There lies a certain sort of reluctant finality in every vow made to grow. It’s a gradual, undefined process of blurred lines and vague steps, but the factor common to each little bit of headway made is a trade-off, relinquishing the ability to act a certain way, to voice certain thoughts; one must not say this, one must not reveal what is really going through one’s mind, one must smile outwardly and wince only inwardly and never let anyone know.

Of course, there is that suggestion to never grow up completely lest you lose a particular viewpoint on life.

I don’t think I will. But now is the time to learn to quash that almost completely on the outside save for around those I know I can implicitly trust.

Independence means, in part, self-dependence. And enough of the theatrical emotions; you know very well that you’re actually capable of standing well enough on your own!

—

One of my hallmates eyed me shrewdly, and asked, “Doesn’t it feel liberating?”

And with wide eyes and perhaps a slight shortness of breath, I laughed, and admitted that it did. In deciding my academic direction, I have encountered the kind of freedom that suddenly makes me enjoy being busy and productive because the tasks are not burdens.

—

On Saturday evenings, an on-campus cafe often hosts a very general do-it-yourself art event. This week was t-shirt painting; I grabbed the darkest color of the smallest size there, the greens and blues I could see, started with a vague mental image of a leaf, and let my imagination do the rest. “Oh, if I draw another curve this way…hmm. Shading? Aaack, that doesn’t work.”

My roommate says my art style is always all curves and swirls and cool palettes, and that’s a decent summary of it. I have an affinity for curves, and one flick of the wrist one way off of one point branches off into another. Seeing past works of mine– paintings, tote bags– I do admit that my art displays a calm flow of one sort or another. Funnily enough, though, the lazy ambiance conveys nothing of the amount of time I put into each piece; this shirt took two hours from me.

I had a subconscious environmental idea, though, based off of a t-shirt design I once saw, and thus from streams of water flowing off of abstract leaves, in the center of the shirt– over my heart– the earth forms. The continuity of the Earth, and of all things.

There is a black line across the middle where I’ve darkened out the single line that I couldn’t do anything with.

Front:

Detail (there are very subtle lines of glitter on parts where a glare of light would fall on a leaf, or the curve of a ribbon; for the first time, I’ve made something where the photos do not do the detailing justice):

Back (the design curves over the right shoulder):

The leaves and water dissolve together and drip into a primordial puddle.

I didn’t think myself capable of this kind of design, but I suppose there’s a sort of inspiration that comes from revering nature.