Getting away with art

I have two major projects due in the next couple of weeks, and I’m quite swamped with it all. Luckily I found out tonight that I can make an art project for my science class, instead of a regular paper. I am studying hallucinations, the lovely/scary friend to mental illness, along with many other illnesses as it turns out. In particular I’ll be looking at visual hallucinations, and since I’ve already learned a bunch of stuff on making a zine, I’ll be making a book, with some clear pages that have images that will overlay on top of other images.

My experience with visual hallucinations is really limited, when I went crazy I had auditory and sensory hallucinations. Nobody ever told me you could feel things moving on your body when you go crazy. It’s true, you can! They are quite startling, one happened while I was manically talking to my best friend and I told her about it. It felt like a cloth was moving under me, wriggling and bumping me trying to get me to stop sitting on it. Thank god those days are in the past. However, when I’ve had migraines I get really AWFUL visual disturbances. My vision goes all yellow, blurred, and opaque, except for a tiny spot in the centre of my field of vision. It makes walking in the world really scary, and then I need to rush home and hide in a dark room for a few hours until it goes away. Luckily it’s been a long time since I’ve had a migraine, I used to get them all the time when I was a kid.

The first time I got a migraine I was walking with my school group through the University campus, and as I was looking at the snow I realized I couldn’t see. It scared the hell out of me and I didn’t know what to do. I was scared I would never see again.

Another time I went deaf, but it turned out I just had too much ear wax.

(eeeew, the crowd says)

Anyway, the world of hallucinations is fascinating to me, especially as a video/film artist. And I think it will make an interesting one off book project, although time is running out and I will have to devote many hours this coming weekend to getting the whole thing due in time for Monday’s class. But after making my zine, I think I know how I can do it.

Mostly, I am just relieved I don’t have to write another paper. One is quite enough for this semester. I still can’t believe I managed to write three papers at the end of last semester. Wow. That is insane.

School makes ya crazy!

I’m glad I’m almost done. Soon I’ll be at the grad ceremony, with my mommy, finally getting my degree. And after that I have to find a job.

I still haven’t heard back from grad school. I have some tentative plans in the event I will have to find something else to do, it would just be nice to hear a yay or nay and move forward on something. I hate ambiguity, except in gender, in which case it is sexy.