How are you? I’ve had a decent week. I started back up at my grocery store job for the year. They’ve moved me to dishwashing in their deli. The sanitary conditions are abysmal compared to the dishwashing at camp. I feel complicit in a crime. The guy training me puts stuff back that’s still dirty with dirty hands. Don’t ever eat at a place with a rating below Excellent. It was a rough day. Also still bummed about the nine hour shifts (what does our union even do). But whatever, we make it through. I’m still looking at grad schools. There’s a few I really like. And I have to pay for it somehow. These are the two main stressors of my life right now. I’m having stomach aches again.
I’m in quite the artistic slump of late. I’ve made next to nothing for over a week. Not that I’m the most prolific (sigh), but man, I was doing much better when I was auditing a class last school year where I could just paint the whole time. I need to paint something… Maybe I should just to it like the Academic painters and grab a random Greek myth. Though they did it mostly to gawk at naked women, in varying levels of obviousness. I’m not sexist enough for that. Mom gave me her copy of Ways of Seeing by John Berger (her favorite book, she tells me), and I’ve read the essay on the female nude a few times — excellent, and fantastic given that a man wrote it, and that a man wrote it in the 1970s. If I ever paint a proper, non-study female nude, I will consult it first. I recommend.
Stupid Bike Night was less than usual. It happened last Friday. Apparently the people who sponsor it and get the street shut down aren’t sponsoring it anymore, so they did it on the monthly “first Friday” event when the main road is shut down anyway. A few people bicycled in a circle up and down. Mom included. It was fun. She put a bunch of black light on last year’s bike-costumes. I watched for a bit before it got cold.
But yes. That’s about all that’s happening. These week felt very short despite the stressful happenings. The historical museum liked my script for the ghost cemetery tour. I was writing as an old man ghost telling his life story. This is easy since old people like to tell you about back in the day. You learn this working at the register at the grocery store. When I worked up there I would quietly listen while bagging. Some people seem to come in just to socialize, which is sad. Maybe try a club, Soren. If you do not still do rowing. Do you really like rowing, or is it like dance class? You’re in better shape than me, at least.
With love,
Alice