Welcome

My name is Alexis and I'm 23 and not really all that drunk. 

I'm here, busting my blog cherry, because I just graduated from art school and I'm finally beginning to accept the fact that I should have spent the last four years writing instead of fronting like I'm going to break into the New York gallery scene someday.

My title "Near Beer" is ripped from Nabokov; there's a sentence where he describes a man as being "near-genius, in the usual sense of near beer."  Aren't we all.  Good at something, but not something practical; talented, but not talented enough to carry us forward; eloquent, but worthlessly so.  It's a reference to my own sense of impotence as I step forth into a cold and apathetic post-college world.  Also, when I write I am usually near at least one beer.  So it works on multiple levels.

I'm pretty much just going to be writing about things that I think are interesting, which for me means people and how they work.  I tend to get caught in the trappings of my own mind, and I find it helpful to ruminate on things I observe both within and outside of myself.