I just watched the movie Basquiat, and it's beautiful, in a broken way.  It's a movie that makes you feel more than you can think.  But it certainly made me wonder...

about a lot.

words are art.  Placement.

I don't think there was anything wrong with Basquiat.  He simply experienced this world differently from the rest of us.

His webpage, "a tribute", seems in every way an insult to his life.  It's the very thing I would write if I hadn't seen the film.  It's just writing...about him.  Making him a political figure, an icon, a symbol.  Everything he hated.  Maybe deep down, though, he wanted it.  He just hated institutionalizing things and people?   He hated the idea of people writing about him all the time--critiquing him, like they knew better, when he's just living.  They were objectifying him, he was put up on table for inspection...but by whom?  People who couldn't see anything below their noses, turned as high as they were.  Is this the kind of critic I am?  of novels, actors, films, things I presume to know so much about when...I should just...accept it all for what it is?

He just made stuff. 

What is beauty?  I guess it is in the eye of the beholder.  But which beholder?  Whose eye matters?  It's never objective.  Pearls?  Plush couches and cushions?  Nice window hangings?  neatly pressed clothes?  high heels?  or life?  Life is beautiful.  Real life.  Not fake life. 

What should we be proud of?  Does it matter to be "proud" of anything we do?  Or should we just do it and go on?  Or is that just existing?  Where's the good, the joy in that?

This needs to be read in monotone.  But not a dull monotone...a real...monotone.  Because, what I'm saying is not dull.  it is not presumptuous

But it is...naked.

"Every line means something."

I've been reading Jane Eyre, and it's absolutely beautiful!  I can't say that enough.  I feel as though I'm underlining every other sentence in the book, I can't help myself.  I've seen the film many times but have never read the book until now, and I'm quite surprised with the originality of Charlotte Bronte's words.  I can't quite wrap my mind around their brilliance.  I'm completely smitten with them!  If you can be in love with words.  She pierces the very feelings of the soul, its core--the exactness with which she portrays every thought and emotion, is singular, as is Mr. Rochester.  Oh!  It's wonderful!  Everyone should read it! 

My most favorite thing about this novel, however, even more than the words, is its theme of love's power over people: how it changes people, brings out their best, overcomes coldness and hard-heartedness, transforms! 

Isn't that the story of our Lord? 

I have to be honest, a lot of me is almost more excited by romantic love than the spiritual...however, I strive to be the other.