so i did a list of things that gave me affirmation as part of a plan to switch my mind from negative thinking to positive thinking - everyone should do that because i found out that there were a lot of things that i had forgotten that were very positive, and they really improved my perspective !

one of the things i had forgotten was that i used to be able to draw eyes with a pen very well at community college because of a young lady i was unrequietedly stalking who i found out after i decided to become obsessed with her - had amazing eyes !

a bcc drawing course i took to get landscape architecture credits, where we practiced over and over drawing self portraits from a mirror with rectangular sticks of charcoal and large squishy grey erasers that were like putty, gave my hand the muscle memory i needed

i bought a pen with about 12 colors somewhere, like the pen in this photo, which only has 10, and it must have been while i was in one of the environmental science building classes i took and dropped out of my aborted last semester after working removing aquatic weeds from a lake in connecticut with phil hooker at the end of the previous spring semester, that i drew some eyes and with all the weird colors they looked kind of freaky and wild, yet really pretty - they accidently came out as a girl's eyes - i was never quite sure which they would be - so i drew a girl's hair and face and it reminded me of an artist who worked in the bcc administration office named gail

https://tinyurl.com/yzfcyhrm

'learn to become an artist' fb group

we had been lab partners in one of the environmental science courses that had a laboratory class day each week - maybe it was water quality - i remember we had to grab  white lab rats out of a cage by their tails

when we were putting the lids onto the petrie dishes of cultures we were trying to grow in the environmental science labs we'd rub glycerine around the edges to seal them airtight and it makes this beautiful, sweet sounding scraping noise when you rub the two pieces of glass together

doug and connie were a couple who were also art students taking some environmental science courses at bcc and for one semester we hung out together at lunch in the cafeteria

i had broken my nose playing pick up basketball in the gym when henry, who was an english major taking some environmental science courses, accidently hit me in the face with his elbow during a rebound - and doug and connie joked at lunch that they thought gail had broken my nose (which gave me bruised eyes) because i had tried to get fresh with her !

i hadn't - i don't recall ever touching her - she had really good taste tho, she looked like a 40 year old fashion model and i was awed and flattered just hanging out with her at lunch - but as you might see, saying that just doesn't work as a line in a poem

when dave and i got to know henry and his lab partner kris from our mutual chemistry course, dave became friends with kris and said kris was gene simmons's son !

so as my tape recorder recorded the class - i wrote a little poem inspired by the feeling of the drawing and later mailed it on the same page as the drawing to a close friend named dave who was living near u mass amherst

dave later told me he put the letter on his refrigerator and at a party everyone who saw the drawing said they really liked it

and i believe the poem became the lyrics to a song most of you have heard :

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