god, I've been busy, so a long post to cover everything I haven't posted

I keep meaning to post and getting distracted. I have written half a post on Finishing paintings, another on Wildfire and other on arrival here at Berkeley, and i really want to talk about today. Ok, so super condensed / what i had and everything elseput into one simple post:

So I finally finished a few pieces a couple weeks ago. I actually started the blog in my excitement to share them, but I couldn’t find my camera! Anyway, here they are: a huge image dump. 3 pieces I’m happy with, a miracle. I’ll spare the rest of the world my bad one.

I don’t know about anyone else, but for me finishing anything is a real accomplishment. I am so ADD about my art, and usually have about 6 projects going at a time, plus ideas for a few more. Or I have nothing, and no desire to do anything, nor should I, anything I try to do turns out like total crap.

But when I work productively, it’s great, and I don’t need to sleep, or eat or really do anything else. It’s kinda like I imagine being high must be, I lose time and sense of self and just pour everything out. And if it isn’t perfect, sometimes I get frustrated, but mostly I just keep trying until I am too exhausted to move, then I sleep for hours until my body recuperates enough, get up and go back to whatever I was working on.

At the moment, I have zillions of art things happening but thats later, probably tomorrow because I'm really tired and I have to upload pictures to show you that stuff.

Anyway, on to other things:
Wildfire!

Wildfire was amazing beyond words!

Friday- we got picked up by Jeremy around 1, threw our hastily packed stuff into his car, and drove for 2 hours to find this place. The camp is normally a boy-scout camp, and we pitched our tents in a small clearing in the woods across the not-for-parking lot, so we were close to the field where everything took place but not actually on it. (We wanted to be able to sleep if people were up late doing stuff). Then we went out to play on the field. It was nice, but a tiny bit awkward because we only knew the other people we came with and a couple others and most people seemed to already know each other. I was more awkward than the rest of the monkeys. Then we had dinner, which was way better than I’d expected and sat through a long and disorganized meeting about fire safety which was unnecessarily detailed for us, but helpful for new performers. I volunteered to be one of the first safeties, and fire got started. Everyone was way better than us, and I was very depressed. There was no yelling etc, and we stayed up too late. Some girl makes me feel bad about myself and Jeremy tells me its my fault. Great, now I'm a bad spinner and a worse person.
Saturday- Breakfast, then Ian's Move Your Body poi class. The class is awesome, and Danielle and Elias go with me. Then Fans, with Eliza, who is nice and very talented. I learn a couple of things, but mostly just improve what I have, and get a sunburn. Jeremy makes me feel bad about myself again. Then I skip lunch in favor of a swim and we go find the showers, and then I skip the next 2 classes to nap, and show up late to intro dart. there are no more darts, so I just watch with Jeremy, and he makes me feel crappy yet again. He's not a bad person, it was constructive criticism but i was not in a good place.... We reconoitered with the others at the tents. It was starting rain, and we decided to play frisbee in the rain. This saved the whole weekend. Jeremy and Surei didn't play but Elias Danielle Sasha and I did, and we met lots of fun, nice people, and no one cared that I'm loud, sarcastic and no good at frisbee. We went skinny dipping, showered again, and went to dinner. Then there was more fire, where I had a lot of fun cheering for people I knew and had a couple good burns. There was a weird show, then a couple of us did an impromtu "coordinated" burn- with a couple set things, working together, agreed up while waiting to fuel, and then our own runs. This prompted other coordinated act type things. it was great. more cuddling, and dancing, and spinning, and i face-painted danielle and sasha and a couple people i didnt know. and we stayed up really late again.
Sunday- breakfast. Face painting instead of a class. Flow with Pali, which wasnt really a class, just an hour to play with combinations and flow. then instead of a class i hung out with Paul and we talked about different toy constructions because i didn't even know what they were talking about in the Poi Geekery class. Then Elias and I went to the Advanced Acro class, which was really not so much advanced. They had people partner with other students, so the pair both had no clue what they were doing and there were only the 2 of them spotting for the whole class, and Elias and I, because we were like those mattresses wont save people. And we got in trouble, we were trying to be good but we were bored. we don't need 5 minutes to get shoulderstand/candlestick/whatever its called. He pressed up, I was like hmm... icarus? box? and those were no problem so i pulled him off my legs into no-hands and he was like "warn me!" and other people were watching and clapping... seriously we didnt mean to make a scene we were just playing. it was the only class where anyone got told not to play because they could do stuff others couldn't. Afterwards we had an awesome play session with most of the people from the class, we taught a bunch of stuff, complicated variations, multi person balances, and stuff like stacks (2 high). It was great. In the fall, I want to teach the acro class. Then we had dinner and more fire! At this point, i know everyone whos spinning I like and am leading a small section of people yelling stuff like "Justin is sexy" and "Paul is too awesome" and "I love Danielle" and getting responses like "I love you too Felicia" from people spinning and people coming up to me and saying, "i'm gonna do a run, will you watch me?" which i assumed meant "can you scream for me too?" it was great. we hung out really late and decided to sleep under a tree..
Sunday- woke up outside, lovely. my sleeping bag was quite wet, not lovely. Had breakfast and went to the massage class. partnered an old guy, not as sketchy as i expected. Went to the future of wildfire panel. I love that they had a "only problems no solutions" format. Packed up and went home. Sad sad.

While I was there I realized that after graduation I want to do circus with my life. Circus and art, and then I came home and found out that there is a circus, Cirque Nova, that teaches disabled people circus. Thats what I want to do. And make art. Lots of art and circus and helping people recover and be happy again. And friends and a cat. Thats a good life. I want that.

Currently I'm in Berkeley because I need a year of spanish so I can graduate. And its a year in 8 weeks, about a chapter a day, 4 hours of no english a day plus, at least 4 hours of homework. So much time I can't take the art class I was planning to take. and I was feeling super depressed about it because i hadnt met anyone here i wanted to even try and be friends with and i hate spanish and im really bad at it and its cold and i have no free time. Yesterday I wrote:

Berkley is no fun. I can’t find any other spinners on campus or even anyone fun to hang out with, not that I have time to anyway. I have class from 9-2 every day and then the homework starts. We’ve been here 4 days, covered 3 chapters and have our first test tomorrow. I am so lost… and so immensely tired.

But today: Spanish was better and I think one of the other girls might be worth getting to know. I went shopping and bought lots of fun art stuff, but thats for tomorrow, Im too tired to get into it. and my roommate finally got here. I like her. And I got something i needed to do done, and i have all of tomorrow and sunday to do art and relax. Yay. I have to sleep but tomorrow I'll post again. I swear.