Schizophreniart

Schizophreniart -- Two parts that make a whole in one artist, with two seperate personalities. One, ready to go, ready to start or finish, always on the move and looking for the next thing to do to move forward. The other, a lazy son of a bitch, one who procrastinates, chews away at the paper and doesn't really want to do anything; always looking for a way out of making that next move.

Friend of mine and I are both in the same situation where we are lacking in self motivation, curiosity, imagination, creativity, and yet art is what we DO. Art is what we love, what we think of everyday. But getting down to business and actually doing up the pieces in your brain is such a TASK. Why does something you love doing still feel like work? We think it may be cause of schizophreniart. The big meany part of you won't actually let you sit down and enjoy what you're doing.

It's like you need to break up with the bad part of yourself so you can become a whole artist. Understand you're a crazy weirdo who can't function properly unless you say goodbye to the one side of you that just doesn't make any sense and that feeds your ego in the wrong ways.

Easier said than done!! But a good idea nonetheless, wouldn't you think? Fresh approach!

Death and Dying and D words

Lots of talk of death lately.

I feel this is what needs to happen in order for civilization to evolve to a more empathetic level. I had a talk with my friend yesterday about so many other friends all of a sudden coming into realizations and epiphanies. Things in life have somehow pushed everyone in a different direction, forward, moving towards a more "spiritual" kind of understanding of the world. Friends who have never understood what I ever talked about when I expressed the way I see things now have experienced it for themselves.

The conversion is happening quickly, so much so that we don't even know where the time goes in between the person we used to be to the person that we are now. Has there really been that big of changes in one day? In a couple of hours? Sure, time seems to be accelerating -- in whatever way you'd like to put it -- but we're also being bombarded with so much information it's hard to believe we'd actually be taking it all in.
Anyway, I've side-tracked, as I usually do. What would happen to this world if we all actually understood what it means to be dying? We are dying every single minute of every day, slowly deteriorating, and yet we push the reality of death aside. Fear of death actually stops us from living fully. The moment we accept how imminent death really is, we may start changing ourselves for the better. We may want to do everything in our power to make the present moment AMAZING, passionate, invigorating, thrilling! Pushing limits, knowing no matter what, we may die today or tomorrow or twenty years from now but it doesn't matter, because we love the fact that we are! Falling in love with death is a strange concept but I personally think this may be the only way to truly save us from all the "fear" that's instilled within.

Thank the universe every single day that you're alive, because who knows how much longer you'll be here? Know that this experience, no matter how mundane, how unfortunate, how lucky, how bright or dark, cannot be done over, cannot be taken back!

It Doesn't Interest Me ...

Someone posted this on Facebook today and it gave me shivers. Sometimes words come along that make you want to change and be better and better and better.

"It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon... I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow; if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain -- mine or your own -- without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy -- mine or your own -- if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself, if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day. If you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure -- yours and mine -- and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!” It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in these empty moments."    Oriah

Introvertedness

I'm currently reading this amazing book called "The Introvert Advantage". Highly recommended to anyone who feels they might be out of the loop with society. Sometimes I feel like I don't fit in quite right, or I judge every move I make too harshly. Conversation doesn't come to me as naturally as most others, and using my short-term memory (even remembering what I did last night) is difficult. Yep, those are all introvert "qualities".

A lot of it reassures that I'm still normal, despite what other people tell me. I know there's a third of the population out there who make a fuss over the little things like I do, and who can't stand being at parties and small-talk chit-chatting for hours. It's cool, cause I can then reinforce the really great qualities of my introvertedness and use it to my advantage. It's also shown me how much my partner and I differ in different areas that I never understood before. It's not that he likes his friends more than me, it's that he needs a larger group of people to satisfy his energy cravings, whereas I feed off of one or two people to get energized. So amazing, the things you learn and that make you feel way differently about yourself!

About Fashion

Yesterday, at an art show, I mentioned to a friend that I take a long time in the morning choosing what I feel like wearing. I don't know what it is that influences my choices, I suppose it's a lot of different things, like what colour do I feel like expressing, do I want to be comfortable or do I mind being in a bit tighter-fitting clothes, do I want to stand out in a crowd or blend in, do I want to be dark or bright, simple or complicated, eccentric or normal, and so many other factors. Throughout the seasons my style also changes; if it's summer, I have a lot less layering to do.

Anyway, when I told my friend this he was blown away. He doesn't get why girls (I think both girls and boys can take as long getting dressed) take so long trying to decide what to wear, trying to look "perfect" all the time. His girlfriend takes pride in her appearance and takes a long time to get ready in the morning, and it's very hard for him to understand why one would bother taking all that time. It must be frustrating for those who just don't see any benefit or purpose to fashion. We all brought up some really good points though, as to why people want to feel trendy, feel good in their clothing, conform or stand out from a crowd ... and it all has to do with social acceptance and exchange of information.

If I think (really hard) about why I dress up the way that I do, it's mainly because I find my being another canvas. My self is a portrait, much like a painted portrait, of who I am and which era I live in. It tends to describe what I like, and sometimes what I'm interested in. I can NOT wear the same thing twice. Yes, I will wear a shirt a bunch of times, but I won't be able to wear it in the same combination with the same other pieces even twice... if I do, a long time must go by in between. It's almost like an artistic challenge every morning: how can I combine what I have and turn it into something brand new? The way my brain works (I've figured through time) is it wants to improve everything it sees, and never repeat anything. It wants to make things better, different, more complex, always wants to add something new into the mix. It erks me to even take the same route to the coffee shop every day. You could say I'm an entrepreneur ...
I will surely be influenced by what other people think. Probably because I always want to look new and exciting, but I also want to look "good" to the public. I want people to think some kind of positive thought when they see me, whether this be "she's creative" or "she's mysterious" or "wow, how did she think of putting all those layers together?" Perhaps because that's what I think when I see others who look really good or interesting. If I enjoy it in other people, I sure will want to reflect this in myself.

There's my little rant on fashion. Why do you dress the way you do?

Piscean Nature

Just went to astro.com for the first time in a long time. Here's a couple of my favorite sections about my Piscean self, and so much of it hits home.
--
"It's impossible to understand your real motivations, because like the tides of the ocean, they change all the time. Pisces is concerned with a realm that has no boundaries."

"You have a fluidity and complexity which can be alternatively enchanting and infuriating. There are so many people inside you that others wonder when the real Pisces will stand up and be seen. Sometimes you show a strange passivity or inertia when a crisis looms. But making decisions requires choosing one thing over another, and to you all choices contain some truth. Seeing the relativity of truth is a great gift, because it makes you tolerant and forgiving - and, occasionally, incredibly lax. "

"That calm, wise indifference with which you greet human transgressions not only applies to your own transgressions. You can sit quietly while your lover leaves, your children insult you, your employer heaps abuse on your head, and your landlord throws you out of your house. Pisceans seem to accept misfortune as though they were born to it, expect it, even welcome it. But you know something other signs don't: all that human suffering means little when your eyes and heart are focused on a greater unity."

"But you have an intuitive sense of some other reality, something magical and elusive, a transcendent unity which makes ordinary life seem drab and meaningless."

"You're also an incurable romantic. Some Pisceans have lots of defences to hide this tendency, but romantic you were born and romantic you will remain. And romance isn't just about love affairs. You crave magic, and you get bored more easily than any other sign. The only truly consistent things about you are your allegiance to a higher, deeper reality and your love and longing for change. Never mind the safe job, the conventional social status, the budget which ensures your pension will see you through old age. You'll take hyacinths for the soul any time."

"Pisceans may be technically faithful, but their imagination isn't, and never will be. Yet the Pisces partner can give a depth of understanding and communion unmatched by any other sign. Pisceans have an essentially unpossessable quality, no matter how long you've known them. Some part of them will always belong to the cosmos, and not to you. The Pisces partner may reveal forty-five of the sixty-eight selves she's discovered inside herself that week. Be content with that. There will be dreams and visions which you never get to hear about."

*** "Keep asking a Pisces what she's thinking when she gets that vague, dreamy look, and you'll drive yourself (and her) crazy and never get any satisfactory answers. The real truth is that she probably doesn't know; she just "went off", and now she's back again. Many of Pisces' ways of communicating are nonverbal. Try to force her into rigid explanations or declarations and it's like holding a handful of water - it slides through your fingers and is gone."

"Remember never to trample on those otherworld dreams and intuitive visions, or ever assume you've understood the complex Piscean nature completely. Just when you do, they'll change on you."

About the man in my life: "It has to be said that the Taurus man can be smug. Yet when you're in a mess, he can be a rock of strength, calmness and common sense. He probably won't understand the mess, but he believes that everything should have a simple solution, and most of the time he's right - and he'll find it, no matter how complicated you thought the problem was."

The past, the past, the past ...

Awesome exerpts from Inward Revolution, by J. Krishnamurti:

"A mind that would perceive what truth is must be free of all the conditioning of any particular culture, which means free of any belief. For belief is based on the desire for comfort, for security, or on fear. You don't believe that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. You know it will rise. It's only the mind that is uncertain, confused, seeking security, comfort; it's only the mind that believes. So one must be totally free of all belief, all conclusions and obviously, all ideals. The fact that a mind that is clouded by belief cannot possibly see what truth is, though it may search for it. Do you see the truth of it? If you see the truth of it, then it's finished. Your mind then is free to observe. As you are listening, are you observing your own beliefs, your own conclusions? Do you see that such a mind is incapable of looking, of perceiving clearly? If you would perceive clearly, the mind must be totally free of belief."

"Surely, love is not an idea; love is not an image; love is not cultivation of the memory of a person whom you think you love. Love is something totally new every minute, because it is not cultivable, it is not the result of effort, strain, conflict. Where there is love, there is no conflict, because love is not a structure of the image-builder (memory, the past, the brain)."

"So a person who would live at peace with himself and with the world must understand this whole structure of knowledge about himself and the world, knowledge which is the past. A mind that lives in the past is no mind at all; it is a dead, static thing. You are living on other people's experience. Please do see this. You have not exercised that marvelous instrument which is the brain. You use it technologically when you become an engineer, when you are fighting for a job, when you are cheating your neighbor in business. But you refuse to use that brain in understanding human relationship, upon which all our social behavior is based. Unless you do this with your heart, with your whole being, your seeking God, your wanting truth, happiness has no meaning whatsoever. You can go hunting after each guru, but you will never find truth, you will never come upon it. You must learn. You must have a mind that is sensitive, clear, objective, healthy, that has no fear."