I really want to go to hair school. I've been doing my own hair for about 5 years, Dan's hair for almost 4 years, and about 7 other friends, both guys and girls, a few times since I started with my own hair. It's just something I've loved doing since I was 15 and I've been following on-line hair communities since. Unfortunately, they're really expensive, and I have no idea how I'd do it while going to school and not being in NY all the time for a year. I need a job, have no idea if I'll get one in my concentration at all after college, and hairstylists are always needed. Ugh. I'm gonna go garden now and do nothing productive for the rest of the day.

May something near the end

I've been home a week and 2 days. It feels like Purchase was decades ago. I can't seem to find a job, though I haven't looked all that hard. I drove to Rutherford and hand-painted this steel mailbox for a company (replied to a craigslist post) and got $55 for it, next day get a call from the guy saying the paint chipped off and it wasn't 100% accurate to their design. So i had to send him $45 back. I worked on that for 5 hours straight one day, driving to and from Rutherford in the same day. For $10. 

Small town, I don't know how much longer I can stand you.

I went up to sussex county yesterday, to my mom's fiancee's town for an oldies car show and some food, and it was real cute, the atmosphere, but the ages ran from 2-10 and then 30+. I really wonder what people in such sprawled out farm towns like that one do in their spare time. I think it's bad here, hm. If I were outgoing, I really would just ask people my age in every place that I go what they typically do. I just want to know that kind of stuff, but I don't think it's really okay to just ask people those things. They'd find it weird. I'd find it weird, at first.

I can't wait to see Animal Collective in August. I hope I really get to go down to Seaside with my friends for a weekend, and go camping. I want to do so much.

Landscape

I haven't been partial towards painting landscapes. 

But when I have to chose a place outside to paint,

I'm happy with choosing a place in which negative and positive space

are equally important. And I paint it not as a landscape, just as a painting.

May 14.

I've been sick, laying on dan's couch, reading Charles Bukowski all day. This virus or whatever it is hit me in the face practically overnight. His living room window faces the woods, and it's windy out, so it sounds really nice. It's dead silent in here; I've been the only one here for a few hours. Dan's at health services, getting both of us medicine. He's my best friend.

This Bukowski book is the Post Office. It's really funny at parts. I'm enjoying it; I'm almost done. When I read books like this, where the main character is a guy who checks out every woman and lives and sleeps with dozens of random people with no thought about it at all, it just makes me wonder if there is anyone in this world who really has this personality. Like in The Stranger by Camus, same thing. I don't know if I believe that anybody could be so apathetic. In the Post Office, at one part, he's living with a woman and she just had their baby, and she's reading the paper and he says "Are you moving out?" and she says "yea" and he says "Lets go look for a place" so they do and she takes the kid and he gets the cat and that's all. It's like the millionth time that's happened in the story. Does this really happen?

I'm leaving Purchase tomorrow, after Dan's graduation, and with that I'll never see many acquaintances again, and it'll be normal. I don't think it's normal. I'm going back home and will be spending time with my group of friends, maybe working a terrible job selling beer on a golf course, and continuing to be awkward. Hopefully I will be painting, but does that give me money? No, and now that I have my own house I will have to buy food and everything will be difficult. Then again it's never not difficult. 

Red

the contrast was just so intense. this picture doesn't show it as well as it was.

this picture also doesn't do the painting's brightness justice, at all. enlarge it though to see it better.

Suburban Culture

I'm a strong believer that one's environment shapes who they are. I've noticed a painful trend in personalities among the people I've grown up with, in suburban New Jersey. A town with one elementary school, one middle school, and a high school in another town which we share with that town's kids. Essentially, we've all grown up from k-12 with the same 120 or so people, adding some more once we got to high school. As I got older, my parents would tell me "nobody ever leaves this damn town." I went to high school with all my parents' friends' kids. I dated a kid who's mom dated my dad in the same high school we dated in. I always felt uncomfortable with this idea of everyone staying put their whole lives.

My mom's lived in my house for 25 years, throughout my birth, the death of 2 dogs, a cat, a bird, a husband who left and a new fiance. My mom's sister lives in her parent's old house (2 blocks from us). They've both lived in this town since they were teenagers, coming from Queens. Their one brother has moved a whopping 1 town away, 10 minutes from our house. Their youngest brother is the only one who picked up and went to Delaware.

Why do I have a problem with this? It seems my area has lead people to be afraid of change. The biggest changes in our area are "Shoprite got a new cheese section!" or "Whoa, a new coffee shop!" Once, cost cutters burnt down. Everyone was there for that. Most people I know stayed in the area for college and work typical part-time jobs. This is not everybody, and I'm not saying this is horrible, but I was absolutely baffled when I came to Purchase to find that not everyone is this way. I know people who came here from California, Texas, Florida, all over the place, for no real reason. I know people who have lived on their own since they were just kids, moving all over the damn area as teenagers. So many friends have dropped out or transferred, so many are so impulsive. The things they do are completely alien to me. 

I admire that type of lifestyle. Just shipping off to another new place, to meet new people and get involved with a different culture. I don't know if I'd ever be able to do this, though. I'm terrified of being stuck in Lincoln Park, NJ for the rest of my life, surrounded by my family that doesn't get me at all, people who don't understand art, and bad music. Some people are okay with being townies, but I'm not. 

landscape study, oil on bristol paper. small.

apologies for the shadow in the corner. 

the color is also horrendous; the background is really a shade of yellow

"From the Window" oil on canvas, about 8x10"