Some kind of Wonderland

This conversation happened at my house -

Ian: After I was certified on my 9mm barretta...

Dad: Oh, does that mean I get my gun!?

Ian: It was a dream. I shot two guys. (Smiles, nervous enthusiasm).

Dad: Yeah.

Ian: You can borrow my buddies 40 caliber Hecklar & Coch. He'll let you, as long as I clean it.

This is who we've become. My brother has joined the army and we learn about fire arms. Merry Christmas.

Me in Miami

I am going to be in Miami Beach for the first two weeks of December for Scope Art Fair, they hired me free-lance and I will be doing what I did last time which is help with exhibitor relations, I have also been asked to participate in a performance art piece that will collect money or charity.I think it will be a great time. I am excited to see Helen and Sadie again.

Also, the intern I hired before I left for this semester is a BYU student and Scope accepted him, after seeing the video I gave them, to receive a grant to perform a performance piece as well. He and his wife and his associate from BYU as well will all be there. I looked on lds.org to find the local chapel and it says there is a Singles branch in Miami Beach. I hope to be able to go there for the Christmas devotional and church on Sunday.

Florida is, as always, a nice retreat and it's great to be at home especially during the holidays. I am working on classes and it is going better than expected. I thought I would hate having to spend my time working on school but it is going well and I enjoy doing it at my pace. I can't believe how much I miss working full time though and have set up an internship with a research company for the next semester and am working out another one for summer with an investment company.

I am going to Park City in January for the Sundance Film festival but I think I will be coming up to New York for a visit in february or March.

I'm shrinking!

Why is it people think I am 19 when they first meet me? Perhaps because I have maintained an enviably youthful complexion. Something tells me it is my vastly immature nature and gross naivete.

It's not so insulting as it is odd to me. I suppose I should take it as flatering that they think I am some kind of prodigy having worked as the Director of an art gallery in New York, completed 4 years of school, filled a 2 year mission to France, mastered singing, piano, tap and jazz, featured on 2 albums (my thanks to nolens volens) and starred in a Saudi Arabian television show. I mean please, I'm 25, by normal standards I am behind the curve.

Alas, such is my fate. I should apply to medical school where the local media will eat me up as the "youngest kid doctor in America." Then retire by 30 on the royalties from a great first person narrative television show based around my life. I'd make them change my name of course. To something like 'Douglas Howard, Kid M.D.' Then I'd exhume the body of Johnny Carson so I could appear on his show as I've always dreamed. Gosh, it's good to be young and care free.

Except I'm not. I turn 26 in March and am unmarried, ungraduated and unemployed (I DON'T cound hocking jewelry at JCPenny's "employment"). Those who don't think I am barely post-pubescent question my masculinityby attacking my interest in the arts - that and the way I prance around like a fairy. Leave to the bullies to kick you while you're down. What is left for me? Music? No. That is the domain of the truly depressed and f#cked up. Only with life then. Maybe I'll start passing myself off as 19, go on another mission and doing everything right that I messed up the first time around. I really will be a prodigy! This is it, I have found my ticket to success and ultimate Shangrai La. Hallelujah! I am born again!

What is in store?

I am busy with school with my class at the comm. college (which I just qualified to be exempt from the final), and my ind. study courses. I am taking my first Bio mid term next week and my only Hist. mid term the week after. I just started a job at JCPenney's for the holidays. I have been in training this week and will be busy selling at the jewelry and watch counter come Saturday. I have also been offered a job working at Scope Art fair in Miami in early Dec. and am going to call them today to let them know if i'll take it. So far, it's yes. It's just one week and I should earn about $1,200.00. That will help me with my other expenses for sure.

Ellie has been very occupied with her missionary who has just gotten home and dealing with all that. He is not out east as far as I know, but back in the states and they talk to each other regularly I gather. I feel best about giving her as much room as she needs right now - which is a lot. She knows how I feel and that I am very much here for her and will be if and wehn things with him don't work out. It just hit me that this could appear as my being her second choice, but I don't really feel that way. If she doesn't like him then she was not her first choice after all. And I can respect that, either way it goes.

Kendra just got accpeted to get her Bachelor's from Univ. of Florida in Gainesville, about 3 hours north of us. She is very excited about it and I too feel like this will be a good and progressive change for her as she continues to deal with her life post-divorce. She has offered to be my roommate out there but I would not be going to UF, but the Comm College there and I am not sure it is worth the expense when i can live at home for free and keep doing more ind. Study classes. no, I think I will stay here through April then decide where to go for the summer then back to BYU in the fall if I can make sure to get back in.

I'm growing

What I recognize about my great friend R. T. Barnhart is that he is keen on anticipating other's needs. He always makes himslef available to help - moving comes up a lot and Ellie was particularly cognizant of his aid on multiple occasions in the last few weeks - but also emotionally and spiritually. I notice too, that as much as giving up freedoms to move back home after living not just away at school but really on my own with a job, that I am very much a different person when I am back home - thinking about others first is no longer a consertated effort I must make but comes second nature as my motive to be truly helpful overcomes childish desires for attention and selfishness.

I have to look at where I am going to move come January, because it is becoming very clear to me that I cannot stay here longer - not taking up space in my parents condo and not in this part of the world where there is so little to offer in the line of peers, spirtuallity and personal growth. That is one of the greatest things I got out of New York, was who I was becoming. My weaknesses and strengths came into heavy relief and allowed me the opportunity to grow in ways I couldn't have otherwise. What I feel also as strongly that I received are the friends that I made and the people with whom I was blessed to create a bond.

Now What

I have made so many changes in my life and all for the good. After finishing the season at the gallery in New York, I decided that that was not the path I wanted to be on and in spite of dating a wonderful girl, Ellie (with whom I still talk on a daily basis), I needed to come HOME of all places to finish my GE's through independent study.

Now I am living in Florida with my parents, my grandmother and my sister who is also free-loading after a divorce and finishing her A.A. at BYU-i. In a funny twist of events, California was calling me when, during a work trip to LA, Hilary introduced me to an acquaintance and student who runs an international ancient-art gallery. He pretty much offered me the position of director there on the spot when we went in to meet with him but, like my NY job, it was not what I wanted to be doing. Sadly, it was then I realized that spending the next 8 months working to finish my degree in a comforting and affordable environment was what I needed to be doing.

And that brings me to here. I miss my girl in NY. I miss not being able to be out in LA with Hilary and my other friends there and I miss having the independence of full-time employment. Once, you have tasted the nectar of that world, it is hard to return to the dark underworld of undergraduate study. But, that puts me on the path to Grad school, with its enlightened minds and deeper course of study. It was pretty appalling frankly, that so many potential employers cared so little for the fact that I hadn't even finished my B.A.

I think that come summer, I will move back to NY where I will find some kind of job/internship to prepare for grad school a year from then - future entrance date 2008.

Three-Eighths of an Inch

Jason saw that there was a three-eighths inch difference between the right hook and the left. It meant that the painting would not hang level. This was a problem. This problem had repercussions. Self-loathing would consume him. He would become short with his boss – maybe even yell a little in frustration. Under the guise of sarcasm, the boss would retaliate and call him a Palestinian terrorist or a stinky Sudanese. What made this worse was Jason was a self-loathing, guilt ridden white boy of 25 whose only real desire was to feed inbred children in the Middle East – or give them free dental cleanings on one of those trips millionaire Orthopedic surgeons go on every few years to salve their consciences.

Three-eighths of an inch didn’t really make a difference but the boss would notice. In the middle of taking a break from drafting an email to talk on the phone with one of his boy-toy, bubble-butt buddies he would slosh himself around on his wheeled chair and bark. “It’s not level. Check the level; you have to check it with the level. The hooks must be off, that’s why it’s not level.” Jason would grasp at his reserves of patience to feign submissiveness. “Yeah, I know…I mean you’re right, the hooks must be off. I’ll check it with the level.” “Now you’ve got to take it down. Do you have to take out the screw? Take out the screw. Remeasure. You have to put another hole in the wall? Oh, then you have to patch the hole.” And then back to his conversation, all interested big brother – right into their pants.

But it wasn’t what he said that frustrated and angered. Jason was sure he meant it as a personal attack. He knew that with all his privilege he should now how to hang a picture level. Wasn’t he grateful to be born white and not unattractive so he could have this job? That’s why he took a huge decrease in expected pay – he was lucky to be working. As much as it was his right as a college-educated man in his mid-twenties to have a flashy job in New York, he was cognizant that how he got there was based more on what he was born with than what he had accomplished. And it helped that old men liked to flirt with him.

Sweat was soaking through his pits and groin. The screws he had hung level but the hooks on the frame were off – by three-eighths of an inch. Damn framer. Asshole, overpriced, cock-sucking faggot. Why had Jason pursued the job? Was school really that miserable? He had thought that this was the answer to avoiding teachers who hounded him for late papers and make-up quizzes. An apartment in New York that he could barely afford, but afford all the same, was better than moldy student housing and Green-Day playing roommates. If New York was calling who was he to turn it down?

He wiped his face. The dew on his brow now darkened his forearm sleeve. The old logic didn’t add up when faced with this problem. The problem of his racist boss, of the lack of support from any of his peers, of his growing spending habits and diminishing savings. He wiped with his left arm. Matching stains. Matching lies. Matching problems. He stared at his arms. The stains were off three-eighths of an inch.

Guess what, i'm older now

This is my 25th birthday weekend, celebrating my entrance into the REAL adult world (but not the "adult" world...). Now 50 something clients won't say, "Gosh you look young! How old are you!?" and instead of, "24." "Ohh, well, that's nice. (Silence. Turn and walk away.)" It will be, "25!" "Amazing! What you've achieved so young, but at least you are a real adult and I will listen to what you say as it now has more legitimacy."

Such is the blessing of living. And the blessing of calendars. And the blessing of a culture bent on self-aggrandizement where I can turn one day into a four week bachinal. Yes.

So tonight I am going into Brooklyn with about 12 of my new friends - and some old ones from my distant, never to return again BYU days - to Relish, a hip fun diner in Williamsburg then to my friend Helen's place where she is throwing a huge bash.

ME!

All I Do Is Party

After coming in at 4 am last night from my fifth party this weekend (and counting), I feel confident that I am adjusting to life in the city pretty well. Between the girls in my singles ward and the girls at my gallery, I have more invitations then I can resonably handle - at least to be able to attend church at 9:30 with more than 4 hours of sleep.

Oh, and I'm about to become a very serious book buyer; why not, gosh! I have come across a contmeporary French philosopher whose name I was told is "Wellbottom." That can't be right, my google search is not helping on this one though. But I am avidly looking for the French version of his writing, so if you come across it let me know.

"the art world is the fart" world

What happens when you sit around hoping that someone is going to discover that you have no ability for the job you've been hired to accomplish. I don't know because I am a genius at what I do and I wouldn't be here if that weren't the case. Just the other day I sat around as artists whose esoteric work garners millions of dollars from the richest, most pompous collectors from the Greek isles came to me begging me to share in their wealth and show their work in our top tier Chelsea gallery. You see, somehow I attract these fools like flies, but have to regretfully decline because we just don't work like that with those types of people. No, it is important to maintain integrity in this business of wolves, and I for one will eat gruel instead of just take on some artist because their work will "allow me to eat everyday," or "make it possible for me to pay my rent and clothe myself." I am a man of integrity, I will starve for my art...ists.

Double "U," Tee, Eff (Exclamation Point, Question Mark)

I live in New York, I live IN New York, I live in NEW YORK. And I love it, the subway rides that keep from from seeing the trees and the sky for about 1/16 of my working day, the dirty grime that seems to collect in every crevase of sidewalk and corner (inside and out-of-doors), and the lavendar walls that line the hallway of my Harlem apartment building. I love it!

Day 1 of New York - Unpacking, parents invading, sore neck from looking at all the tall buildings
Day 2 of New York - Parents leaving, wandering, movie, FHE, sleeping in my own bed
Day 3 of New York - Waiting for Pete to show up at RARE, me here