<img src="http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~epachec1/picture/spare/longjacketthumbbig.gif">

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the problem with the future is that it always becomes the present.
nevermind the picture. its just a part of something that i did a little over 8 months ago and just recently refound.
what im thinking right now is how odd it is to start feeling older. certain things that i did less than a year ago are now things that i cant find the time to do. either that or they seem like things that belong back there in the haziness of the past and nowhere near the present. people say that certain things kill them a little on the inside. it might just be true, but its the passage of time that does away with us.
i used to sketch all the time... highschool i did it nearly every damn day in every class... id have notebook upon notebook filled with doodles, little things in the margins, or whole pages dedicated to one subject. however these images always came about to completion in 45 minutes, never more nor less if it wasnt "done" in 45 minutes, then it would never be done. and all those notebooks are now lying in a landfill somewhere, they are gone... just plain gone. so that now the only way i can remember them is through the haze of nostalgia, which has a tendency to over emphasize the positive, and severly downplay the negative, so that what i remember probably in no way resembles what was actually there. but i suppose thats why all our memories are different when concerning a single shared event. but ive stopped the sketching... mostly anyway, occasionally i make one or two sketches, but i feel like the quality of my sketches has declined. im just not as confident in making one anymore, not that i ever really went around showing them off. but now i find myself hiding them even more. on the one hand my technique is faltering, but on the other at times i find myself thinking that my imagination/creativity has outgrown my skill. what i mean by that is that i find myself thinking how i want to make something look a certain way, or move, or this or that, but cant find a way to do it... so its become less about static images and more about moving images. yet pictures still seem like an outlet... theres the one series of pictures that i want to have, but i probably wont ever get them. not because of a lack of time, ability or whatever, but because the actual end result will never compare exactly to the image i have in my head. but thats only because every image in my head is never merely one lonesome image... its an image within an image... so that picture that i want, isnt just a picture. its part of something slightly larger. its less static, more dynamic. like a story that just spins and spins outward from itself to encompass not only the story of the one person but the entire history of everyone they know. but ive had to slowly start to give that up. not voluntarily, but time becomes more and more of a premium as we age. now i have classes, projects, groups, social events, etc. etc. that require my attention and suddenly finding time to do something on my own, without much encouragement or recognition just becomes a lot harder. and i suddenly realize that nearly everything i do here is just something short of a veiled attempt to fit in and find acceptance, and perhaps that is why most everyone in college ends up being so similar to everyone else within their spheres of influence. beyond that though, i think the moment we start to feel aged is when we think of what we have done and are hit with the streams of memories. when there are so many coming back to us that is seems overwhelming that we have experienced so much, that so much has changed in our lifetimes and in ourselves. perhaps that is when we realize that we are older. that we age. that we mature grow and change at all times. its just a constant process up until the time that we decide we have done everything that we are ever going to do at which point we stop. and despite it all. at times we attribute changes to our surroundings, to the people we knew and have left behind, to places that no longer seem as magical as they once were, to interests that are now foolish and better left to younger individuals. but perhaps its we that have changed? is it our experiences that then change the nature of things? is the loss of innocence then our own doing? not that of the world we live in but how we have interacted with it and let it change us? but by that then individuality is not really who a person is, but what the surroundings have made of them? so that when a person seems unique, it is not his individuality that comes through, but his desire to make this place more similar to the surroundings from whence they came.... this would explain why people of a certan ethnicity band together (people from korea are more likely, at least initially, to interact with others from korea upon entering college in america)... i think im completely off topic here... whatever the reason for my rant im not sure quite what it is but i have an inkling of an idea... i forget my point, there probably wasnt one. its all just letters and words and hopefully something meaningful spills out of that. suffice to say i think, that ive been reading a book lately that puts me in a specific frame of mind...
and honestly, i think im coming close to understanding the difference between a good book and an entertaining book... if nothing else is said this day by myself, let it be this...
gabriel garcia marquez, love in the time of cholera, is an incredibly romantic book, yet not in the same way that romance novels are romantic... this is simply romantic (perhaps because i found a character that i can relate to far to easily in this one... but i think everyone can relate to someone) and it puts me in a particular state of mind, very very particular... ill explain later. for now ive gone far enough.