The past couple of weeks have been ones of profound reflection on what direction I’m headed in professionally, personally and otherwise. This has been somewhat of a mini-existential crisis, if you will. That surely makes it out to be rather cataclysmic, but I suppose I’ve always been one for unnervingly thorough self-analysis. The burning question is whether I should stay in my graduate school program and accumulate an asphyxiating amount of debt, and if it would lead me towards the kind of life I think I’m seeking in order to make that debt worth it. I’ve had that nervous feeling in my stomach like something isn’t quite right, although pinpointing what that something is has proven to be quite an elusive pursuit.

What I do know is that I’ve been seeking more creative outlets of self-expression. I’ve spoken to my parents, boyfriend, best friends, strangers, and having exhausted the advice of every possible outlet, I begged for the clarity to come to me in a dream (naturally, how else should one solve life’s most pressing problems?). Anyhow, at the risk of sounding slightly like I’ve gone off the deep end, I will share the dream I ended up having last night.

In it, someone called me on the phone to tell me my mother had died. Now for those of you who do not know my mother, she is buzzing with creative capacities. The woman can paint, sew, draw- you name it. In the dream, I am not sad, but rather intensely curious, so I go to my parents house to collect her belongings, but the only things I can find are her paintbrushes, paintings, and other art-related belongings, so I take them and place them around my apartment.

This is what I found on dreams about death:

“To dream about the death of a loved one suggests that you are lacking a certain aspect or quality that the loved one embodies. Ask yourself what makes this person special or what you like about them. It is that very quality that you are lacking in your own relationship or circumstances. Alternatively, the dream indicates that whatever that person represents has no part in your own life anymore. In particular, to dream about the death of your living parents indicates that you are undergoing a significant change in your waking life.”

So what do you think, should I leave school and seek something else, perhaps something more creatively in-tune, or should I stay on track and bludgeon my unsettling impulsivity with a sledgehammer?

On a less serious note: a couple of pictures from my lomography camera:

Frightful flower, with what vehemence do you dare not to grow?

Is it oft that the sun does now shine in your favor,

Pouring down upon you its glimmering golden vessel of all life?

Does not your patch of soil provision all the food and drink to be had at your hearts content?

When the jovial skies, in a frenzied deluge of manic bear upon the earth

A sleet of iridescent tears,

Do you not emerge yourself the better, endowed with the vigor of a penitent having performed the nights sacred ablutions?

Have you stopped to consider your opulent dress of velvet so fine the highest royals seek it, and blues and reds so bright the finest painter contemplates it?

Perhaps familiarity has robbed you of your very scent,

Fragrant as the honey of the sweetest bees.

Is there a thing for which you truly want,

that has not been ordained to you in the cosmic order of life?

I think it not that you may have encountered an existence more immutable than your own.

I have spent the last several days packing, cleaning, painting, heavy lifting, and otherwise moving my excessive belongings to my new apartment in bushwick! This will be not my second, not even my third, but my FIFTH apartment since I moved to New York three years ago. Talk about living in a transient city, and every time I do it, I promise myself it will be the last time I move. My room is coming together nicely though, and is considerably bigger than my last, which is always a good thing- particularly when you've accustomed yourself to living in closet sized bedrooms because its simply the norm in this city. I also found the perfect 1970's vintage white dresser with gold trimming (craigslist, you never let me down) and that has made me extra happy.