Capturing Campus: Dying Ritual

EKArts Leave a comment

Content warning: Suicide

Dying Ritual

Put on shoes—your best ones–or regular ones; tie them tight for white toes and pink ankles; start walking; walk with purpose, on a time crunch to nowhere; cross the street; watch for cars; don’t trip; remember not to trip; not tripping is important; round the corner at the stop sign; there’s a bird on a wire; don’t stare because that would be rude; keep walking; another turn; do you remember where you’re going; reach the gate; bend your spine; duck beneath; don’t let a car snag your side; up the elevator; press down; top floor; wait a moment; think of nothing in particular; wait some more; the doors shutter open; step onto the roof; find the courage; take a step; remember your shoes are tied; take another step; look at a bird, which could be the old one but isn’t; take a large step; how would one know if it is the same bird; take a larger one; step step step onto the ledge; is anybody watching; watch the bird that hasn’t budged; move an inch, a couple more; how many centimeters is an inch; the wind is cold; breathe a breath; make it good; don’t go slowly; say a prayer; don’t go slowly; don’t look down; but do; should you look down; is that what people do; look down and fall—or don’t; you’ll see it through tomorrow.

aSoSS 40 | Leeway

a-spider-on-state-street Leave a comment

…and she responds, and doesn’t get weird, or defensive, like you.

[mouth agape]

Yeah, yeah, it’s okay. Me too.

Trader Joe’s, 12:00PM, 11/24/2024

every shipman is aware of the dangers of slack, a knife of potential cutting across the air. and yet we have tiptoed around the topic for too long, each of us too scared to wake the current and lose the line. like a cruel childhood game–whoever moves first loses!–your hands are at your mouth and i am on one knee (as if to tie a shoe, i tell you, but really, do you believe that?) and the moment is frozen in a dream, so vivid a memory could not do it justice. the orange is left to spoil on the counter, unpeeled, unsplit. pure and perforated and rotten, at the same time, in all the wrong places.

If you don’t like it, you just hand it to Eileen, be like “cool, now you have two!”

Food Mart, 12:00PM, 12/26/2024

the vice of the human condition is the systematic approach to an unstructured life. you have been tasked with falling in love: go and sit on the bus and hold eye contact and brush the snow out of her hair. a look of surprise overwhelms you. even the most artistic are drawn to scientific conclusions, eliminating every variable at once. everything must go to plan or else it is not the plan at all. a senior thesis: is it, or is it not? the numbers quiver in their sockets.

when you board, the bus is empty, the driver wears sunglasses, and all the snow has melted.

That’s my job, and yeah, you and I have to stick to it because we’ve been way too accommodating!

Traverwood Library, 5:00PM, 1/14/2025

the tap water runs clear and straight–an ominous sign. it was the vietnamese activist Duong Thu Huong who wrote there’s no river without a bend just as there’s no life without its unhappiness. i look around; the room is littered with peanut shells. i am an elephant with a blanket on its back and the room is nothing more than a cage. outside, panem et circenses. the carnival band starts to play and the world is filled with all the notes of an obituary.

Witness the Small Life – Self-Interest

Mia Lambert 1 Comment

New year, new semester, new entry! Huzzah to the jugs of coffee, days of work, and more hours of sunshine to come our way. Although we’re barely a full week into classes, it already feels like a semester to rival all others.

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept and physicality of self. In my figure drawing class this semester we have a self portrait to do every week, a new version of ourselves frozen in the moment we create them. As someone who started as a self-taught artist in middle school, I’ve always used myself as a model in my artwork. It’s the easiest reference to use, right at the ready as long as you have a phone or a mirror. What started just as studies of human anatomy started to grow into modes of self-expression. I started to draw myself not just as what I saw but as what I wanted to see. Somebody confident, or witty, and especially self-assured. I dreamed up fantastical stories and places that I would put myself in as if I always existed there. An ideal within a dream that took place between the covers of my sketchbook. Then, in high school, I decided to move beyond the literal and into the conceptual. For my AP art classes my upperclassman years I explored the events, memories, and ideas that shaped me throughout my youth. From identity, to nostalgia, to crisis I captured it through the explosion of visual language that I started to hone in my teenagedom. It was Covid, of course, so being cooped up inside meant I spent a lot of time with myself, whether I liked it or not. This lead to the creation of self-portraits in forms of crochet sweaters, clay sculptures, a pair of junk earrings–whatever I could get my hands on really . The expansion of self-portraiture that I created in this time pushed not only my perception of self but my understanding of how I could really capture that version of self beyond what is there. Now in college I’ve turned back to traditional self-portraits with a newfound appreciation. I’ve learned how a drawing of your face is more than just your face, it exists as a record of every decision made to create that face. Every line of shadow and scratch of contour is an example of our very impact of choice onto that page. As an artist, and as a person really, every thing I do is influenced by who I am. The idea of self and identity are always shifting and transforming that I find myself fascinated by the very concept (which is absolutely why I have a billion of drawings of myself). I think it’s funny to say I love drawing myself as both a slightly conceited thing and a truly passionate declaration. Through the creation of my self-portraits throughout the years I’ve been able to confront who I am and grow so much of my self-love from those moments of confrontation. To see, create, and capture is to love and how wonderful is to do that through the practice of self-portraits.

To take into our next week:

Ins: Clogs (always!!), sunglasses, oolong tea, accents, cheesy soup, practicing an early bird routine, medium roast coffee, dressing up in costume.

Outs: Sour tomatoes, sore feet, undercooked onions, objectively bad jokes, character assassinations for the sake of plot, not doing wrist stretches, spoiled milk.

Here’s to another lovely year together and to even more witnessing of the small life all around us 😀

LOG_039_HUIJ

Traveler Leave a comment

Above: the beginnings of a village established on KHEPRI-1c. Though most of the planet’s population were transient researchers, some found their calling among the icy peaks and igneous valleys and sought to become permanent residents. Powered by geothermal activity beneath the crust, their massive radar tower was the main source of communication with the outside world, and it expanded into one of the biggest outposts on the planet. However, less than a decade later, misfortune struck: a major earthquake followed by a particularly harsh storm wiped out most of its population, and the remaining survivors elected to abandon the crumbling town to the mercies of 1c’s eternal winter.