Baby Don't Get Lost in that Evil World

I will never understand why the ABC keeps slotting in this Star Stories crap between series of the good shows on Wednesdays. Seriously, it's mindblowingly terrible. And it makes me sad to know that the kid from Muppet Treasure Island has become so... skeevy. Know what, bugger this. I'm gonna run up to the street and get some chewy (it's an addiction, you guys, seriously) before Tara starts. brb. *leaves*

*returns*
*turns on TV*
Perfect timing!
*blows bubble*

So hi. Got the Abnormal Psych essay in today, ON TIME. It wasn't actually finished, but I've been having so much despair with this thing hanging over my head I was not going to spend another day with the damn thing, so printed it at 4:52 and ran - actually ran, which I'm technically not supposed to do because I could, like, lose the feeling in my legs or something - it to the psych building. When I got there they'd pulled the roller door down already, and I almost freaking SOBBED. Went around the corner to the staff entrance and caught them leaving, because damn it, my phone said it was 4:57 and I fecking ran for this freaking essay. They were very nice, and accepted it. Thank god.

( This was going to be a big entry about a lot of random little things, but turned into bitching about Sydney Uni Psych, loving Sydney Uni Art History & Film, comparing the three, and talking about my academic and career plans )

The plan, such as it stands at the moment, is to spread the remaining four units of study I have left on my degree over two semesters next year, while hopefully getting a job vaguely related to film in some way (or getting an unrelated job and volunteering at film festivals), and doing short courses at AFTRS (the Australian Fillm, TV, and Radio School) to build a portfolio and study cinematography/ directing/ art direction there properly the year after I do honours here. Which means three more years in Sydney, which is bad, but there isn't a lot of choice when it comes to learning film making - it's pretty much a capital cities thing, I think. Although I may take a year off after honours, stay in the Central West working some little retail job, or working at one of the ABC's regional offices. A foot in the door is a foot in the door in the Australian film industry, no matter how small the door, or which side of the house it's on.

For all that flights of fancy and imagination are wonderful, I find there is just as much wonder in reality. The mind is the source of all that fancy, and that is just such a beautiful thing. 

I learnt last night about cave paintings, that they were the pinning down of visions had in trances. That every human, no matter where from, since the begining of the species, experiences the same basic internal images when in a trace state, or when suffering sensory deprivation. The human brain just throws them up, always the same. So in caves and on rocks, worlds apart from oneanother, the same patterning appears. And if we close our eyes for long enough, and expose them to the right outside stimuli, we can see the exact same images that people saw tens of thousands of years ago. 

To see those paintings, and to know that they were painted so long ago, before buildings and farming and the idea of 'art', and to see how beautiful they were, how spiritual and otherworldly - it inspired such awe. 

The world - nature, animals, plants, flowers, water, rocks, weather, the sun, the moon, the light they bring - it's all so incredible, so simply beautiful and so there. And the brain, and all it has created, is just the same. Is part of that basic, fundamental reality of the world. There really is so much harmony in life. I will never cease to be amazed. 

And all the beauty we can make, all the places, the art, the literature, the poetry, the sentiment, the emotion, all of that, just takes may breath away sometimes. The brain gives us all that. The ability to create it and the ability to appreciate it. To feel it and to be it. 

It's fascinating. 

I love art, and I love psychology, and really, they are much the same thing. I tend to call this type of writing that I do sometimes whimsy, to say that I drift off into flights of fancy. But that's not entirely appropriate - what could be more grounded in reality than what my own brain generates? Whether I'm happy or depressed, excited or anxious, mad or sane, it's all happening. It's all maluable, it can change, but it is there. We can't see it, but we can feel it, which is undeniable proof that something is happening.

My mind is my own, only ever for me. But the brain is universal. But for a few quirks, this incredibly complex organ is the same in every living person in the world. And even some of the quirks are almost identical to those of others. 

Sometimes, sometimes it all just hits me, you know? For all my rationality and talk of science, and for all I may experience incredible pain from what my brain and the world comes up with sometimes, I just can't quite help but be awestuck by it from time to time. 

Life is astounding.