The diploma arrives at my parents' house...

I hate moving. I hated moving my sister around two or three times a year when she went to college on the other side of the state. Driving west and up was my favorite part. I've always been a sucker for watching the world pass by in parallax. Moving meant lots of yelling and heavy lifting. Hard work with nothing to show. A big waste of time. But this isn't really anything new, no one likes moving.

Sifting through the rubble of a year (thank god that's all) is an imposing task, but I'm glad I can't pay someone else to do it for me. So much can fall by the wayside in the small space of a year. While filling up a bag with everything I thought would be important and other detritus that just seems to have missed earlier sacks I found an envelope bearing a few footprints from my desk chair. Inside was a card from my Grandmother, recently spirited away to the great unknown on the pirate ship Cancer, bestowed upon me on the advent of my graduation from Art School. Inside it reads in a shaky hand, still retaining some elegance,

In homage to the new
graduate
PETER

Much Love,
Janice

The front of the card bears the image of a painting from 15th century Turkey, a miniature entitled "Offering gifts to the Sultan Selim II." Twenty-three men with identical faces and scraggly bears in multicolored robes and ridiculous tall hats are paying their homage to a thoroughly bored Sultan. I was never close to Janice. Old people have always made me uncomfortable. Even before my first experience with death, I associated the wrinkled and grey with the end of life, with senility, incontinence, and crabbiness. Maybe I just found their wealth of experience too imposing. Whatever the case may be, I regret not learning more about my forbears. It has taken me far too long to taste just a little bit of the richness of their experience. The tastes I can still manage now can't compare to what I could have found out if I had been curious from the beginning.

Apparently my family dynamic is a strange one. I love my family, but I just can't make myself take much of an interest in them. Caring and intimacy are separate. We are a humanistic bunch, I suppose. Respect is in good supply, respect for differing feelings and points of view, and a respect for privacy. I think that is partly Janice's fault. I only use blaming words because I am coming to terms with my own problems with interpersonal relations. I lack curiosity. Personalities attract me, but I always fail to make a connection on much more than a cordial level. It takes a lot for me to actually become involved in another person's life. Of course this is also a product of bullying and alienation in primary school. Those times are a long story of disappointment.

Something killed my curiosity. I've felt like my brain was missing something for a while now, and maybe that's it. Without desire, there is less room for disappointment, and a need to know - to experience - is a big catalyst. It's almost like my intellect has been neutered. There's a project. Grow a new curiosity gland, maybe near the hypothalamus. I think a part of that needs to be keeping this blog updated at least once a week.

Here goes...

Introit

My name is Peter. I graduated from art school this past May with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography. I had no idea what I was getting into when I decided to apply exclusively to those institutions of higher learning that specialized in creative education. High school was too easy. Straight A's came naturally, and I didn't have the wherewithal to take the few classes that may have actually given me a challenge. I stuck with the things that helped me feel as remarkable as I wanted to be.

Skip through all the tedious decision making, experimenting, stagnation, discovery, disappointment, your standardized collegiate experience, and you find me sitting in the air-conditioning in my boxers killing time before going out for sushi with the girl I love. The same girl I thought I had failed to woo in one of my earliest experiments with impulse, and made the incredibly easy decision to move on to a more intellectually stimulating environment. I'm not wallowing in post-baccalaureate, unemployed depression, nor am I recovering from another nocturnal bohemian ritual. What I am recovering from is a day of lifting, stickering, trashing, and delivering in ninety degree heat. I confess to spending most of this time in the air-conditioned basement of a small museum, but I do make jaunts outside through crowds of tourists with over a hundred pounds on a dolly. This wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't inherited my father's slightly overactive sweat glands.

So if you still find this interesting, this salinic position is actually a promotion. I used to spend all my time stagnating in the stores I now provide with wares. I am, essentially, a stock boy with extra duties sprinkled here and there, being bred to do everything my boss/manager/supervisor does now. Again sparing the mundanities that got me into this position, I find myself faced with the prospect of a meeting with my boss' boss in the next day or two. After a month of working twice as hard for the same peas and carrots I got in the stores, I get to have my position created, and my raise (hopefully) instated (retroactively please!). The only trick here is considering my future with the company. Where do I see myself? Of what use can I be? In short, am I worth the company's investment.

I want to cry out, "NO! I want to stay out of this basement forever and create a body of work that will be remembered for centuries, perhaps millennia! You suck all my time and energy out of me like a tired metaphorical vampire who needs to survive just a little while longer to keep itself relevant! I will flee at the first chance I see, so get rid of me while you still have the chance to do it on your own terms!" but I like the idea of having a steady job. A place where I know my function. America is a strange enough place to live. Why would I want to wander for years trying to create my own relevance when It is being handed to me on a pewter platter? Give me a salary and health insurance. Give me a reason to buy nice shirts and keep my stubble at bay. Give me a chance to have as many as three people working under me, and I will be sated. Give me a means to support this creative habit of mine. Something to react against or draw upon. Give me adulthood, and maybe someday I'll give you a work of art.