This is Van Gogh's most recognizable painting, composed entirely of images snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomy excites me, but in the same way the ocean does -- it is seemingly infinite, absolutely essential and still uncharted and unknown. Astrophotographers use lasers to focus the cameras, using multiple lens filters and focal lengths to produce the final photo. Lasers! They shoot it at sodium dust rings around us in space, among other debris still circling around our atmospheric outskirts since the last celestial object passed us by. These filthy frosty bits of elemental material remind me of that ball of hair you dig out of your shower drain in disgust when your tub starts to empty sluggishly. They're like the O'Doyle family in Billy Madison, tossing off the particulate pollution like a styrofoam cup thrown out a sunroof. Or more literally, like banana peels or whatever, I'm not a cinematic reference machine or anything!
I feel guilty when I look at Van Gogh. He was a cripple mentally, and suffered with a disability that left him destitute. All he could do was art. Obsession isn't something I respect, it's extremism, and extremism is inverse to equilibrium, the naturally balanced condition all systems strive for (well, that and more freedom, but that's getting off topic, I can feel it). So I feel like I'm not looking at sunflowers or french cafes, i'm hearing an insane man screaming still, and it's sort of humiliating. His art is incredible and inspiring, with marked intuition and composition. But if his epilepsy were cured at the expense of his artistic ability, I rather wish for his happiness then to ever have seen his work. I would willingly choose a life without his paintings if it meant his mind were more his own than it was historically.
I think I'm looking too much into this, but I've always felt that way. Poor dude. Makes my ear hurt, and reminds me of that scene in reservoir dogs, but i'm not certain if that agent was crazy or cold-hearted. I heard it was based on the wild bunch, and that film has that guy in the bank, the disabled fellow who keeps repeating, "I kill him nao?", a huge grin innocently pasted on his face. I think that's who he's supposed to be. Keitel is the main dude, and Buschemi is Borgnine. The mexican fellow getting dragged through the streets by the fancy car is tim roth, no question. I can't find anything on google linking these films, but it's obvious. Apparently the first scene from RD is lifted nearly in tact from WB. Gotta love Quentin, his habit of blatant homage makes him out to be the Gaga of cinema, so he's more a collage artist or multi-specimin composite surgeon than he is a father, giving organic life to his work as an extension of self. But what do I know? I've never so much as acted on film. Just asking questions, is all.
I had a neat idea of specific-posts on here. Fungus, definitely, as I'm a big mycophiliac, complete with the field guides for identification and eye contact with each shady spot under mulchy trees. In my plant biology lecture this morning, and in my biometry class directly following a floor above, I took out my planner to jot down blog ideas, even noted it in my class writings on the looseleaf, when it hit me: do a lecture-specific blog post each week. Helps me study, and is a natural way to write about science. I'm not a grad student, nor do I do research or work in the field. I do, however, know a lot of folks with degrees in the sciences who i don't mind approaching for interviews and article ideas. I'm always gushing about the articles I read anyway, which got me wanting to respond to links briefly in the morning as a daily science post here. Posting frequency is a massive factor in establishing a readership here, which is why I sat down to type this after getting my salami and cheese and light beer lunch before meeting Julia in like, twenty minutes when her bus drops her off down the hill.
So, that's science news article response every day (goal), ideas i have in my day followed up on (topical), mycology (specialization), and lecture observations. That's good for now, I think. I'll include interviews eventually as I do them throughout the semester with faculty and staff on campus and within the community. Gotta stay focused, or I'll abandon the effort entirely, and my ambitions deserve more attention than that. I'm over the self-neglect of my early twenties. I'll be thirty in four years, it's time to start formalizing my adult expectations of myself like condemned criminals along a brick wall: align and fire. Anticipate and eliminate.
I've been reading the Getting Things Done (GTD) method, which suggests that any preoccupation, imaginative, realistic or otherwise, is bondage. Liberation is discipline, it's thinking of what i want to be thinking of at the moment i think it, and designing my obligations and circumstances in a manner more conducive to a situationally-appropriate output. If we refuse to master ourselves, we will remain enslaved. I have been attempting to establish a dialogue with myself in contemplation of this, it's yielding some surprisingly productive results, practically and philosophically.
I'd like to write about my lecture observations after I get back from the bus stop in a little bit. Let me know what you think in the comments. If you think of it, I want to write about it!
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