standardkink: January 2017

My Winter term started this week and so I am back in school after a month off. It has been hard to click back into gear. It would be an understatement to say that my time up here has been more difficult than I expected. It has been rough, guys. I’ve been very discouraged (and continue to be). Today though I was doing the reading for one of my classes and I came across a paragraph that reminded me why I value the time I get to spend here doing this work, and really why all this higher education thing is worth the pain, cost, and frustration it requires.

This is from an essay by Deborah Knight entitled, “Why We Enjoy Condemning Sentimentality: A Meta-Aesthetic Perspective”:

If we are to appreciate the natural environment aesthetically, (...) we must attend to it differently. Our normal way of attending is to treat nature as an unobtrusive background. It is there, but we overlook it, focusing instead on objects or occurrences within the overall environment that attract our attention. We begin to attend differently if we transform that unobtrusive background into an obtrusive foreground.

What she’s telling us - and what all this book learnin’ helps us do - is that finding solutions to a problem has a whole lot to do with how we look at the problem. Adjusting how we see does wonders for helping us to see better.

That is a helpful thing to know.

standardkink

Saturday, January 28, 2017

#resist

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

FYI: it's really easy to report people on Twitter.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

#womensmarchportland

Look at all these people I found! #womensmarchportland

It's going to be a busy four years. #womensmarchportland

#womensmarchportland

Best protest sign ever.

#womensmarchportland

Look at this weirdly Eye of Sauron building I found while wandering around for no good reason in the middle of a night in the part of town that's under a curfew!

Friday, January 20, 2017

Democracy may be messy, but this picture of SWAT cops closing down a street in the rain is god damn gorgeous!

A block away from this I saw a teenager with a gas mask, but those two things are probably unrelated.

Democracy update: whatever this smoke is, it smells terrible.

I am going to go grab a beer with my old friend Henry. #inauguration

Thursday, January 19, 2017

HEY EVERYBODY! Look at how fancy I am!

Look at all this art I found!

Thursday, January 12, 2017

What I Did at School Today.

The further I progress in my education and in my life as a thinking person, the more I end up making this note in the margins ...

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Literally #nofilter. Weather is weird and will probably end up killing me.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

The view out my window. Look at this blizzard I found!

There is so much (ridiculous) snow just snowing all over everything right now.

Saturday, January 7, 2017

Perfectly pretentious Portland snow selfie.

What passes for wit on very cold college campuses. #sendnudes

The snow brought out the crows.

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Sarah Ruhl is a genius. #minimalism

Sunday, January 1, 2017

How I feel looking forward to 2017: hope in my heart, but I will cut a bitch.