The Bliss of Ms. Blossom

I know I'm not even close to being an easy to person to get along with sometimes. I can be moody, difficult, and inconsistent. I can be analytical beyond belief (you think you know, but you have no idea). I can also be extremely sensitive over things that, in hindsight, maybe aren't so important.

But some of you people are no picnics, either.

Adam was feeling a little squished between Mike and Sara, because all seven of us were crammed into a booth. Fortunately, he wasn't eating anything, so he didn't have any plates to further crowd the table. Unfortunately, this was a sign to everybody that Adam is anorexic. Bryant concluded that Adam and Mandy have this in common and they should start a club. I was a little remiss in introducing him to everybody, but actually Mike claimed that they had met at least once, even though I don't recall when this would have happened. Kenneth was impolite and refused to acknowledge Adam's presence because he couldn't see him. He then insulted the rest of the table by calling into question our levels of sanity. We eventually dismissed his opinion as boring and rude. I said something funny (yet immemorable) at one point, and Adam laughed. Mike blatantly lied and said that Adam was laughing at one of Mike's jokes instead, and Sara fiendishly corroborated the story by claiming to have heard the joke as well. Nobody was able to actually tell the joke again, so I remain dubious. We asked him for his opinion a few more times, but other than that, he was relatively calm and patiently waited while I drank a million cups of coffee and was the last one to finish. In retrospect, we should have sung him Happy Birthday, but I facebooked it and called him on the phone, so that will have to do. I must admit, Adam, even Absent Adam, is always good company.

To Sara for being the responsible roomate and not hating me for being a mess in every aspect imaginable. And for listening to me discuss the same aspects of my grad school applications over and over (and over and over).

To Bryant for convincing me to go see Of Montreal and for buying me beer (I guess I should thank Paul for the second part, too).

To Stephanie for leaving me long facebook messages. I've always been excited to see that little envelope. It's the only way I know I'm loved. (And now I want to take Bryant's shout-out away, because he sends me pointless messages just to get my hopes up that I have something intriguing to read.)

To Mandy for being as enthusiastic about Balderdash as I am. Everyone needs to have someone in her life who thinks she is funny and will vote for her Balderdash answers even when they are blatantly ridiculous.

To Will for hurting his finger in an interesting way (mallet finger, to be exact).

In the shower, I like to stick my arm out and aim a stream of water on targets found on the floor of my bathtub (strands of hair, clusters of soap suds, etc.). I feel like a water goddess who controls torrents of rain and can flood entire cities with deadly accuracy. I would rather lightening bolts shoot from my arm, but water will have to do. For now.

I hope this clarification actually clarifies something.

When I first saw cubist art in elementary school, I didn't particularly care for it. I liked curvy lines better, and the blocks seemed so contrived and ugly. No, cubism was not for me as a 10 year old, but I have since changed my mind.

My art history class a few years ago coupled with the Paris portion of the LP trip really turned me onto modern art. Seriously. The Pompidou and the Tate are some of the best places in Europe -- probably even the whole freakin' universe. It's not just the art, but the whole time period where people were experimenting in different mediums (and combining them) that challenged fundamental thoughts about what art and creation are. Gertrude Stein (as aggravating as she can be) even went so far as to rethink the basic linguistic structure of her sentences. Pablo Picasso (along with Braque, Gris, and Cezanne, obviously, but Pablo's my man) altered the way that paint can be used to visually represent an object, and I think -- from my 22 year old perspective -- that it is genuinely fascinating.

I think my problem when I was younger was that I thought good art was art that recognizably looked like something. The closer the artist could get to reality, the better. I didn't understand why someone would want to take a painting and break it up into different forms, or why someone would want to mess with perspective in a new way. It certainly didn't make the painting any prettier.

When I took my art history course a few years ago, the professor (or maybe the textbook? We'll give her credit since she was a badass.) made the comment that Picasso was trying to show all sides of an object at once. That's why it seemed fragmented and as if nothing fit together, because that's not how our eyes actually perceive things.

That's analytic cubism anyway, but even with synthetic cubism, this inclusive tendency is found. By creating pieces that had all sorts of 3-D objects and crafts on them, they were expanding horizons. Instead of presenting an object or an idea using just paint, they were showing different sides of it using different materials.

Gertrude Stein goes fuckin' nuts in Tender Buttons, but even in texts that are seemingly more straightforward, she plays with perspective. In the Autiobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Stein is actually writing from Alice's point of view about herself. In class, we talked about how this affords her more freedom in the text, because she can present her actual thoughts as she thought them, and how she fits into the story that includes many many other characters. It's as if we are both inside a painting experiencing the environment and standing in front of it able to see its entirety and how it fits into the frame. She is able to show more than one side of herself by appropriating different perspectives, the internal and the external.

To me, these are all attempts to transcend one point-of-view. It shows how every experience is relative (culturally relative, even!) to where one is standing. Cubism is a way to show everything -- a guitar, a person, an idea, life -- from, not only two different perspectives, but from all perspectives at the same time. The idea is not profound, but I like it, and I like cubism. It's not about squares, but about discovering the different forms of an object and realizing that it is natural for things to seem contradictory but to actually be part of the same thing -- if only one had the opportunity to see it all at once. And it's not simple enough that all it takes is to take a step to the left or right. I can't actually get into someone's head and -- with all of their collective memories and experiences -- see things they way s/he would, but at least recognizing that prevents me from assuming too much.

Maybe even just calling this a cubist idea is one perspective (ethnocentric even?). In a class last year we read a folktale from the Congo about a two-colored robe. A man was wearing this robe that was red on one side and blue on the other, and he walked between two farmers' fields along the boundary. These farmers, who had formerly been friends, began fighting over what color the robe was and became enemies.

In the end, I think the walking man was the devil and the farmers made up, but think about if Picasso had been there. He could have painted a picture of the man and shown how the robe was both red and blue (without being purple, alas).

I refer to my apartment as Alaska because Sara likes to keep the temperature as if we were trying to preserve meat. I, on the other hand, prefer to be comfortable in my own home and not be forced to hide my beautiful body underneath jackets and blankets. I was telling this to someone at work today (Mark Stoll, if you know him) because he said that married people (or roomates in this case) always have thermostat wars. I told him that if I was going to wear a coat, I would just go outside. The reason we invented the concept of having an indoors was so we could control our personal settings. What is the point of having walls (besides obvious structural or privacy reasons) if not to keep out cold air and keep in warm air during the winter? He just looked at me for a beat then said that I am extremely illogical. I fail to see why I need to wear a sweater if I am in an environment that is capable of being temperature-controlled. It's the principle of the thing.

I am rereading the book Laws of the Bandit Queens, and am remembering how much I love it. Not really a book, I guess, as much as a collection of photography and personal stories about and by various feminists. It includes Jeanine Garofalo and Alice Walker, two of my favorite people. I think lots of the stuff in it is pretty inspiring and really helps me focus on the things that I find important.

That being said, New Year's resolutions.

One. Unpack. In preparation to begin packing. This resolution seems really ambitious and slightly conflicted. If you know me at all, you know there are still boxes that haven't been completely unpacked since I left to move into Gordon two thousand years ago.

Dos. Be a good UDems member. If all goes according to plan, we are going to have new officer elections at the beginning of the semester, and for once, I will get to be a normal Democrat instead of a Democrat officer who has to do all sorts of bureaucratic nonsense (read: SGA nonsense). One thing that always bothered me, though, was how few people off of our mailing list actually came to meetings and, furthermore, really participated in events. I resolve to actually be committed.

Trois. Keep in touch with people. I could have done a better job of that after high school, but I get another chance with each new wave of graduations, which includes my own this semester.

Other than that, I'm a fuckin' Bandit Queen. A fuckin' bandit queen who had (or almost had) another water issue this morning. The first one has been resolved since Tuesday when some nice man came and put on a new knob for my bathtub faucet. This morning, however, the water was unexpectedly turned off for a short period of time before I had a chance to rinse the shampoo out of my hair. My crises seem to occur when I have no clothes on.