Pablo Picasso:  A Confession

. . . We no longer feel art as a vital need, as a spiritual necessity, as was the case in centuries past . . .

From the moment that art is no longer the sustenance that nourishes the best, the artist may exteriorize his talent in all sorts of experiments with new formulas, in endless caprices and fancy, in all the expedients of intellectual charlatanism.  In the arts, peopel no longer seek consolation, nor exaltation.  But the refined, the rich, the indolent, distillers of quintessence seek the new, the unusual, the original, the extravagant, the shocking.  And I, since cubism and beyond, I have satisfied these gentlemen and these critics with all the various whims which have entered my head, and the less they understoof them, the more they admired.  By amusing myself at these games, at all these tomfolleries, at all these brain-busters, riddles, and arabesques, I became famous quite rapidly.  And celebrity means for a painter:  sales incrememnt, money, wealth.

Today, as you know, I am famous and very rich.  But when completely alone with myself, I haven't the nerve to consider myself an artist in the great and ancient sense of the word.  There have been great painters like Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt and Goya.  I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time.  This is a bitter confession, mine, more painful indeed than it may seem, but it has the merit of being sincere.

So I bought an APU nalgene a few weeks ago, to sport my APU pride.  Today, I decided to add a Bush/Cheney sticker as part of my personal campaign.  All of public comm I sat in on top of my desk, facing the rest of the class.  Now I know Chris isn't exactly a Republican, and sometimes a little odd about pent-up, repressed feelings, but I didn't expect this... walking to the caf after class he asks Mike Davies about the indestructable nalgenes, then grabs my nice new clean unscratched APU one (with the Bush sticker) violently right out of my hand and starts hitting it against a cement wall.  Not normal hitting, like a light smack, but one of those I'm going to bring this down with all my strength and smash it to pieces hits.  It doesn't break, nalgenes are practically indestructable, but the side is all scratched up.  I don't really care about the bottle, though I did like how it looked all nice and clean, but more the action.  It seems indicative, how he took something I admired and tried his hardest to smash it to pieces.  or maybe I'm just making this up....

I know it's just a nalgene, but I think this is symbolic of a whole lot more about us than merely a nalgene or a political coflict.

8 page theology paper, and I haven't written a word.  sigh

"We're on the same page in different books."  - Ashley Owyang

I'm not mad, or even really upset about how I was treated.  I didn't have any heart commintment to him, and I can easily reason to see the better choice.  I simply feel used and led on, and as though I should be angry.

"I have escaped; and that I should escape, may be a matter of grateful wonder to you and myself. But this does not acquit him, Mrs. Weston; and I must say, that I think him greatly to blame. What right had he to come among us with affection and faith engaged, and with manners so very disengaged? What right had he to endeavour to please, as he certainly did--to distinguish any one young woman with persevering attention, as he certainly did--while he really belonged to another?--How could he tell what mischief he might be doing?-- How could he tell that he might not be making me in love with him?-- very wrong, very wrong indeed."

"Impropriety! Oh! Mrs. Weston--it is too calm a censure. Much, much beyond impropriety!--It has sunk him, I cannot say how it has sunk him in my opinion. So unlike what a man should be!-- None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that disdain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life."

"Well," said Emma, "I suppose we shall gradually grow reconciled to the idea, and I wish them very happy. But I shall always think it a very abominable sort of proceeding."

"he was become perfectly reconciled, and not far from thinking it the very best thing that Frank could possibly have done."

Emma by Jane Austen

He said he loved me, and would wait for me- only 3 days ago.

Oh yea, about the new profile pic- it's not any alcohol next to me, just a slushie-ish wannabe at our summer staff banquet.

Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream…. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves. By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. ---Dietrich Bonhoeffer