One Sitting

Start now, it says
Start now, not later.

I will start.
And I do.
And I still do.
And I keep do.

And I watch my watch,
Finally.

No worries, it lies,
The will is timeless.

Tomorrow I will start.
Tomorrow I do.
Tomorrow I don’t.

October 15, 2009 at 8:18 pm | Poetry | No comments

Physics Homework

A time when I was traversing down the truly, most definitely clear road of a teenage high school student who is most certainly NOT experiencing the identification stage of life(See Erik Erikson, the man with an awesome name), I realized that I had forgotten the preposition starting the first sentence of an article I was forming in my head to be written at a future time.

Disorganized was for the word my thoughts. Disarrayed was the word my thoughts for. Disastrous spelt it all.

Thinking, then, I remembered I was working on my physics homework. For the past few moments, a random passerby would have caught me with my eyes glazed over had not they been blockaded by the computer screen. Yes, computer-assigned homework is truly a marvel in its eye blockading abilities(to random passersby even!), but the content of the homework would, by all modus operandi, hold true to its mind-arresting aptitude.

Yes, I, for a moment, was blank-minded, suspended in the endless suspension of dumbfounded-ness at a single physics problem. I, with my eyes glazed over, ceased to continue any but that single physics problem. I, who ignored my own approach.

I, in a time before the writing of this article, thought. And, I, in an instant, learned the virtue of patience.

A computer accomplishes more than hide the eyes of its user from the view of someone staring upon the machine’s back. Despite my most reliably cited popular belief, the computer is more than a mere black or white or gray or beige or rainbow box obscuring the world. It is a call to convenience.

And at that moment, as I mused on computers, a thing(calculations) which eluded my difficulties in the past, was the impetus to my absentmindedness. I lost all focus. I lost it the minute I sat in that chair–No, the minute I turned on that power button the minute before I sat in that chair.

I remembered a past life of lesser laziness when calculators and notebook paper were instinct. And here I was, seeing an assignment on the computer, predisposed to venture the mental crunching of numbers in my mind. My finitely reserving mind! It was scarce a wonder that the solution eludes those who forget the value of circumspection!

And so I pretended to undust my pencil as if the time between now and the end of school, when I had last writ with that gratifying lead, were a lifetime of neglect. So quickly had I forgotten the treasure of written aid.

In a few short moments, I scribed that which was to be scribed so fancifully and cheerfully as I would choose to scribe the word scribe rather I write the word write. In a few short moments more, all became clear for the discord and chaos that was the disarray, disaster, and disorganization of my determinate critical thinking capacity was now bound and formed upon the indeterminate bulk of all the world’s paper.

In a few short moments later, I finished my physics homework.

September 7, 2009 at 7:05 pm | Lifepost, Reflections | No comments

Improvement Efficiency

The Dragon’s Scales

In a far long gone-by event, I had caught myself staring at an even further gone-by drawing of a dragon. There was nothing spectacular about this drawing of a dragon. The pose was static. The perspective was bland, making the picture flat. The pencil shading was more or less standard.

Specifically though, I had remembered that at one point, this picture was one in which I had dedicated multiple uncounted hours. Now, while multiple hours may be incomparable to the time spent by some artists on some of their keystone masterpieces, a stale, unspectacular picture of a dragon did not seem to require such time.

At some point, this picture of a dragon had many rather semi-hexagonal scales strewn crudely through the entirety of its body in pencil. In the end though, this painstaking effort did not contribute to the appearance of the picture as the scales had mostly been smudged away by time. Even in the beginning, the scales felt to be a futile effort. Not because they smudged away. Such things could be prevented.

Purpose

The addition of the scales was only one that could enhance the specific picture and nothing more. The scales were not drawn out in a thoughtful way. Their main attraction was to draw the awe of viewers who sympathized with the time spent.

No stride in improvement of technical skill was made through the rendering of the scales. Perhaps muscle memory of drawing the semi-hexagonal shapes in a specific pattern was gained, but such was little reward for the effort spent.

When catching myself staring, thinking of the old scales on the dragon picture, I wondered why I had drawn the scales in the first place.

I knew I was not a fully-fledged and technically knowledgeable artist. Why had I spent my time with such idlings as drawing out the scales on a dragon?

Goal-Oriented

The thing I vividly remembered most was that through all those past days of doodling little scales on dragons and other fanciful such things, I believed my goal in art was to improve.

So, I sat there thinking of how many artists improved by doing studies. The main thing that separated me from them was that I had not made an attempt to analyze the appearance of the world around me as I sketched.

And, I simply sat there wondering. What kind of approach to improvement might be more effective than drawing scales on a dragon? How does one efficiently improve technical art skill?

All the same, I wonder whether a true practitioner of the form may ever need bother themselves with such things, and thus I wonder if one such as myself may be better suited in the classification of an observer of the art world. Then again, if the goal of an artist is to achieve realism, would not a practitioner do well to consider how to achieve the state of being capable of imitating the world?

In the end, all I can say is that if an artist’s goal is truly to imitate the real world, then it would seem that analyzing the appearance of the world through studies is truly the path to improvement.

December 29, 2008 at 12:38 am | Reflections | No comments