Starting school.

I remember the summer when I was starting year 7, I'd actually kid myself that monday the 2nd of September would never actually arrive. Even the sunday before I was in complete denial.

At least with uni I don't need to panic as much, just the whole failing my degree thing is a slight worry, but still, only very slight...

My younger cousin Jonathan is starting high school this thursday. I was listening to him yesterday talk about how he can't take a packed lunch because it means you're a loser. I was so close to tears its actually unreal.
In a way he's slightly better off than me, he's got two friends going up with him, both of whom seem as clueless and as impressionable as him. Whereas I, had none!
Like me, he's entering high school with a massive complex. The fat complex. It's really funny how his 11 year+ life is mirroring mine. Around that age I also gained... a bit of extra weight, hah, or puppy fat, whatever. My neighbor once greeted me with, 'Ooh kate, oh haven't you put a lot of weight on!' and yesterday I had to hear of a similar situation with Jonathan and his neighbor. 'Oh Jonathan, look at that big fat belly on you!'...
... the funny thing is though, I took my verbal battering. But Jonathan didn't.

'Thanks moira, but you're not exactly skinny yourself are you!'

brilliant.

I remember at some point in the first week of high school, someone ripped one of my bag straps from my shoulders, claiming it was 'uncool' to wear both. It all does make me laugh now, but in a twisted sort of way, they were trying to help me.

Luckily for him, he's a funny kid with many, many witty comebacks (I can vouch for this!)

But I'll still be a bag of nerves on thursday.

♥

'its not one of those bets is it? like in 'she's all that' where they try kid the ugly girl she's attractive?'

'i don't think that happens in real life. especially not in yours. you don't wear glasses, it couldn't happen to you. she wouldn't have been able to take them off at the end and walk as though she knew where she was going, especially in high heels'

'what if she had contacts?'

'well just because someone takes their glasses off and puts contacts in doesn't mean they're suddenly beautiful. even if they straighten their frizzy hair and put a dress on. it's a bit like polishing a turd, it can't be done.

'in real life people have no fun because they stay away from bets like that because in order to win, they would actually have to shag an ugly girl'

Lets get out of the woods.

What a year! or half a year, to be precise.

This isn't going to be very pretty I'm afraid.

I've been thinking a lot about what sort of path I want to take next year, art work wise. What happened in the last 3 and a bit months has obviously had an impact on me that was beyond my control. And at the moment I'm becoming quite an annoyance to myself. Quite often and usually without realising it, I find myself losing my head; I spend countless minutes, hours and days reminding myself of what was, and what so easily could have been.
If it wasn't for the art of communication (or in this case, severe lack of) I could have lost my best and most beautiful friend. Thinking about it, my dad really did save my mum's life. It's crazy to think that without her influence on his, he may never have pushed and fought as hard as he did, he may have sat back and put all his faith in the doctors, and who could blame him if he had?

Yesterday, mum came up to me with this recorded message she'd done for my gran a few christmases ago that she'd found in one of our many drawers full of useless shit. 'ooh, wouldn't it have been dead spooky if you found this and I'd died?'
...great, yeah, dead spooky.

In my head, the bad always seems to override the good. I said to mum a few weeks ago, with absolutely no offense intended, that I was surprised how quickly I lost all hope when she was severely ill, not that I didn't want her to live(!) but afterwards I shocked myself with all the terribly selfish thoughts that went through my head on the 9th, 10th and 11th of April. I don't think I ever spoke to anyone about that, a little bit out of shame I guess, it was just me preparing myself for how I was going to carry on when she wasn't here anymore. Grief had just completely taken over.

Despite the new found love, appreciation and admiration I have for almost everyone and everything, I can say this, and for once in my life I can be sure to say it with confidence - I will never be able to fully absorb the feeling and realisation that absolute unprecedented fear had set in, and still hasn't quite gone away.

Normally, I would take great pleasure in the thought that someone had used their family tragedy as a stage in which to create a colourful masterpiece clouded with ambiguity and most importantly, a good old batch of pain.
I feel it would be ever so hypocritical of me to set my own stage in motion, but in the end, does it really fucking matter? The be all and end all is - I need a project, I need some sort of emotional release and really, I'm exploiting nothing and no-one but myself.

There are a million and one things I wish I could paint about, mostly my issues (hahah) with myself, but I've just no idea where to start.

I've hit a wall, and I need to knock it down!

Eye of the tiger.

I'd say 'not so suprisingly', but considering the state of our university course, I guess its really not that suprising anymore. I've been on and off struggling with work. Not so much the doing, but the ideas. No matter what direction I get distracted with, I always find myself coming back to people, faces and features. My biggest problem, of course, is trying to merge a meaning to whatever it is I do. Before christmas, I was having a tutorial with one of my tutors. I'd drawn some really detailed faces, that I actually loved! (first time for everything) and he happened to stumble across my sketches that I'd done in preparation for those drawings... and just completely went off on one.
"It's not about capturing the whole person, just their essence". Firstly, I don't even know what IT is yet, isn't that what I'm trying to figure out by 'doing'?

So of course, over christmas, that's all I did. Eyes, nose, mouth, ears, the works. My tutorial this week was with someone different. Suffice to say, this guy saw things very differently from the last one.

Looking forward to the zine fair next week, I'm feeling a good sort of pressure. Not a looming sense of doom like usual!

C'est la vie.

I'm not quite decided what to include in this blog, I don't want to base it on one thing, so I thought I'd share my University blog. We've been pressured into writing one for our context module. It's basically a review of our visits to galleries in and around liverpool.

To say they have been a bit sketchy on every detail to do with this course is an understatement (but I'll save that for another day!)

Here it is -

http://www.katenotsomuchincontext.blogspot.com/

I apologise for the spelling mistakes, and the swearing (of course!)