it was raining today! i really like the rain. more on that soon, in another update maybe. there are lots of snails in the garden. when i watch the rain i think about all of the layers of the object it reaches. if it never stopped raining, and an object was never moved, eventually the rain would seep into every aspect of it. it would become joined with the water, inseperable. eventually, it would crumble apart. i think about all of the concrete sidewalks. it's very nice sitting in the rain. the smell and sound and texture is really good. (i don't know how to capture this this next part in words that can be understood, so i'm going to give up and say it as i process it.) if i close my eyes, i can concentrate on the (slightly desaturated) reflected purple light blinking in the rain. a star passes right through me. for a moment, the unrelenting fractal concept of time is completely stopped, and an infinitely tiny moment is stuck, one little frame. and everything is a part of itself and inseperable (as in, the concept of it all, physical reality, laws, rules, systems, ideas) and then it all starts again!
but that entanglement is constant, really. i have talked to two people about free will recently. if you are familiar with the butterfly effect, it can feel like that even the smallest adjustment can cause world-ending changes. i think that the butterfly is there because of some other odd reason, and that happened because another, and so on. a double pendulum displays massive differences when allowed to start at even a slightly different position. but it will always be the same if it is dropped from the same position. everything has happened because everything has happened. so the concept of free will, while interesting, isn't really my perspective? it seems like an interesting tool for a lot of hypothetical situations, but to me it isn't measurably existent or not, just kind of a null. all of your actions are from a cause, and all of those causes.. and so on. these conversations have naturally drifted towards extraterrestrial life somehow? not a lot is known about space (it is not even known if there is living matter in the solar system, much less literally everywhere else. not to mention how weird space is with.. space) anyways, while i am certainly not 100% sure, or even 50%, i usually voice my thought that there might not be anything at all. and both of the people i have talked to said that made them kind of sad, the idea that we, on a planet with billions to communicate with, were helplessly alone. but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. it's a very easy thought to have, though. i think a lot of people think about how impressive it is that humans are able to form together and think and create. and someone might go, well, its also impressive that things are alive at all. and someone may say that it's impressive that anything exists at all. but these perspectives are biased, as they come from things that exist and are alive and create and think. but from a certain angle there is no difference in impressiveness from there being nothing or something at all. this is the only way it could be, and it is nothing, as it is. maybe one day there will be nothing, or it already is, or maybe it is that the idea of nothing does not mean anything because there only is (and yet that "is" is abstracted beyond real meaning). i think that idea would make people sad as well. i guess this means that everyone is an artist, because they cannot help but find the idea tragic tragic that it and its world is composed of nothing at all.
to be honest, the idea is OK with me, because even if it really was nothing all along, i can still experience. i can still make art, and it has meaning, because we exist in a little pocket of space in the middle of nothingness where we create the idea of meaning and experience. or maybe everything does exist and all of this is wrong idk
i haven't updated in a while!! i hope your halloween was fun. more progress on 403!! when i started, i was a little worried nobody would read it, or worse, i would lose interest after the first or second part and never complete it, out of things to say. but as i've gotten older i've found it easier to stick to projects i want to work on. my friends are very supportive, to be honest i was really surprised when one day one of them asked how my progress was going. tbh i expected a lot of them to skim the pages and then go back to what they're interested in, and when a new part would come out they would skim again. its weird to think that people care about thjings you make.. surreal i guess.
the internet is not very solid; its presence in physical space is abstract, but it is still a *real* place. like seeing a mirage of something far away over the horizon. being seen feels very alien! it's like this abstract place i cannot see is suddenly concrete and real, and i can feel the ground underneath me and the sun's rays. i dont know if thats a Universal Internet Experience though. i am very used to being an observer online. i am very, very, very shy. i try to not bother anyone, which is very easy on the internet where you're practically invisible. after all, no thoughts are really original, and it's hard to know what other people might , and a lot of things are unpredictable. adding to something just feels like pointing out something obvious. and it usually is! it's hard for me to understand people that can say a lot online, or how they conceptualize so well that people want to listen.
i think that's partially why i like making this website so much. it's my own little space! you don't have to click the link, nor do you have to read the words, nor do you have to click on my blog or comic or see my art. it can pass through you. it's all up to you if you want to listen. but these messages are made for you. i have a lot to say, if you want to hear. past the text on a screen, i am found within the compression artifacts of a jpeg. you can see me through the posterization rays and bands, alternating, its halos of color. you can watch my understanding progress as i become more confident writing the markup, so my thoughts are archived in all of my mistakes in the coding, the misunderstandings of tags, the errors in the css, the impractical workarounds. i'm where all of the stray pixels and uncolored fragments of my art sit. i'm made up of the experiments i make in music, art, the website; the successful ones that i have kept and the unsuccessful ones i have forgotten. you can find me in the few secret messages i've left around the images on this website. can you see me? are you listening? these messages are made for you.
im so excited to be making 403!! but people arent really reading it besides friends (which is ok and awesome!!) and its partially because of my hesitance to reach out jflksds. im a little nervous to share it and give it all the tags it is!! i feel like peolpe will know im advertising to them. but im not!! im just sharing art!! probably something i have to get over if i want to work on it more but!! small progress :D
keeping up w school has been so hard asjdgfkl so far i still have a 4.0 for this year but theres so much to go. and theres also programs and standardized tests and etc etc. im pretty lucky to have a lot of oppurtinities but the moment i slip up 20 doors close for me which is difficult because i still don't know what to do. i do think that i have something at least a little unique to say but i can only be seen through a how high a number is. not to mention all of the people infinitely more creative and insightful than me that aren't as lucky and have less opportunities. i wish i could get to a point thats. "OK. you did good." and have nothing else to worry about in the future
i like to imagine that, when i'm talking to someone, i'm rolling a bunch of dice every statement. sometimes i roll a 20 and expertly pull something off. it feels amazing. other times i might roll a 13 or 12 and that's what i would consider the average (i might be too quiet, not have the right tone i need, or stutter) and sometimes i roll a 1, which is when i can't say anything at all (or completely mangle the sentence). that doesn't happen often though. i'd say the likelihood of rolling a complete 1 would be.. 1 of every 800 statements? i know that doesnt make sense with the dice metaphor because it would technically be 1/20 but. an 800 sided die would suck to roll. it would just fall of of tables endlessly. and the numbers would be so small that you would need glasses to see. etc. my kryptonite? ordering food. i have never gotten it right. too quiet too loud said it wrong said it too fast it is endless!! one day. even though i don't go to restaurants often. also i spelled restaurants correctly the first time please give me money
sorry for the lack of updates. pondering, doing my wizard activities, etc. something i've been trying to capture for a long time now is the gesture of experience. i find it in art i admire. i want to show it to other people, too, so i think that's part of the reason i like making art. but it's difficult to capture. it's an array of pressed flowers stuck between an old book; the content of the passages are not what is to be admired, but whatever is stuck between them. every medium is like this. it's very inspiring to see others find it. i know some of my art related entries have been very similar. i don't mean for it to be, but i think writing it all out helps thread the gaps in my understanding. they all lead to the same center. but i still need to wait to talk about the orange star shape, it's coming eventually i promise fgdssaa
memory, like time, is not an objective reality. it is simply the recall of a stored and, likely, flawed array of information. (i am not a neuroscientist!! if i'm wrong it's because i chose to. trust me.) although memory is tied to a sense of self, it, too, is flawed. imagine a very long flipbook. it is infinitely long, and it has an infinite amount of frames per second. a 'self' is every single one of these frames, constantly changing through what can be considered time. as i am writing this the data processed by my enviornment and past experience splits me into an infinite amount of selves, as ideas, confirmations, contradictions, fragments of music notes, subconscious thoughts, chemicals, all crash into each other to exert force and type the letters in this html file. but that is not a very cohesive way to define self! so i am the culmination of my past and present, and presently composed of my past memories. memory is how i compile past experiences, string them together, and learn to make a new (and yet continuous from my past) self. but what of memories so entrenched and deeply rooted yet so, so, distorted by time? the events that have made me integerally altered in some way, but that i cannot grasp? i, like you, am made up of ghosts. there is a string of time that alludes me to this day. unless i try, it is no longer sound, taste, sight, touch, nor taste. it is not a summary of its events. its existence is processed as if it were nothing but a smooth bump on a flat surface. if it were a stone, once rough, it has been completely smoothed as i have revisited it. and still, incomprehensible! as i have pried it out of myself and inspected, i have shapeshifted my memory, my self, as if it were traveling in time. six whole years now!! every time i look at it differently, a part of it is lost forever in its simplification, definition, and accumulation to make the self. it is nothing but a thing that has happened.
5 is my favorite number!! it is, kind of, the most even odd number there is. while i do not dislike odd numbers, i do not typically like them as much as even numbers. while some odd numbers like 7 and 9 would feel very sharp and spiky (and a little bit like steel wool), the surface of 5 would be like running a finger over a right angle of a desk (although, i do also realize that it does have an aspect of irreguar sharpness that other odd numbers have. if i were to descrive it as a shape, it would be the star one that i draw frequently, but that is for another time). it is very definite in its existence, even when doing some math problems seeing 5 in my head or on my paper makes it feel more physical and less abstract. it has been my favorite for a very long time (i believe at least since third grade) because i had managed to befriend some of the people in a higher grade on the bus, and they were also fans of the number 5. i like to imagine that keeping it as my favorite preserves a little part of them, even if i do not remember their names.
recently, i have been able to find a few books i like!! i think i'm a little picky about them, but when i do enjoy one it's very awesome. i have been leanign pretty heavily into science fiction and non-fiction. recently finished a book on europa.
i've started another minecraft server!!! i am playing with a friend. we are going to make a little dock area house thing!! minecraft is fun to build things in every once in a while.. a whole little world to yourself and whoever you want..
short one today!! i didn't have time to write an update yesterday unfortunatetly. i think i will only be able to do longer updates over weekends and breaks and et cetera!!
while i've been writing for terabyte and sol in 403 (which is very fun!! i have elaborated on their traits so much more!!) but i have also noticed a lot of ways i subconsciously act are very similar to traits i have deliberately decided to apply to them for narrative purposes. i'll give away some character info early to demonstrate (my evil knows no bounds). for terabyte, especially early in the story, it tends to only do things when prompted so or shown as something it can do. they can do things by their own of course, but unless it has a particular goal it will stay on the same trend. at one point where i was making spaghetti with my friends, it did not occur to me that i could.. make things i did not usually make?? so thank you terabyte for allowing me to learn something about how i act.
expanding off of that. my friend started this bit where i'm secretly a robot etc etc and some others have caught on and its all silly and i am comittedf to the bit and i will never confirm or deny i am human but. sometimes it gets me!! sometimes it IS easier to eplain things as being a robot!! it would be so easy if i could say stuff like "sorry man im all good thanks for asking!! i'm a little unfocused my ram is being taken up right now!!" "oh wait my bad it didn't occur to me that it was a time that we could talk right now haha. yeah its because of the robot thing lol." "whoa for a second i was worrying about acting normal when going about casual tasks that everyone does. robot moment." it is simply the most efficient way of describing something. it makes sense.
ive been learning to skateboard!! im not good at it but i am learning!!! i can go forward, turn kick, and im working on tacking really well. i think i get less scared of new things when i frequently try new things that might make me fall and eat dirt (never happened before though!! i stay winning..)
i've been skateboarding after school, but i don't want to immediately get off of the bus and skateboard. i need a little break. but its getting that time of year where it gets dark faster!! so i usually skateboard at night. i always get distracted by how beautiful the sky is though. i remember seeing the moon as it was waning and a ring of light shone around it with hints of all of the colors like how i like to draw bright things. i downloaded this app to see the names of the stars i've been seeing (womp womp i know. but i dont have the time to map out the entire sky and it seems accurate enough.) and i think my favorite is vega because of how bright it is!!! in my ceramics class i made a little trinket box and i painted its constellation, lyra, in there for fun. tbh i usually start out trying to skateboard and end up looking at the sky for an hour or two fdsfdfdsf. these entries are getting longer and longer. all part of my evil plan. i wonder how many people read these btw i hope i forget how to cringe before i read these again a million years later
i've been thinking about art and interpretation a lot. while i will write something about interpretation eventually, i still need to think about it more. but i do want to write some things about making art. recently i've gotten stuck on worrying how readers will interpret things i write, and if that would lead them in the right direction while also making sense narratively. but i think it might better to focus on writing how i interpret what is happening, even it if might be confusing. i should be trying to capture a moment and turn it into words, not have to capture something and translate it into something people will necssecarily understand. it makes me think of contemporary art, because while the simplest of paintings might have complex stories behind them, it can be difficult to understand without reading the little title and description next to it on the wall. does that take away from the experience? or is it that the interpretor's role is not to pry, to consume, but to notice, and continue? or is it bad art to rely on background information to understand? like all things in abstract art, it's just up to the artist.
recently i've been looking into a new kind of art, args. i'm not very good at them, but some of my favorites are very underrated and i don't know anyone else who has heard of them. i'itts really different from books or paintings or movies because of the active role. it also takes a lot longer to get to the next step. they remind me of this one part of 17776, with the person who sits by the cave and only plays one little lcd video game for a really long time. because everyone is immortal, mysteries are finite. i'm glad i live in a world where people are devoted to making mysteries for other people. its very awesome.
i think i see the world in a different way to other people sometimes. i like to think of things as associations, connections, and, in the best way i can describe it, as the gestalt of experience separated from what occurs (not the information of listening to a song, but the experience derived from it, encoded and only able to be read by one individual). it's very fun! especially, as i said earlier when talking about art, when trying to turn that back into communicable language. i think i want to lean into it more, and share that perspective to others sometimes. i recently described it to someone else and they thought it was interesting at least.
i have a lot of exciting things i want to write about here. notably, the star shape i draw all the time and the color orange. they're very important to me though, so i want to give them blog updates separate from anything else.
recently i've been trying to get some more experience with html and css, it's very fun to make somethign with your own brain (and a search engine) it's nice to have a creative outlet that isn't 100% making something without rules, it's a mix of problem solving with creativity. trying to break the format of all of the pages i've been making with repeating background and 50% width but idk how well im doing it!! either way having a neocities website is very fun. it's awesome to have a website to yourself etc etc what everyone else says about neocities