Thing

I

Make sure you get plenty of hugs this weekend, Mom says. In my dream, where I'm talking to her.

Hugs? Actually, there's a furry convention this weekend I was totally going to go to anyway, I say. Furries are crazy big on hugs. All about hugging, really.

Acceptable, Mom says. And I head out to leave, and I wake up. And I get out of bed (still half-piled with my stuff from packing) and I grab my Kindle and I look up if there even are any furry conventions going on this weekend. And, yeah I guess there is one, actually, but it's in Shanghai, so, thanks but no thanks.

And it occurs to me a few hours later, however many, that, heck, maybe there could be a brony convention going on this weekend instead? But didn't Bronycon Baltimore just take place; I doubt that there'll be another one so soon after that. I read about it in the papers, explaining what bronies are to an audience unaware. Community, the article talked about. Finally feeling like you've found your people.

Sounds like something that would make me entirely too uncomfortable to attend, putting it that way.

I try to analyze the root of these feelings- do I really not want to find my people? Do I just not want it to be these guys, taking these things way too seriously? Do they reveal things I'm afraid of about myself?

Am I afraid of fitting in at all? Do I want there to be a "my people?" If there is a "my people," do I want it to be them? Nerds, weirdos, whatever, is it better to be an outcast even from that? I've seen the slippery slope of using these waypoints to define yourself; I've been down it. But even just being yourself, that's what that's all about, being accepted; these are your people.

Do I not want to be accepted?

I'll say not, because, of course I want acceptance, but there's a difference between unconditional love and unconditional acceptance, and, really settling down and saying "this is who I am," miiight stunt growth, hinder progression?

But that's not it either. It's not quite J Alfred Prufrock-level, "it is impossible to say just what I mean," but neither is it liable to be a subject that can be exhausted.

I go to the craft and hobby store, like I do frequently. Check out the fabrics. Check out the, whatever. Take a trip to the Hobby Lobby, take a trip to the Office Max. These, I say to myself, these are my people.

And in a sudden blast of realization, I let out a breath, a death rattle minus the death.

II

The past and present are collapsing in onto each other. Aggressively. With the future added in for good measure (though, it being graduation day, not necessarily my future.) Collapse of time, Christmas in July and all that; seriously watched Elf today*. It's the final day of David Dornan's Detritus, the art exhibition at the Spori that replaced Brother Geddes's retrospective. I went in there one last time and realized I never actually got any photos of the exhibit itself. I have a few now.

As much as I hated to admit it, didn't want to like it just on principle how the exhibit replaced the last grasping point of my Art 101 teacher now retired, the last anchor of his to this school- but, the Dornan exhibit, it was really mind-blowing.

Photos can't do it justice, sorry. They're paintings but they look like photographs. Still lifes but not draw from life-- rather built up from the paint itself, applied in random or semi-random shapes which suggested how to go from there, representational objects constructed, knowledge of the science of lighting applied. The colors are vivid, the textures are painty. Like, actual drips and globs of paint, applied to the canvas, and made to appear as part of the image itself instead of just dripped over it. And doing the same with stenciled-on images, too.

It took a bit of study to figure out how he did it, but. Basically has to do with going over the globs themselves with more paint, to blend them into the lighting of the object.

I've been in the gallery before, of course. But it was only today that I realized that, as with all the other exhibits that have been displayed here, there's a second-floor balcony section of the exhibit too.

While I was up there, musing on, actually I guess I wasn't musing at all, there was a knocking sound past the door, whack-whack-whack-whack-whack, where the faculty offices are. I'd watched Brother Geddes clean out his office, after his own art exhibit; now, as I peeked in, I could see a couple members of faculty, dressed in the ceremonial robes of graduation, pounding the pins out of the doorhinges of the offices, for some reason, with the butt end of a screwdriver- specifically Brother Geddes's old office, and though they moved onto others too, there it was: this the final day of school, graduation day, the final day of the exhibit after Brother Geddes's retrospective, and here they were in commencement robes, depinning doorhinges.

III

The collapse of past present and future all to one day doesn't sound so aggressive with just that one surreally symbolic-seeming example, so I'll mention one more thing: hand-carved mahogany. I mentioned it in the title for this post of exactly one week ago, but by definition did not say why. Sinbad: The Legend of the Seven Seas, maybe it will finally stop haunting me with this. The same couple in the lounge as from last week, they were watching The Emperor's New Groove last time and here, on less of a date (meaning, seemingly not minding as much my being there) watching The Road to El Dorado. The lounge right now is smothered in stuff. Luggage. A couple of boxes of give-away stuff, which people can add to; one box for food they didn't eat, the other for not-trash. They go through stuff now, in the background, mostly watching the movie. I hover for a bit, but mostly am on my way passing through at the odd time betwixt errands which I really can't remember anymore.

Last time, a week ago, they said, do you mind, this is kind of a date, just the two of them on a sofa. Yeah, sure, I say. Just here to catch this one part... "Break it down? This is hand-carved mahogany," Kronk says, and with that line, my quest is complete. I'd watched Sinbad earlier that day, which also has the line, this is hand-carved mahogany. And Sinbad is a movie that seems to be cropping up more and more frequently, lately, because even that viewing hadn't been the most recent one since the Animation Workshop finale of last semester, more like the second or third. Or fourth.

And so, guess what movie the item watches after Road to El Dorado.

I don't catch much of it at all, this time. Going between errands that I can remember this time.

IV

I mean to pull an all-nighter tonight. Still have the papers to write for Ancient Temples and Temple Texts. And my bed is still covered in stuff. This is what it looked like last night:

I just cleared off the stuff at the one end to sleep, sleeping on just half the bed; the Zootopia merch I left on. Clean checks, and checkouts today, but we're not checking out till tomorrow, and this is what my bed looks like now:

That's with that box on the floor, its contents scattered about, which had at one point contained the non-Zootopia-merch portion of the bed's original contents. The Zootopia merch is all in that suitcase on the bed, save for the hats. I used those for a still-life, from life, or 6 thumbnails for a still-life at least. The box on the floor vomited because I still needed art supplies for it, and those were buried down there.

And then it turns out that the assignment from last week is the real final, with this week's lesson canceled for sake of convenience. It would certainly have been convenient knowing that earlier.

And now I have this scanned**, but with nothing to do with it. I can show it here I guess.

*it's directed by John Favreau, which blew my mind when I learned that.

**Unrelated, save for... down in the Spori lab, same place where I learned of Teen Witch and they watch Netflix and YouTube anyway and view their illustrations and animations: this got viewed, Too Many Cooks got referenced, and for those who enjoyed that there's this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN71h43iR6U