|
 |
Art Colony: i don't want to be like...
Monday, February 28, 2005
› by victoria
Warning: Unbridled Vitriolic Statements coming up.
The Gallery thing on saturday night wasn't fun like I thought it was. I met up with my 2 Marquette friends Gina and Colleen right after I got off of work--I had gone home during my 2 hour break from 2-4 PM to change into "nice" clothes, a green blouse and better, not-covered-with-icedemelter-jeans--and so we all got on the #10 bus and rode it over to my apt. I had to drop off some stuff before leaving (i was tired of carrying bags around) and so I made (what I feel now as) the mistake of letting them a little bit inside my apartment while I puttered around and got stuff. BF just grabbed his coat and he was ready to go.
But somehow I felt so exposed like, as in, my apartment must've looked awful. I try so hard to keep it clean. It must've looked really bad, because we don't really have a way of organizing things in file cabinets or shelves or on tables, so my textbooks and papers have a way of sprawling all over the floor...I just felt really strangely humiliated, seeing myself through somebody else's eyes.
Then we went to the Gallery night show. Which exacerbated the feeling. Everybody there was all about "schmoozing" and looking rich and acting "casual"...The first show we went to at Hotcakes was much better, both in my opinion and in BF's. Shinji, the japanese artist, was really eccentric and cool and impossible to bourgeoisify. This Jonathan Kir-something guy did some cute art, but it was (A) wayy overpriced and (B) the show was all about the schmooze factor. To be perfectly honest, I was just as uncomfortable as BF.
To be completely, bluntly honest, I felt
poor.
This is an awful feeling. But it hasn't stopped, not since Saturday night. Today I'm walking around campus and I feel really poor. What is a poor feeling, you may ask? it's got a lot of components.
It's a complex feeling that crushes your hope and then licks up the juice of your tears.
It's when you are out of milk and bread and you are scared to buy any because you are really worried that you can't make the rent. It's when you don't know how to print your homework because you don't have any money on your "Printwise" card and printing costs seven cents a sheet. It's when you feel like you look like shit, because everywhere you see other people who are all conspicuous consumers of the worst offending variety. It's when you live in a society that equals your personal worth with your financial worth, and you don't know what the fuck to do about the conflict that's inside you, between the side that says "You're smart, you get A's, you work hard, you're an okay person" and the side that says "Who the hell are you kidding? You are ridiculous. You don't have money for gas, you don't have money for food, you don't have money for shit. You should stop trying right now, because you are never going to make it."
BF says that I have become a member of the "Playa-Hater" society like in that David Chappelle show skit.
|
