YSP Week 4: Overdose

I'm in Albany Andover now, on the Monday Tuesday after, so I'm writing some of this in retrospect. I'm sorry, but I had one too many corndogs the other day. I haven't had corndogs for a childhood.

If I keep living like I did this week, I'm going to crash. I'm going to be button-eyed rag doll, wasted in my own skin, with the highest highs and lowest lows, slamming myself back and forth between what I want and what I need. I feel like I'm acting on drunken impulses, hand picking my pleasures, only to have the gluttonous weight of my indulgence seize my body again.

And no, not PMS.

It started with food. It always starts with food. It was in no sane person's mind any sort of binge or purge or disorderly consumption of noodles, but it blew me into a swamp, so sticky and sickly, so guilt-ridden in spite of the beautiful, clean weather we finally received. It was cool outside, but I felt hot on skin. I felt like the food was burning into my arms and legs. I wanted to be a Wintergirl. The tall and short, thin and wide, dark and bright - they're all sick with disease. They have their own battles with demons. But at least the thin looked good.

I won't write too much about what I put through my body, but I spent my expected happy hours on Thursday clenching my backpack to my body, waiting for cold sweat to pass, sleeping away a fiery pain that arose in the bottom of my gut. Nothing explosive or wormy happened, if that's what you're afraid I'll describe. But I collapsed in bed, shuddering next to my heat pack, barely stopping myself from drooling, exhausted by wrenching pain inside.

Still. Managed 36 miles this week without running that day, which brings me to mention only briefly that I woke at 10 PM to eat a bowl of fried cabbage and seaweed while working on a hopeless Candy Crush design until 2 in the morning. I slept briefly and woke up to finish it. I refrained from donuts on the last day of YSP. I felt too horrible about sleeping in class to say thank you to Eldin. I ran 8 miles (it wasn't on purpose) on nothing but a couple slices of smoked ham and 4 dried plums. My dad asked me if I was celebrating, but every crying fiber inside of me screamed for a crueler punishment.

There were nights in which I slept wrapped in woolen devastation, feeling supremely alone, knowing God was sad, but being too weak to lift my eyes up (Worn by Tenth Avenue North. Don't tell me you can't feel the tragedy inside). There were the subsequent mornings, spent half-comatose, in which I stared at my drawings bitterly, still wishing for time and less impediment. I stayed red-eyed and ugly until I ran and ran and ate and ate. I didn't sleep enough. And I ran again, on Saturday, for 8 miles.

It was a gripping cold outside, but my previous confident stride was reduced to a meek shuffling. Nothing I had done made sense to me. Professor Sally told us that YSP was supposed to light our fire, but there was only a candle inside of me, and was certainly not for analytic math and not particularly invested in anything. I showed my sister the technicalities of Candy Crush (she's on Level 29 now, bless her) and drove glumly to Sunny's party, where there was an abundance of good chicken and multiple frenzies of hand washing. I fed my dehydrated lips and sat on the top of the corner of the couch, completely comfortable even in unnecessary solitude.

I had to write privately about everything else that happened inside my discomforted heart, especially because I don't have the strength to write it in code now, but I don't think I'm doing any readers any injustice. It was a very secretive sadness, probably more irrational than not when scribbled on the floors of the hotel room at 12 in the morning.

Art's Sake

We have to write essays soon. Last year, coming up with ideas for the graduated seniors was so easy, yet when it comes to myself, I trip over every other word. For the common application, I want to talk about running in 87 degrees that feels like 95 degrees in 70% humidity. I want to talk about how I can feel rays of cancer searing into my slippery skin. Its so easy to describe the literal ruggedness of Pioneer's broken forest, where the remains of the bull-dozed trees are crumpled in ugly juxtaposition with the ever-running river. There isn't a day when I don't remember the times when I run so fast that my face hits the gnats before than gnats can fly into me, and there isn't a moment when I won't forget they day's I'd have to walk, forcing my legs to throw themselves forward, exhausted, fatiqued, waiting for me to go pee.

But my mom wants me to write about drawing. Man, I love drawing. This whole week, I've felt like crap, full of turds, spouting nonsense, but in the midst of my dad's conservative air conditioning, I could find the last remains of my patience to draw. I mean, if you count that city scape as drawing. Its really more like using my ID card as a ruler and wedging my pen against it a hundred times over. I loved drawing those eggs and figuring out which expressions worked best to what scale. 

I don't know how to talk about it though. In this modern era of art for art's sake, art seems so existentially fraught (yeah, Augustus Waters and basketball hoops used this phrase first, forgive me please). I don't throw away too many drawings anymore, but I also don't archive much of anything. AGhh I already ran out of things to say. Here's what I wrote in my scholarship essay. The question was "What career goals do you have? Why do you want to pursue this career? Have you been involved in activities or certain academic classes that have guided you in this field?"

I want to create for other people, and the most realistic and personal application for this goal is to pursue graphic, architectural, or industrial design. When I first complied to the rules and regulations of the AP Studio Art drawing portfolio, I was young and overenthusiastic, eager to crank twenty four stunning pieces of artwork in 30 weeks. It took me but a fraction of those weeks to realize that I did not possess the detailing and adventurous passion to sculpt deep and lifelike motifs into the heart of the canvas, especially not 24 times in a row. I had no reason to do so, because my love for aesthetic qualities of space and time stems not from a desire to score a 5 on the final College Board portfolio or to feel a sense of capability and self-worth. I never wanted to work for my own benefit, to create a piece just to prove to myself that I held mastery over oils and graphite alike.

I need to create for other people. I felt the artist's equivalent of a rush of adrenaline when I drew a portrait for my badminton coach and painted thank you landscapes for my teachers. I was content to spend my entire spring break designing my badminton club team's tshirts and posters, to be full immersed in every pixel I could alter on Photoshop. While I would love to win a Threadless or shirt.woot contest and bring home thousands of dollars and shining new barbeque grills, I participate in these contests because I love to collaborate with my friend who had shown me these projects in the first place. It was the necessity inherent to the nature of these contests (and my own failing creativity) that brought two friends very close together in the least romantic way possible. I would love to continue to create for other people, to make  something that is not only beautiful but also useful to them.

YSP Day 8: Calvin and Hobbes

I don't think journalling about YSP is necessarily the route to my trumpetting success as a writer. Not only is it uninteresting to talk about math, but I also make a lot of typos transcribing notes from my phone and chicken-scratch Staples pad. I will, however, continue to write as frequently as possible. I read the first parts of Eveline's blog recently, and I feel insufficient. She does write fiction though, which is hard for me to accomodate in my pea brain that latches onto only very personal writing. But then again, isn't the art that encompasses fiction a purer truth than any string of words man can speak?

...No. That's something stupid Aristotle or an old-timey philospher thought up while he (let's face it, it was probably a "he") was breaking bread across his toga'd lap. I know I made a terribly stereotypical generalization. The point was that nothing is that simple. I should try to read fiction that is not already transcribed in books.

So as I try to forget all of the math that I pretended to learn at YSP (we did Laurent polynomials on Thursday. I missed Friday for my consumer ed final, 81% final 95% semester grade WADDUP), I always become really sad. This is not to say that I'm not sad in other situations; I spend most of my time being sad, but math - this "real" math - seems to emphasize it. Everyone at YSP tries to hard to keep up. Everyone at YSP who isn't stupid already knows that the integers are an integral domain in which the positive elements are well ordered. I liked being proficient at finding roots of unity and proving that e^pi is greater than pi^e (diagnostic test material), but I guess there was always something in the back of my head that told me that this was step 0 of the introduction to mathematics. It could be the 6 hours of sleep in moody weather, but I've lost it. I would rather look at tshirt design platforms than prove that the lowest upper bound is the intersection of all ordered fields. That probably wasn't even right.

*I think I say the same thing on this blog a lot. You guys are allowed to comment and tell me things I'm doing wrong. You should also tell me what to write about, because I don't have any structure or reason.

Anyway, all of this sadness (not just the math induced kind) carries me to nowhere land. My runs have been spectacular bursts of stretching and walking. I didn't eat much. Like, I'm back to last year's weight, not just because of dehydration and certainly not because I run 10 miles a day like I used to, but because I just stopped eating when I could. One part of my life corrected itself, even when its ratification is a problematic creation in itself. Sometimes I'm so tired that the rush of blood blackens my vision when I stand. I had to bike instead of run twice. But my stomach's normal. My legs are... normalling. For the first time in a long time, I'd rather be skinny than muscly. At least, not that muscly. And yes, I know, I look normal, with a healthy BMI of 20 and am still sprouting with flowers and sweat. I feel better in one way. Worse in many more.

Most of the time, the fatigue travels through my fingers, and I start ignoring people on chat. It started this school year, and I dropped friend by friend. I used to care what they'd think about what I would say, and I would still help anyone without hesitation. Its just so easy not to care anymore. I want to watch Master Chef. I want to watch vlogbrothers. I want to read Mental Floss and Calvin and Hobbes and Zits and Foxtrot, snuggled in bed or slouching over a table, a pack of gum, a watermelon, and slice of lemon dangling in my water. I want want want want want want want. While I'm at it, I want to draw and listen to the Miracle of Swindon Town and Swoodilypoopers Strike Back. I want a break, and some Portillo's. It's 11:33 PM right now, so of all of those things, I just want to read myself into a comical and serious world of painted characters, so deep and complex, yet so resolute and truer than any person who's tried to hold a conversation with me.

I wish I could cartoon. All I can do is write about how great cartoonists are. They are all, in fact, great. Sparky to the Bills to Jim and Jerry. Artists are a friendly bunch, just not syndicates and merchandising businesses.

Well, at badminton today, we did forehand drop-overhead smash for an hour and a half straight. It was like plyo on steroids. Our butts melted. I lost my air. We were a happy bunch. I've missed being happy here. I've missed feeling invigorated by the possibilities, because now I don't have possibilities (and no, for anyone who judges me for my grades in junior year, they were not the worst, and you're terrible for assigning my academic value to B+s. I am obviously a stable academic. haha.). I don't love anything outside of the humanities. Where has my reason gone.

To the people I don't reply to (that is, all but three people. I've left monoloques hanging.):
Sorry, but I don't think I'm that sorry quite yet. Here is my pity card: I wake up wondering if I should eat breakfast in the stale and clogging air, or if I should run, and forget that breakfast is truly that important. I spend half of my days wishing I could try intermittent fasting, and the other half wishing I could run faster. I draw, but I know I'm not that good. I'm okay, better than you probably, unless you're Eveline or Elizabeth (I'm assuming no other artists read this blog), but I would still rather read Will Grayson Will Grayson. I would rather read about suicidal love that is not overly sexualized than draw a city scape. I romanticize everything, and everything falls short. I'll romanticize a great conversation with you, and it will fall short. I'll feel the need to run or draw in the middle, and I'd find something cool on Youtube or Pop Chart Lab. Let's go to Starbucks or Einstein's instead. I promise we'll catch up, no phones allowed.