In case any of you were wondering about yesterdays post, on the first official day of this project by 8pm I felt a sort of illness I had never quite experienced so I took pen to paper and within half an hour was able to accurately diagnose the feeling in my body. In writing I found the name that had evaded me. Today has very much been about getting into solid work. No more doodles, the blog is set, so is the twitter  ( https://twitter.com/Blinkx4L ) and now I have to prepare for the painting.

Studying the faces of 25 elegant, engaging, lost women has taken it’s toll. Working solidly on canvases or paper for 10, 12, 14 hours at a time is not unusual for me but this is something far different. I was only able to complete 4 sketches today and I felt drained.

I’m still shocked at how connected I feel to those I do not know. I can already feel the dangerous grasps of desensitization sinking in and although it would make my task far easier if I could objectify them as simple subjects I know it would abolish the purpose of Blink. Somehow, someway I must maintain and, in fact, embrace the squirming discomfort I felt upon viewing each of their beautiful faces for the first time.

What confuses and disturbs me most of all is how easily I have been able to transition back into normal life after working. At first it wasn’t easy, in fact it was nearly impossible, I became a woman obsessed but these transitions are becoming smoother. Of course, this is the human way. When faced with our own mortality through the loss of others we become disillusioned, questioning of our purpose and sometimes apathetic. But then this very human, very odd gene kicks in to make us forget, helps us ‘move on’ and numbs us to the undeniable, paralyzing fear of death.

Constant awareness of our own persistent proximity to death would undoubtedly force us into an impossible prison of fear. It would cripple us, preventing us from life and yes, in some ways kill us. I guess this is just another quirk of nature, an evolutionary response to the inability to live with the deadly thought of death clinging to our collective back like some sort of fatal parasite. We’re all a blink a way, it can’t be every blink, but it could be any blink. So all we can do is hope, hope is the gene that sheds the terror and keeps the monsters away at night and as long as hope prevails we can live each blink like there will never be a final one.