Tradition

Extreme, cynical perspective: 

Tradition gives humans the illusion that there is order in chaos (ahaha, there's the lame name of my blog). Humans are creatures of habit-- we think that if we go about life repetitively, routinely, then we are in control.They also give us the illusion that we are united. Kum baya. But we are all inherently alone; we will never truly know another soul besides are own. And do we even know our own soul?

I always feel empty going through the motions of a holiday. I try to channel my childhood excitement, I reach for it, and it never comes. Because I cannot lie to myself. Each holiday is just another ordinary day, it is not any different because of a human label- Thanksgiving, Christmas.
here is kind of the extreme side of tradition cynicism.. Here is the other side.

Traditions only exist because they make money. Retailers don't care that Jesus was born on Christmas, they care that you buy eight billion candy cane rain deer. Everything comes down to money. We are materialistic.

Lets not be dismal perspective: 

Tradition intertwines us with our ancestors, and all humans everywhere. We are all inherently connected, made of the same chemicals, glints of our souls visible through each others eyes. Yes, shoving bread up a bird's ass is simply that. But is impossible to ignore that the meaning behind it goes deeper. The knowledge that everyone around the country is also doing it simultaneously, and that for hundreds of years people have been doing it, makes us feel apart of something greater than our own mini universes.

One Thanksgiving past, my dad was supposed to take us children. When we showed up to his apartment, he was very intoxicated, so we left and ended up at my mom's friend's friend's sister's house. They are avid believers in Voo-Doo and had a Tofurkey. No judgement. But my little traditions: real turkey- live meat, killed and roasted, our slacker Christian-ish prayer, were broken. This (and the fact that my dad once again let us all down) made for the worst Thanksgiving ever. Why did the fragmentation of tradition cut my soul open? I feel entitled to turkey, to hastily bowed heads and a prayer- thing, to my family happily chugging mashed potatoes and lard based gravy. And there we were, singing Grateful Dead songs under the flicker of candle flames with randos.

We all hold tenaciously to these traditions, and when they change or don't work out, we become enraged. Why? We feel connected to the universe, even if it is a bit of an illusion. We feel connected to family and our past selves.

Inspiration

Slowly I have been weening myself off of Pinterest. The little red word: Art, in the category menu is my crack. I can drop five hours just admiring the small squares of amazingness.

 I need art, I breath art, I love art. I remember signing up for classes in eighth grade; four open boxes? Who wouldn't fill them all with art classes? Mixed Media, Drawing 1, Drawing 2, Pottery 1. Yes.

this is watercolor.... holy shit. 

Then I arrived in the sterile corridors of Wayzata High School. Art is something that is shoved in the corner. Something to admire passively. It is not serious. I should focus on math, football games.

What irks me is the overwhelming attitude towards this subject. When I say anything about my art, I meet raised eyebrows and 'knowing' glances. It is a slacker class, they say with a laugh. AP Drawing? Hahaha, what do you do for the AP test? Draw? Hahaha.

Then I show them one of my pieces, and the shut up pretty quickly.

I constantly meet the mentality that art is lesser. I even bought into it for a while junior year. Advanced drawing and AP drawing in one year? My inner tiger mom screamed at me in disgust, "That's not college material. You should have taken more REAL AP classes."

I have come to see that what I have with paint is special. No one really understands, and that doesn't matter at all. Creating makes me happy. My soul sings with the even shading of charcoal, from dark, harsh black, to the lightest of light grey. I can literally do whatever I want; a white starchy canvas is infinite possibilities.

I can say anything about human nature, life. It all comes pouring out of my paintbrush. Creation is innate. It is stitched permanently in the fabric of me. I cannot live without it.

Banksy makes my heart palpitate. 

Salvador Dali is a genius. 

If I follow my passion, lots of people will, (and already do) tell me it is a waste of time, a waste of brain. I will add a stipulation to Seth's statement: without art we are animals. Without the ability to see beauty and recreate it, we are just blobs of flesh and enzymes.


This blog assignment made me realize that I should definitely be applying to art school. I have always felt torn between my love of learning and my innate need to do art. But that fork in the road (for lack of a better metaphor) is an illusion, and I will forge my own trail.

Dali again.. ahhh. 

Observations

I feel anxious when I brush my teeth.

The plastic, semi-transparent trash bag is a fresh jagged cloud.

Green pine tree fingers pulse and twitch in the wind.

Humans are forty percent stardust.

Her whiskers are the white arches of drooping parabolas.

Whenever I gossip, this Eleanor Roosevelt quote comes to mind:
"Great minds discuss idea. Average minds discuss events.
Small minds discuss people."

The ceiling is smeared cottage cheese.

Conversation

With permanent marker thursday night, I watched as the ink of these words seeped into my pores, and  spidered out in tiny overflowing smudges on my right hand:

"In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud
under the bludgeoning of chance
my head is bloody, but unbowed."

It is the second paragraph of "Invictus." I want to memorize it, so I can recite it in times of distress, to remember my strength.

Friday I was in AP Calc. That sterile, boring classroom is a complete drag. Despite the taunting posters littered like flotsam across the walls that say "Math is FUN!" math is not fun. Who cares what the rate is of the radius of a a circle created by a stone dropped into a lake? Hmm, no one.

My palms, always loyal in times of distress, are sweating like two pigs that just got off the treadmill. My paper is wet, but I manage to finish the quiz. I drop it in the yellow stack accumulating on the corner of Mr. __'s desk and hand him my calculator. We are getting new programs, I'm so excited, I think it might be Christmas.

Randomly, slightly incredulously,  he asks me, "Did you get a tattoo?" His eyes are focused on the pink curves of my TI-84, but I can see the judgy glare below the lowered eyelids.

This is strait up weird. I have probably conversed with my math teacher three times. Sometimes I pass through a whole block and realized I haven't opened my mouth. It's not that I am overly shy, I just have no friends in that class and math is shit.

"Errmm... No." I say with a little fake awkward laugh.

"Oh, good. I was just wondering about that." And he hands me my calculator with a small smile.

I don't really know why this tiny conversation phased me so much. I guess I feel invisible in Calc, so it was kind of a shock to know that people, and my teacher, see me. But mostly, why would he care? What if it was a tattoo? Would he be more apt to scrawl those tiny red -2's, -1's on my tests? Or maybe he just has a tattoo thing. My grandpa hates tattoos with the fiery passion of the flames of hell, perhaps Mr.__ is the same.

We are all visual creatures. The vision part of every human brain is proportionally the largest. This shows that everyone ( even the most genial of us) inadvertently judge others based on physical appearance, what is manifested in front of our eyes. I shouldn't be surprised by it.

Sushi and Comedy: They Do Relate

You might be wondering how raw meat with rice and SNL skits are related. Jiro Ono and Tina Fey are both experts; they are bound by passion and intrinsic competitive spirits. How they achieved this success, how their stories are presented, and the cultures that formed their lives, are, of course, extremely different.

Tina Fey grew up in a typical American home. She was  always loved and supported by family. She charmed her way, humorously, through early life. Jiro Ono's background was much harsher. He left his family at around age 9 and began his sushi career then. He was motivated by survival instinct and passion.

Ono truly dedicated his entire life to sushi. He claims he "[has] never once hated this job. [He] fell in love with [his] work and gave [his] life to it." He remembers waking up at 5 am every morning throughout his son's childhoods and coming home at 10 or later. His son did not recognize him when he was home. He admits to not being much of a father then, and does not really seem to care, because it is all in the name of improving, coming closer to perfection.

Fey is more "well-rounded" than this. In Bossypants She focuses on all different parts of her life, and she  has values, goals, and aspirations beyond just her work. The end of her book was  a rant about her torn feeling between having another kid and focusing on work. When she was describing a stressful week when her daughter was having her birthday party and Oprah was coming on 30 Rock, she describes the events as equally important to her.

The thing that binds these two is their pure passion and inherent love of the subject. That is the basis of their success. Ono says he feels "ecstasy everyday" and that he "loves making sushi." He does not care about the money, and only cares about improving his sushi. Fey is the same way; she simply loves to be funny. In her novel, the one time when she completely owned her success with pride was when she was Sarah Palin on SNL. She does not care about awards, famous people, photo shoots, money, it comes down to passion.

Another binding characteristic between Fey and Ono is an intense spirit of relentless perfectionism. Both of them, despite their success, are never really satisfied, and always yearn for improvement. Ono says that "after decades of work, [he] does not think he has achieved perfection." His advice is to "always look ahead and above yourself, always try to elevate your craft." It is the same with Fey. She insults herself throughout the entire book, constantly saying that Will Ferrel and Amy Pohler are the truly talented ones. Ono and Fey are bound by humbleness and knowledge that perfection is unattainable. Yet they still fiercely fight to be the best; not in an external way, but intrinsically. They compete with the craft itself within themselves.

The presentation of these stories also effects how the reader/viewer sees Fey and Ono. Bossypants is an autobiography. It is structured in an easy-to-read way that follows various stories and blurbs about Feys life. It is speckled with hilarious pictures and jokes. Fey wants to make the reader laugh, which of course makes her seem like a funny, laid-back person. Whereas Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a documentary; with bleak gray imagery of Tokyo, intense dramatic music, and all of the manipulative nuts and bolts of cinematography. This invokes an image of Ono as focused, intense. These juxtaposing images illustrate how the medium used to display their stories effects the audience's perception.

Fear / The Most Embarrassing Thing Ever

Wanna hear the lamest, most idiotic story ever?

It was a peaceful afternoon in Suburbia. The sun was a-shining, the leaves where a-swirling through the sky. I was home alone, gazing out the window, when a white van slowly approaches my driveway. The wind is wild, and our swing begins to thrash about like an angry toddler.

The white van enters the driveway. It turns in and parks. A dude with a dark brown, overly large coat with creeper vibes gets out of the ominous vehicle and begins walking up the stairs to our front door. I freak out. White van, creepy dude, a breezy autumn day: I am obviously about to be stabbed to death. I run to the phone and call my mom (which if I actually was about to be decapitated probably wasn't the smartest move). No answer. I call my auntie Dede, who picks up. I quickly tell her that I am probably going to die, and she tells me to call the police.

I can't believe I am actually writing this down. Anyhoo...

I called the police, they came, I am stupid, it was the stump remover guy.... Why, why, why, do I have to live with this. I am sorry world.

Before you call the insane asylum hotline, this story makes a more sense in context. I had lived in the sheltered bubble of Suburbia my entire young life, when all of a sudden, we moved to a duplex in Northeast Minneapolis. (What do you get when you put three spastic toddlers, one narcissistic father, one bitter mother, and an intolerant, hateful pot-smoking couple in the same general living vicinity? Divorce, of course!) In our absolutely delightful duplex my slight paranoia issues began.

Here are a few things that pushed me over the edge:
1. A certified sex offender walked down our street every single day with his German Shepard at the exact time we had to leave for school.
2. A shooting occurred in front of our house.
3. There was a park across the street, and on my way there a grey-bearded creep jumped out at me behind a tree.

This was too much for my sheltered brain and I went into over-cautious mode. I was scared to leave the windows open at night. I thought that the sound of the old pipes creaking and screaming were murderers. Everything was a threat. I remained in that mode even once we moved back out of the Cites.

I guess it was good that the police incident happened, it made me realize how completely extreme and ridiculous my fear had become. I was able to come to the conclusion that if the end of the world comes there are two ways I can live until it actually happens. I can sit in the corner waiting for something to attack me, surrounded by protective pillows and holding my brothers Nerf gun menacingly. Or I can relax, and embrace the moment with bravery. So I chose the second one. In the split second it took me to shove this embarrassing story into the depths of my soul, I decided to grow some. I left my window open without having an aneurism, and I lived happily ever after.

Analyzing Real Housewives of New Jersey

One of my good friends is a Housewife addict. She watches seasons in a periods of two days... Ahh, that Housewife high. I asked her which episode is her favorite, and she texted me, "Real Housewives of New Jersey, Reunion episode. Shit gets real."

Like most reality TV shows, this episode opened amidst fragmented clips of high powered drama, charged music, and one of those announcers who sounds like he warming up for a five hour singing performance. "AAnnnDDDD HeeerRRRReee'SSSSSSSS REALLLLL HOUSSEEEEWIVESSSSSS!!!!!"

The camera flashes to the women on stage. They are middle-aged moms, yet are dressed in what look like prom dresses. They have full-out makeup with heavily drawn black eyeliner and orangeish foundation. Their bare legs are splayed at varying angles. They look like they are trying to be young. The gaudy colors and ill-fitting dresses seem tacky and the over-done makeup seems fake. But the hairstylists and producers did not have to make them look this way, it was deliberate. The show producers tried to make the women look over dressed: showing too much skin for their age, looking overly made up, to emphasize the stereotypes they are drilling in to us, "These catty women are fake and materialistic."

The man who is supposed to be "mediating" this reunion, slightly grey haired and innocent looking, warped the conversation as if theses women were his marionettes. He brought up subjects that he and the producers know are sources of tension among the ladies. He is payed to "make the shit get real."
He showed a flashback clip about one of the most insane, dramatic moments of the season, a family brawl. Literally punches were thrown in the clip. Remembering the pain of these memories, one of the women started crying, and I swear I saw this mediator-dude smirk in triumph.

Everything he says intentionally heightens the drama. "Oh my gosh, she said you have a big forehead?" This guy (backed my the makers of the show of course) makes the women look more emotional than they would have if he hadn't brought up tense subjects.

The ladies are from New Jersey, so they have the accent. They say "youse." There was a flashback of all the times during the season where their grammar was wrong. One was singing amazing grace and said "...save a wench like me."
The show is again enforcing the stereotype, by emphasizing their accents and grammar issues, that these women are unclassy and stupid.

People justify watching reality tv by telling themselves "Oh, I know these people are trash, but I am going to make the conscious decision to indulge." The producers heighten preconceived stereotypes even more to make viewers feel right. They capitalize on the idea of "indulging." If you are indulging, you feel above the drama, and justify wasting hours of time doing nothing. The more trashy it perceived to be, the better to indulge in,  which gets more views.