more more trees

I had my suibokuga class tonight and got lucky on my first attempt at pine trees Japanese style. I am very fascinated by this course because it involves drawing chaotic, highly detailed, yet orderly subjects like pine trees, flowers, and bamboo in a highly orderly way. The goal is to be able to copy, exactly, the way of the teacher. While this goes against my general interests in art, I kinda like the contradiction of such strict rules for such a complex and haphazard representation of nature.

At class I drank grape flavoured Fanta because I had the urge to consume large quantities of fizzy, sweet, fake-fruit tasting liquid. Cold too. I still have some of my 1.5 liters left. Drinking it reminds me of a special time in my life--the "Stand By Me" era in a boys life right before dating girls is a serious option and yet after you have attained a somewhat adequate level of independence, or time away, from parents. These were the days on the streets of Eugene. Tye, Yoni, and I would walk to the movie store on a Friday, rent a couple b-movies (like "Nazi Surfers Must Die"), buy candy and soda, and then walk back to Yoni's room to watch and eat. There we would sometimes, if lucky, order pizza. Man those were the days. After eating and sometimes during the film we would get into these wrestling brawls with pillows and stuff and wake up his parents. That was funny, man. And one time Henry came over and we were both pretty chubby at the time. So we had a sort of Clash of the Titans fight which was even better because we had issues to sort out and wrestling heroically in front of Tye and Yoni was probably just about the best way to do that. Man those were the days. It was like in the Big Lebowski except we played golf instead of bowling (our town's middle school had a golf class that met a couple mornings a week at our local golf course). One time Yoni and I got into a heated fight there and ever since I held his head down and sardonically said "kiss the ground, ^&$*^&%^&%*^," things were not the same between us (I guess he didn't like that). But no worries, we were still good friends, and a few years later I even watched him getting LAMF tatooed onto his belly (he told his parents it stood for "like angels many fall," but it really stood for "like a ^&$*^&%^&%*^," which makes me think my comment might have somehow caused this tatoo).

We were addicts back then. Addicted to time, candy, bad movies, kicking each other's asses. Those were the days. Now that I am an old man I think that I must do more mature types of things like produce hundreds of thousands of pieces of original art and... try to convince all the people of the world that life is meant to be lived, and lived well (even, perhaps especially, in trying times)! Making things makes me happy I've come to realize, or at least it makes me feel content. I like concentrating on something. Then I like reflecting after the concentration. Perhaps it is a bit like my life in middle school--wrestling, then b-movie, then wrestling, then candy, then pizza, etc ad infinitum. Live, I say, live.