Santin.

Talent, as energy, is neither created nor destroyed; it either sublimates or frustrates us. Just as important as having a talent is betting on it, not only one day but every day.

Dream Selection.

I wish that we could say for certain what exactly causes the dreams that we have when we go to sleep. I have heard that all people dream every night, it’s just a question of whether they will remember any of it when they wake up. This is somewhat curious that I should be so interested in dreaming while we have been reading magic realism literature in my English class. The story Eyes of a Blue Dog is a perfect example of what I am curious about. In the story two people, a man and a woman, meet in a dream. Yet when the dream ends and they both wake up only the woman can recall what happened and the man has forgotten everything, Now I know that this is not just an occurrence from a story, I’m sure it happens in real life also. Maybe not the dream time meetings with other humans; I cannot be certain of that… but perhaps it could happen and if you cannot recall your particular dream from that night you would never even know.

On the other hand, supposing we could remember our dream upon awakening, if we could find a surefire way of knowing what the exact causes of our dreams were then we could have the control to choose what kind of dream we would want to have each night. For instance, I know for a fact that every time I read a magic realism story before I went to bed I would have very vivid and elaborate dreams, so if I want to have more dreams like that all I have to do is pick up one of the stories before I fall asleep. But beyond that I can see no reasoning behind the majority of the dreams that I have.

Maybe there is no real reason and the dreams that we have are just dreams… but I’d like to think that there’s more to it than that.

Side Effects of Reading Mystic Realism at Bedtime.

I am fortunate (or maybe sometimes it is a little unfortunate) that I can say I remember my dreams nearly every night. Whether it is my travels through a cartoon wonderland, a friend desperately trying to save me from a conspiracy, or a mission through the levels of my mind, I find all of my dreams rather curious. This is why at some point in my life I hope to take a class about the nature and interpretation of dreams. Sometimes when dreams are discussed around me I hear a person say something along the lined of, “What the hell did you eat before you went to sleep?” But I don’t know if I believe that has anything to do with the scenes that play out in your head. I think that while we are sleeping we are able to see into a part of our minds that has the potential to be an untapped resource to our own self-understanding. The only thing prohibiting ourselves from seeing the message that our subconscious is trying to reveal is the fact that we need the key to unlock it.

Just last night I had a particular dream that I very much wish I held the key to… and just a little preface; this dream may seem a little confusing to readers.

The dream took place in descending levels of my subconscious mind that, as the dream continued, went deeper and deeper. In addition to my mind being the setting, it was also one of the main characters, yet my body was different. My conscious mind was inside the body of Harry Potter and I was on a mission inside my own subconscious with my English teacher, Ms. Healey, and Ron Weasley.

Now, the earlier plot points of this dream are fuzzy to me now, but the general idea was that the three of us were supposed to discover clues in each level of my subconscious in order to be able to move through the door and descend to the next level in my mind. We had passed through several different levels when we came to a floor where there was no door. The room was vast like a warehouse but was furnished with décor that was odd but beautiful. There were large, ornate mirrors hanging on the walls, tall shaped shrubberies, and an extremely long banquet table with only two chairs. After the three of us had examined our surroundings we began to look for a secret switch of sorts that would reveal a hidden door when Ms. Healey began to scratch at a spot on the wall. After several seconds of intense clawing Ms. Healey, turning away from the nail marks she had made, looked a Ron and me with a manic face and began to speak in a language that sounded like gibberish. All of a sudden, in an attempt to make her stop, Ron hits Ms. Healey right across the face! Despite the fact that I had Harry Potter’s body, my mind was still astonished that Ron had hit my teacher. After several more slaps to the face, Ms. Healey returned to lucidity and at that moment I was woken up.

While I have absolutely no idea what I was supposed to gather from that dream, I think it is interesting that I can explain why I had it. I can with a good bit of certainty say that the unusual sequencing and the presence of my English teacher in this dream was the result of our class beginning to learn about magic realism in literature. And I also know that the Harry Potter characters were a result of my mom making a comment about a Harry Potter commercial after I got home that night.
But the question I am left with is why? Why that specific combination of elements from my day at school, my interaction with my mother, and what is going on inside my head? I’d like to think that if I had the key to understanding that dream it would reveal something astounding to me… but I suppose that I will just be left wondering.

Natural.

Something that never ceases to amaze me is the ability of nature to produce so many beautiful things. Recently I went to the Philadelphia Flower Show and I was astounded by what was able to grow from just three simple things; a seed, soil, and water. I walked into the room at the convention center and the vibrant colors, supple textures, and soft fragrances enveloped me, much to my surprise. I will admit that before I attended the Flower Show I had a rather strong distaste for flowers. I do not usually like the smell of flowers, except for lavender, and I typically find that I enjoy discovering beauty in nontraditional sources. While I was there I was able to see hundreds of elaborate displays by people who turn flowers into an art form, and after having conversations with several of them I have gained a new appreciation for things that are more traditional in their beauty. Like a sculptor with a fresh piece of clay, these artists spend extraordinary amounts of time caring for their living works of art… and perhaps, the creators of these floral displays have an even more unique gift than the sculptor because they have the capacity to work all the while knowing that they have no real control over the outcome. Although the florist plants the seeds, it is up to nature to decide what will become of the creation.

Pope.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot... The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind... Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.

Light Bulb.

One of the greatest feelings in the world is the feeling that you get when you come up with a really great idea. That first moment when all of your thoughts align and you suddenly come up with something amazing and you can do nothing to stop a little smile from creeping across your face. Speaking as someone who likes to thrive on carrying out these brilliant ideas, the only feeling that can come close to touching that of the initial concept is the satisfaction that you feel after carrying it out.

Since the beginning of this year I have found that I have very little time to do the things that I really enjoy. I have been forced to dedicate my time to school and my job with the little remaining time used to sleep in an attempt to recharge my battery in order to start all over again the next day. But recently, with the last stretch of the school year approaching, I have begun to have more and more time to do things that I find interesting.

There is rarely a moment that the gears in my brain are not churning with ideas for photo shoots, graphics, drawings, etc., and amid my thoughts today my brain stumbled upon an idea for a shoot. Now, this idea is something that I will not disclose here until I complete it… but nevertheless it does not change my excitement. The thought of finally having a new idea for something that I can create that I will actually be proud of.

Now, maybe you’re reading this and know exactly what I’m talking about or maybe you have absolutely no idea… but what are your thoughts on this? What ideas have you had that have excited you?

Three.

Since the beginning of quarter two my readership has increased quite a bit. The beginning of my increased readership seems to have started when I posted the link for my blog on other websites. I have a Facebook, a Tumblr, a Twitter, and a Flickr, and once I put up the like to my Blogger the number of views to my page went up. I also think that views to my blog increased when I went back and tagged all of my posts with key words to make it easier for outside viewers to find it. Something else that I tried was to try to keep to similar subject matters, but I’m not sure how much of an effect that really had.

The most popular post that I’ve written is my post titled Ink that I wrote of February fifth. I think that this was a popular post because of the subject matter and the interests of the people that I know. This was one of the first posts that I wrote after I started putting my Blogger link on Facebook, and the reaction by the people I know was great. I had a good number of my friends tell me that they really enjoyed what I had to say about the subject. I also posted the link of Tumblr where my followers tend to be interested in tattoos also. Impermanence was also a popular post. Though I have a more challenging time pinpointing what made it so. Perhaps it was just luck that people happened to want to read my blog that day, or maybe people were just interested in my stream of consciousness at the time. What I can say for sure though is that my readership went from twenty viewers for the entire month of December to three hundred and ninety five in February.

When looking at the sites that people have linked to my blog from, Facebook is by far the leader. With two hundred and forty eight links from Facebook it is followed by thirty nine direct links to my blog and twenty six from my Tumblr. Something that I’d like to try to improve on is the number of viewers that I can get from searching a key word. So far I’ve only had one that was searched under the key words “Alex Grey ideas”.

This quarter pretty much everything that I tried to do was able to boost my readership. In the future I would like to be able to increase the number of readers that will come back to my blog on a consistent basis that are outside of our school setting. Several of the people that I work with have told me that they come back and read my blog consistently, as so some people from Canada and England, but I’d like to see this number increase in the future. If I had to assign myself a grade for quarter three blogging I would give myself an ‘A’. Not because I just want to have the good grade, but because I think that I deserve it for working to advertise my blog consistently, post on a regular basis, read and comment on the blogs of my classmates, and improve the appearance of my page.

As a writer, I’ve learned that if you know how to write for your target audience that you will be much more successful than if you were to just haphazardly write anything down about a chosen topic. I am rather new to this type of writing so I need to build up my skills at this a little bit. But now that I am aware of this fact I can work of my writing techniques. I’m not sure if I have really noticed a change in my writer’s persona simply because I do not really know what my persona was like before this blogging experience because I didn’t write very much. But I plan to continue using this blog after I leave St. Mark’s, so hopefully I will be able to look back and notice some changes.