the last 2 months have been busy with all the little things to recreate a life in a previous country. "documents" and "admin" literally take so much life <time>. i can see why people prefer to not move around too much

things are finally slowing down a little and i'm feeling more grounded here (which was always the intention). the question of how to live life? is always on my mind. i guess at different ages i've had a different answers to this.

been thinking about what family is: is it a support structure, comfort, something to question, love, something else?

also, been thinking about what rural, country(side) mean. the big trucks with country or keep country, country written across them. my frog neighbor and how the stars were extra close to earth at 4am.

what does "practice aloha" mean? what does "aloha practice" mean? i like it more as a practice instead of an instruction. My mechanic starts every message with Aloha,

practicing,
Elliott

it's all a blur of excitment

i'm a kid again

i have these visions of returning to the island. turning over the west maui mountains. very green. and the hum of the plane

a full commitment to a place, to a life

why didn't i think about it long ago

of course this was the question, what was the answer?

I romanticized their life there. I remember staying for a party and feeling extremely awkward lol. Socializing outside of the bubble of their friendship felt difficult. Their kindness was comforting. Wandering the streets with them felt like a form of play. I liked trying to become their style, tricking yourself into seeing the city as an artwork.

Would love to claim some advertising space in the city for personal websites.

Summer poster, 30 × 48 inches, [download]
Spring poster, 30 × 48 inches, [download]

I returned from traveling. Back in routines. I thought I would change my life, but I'm embracing the patience.

I don't recognize myself or my work in the internet theories that people are writing about. But that's okay. I don't believe they represent humans with complex lives. That's the internet::life I see.

The more I think this way about the internet, that it is life, the less I can see it differently. No one lives that way, not even the people writing it.

I've started to believe in landscape. In the mist and talus fields and the curve of the road. I try to steer the car on the narrow road, following the tracks between the snow, wondering if the tires are actually snow tires. It's only scary when a large truck passes. I feel fragile in this humid box. I think I'm interested in living a slow fast slow life.

On the last night, the cabin gets very smoky. It's difficult to leave the warmth. The cold air is like drinking water. I miss both.

In recent years that feeling has changed. I can feel comfortable around others. I think it just took knowing my needs in relating to others.

I’ve found a lot of people here that I can be in-tune with. It’s a beautiful thing.

I worry about losing that and isolating myself in an individual bubble again.

American cities scare me for that reason. Bubble culture is real, though this is likely everywhere, and maybe I’ve just been lucky here.

I also wonder about tuning myself to other things:

• the sea
• the mountains
• others (in a more direct / less needy / more intentional / proactive way)

but still I might be making a mistake in leaving.

want to echo this :) huge thanks to everyone who organized! it's so beautiful to see everyone gathering offline and writing together. feeling very hopeful about the future of the web ❇️💚

it does feel like something is a little different this year. maybe it's more internal, like how i have been treating it. we took it a bit more seriously this year. html energy is not a passing trend or an art project. i think it has legs now and people are gravitating toward it for various reasons.

for me it's a way of showing the world the kind of web we could have: something that balances online and offline time, something where irl social time is prioritized, something that is a learning environment, something that anyone can make their own.

I've thought about moving back to the US but I'm not sure if the trade offs are worth it. Working a full-time job just to live in an expensive US city. Somehow fitting an artistic practice in on the weekends. Being stretched thin. That also doesn't sound sustainable. Where do people live cheaply these days?

This morning I listened to a podcast about the financial life of Bernadette Mayer. They mentioned Committee on Poetry, which I'd never heard of. Feels like there should be something similar for web artists.

On another note, I was browsing Bernadette Mayer's website, and she made a work called Memory.

[bells ringing]

yesterday i was stuck thinking about the future again. the decisions i make now have real weight. i guess that's why i'm taking so much time with them. its not so light in the end.

the internet has felt the most like home. when you've spent so much of your childhood here its difficult not to feel this way. being in nature also feels like home. i miss the pasture lands and forest around the house i grew up in.

i guess its really a question of how to live. like where do you put your energy. how do you put energy into things that won't just dissolve? or maybe that's inevitable

the sky is very blue today. no monks

At first, he was hesitant about doing the independent study with me, but eventually he agreed. In the end, we only met twice over the semester. I vaguely remember the first meeting. I think he visited my studio, which at the time was in the glass studios. I was making “paintings” with long pieces of colored string draped around my tiny studio. I remember him being sort of neutral about the work, but he thought it was heading somewhere.

The next and final time we met was at his studio in West Oakland. His studio was at the back of a long creme colored twisting tile hallway. Inside, it felt like a gallery: a huge skylight and florescent lighting. His paintings were very minimal, often just single color fields. He was really into materials: handmade paints, special linen and canvas.

At the end of the independent study, I was supposed to present a new work I'd made during the semester. Instead, I’d used the extra time the study gave me to focus on my other courses. The night before our final meeting, I came up with a last minute idea. I made some "loop" drawings on printer paper using different colored pencils. Just a series of lines that looped and crossed. It took an hour to make them. For some reason, I was convinced he would love them. The movement of making the loops felt good in my mind, and I thought he would obviously understand that haha.

The next morning I biked over to his studio, anxious to show him the drawings. I was worried he might think it was a joke with all these quickly made sketches but I also felt that if anyone he would understand, that he would feel what I had felt.

He paged through the stack. I could tell he wasn’t happy. I tried to explain a bit, but the words couldn’t carry the feeling I’d had while making them. He set the drawings down, looked at me with a harsh expression, very unusual for him, and simply said, "these are not good." Then his face returned to its usual jolly expression. He signed the independent study form with the highest marks and walked me to the door.

I remember biking home feeling confused. I felt like I had let him down, but I also felt misunderstood. Yes, it was rushed work, but I didn’t think it was all terrible. It felt like something important had been missed. Like a whole conversation hadn’t happened. I wanted to convey why I felt so good about the drawings, how the feeling of making them was what mattered.

I stopped painting and drawing around that time. It might have also been due to graduating and shifting priorities, but looking back on it I do think this affected it a bit too. I think it got to me, even if I didn’t see it clearly then. But I also think something good came from it. I had been trying to make paintings and drawings I thought he would like. In some way, this experience broke that cycle. I was free, in a way.

walking onto the deck from the kitchen
fence surrounding it to keep the bunny in
lifting one part of the fence momentarily
you could easily walk onto the roof and climb a bit until you were on top of the apartment. was there a ladder?
a strange corner of roof
it was easily navigated but one wrong step and you'd fall several stories
the heat on the expansive roof and the view in all directions
dizzy after being there for an hour
orange (lemon) trees below in the neighbor's yard and the orange sky in all directions

I remember the roof and how to get onto it in vivid detail

shortly after (could be a day | could be a month) SN and I broke up
and i moved out of the house with H and M
got the job at the gallery
moved into M's place on Juniper St.

So much happened in that month