the next two days to cleaning and painting. There is a coffee shop around the corner from my house that is interested in hanging some of my work. Most of my stores of energy will be put into a new series of black and white paintings and some pop-art pieces. More about that later…

The house has started playing basketball. I lost a couple of games of Horse, but that’s OK because I know that I am rock bottom, and when that is the case, there is no-where to go but up.

Happy Monday off!

 

Rivers running still

Happy!!! Very, very happy! It has been quite an adventurous few days. Jeremy arrived at our humble abode early Monday morning. I woke up to the smell of coffee, that’s how I knew he was here. We said hello and it was like no time had passed at all. We sat on the porch and caught up over a cup of coffee.

Fun: Last night, another friend popped up! I walked onto the porch, and there, sitting on my throne was “Big Gay” Matt. Brian and him were in a conversation about hotels when I took my place by the door. Brian was fanning himself with my fan. We started talking about the prank call that I made on Thanksgiving, pretending to be a girl “with weak ankles” that had a crush on him. He fell for it pretty hard. Around 11 o’clock, the rest of the household arrived and we played Uno for a long time (I won) and then decided to go to the bar. After Jeremy played a couple of his new songs, we sat back out for another hour or so before he realized, too late, that he had taken too many pulls of Jim Beam. He passed out on the couch and the rest of us hailed a cab. Once inside, Matt took it upon himself to play cash cab with us. “This one is worth one dollar: what is the tire pressure ratio to landing ratio to wingspan ratio to…(something unintelligible) ratio of a plane?” Huh?….none of us won the dollar.

Once at the bar, we all ordered our beers and sat outside. I people watched as usual, while the boys talked about other things. Rachel arrived just as Matt was high fiving everyone that he came in contact with. He was pretty drunk at this point. I had an extremely difficult time repressing my laughter, seeing as Matt is 6’6 and super jolly all the time. People were very confused by this hunk of mass yelling and laughing while he “made friends” with the Tuesday bar hoppers of Raleigh. After drunken Brian bought us a round of soko and lime, we decided that it was time to head home. The six of us squeezed inside of Rachel’s ’95 Accord. On the way home, Matt kept on shoving his giant foot into Brian’s grumpy face and I laughed harder than I have in a very, very long time, while Rachel and the rest of the car sang to TLC’s “No Scrubs.”

Home: We all stumbled onto the porch a lot happier than when we had left it. We decided that it was time for a game of “much borracho”. Four games and two pizzas later, someone had found the ginormous sharpie pen that had been left out after the last art adventure. Matt grabs it and runs inside. I’m glad that I had decided to follow him because the sight that followed was well worth the sore abdomen and jaw that I woke up to this morning. Matt was sitting next to a passed out Jeremy, wearing lime green rimmed sunglasses, drawing all over Jeremy! This morning, Jeremy woke up with a fresh set of kitty whiskers, and “butt sex” scribbled clumsily on his leg. He decided to keep the leg art, but managed to wash off the whiskers.

Today: The boys have driven off to the beach, for a two day camp out adventure. I have to work, so I stayed behind. I have the house to myself, and it is a recovery night for me complete with a wonderful book and a box of cookies.

yuuuuh!

No Such Thing as Doors

Jeremy is coming to visit tomorrow!  This is going to be a very interesting two weeks, I’m sure. I haven’t hung out with him in over a year and I’m sure that we have all changed quite a bit. I’m still super excited though! It’s going to be nice to hang out with someone that was so close to me. I hope that he brings his guitar because we need some new music on this porch. I’m growing weary of listening to Lil Wayne and Jay-Z every night.

Anyway, here are some of my favorite quotes from Infinite Games by James P. Carse:

“…the finite player plays to be powerful the infinite player plays with strength. A powerful person is one who brings the past to an outcome, settling all of it’s unresolved issues. A strong person is one who carries the past into the future showing that none of it’s issues is capable of resolution.”

-Page 39

 

“Evil is never intended as evil. Indeed, the contradiction inherent in all evil is that it originates in the desire to eliminate evil.”

“Your history does not belong to me. We live with each other in a common history.”

– 41

 

“Only that which can change can continue: this is the principle by which infinite players live.”

-45

 

“The more powerful we consider persons to be, the less we expect them to do…”

– 61

 

“Wealth is not so much possessed as it is performed.”

– 62

 

“…the poietai are the ones most likely to remember what has been forgotten.”

– 64

 

“Art is dramatic, opening always forward, beginning something that cannot be finished.”

-67

 

“Therefore, poets do not ‘fit’ into society, not because a place is denied them but because they do not take their ‘places’ seriously. They openly see its roles as theatrical, its styles as costumes, its rules conventional, its crisis arranged, its conflicts performed, and its metaphysics idealogical.”

-68

 

“Who lives horizonally is never somewhere, and is always in passage.”

-70

 

“What will undo any boundary is the awareness that it is our vision, and not what we are viewing, that is limited.”

-75

 

“The outcome brings the contradiction to perfection: by proving to the audience that they were wrong, we prove to ourselves that the audience was right.”

-88

 

“Finite sexuality is a form of theatre in which the distance between persons is regularly reduced to zero but in which neither touches the other.”

-96

 

“Lovers often sustain vivid reminders of extraordinary moments, but they are reminded at the same time of their impotence in recreating them. The appetite for novelty in lovemaking–new positions, the use of drugs, exotic surroundings, additional partners–is only a search for new moments that can live only in recollection. As with all finite play, the goal of veiled sexuality is to bring itself to an end.”

-99

 

“Stories set all necessities into the context of the possible.”

-125

 

“Explanations settle issues, showing that matters must end as they have. Narratives raise issues, showing that matters do not end as they must but as they do. Explanation sets the need for further inquiry aside; narratives invite us to rethink what we thought we knew. If the silence of nature is the possibility of language, language is the possibility of history.”

-125

 

“To use machines for control is to be controlled by the machine.”

-145

 

“Nature does not change; it has no inside or outside. It is therefore not possible to travel through it. All travel is therefore change within the traveler, and it is for that reason that travelers are always somewhere else. To travel is to grow.”

-154

 

“But waste is not the result of what we have made. It is what we have made. Waste plutonium is not an indirect consequence of the nuclear industry; it is a product of that industry.”

-156

 

“We understand nature as source when we understand ourselves as source. We abandon all attempts at an explanation of nature when we see that we cannot be explained, when our own self-origination cannot be stated as fact. We behold the irreducible otherness of nature when we behold ourselves as its other.”

-159

 

“The contradiction of finite play in its highest form: to play in such a way that all need for play is erased.”

-173

 

“Infinite players are not serious actors in any story, but the joyful poets of a story that continues to originate what they cannot finish.”

-176

 

“I do not therefore understand the story in terms of my experience, but my experience in terms of the story.”

-167

~~~~~~~

Next up: Inner Work by Robert A. Johnson.

 

Dear Miami,

You must know by now that I didn’t mean all of those mean things that I used to say about you!  I miss you so much, and now that I am gone, it is more evident to me that perhaps you and I could have worked out our little differences in a more effective way. Kahlil Gibran once said “How could I have seen you save from a great height or a great distance?” this line rings more truth for us now that I am so many miles away missing those sandy shores, and my crazy Cubans, and the food (ah, the food!). Someday soon, I will run into your heat again, and I will probably get mad at you but you have to take into consideration that some little things about you just don’t agree with me. However, at this point in time I have come to realize that those little things that pinched and tugged at my nerves are some of the things that I love most about you (even the terrible drivers!). You are my home, for, home is where the heart is and my heart is with you. The only thing that I ask of you is to receive me with a blue sky and a brilliant sun. Let all of our Cubans out on the streets (with churros, I hope), and I will smile with open arms ready to roast on the beach with a Corona in my hand and a giant piece of flan in my purse.  I will be home soon but until then, please get all of the rain out of your system.

With endless love,

Katryna

 

Organic

 

::sigh::