Beautiful inside my Mind

Saw this photo today in a post titled 'The Design Student' on The Sartorialist and laughed because I recognized the toolbox- I have a similar one. Plus the roomy bag and cup of coffee. Doesn't that just scream 'design student'? We lug a load of art supplies to school everyday and survive on coffee to keep awake during marathon studio classes and while doing assignments.

So I just returned from my longest day of the week- a 6-hour life drawing session followed by English Literature class. Though such days are draining, they're also very fulfilling. Both are my favourite classes, and I always feel that I've achieved a lot in one day. We had a female model today called Yuko. I really do get a sense that both my gestures and long drawings are improving. For English class, we discussed two short stories- 'How I contemplated the world...' by Joyce Carol Oates and 'The Garden of Forking Paths' by Jorge Luis Borges, the latter of which I found pretty fascinating.

'The Garden of Forking Paths' derives its name from the fable of a Chinese man named Tsui Penn, governer of Yunnan, who withdrew from public duty to write a novel and construct a maze. After his death, his descendants found only a heap of seemingly contradictory drafts, and no physical maze. It took a Sinologist, Stephen Albert, many generations later to discover that the novel was in fact the maze. Unlike conventional stories in which the narrator chooses one option out of those presented and eliminates the others, Tsui Penn's novel diverges into all possible outcomes the way a maze 'forks', only that the forking exists in time, not in space. To sum it up, Tsui Penn's novel presents parallel futures that exist simultaneously.

I broke out my snuggly thick knitted cardigan today, also bought over the weekend. To enliven the grey colour, I pinned a faux jewel brooch to the 'lapel' (the collar area) and the effect worked well I think.