heartsick.

I have no crushes right now. Not one. Only regrets over past relationships and interactions that I wish would've waxed into relationships. I've married myself to design and the podcasts and music that keep me company while work in isolation. And I've been doing a lot better work.

Because I realized something weird about myself. I MUST work in a fairly isolated situation to get anything accomplished. Sure, I can execute orders or plans in company, but my brain work must be done alone. It's funny that I realized so late. I think my insistance to work among friends stifled some progress that could've been realized while I've been in the BFA program.

Socializing is so enjoyable to me that it causes a sort of automatic ADD. There is nothing I enjoy in life more than an engaging conversation and it always feels like a worthy distraction.

But as I've spent so much more time alone than usual, the less frequent engaging conversations I share with my closest friends all echo a taste of the same sadness. Everyone wants to get married; all of us are lonely. Maybe it's just because we're getting a little older. So we're trying everything. We're all growing our hair, doing our makeup faithfully, losing weight, and reading dating books.

I'm telling you, it's breaking my heart. They are all the kind of people where it makes you sick to ever imagine that they might feel desperate because they really never should. And these aren't the kind of girls who sit around waiting. They are educated (with graduate degrees for the most part) and they're doing work they enjoy. But careers are a poor substitute for love; the big, deep-down kind you imagine where every part of you is safe with somebody else. Success holds such a cold uncertainty.

It is one of my deepest prayers and hopes that this sadness meets its solutions soon.

james victore.

James Victore. Hilarious, honest, entertaining, brilliant, crude? Yes. Yes oh yes. I saw him speak last night for AIGA. I laughed a lot.
I woke up this morning and realized something about him though. Something that apparently had to be processed in my subconscious overnight. He referred to women in only two different contexts:

1. He used live chicks on a project once and ordered them in from Iowa to his studio in Brooklyn. He said he told his female intern to figure out what chicks eat to prepare for their arrival.

2. He said things a few times about how he likes naked women and how they like him back. He showed us a few sexy pictures as proof where he'd painted all over their skin.

Here is the clincher for me. He brought up his son multiple times. He referred to his son as being the most important thing in the world to him, his favorite and best work he's ever created. He wore a wedding ring on the correct hand and finger, but never mentioned his wife, not once, not even in passing.

Another big-time graphic designer visited BYU and spoke to our class a few months ago. He referred to his wife only as his "business partner" (they run a studio together) and later told us a story about flirting with a younger woman on the subway.

It is disheartening coming from these men whom I admire in so many other contexts.

One last thing. Radiolab. I just love it. I could gulp it up and swallow and listen for hours on end. Public radio is a lovely thing. It is an education for those who aren't in school, a friend to the friendless, a lover to the loveless. It wants to tell you stories and keep you laughing as well as informed. I have a new celebrity crush on Jad Abumrad.

no image could do this justice.

The most beautiful girl in the world was in my high school figure drawing class. I remember trying to describe her after the first day.
"She's so beautiful the air around her stops moving."

I can't really think of how to describe her features. I'm satisfied to say that a photograph could scarcely do her justice because her posture was equally captivating. She did have: long, thick, blonde hair, full lips, an angular nose with a satisfyingly smooth point, high cheek bones, a thin, yet curvy frame. She didn't wear too much makeup. She was from a wealthy family in Alpine too. I was intimidated out of talking to her although she was a grade beneath me.

My drawings of her in class when it was her turn to model failed consistently. I was always confronted with my utter lack of capacity to capture any portion of what it was like to look at her.

In that height of all of my insecurities concerning physical appearance, I often wondered what it would be like to be that beautiful.
"Bad." I thought out of jealousy. "Probably that much boy attention would be annoying. Probably all girls would hate you."
I told myself that nobody would ever regard her personality because the overwhelming beauty would overtake whatever item of real interest there was sleeping beneath it. That obviously happened with me. The only question I ever imagined asking her was what it was like to be that attractive.

She died last November; age 26. Although she'd only been briefly ill, her health suffered from drug and alcohol abuse, is the story I was told. And to make things much worse for her family, her father died less than a month later from cancer or something like that.

I guess I don't really know what to say. I feel like I could wrap this all up with some sort of trite ending that doesn't feel fully honest.

I still want to know how it is to be that beautiful; I really do wish I could watch some version of her life unfold in a movie or a book so I could understand how things stretched toward that tragic end.

And how strange it is that I'm writing about some girl I never even really knew just because she was unbelievably gorgeous. I'm as superficial as anyone, I guess.

blasting in the new year.

A collaborative piece I did with my 2 yr old niece, Mattie:
I guess it's time for some goal-making:

1. Figure out how to wear fake eye lashes.

2. Convince myself i'm getting better by kissing some boys (not too many) and feeling like I really mean it.

3. Graduate.

4. Blog at least once a month just so that the stuff i did last summer and the boys I dated 2 years ago look further away than they do right now.

5. Read even just one verse of scripture every day.

6. Lose weight by eating less and having it always be healthy ( i think i still won't have tons of time to exercise beyond riding my bike around.)

(I have listened to Joni Mitchell's "Blue" so many times I don't even have to stop it to write this because I know it so well I don't have to listen.)

Is it strange to feel so inspired by funerals? I attended the funeral of Whitney's grandmother I guess mostly because I believe in going to funerals and most especially because Whitney was asked to speak. She did a fantastic job. I wish I would've recorded it. She illustrated so clearly all the ways this woman I'd never met had had such a positive and profound influence on her life. Whitney Joy would've never been Whitney Joy without her grandmother, Joy Whitney.

Maybe the strangest thing about funerals is that I always just feel like I need to have kids afterward. I never really feel like having kids. It's always something I want for the future, but never for the present. Maybe the two will meet up some day. Maybe after somebody's funeral. Maybe I'll name her Joy.