It really hurts that I cannot express myself at all...My abilities in all things are so minute that they cannot properly express what i feel inside. Inside where i have images and pictures of landscapes so beautiful, that me describing them in words would only result in pointless ramble. It is so very hard to see others with some degree of talent be able to draw the pictures that they see inside their heads. Because I cannot draw leaves me at a huge disadvantage. I suppose if I had a friend who could advise me on my art, he would tell me to keep practicing, that one is not born an artist, but one is born with dreams. One must earn the skills to create the dreams into a more physical, tangable form. But I am impatient and not a very good study. I do things through seeing and through example, and no one has ever shown me how to draw, atleast the things I want to create.

My Art teacher would always have us do random assignments, using her printing press, or what ever it was...She'd have us make random ink blotches and then press them on paper and then try to create something out of it. I could not stand that. While the others were busy with making her happy, I snuck off to the computer lab to edit photos for the school newspaper and yearbook committee. For a while i felt a sense of pride that *I* could edit these pictures, and I concidered these edited pictures a work of art. But then I later asked that same imaginary friend, " Is this truely art?". I could just imagine that friend smiling to me and putting his hand on my shoulder and say, "If you question the very nature of your art then you cannot ask someone else to tell you if it is or if it is not."

Do I question the nature of my art? I thought I found my art, by editing pictures for the school. I was very disturbed by this for a few weeks. I pondered upon weither or not editing the school photos really was a form of art. Where else could there possibily be art of this nature in the world? I began to ask myself that over and over. I decided that instead of beating my head over it, that I would take a trip to the Moder Art Museam of San Fransico. From the moment I walked into that building, a sense of dread fell apon me. As I looked around I saw great piece of art, all constructed or painted in various curious fashions. The journey through the museam seemed to wake me up some. I even saw examples of the very art that I thought was my own, editied photos. But these weren't mere editing where certain profane T-shirts were blurred out or just made completely black and white. But these were genious edited versions of many things. I remember one was of an edited picture of a beautiful girl on a horse. I remember staring at that the piece for what seemed like hours. I curse my poor memory for not being able to remember the name of the piece nor the artist, I've never had a good memory of such things. As I traveled up through the galleries I finally came to one piece of "art" in particular, again artist and name of picture elude my attempts to recall the moment exactly but here is the best I can do. I remember the canvas being large in size, much taller than myself. And it was all white, untouched. And at the very center of the picture was a big, red DOT. This infuriated me. This wasn't art! This was more like the Japanese flag! Not art at all! As I glanced once more at the piece and in a puff of smoke I stormed out of the building and never have returned since. It's simplicity was what infuriated me the most at the time. And then I looked at what I was doing and I saw the same simplicity, nothing creative, just the same thing over and over again. "Why do you care so much about that?" My friend would ask, my only reply would be, "Because it symbolizes just how much time I have wasted, time I could have used improving myself in other mediums," and I for one cannot stand having my time wasted. I quit my position of editing the photos shortly there-after.

In fact, after that I never went back to art class. For a long time I saw art as a fraud, as a sham, nothing new or creative. It had been all done before. Want with my fury came rage, anger and depression. And it was in this dark time that those pictures in my head turned to grey and dissapeared. For a period of two years, the bright pictures in my head were gone, and I was left with nothing. I would ever give reason that my "friend" would have gone off to never speak to me again. I was alone for the longest time. It was so very lonely, and that was all I could ever think about, was about how alone I was. I began to become bitter and snappy at those around me, I particularlly got jealous of other artists, especially a few of the really talented ones at our school. A few were my friends from before, and they would try to send me a smile and maybe even show them some art piece they did. But I didn't care I was so deeply entrenched in my own self-lothing that I refused to see anyway out of my whole, much less than the smiles of the closest friends who had kept me afloat emotionally up through out my school life until that point. My life had begun its long spiral downwards, into an abyssal hole that I thought would never escape. I began to spend gross amounts of time on the internet, and on a game in particular, EverQuest...But I will not get into that. Sufficided to say that I almost lost everything because I was so enrapt playing that game. Lost was I on a seemly endless sea of eternal nothingness, one of which I would never find solid ground again.

But as all dark places have, there is always one small point of light. I had ignored it for two years w hile i floated aimlessly through this sea. It really wasn't until I completely woke up to the fact that I may not graduate from High School, but instead not graduate and end up in a very horrible situation at the age of 18, not future college education and no ability to get a job. My parent's told me I could stay so long as I stayed in school, but I had made up my stubborn mind and declared dramatically, "That if I had not graduated in the year 2003 along with the friends of whom i had long forgotten, then I would surely end my life, for I will not live on charity from my parents, and I surely not go back to school, since I had no future there after failing once." Not the most intelligent thing that has ever come out of my mouth, but at the time, i felt as if I had no other alternative, I did not want to live the street life my older brother lead before he finally settled down. Quite frankly, I would not surivive one moment. Plus the big difference between him and me, is that he is a hard worker who has a particualar charisma which people latch onto. But he had earned every break that he has gotten. Comparing myself to my brother, always sent me into a deeper funk. He at least had a talent, worthy of artistic praise. He was a musician, and not just any musician, to me he was the best there ever was. He couldn't read music, he never got formal training to do so, but he could pick up any song by just listening to it a few times. He had the musicians ear, which is a powerful gift blessed by the higher beings to those who are worthy of such gifts. Along with this " Musician's Ear" is the "Artist's Hands", the "Photographer's Eye" and the "Writer's Mind". All of which are splended gifts of which I once demanded that I could have. But of course I knew these things were gifts, not on demand powers. But in vain I tried.

I envyed my brother more than anyone really, tho I have never really told anyone until today as I write this. I envy him in all his ability to motivate himself to do the things that he wants. I'm sure he's had his own expirences dipping into the seemingly endless black sea, but like my mother says about him, "He is a cat with nine lives, and he has about two left." If you were to compare me with any animal, an Osterage would be the most fitting. A flightless bird who can run away from danger fairly fast and spends most of the time with its head stuck into the ground. And then I can hear my dad tell me that I must lay the biggest eggs of them all.

But back to the original train of thought. Surrounded in darkness I was and only one hard to find speck of light remained for me. What was that light? I was my own stubborn pride, one which was locked on graduating in the year 2003. Irgonically it was my stubborness that really got me into this mess, and it would be the very same part of my human nautre that would lead me out of the darkness. I cut deals and made compromises, I even left the internet for a period of time. I took more than the normal load of classes, I essentially was doing my junior and senior year at the same time. And in the end I completed it, after transfering to a new school, my grades shot up, my productivity sky rocketed. And while I am at it, someone placed another dish of irony on my table. In my final semester, one of the final classes i was required to take was Art. And it was in that art class that I truely healed the wounds of old. I worked on projects just like the rest of the class, I did not go off and do my own thing like I had done before. And in the end I found that doing the art someone else told me was much easier on my own mind than figuring out what to do myself. I really climbed out of my hole in that class. Because it was there that I finally accepted that I was never going to be the best, that everyone also has their own unique talents in art. My talent still remained on the computer, but I no longer to pride in my work, I just let it be what it was, total crap. I still could not draw, I could mimic and copy but not draw from out of my own head. That is still a barrier I must bring down, but for now the art that I do is just fine for me. And if people ignore it and never even see it, thats alright because I did it, and its out there.

That art class awoke a lot of things which lay barried benieth so much depression and self-inflicted pain, that I forgot they were even there. For once in a long time I saw hope, I saw the very thing that I wanted so badily in my life, something that I was good at. I was developing my art all through out my final year in high school. I was given an option to write a book instead of going to one of my two english classes, and I took that opporitunity. And it was on that warm and fuzzy award day that I had always sat through watching other people recieve their awards and heartlessly clapping for them, that my name was called. I was given the "rubber duckie" award, which offically was the Best Fiction Writers Award. I found that through writing I could better express myself, better than any picture could. And while I am still trying to develop the ability to paint a beautiful picture, I am also developing my ability to communicate what I see in my head into words, which really in the end is the first step to being a great artist, to get those pictures out of your head and onto something tangable. And while I am doing this my life is still fraught with unseen patches of darkness, but then again, how can you grow with out breaking a few osterage eggs?