7/25/2020

ah yes, i just remembered, i had a thought about writing a story about drawing. how, when i draw something with attention to its details, it tends to make it bigger, so that by the time i complete the overall drawing, certain parts are out of proportion. i find i can usually draw faces pretty well. i wanted to talk about eyes, about how they used to be difficult, until i stopped thinking of them as eyes, and instead drew each individual shape: a triangle for one part of the cornea, a strange dark shape for the unreflected part of the iris, etc... the funny thing was that although the eyes did look right, i could never draw them as though they were looking AT you. there was just something that made them change the angle of their line of sight oh so slightly... i also had an idea of tying in the idea of the imperfect circle of zen... something about how the ends never match up.

*****

i had a pretty blah day today. i went to school, to my room. i think i've overall been wasting time over there. i try to clean things up, but frankly, i'm not particularly motivated. i mean, i feel like i'm giving up so much this year. i can't do robotics. i can't pursue my ag-tech dreams. i will just be trying to teach my ten or so resource kids. it saddens me...

after going to school, i headed home briefly, and took a brief nap, while listening to msnbc and its incessant reporting on the abuses of the trump administration. then, i picked my son up from his summer fun... oh yes, i did do a drawing. i think it turned out pretty well. i've been experimenting with drawing on colored paper, using a darker colored pencil to shade in the shadows, and then using a lighter colored pencil to shade in the highlights. i think i'm getting better at it. hopefully, this leads me to learning how to use color to better effect.

my wife wanting to go to the beach, so that's where we went. we met her newscaster friend and her daughter. while they talked, i sort of swam out and came back, swam out and came back. it was somewhat refreshing. i enjoyed (briefly) those periods where i would just float on my back like some tremendous whale, and watch the sky...

after the beach, we went to frost city, some froyo place. it was alright. although i wasn't really part of most of the conversation, at one point, i was asked about buddhism. so i told the story of my brief time in japan, in hokkaido, staying at the temple. i described the whole koan process, and how, every morning, after chanting and meditating, i would have to present my answer to the head priest there, and how, every morning, he would ring a bell signaling my abject failure. 3 months of that...

i told everyone that i didn't think the head priest was listening for a particular, set answer. rather, i felt he was listening for a kind of vibration, a sort of change in wavelength or something, which i had clearly not achieved yet... perhaps never will.

*****

oh well, as i said, kind of a blah day. so that's about it.