Tired

I feel exhausted lately.
Despite my two recent vacations, I am still tired, and beginning to believe that the kind of tired I am feeling is drastic and hopeless fatigue.
I know that the only thing that will make me feel better is to be done with school & boards.
I just hope after that I can actually return to my normal self.  Whoever that is....
I have a lot to be thankful for, and I am just that thankful.
Everyday I am surrounded by people that unfortunately now are fighting for their lives in one way or another.
It makes everything else seem pointless, everything you stress about or are sad about, everything you want or desire, because this person may not live.  And that could be you, or someone you love.

But despite this slap in the face all the time, I am still tired.
I hate being tired, despite a lot of sleep from time to time.
5 months seems like forever right now.....

I can still remember at 16 yrs old walking into the Cy Twombly museum for the first time.  The smell, the sound on my shoes against the hardwood floors, the open space.  And then the first painting.  My eyes glancing upon the largest painting I've ever seen, and the only painting that has ever brought tears to my eyes.
This is a painting that takes hours to fully take in, perhaps multiple trips over years of time.  One of the largest paintings ever done my Cy Twombly, and it took him over 25 years to complete.  I love it, and I love going there just to sit and absorb it all in.

Houston, in general, is very fortunate to have a Cy Twombly Museum at all.  An entire museum devoted to one painter.  The ceilings that were specially designed allow natural lighting to grace the paintings filtered through meshlike material.  Cy Twombly came to this museum when it was built and hung each and every painting himself.  An interesting fact, but others emerge as well such as the fact that he is from Virginia & was once in the military servicing as a decoder. 

Over the years, I visit the museum in a scattered, unpredictable fashion.  Each time I am fascinated, and my own desire for painting grows.  Human behavior and interaction with art in general fascinates me.  And I am constantly wondering why can I look at this painting and be so moved, yet another can look at is a see nothing but scribbles their 4 year old could make.

I have searched several times over the years for interviews by Cy Twombly.  To my great surprise, I have only been able to find one.  That is because only one exists.  How astonishing really...a painter with this much worldwide success....and only one interview.  I love that.  I love his removal from the media.
When I found out last week that Cy Twombly died in Rome, I personally was in a pool in the Sonoran Desert overlooking giant boulders with a raven flying about making calls.  I was genuinely sad.  Usually this is not the case.  I find it melodramatic to be sad and complain when someone famous dies.  I don't have connections with very many famous people of course because I don't know them.  This makes logical sense to me.  But, obviously I feel different about this because Cy Twombly's paintings have had an impact on my teenage years and my paintings.  Someones work whom I admire, and whose paintings stir me.

The thought that Cy Twombly will never make another painting is truly saddening.  But it is no doubt his paintings have had their impact on many, and will continue to do so for many many many years.

“The instructor has a responsibility to the students to provide an open,

affirming, intellectually-invigorating environment which inspires and facilitates learning.

I'll have to remember this.

breaking the lines

today I had pleasant news
unexpected news
and proof to myself of changes I need to make
in my self-perspective
my disappointments
and moods
the analytitical side

I'm so glad my friend called and told me this news
because it was ever so important
and almost made me cry with happiness

On a side note and thought
my classmate said to me quietly in the OR yesterday
we are almost at the 6 month mark
and it felt so good to hear this

Lori Pensini

angry people

 "Do you want your happiness to depend on whether other people act the way you want them to act? Or do you want your happiness to come from your ability to respond to life in harmony with what you value?"

No, not really, is my response.
The world I work in seems to be surrounded by people who are constantly trying to blame others for one thing or another.  This is even when nothing has gone wrong.  But when something does go wrong,, boy do people want to point fingers.
Today, someone tried to blame me for something when really they had done it themselves.  At first in my head I was about to defend myself, but then I just decided that I had both the power & the skills to fix what they had messed up and that I wasn't going to argue with this person about how they had just lost this line when they were drawing blood from it.
A lot of this happens though- this kind of compensation all the time- and I wonder if that too will eventually take its' toll on people. 
I know when I have to compensate all the time for someone even if it's just in a relationship- it is tiring.
Oh well, I am surrounded by lots of angry people all the time- but that is their problem not mine.

If you don't let your imagination fly, who will?

possibly maybe