Today was our last day when we had classes at Payton. Lucky as i am, i had my two favourites, those i had most of the time, AP lang and spanish. It was just… to be honest, like all the other schooldays. Except for that little patch in my subconscience, that i didn’t dare to touch, the one that had “this is your last day here” written on it. So i payed attention, and tried to enjoy these classes as much as i could. Then we had an hour to spare, then heading out for the Art Institute. I’d gladly have spent a whole day there, though i’m usually not really into watching paintings and such.

Maybe i’m growing up? Don’t know, but that’s sure that i enjoyed this huge gallery a lot. Stood amazed in front of japanese paintings for a couple of minutes, another few perplexed in front of some abstract modern painting, trying to figure out what i should see in that, then stopped stunned in front of again one other painting, when i realised that i’d known that one and that it was a Van Gogh—you know, just as the so-called average person of the statistics, i was like “wow, an original Van Gogh, i guess this’ a once-in-a-lifetime experience”. I shouldn’t leave out such moments when we almost rolled on the floor laughing when the managers of the museum (?) called a plain plank painted pure (p)red (“p” for the sake of the alliteration) or an empty dark blue canvas a piece of art. All right, i know art is whatever its creator considers art, but then… hmm, i must confess i couldn’t find any good point in an argument like this. Still, even amongst the moderns, and here i include contemporary artists in modern, there were some that i could even imagine on the wall of my own living room, if i may, by chance, once in the future have a hause, like the paintings of Clyfford Still, which would really fit in the house of my dreams.

Also, in there i was surprised that i could recognise some names of the moderns, but then i realised where my knowledge in such fields come from. There was this Vonnegut character named Rabo Karabekian, who appeared in his novel Bluebeard and also for a minor role in Breakfast of champions, which i both read, and who was an abstract impressionist painter, so in Bluebeard, which focuses around him, there appeared many other modern painters, like Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko, so these names were familiar to me.

One more interesting thing is, that when i decide to put some content in my writing, especially in my blog, and maybe even some style, i end up creating long and complicated sentences, impossible to follow. Or at least, it feels like that for me. Sometimes, when i’m reading my own writings, i get the feeling that i use sentences those are too short, so i usually pay attention and try to write longer ones, which really have something to say. I’m ashamed that i don’t know who said that whenever you write something, you should read it from the beginning to the end, and if a sentence doesn’t have something to say or something to show, let it go—i think even Vonnegut had such an advise for beginner writers in the afterword in one of his books, or maybe the foreword of the Bagombo Snuff Box, the novel collection i’d written about earlier, but now as i wrote this down, i realised that this was originally the idea of the author of the Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes, whose name i had to look up, and who said the same thing about books: if a book doesn’t have any scientific information in it, or doesn’t hold any meaning or beauty, it should be burnt. Or something along these lines. Still, if it wasn’t Hobbes who said this, please don’t be harsh on me, that part of the enlightenment philosophy doesn’t really interest me, and also it’s been a year since i learnt that—i promise that as soon as i get home, i will look this up. That’s still at least one and a half day…