30 September 2011

I'm finished with my day of shopping. I even had a beer with that funny hippie guy who hangs around Tom's building. Suppose my enjoyment of talking to him comes from the fact that he is a fellow Aries. Natives of my sun sign can be really fun to talk to, or they can be overly aggressive types who dominate you. Not all Aries are domineering however. I find more often than not a lot of Aries people embrace the qualities of the lamb rather than the Ram. Mona's dad is a ram and he is a quiet and gentle introvert. I think the key quality I find in natives of my own sun sign is that they are extremely individualistic. Many of them are not afraid of being different and most are quite expressive. I like a lot of people of my sun sign. My mother is an Aries. My great aunt Lorna is an Aries. Great Aunt Lorna is very much the Aries archetype in that she chatted her way out of a parking ticket by pointing out that she was 85 years old and her daughter was in her 50s. Did they really want to pick on a couple of old ladies? When she went to pay the parking ticket she was told there was no record of it, so I guess her ploy worked. But, she also dyes her hair so the police officer probably didn't realize she was 85 until she pointed it out. Aunt Lorna also mentioned how she used to take classes on how to read poetry with the proper intonation and expression. That sounded kind of cool.

My first cousin is an Aries and unfortunately that manifests itself in violent ways. My cousin broke a kids arm in grade school, so that kind of reflects negatively on the sign. I feel bad for my cousin because it seems like he is always getting into some sort of trouble, but he is family, and so we love him anyway. He has a really bad case of ADHD and it's presented enormous problems in his life. Didn't really take to traditional education that well, and neither did I for that matter.

I was posting earlier about the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy in terms of expression of character. Can't really grasp which I would fall into. I've always assumed I was more the ecstatic Dionysian sort, but order and reason also play it's part in my life. In some ways I can be obsessive about structure. But, I do not have the patience to paint op art or photo realist works. It's like I always have to deal with my own irritability or mood. And, I find I feel irritable a hell of a lot. I don't think how irritable I feel on the inside really shows at times, because I can be quite chatty and friendly. More than once today I tried striking up conversations with strangers outside. I kind of felt self-conscious about my one attempt at talking to this woman. I saw my neighbour's dog tied up outside the bank. I called out to the dog and then said to this woman who was standing there that it was my neighbour's dog, but I wasn't going to pet it because I was afraid I would get bitten. She just looked at me with hostility and didn't even crack a smile. Most people will smile at you or respond if you start smiling at them or talking to them. We've got a few woman in the building who have personality disorders which makes them kind of hostile. I try to not take their rudeness personally and figure they have an illness. It would be absolutely retarded to fight with them anyway. The way I see it is that these women are defenseless creatures who use their disjointed and odd hostility as a way to protect themselves. They probably have horrible fears of intimacy and want to keep people at bay. I can relate. I have intimacy issues and know it can sometimes be a pain in the ass for people.

I can get right testy at times and kind of guard over my personal space with a feirceness. I know I have upset people in the past with disconnecting my phone and not getting in touch with them. I know I've made myself impossible to reach by both my mother, former best friend, and ex-boyfriends. I get paranoid about other people getting in the way of things or trying to control me. I find it very easy to withdrawn into myself and detach myself from all social needs. It's funny, but my mother's astrological chart says that she will have a child Plutonian in nature and Pluto is associated with things that are hard to reach. Pluto kind of hovers at my ascendent. I'm currently re-evaluating the role of Plutonian aspects in my chart. I have been exacting certain degrees and angles in my chart. And, oddly enough I cannot figure out if this lessens or increases the role of Pluto in my chart. I just know that I truly can be a difficult person to reach.

The only people I really enjoy talking to on the phone are my mother and Mona. I generally feel ill at ease on the telephone, which is surprising with me being a top sales person for certain Artsmarketing campaigns. That's different because I have a formula for how to talk to them and I already know a lot of what I am going to be saying to them. I used to absolutely enjoy calling people up on the phone and trying to get them to donate money, buy a membership, or come out to some concerts. It's fun because I kind of liked talking about classical music. I mostly enjoyed the classical music campaigns when I was a telemarketer. I worked in a classical record store prior to working on these campaigns. so I always had a lot of things I could recount from personal experience. I could tell them about musicians I liked or pieces or music I liked. I could even tell them about some of the concerts I had been out to.

I miss my old job, but I truly think it is bad for my nerves. Sometimes it was a lot of fun, and sometimes it was the worst stress you could imagine. I also struggled a lot because I had the idea that my visual art would supplement my income and worked only a 20 hour week. When I had trouble making money off of my art, I picked up more hours. I couldn't handle the emotional strain of repeated sales rejection. Not that I'd didn't make sales. Certain campaigns I couldn't make sales on, of course. I could not sell at all for Boston's Huntington theatre or some aquarium down in California. I was really good at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra particularly, but I did really enjoy working on the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra campaign. I was revved up for the NJSO at some point and even dreamt of New Jersey. Plus, it was a traveling orchestra and a lot of their politics as a symphony resonated with my own.

There was this huge transformation of all the major arts buildings in Toronto when I worked jobs raising money for various organizations. I was there the year that Roy Thompson Hall was done over and went to the premier when the building was opened. We were even invited to the after party of that first concert which was Mahler. Got to meet Jukka Peka Sarsatse and Elizabeth Batiachiveilli. Not sure if I spelled either of their names correctly. I used to love classical music because we would have to spend an hour learning how to pronounce all of the names of the composers and musicians prior to each season. Trying to spell their names is almost impossible. That is part of the magick of the whole experience.

If I become gainfully employed again it's going to have to be a situation where I am forced to function very differently. I have ideas come in and out of my mind all the time. I'm addicted to writing, but feel I don't embrace enough of the Apollonian aspects to get further in this field. I just can't see myself thriving in a rigid and academic environment. Teachers have suggested I try to augment my art and potential by studying philosophy at a university level. In some ways I could see myself getting the drive to study psychology. I once read an entire college textbook on abnormal psychology just because it was a page turner for me. I was good ast history. I remember my grade 9 teacher gave me a 60 or 70 percent for creativity on an essay I wrote where I obviously hadn't read the assigned work. I wrote that it was a bloody battle and many lives had been lost. My teacher wrote 'nice try, but the one army surrendered before even a shot was fired'. I have a really good memory though. I used to find history easier because I just had to remember stuff I'd read. I could even visually imagine where a sentence were located in a textbook. But, usually academics were not my thing. 

I was mostly interested in art and drama throughout high school. I certainly tried my best to schedule as many of these classes into my schedule as possible. Only went on with math beyond one year of what was mandatory. Math is one of those subjects which I had a love and hate relationship with. I certainly was an idiot about science and I don't understand why I could never get a good grade in science. I once spent hours with a science text book trying to understand it and it only resulted in a 60% test score. It was like the science teacher's voice was sounding like the teacher's from Charlie Brown with all this garbaled speech. I could never really understand what they were talking about.I certainly was not the greatest student growing up.

My marks fluctuated all the time. I once bawled because I didn't get 100%, but only a 90% in a clarinet playing examination. But, I got the highest mark in business one term. Got the highest mark in visual art one term. Then I got the highest mark in OAC dramatic literature. My mother used to take a stanglehold on me over school projects and dictate every step. I got the highest mark in the class or 100% for a lot of stuff. Stuff with visual presentation or models. My mom and I used to fight like fiends over this kind of shit. Sometimes I would go off crying because my mother was not allowing me any creative input on certain school projects. This kind of control was part of the case I made to the psychiatrist when I wanted to move out at 17 years of age. That's parents sometimes, of course. They want to live through their kids. I went through the roof when I found my mother had applied the finish to this sculture I had worked long and hard on. I had a fit and I made her scrape the whole damned colour off. I wanted it in a matte finish with vibrant orange as the colour. My mother had put a glossy coat of this pinkish colour over it. I am sure I cried over that one. When I handed it in the teacher gave me 100%, but said she couldn't understand why I chose that colour.

I think it's hard when the mother is of an artistic temperment and so is the daughter. It causes conflicts in terms of competition or such. If I try to talk about my art with my mother, she always pipes in about her own. But, that's one of the reasons I love her. I kind of love that my mother is utterly different from anybody's else's mother. Everybody else's mom just seems like Molly Milquetoast in comparison. My mother has a lot of fire and personality. I probably wouldn't have been so interested in art if it wasn't for my mother. My mother used to do elaborate landscape paintings on top of furniture. Not that she's somebody who paints all the time. Sometimes she just researches the family tree on line for hours. She always has some new story about our ancestors which I always try to take with a grain of salt.

Anyway, that is my second ramble for the day. I'm just all drinking beer and smoking a bit of weed. I've had 3 beers today and I feel toasted. That's what happens when you lay off the booze for a while. It hits you harder when you do get around to drinking it. I think I'm going to try to get out of this lethargic and moody stint I've been running and get back to my dreams and aspirations. I should try to get my room cleaned and my laundry done at any rate. Anyway, see ya later alligator.