5 June 2002 (Wednesday)

how many words is it worth to ya?

I have been painting my kitchen table this morning. There are now four table legs standing orphaned in the center of my kitchen, like an abstract representation of a grove of redwoods or something, on top of haphazard sheets of newsprint with black paint scattered all over them. White linoleum beneath, black chairs and bar stools surrounding.

I bet I could sell this as an installation to the MOMA. If I gave it a properly mystifying title: "The Sacrifice." Or "Untitled 6." Or "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?"

Strokes of black paint on white does something for me though, I must say. It conjures calligraphy, that's what it is. Yearning for my lost cultural roots, perhaps.

It serves me right that I lose my camera the morning before I leave for Alaska. I've been sniffing scornfully at it for over a year, it being a Fujifilm point-and-shoot 35mm, a fossil in this digital day and age. But it's all I've got, if I want to capture any visual mementos of this trip, and now I'm digging frantically through my drawers of Unimportant Stuff, my boxes of Stuff To Maybe Sell Or Just Give Away, trying to find this one object that's suddenly become so important to me.

Me and Ava and mountains. I can't wait.

posted by enjelani @ 10:42 AM PST [ link ]

4 June 2002 (Tuesday)

caterina gets married!

I don't know why this makes me so happy. I don't even know the woman, really. But oh, happy sigh.

Speaking of which (well, sort of): there needs to be some item of jewelry to indicate that one is utterly smitten with someone, and that this someone is in a state of mutual utter smitten-ness, and that it would result in great awkwardness for a third party to presume otherwise. There is the engagement ring and the wedding band, of course, but we need something a level down from that. A going-steady trinket. I was asked out to coffee the other day by a very nice man, with whom I'd just had a long lovely conversation, and the poor fellow became rather flustered when I explained that I was very much taken by someone else. It would've been nice if he could have glanced at my hands and put his nervous wondering to rest.

Or maybe I just need to stop being so friendly to strangers that it gets mistaken for flirtation. The thought of cultivating a colder, more withdrawn demeanor just to ward off the coffee?-men doesn't seem right, though...I like having conversations that go beneath the surface with people I've just met, and I've had several with women that didn't end in doomed romantic overtures. I just wish I didn't have to watch a guy work up the courage to ask, which I know to be damned difficult, only for me to smile apologetically and say no.

"Look at it this way," said Soren. "It was good practice for him."
"Ah! So I was actually helping him find his future wife?"
"Exactly."
"I like that idea," I said.

posted by enjelani @ 03:04 PM PST [ link ]

3 June 2002 (Monday)

purpose, revisited

What is my calling?

I'm searching for the sweet spot, the center of the Venn diagram: where what I love, what I'm good at, and what needs doing intersect. All three are necessary elements; like a bar stool or a tricycle, remove any one and the whole thing gets unstable. Achieving excellence alone isn't fulfilling, but neither is slaving away for a worthy cause without a sense of being uniquely qualified for the work.

I'm beginning to wonder whether I will have to settle for instability -- whether I'll spend my life switching between careers that fulfill one or two of the requirements, but not all three. With this dream I'm pursuing now, it's certainly what I love, and I have an unusual talent for it (so I've been told). But as to whether I'll make a lasting impact, and whether advances in the arts have the kind of social significance I'm seeking, I'm not so sure.

Soren and I went to a couple of seminars and forums this past weekend, and we both walked out with that wistful tugging in our hearts back toward school. I think my field of study would be interdisciplinary: a mix of business, public policy, urban planning, environmental and civil engineering, economics, ethics and psychology. A PhD program in How To Make People Give A Shit About Saving The World. With a better acronym, hopefully.

I would have great fun studying it, and it would be incredibly rewarding work. The question is: would I be any good at it?

There is also the question of timing, parenthood being another lifelong dream of mine. Pesky ol' biological clock.

posted by enjelani @ 03:12 PM PST [ link ]