Lava river

Excuse the long post!, this is not for you, then. Leave! :-)
The image is the second out of that new "paintbrush simulation" style, which is starting to dislike me and annoy too.

This has been an art-only related blog. Lately the weight of problems has showed up here, since it affected everything. I never liked that: blogging zones of the personal life in what started as a non-personal blog, seems unnecessary; but words are pushing to show up here, anyway, since they don't find the appropriate forum yet.



Lately I've had many tasks to take care of, mostly by heavy moral obligations. Still, against those obligations, in the last days I had the more unexpected episode, and it was very related to the making of the images for this blog. It happened that I was driving the flow of images (my description of evolutionary art included there), and started to delay some things in my personal schedule while was in the search of a particular image, I denied as much as possible to leave it for later while I was feeling in the right path. "Just some more minutes, then I save". This was new, since my abandoned times at writing; but I didn't saw it. At the next day I delayed my appointments on purpose, "so argentinian". It was just that the flow of images was going the right way, I felt it flowing like a river through me, and "do not want to waste the inspiration saving now". I had a access of guilt regarding my moral obligations after this. But next day I repeated the scene, "now I have it under control, will call a friend to do some of my tasks for me if I can't go", and the flow was going through me, I never was as much productive as that day, with an unethical plan to escape of the things that I should have done, and a desire of doing what I wanted. My friend was not available. I call to cancel and re-schedule the appointment then, but was too late; getting on time was impossible, and making the circumstances to work around my obligations was very hard, but saving the work and leaving felt worst, even knowing the moral scale and principles was on the line. Aside, I was looking for images of a kind; a long series of images resembling flowers, and was blinded by the idea that that was significative somehow: the flow became neurotic. Next day, the set of remorses didn't allowed me to focus, no idea worked out, no image pleased, "I will not move until finishing one today!", and the clock was ticking, "something must be done today to not lose this day working for nothing", and the calls started to enter the mobile phone: "- Will you go to take care of that or not?", "- God, can't _you_ go instead of me?", and my temper was difficult to manage under the pressure of frustration... the flowing was going backwards now; working on this artwork was substracting peace instead of adding it. The day ended with a feeling of achieving nothing, not doing anything truly good or truly bad, just nothing useful: the flow became obsessive then. Next day no moral obligation was strong enough to kept me out of trying to "achieve something today": the weirdest set of justifications and escapist ideas was put on the table to rely on; like Kafka, out of context: "Each thing was given the responsibility for itself". The backflowing of the former peaceful flowing river, became a lava river, burning everything: the peace in me, and the trust of others, only in a matter of five days. So after hours of frustration, a light broken the darkness: "Oh oh, I'm obsessed again!, like when writing, years ago... from now on, this has to take no more than two hours a day, between fixed hours if possible, and be an oasis again". So the experience of other time helped out to not repeat a sad mistake. The writing times, years ago, were much worst managed without the experience: alcohol, finantial troubles due to the high amount of time dedicated to write, and disastrous personal relationships. It is cool not tripping on the same stone again, but not at all the price to pay in time and effort, and less than everything being forced to learn like that; but I accept that is an effective way.

This poem -perfectly illustrates the best part of making images relying in evolutionary art techniques- belongs to the best reputated poet of my town, Paraná, Argentina, and he lived between 1896 and 1978.

I went to the river, and I felt it
near me, before me.
The branches had voices
that didn't reached me.
The stream said
things that I did't understood.
It almost distressed me.
I wanted to understand it,
to feel what the vague and pale sky said on it
with its first extended syllables,
but I couldn't.
It was backflowing
-It was I the one that was backflowing?-
in the vague anguish
of feeling lonely between the last and secret things.
Suddenly I felt the river in me,
it ran in me
with its tremulous borders of signs,
with its reflected depths slighly starred.
The river in me ran with its branches.
I was a river in the dusk,
and the trees sighed over me,
and the footpath and the grass were quenching in me.
Was flowing a river through me, flowing a river through me!

Juan L. Ortiz, "I went to the river" ("Fuí al río", original in spanish here).