This is what I meant to post before all that stream of consciousness slipped out, whoops.

An excerpt from The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath:

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.


... This is my life right now.

Sylvia Plath

Despite feeling absolutely no suicidal thoughts, I connect with Esther in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath in a way most people would not even recognize. I felt a taste of something bizarre that shook my perception completely. For weeks at a time over the past 2 years I have been experiencing these episodes during which I can sleep for about 20 hours a day and still feel incredibly exhausted. The entire essence of my easy-going friendly personality leaves the building and I become a crazed fiend with no morals intact. My grades have suffered tremendously and at times the anxiety of having another episode ruin my college career can become overwhelming. I felt isolated, completely lost my faith in many medical professionals who can only do expensive strings of tests which have all come back normal while I have felt completely abnormal. There is a medical record of me storming out of a hospital in a mad rage because I wanted a bacon cheeseburger, but not in the random act of comedy kind of way. I desperately did not want to talk to a psychologist in the hospital while I was ill. Nearly a year later, I spoke with a counselor who felt it was a medical issue. The professionals have literally been bouncing me around, with no answers in sight. I do not blame them or feel spiteful, they genuinely wanted to help me but could not offer any solution.

Esther reminds me of this experience. She walks around like a complacent zombie, feeling dead where it counts. Her descriptions of everything (excluding the suicidal and self destructive bit) match my episodes so rightly. It terrifies me to openly admit this, but those moments of pathological weary feel like The Bell Jar. One day I am my usual self, then out of nowhere I get hit with the urge to sleep all the time and when I am not sleeping a drunken marionette man strings me along throughout the day. The hours go by as if I am having an outer body experience and I can hear myself say phrases that are witty, but it's like I can watch all of it from a foggy lantern where the sounds of my life are muted, distorted. This is actually what I have been going through, and even some of my closest friends do not realize how severely this has plagued me. Braving a face of collection has become my guise, but it really has only separated me, strangely enough, from the people in my program. I feel like if they knew how strange my body reacts to who knows whatever is happening that they would see me as ill, and in the medical profession, undesirable. For that reason, having distorted thoughts for two weeks at a time is better than knowing there is actually something wrong with me.
(I would like to add that I have not felt ill in this way in several months and I feel wonderful right now, this is merely a reflection of the rougher times. I literally wake up each morning feeling an excitement for life and the experiences each day may hold.)

Digital Democracy

"Digitisation really has the profound effect of democratising access," says Prof Stephen Brier of the City University of New York Graduate Center, a historian and co-director of the school's New Media Lab.

"It gives access to people to materials and documents that would previously only be accessible to very few."

These quotes were taken from a BBC article about the documentation of raves and mixes made by DJs, but I think it can be applied to a broader aspect of our generation. Consider social lubrication for our generation, it is largely based upon knowledge you consume. With the digital expanse and widespread access to technology it is now possible to become socially marketable in more innovative ways. Although this does not work exclusively to socioeconomic status or any other forms of identity it can create more dynamic forms of socialization. Social status can be determined through knowledge of the news, music, books, whatever.

Information becomes more widely available but then what is important is what you choose to inform yourself about. We have the potential to become our own Good Will Hunting (slightly less talented, maybe) with everything available on the internet. I find it incredibly interesting to think that an individual can decide what to consume, but it is relevant only if enough people agree. It seems like this is one of the trends that comes with digitization (+1's or like's).

Why Art Is Important

Art is a form of communication that evokes a reaction beyond simply reading or watching someone recite the news on television. The vibrant colors and bold lines of a piece can illicit emotions faster and more clearly, similar to the way a good poet must show feeling rather than just tell it.

Art has this organic quality of reflecting the world. An individual produces it just as if it was grown in a garden in the back yard, creating an honesty that cannot be celebrated in other methods of spreading a message. The viewer can immediately seek out the personal views or cultural context of the artist to understand aspects of the piece which are not clear upon sight only.

Art is the personal thermometer for the temperature of current situational climates with an agenda: to send a message with no guise of neutrality involved, providing a voice for many people whose histories are overlooked. Oftentimes, it becomes an alternative but drastically important history.

Recently I had forgotten why art was important, but lying sleeplessly at night a few weeks ago the reason hit me out of nowhere.

Scouring the BBC News page today I found an article about cartoons with an agenda to change the media discourse on the issue of drug war violence in Mexico.

Check out the following link to view a slideshow of the cartoons of the alternative histories:

http://www.theworld.org/2011/09/cartoons-no-mas-sangre-mexico/