...interlude...

for knowing so clearly what i think will raise the quality of my life, i am terrible at getting what i want. felt like i was getting somewhere for a while there, but then my momentum petered out. still going, but slowly. which might as well be not-at-all, 'cause life seems like it's going to be short. i don't generally regret things because i don't generally have any cause to regret them. but if my present were my past, i think i'd regret it right now. yet i feel attached to this situation, to "my life." not sentimentally attached, but tied down. i don't want to be a "product" of my life. i don't want to do the same things over and over and i don't want to just react. i think this is what disillusioned middle-age must be like. wanting other things in life, yet feeling resigned to your current family, job, friends, lifestyle -- things that pull from you your energy to create and leave you feeling tired and reluctant about life.

i've read it in writing and even in song lyrics the idea that a person is an artist and a work of art. you are your medium. make of it what you will. when i think about things this way i feel like i get why some people dress differently, absurdly, or wear ridiculous make-up or get tattoos and piercings or walk with character or do those creative things that no one appreciates in the same way that they themselves do. they are artists. and they are performance art. i don't think everyone is an artist.

someone recently told me about a theory of aesthetics which claims that art is necessarily "framed," if not by the dimensions of a page or a gilded rectangle, then by the dimensions of human perception.

when the sun descends beyond the horizon in a captivating sunset, it's the ephemeral nature of the moment that makes it art for many people. art can be framed in space or, as in this case, time. sometimes a piece's spatial or temporal framing has everything to do with everything. the dimensions of the frame don't have to be rigid and are often, in fact, blurred or faded or uncertain. art prevails nonetheless. haha.