Vladimir

So I've been trying to improve my sketching skills. I'm generally not bad at drawing, but I can't capture reality quite in the way I want to - which is quickly but still accurately. To remedy this I've ordered myself to practice practice practice, because when it comes to drawing and art in general that's just the only way to get better.

Anyways, this morning after breakfast I thought I'd start my journey towards a better-sketching-me with a quick sketching practice. I grabbed one of my magazines, my sketchbook and a ballpoint pen and picked out a high contrast photograph for my drawing (high contrast = awesome shadows).

Let's just say I failed miserably in the difficulty assessment department... this drawing of Vladimir Klitschko (picked because of my recent faible for boxing and the wonderful lighting) took me three hours to do. THREE HOURS.
I mean it's accurate and all, but the time component ...agijoawigjiap odjbcviuowrjkvcioeRGURGLEgurglegurglegurgle.....SIGH
PS sorry about not posting lately! I've been vewwy busy and google chrome won't let me use the blogger page for some reason (it's beyond me, really... after all blogger is google owned, am I right?!) so I always have to switch back and forth between chrome and firefox, which just makes me infinitely unmotivated..... XD

Walk the line

Giddiness... :D

I have a job. Well, really I have two. But I only earn money with one of them. With the other I earn awesomeness.
Yessssss, maybe I'm boasting a little right now, but I'm just so unreasonably happy that I can't help myself. I've been skipping around for the past 10 minutes and also ate a celebratory Hanuta.
Glory. Pure and utter glory. (noooooo not udder. utter!)
I finally feel like my life is getting some direction, if only on a small scale. Baby steps right?

On other news, I went to the 'advanced' kickboxing class today and found it was easier, but strangely less fun. Who would have thought!? Sadly I'll be missing the beginners class on Friday, which makes me sad because my teacher is hilaaaaaaarious (yes, he really merits that many a's) but the sadness really only goes so far... Because I'm going HERE.
I can't even begin to describe to you how excited I am. No amount of celebratory Hanutas will suffice. Tomorrow I'll be going to stock up on energy drinks, because music starts in the early afternoon and gets better and better until, yes, 7 am. And I will be there, going manically strong.

Then on Saturday I will once more be missing my hilarious boxing coach to sleep and do the whole thing over again (different music, duh!)

Sunday, me and my friends will hopefully not miss the train back home and leave Berlin in what I predict to be the most complicatedly mixed state of bliss and exhaustion ever.
I cannot wait. I am counting the hours. I'm thinking of doing one of those cheesy countdowns on my iGoogle page AND facebook. It's THAT seriously exciting. I've also been seriously studying (aka listening to) the music of all the AH-mazing bands that will be there (hot chip, the editors, caribou, Adam Green, .... .... ... look at the list yo) and if that fails I've created the perfect combo of random words to fake lyrics whenever I don't know them. Serious Epicness requires serious preparation.

Beware Berlin, Lies is coming back!

my mind is. by e.e. Cummings

my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell
and hearing and sight keep hitting and chipping with sharp fatal
tools
in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of chrome and ex
-ecute strides of cobalt
nevertheless i
feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am becoming
something a little different, in fact
myself
Hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings.

Compromises?!

This weekend was truly a learning experience for me.
I'm never sure whether having to go through certain learning processes are worth the lesson.
You know what I mean?
Sometimes I do things, just to try them out, and then I ask myself afterwards: Why did you have to compromise your integrity - your beliefs that way?
But at the time it didn't seem that way. At the time I just wasn't sure what I wanted or what was right or wrong. I can be so focused on being easy going and just trying things out that I don't even realize that something is wrong.
For example, I never learned how to be angry.
There are things that should make me mad! Raging mad... but they don't.
And afterward I wonder why I had to behave that way, because in retrospect it was 103% stupid.

But I'm so fixated on being liked that I forget myself. I forget who I am and what I stand for. I forget that I don't have to live by other people's standards.
I'm not going to forget anymore. Because it doesn't matter what other people think.
They don't have to live with my conscience. I do.
And I'm sick of putting those people first, those people that don't care one bit about me, who would drop me in a second and never look back. I don't need them in my life.

My friend Alice told me the other day that life is the worst kind of teacher because you learn the lesson after the test.
But then you know ... let me tell you... i know

Inception

Hello Neighbor...?!

My brother informed me today that people on the street can hear me while I'm piano playing or singing. I've suspected as much, since once after an especially intense jamming session on my piano (this can be translated to very ... very loud and repetitive) somebody rang the doorbell. I didn't answer it, because I was in my pajamas and looked a bit tousled, but when I left for the dentist about ten minutes later I saw a police car driving out of the street. Now you have to realize my street has a dead end... so they weren't just passing through. I just thanked whatever power there is above for great timing and went on my merry way to get my teeth checked.

So when my brother informed me of my musical activities leaking onto the street I was not really surprised. Thus far I had successfully evaded all noise-disturbance-complain-attempts (or possible packages being delivered by the mailman) by not answering the door during my prime practicing time (right after I get up, when I'm obviously too pajama-ed and sleepy to face anybody) A meeting with the law enforcement just wasn't really on my agenda...
Anyways, I'm not sure if my brother had just joined the conspiracy to get me to stop (since I practice for at least 3 to 4 hours total each day) or if he was just innocently making an innocent observation while walking by the house on his way home.
Since he often complains that I practice too much and with little variation in songs (Repetition is good I tell you!) I'm guessing it's not the latter. Nonetheless, he is wrong to think that telling me that everybody on the street can hear me will get me to rethink my practicing schedule. I have already considered this and decided that a little cultural awakening couldn't really be bad for anyone. In fact, now that I have hard proof of my involuntary audience, I'm going to have to practice even harder... It's for their sake I promise!
I don't know about the singing... I might cut down on that. I sound a little bit (very) raspy in the morning since I can't count on talent balancing out the fact that I'm not warmed up etc. and if you ain't got the goods when it comes to singing, then you really can't do much. Although I'm not sure if that theory has been tested...
When it comes to piano however, practice really does make perfect. I'm also a tough case, because my left hand consistently lags behind my right hand (after 13 years of playing... yes) so I find that I have to practice even more to make up for it. This hood better get ready for some entertainment!
I'd even go out on the street and give them a truly un-wall-muffled experience, but that would require me to get dressed into something other than my pajamas and I'm afraid it's just not happening. Oh... and if you ring my door bell please do it in rythm...

Home

Today many of my friends moved in to college. It got me thinking about this thing called home, because going to a new place is hard and finding out how you belong even harder.

So I was on facebook looking through random photos of my friends and people I know or used to know, that were especially important to me throughout the years. (YES I realize this is borderline stalking, but come on, I know these people! They've practically given me their concent!!! :P)

Anyways... it made me really homesick.

Not homesick in the "Gosh darn I hate it here, please let me go back to [random place]" sense but homesick the way you get when you remember all the fun times you had and how it felt so right and like you belong.

To find home in that way isn't easy.
I wasn't going to admit that I miss high school, but I guess I do.

I miss the community and I miss the feeling that no matter what happens, tomorrow I can go back to this place and know that these people will be there.

Then again, high school was crushing in that way too... each year some of the people whom I dearly loved went on to go to college and find a bigger, better community there, where everything was exponentially more exciting, simply because of the lack of parental supervision.

I think that it was mostly this transition between life stages that got to me, because I just couldn't shake the feeling that they were trading up and I was staying behind.

Sometimes I'm also surprised by who I miss. Half the time it's not even someone I was particularly close to. It was just the special combination of people around me that made for the feeling... some people took active parts in my life, others just temporary ones, but they were all part of the scenery and thus hugely important.

What's great about school is that you're not only around people you choose to be around. I used to think this was a bad attribute, but things tend to loose their shine if there's nothing different around, if their special glimmer becomes commonplace.

I miss being exposed to the world that way every day. I miss having to interact with all kinds of people. Now half my life is spent putting myself into situations where I can have chance encounters with people I might not normally talk to or don't already know. All these little every day communications have gotten a new glow in my mind. I need them.

I now get excited to go to the grocery store, because I'll be able to talk to the cashier for a brief moment or ask where a product is. It seems silly, but it makes me happy to talk to someone random.

I think all human communication should be relished that way, so maybe learning this lesson is exactly what I needed.
The tough part about moving in general is that you aren't immediately part of the community: Each time you have to find your own little niche, where the people are nice and interesting and you feel good about yourself and the world. You have to find somewhere to belong.

So I wish all my friends at college the strength to put themselves out there and find that place.

I wish them strength to go walk their path and to meet new and interesting people.

I wish you the strength to love and be loved.

I'm so excited about your lives and where they will go... :)

....and i hope you don't forget me... stuck on a different continent, in a weird and messed up stage of my life. We'll both find our ways... you'll see :D