I don't like science fiction

In fact, I might go as far as saying that I hate science fiction. The mere mention of a Hobbit sends me into a semi-catatonic haze. Oh yes, I can anticipate, some of you will argue, this is fantasy not science fiction. However, I know this much—the Hobbit book and its offspring involve many new species from an unknown planet searching for some ring that makes its wearer all-powerful with a hint of evil. This is a literary and film genre in which I cannot personally invest time. Though I will say that I have nothing against lovers of sci-fi/fantasy, in fact I find its followers endearing—my father and brother trained me that well.

Lately reading certain mainstream journalism has been giving me chills, heightening my daily anxiety level and sending me toward the familiar Hobbit-coma-state. To be more specific, I am trying to understand how the theory of "Intelligent Design" seems to be making enough news to find a home in The New York Times almost daily.

I was raised in the Church of Science. When I was small, my family lived in West Virginia. We had a huge yard on all sides of the house and a long driveway that my dad re-tarred every other year. One summer he took two rolls of computer paper from the old dot-matrix printers (the kind with the pages linked together with perforated seams and the edges lined with hole-punches.) We stretched the paper out the length of our very-long driveway and made a time-line of well, time, as we know it. I spent the day drawing shelled animals from a book on fossils and at the very distant end of the dot-matrix scroll, my brother and I began to understand how little time humans had spent on earth.

This week The Times began to cover the lawsuit in progress in Pennsylvania; a debate about whether introducing I.D. in public school science classes simultaneously introduces religion. The article summarized that Professor Kenneth Miller of Brown University "projected slides that he said contradicted the core of design theory: that organisms are irreducibly complex. He also denigrated intelligent design as 'a negative argument against evolution,' in which there is no 'positive argument' to test whether an intelligent designer actually exists. If the theory is not testable, he said, it is not science."

It is this simple, Intelligent Design, is not science. I'm not sure if it is even science fiction. Well maybe on a good day it's science fiction with a really shitty underdeveloped plot-line. I suppose in some sense I'm beginning to understand what it feels like for government to make decisions that completely undermine my religious grounding...in the Church of Science. I can't even imagine the confusion that will breed if all glosses of Darwin are preceded with a "keep in mind, you might just go to hell if you support this guy." Maybe we should all just give up and form mini expedition parties in search of Frodo's ring to meld the future of the human race to our own personal whims.

"I'm an...ahem....artist"

During a conversation the other night, knowing my area of work, a man asked "Well what is it you want to do really?" and I paused and said, "Beyond making ends meet I want to be an artist." He bounced back immediately with "You and 750,000 other people." I thought to myself that this comment was quite possibly the most obnoxious conversation dead-end and also wondered how he decided on that number. His phone rang simultaneously and with that, our "conversation" was indeed over.

It's taken me a long time to be comfortable with that statement, "I want to be an artist," simply because it does conjure up images involving unwashed greasy hair, an ashtray piled with cigarette butts, big 80's dresses in Soho gallery openings, becoming an old lady with "funky" glasses, a pottery wheel in your living room and 80 cats, not to mention that it seems so inaccessible to many people that it becomes its own conversation stopper. But I am getting older and I think I need to be honest with myself about what I want to do with my life.

I know I will be happy if I am able to work in the visual arts—in visual communication. I am beginning to be more comfortable with the idea of not making much money, with the unknown, and with finding work in obscure areas. I certainly do not assume that I will ever be able to make an entire living on creating my own images. But I want to work really hard and see if I get there someday.

Perceptions and reactions are indeed funny when you come to terms with wanting "to be an artist." When I participated in a yogurt focus group a few weeks ago (i.e. finding work in obscure areas) they provided a table full of stickers and markers to make name tags. I chose a funny looking chicken sticker and wrote my name with a blue marker while some of the other ladies spent about 20 minutes perfecting the union of balloon stickers and magic marker polka-dots around their name. One of the brainstorming leaders approached me and said "That's not a very fancy name tag for an artist." I wanted to reply with "Right, because that's what I do for a living, I collect stickers and make name tags." But instead I just said I wanted to keep the focus on my chicken.

Some days it's easier to just say I am an "odd-jobist" for a living and avoid the images of a black wardrobe, performance art sequences in the nude, and selling small oil paintings on street corners. But this is exactly the reason I am so lucky, because I have the choice. I had the choice to take the risk of walking away from office life and health insurance after two college degrees, the choice to dress like a teenager when I go to work, and the choice to choose uncertainty and figure out how to be happy in it.

Go away blogger spammers

Thank you Blogger for posting a note about using “word verification” to block spam comments. I do so hope this technology works. The animal that is spam seems to have wormed its way into every corner of internet publishing and communication. Sometimes it feels like wading through raw sewage to find that email from your friend’s new work address. Personally I’d like to read some statistics on exactly how many bottles of sugar pills have been sold as a result of the ENLARGE YOUR PENIS IN JUST 48 HOURS emails we all find in our inbox every morning. The most humorous spam comment so far was the following remark after my musings on Divine’s big bush from that eloquent blogger, Handbag—

Handbag said...
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Thanks, Handbag, I was just thinking about finding a fake Louis Vuitton bag so I can blend into every other woman on the subway. The Scrabble It’s your word against mine canvas tote that K gifted me is looking rather shabby. Thanks for the tip.

Open Season

September 1st was a beautiful day at the Jersey Shore. I sat on the beach reading for almost 8 hours. At one point I became absorbed in watching a three-on-three tag football game. The game was made up of boys from two families in three sizes—small, medium, and beer gut. The Smalls were fast and eager, overcompensating a bit, veering off in the wrong direction, Mediums were graceful in receiving the ball and made their juts back and forth look fairly effortless, and the Beer-Guts were vocal and a little lethargic.

I was throwing a football in Central Park a few weeks ago which led me to yell “Ugggh, I throw like a girl.” So, after observing the beach game for a few minutes I estimated that my skills could be improved by focusing on the 6-year-old Smalls’ technique. After a few plays, a Small was hit in the chest during an attempted catch and crumbled to the ground to pout. His Beer-Gut counterpart yelled “Oh come on, you’re OK, get up.” And after a couple minutes, he turned to his daughter “Megan, wanna play?” A bean-pole 10-year-old ran over to the “field” lunging and clapping her hands, ready for the game, but also followed by a toddler and four-year-old who skipped around the playing area. The Beer-Guts looked at each other with slight frustration and at the threat of his place being taken, the injured Small rose, ready to play again.

I found myself in a strange moment sitting there alone, surrounded by young families, half-way into a book, with most of my New York anxieties buried at the back of my brain. This week of nearly perfect end-of-summer weather makes me a little sad in general. I love August and I’m not sure where it went. Right now merging back into the day-to-day my mind is racked with the things I want to aim for this Fall; overarching to-dos that quieted in the end of summer heat and travel. There’s a lot in my head and it’s been keeping me up at night. So I am making lists in a new notebook— I have graduate school applications to begin, some gallery shows to apply for, a new work schedule, at least a dozen images that I need to get down on paper, a friends’ wedding to look forward to, and apple pie season, I’d like to write more often, work on my headstand balance, and I don’t know, maybe improve my football throw.