The past few days have been

Well, I don’t want to say “bad”, because not all of it was bad. I’ll say “interesting”. The past few days have been interesting.

Friday wasn’t such a good day.

Long story short, Hung, Angie, Minji, and my work was rejected from the Blaffer Gallery. We were five to ten minutes late for the deadline. As we ran towards the gallery entrance, some obese, shit-filled beanbag with a power trip belched at us, “NO. NO MORE ENTRIES. DEADLINE IS OVER.” My heart sunk. Angie and Hung pleaded with her, but it was just energy wasted. We dragged our pieces back upstairs, defeated.

Hung and Angie e-mailed two of our painting professors about the situation, and a reply from one of them was quickly sent back. “There’s nothing I can do about it.” I’m most likely not going to pursue art formally after college. It feels like this was the only chance my work will be displayed in a prestigious gallery, even if it is just a student show. It saddens me more that the most vulgar piece out of all of my current work was chosen for the gallery, something that I wanted everyone to see, and now it’s too late. It looks like my beacon of hope just gave its last flicker.

As I vented to Fred about the situation, he told me that he’s been through similar circumstances. He then left me with some wise words. “And I don’t want to come off the wrong way, but at least you won’t ever be late with anything else you care about again… I know I went overboard getting my stuff in on time after one or two of those.” Normally, if anyone told me something like that after such a terrible situation, I would take it the wrong way. It’s like when people tell me, “No offense, but–” How can you not take offense after that’s been stated? Anyways, I understood him completely. I told him, “When I was a kid, I stopped relying on/asking for my friends for anything because I didn’t want to blame them if shit fucked up. I’ve had a lot of unreliable friends growing up. Now here I am, years later, and I put my guard down. I should’ve done this shit on my own, asked a Home Depot employee, anything. I was much wiser as a kid.” It makes my current friends seem like bad people, but honestly I don’t blame them at all. The only person I blame for this is myself. Well, myself and that fat sack of shit that sent us away.

Later that night, I took Hung to come chill out with a couple of my other friends. Another long story short, drunken fun may have ruined some very good friendships between some very good friends, including me. Hopefully, things will blow over. I’ve gone through too much shit lately. Hopefully, God will give me a break this time. I passed out in my studio that night.

Saturday was much better.

Kim came to visit my studio that day, which was a delightful surprise. She hadn’t come to visit me in a long time, let alone on a weekend. After checking out my work and letting me whine to her about the gallery bullshit, we went to her apartment, where she cooked food and I got to watch 300. The first time I saw that movie, I hated it. It was hyped like crazy by everyone around me, and I was in a bad mood that day. Now that I got to see it again, in a different environment, and was actually able to hear and understand the storyline, I got to love the movie as much as everybody else does.

Along with a good movie and a home-cooked meal, something I hadn’t enjoyed in days, I also got to take a comfortable nap, something I hadn’t experienced in months. While Kim was messing with stuff on her computer, I woke up on her couch rejuvenated. Almost everything that this semester had drained from me was restored.

Later that night, I went joyriding again with Hung. We went to check out ArtCrawl, an open, regular event where Houston artists display their work in various gallery spaces. All I’ll say about ArtCrawl is, for a brief time after visiting that show, I hated all art.

After ArtCrawl, Hung and I met up with Kim, where we went to a girl’s birthday party. A couple of shots later, I eventually found myself passing out in my studio again.

Sunday was pleasant.

I spent the first part of Sunday teaching art to Kim’s nieces. Christ, I feel terrible for them. I don’t put any real effort into their lesson plans, and since it’s my first time teaching, much less teaching children, I feel like I’m hindering their education. At least I’ve reformed a plan for them. I truly hope I’m doing more good than bad.

Sunday evening, I gathered several friends together to watch Beowulf. What an excellent way to end an interesting weekend. I urge you to catch the movie if you haven’t already. I absolutely loved this adaptation of the Beowulf poem. The fight scenes were gory and amazing, the environment was realistic, and the characters were lively. I’ll admit, it bothered me at first that the movie was done entirely in CG, but after the first ten minutes the CG animation didn’t bother me at all. The characters and scenes flowed beautifully. Also, as Fred put it, “At least it’s a good ‘See, people make grown-up animation too, you fucks…’”

I’ve spent a huge majority of the past week taking a break from painting. Just one more week until school’s completely done. Time to get back to work, and get this shit over with.

~ by triplejerk on November 19, 2007.