i can be new
sometimes a message comes to you through art just when you need it. there's a piece by @hillergoodspeed that's been cemented in my brain since i first saw it a few years ago. it's a simple green wash with a figure laying in what i assume represents a grassy field.
i can change, it says.
i can be something else
i can be different
i can be new.
sometimes the most simple and obvious truths resonate the most deeply. i was at a very transitory point in my life when this work slid across my feed, and its text became a mantra i would whisper during difficult battles with myself.
the work to figure out what kind of person you want to be is a lifelong project, and it takes a good amount of initiative and agency. somehow i had never realized this before: that you can decide who you want to be. that your personality is not hard-coded.
i'm hard on myself, but i am trying. trying to give myself the chance to actively decide what kind of person to be. to let myself be reborn any time i need it. to give myself the grace to know i don't have to be fixed in my ways.
the world is as flexible as we are, and we can change whenever we want.
yes, i can be different. i can be new.
he who chases two rabbits catches neither of them
a cursory internet search attributes this saying variously to confucius, "native americans," old russian grandmothers, and now-retired legendary crypto traders. regardless of its origin, "he who chases two rabbits catches neither of them" truly does seem a worthy proverb to guide one's decisions in life.
lately my brain has been scattered to the four corners of the earth. i'm definitely chasing way more than two rabbits. it's more like i'm standing in the wind with a piece of fly tape, trying to catch butterflies or something for some kind of weird art project, but instead the tape gets tangled and my hair gets stuck in it and then i'm running for my bus because i lost track of time and it only comes once an hour but the doors close just as i reach them and i trip and a pickup truck with obnoxious little flags on the back aquaplanes across the road and i see my life flash before my eyes, but instead of hurtling into oblivion i just end up a bit drenched and pick myself up and i'm fine and the sun is peeking out of the clouds and my god, it's a damn beautiful day.
yeah, it feels like that inside my head some days.
oh little bunny, why do you always run away?
i'm well aware that being psychotically chaotic is not good for my health. i think it's closely tied to being terminally online, and it's not my actual personality but a normal symptom of the social media dopamine loop. in january of this year, i spent a few weeks in panama and colombia -- it took at least a week before i was able to relax. i was sitting on the beach and i felt stressed. ʕಠᴥಠʔ
one of the best things i did on that trip was to go on a four-day hike to ciudad perdida. no internet, few creature comforts, sweltering heat -- and pristine streams flaked with gold, starry skies, an abundance of rich local knowledge, miles of unexcavated structures, and indigenous spiritual beliefs that absolutely captivated me. the precolombian tribes living in this area only made first contact with the colombians in the 1970s (!!!!!!), a mere 50 years ago! one of the tribes never even comes down from the sierra nevada -- so much of their culture has therefore been preserved, and anthropologically, offers unparalleled insights to a society that lives in complete harmony with nature.
during that trek, i felt fully, wholly human. there was only now. and i revelled in it.
in 1990, some members of the kogi tribe worked with the bbc to create a documentary and share their warnings with us. (highly recommend a watch.) i could wax on forever about my experience in northern colombia, and how many worlds it opened up within me. for now, i must be content in knowing that such harmony can and does exist out there. i choose to know that this chaos is not forever -- so i find ways to enjoy it instead. and i know that i can go back to that place of peace in my head any time i feel like it.
i've digressed. (it's my internet diary, you expected coherence??)
i learned quite a few lessons by minting my first .glb project, kafka said it better. despite the upload limit of 2gb on zora, i think the file could have been optimized much better. i tried to take this into account with my latest piece. this will become a series in its own right -- cute, girly weapons -- because you can look, but don't touch. we might be pretty, but we're filled with rage.
and much like the mietze conte song, it is both cute and disturbing.
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kafka said it better
in letters to milena, franz kafka wrote, you are the knife i turn inside myself; that is love. that, my dear, is love.
this piece is a little ode to the type of love that tastes better in your dreams.
on the handle, it says:
i wanted your heart
you gave me a knife
it's also tied to a short text i wrote once that's a bit gory so i won't share it right now.
(⊙_⊙)
it's my first time minting a .glb; overall, i'm very pleased with how it turned out. there were, and still are, some lessons to learn about texturing and file optimization with this format. if someone has experience with this, please hit me up.
watch the creation process:
the number of kafka memes i've been seeing on my deranged girl instagram feed has increased lately. from this amazon listing, i surmise that booktok found out about letters to milena and went nuts over the dreamy tragedy of a clinically depressed, socially anxious man who reads.
anyway, here's to all my lovergirls and loverboys. may you find that aching love and enjoy it before it smothers you.
i can't write about you because you'll read it
back when i lived in a more vibrant neighborhood (that's a polite way to say it), i used to keep notes about the people i'd run into or have random conversations with. like a former boxer with a tough-looking dog who always called me "bella." or a german woman with a walker who lived in a hotel down the street, usually wearing not-quite-appropriate-for-public-appearances pyjama shorts and wiping her nose incessantly, a blue medical mask dangling uselessly from her chin. or a smiley old man who asked me several times for help with his crossword puzzle at the bus stop — requesting that i "put something in the google" for him. then there was that fellow from the retirement home behind my place, who would roll up to the park on a creaky bike and throw the birds old bread, nuts and weird extras like boiled eggs. (isn't it kind of fucked up to feed eggs to birds?) anyway, he'd smile and coo like they were his babies. he reminded me of the man from the pixar chess short.
i like to study people. to think of them as characters whose lives weave in and out of the fringes of mine. perhaps it is wrong of me to do so; perhaps it is a disservice to make such assumptions and embellishments, but i recognize that i can only understand who they are to me, and whether or not they would agree with my conclusions of their character is rather secondary. life is a story i keep on telling to myself.
lately, my "real life" and my "internet life" have begun colliding a lot more than they used to. this makes me want to self-censor sometimes, which i don't like. i want my work to be weird and cute and anguished and honest without fearing that like, people will ask me if i'm ok (it's happened). (i'm fine.) (this is what internet children do, we pour our feelings out online.)
"i can't write about you because you'll read it" is a cute little paradox. i could be writing about my lover, or my enemy, or that friend who found my instagram page, or that guy who likes all my posts, or i could be writing about you.
i can't write about you because you'll read it, and yet, i just did.
launching my website!
i hemmed and hawed over this for a while. is a website really necessary, when i already have what feels like 47 different social profiles and a linktree? technically...no, it probably isn't. but a website allows me the privilege of better controlling how my work is perceived: it puts everything into one place, and i get to curate it carefully.
my goal for the next 3-6 months is to focus on and expand my portfolio of 3d work. i will still create pieces for my internet diary project; there i would like to focus on more narrated prose pieces and other experiments in methods of expression.
paragraph will be a repository for updates about new work, process and progress pieces, and of course, i'm a blogger at heart, so expect all kinds of oversharing.
check it out and let me know what you think: https://www.tinyrainboot.com/
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