http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Hpbf6ahnHhTRY3hXRNmaGg?authkey=Gv1sRgCLrGqeuss_SV7AE&feat=directlink
I am anticipating that I am going to be cranking out quite a few blogs here. So my goal for each blog is to incorporate one or more pieces of "visual art" and state five inter-related points associated with this piece of art. As to whether I will follow this protocol very well, good luck to me.
#1. Above is an impressionistic version of me, Victoria the hermit crab. I am in a state of hiding. I like to hide and pretend to be non-existent to others. So I can focus on maximal observation of the world around me. I like to hide by wearing my infamous oversized brown beanie.
#2. Not to scare anyone away, but I have realized through my systematic training in acting and public presentation (over my last year leave of absence, 2006-2007), I have systematically developed Multiple Personality Syndrome. But do not worry! This is on purpose, intentional. Much like how Sacha Baren Cohen systematically developed and "flipped mental switches" or "shifting mental gears" into multiple characters (Ali G, Borat, and Bruno). Otherwise Sacha is a very quiet, benign, introverted character. I will further elaborate in a future blog, but to frankly state my intrinsic personality is introverted, highly observational, and sponge-like. Yet this personality can be very detrimental such that in the past it has led to several implosions and self-inflictions. So, in order to keep up with the inputs and outputs of ideas and actions within Victoria's mind and form, or basically... to find an outlet of self-expression, Victoria systematically trained herself into an extroverted state, which is rarely expressed (usually in front of the camera, regular photography and film, and usually in isolation). Wow, that was a long point. And one more subpoint. I am doing this because many scientists suffer from social and presentational dysfunction, and I just don't want to be another one of those.... That's another blog right there....
#3. Many people hide like I do. The more fashionable thing to do is to wear shades. Sunglasses. Either the regular ones or the now-trendy insect, bug-eyed glasses that people used to wear decades ago. I don't like wearing shades because most of them don't fit around my ears very well.
#4. I created this cartoon in the fall of 2005 (upon returning to school from a year leave of absence and thousands of pages of writing), in which I declared that I was tired of hiding in my room and writing.
#5. It's rare for me to draw a cartoon I like on the fly--I mean, on the first draft. I usually must go through a rough draft, and then after several erasings and pen-overlays later, a final draft. This was the first draft version, and though it's a bit sloppy, I like it.
#6. Bonus point. Victoria analogizes herself to a hermit crab. Indication? Victoria finds a form of self-identification through comparison with other organisms, and not necessarily other humans. That's another blog topic as well.
P.S. I am aware that I am switching from first-person to third-person. Well, this is a BLOG. There are NO RULES in blogging. So... I'll also declare my right to be Gramatically Incorrect! |
1 comment:
More and more my existence at UCSB has become a bit more noticeable and I receive much commentary on my brown beanie. I vividly remember my friend Dan Letchworth commenting on how "cute" I looked in this beanie. I recently had a fisherman tell me how pretty I was and why do I hide under a little beanie? (Heck, I'm not pretty! If I don't look like Natalie Portman, I'm not pretty! What are people's standards nowadays?) Other people told me that if I wear hats too much, I will lose my hair (which I may partially agree since last quarter I had a horrible nightmare on how I lost a lot of my hair because I think I went through radiation therapy with cancer). Some professors have even asked me about my beanie and why I was or wasn't wearing it today. First of all, as mentioned before, the beanie is a means of hiding, as if I'm Victoria the Hermit Crab. And secondly, as I am now battling in the year 2010 to take my written exams for this Bren Ph.D. process, I feel that my beanie is a symbol for a warfaring helmet that a soldier must work in the battlefield. At first I felt that my "environmental media existence" held a rather sketchy place at UCSB and I always felt that at any point in space and time I might encounter some form of intellectual firing squad and that I would have to fight through some form of theoretically abstract battle (not necessarily win, but survive). And then, as I have been probing through the literature on eco-environmental-anything on human-environmental relationships, I have realized that the whole university is a whole rotting intellectual cesspool of jargon and ideologies that has no sense of clear cohesion anywhere... (except for the EBM, SES, and SBS folks). I am wearing my helmet beanie rightfully so, for I'm ready to combat this "war of the words" with the goal of bringing cohesion to a universe of intellectual rot. It's a war toward synthesis... and clarity... noble cause I'd say. It's a war against chaos. I'm not defeating anyone. All I'm trying to do is win the battle... through organization... and unfortunately that takes time, energy, quietness, solitude... and of course, the wearing of my beanie.... I am wagering the war with human-environmental chaos, and I will win the war of chaos, YES I CAN!!! Patience, virtue, and one step at a time.... For some coherence, I will list a few blogs that go into elaborate discussion of the Philosophy of Vic's Beanie... Blog 112 (this one), Blog 439 (sparky and the bean)...
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