Paint

I’ve always considered art my “hobby” because, I don’t know when, but somewhere I realized I just wasn’t going to be that good. Or I didn’t feel the need to be that good, I didn’t want it that much. I’d draw pictures for other people: family, friends, boys I liked, but I never felt the need to do more than that. Even though I’m hugely invested and interested in the idea of visual art, it doesn’t sustain me by itself — there is still something flat and static about the people and things I draw unless I’m mimicking, unless there’s a reference; I don’t understand the anatomy of something that moves, I can’t quite translate the muscle to the visible surface. I like the palette of words, the way you can construct a room a house an ocean a city an entire person, with almost nothing, but then also infinitely everything. But I’m not saying it’s better, either, because all that stuff, all those words (here is a tree with dark branches, though in parts the bark is stripped pale; here is the way the sunlight makes your eyes translucent) so depends on what you’ve seen before, even if you haven’t really seen them before. The connection is fluid.

So that’s why I don’t stop, not that anybody’s asking me to make that choice, but I’ve wondered why I keep doing this, scrawling or painting or taking pictures, if it doesn’t immediately do anything for me, if it’s not super astounding or adds to my portfolio or pays my rent.

Because there is something about the process that I like, the making and the noticing. There is something really awesome about mixing paint, about seeing these new colors unfurl, the trial-and-error steps that go into finding the exact shade I want, a little like coding, a little like revision. And I never pay as much attention to something unless I’m trying to draw it, unless I’m trying to understand its contours and textures and weight, or at least replicate it, represent it, in a way I don’t have to in text.

I want to do more of that this year, which is something I say every year, but let’s be ambitious. And grateful.

2011 goals in review:

• Subscribe to more magazines/journals: Done and done, maybe even too much, and THERE IS ALWAYS MORE TO READ. It’s been interesting going through the flashy glitter of commercial print stuff, e.g. GQ, compared to the smaller (and larger) periodicals that make up the literary sphere. I am kind of/always amazed at how profuse the offerings are and I enjoyed all of my subscriptions. I’ll note that I stopped my sub to Print Magazine because it’s too far removed from what I’m interested in, I guess, even if it’s a beautiful and interesting curation of graphic design and print artifacts.
• Write more: Ha, yes, and still not enough! But I think I accomplished the “more.”
• Run: So despite my wonderful boyfriend’s incredible coaching, my inner monologue was like this for most of the year: “Hey, yeah, you can totally do this! — Oh wait actually no, MAKE IT STOP I HATE EVERYTHING ON THIS PLANET.” But I am making progress! Though going back to 30-degree weather is going to be f-u-n.
• Cooking more: Oh what a glorious thing.
• Library: Apparently I didn’t check out enough books at either the public or the university library in 2010. Now I think I have a hoarding problem. (This applies to all graduate students, right?…)

For 2012:

• Read more online: Yeah, I already do this mad digest of Google Reader feeds and internet binging, but there are a bazillion internet magazines I’m just not too familiar with. I resolve to spend more time with them and figure out what I admire about the ones I find, and what I don’t. I keep thinking about unsubscribing from GRANTA’s feed because the content is just too long to read at one stroke (even though it’s excellent content!), for example, so maybe feeds aren’t the way to go for that specific kind of publication system. (Speaking of GRANTA, they excerpted from Paul Auster’s second memoir which is due September 2012, THAT IS FOREVER FROM NOW. AUGH.)
• Learn Flash/eBooks: Because they are important, although I resolve never to use flash/background music for a restaurant website.
• Revise + submit more + play: Should be a given, and I keep taking this off the list, but here it is.
• Optimism: that tricky inspirational poster word which is easy to bat away, because sometimes it’s just hard to get yourself to move, but you have to. “It could be disappointing, but it could be marvelous.” Because you want marvelous.

Participation

I feel like the older I get, the less I experience Christmas, maybe because my family has never had a set tradition; no stained-glass cookies, no stockings over our fireplace (maybe once, twice), and the flurry of torn giftwrap has a flexible date and time. We never get snow or roast chestnuts or drink eggnog, though I try to maintain my annual tradition of watching Home Alone and Home Alone 2, which is probably why I have this weird crystalline idea of a “real” Christmas complete with snow-dusted trees and knit pom-pom hats and ice skating, though those crisp images are actually unreal. But I definitely used to agonize about waiting and waiting and waiting for presents, but also the idea of celebration, the poinsettias with thick red leaves, the process of putting up lights and dressing the tree in tinsel, the cold night air, looking up at the sky and trying to imagine the Star of Bethlehem and the manger I’d seen so many times in so many ways. Now, though, my family’s been lazy (me) or too busy (my parents) to wrap presents ahead of time, so the skirt of the tree was bare until just yesterday. Even when I went out shopping today with my best friend and my sister, the Christmas music they piped over the speakers kind of faded, I don’t know why — it wasn’t exhausted or cloying, it was just unremarkable. It’s almost Christmas Eve and I feel like I’m barely ready, that I haven’t enough time to participate in what Christmas means to me, and that I’m not even really sure what it means to participate. Today, when a store employee rang me up and chirped, “Merry Christmas!” I mumbled: “You too.” It occurred to me how weird it is, like, what does that mean? Hope you enjoy your Christmas, have a good day? It’s not actually Christmas Day, though, and she didn’t say “I hope you have a Merry Christmas.” Okay, actually it’s shorthand for Nice, Seasonally Aware Goodbye to Customer, a thank you for participating in the most consumerist holiday, and especially a thank you for patronizing their business. But it felt suddenly, weirdly personal, like she’d forced me into the cult of Christmas, of universal goodwill and cheer, where everything is somehow magical and festive and lovely and everyone gives out hugs and cocoa. Of course, the blip of time passed and then I just gathered my bags and went to the next store with L and my sister.

Later, though, I wrapped my last present and went downstairs to stick it under the tree. The tree was lit up and I realized that everyone had put their presents down there, finally, carefully folded and decked with bows and little drawings, these boxes we’ll pass around and open soon. I set down the box and then had to go back for my camera because it just looked too good, this tree, the electric colors, the pinkish-yellow light painting everything, the glitter of the tinsel, all the sparkle points in the dark. I looked and I looked and I looked. All the bokeh and the millions of tree photos that are out there and all the clichés and I had to do it anyway because, how can such a thing exist? This small spectacle.

Season of

Unfocused street lights, flooded gutters, and cold air.

Darling and regal horses.

Not pictured: Texas brisket, pulled pork sandwiches, watermelon mojitos, a canopy of trees, and the best company.

Also not pictured: so much from August and September thus far that I have, unfortunately, neglected to document. But I did manage to finish A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (amazing) and figure out how to keep a virtual cookbook with Evernote, so that has to count for something, right? Maybe.