Fighting Inertia

Objects at rest tend to stay at rest, and objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

I am all too often an object at rest.

Sunday night I arrived back from the spelunking leg of the week's travels, and it is only now, on Tuesday evening, that I have begun to blog again, or do much of anything, really. The human capacity to do jack shit is really quite astounding when you think about it.

But some things were accomplished. Yesterday's time was eaten up by a trip into work to do a bit of paperwork that needed doing and could be done by none other than me. Today began with some hardcore loafing, and then continued on to an outing in which I purchased, yet again, painting gear. And let me tell you, art supplies are waaay more expensive when they aren't subsidized by either one's parents or one's high school art teacher. Nevertheless, I've allowed cramped dorm and apartment living keep me from my art for far too long - the entire seven years since I graduated high school, in fact. Which is downright weird when you consider how big a part of my life art was for me prior to graduating high school. I'm convinced that had I not had art classes and the community thereabouts through high school, I would have ended up way more messed up than I did.

Whatever the case, I have a stack of canvasses, some fresh paints, and some brushes and knives that are sufficiently servicable to crank out some of the abstract-ish stuff that I evolved into doing towards the end of my high school career. What I'm going to paint, I don't really know. As an angsty teenager, unfocused anger and frustration was a driving force in my life, and it really was at the forefront of my psyche. Because of this, I always had something very obvious to tap into when I painted. Now, I'm not really sure what to do. I'm happier in general, but I'm still very suceptible to existential dread, and while there's still anger, it's highly specific anger focused on a plethora of environmental elements. There just doesn't seem to be one driving emotion that can leap forward and lead my focus. When I think about art, and my practicing of art, I end up thinking about how I've drifted away from that ideal path that I set out, how I feel burdened by "real life," and how I yearn to get back to that ideal. I feel like Odysseus, with a touch of Jonah. How to channel that into some visual art, I don't really know, but we'll just have to see what happens. 'Cause it's a damned shame I drifted away from art, and it's gonna change. (This is all a part of last Thursday night's epiphany...)

In other news, I'm trying out making some gravad lax, this time using some farmed, color-added Atlantic salmon. Should it turn out well, I've got some wild sockeye salmon sitting in the freezer (to kill off any parasites it may be carrying), awaiting the same, salty fate.