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With color, with size, with detail.... the painter gives us a sense of depth. I think this applies to more than just paintings. In terms of human beings, our own uniqueness and personalities bring color into our worlds. As well as bringing color into ourselves. I remember reading somewhere that, no matter how hard we try, we can't think of a color that doesn't exist. I believe the same goes for us, there are times we feel so alone and like we are one of one. However, inside one "color", exists many varieties of that same color, combinations of different colors to make one color. Even the way we perceive color is dependent on the layers of composition surrounding it. I can relate to the reducing done by labels and what-not. The limiting of our personalities and ourselves as a whole. I often think of this in terms of impressions. In college, you may only come across a person once. Everyones schedules are so different yunno. So, sometimes I stress about the first impressions I do have with people because I know very well that I may never see them again. Or that however I present myself is the way that they'll know me until I am given another chance to add to that narrative. I kind of lost my direction in what I was writing. So I'll end here. I related to what you said and I understood the way you think about that. Sometimes I feel like those labels may just be the words we seek to describe our "indescribables". But we always look for more, so that may be a reason for our constant rejection of these "norms". I also think it is important to look for more, in whatever it is. it helps with our progressions and what-not.

I often think about how complicated we have made the world on more than just a surface level. We didn’t just create arbitrary systems that make life more complex like governments and money, but we made systems that are used to control the way that we think about ourselves and those around us. On some level, the search for identity is very human. We all want to have a grasp of who we are and why we are even here in the first place. But unfortunately, it’s also very human to be visual creatures. Our identities are usually more centered around the way that we appear to others, rather than the real beauty of being alive. Instead of finding meaning in the way the moon controls the tides or the way our heart pushes blood through our veins, we have found meaning in the way we look and if society has deemed us worthy. I spent too long identifying myself by the label that society awarded me. Fat. The world taught me that because I didn’t have a flat stomach and a thigh gap, I was unlovable, gross, and a joke. The world gave me this label and then told me it was my fault. It was my fault that I was born with thick thighs and a butt that protrudes out more than the other thinner (and thus more worthy girls) that I went to school with. I grew up thinking that if I didn’t shed fat and the label that came with it, then no boy would ever find me attractive enough to love me, and if I didn’t find a boy to love me, then I would be even more of an outcast then I already was. This prejudice, along with prejudice regarding every difference you could have to the cis, white, able-bodied example that we are supposed to live up to, has existed for a long time. But social media and our new, robotic existence on the internet has definitely perpetuated the labels that have plagued society. It highlights our differences and gives people the chance to tell us their opinions about it, whether it’s directed at you or just someone that looks like you. However, in the right hands, this highlighting can be incredibly important. It’s important to see a wide range of people who take those labels and rip them up so that they can collage it back together in the way that feels right to them. If we have to live with these labels that we’ve created, then we might as well try to take them in stride so that we can throw it right back into the faces of those who criticize us--even it’s our own brains.

I think you’re absolutely right about ownership. I believe that we weren’t put into the earth to belong to someone or something and let it control every aspect of our lives and it absolutely baffles me that we are forced to live by societal rules, which are essentially not real. Who are they to tell us who and what we are and what our relationship to our bodies and minds should be. Personally I’ve never really liked to call things mine. For example, “my” dog Daisy, she provides me with too much support and comfort to be boxed in the idea that she is mine. I think of her more like a gift from the universe to aid me in time of need. A companion, which is something I’m grateful for. I have never felt ownership of the earth as some people do, for she is so much greater than all of us combined. Like you said the moon owns us and I think that much is just as true for the earth. We can not live if she dies.

Identity is such a tricky thing. Tricky because of how many things we are influenced by. My parents are from Mexico and they came to the US in search of something greater. Now that I am 19 and can make more sense of things I can say it's like living in two completely different worlds. To put it simply, Mexican culture and American culture are nothing alike in the slightest. I feel like I’m being told to do two things at once without interrupting the other, which is nearly impossible to do. I think it's a little funny that we are talking about ownership and identity at the same time because for the longest time I felt like I didn’t ‘belong’ in any place, but I don't think that's the case anymore.

As hard as I try, I simply cannot put into words the universe that lives inside of me and all its complexity. The only way I can get close to it is by painting and making art but even then it doesn't capture what really is going on in my head andI’m left with having to water myself down to not appear as dense and concentrated to everyone else

Identity is considered to be ourselves But we really just pick up some stuff off of shelves We think were unique But what ive learned this week Is that everyone is owned by everyone else