My day today plain and simple

My first day of illuminated journaling was fair. 

To give the program credit, it began in the most spectacular way: I sat by myself under a Jeffery Pine's shade, sunken into a meadow to such a degree that my head was at the same height as the grasses and sedges. AND I was looking up Lee Vining Canyon at the Mono-Yosemite volcanic/granitic divide. All I had to do was doodle and write. I was even given a water-soluable pen and a water brush, both of which I'd never futzed with, but am completely enamored with now.

I heard chirping, turned around and a brown creeper worked it's way around the trunk of the Jeffery, then around a low hanging branch. Willows and grasses all tilted to the left as a mellow breeze, just enough to keep the meadow from bee-ing too buggy, sustained their movement. Perfection. An hour of perfection.

The rest of the day was not perfection. 

A-person-who-shall-remain-nameless (not like it matters, because she is so unaware that if I used her name and she happened to read this blog - even though there were only 5 other people in the class- she would have no clue who I'm referencing) could not stop talking. Don't. Stop. Believing. 

Honestly, I should have known right from the introductions, which went something like this:

Hi, my name is A-P-W-S-R-N. Yea, so I'm from Berkeley, but I grew up in San Francisco, and wellllllllll, yea, I really have been taking a lot of different art classes since my cat died.

WAIT A SECOND! First: if your cat dies, you party, right? I like doing art, so I give her the benefit of the doubt and think maybe that's how she's celebrating. WRooooonnngg.

So I have done a lot of textiles and pottery. Ohhh, yea, I really liked my pottery, and then I was thinking that when I was really young I liked to draw, and then I bought a bunch of books by authors that you probably don't know but I'm going to reference them like you do know them, because I'm from Berkeley, and the books taught me how to get in touch with myself and my cat, and so I found that I drew my cat a lot and journaled a lot because I was dealing with my cat dying and I wanted to remember her when she was alive so I drew her in my journals.

And then the rest of the day was tinged in the background/foreground drone of APWSRN. You want more? I'll give you more:

Soooo where else is there to eat [we are eating at the Mobile restaurant - "fancy gas station food" where she ordered the only $20 salad with terrible looking halibut instead of a delicious piece of pizza]? Ohh. So, there's a sit-down restaurant? Is it like this? Because, I'm from Berkeley and this food.... well. THIS food is NOT the standard in Berkeley. Yea. They would never serve this even in like, food court places. Yea, not the standard at all. Is there somewhere where there is decent food...? BECAUSE I'M AN UPITY BITCH! [emphasis and entire last sentence added].

Hannah! Hannah! [our instructor] SOoooooo, I'm not really understanding what you mean by proportions. I think since we have different sized pencils that this isn't making sense to me. What kind of pencil do you have? I think that your eraser is a bit longer than mine, and I don't think we are using the same weight of paper so I really am just not understanding how to draw this chair. Sooo, I have this book in my hotel room that I'm going to go get because he explains how to draw a chair to proportion better. I mean, Hannah, you are okay, but like, he just kinda did it in a way that I really understood better, so yea, is everyone going to be here a while longer? [yes you stupid woman. take as long as you need. we will be here enjoying the silence in your absence. go piss up a rope]

On and on and frikin' on. It didn't stop. The entire day. She didn't breathe, she didn't really do any art, and she didn't stop when other people were talking. Literally, you would attempt to answer her question and she would continue talking over you in a way that was only comical because, since you didn't have to answer her question, you could spend all that spare time deciding what her parents must have been like. Because who actually is that rude and so self-UNaware?

So in conclusion: her cat killed itself.

Sleep well, readers. XOXO