Thanks Sami from Flickr!

Snow is falling, acting as prelude to the bitter cold that is arriving in a few days. I’m tired of cold weather, and sometimes, I’m tired of the snow even though it’s so pretty. I’m not a fan of winter; it’s depressing and drags on too long. All the bleakness makes it hard for me to feel fervent, which, if you think about it, fervent sounds the opposite of what it truly means. Anymore, I just feel so down and hopeless and it’s hard to find that silver lining or little glimmer of joy.

The other day, I had a therapy session with my boss. It sounds strange to open up to your boss, but it was one of those things where the flood gates literally opened and I didn’t know what to do. I told her about why I wasn’t teaching, talked about how screwed up the university system is, and how I feel I was going nowhere in life, which I truly feel. She told me that I needed to stop doing that and that I need to wake up every morning and say to myself, “I’m going to kick [butt] today!” Easier said than done. I feel as if there is so much missing in my life. I’m not allowed to teach at my university even though I’m above qualified, and it feels like I’m just going to be filing paperwork for the rest of my graduate school tenure. I see other people getting the teaching positions and they’re all cut from the same cloth: sucked up, kissed butt, and were so sugary sweet and amicable toward the professors that if it was time to actually argue against something, they would be afraid to fight their own shadows let alone their own beliefs. I’m not teaching because I felt a play a professor wrote was weak and I unjustly received F’s on papers for that class for no reason. I got a B in the class because I was going to repeal my grades. But now, I’m a pariah in the English department because I said something was not to my liking in an assignment that I was suppose to do that for. I would never change my actions, however, but to not give a person a chance because of an opinion is ridiculous. I hope all the G.A’s at my university crash and burn, because suck-up Eddy Haskells need to just disappear from society because this world has too many of them. Where are the people who stand for something? People all say they stand for something, but if they get picked up for something, it’s screw everyone else, it’s all about me, me, me and the fact that the professors (or insert anyone here) love me more than you and I need to suck up more. Personally, I despise all the people like this and there’s no room for them in my life, even if the person was once close to me.

For me, the above has been a bad experience and has really destroyed me. I can’t write as well I had in the past. I can’t function well in daily life without having some ounce of bitterness within me. I feel worthless, hopeless, and broken. I have a lot of anger within me and although I try to be “cool as cucumber,” sometimes that doesn’t work and thoughts of the professor who ruined my career appear in my dreams and creep into my thinking on a daily basis. I think that’s why I want to take the job is Japan and forget about graduate school for awhile. I need to get away.

Since that whole incident, the need to travel and see the United States and the world have really been prevalent. I just feel like I need to walk away for awhile and unwind by exploring the world around me. I need to break free from the traitors and toxic people and just see things from a refreshed world view. I want to see Savannah, Georgia and experience REAL southern food and charm; Kyoto, Japan, Estonia, feel the ocean at the Carolinas, Florida, and the California coast, what a tumbleweed truly looks like in Oklahoma~ I want to experience Canada, catch a Yankee game in New York! I want to see the stars in Big Sky Country (Montana), and see Santa Fe! Maybe I can go and find my roots in Italy and dance in Tennessee, work at Disney World! I want to live for once instead of going through the motions of daily life! I’m tired of living this life. I want to break free.

My life doesn’t even feel like my own, and right now, I know it isn’t. My mom pretty much runs the show for me. Whenever I gain some sort of autonomy, she takes it right it back by taking away more of my freedoms. I feel like I’m dying a slow, horrifying death. A lot of my mom’s grasp, I think, has a lot to do with the fact that she never got to live her life the way she wanted and that all her other kids left and created their own lives. I feel as if she wants me to be as miserable as her and wants me to become her.  I don’t want to be like that! I feel like a mouse trapped in a mouse trap. I writhe and scream and I can’t break free. Someone needs to release me from the trap. My tail and my paws are trapped and my death is slow and agonizing. I am bleeding. My eyes glaze over and lose life. I can feel my organs shutting down, lung function ceasing. There’s no help. The person who trapped me watches as I die and force feeds me words of “love” and protection. That person tells me it’s okay and that I’ll survive if I listen to what she has to say. I’m dying and that person refuses to see. Set me free… set me free…

I want to live on my own and experience life as not just a daughter living under my parents’ roof. I want to be a wife, someday. I want to be that before I take flight, because I want to know I have some sense of security. Plus, I love my boyfriend very much and I don’t think he’d betray me. Besides, he has expressed a need to see the world, also, so I would like him to accompany me.

I also feel depressed because I am a bit on the impatient side, but I’m trying to change that. Tala knows what I mean, so I won’t get into further details.

I want to know what life has to offer, and I feel like I’m slowly dying inside. Like my boyfriend said the other night, “I want to touch a hot stove in order to learn to never touch it again because it burns.” I want that! Besides, my opportunities are up in this little Podunk town. I have been cut loose because I am a threat to the system at my university. “Only non-threatening people allowed,” reads the sign at the graduate office door. I guess it’s time to take my show elsewhere…

Aside from all this negativity, I do feel hopeful about something, and that’s my relationship with my boyfriend. Since school let out, we’ve been working on a lot of things and talking more. We’ve also been working very hard for things, and I think we are more willing to help each other. I hope so, and I hope things continue to get better from here. More and more, I realize how much I love him and how much I need him in my life. He’s a great guy, flawed like me, but still great. I admire the fact that he has great drive and work ethic, and I hope he uses that to his full potential. He’s a writer and a darn good one. I hope he never abandons that for something lesser than that. You’ll be hearing a lot about him someday, I guarantee that. I wish I had the drive he has half-the-time, but like I said, I seem to have lost my spark for a lot of things. I hope I can get it back. If only I could teach… if only I could get married and see the world!

I wish to unclip these wings…

I will end my post with some song lyrics that I currently resonate with. The song is by Reba McEntire and is titled “Is There Life Out There.”

She married when she was 20
She thought she was ready
Now she’s not so sure
She thought she’d done some living
Now she’s just wondering what she’s living for
Now she’s feelin that there’s something more

(chorus)
Is there life out there?
So much she hasn’t done?
Is there life beyond her family and her home?
She’s done what she should
Should she do what she dares?
She doesn’t wanna leave she’s just wondering is there life out there?

She’s always lived for tomorrow
But she’s never learned how to live for today
Oh she’s dying to try something foolish
To do something crazy or just get away
Oh something for herself for a change

(chorus)

There’s a place in the sun that she’s never been
Where life is fair and time is a friend
Would she do it the same as she did back then?
Oh she looks out her window and she wonders again

(chorus)

Oh, she doesn’t wanna leave she’s just wondering is there life out there?

As Alex mentioned in his post, many people have used death as an excuse to create art. Observe:

a effigy of Sarah Palin hanging from someone’s house, with McCain burning in the chimney…When interviewed, the homeowner not only said that it was part of their Halloween display, but that the display was created for “art” reasons. Hmm, he didn’t really explain why it was meant to be artistic. Does that mean that politics=art? Could you submit a “support McCain” bumper sticker to an art show?

A less light-hearted example of art [was] taken to the extreme. Aliza Shvarts attempted to make an art statement about the human body by getting pregnant and inducing as many miscarriages as possible. She then videotapped her miscarriages and collected the blood from the miscarriages. (Beckett “What is Art?”)

Now, I don’t necessary believe that lynching someone is artistic. What is artistic about hanging a person or burning someone? Nothing. Even though the Palin/McCain effigies were plastic, they were still symbolic of someone’s desire to want them to die horrible deaths. The plastic figures represented the evil that exists in America today–or anywhere else for that matter–because death and destruction is glamorized and considered “cool.” Seriously? I never found someone dying artistic; I find it sad and horrible knowing that the person who is dying or dead was somebody’s mom, dad, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, child, cousin, etc. For me, if it’s something that causes someone else pain, it’s not art, but a reflection of the cruel nature of society.

Moving on to Aliza Shvarts, the college student who had SEVERAL abortions (from what Yale University knows, she has had at least 20) in the name of art. How is the abortion of a potential life art? For anyone who has lived through and had to have an abortion at any time, those people know what abortions to do the body. Not to get graphic, but there’s cramps, heavy bleeding, potential for internal bleeding if the doctor misjudges with the chosen abortion instrument, periods of sickness, destruction of the uterus in some cases, and sometimes, the inability to ever have children. So why, I ask, would anyone in her right mind do this for art’s sake? Then to videotape the process is just sick and Miss Shvarts should consider mental evaluation. Any person with a heart would not kill a child–fetus or otherwise–for “art’s sake.” Murder is wrong, wrong, WRONG! There is no art in a murder. No art in death. Do you think any murder victim considered their deaths art?

Furthermore, and within a different line of thinking, I find the human body to be incredibly beautiful. The lines and curves of the body are gorgeous no matter what shape a person is in. However, I don’t consider porn art. Porn is a degrading fantasy designed to create a false fantasy of what a sexual experience “should be,” not what it really is. Sex is an art form between lovers who truly care about each other, not a sweaty disgusting orgy of sexualized and filthy slurs and wildly fake orgasms. Porn is degrading to women, too, which is why it is not art to me. Sure, there are many women involved in the porn industry, but there have been studies performed stating that women involved in porn have low self-esteem. A friend of mine told me once that even though he watches porn, he doesn’t do so because of how women are treated. He told me that women in porn are often forced to perform those sexual acts and that some of the rough porn is a result of forced rape. Additionally, my friend told me that there’s a lot of abusive scenes in some porn videos because of abuse fetishes that some viewers may have. So abuse and rape is art? Not in my book, so in my opinion, porn is not art.

Another art form I enjoy very much is music. Music is my soul, much like baseball is my life. However, there are some forms of music that I do not consider art. Some raps songs, for  instance, I do not consider art. Some metal songs are not art. Why? because of the demeaning nature of some of the songs’ lyrics. My brother likes rap and metal, but he only likes the songs that discuss torture of women, murder, and the degrading of women. Calling women “hoes” and “B*itches” is not art.

Ludacris, a rapper, is known for his degrading lyrics and is an example of what I think art is not supposed to be like.  An example of his lyrics, from the song “Pimpin’ All Over the World,” include:

You hear the song so dance, don’t always think I’m tryna get in your pants,cause see me my
Pimpin’s in 3-D, I’m takin you places you only see on T.V., tryna show ya that livin is trife,
How many guys you know that can bring the travel channel to life, one day we on the autobahn
Swervin drivin, next day we in the sun on the Virgin Islands, if you wit me ain’t no time to
Sleep, especially at wet willies on Miami Beach, but I drive you off and pay you no attention if
I make it to Atlantas Brina Brothers convention, then jump in the car and just ride for hours,
Makin sure I don’t miss the homecomin at Howard, Hawaii to D.C. it’s plenty women to see, so if
Yo *ss don’t show up it’s more women for me, Heyy. (”‘Pimpin’ All Over the World’ Lyrics”)

Ludacris, in the aforementioned song, is singing about trying to have sex with several women all over the world without making a commitment, then, since he is singing about being a pimp, he wants to give those women to other men. Women are sex objects and subject to degration in this song, and this is just a small example of what rap includes today.

Another rapper, Eminem, often raps about murdering his ex-wife Kim and mother, his sexual exploits, and suicide.  Take his song “Kill You” for example (explicit content, reader beware):

They said I can’t rap about bein broke no more
They ain’t say I can’t rap about coke no more
(AHHH!) Sl*t, you think I won’t choke no wh*re
til the vocal cords don’t work in her throat no more?!
(AHHH!) These motherf**kers are thinkin I’m playin
Thinkin I’m sayin the s**t cause I’m thinkin it just to be sayin it
(AHHH!) Put your hands down b***h, I ain’t gon’ shoot you
I’ma pull +YOU+ to this bullet, and put it through you
(AHHH!) Shut up sl*t, you’re causin too much chaos
Just bend over and take it like a sl*t, okay Ma?
“Oh, now he’s r*ping his own mother, abusing a wh*re,
snorting coke, and we gave him the Rolling Stone cover?”
You god d**n right B***H, and now it’s too late
I’m triple platinum and tragedies happen in two states
I invented violence, you vile venomous volatile b***hes
vain Vicadin, vrinnn Vrinnn, VRINNN! [*chainsaw revs up*]
Texas Chainsaw, left his brains all
danglin from his neck, while his head barely hangs on
Blood, guts, guns, cuts
Knives, lives, wives, nuns, sl*ts. (”‘Kill You’ Lyrics)

How can anyone call these vile lyrics art? As previously mentioned, murder and death should NEVER be considered an art form. Sure, in Egyptian times and in Native American, Hindu, Buddhist, and Laotian culture, the transition from life to death is poetic and artful, but intentional killing is not. And of course, cosmetologists who focus in post-mortem makeup are artists because they have to make a viewable body presentable. A friend of mine is specializing in post-mortem cosmetology, bless her heart. But again, I reiterate: intentional death is not art.

Like Alex, movies are an art form, but movies featuring dismemberment (I’m talking to you Quentin Tarantino) is not art; those films are just disgusting, not to mention that many of them offer ideas of gruesome ways to murder people which is being copied by teenagers and other sickos today. Look at the Saw franchise and how wildly popular those films are. Why? Because in today’s culture, dismemberment is considered cool. Over the past few years, murder and horror films have dominated theaters. Why?

So, are all of the above considered art? Well, to me, not at all, but people’s opinions differ. What are your thoughts? Comment and email me at sketchinghouseonline@gmail.com.

Mari