look again

change.

I'm slightly afraid that I'm becoming rather dangerously optimistic about life. this is really different. in fact, it clashes dreadfully with my traditionally pessimistic insides. the result is a lot of me feeling like I don't really know myself. me feeling like some other person. living some other life. which of course makes very little sense.

which of course... may not make such little sense after all. today is not yesterday and maybe we all wake up in the mornings with some potentially other life in front of us.

change is good. it's wonderful. without it I'm sure I'd go crazy.

I guess the stories I've told myself always have had an eclectic mix of fairytale and failure. light and frothy hope stirred in with the dark molasses of realism. so this new-feeling sunshiny perspective shouldn't be too surprising, really. it's almost delightful, knowing things don't have to stay the way they always have been.

however long ago it was when we were wandering about art museums in Los Angeles, we wandered by a table with a lot of round things on it.

and we would have kept wandering, except an art professor leading a small tour group told us we should stop and just look for a minute at all these round things.

so we did. she asked us a lot of pretentious-sounding questions about our thoughts on this piece of art. and when none of our answers seemed good enough, she asked us all to step up right next to the table and just look at one thing on it for as long as it took...

and that's when I realized the little brown bowl was spinning. and the letter P on the pepper shaker had disappeared... for a moment I thought I was going crazy, until Ms. Art Professor grinned and told me I was right: everything on the table was spinning--very slowly. so slowly you might not notice unless you have a bit of patience.

I don't remember the artist's name, and the MOCA's website is not telling me. I never found out who that art professer was or why she asked us to join her little group just then. but the rest of that day I kept thinking about that. how a bunch of round things on a table may not count as 'art' to a lot of people. but all it took was a little bit of the unexpected, revealed at the last minute, to impress me.

now I've ruined the installation for all of you, maybe. sorry.

anyway:

there's been a slight tweaking of the blog. you probably noticed, right? it's been less than a week. and all the google traffic I used to get--people searching for remedies for their anger and doubt, mainly--has disappeared.

that's probably good. though instead of changing my title I suppose I could have written up some remedies for those angry, doubtful people...

was that what I was trying to do for myself with all these theories and reviews and aphorisms? maybe it's still what I'm trying to do. words do make everything better. find someone to talk to. things will work out.

I guess I'll see what happens next...