Oberlin is a great place. Great restaurants, free music shows, amazing theater, hilarious people. But there are a few things you can't get in town. Principally: clothes.
As Oberlin's my home, and I don't have a car, I haven't gone shopping in a long time.
But yesterday, I went shopping. For serious lady clothes.
Thoughts on Gender:
You know that point in high school, where you figure out your gender role and how much you want to do with it (if anything)? It might involve fixing your hair more often, or buying different clothes? It might mean figuring out how to brand yourself to attract the right kind of significant other. You work out how to flirt best, how to hold yourself, how to dress and act. I never had that.
I didn't really hit puberty until my sophomore year of college. And I've been catching up as best I can. While most people seem to adjust to their gender easily, I think about it.
I'm an aggressive person: blunt, forward and competitive. I like violence, video games, sex and food. I'm physically larger than most of my male friends. I've never had a manicure or a pedicure; I don't own any foundation or blush; I'm not very graceful.
But presenting femme is awesome. It's such a great game. Every morning, when I put on my clothes, I feel such amusement and amazement at the alien-ness of female attire. I shave my pits, groom, exercise, and do everything possible to mitigate the masculinity of my eastern European side. I am a gender ninja.
But while I'm got some mannerisms down, I'm still a bit sketchy on one avenue: clothes. I've figured out how to dress like a girl (cute shirts + jeans! Silly, flouncy dresses and skirts!). But dressing like a woman? A woman with a job but without a family or the presumptions of age?
Common Wisdom on women's workplace garb is weird. Professionalism screams for a de-sexed look, clothes that indicate adulthood, power and prestige. However, *not* acknowledging your gender, is pretty suspect. You want the dress that makes your figure look good, but not bodacious. Class, not ass.
It's hard for me to find that middle ground. Muffling my recent sexuality is as unnatural to me know as dresses were when I was 14. I've worked hard for my positive body image. I want to keep it.
This is where Brandi and Ali come in.
Brandi and Ali are classy, stylish ladies. Ali can look overwhelmingly great in anything, no matter how odd, and Brandi's just... classy. If class were a person, it'd be Brandi. If style were a person, it'd be Ali. After 4 hours of dancing, Brandi will still look impeccable. They understand being ladies. They get it.
We went to Crocker Park, specifically H+M. And I got schooled.
Ali: "What are we getting?"
Brandi: "Shirts and skirts that you can throw on the floor, stomp on and still look good."
Aries: "... Good thinking."
At H+M, they just found amazing things. It was like an episode of What Not To Wear except without the cruelty of a TV audience. They were clear in what worked, what didn't, what needed a different size and what was just... wrong. Given my weird, hip-heavy body, it was awesome to have professional help.
"Spin... Ass is great. But where's your hips?"
"Yeah. That's a no."
"YES. Yes. My god. Yes."
"That would need tailoring."
"No tailoring could fix that. Oooh. See how the pockets poke out, making your hips look ginormous? That's a problem."
"Buy it."
And it was fun. Ali and Brandi are both hilarious, sassy humans and it was fantastic to spend more time with them. I rarely just chill with folks for several hours at a time, which I need to change. As soon as possible.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
The Big Tour
Life? Life is good.
I gave a tour to the direct descendant of John F. Oberlin, for whom the college was named. I was nervous, of course. The only details about the Perrus: French, from Paris and middle-age. Possibly, they had never been to the US before.
In high school, my French teacher was a Parisian. Though an excellent teacher, she terrified me. A strict person, both in diction and behavior, she did not approve of my chronic lateness, imperfect accent or adoration of comic books (I wrote an essay on the Sandman).
In my head, I pictured giving a tour to a pair of irritated blonds, infuriated by my foolish blathering and my inability to discuss Oberlin achievements in conversational French. They would probably bolt from the tour, forcing Ben to fire me for insubordination to historic guests. From there, I would move to the Canada, shamed beyond measure, and wandering across the tundra until I was eaten by rabid bears.
I met the couple in archives, where I confessed I knew nothing about the Oberlin memorial, where we were doing a short photo op. In two seconds, one of the archivists grabbed a book on designs and explained it. The Oberlin Archives are really cool: they have letters from the civil war, including two officers in the USCT. Oberlin is an incredibly historic place, so the archives has plenty of fascinating local information on abolition, racial justice, gender equality, as well as a ton of books completely unrelated to Oberlin. For History and Structure of the English Language, one of our assignments took us to archives, just to see what Old and Middle English scripts looked like. In my Hebrew Bible class, an archivist brought in objects over a thousand years old.
As a history nerd, I explode with glee every time a librarian puts on gloves to look over a text.
The Perrus sat at a table, looking over super-historic documents. I stared at them for a minute. They didn’t look terrifying. Then they shook my hand, smiling. I sighed with relief.
The Perrus with Marvin Krislov.
Oberlin students don’t know much about John Frederic Oberlin. Even his name is perplexing: we call him John Frederic, but he’s also Jean-Frédéric or Johann Friedrich. I’m going to call him JFO for simplicity’s sake.
Our confusion is understandable: JFO never saw Oberlin College: he died before it was founded. On tours, I don’t discuss the ethics of JFO, and how he impacted John and Philo, Oberlin College’s founders. That said, I think I should. JFO was a cool guy. He was very "Oberlin," linking social justice into his role as pastor. In his parish, he built bridges, taught agriculture,founded schools and libraries. Given how Obies work in terms of ecological design and environmental and educational progress… JFO would probably like Oberlin.
On some tours, I do tell an Oberlin founding story, involving bears and Heavenly Signs.
In my mind’s eye, this story takes place in the dead center of Tappan Square, where I told it to the Perrus.
Small tours are different from big tours – I cater towards different interests. In this case, we spent more time outdoors, as the Perrus loved the trees in Tappan, venturing guesses as to what each kind was. We snuck into Hall Auditorium where they mentioned their son was a sound engineer, seeing the paint dry on a new set. They both loved music: jazz for him, classical for her. We spent a while in the Conservatory.
Though there was a language barrier, I think I discussed the uniqueness of the college while still being mildly entertaining. The Perrus reminded me of my own parents, smiling and laughing easily, occasionally mock-bickering in French. It was such a pleasure to meet them.
Oberlin Founding Story:
I gave a tour to the direct descendant of John F. Oberlin, for whom the college was named. I was nervous, of course. The only details about the Perrus: French, from Paris and middle-age. Possibly, they had never been to the US before.
In high school, my French teacher was a Parisian. Though an excellent teacher, she terrified me. A strict person, both in diction and behavior, she did not approve of my chronic lateness, imperfect accent or adoration of comic books (I wrote an essay on the Sandman).
In my head, I pictured giving a tour to a pair of irritated blonds, infuriated by my foolish blathering and my inability to discuss Oberlin achievements in conversational French. They would probably bolt from the tour, forcing Ben to fire me for insubordination to historic guests. From there, I would move to the Canada, shamed beyond measure, and wandering across the tundra until I was eaten by rabid bears.
I met the couple in archives, where I confessed I knew nothing about the Oberlin memorial, where we were doing a short photo op. In two seconds, one of the archivists grabbed a book on designs and explained it. The Oberlin Archives are really cool: they have letters from the civil war, including two officers in the USCT. Oberlin is an incredibly historic place, so the archives has plenty of fascinating local information on abolition, racial justice, gender equality, as well as a ton of books completely unrelated to Oberlin. For History and Structure of the English Language, one of our assignments took us to archives, just to see what Old and Middle English scripts looked like. In my Hebrew Bible class, an archivist brought in objects over a thousand years old.
As a history nerd, I explode with glee every time a librarian puts on gloves to look over a text.
The Perrus sat at a table, looking over super-historic documents. I stared at them for a minute. They didn’t look terrifying. Then they shook my hand, smiling. I sighed with relief.
The Perrus with Marvin Krislov.
Oberlin students don’t know much about John Frederic Oberlin. Even his name is perplexing: we call him John Frederic, but he’s also Jean-Frédéric or Johann Friedrich. I’m going to call him JFO for simplicity’s sake.
Our confusion is understandable: JFO never saw Oberlin College: he died before it was founded. On tours, I don’t discuss the ethics of JFO, and how he impacted John and Philo, Oberlin College’s founders. That said, I think I should. JFO was a cool guy. He was very "Oberlin," linking social justice into his role as pastor. In his parish, he built bridges, taught agriculture,founded schools and libraries. Given how Obies work in terms of ecological design and environmental and educational progress… JFO would probably like Oberlin.
On some tours, I do tell an Oberlin founding story, involving bears and Heavenly Signs.
In my mind’s eye, this story takes place in the dead center of Tappan Square, where I told it to the Perrus.
Small tours are different from big tours – I cater towards different interests. In this case, we spent more time outdoors, as the Perrus loved the trees in Tappan, venturing guesses as to what each kind was. We snuck into Hall Auditorium where they mentioned their son was a sound engineer, seeing the paint dry on a new set. They both loved music: jazz for him, classical for her. We spent a while in the Conservatory.
Though there was a language barrier, I think I discussed the uniqueness of the college while still being mildly entertaining. The Perrus reminded me of my own parents, smiling and laughing easily, occasionally mock-bickering in French. It was such a pleasure to meet them.
Oberlin Founding Story:
“Utopia, Philo,” John said, “We are going to build it.”
Philo nodded, chewing on his tuna sandwich, brushing the crumbs onto the forest floor.
John continued, “So often they turn out peculiar, but I have faith in us.”
“I hear in Oneida, each man has seven brides, all children.” Philo said. He adjusted his glasses; speaking of child-brides warped his frames.
“Free love and communism,” John muttered, shaking his head.
Philo fished an ant off of their blanket, letting it walk across his palm for a minute. While John wrestled with big ideas, Philo tended towards more earthly issues: accounting, carpentry and gardening.
“There’s an excellent spot further south that the locals say rings with holiness.” John said.
“That might be too expensive,” Philo added. “Why not here? No one has claimed this township.”
“This area is cheap, but far too swamp-like to support enlightened children. Without a godly spot, the college will fail. We must find a place like Alsace in its beauty, able to attract students great and far.” John’s sonorous voice always comforted Philo, even when he disagreed. They had been exploring the back-country of Ohio for weeks, searching out the spot to base their college. Their boots reeked, muddy and sweaty, and though they had just found a lake the day before, Philo already smelt the stink that had nestled into his body.
“Do you think people will confuse Oberlin with Oneida?” wondered Philo. “The names are familiar.”
“I hope not,” John said as he munched on an apple. “That would be sorrowful.”
A strange noise perked their ears, a low growl spreading from the trees. In the trees, the birds flew away, the squirrels bolting for distance branches. John inched closer to Philo. Philo found his breath strained. The ants were gone now. The brush before the woods parted slowly.
A bear. It stood thirty feet high, with gigantic ivory claws. A stream of drool ran from the bear’s mouth, its maw opened, teeth jutting from each angle. Steam puffed out from the bear’s nose, lined with putrefied snot. The bear’s coat was rust-colored, matted with bits of fur and bone from smaller creatures.
John squeaked and gripped Philo’s hand.
The bear lumbered towards them, its body shaking the ground. A few feet from the picnic blanket, the bear screamed. The incredible roar echoed for miles around, terrifying children and other small animals.
Philo gripped John’s shoulder. He stood, legs wavering.
“Leave this place,” Philo commanded, waving a loaf of bread as a scepter.
The bear paused and jostled its weight around. Eyes glowing red, it eyed Philo. Steam from the bear’s nostrils singed Philo’s eyebrows. His glasses fogged, rendering the bear a darkened smudge.
“Begone!” Philo screamed, realizing how close the bear’s claws were.
With a final huff, the bear turns from the humble picnic and lumbers back into the woods. Philo stands for another moment before his knees collapsed.
John clears his throat. “I think we should build Oberlin here.”
Philo nodded.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Orientation: Best of Times!
Normally, Orientation is a crazy time, though no one agrees why. Freshmen go through some pretty dramatic changes, and no matter how well Orientation is run, it's going to be stressful. That said, the stress manifests in different ways.
Over the last two years, I've found that for every emphatic opinion, there exists the equal and opposite reaction, delivered just as piercingly. Say these freshmen, Joan and Oliver, are talking about Orientation. You might get something like this:
Oliver: It's too boring.
Joan: It's too busy.
Oliver: Jeez! Is there anyone who doesn't play music?
Joan: Yay! Everyone plays music! Win, win, win!
Oliver: Where's the noise at night? I miss the city.
Joan: Why are my hallmates so loud? I can hear them playing Lady Gaga in the lounge!
Oliver: It's all talk-talk-talk; everyone is telling me what to do!
Joan: I don't know what to do! Someone tell me!
Oliver: Dude, it's freakin flat here.
Joan: It's so beautiful! The sky is so bright, the trees are so green! I'm going to go picnic in the Arb!
Oliver: Registration is so simple. Are we done now?
Joan: WTF PRESTO ATE MY CLASS. FML.
Oliver: I got everything I want! Classes should start now.
Joan: WHERE ARE MY APs? HELP PLS.
Oliver: I really miss my girlfriend. This is going to really hurt.
Joan: The cute boy in Barrows made eye contact with me! Yes!
Oliver: People are really awkward. I can't wait for things to get rolling.
Joan: Everyone is so friendly! This already feels like home.
Oliver: I left so much stuff at home. Strangely, I don't miss it. There's something great about being in a new place.
Joan: It's weird not to go to the living room and see my brother and my dog. I mean, my dormmates are cool, but they're not my family.
That said, this year feels different. Everyone is relaxed, and while there may be some absolutist Joans and Olivers... they aren't as many out there. The freshmen are mature, active and wonderful. I feel so lucky to be here.
For two years, I moved to campus early to be an Academic Ambassador: counseling, consoling and communicating with freshies on issues big and small. (As both Brandi and Ma'ayan are both Academic Ambassadors, they might have a different view of all this.)
Basics of the Academic Ambassadors:
1. Teach freshmen about academic requirements.
2. Serve as a Big Brother/Sister, giving mentoring and advice to make the transition easier.
3. We're the WD-40 of Orientation. We keep things rolling as ushers and guides.
4. Give mini-seminars on academic issues during the first semester.
5. Hang out with Dean Randal Doane, one of the smartest people in the whole world.
Photo Cred: Ma'ayan Plaut.
In terms of our official duties, the big thing we do is give a classroom presentation on academics to our twenty first-years. As we don't have a core curriculum, students have a lot of choice in how they make their schedules. That said, we do mandate some distribution requirements. While they aren't killers, it's a good thing to keep in mind when registering for classes. Not sexy information, but really, really helpful.
My favorite part was helping with registration. I imagine registration as a Scrubs-style daydream....
At one instant, you're sitting at a laptop with at least 3 tabs open, staring at Presto, the course catalogue and the course schedules. You can't figure out if classes are conflicting. Are the classes you signed up for over the summer at the same time as these two totally rock-freakin-tastic courses that would totally fit with your major? Is Presto frozen? Why is it taking so long? How many spots are left? Do I need consent?
... And suddenly, you're on the floor of the NY Stock Exchange! You're wearing newsies clothes that don't fit! Your suspender snapped - fix it! Sell the class! Buy the other class! No, no, get the one with dividends! Oh, the price is rising and your options are tanking! Your ambassador is trying to tell you to take the new class! But the stock is plummeting! You're really hungry because you forgot breakfast and the person next to you just finished cooking muffins for his co-op! He smells delicious! The first year seminar is your only stable stock; you're going for broke! Buy everything! Get a muffin! Take the class!
And then, you've signed up for 4 classes, planned which excos you're going to take, signed up for your library/computer help desk/dining hall/Student Union job and your portfolio is balanced. Phew.
Registering! Photo Cred: Ma'ayan Plaut.
The rest of being an AA is more chill, giving advice and generally helping out. As someone who totally messed up their first year, my advice was generally well-received. There's nothing like a cautionary tale to help clarify some issues.
Truth: I was not qualified to become an Academic Ambassador. I didn't get recommended by a professor. I didn't have a solid transcript to back me up. For the first time in my life, grades were not my strongest suit. And yet, though I had done most of the things you aren't supposed to do, Dean Doane to hire me.
My first semester, I assumed college was like high school, and to do well, I would just do more. In retrospect... that was a poor choice. I took a full courseload, overloaded with work, projects and extracurriculars. I failed a class my first semester and barely scraped by in the next semester. On the positive end, I made tons of friends, worked through some really painful personal problems and took some spectacular classes. I started new things that I fell in love with (radio, improv, circus, storytelling, clowning), but did it with little sleep or planning.
I love helping freshmen avoid making my mistakes.
That said, this year's freshmen don't seem in danger of that. As a class, and individually, they are some of the smartest, most relaxed, charming and friendly folks I've ever met. For the first time, I think I would feel okay if classes never started. These freshmen are just way too cool.
Yesterday, I did Day of Service at George Jones Farm, weeding veggies, moving a shed and chilling with freshmen for a full day. There's something about picking up a shed and sliding it that lets your really understand your peers. When it's hot and sunny, things are heavy and ungainly, they're on it. They're all over it. If we start throwing a peach and it explodes, they'll keep going. They understand how the game works. When our supervisor didn't come back for a while, we stood in a circle, telling stories.
When we did a circus shindig the other night, the freshmen weren't afraid to try anything. They learned fast, they wanted more. Despite moving hundreds, or thousands of miles from home, living in different rhythms with different demands, they rocked it. At the swing dance last night, the room was packed. The raw beginners were wonderful partners.
PS: Every year, around this time of the season, I listen to "This Will Be Our Year" by The Zombies (or the cover by OK Go). Sometimes it applies to relationships (blush), but mostly to school, to hope, to change. This year, it seems more fitting than ever.
The warmth of your smile
smile for me, little one
and this will be our year
took a long time to come
You don't have to worry
all your worried days are gone
this will be our year
took a long time to come.
Over the last two years, I've found that for every emphatic opinion, there exists the equal and opposite reaction, delivered just as piercingly. Say these freshmen, Joan and Oliver, are talking about Orientation. You might get something like this:
Oliver: It's too boring.
Joan: It's too busy.
Oliver: Jeez! Is there anyone who doesn't play music?
Joan: Yay! Everyone plays music! Win, win, win!
Oliver: Where's the noise at night? I miss the city.
Joan: Why are my hallmates so loud? I can hear them playing Lady Gaga in the lounge!
Oliver: It's all talk-talk-talk; everyone is telling me what to do!
Joan: I don't know what to do! Someone tell me!
Oliver: Dude, it's freakin flat here.
Joan: It's so beautiful! The sky is so bright, the trees are so green! I'm going to go picnic in the Arb!
Oliver: Registration is so simple. Are we done now?
Joan: WTF PRESTO ATE MY CLASS. FML.
Oliver: I got everything I want! Classes should start now.
Joan: WHERE ARE MY APs? HELP PLS.
Oliver: I really miss my girlfriend. This is going to really hurt.
Joan: The cute boy in Barrows made eye contact with me! Yes!
Oliver: People are really awkward. I can't wait for things to get rolling.
Joan: Everyone is so friendly! This already feels like home.
Oliver: I left so much stuff at home. Strangely, I don't miss it. There's something great about being in a new place.
Joan: It's weird not to go to the living room and see my brother and my dog. I mean, my dormmates are cool, but they're not my family.
That said, this year feels different. Everyone is relaxed, and while there may be some absolutist Joans and Olivers... they aren't as many out there. The freshmen are mature, active and wonderful. I feel so lucky to be here.
For two years, I moved to campus early to be an Academic Ambassador: counseling, consoling and communicating with freshies on issues big and small. (As both Brandi and Ma'ayan are both Academic Ambassadors, they might have a different view of all this.)
Basics of the Academic Ambassadors:
1. Teach freshmen about academic requirements.
2. Serve as a Big Brother/Sister, giving mentoring and advice to make the transition easier.
3. We're the WD-40 of Orientation. We keep things rolling as ushers and guides.
4. Give mini-seminars on academic issues during the first semester.
5. Hang out with Dean Randal Doane, one of the smartest people in the whole world.
Photo Cred: Ma'ayan Plaut.
In terms of our official duties, the big thing we do is give a classroom presentation on academics to our twenty first-years. As we don't have a core curriculum, students have a lot of choice in how they make their schedules. That said, we do mandate some distribution requirements. While they aren't killers, it's a good thing to keep in mind when registering for classes. Not sexy information, but really, really helpful.
My favorite part was helping with registration. I imagine registration as a Scrubs-style daydream....
At one instant, you're sitting at a laptop with at least 3 tabs open, staring at Presto, the course catalogue and the course schedules. You can't figure out if classes are conflicting. Are the classes you signed up for over the summer at the same time as these two totally rock-freakin-tastic courses that would totally fit with your major? Is Presto frozen? Why is it taking so long? How many spots are left? Do I need consent?
... And suddenly, you're on the floor of the NY Stock Exchange! You're wearing newsies clothes that don't fit! Your suspender snapped - fix it! Sell the class! Buy the other class! No, no, get the one with dividends! Oh, the price is rising and your options are tanking! Your ambassador is trying to tell you to take the new class! But the stock is plummeting! You're really hungry because you forgot breakfast and the person next to you just finished cooking muffins for his co-op! He smells delicious! The first year seminar is your only stable stock; you're going for broke! Buy everything! Get a muffin! Take the class!
And then, you've signed up for 4 classes, planned which excos you're going to take, signed up for your library/computer help desk/dining hall/Student Union job and your portfolio is balanced. Phew.
Registering! Photo Cred: Ma'ayan Plaut.
The rest of being an AA is more chill, giving advice and generally helping out. As someone who totally messed up their first year, my advice was generally well-received. There's nothing like a cautionary tale to help clarify some issues.
Truth: I was not qualified to become an Academic Ambassador. I didn't get recommended by a professor. I didn't have a solid transcript to back me up. For the first time in my life, grades were not my strongest suit. And yet, though I had done most of the things you aren't supposed to do, Dean Doane to hire me.
My first semester, I assumed college was like high school, and to do well, I would just do more. In retrospect... that was a poor choice. I took a full courseload, overloaded with work, projects and extracurriculars. I failed a class my first semester and barely scraped by in the next semester. On the positive end, I made tons of friends, worked through some really painful personal problems and took some spectacular classes. I started new things that I fell in love with (radio, improv, circus, storytelling, clowning), but did it with little sleep or planning.
I love helping freshmen avoid making my mistakes.
That said, this year's freshmen don't seem in danger of that. As a class, and individually, they are some of the smartest, most relaxed, charming and friendly folks I've ever met. For the first time, I think I would feel okay if classes never started. These freshmen are just way too cool.
Yesterday, I did Day of Service at George Jones Farm, weeding veggies, moving a shed and chilling with freshmen for a full day. There's something about picking up a shed and sliding it that lets your really understand your peers. When it's hot and sunny, things are heavy and ungainly, they're on it. They're all over it. If we start throwing a peach and it explodes, they'll keep going. They understand how the game works. When our supervisor didn't come back for a while, we stood in a circle, telling stories.
When we did a circus shindig the other night, the freshmen weren't afraid to try anything. They learned fast, they wanted more. Despite moving hundreds, or thousands of miles from home, living in different rhythms with different demands, they rocked it. At the swing dance last night, the room was packed. The raw beginners were wonderful partners.
PS: Every year, around this time of the season, I listen to "This Will Be Our Year" by The Zombies (or the cover by OK Go). Sometimes it applies to relationships (blush), but mostly to school, to hope, to change. This year, it seems more fitting than ever.
The warmth of your smile
smile for me, little one
and this will be our year
took a long time to come
You don't have to worry
all your worried days are gone
this will be our year
took a long time to come.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy!
I just saw Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Live. Free. In Youngstown.
Obviously, I danced a lot.
The Crew:
It was all because of Brandi Ferrebee. Her car contained: me, Brandi, Matt C, Rachel B, and John A.
The Band:
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy!
Big Bad played an awesome set: over an hour of tunes. I remember "Mr. Pinstripe Suit," "Minnie the Moocher", "You And Me And The Bottle Makes 3 Tonight" and "I Want to Be Like You," though there were certainly more. It was solid. Sadly, they didn't play "Maddest Kind of Love." But they nailed out a lot of fast songs with tight playing. Though after a while, I focused less on musicianship and more on the beat.
The venue was a grassy valley, a natural amphitheater. Grass and swing dance aren't great bedfellows, which I never knew before. Brandi suggested wearing sneakers, not flats, but my sneakers looked pretty smelly, so I went with my casual flats. Ugh. The ground had very little traction, and any footwork I had... went away. I danced badly, unsure of my footing.
The swing crowd was tight. Out of the general audience of 300 - 400, there were about 25 swing dancers. They knew their stuff. There was a Greg Schram doppleganger. I wanted to dance with him, but he was really good and had a girlfriend, who he danced with for the whole show. Damn you, monogamoid couple.
John and Brandi were some of the most talented dancers there. John gets totally immersed in the musicality of the song; he scat calls as he dances and is one of the most outwardly happy dancers I've met. Most swing dancers seem to take it very, very seriously. Brandi wields an incredible style: cute, sultry and exact. She prances and pouts when she dances, her hips always moving.
I was only disappointed with the audience. While the grass was full with lawn chairs and picnic blankets, no one stood up. Clapping was minimal. Cheering was slight. Singing call-backs were quiet. The audience was mostly older folks and families; folks who gave little energy back to the band save their presence. Watching amazing performers for free is an incredible privilege. Fail, people.
--
It's something I've noted elsewhere -- normal people suck at being audience members. (The woman sitting next to me at the Tempest actually recoiled from me whenever I laughed.) If a performer does something impressive, you clap. If you don't clap, Tinkerbelle dies and the show is sad. A supportive audience makes a good show great.
I know people express joy differently. I know loud people don't feel more than quiet people. I know I can't pack each show with Liz Hibbard, Ardon Shorr, Grey Castro and Chris Gentes... but I'd like to.
--
I feel guilty when I swing dance. I apologize to my partner before and afterwards. I bumble and shift. My footwork is awful; my timing is worse. It's so frustrating. I want to do it more; I want to learn more and dance more. I want to dance to fast song. I hate being a block to my partner.
But as fraught as I feel, it's still wonderful. Swing's peculiar intimacy has grown on me considerably and the sensation of a good dance is unbeatable.
I unleashed my litany of self-defeating woes on a follow, a really good one, asking for her advice. Her name was Miriam and she moved like a tricked-out ballerina.
"Well," Miriam said, "All of us were once where you are now. We all remember how much it sucks. So when you ask a guy to dance, don't apologize, just say, "I only know the basics." That always works."
Obviously, I danced a lot.
The Crew:
It was all because of Brandi Ferrebee. Her car contained: me, Brandi, Matt C, Rachel B, and John A.
The Band:
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy!
Big Bad played an awesome set: over an hour of tunes. I remember "Mr. Pinstripe Suit," "Minnie the Moocher", "You And Me And The Bottle Makes 3 Tonight" and "I Want to Be Like You," though there were certainly more. It was solid. Sadly, they didn't play "Maddest Kind of Love." But they nailed out a lot of fast songs with tight playing. Though after a while, I focused less on musicianship and more on the beat.
The venue was a grassy valley, a natural amphitheater. Grass and swing dance aren't great bedfellows, which I never knew before. Brandi suggested wearing sneakers, not flats, but my sneakers looked pretty smelly, so I went with my casual flats. Ugh. The ground had very little traction, and any footwork I had... went away. I danced badly, unsure of my footing.
The swing crowd was tight. Out of the general audience of 300 - 400, there were about 25 swing dancers. They knew their stuff. There was a Greg Schram doppleganger. I wanted to dance with him, but he was really good and had a girlfriend, who he danced with for the whole show. Damn you, monogamoid couple.
John and Brandi were some of the most talented dancers there. John gets totally immersed in the musicality of the song; he scat calls as he dances and is one of the most outwardly happy dancers I've met. Most swing dancers seem to take it very, very seriously. Brandi wields an incredible style: cute, sultry and exact. She prances and pouts when she dances, her hips always moving.
I was only disappointed with the audience. While the grass was full with lawn chairs and picnic blankets, no one stood up. Clapping was minimal. Cheering was slight. Singing call-backs were quiet. The audience was mostly older folks and families; folks who gave little energy back to the band save their presence. Watching amazing performers for free is an incredible privilege. Fail, people.
--
It's something I've noted elsewhere -- normal people suck at being audience members. (The woman sitting next to me at the Tempest actually recoiled from me whenever I laughed.) If a performer does something impressive, you clap. If you don't clap, Tinkerbelle dies and the show is sad. A supportive audience makes a good show great.
I know people express joy differently. I know loud people don't feel more than quiet people. I know I can't pack each show with Liz Hibbard, Ardon Shorr, Grey Castro and Chris Gentes... but I'd like to.
--
I feel guilty when I swing dance. I apologize to my partner before and afterwards. I bumble and shift. My footwork is awful; my timing is worse. It's so frustrating. I want to do it more; I want to learn more and dance more. I want to dance to fast song. I hate being a block to my partner.
But as fraught as I feel, it's still wonderful. Swing's peculiar intimacy has grown on me considerably and the sensation of a good dance is unbeatable.
I unleashed my litany of self-defeating woes on a follow, a really good one, asking for her advice. Her name was Miriam and she moved like a tricked-out ballerina.
"Well," Miriam said, "All of us were once where you are now. We all remember how much it sucks. So when you ask a guy to dance, don't apologize, just say, "I only know the basics." That always works."
Friday, July 17, 2009
Dirty Water for Elephants
I read "Water for Elephants." Everyone told me to do it.
Water for Elephants was an okay book. Cleanly written. Digests easily. A good book for a plane, here you need something for 4 hours to take your brain away. It was solid, but not very interesting. In part because the characters weren’t very… spicy.
Warning: Lots of pictures. Tons.
Characters:
Jacob= Jimmie Stewart + Harry Potter. In college to become a vet, disaster brings him to the circus.
August= Christian Bale + Handlebar Mustache. Attractive, abusive, crazy.
Marlene: Jessica Alba. Pretty, rich, weak idiot.
Plot---
Jacob: I shall care for nothing.
Circus clowns: It's the circus, you ninny.
Jacob: I shall care for animals.
August: I am charming and highly competent. This boy seems like an excellent lackey. Come, lackey! I will enjoy breaking you! Would you like to wear my suit? It can be a metaphor!
Jacob: I don't... understand... I thought... but you're my boss.
Clowns: Oi, watch the show.
----A circus ensues, followed by circus, cooch, hooch and poverty----
Jacob: Gosh, that Marlene is pretty.
August: My wife is indeed attractive. _pause_ If you smile at her, I will fuck you with a hook and feed you to the clowns.
Jacob: Ah, it is time to run away now. Where were the hookers?
August: My hook is right here, boy. Whenever you want it.
--- There is mad drama because Jacob likes Marlene ---
Marlene: Jacob, don't get upset when August beats me. He can't help it.
Jacob: Angry.
August: I am bigger than you in all ways.
Jacob: You are a bad man.
August: You cannot control your manhood.
Jacob: You’re insane.
Marlene: I am going to cry!
August: I had carnal relations with your mother last night.
Jacob: My mother has been dead for months.
--- Cut scene: fight ---
Ringleader: I make poor business decisions. La la! Elephants for everyone! La la la! I love Rosie!
Poor people: I’m quite hungry.
Ringleader: But don’t you like the elephant, hobos? Don’t you identify with Rosie’s downtrodden, abused, denigrated form, wrestled from an exotic land across the sea? Doesn’t she make you feel majestic and large?
Readers: I think it might be a metaphor for the swollen American dream…
Poor people: No, not really.
Rosie, the elephant: Czesc.
Jacob: She speaks Polish, guys.
August: Listen to me, Rosie, or I will pretend you are like all women and start hitting you until you do what I want.
Rosie: Dude, that was not Polish.
August: This has angered me. It’s punishment time.
Rosie: I am going to cry enormous elephant tears. Skurwysyn.
Readers: This is so poignant!
---Marlene and Jacob make out and feel guilty.---
Marlene: Running away with an older man and joining the circus was an unexpectedly bad idea!
Jacob: Marlene, you're so pretty when you go into hysterics. Your mouth makes an oh shape.
---Circus occurs, followed by historically accurate portrayals of the national malaise.---
August: Guys, I'm not angry anymore. Remember, Marlene? Me? Lovely husband? I bought you a shiny thing! Let’s dance!
Marlene: I knew you were still wonderful and charming! Lovey!
Jacob: But… too good… to be true…
August: You’re like a son to me, kiddo.
Marlene: Let’s have a dance party and eat oysters while the people outside starve to death on poisoned moonshine!
August: We can all dance together! Yay!
Jacob: Um… Okay.
Marlene: Hurray! I will hug Jacob in a platonic manner.
August: …I lied. I am still angry. More than before.
Marlene: ... Please don't hit me with the elephant whip.
Jacob: Also, please don't hit the elephant with the whip. FYI.
---Drama. There is more.--
A Taste of Water
"I look up just as he flicks the cigarette. It arcs through the air and lands in Rosie's open mouth, sizzling as it hits her tongue. She roars, panicked, throwing her head and fishing inside her mouth with her trunk. August marches off. I turn back to Rosie. She stares at me, a look of unspeakable sadness on her face. Her amber eyes are filled with tears."
August is not just beating his hot wife, but he's also abusive to non-native animals. An utter cad.
CAD:
And now you know what I think.
Water for Elephants was an okay book. Cleanly written. Digests easily. A good book for a plane, here you need something for 4 hours to take your brain away. It was solid, but not very interesting. In part because the characters weren’t very… spicy.
Warning: Lots of pictures. Tons.
Characters:
Jacob= Jimmie Stewart + Harry Potter. In college to become a vet, disaster brings him to the circus.
August= Christian Bale + Handlebar Mustache. Attractive, abusive, crazy.
Marlene: Jessica Alba. Pretty, rich, weak idiot.
Plot---
Jacob: I shall care for nothing.
Circus clowns: It's the circus, you ninny.
Jacob: I shall care for animals.
August: I am charming and highly competent. This boy seems like an excellent lackey. Come, lackey! I will enjoy breaking you! Would you like to wear my suit? It can be a metaphor!
Jacob: I don't... understand... I thought... but you're my boss.
Clowns: Oi, watch the show.
----A circus ensues, followed by circus, cooch, hooch and poverty----
Jacob: Gosh, that Marlene is pretty.
August: My wife is indeed attractive. _pause_ If you smile at her, I will fuck you with a hook and feed you to the clowns.
Jacob: Ah, it is time to run away now. Where were the hookers?
August: My hook is right here, boy. Whenever you want it.
--- There is mad drama because Jacob likes Marlene ---
Marlene: Jacob, don't get upset when August beats me. He can't help it.
Jacob: Angry.
August: I am bigger than you in all ways.
Jacob: You are a bad man.
August: You cannot control your manhood.
Jacob: You’re insane.
Marlene: I am going to cry!
August: I had carnal relations with your mother last night.
Jacob: My mother has been dead for months.
--- Cut scene: fight ---
Ringleader: I make poor business decisions. La la! Elephants for everyone! La la la! I love Rosie!
Poor people: I’m quite hungry.
Ringleader: But don’t you like the elephant, hobos? Don’t you identify with Rosie’s downtrodden, abused, denigrated form, wrestled from an exotic land across the sea? Doesn’t she make you feel majestic and large?
Readers: I think it might be a metaphor for the swollen American dream…
Poor people: No, not really.
Rosie, the elephant: Czesc.
Jacob: She speaks Polish, guys.
August: Listen to me, Rosie, or I will pretend you are like all women and start hitting you until you do what I want.
Rosie: Dude, that was not Polish.
August: This has angered me. It’s punishment time.
Rosie: I am going to cry enormous elephant tears. Skurwysyn.
Readers: This is so poignant!
---Marlene and Jacob make out and feel guilty.---
Marlene: Running away with an older man and joining the circus was an unexpectedly bad idea!
Jacob: Marlene, you're so pretty when you go into hysterics. Your mouth makes an oh shape.
---Circus occurs, followed by historically accurate portrayals of the national malaise.---
August: Guys, I'm not angry anymore. Remember, Marlene? Me? Lovely husband? I bought you a shiny thing! Let’s dance!
Marlene: I knew you were still wonderful and charming! Lovey!
Jacob: But… too good… to be true…
August: You’re like a son to me, kiddo.
Marlene: Let’s have a dance party and eat oysters while the people outside starve to death on poisoned moonshine!
August: We can all dance together! Yay!
Jacob: Um… Okay.
Marlene: Hurray! I will hug Jacob in a platonic manner.
August: …I lied. I am still angry. More than before.
Marlene: ... Please don't hit me with the elephant whip.
Jacob: Also, please don't hit the elephant with the whip. FYI.
---Drama. There is more.--
A Taste of Water
"I look up just as he flicks the cigarette. It arcs through the air and lands in Rosie's open mouth, sizzling as it hits her tongue. She roars, panicked, throwing her head and fishing inside her mouth with her trunk. August marches off. I turn back to Rosie. She stares at me, a look of unspeakable sadness on her face. Her amber eyes are filled with tears."
August is not just beating his hot wife, but he's also abusive to non-native animals. An utter cad.
CAD:
And now you know what I think.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Tall and Short of Oberlin
Hello!
Remember that video you were in? Well, here it is!
I want to thank all of you for being involved in this project. It was a lot of fun to put together.
Have a lovely summer,
Aries
Remember that video you were in? Well, here it is!
I want to thank all of you for being involved in this project. It was a lot of fun to put together.
Have a lovely summer,
Aries
Road Trip 5: The Last Night
Dearest Readers,
The backlogged road trip is now over! Still to come: Dallas, NY, Obietown!
Onwards!...
We stopped at Hope, Alabama, birthplace of President Clinton and strolled around. While walking, Yoshi and I had a heated talk on small town living. At first, I lauded them, a bit too strongly. And as we move towards the cold, steel talons of the real world… the closeness of a village is a lovely thing.
Yoshi questioned me: citing the slowness, the insularity and the backwardness. It would be hard for us to find “our people” in nearly any small town. They sold a unicycle in the Hope Bike Shop… but a single unicycle does not make a circus.
As we were talking, a man in a car stopped us, calling out, “Hey, I don’t know you – you new?”
“We’re from out of town,” we explained, “Just taking a walk.”
“We don’t get young people too often,” he said. I bet you don’t, I thought.
Balancing out my conflation of small towns was a general disdain for southern culture. After a while, my insensitivity, crudeness and tactlessness became overwhelming; Yoshi politely asked me to shut my face.
I did shut my face, keeping quiet even when we passed Arkedelphia and Okalona. I tried to be respectful of Texarkana, where we planned on staying the night. Yoshi held hopes for the place, he’d heard of it often enough in Texas. However, I kept mispronouncing the city, which made me sound even more like a Yankee snob. We came up with a few mnemonics for me:
“I am Texarkana’s cold sweat.”
“Yes we texarKAN-a.”
“I’d like to recycle my Texarkana.”
(I was saying Texarkana. Like Madonna. Or Americana. Or Llama.)
I tried very hard to be polite. But Texarkana was a sad, empty town. When I told my dad we passed through, he said, “Guess it hasn’t changed in 80 years.” Apparently it got hit during the dust bowl, sending penniless farmers to California.
From there: Shreveport, the South’s answer to Las Vegas. I was excited – I’d never been inside of the real gambling floor of a casino. When my parents went to Atlantic City for a family get-together, I’d spent my time in the arcade playing Rampage World Tour.
In my childhood, the casino floor seemed so dangerous and glorious. Skill! Chance! Loss! Gain! Bright lights and fast-talking! Cards runs deep in my family – my grandfather was an incredible poker and bridge player. As a kid, I anticipated the day when I could make dough playing cards all day. This was my destiny, to be Aries “Lucky” Indenbaum. Better pay-off than a bank robbery and safe as a CD.
But the Shreveport casinos were not glamorous. Not one bit.
After dinner at IHOP (strawberry pancakes drenched in diabetes-sweet syrup), we went to the casinos: Sam’s Town, Horseshoe and Boomtown. There were a few surface differences between them, mostly in the uniform of the waitresses. Questions were: How pretty were they? How tall were they? What was the color of the waitress costume? Did the skirt end with the thigh, or did the fabric slide away as the ass was finishing its final rotation into the pelvis? How much junk was packed into that trunk?
As we spent more time in the casinos, I felt my disgust grow and grow. Not at the players, but at the structure, which enabled addiction. Pure addiction. The casinos allowed cigarette smoking, had little lights on each machine to allow patrons to order drinks while they played the slots, chatted up high-rollers…. it’s all good business, but to a foul end. The slot machine customers resembled cows at a feedlot.
Given my own associations with addictive behavior, I felt queasy and overwhelmed. The “Requiem for a Dream” theme rang through my ears. Although these were apparently bottom-of-the-barrel places, it was nice to see what remained when the glitz washed away. Gambling in the raw.
We watched one guy play a “sexy” slot machine game for a while. Most of the symbols seemed arbitrary, hearts and diamonds, with one figure of a foxy cartoon chick. He kept playing and playing. I couldn’t even see when he won – most of the lines seemed irregular, and it was unclear which figures were wilds. The machine behind Yoshi and I made a huge noise whenever anyone did anything to it, and all loud, heart-popping jingles. The sound, coupled with the flashing lights and the smell of smoke and booze, made my head hurt.
Yoshi, who had been to Vegas, wasn’t as revolted as I. He played one slot machine based on “House of the Dead” and made $30. While I’m glad he won, and I don’t begrudge him for playing… I was fine avoiding it.
It was a smart system, Yoshi noticed. All of the slot machines were more of less the same, and as computer systems, it would only take a few adjustments in code to make a completely new game. Slap a new plastic cover on it, and it would be done. The Scream game becomes the Blair Witch game becomes the Hostel game, all on the same piece of hardware.
I was happy when we left.
The backlogged road trip is now over! Still to come: Dallas, NY, Obietown!
Onwards!...
We stopped at Hope, Alabama, birthplace of President Clinton and strolled around. While walking, Yoshi and I had a heated talk on small town living. At first, I lauded them, a bit too strongly. And as we move towards the cold, steel talons of the real world… the closeness of a village is a lovely thing.
Yoshi questioned me: citing the slowness, the insularity and the backwardness. It would be hard for us to find “our people” in nearly any small town. They sold a unicycle in the Hope Bike Shop… but a single unicycle does not make a circus.
As we were talking, a man in a car stopped us, calling out, “Hey, I don’t know you – you new?”
“We’re from out of town,” we explained, “Just taking a walk.”
“We don’t get young people too often,” he said. I bet you don’t, I thought.
Balancing out my conflation of small towns was a general disdain for southern culture. After a while, my insensitivity, crudeness and tactlessness became overwhelming; Yoshi politely asked me to shut my face.
I did shut my face, keeping quiet even when we passed Arkedelphia and Okalona. I tried to be respectful of Texarkana, where we planned on staying the night. Yoshi held hopes for the place, he’d heard of it often enough in Texas. However, I kept mispronouncing the city, which made me sound even more like a Yankee snob. We came up with a few mnemonics for me:
“I am Texarkana’s cold sweat.”
“Yes we texarKAN-a.”
“I’d like to recycle my Texarkana.”
(I was saying Texarkana. Like Madonna. Or Americana. Or Llama.)
I tried very hard to be polite. But Texarkana was a sad, empty town. When I told my dad we passed through, he said, “Guess it hasn’t changed in 80 years.” Apparently it got hit during the dust bowl, sending penniless farmers to California.
From there: Shreveport, the South’s answer to Las Vegas. I was excited – I’d never been inside of the real gambling floor of a casino. When my parents went to Atlantic City for a family get-together, I’d spent my time in the arcade playing Rampage World Tour.
In my childhood, the casino floor seemed so dangerous and glorious. Skill! Chance! Loss! Gain! Bright lights and fast-talking! Cards runs deep in my family – my grandfather was an incredible poker and bridge player. As a kid, I anticipated the day when I could make dough playing cards all day. This was my destiny, to be Aries “Lucky” Indenbaum. Better pay-off than a bank robbery and safe as a CD.
But the Shreveport casinos were not glamorous. Not one bit.
After dinner at IHOP (strawberry pancakes drenched in diabetes-sweet syrup), we went to the casinos: Sam’s Town, Horseshoe and Boomtown. There were a few surface differences between them, mostly in the uniform of the waitresses. Questions were: How pretty were they? How tall were they? What was the color of the waitress costume? Did the skirt end with the thigh, or did the fabric slide away as the ass was finishing its final rotation into the pelvis? How much junk was packed into that trunk?
As we spent more time in the casinos, I felt my disgust grow and grow. Not at the players, but at the structure, which enabled addiction. Pure addiction. The casinos allowed cigarette smoking, had little lights on each machine to allow patrons to order drinks while they played the slots, chatted up high-rollers…. it’s all good business, but to a foul end. The slot machine customers resembled cows at a feedlot.
Given my own associations with addictive behavior, I felt queasy and overwhelmed. The “Requiem for a Dream” theme rang through my ears. Although these were apparently bottom-of-the-barrel places, it was nice to see what remained when the glitz washed away. Gambling in the raw.
We watched one guy play a “sexy” slot machine game for a while. Most of the symbols seemed arbitrary, hearts and diamonds, with one figure of a foxy cartoon chick. He kept playing and playing. I couldn’t even see when he won – most of the lines seemed irregular, and it was unclear which figures were wilds. The machine behind Yoshi and I made a huge noise whenever anyone did anything to it, and all loud, heart-popping jingles. The sound, coupled with the flashing lights and the smell of smoke and booze, made my head hurt.
Yoshi, who had been to Vegas, wasn’t as revolted as I. He played one slot machine based on “House of the Dead” and made $30. While I’m glad he won, and I don’t begrudge him for playing… I was fine avoiding it.
It was a smart system, Yoshi noticed. All of the slot machines were more of less the same, and as computer systems, it would only take a few adjustments in code to make a completely new game. Slap a new plastic cover on it, and it would be done. The Scream game becomes the Blair Witch game becomes the Hostel game, all on the same piece of hardware.
I was happy when we left.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Cleveland-town, everyone.
Until this summer, the majority of time I’d spent in Cleveland was in goth clubs. I’d gone to Cleveland a few other times: West Side Market! Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! Izzie getting a tattoo! Party with gorgeous alumni! But aside from these events, and my hours of dancing to remixes of The Cure… I’d never spent a full day in Cleveland.
But in summer, Oberlin slows down. There’s still a few amazing festivals, like Juneteenth and the Chalk Walk, but the fast-paced vibe of campus eases. It’s a sleepy little town. The most exciting thing happening right now is a bagpipe conference.
After a long, stressful semester, I love that.
For a day or two.
But with a full week with nothing to do? Yoshi and I looked towards Cleveland.
Great Lakes Science Center + Cleveland.
When I was in elementary school, one of the best field trips ever was to Liberty Science Center. The next year, my middle school went to DC, setting me loose in the Smithsonian for a full day. Being at the Great Lakes Science Center brought me back to that feeling of childhood joy. Though we didn’t get a chance to explore the whole museum, what we saw was awesome.
The main floor was bioengineering. There was a section on virtual reality, file compression, synthesizer music, and alternative interfaces. The exhibits on material science was excellent, with smart windows with LED sensors responding to changes in light and sound.
There were some things that confused me. When you have interactive displays about communicable diseases… why don’t you have hand sanitizer nearby? Especially as the exhibit is child-friendly and children are the cutest little disease vectors… I’d love some sanitizer. Though generally, I love hand sanitizer. My immune system is a little like the shields on Star Trek. They can take a lot of small damage but if something massive hits the Aries Enterprise, the ship goes down. When h1n1 broke, Health Services put up enormous bottles of hand sanitizer at every public hub on campus. Bliss became me.
Besides that, there was a section on addiction. Most of Yoshi’s research experience involves addiction, especially as it intersects with memory. From time to time, he would yell at the machine that supports a “hedonistic model.”
The second floor was play-land. Physics is the best. There was all sorts of lovely games that showed how sound and light can be manipulated. Each exhibit had a purpose, explaining the physics behind funhouse mirrors and giant bubbles. While I tried to be a good adult and read about the thing I was playing with, the museum closing soon. So, I played. There were lasers and musical PVC pipes, smoke holes, plasma balls, an Oscilliscope... Lots of stuff.
At a display on Salmonella, there was a space for visitors to write questions they had after viewing information. While waiting for Yoshi, I added these questions:
“Will Salmonella help me lose weight?”
“Is Salmonella sexually transmitted?”
“When was Salmonella invented?”
“Can I buy Salmonella at Target?”
The second we left the building, we were on Lake Erie, next to a maritime museum. We held hands and watched the seagulls destroy some fish.
From there, we headed to University Circle… And promptly got lost. The map indicated a park bordering the road to University Circle, but it didn’t say what that street was called, nor did it have any nearby streets labeled. So, when we left the road to find a place to park, we got really lost, driving up and down residential roads. Mercifully, the park hugging the road was lovely. It hosted a row of “culture gardens” - statues and alters with fountains.
Meanwhile, the collective blood sugar in the car was sinking, making navigating and communicating more complex. Yoshi’s voice gets flatter when he’s tired, while I start to make less and less sense. We go to our poles. I become Delerium, Yoshi becomes Squall .
vs.
Aries: Germany, Estonia, India, Ireland. The world is so big in Cleeeeeveland. The grass is just so super-green. I could wrap a tree in it and call it good.
Yoshi. Yes.
Aries: Can we stop now and walk through the cultures? I want to see Latvia. Anna’s from Latvia. I hope they have bears.
Yoshi: Parking.
Aries: What time is it? I can’t find my cell. I hope I didn’t drop it in the lake. Let’s go swimming with the duckies…
Yoshi: Food.
Given our hunger, we decided to pass on the culture gardens for a bit and try to find some food in University Circle. Despite staring at a map for a few minutes, we walked the wrong way for a bit too long. Then, we trailed up Euclid and got to Case Western Reserve. Despite having been to Case twice, I had no idea what I was looking for. There seemed to be no food despite the collection of awesome buildings, museums and hospitals. It was an odd campus – I loved the buildings, but it seemed to weird that huge streets ran through the whole thing.
Awesomely geeky garbage cans! Yeah, CASE!
We finally found a strip of restaurants. A cop was going into the pizza shop. We quibbled about whether he was busting someone or whether he was hungry. There was a Chinese restaurant, a deli, a Starbucks… out pickings were slim. We looked across the street and in the same breath said “Felafel?”
Mediterranean food is a rarity in my life and as a long-time vegetarian, hummus is a joy I cannot eat enough of. That said, I didn’t have high expectations. The place itself was not so gorgeous, filled with plenty of plastic tables. The ketchup packets stuck to each other. There were only a few people in the restaurant. The place seemed… greasy.
Yoshi got a lamb kebab; I got the cabbage stew. Both dishes were frighteningly great. The soup was flavorful without being too rich, the vegetable delicious. Yoshi’s kebab was excellent; the pitas offered were light and tangy. Later, we discovered that we stumbled into one of the best restaurants in Cleveland; Falafel Café was rated in the top five restaurants in the city for the past few years. While I went to the bathroom, Yoshi spoke with owner-chef who was from Beirut. “Of course Lebanese food is great!” he announced, “Why else would you go to Lebanon?”
Hunger eased, we walked through Case, past the museums, and to the Culture Gardens, where we wandered around for over two hours.
Highlights:
India! Gandhi looked awesome, with a quote about tolerance on the podium. There were little stones with information on Indian cultural advances.
Germany! The centerpiece was an enormous statue of Schiller and Goethe, looking like old-school fraternity brothers. I tried to read the inscription from Faust aloud, but failed. The statue was so huge that trying to see over the terrible two’s bellies was tricky. The other German who earned a statue was Bach, who did not look too happy.
Finland! Nothing could seem sad next to the Finnish. The poets and statesmen represented looked like sailors trapped within the doldrums, their wind gone, sitting in a ship of fools and eagerly anticipating starving to death. These were sad, sad men.
We didn’t realize the sun had set until the park was dark and the moon was high. Tired out, we strolled back to the car and drove back to Oberlin. A great day. High five, Cleveland.
But in summer, Oberlin slows down. There’s still a few amazing festivals, like Juneteenth and the Chalk Walk, but the fast-paced vibe of campus eases. It’s a sleepy little town. The most exciting thing happening right now is a bagpipe conference.
After a long, stressful semester, I love that.
For a day or two.
But with a full week with nothing to do? Yoshi and I looked towards Cleveland.
Great Lakes Science Center + Cleveland.
When I was in elementary school, one of the best field trips ever was to Liberty Science Center. The next year, my middle school went to DC, setting me loose in the Smithsonian for a full day. Being at the Great Lakes Science Center brought me back to that feeling of childhood joy. Though we didn’t get a chance to explore the whole museum, what we saw was awesome.
The main floor was bioengineering. There was a section on virtual reality, file compression, synthesizer music, and alternative interfaces. The exhibits on material science was excellent, with smart windows with LED sensors responding to changes in light and sound.
There were some things that confused me. When you have interactive displays about communicable diseases… why don’t you have hand sanitizer nearby? Especially as the exhibit is child-friendly and children are the cutest little disease vectors… I’d love some sanitizer. Though generally, I love hand sanitizer. My immune system is a little like the shields on Star Trek. They can take a lot of small damage but if something massive hits the Aries Enterprise, the ship goes down. When h1n1 broke, Health Services put up enormous bottles of hand sanitizer at every public hub on campus. Bliss became me.
Besides that, there was a section on addiction. Most of Yoshi’s research experience involves addiction, especially as it intersects with memory. From time to time, he would yell at the machine that supports a “hedonistic model.”
The second floor was play-land. Physics is the best. There was all sorts of lovely games that showed how sound and light can be manipulated. Each exhibit had a purpose, explaining the physics behind funhouse mirrors and giant bubbles. While I tried to be a good adult and read about the thing I was playing with, the museum closing soon. So, I played. There were lasers and musical PVC pipes, smoke holes, plasma balls, an Oscilliscope... Lots of stuff.
At a display on Salmonella, there was a space for visitors to write questions they had after viewing information. While waiting for Yoshi, I added these questions:
“Will Salmonella help me lose weight?”
“Is Salmonella sexually transmitted?”
“When was Salmonella invented?”
“Can I buy Salmonella at Target?”
The second we left the building, we were on Lake Erie, next to a maritime museum. We held hands and watched the seagulls destroy some fish.
From there, we headed to University Circle… And promptly got lost. The map indicated a park bordering the road to University Circle, but it didn’t say what that street was called, nor did it have any nearby streets labeled. So, when we left the road to find a place to park, we got really lost, driving up and down residential roads. Mercifully, the park hugging the road was lovely. It hosted a row of “culture gardens” - statues and alters with fountains.
Meanwhile, the collective blood sugar in the car was sinking, making navigating and communicating more complex. Yoshi’s voice gets flatter when he’s tired, while I start to make less and less sense. We go to our poles. I become Delerium, Yoshi becomes Squall .
vs.
Aries: Germany, Estonia, India, Ireland. The world is so big in Cleeeeeveland. The grass is just so super-green. I could wrap a tree in it and call it good.
Yoshi. Yes.
Aries: Can we stop now and walk through the cultures? I want to see Latvia. Anna’s from Latvia. I hope they have bears.
Yoshi: Parking.
Aries: What time is it? I can’t find my cell. I hope I didn’t drop it in the lake. Let’s go swimming with the duckies…
Yoshi: Food.
Given our hunger, we decided to pass on the culture gardens for a bit and try to find some food in University Circle. Despite staring at a map for a few minutes, we walked the wrong way for a bit too long. Then, we trailed up Euclid and got to Case Western Reserve. Despite having been to Case twice, I had no idea what I was looking for. There seemed to be no food despite the collection of awesome buildings, museums and hospitals. It was an odd campus – I loved the buildings, but it seemed to weird that huge streets ran through the whole thing.
Awesomely geeky garbage cans! Yeah, CASE!
We finally found a strip of restaurants. A cop was going into the pizza shop. We quibbled about whether he was busting someone or whether he was hungry. There was a Chinese restaurant, a deli, a Starbucks… out pickings were slim. We looked across the street and in the same breath said “Felafel?”
Mediterranean food is a rarity in my life and as a long-time vegetarian, hummus is a joy I cannot eat enough of. That said, I didn’t have high expectations. The place itself was not so gorgeous, filled with plenty of plastic tables. The ketchup packets stuck to each other. There were only a few people in the restaurant. The place seemed… greasy.
Yoshi got a lamb kebab; I got the cabbage stew. Both dishes were frighteningly great. The soup was flavorful without being too rich, the vegetable delicious. Yoshi’s kebab was excellent; the pitas offered were light and tangy. Later, we discovered that we stumbled into one of the best restaurants in Cleveland; Falafel Café was rated in the top five restaurants in the city for the past few years. While I went to the bathroom, Yoshi spoke with owner-chef who was from Beirut. “Of course Lebanese food is great!” he announced, “Why else would you go to Lebanon?”
Hunger eased, we walked through Case, past the museums, and to the Culture Gardens, where we wandered around for over two hours.
Highlights:
India! Gandhi looked awesome, with a quote about tolerance on the podium. There were little stones with information on Indian cultural advances.
Germany! The centerpiece was an enormous statue of Schiller and Goethe, looking like old-school fraternity brothers. I tried to read the inscription from Faust aloud, but failed. The statue was so huge that trying to see over the terrible two’s bellies was tricky. The other German who earned a statue was Bach, who did not look too happy.
Finland! Nothing could seem sad next to the Finnish. The poets and statesmen represented looked like sailors trapped within the doldrums, their wind gone, sitting in a ship of fools and eagerly anticipating starving to death. These were sad, sad men.
We didn’t realize the sun had set until the park was dark and the moon was high. Tired out, we strolled back to the car and drove back to Oberlin. A great day. High five, Cleveland.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Road Trip 3: Little Rock is Clinton-tastic!
We did not have high hopes for Arkansas. Little Rock proved us wrong.
We spent three hours at the Clinton Library & Museum. In high school, I watched “The War Room” for my AP Government class, as well as old election footage from 1992. I developed huge crushes on James Carville, George Stephanopoulos and candidate Bill Clinton. But in my fantasies, I didn’t want to kiss those guys. I wanted to BE those guys. Going to this museum was like going to Disneyland for me.
The museum was supposed to look like a bridge to the 21st Century… but actually resembled a giant trailer. Aesthetics aside, the building was eco-friendly, using local materials and energy-conscious architecture. Most of the information was conveyed through a timeline with pictures, text and video. To drive points home, there was plenty of repletion between written displays and film.
They had replicas of the Oval Office and the Cabinet, which were surprising unattractive. The Oval Office felt cluttered to me, chocked with americana. The saving grace was a moon rock. During a heated discussion, Clinton would occasionally gesture to the stone, saying, “Hold on here – that rock there on that table is 3.6 billion years old – we’re only here for an instant – let’s get some perspective on this thing.”
The museum presented a glowing review of Clinton. Back in the day, government fought for change and the betterment of all people: reducing crime, increasing prosperity, supporting technological advances…. Under Clinton’s leadership, America wasn’t just a superpower,
we were a superhero.
Given the trends of the Bush years – limitations on science and technology, inept handling of the explosive economy, two unfinished wars, few achievements made… I can’t imagine how I would conceive of my country if I were born five years later.
Sadly, the museum didn’t touch on any of Clinton’s failures. There was scant mention of the impeachment proceedings, the massive investigations, the flaws of NAFTA, DOMA, or “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” His innovations in finance laid the groundwork for our current economic flummox.
We didn't see any note on this lady either.
Though I understand the omission of critical information, I could have dealt with more policy and process.
- How did Hilary affect women’s rights besides uttering one of the best soundbites I have ever heard? “It is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights.”
- What did Clinton do to help usher in the internet age? Yes, he funded computers in schools, but was there more?
- How did Clinton broker a peace?
- Why not more personal information on “Candidate Clinton”?
As we got restless, we noticed the time and understood our hunger.
We spotted over to the volunteer desk and asked what they recommended for lunch. Small-world alert: One of the volunteers was from Cleveland and had lectured at Oberlin, speaking about time-management. WHAT. I flabbergasted at her. She told us about a catfish place. The other volunteer, a kid who looked like a Boy Scout, told us about “Whole Hog Café,” where Clinton apparently used to go. “Get the Pulled Pork Sandwich. Best pulled pork sandwich I’ve ever had.”
Off we went! Whole Hog, like Rendezvous, had an unsurprising lack of vegetarian options, but given my lack of running around, I wasn’t as hungry as normal. That said, my taste of Yoshi’s pulled pork platter was amazing. Flat-out amazing. The beans and potatoes were unstoppable.
From there, we went back to the Clinton Museum Store so Yoshi could get a present to Professor Dawson, inspiration/terror to thousands of Obies. Then we strolled to Arkansas River Market → a Martial arts garden → highway.
The Little Rock – Dallas leg was a longer one, about five hours. But after about 15 minutes on route, we got a call from Yoshi’s folks. Apparently, there was a giant storm in Dallas, knocking out power and flooding to a huge swath of the city. They recommended we not make the push on and go somewhere else for the night.
Looking at the map, we spotted Texarkana and Shreveport, and aimed for them.
We spent three hours at the Clinton Library & Museum. In high school, I watched “The War Room” for my AP Government class, as well as old election footage from 1992. I developed huge crushes on James Carville, George Stephanopoulos and candidate Bill Clinton. But in my fantasies, I didn’t want to kiss those guys. I wanted to BE those guys. Going to this museum was like going to Disneyland for me.
The museum was supposed to look like a bridge to the 21st Century… but actually resembled a giant trailer. Aesthetics aside, the building was eco-friendly, using local materials and energy-conscious architecture. Most of the information was conveyed through a timeline with pictures, text and video. To drive points home, there was plenty of repletion between written displays and film.
They had replicas of the Oval Office and the Cabinet, which were surprising unattractive. The Oval Office felt cluttered to me, chocked with americana. The saving grace was a moon rock. During a heated discussion, Clinton would occasionally gesture to the stone, saying, “Hold on here – that rock there on that table is 3.6 billion years old – we’re only here for an instant – let’s get some perspective on this thing.”
The museum presented a glowing review of Clinton. Back in the day, government fought for change and the betterment of all people: reducing crime, increasing prosperity, supporting technological advances…. Under Clinton’s leadership, America wasn’t just a superpower,
we were a superhero.
Given the trends of the Bush years – limitations on science and technology, inept handling of the explosive economy, two unfinished wars, few achievements made… I can’t imagine how I would conceive of my country if I were born five years later.
Sadly, the museum didn’t touch on any of Clinton’s failures. There was scant mention of the impeachment proceedings, the massive investigations, the flaws of NAFTA, DOMA, or “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” His innovations in finance laid the groundwork for our current economic flummox.
We didn't see any note on this lady either.
Though I understand the omission of critical information, I could have dealt with more policy and process.
- How did Hilary affect women’s rights besides uttering one of the best soundbites I have ever heard? “It is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights.”
- What did Clinton do to help usher in the internet age? Yes, he funded computers in schools, but was there more?
- How did Clinton broker a peace?
- Why not more personal information on “Candidate Clinton”?
As we got restless, we noticed the time and understood our hunger.
We spotted over to the volunteer desk and asked what they recommended for lunch. Small-world alert: One of the volunteers was from Cleveland and had lectured at Oberlin, speaking about time-management. WHAT. I flabbergasted at her. She told us about a catfish place. The other volunteer, a kid who looked like a Boy Scout, told us about “Whole Hog Café,” where Clinton apparently used to go. “Get the Pulled Pork Sandwich. Best pulled pork sandwich I’ve ever had.”
Off we went! Whole Hog, like Rendezvous, had an unsurprising lack of vegetarian options, but given my lack of running around, I wasn’t as hungry as normal. That said, my taste of Yoshi’s pulled pork platter was amazing. Flat-out amazing. The beans and potatoes were unstoppable.
From there, we went back to the Clinton Museum Store so Yoshi could get a present to Professor Dawson, inspiration/terror to thousands of Obies. Then we strolled to Arkansas River Market → a Martial arts garden → highway.
The Little Rock – Dallas leg was a longer one, about five hours. But after about 15 minutes on route, we got a call from Yoshi’s folks. Apparently, there was a giant storm in Dallas, knocking out power and flooding to a huge swath of the city. They recommended we not make the push on and go somewhere else for the night.
Looking at the map, we spotted Texarkana and Shreveport, and aimed for them.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Road Trip 3: Meaty Pyramids of Memphis
I can’t find my Memphis notes, which is a reflection on Memphis, I think.
Memphis is famous for meat. That said, I know nothing about the culture of barbeque, nor about regional differences in barbeque making. "Dry-rub" versus "Sauce" seems more like a discussion on wanking than cooking.
That said, the dry-rub style of Memphis is one of the state’s charms. So, me and the Texan went to Rendezvous. Rendezvous is allegedly the best barbeque place in the city. However, as we got there in between lunch and dinner, they were only serving ribs and sides. Nothing else.
As I’m not a red meat eater, I couldn’t give a proper appraisal of the meats. Yoshi wasn’t impressed. These were not tender ribs, but seemed undercooked. Bitter disappointment stuck us.
From there, we went down Beale Street. We had a cool conversation with a guy named Eliot who worked at one of the gift shops on the row, then moved along. There were some musicians, playing in the park. At this point, I got a bit foggy. I had forgotten my water bottle in the car. The sun was high and venomous. Things didn’t feel fun anymore.
Interruption of Overarching Theme: Sun, Water, Sugar.
They governed our lives.
From there, we went to the abandoned arena. It was a pyramid. Apparently, they built a new one and just left the old one behind, like a refrigerator on the side of the road. Soda cans and snack wrappers pooled by the entrances, mulched with old leaves and pigeon shit. Homeless people, the lichens of the city, had taken root there.
All of the doors were locked. The brick wall was fake; Yoshi dented it with a tap. Everything was covered in dust. Despite my sleepiness, I loved this weird relic. It reminded me of the pyramid from Stargate, though it bore closer resemblance to the many shuttered and darkened shorefronts scattered thoughout the country.
“Why isn’t anyone using it?” I wondered.
“What can you do with a pyramid? The land here must be expensive— it must be impossible to find a buyer.”
Yoshi, as ever, was right. We were down the block from a row of hotels. There was a river to our left and city hall to our right. Pricey turf.
Still, as we left, I hoped some newfangled Charles Foster Kane would make the place his Xanadu.
Given lunch’s disappointment, we didn’t get barbeque. We aimed for Wang’s, but we had to walk to the car to refill the meter. By then, we were far from the Wang. We found ourselves at the second best Indian restaurant in the city, which provided adequate foods. And from there, we drove.
We had bad hotel luck that night. But eventually, there was sleep.
Memphis is famous for meat. That said, I know nothing about the culture of barbeque, nor about regional differences in barbeque making. "Dry-rub" versus "Sauce" seems more like a discussion on wanking than cooking.
That said, the dry-rub style of Memphis is one of the state’s charms. So, me and the Texan went to Rendezvous. Rendezvous is allegedly the best barbeque place in the city. However, as we got there in between lunch and dinner, they were only serving ribs and sides. Nothing else.
As I’m not a red meat eater, I couldn’t give a proper appraisal of the meats. Yoshi wasn’t impressed. These were not tender ribs, but seemed undercooked. Bitter disappointment stuck us.
From there, we went down Beale Street. We had a cool conversation with a guy named Eliot who worked at one of the gift shops on the row, then moved along. There were some musicians, playing in the park. At this point, I got a bit foggy. I had forgotten my water bottle in the car. The sun was high and venomous. Things didn’t feel fun anymore.
Interruption of Overarching Theme: Sun, Water, Sugar.
They governed our lives.
From there, we went to the abandoned arena. It was a pyramid. Apparently, they built a new one and just left the old one behind, like a refrigerator on the side of the road. Soda cans and snack wrappers pooled by the entrances, mulched with old leaves and pigeon shit. Homeless people, the lichens of the city, had taken root there.
All of the doors were locked. The brick wall was fake; Yoshi dented it with a tap. Everything was covered in dust. Despite my sleepiness, I loved this weird relic. It reminded me of the pyramid from Stargate, though it bore closer resemblance to the many shuttered and darkened shorefronts scattered thoughout the country.
“Why isn’t anyone using it?” I wondered.
“What can you do with a pyramid? The land here must be expensive— it must be impossible to find a buyer.”
Yoshi, as ever, was right. We were down the block from a row of hotels. There was a river to our left and city hall to our right. Pricey turf.
Still, as we left, I hoped some newfangled Charles Foster Kane would make the place his Xanadu.
Given lunch’s disappointment, we didn’t get barbeque. We aimed for Wang’s, but we had to walk to the car to refill the meter. By then, we were far from the Wang. We found ourselves at the second best Indian restaurant in the city, which provided adequate foods. And from there, we drove.
We had bad hotel luck that night. But eventually, there was sleep.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Road Trip 2: Nash-Nash-Nash
Where we last left our heroes… Nashville! Turkeys! Abandoned Places! Urban Sprawl! Bourbon!
While Nashville was cool, it’s not the best thing when the first part of your day is the best. Free breakfast was hard to beat; but the Parthenon was even cooler.
Nashville, for some ridiculous reason, has a replica of the Parthenon. Both Yoshi and I knew a bit about its arrangement, structure and purpose. That said, the coolest thing was definitely the size. The damn thing was huge. Really, freakin’ huge. We walked around it, and around the surrounding park, filled with joggers slogging through the heat.
According to the City, Elliston is a “young, trendy neighborhood.” We headed there hopefully, anticipating folks who had tattoos and liked The Magnetic Fields. There would be bicycles! Vanderbilt students carrying copies of Proust! Older folks playing chess with younger kids!
Not so much. Nope.
Elliston wasn’t really a neighborhood, but a street. An okay street, but a street. The two rock clubs weren’t anything during the day and there were only a few open stores. The interwebz announced, “No trip to Elliston Place is complete without a stop at the Elliston Place Soda Shop.” So, we stopped. I believe the trip would have been complete without the Soda Shop. The food tasted like high school lunch.
We were also told about “Elder's Bookstore, which has been serving Nashville's literary set since 1930.” Elder’s Bookstore was, as Yoshi put it, “the worst kind of library.” Dark, dank and unwelcoming, the walls were plastered with signs to be quiet and threats against small children. Conservative agit-prop decorated bookshelves. The bookshop owners sat in overrun desks, quiet and solemn.
From there, we saw Donny Smutz, a contemporary surreal artist who uses politically-loaded images. My favorite piece was called Rapture, showing a man staring at a painting that depicts him, moving through a space. At his right was an unplugged TV, showing a similar image. Upon seeing the art, the man had unplugged the TV. Or vice-versa – there’s no clarity of time. While my description doesn’t do it justice, it evoked feelings of introspection, artistic relevance, consumer culture and passivity, conception of self… It did a lot for me.
Next to that gallery, the Tinney were a few others, once showing SCAD artists, the other one involving redone bicycles.
Then, the Frist. The Frist was fascinating. A former Post Office, remodeled into a museum had an amazing art deco style. “Like Brazil,” Yoshi said. It looked prepared for a high-class cocktail party or a dystopian show trial.
The Frist alternated between traditional shows and new displays-- we just missed one on Body and Flesh. The first show was found was an interactive display to teach children how to make all sorts of art, from abstract representations to figure drawing and printmaking. It was very cool and very simple – a set of stations, most unmanned, with precise instructions on how to start artistic processes. If I had a child, I would totally take zir there. Also, the museum was very inexpensive: 3$ per college students, and kids were free. I will be using my Oberlin ID for much savings.
The second show was on museum design, displaying new structures from across the world. My favorite was the “friendly alien” museum in Graz, Austria. The idea of a building as a presence with personality and charm is hardly new. However, the Pixar-like charms of the museum strike me as something new – magical realism intruding in.
Besides having large reproductions of the architectural drafts, and models of the completed structure, the Friendly Alien building also had a video of how each nostril of the beast was made. it was totally a Miyazaki monster.
I also enjoyed the futurism museum in France, the Stonehenge visitor center and a totally unfeasible planned art/tech building in NYC. Many of the new museums took into account details like LEED, multi-use spaces and architecture’s relationship with the overall feeling in the museum. Form complimenting function. The Frist itself was an excellent study. The retro sleekness and the trappings of a post office made the building a foil for its works. The space itself required creativity, and added a layer of dept to each display.
After Frist, we went to 12 South, one of the allegedly cool walking areas in Nashville. While it wasn’t as empty as Elliston, it was a yuppie daydream, lots of restaurants, a salon, clean-cut kids. Alas. After driving through disappointed, we parked on a hill, and looked at a monument. erected on Armistice Day to memorialize the end of the Civil War. It showed the Spirit of Unity, personified by a rather bishonen boy holding two horses, the emblems of the North and the South. Rather like Equus, really.
We strolled around the park. Some squirrels had sex in front of us. We felt uncomfortable with the level of consent displayed.
Realizing that our blood sugar was tanking, we went to the “Frothy Monkey,” a coffee shop, for ideas on where to eat. The barista was a sweetie, a musician who was now taking university classes. Also, after a bazillion hours of only Yoshi and I, it was fascinating to speak to someone who was under thirty who wasn’t… us.
His best recommendation was a café/grocery in the town where the elderly stars of the Grand Ol Opry lived out their sunset years. At this cafe, especially on Sundays, they’d flock together on the porch and scratch out some tunes.
Imagine Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird playing some ball on the street. The best players in the business, not worrying about being the best. Just having fun. Now take out the basketball and make it country music.
Apparently, the café made pretty good fries too.
While that sounded amazing, we were hungry. After a few false starts, we ended up at Bosco’s: expensive and unsatisfying. Had a good talk, as a result. Not an easy talk, but something that need to happen.
Night driving. A false hotel, too pricey and full. A new hotel. Sleep.
While Nashville was cool, it’s not the best thing when the first part of your day is the best. Free breakfast was hard to beat; but the Parthenon was even cooler.
Nashville, for some ridiculous reason, has a replica of the Parthenon. Both Yoshi and I knew a bit about its arrangement, structure and purpose. That said, the coolest thing was definitely the size. The damn thing was huge. Really, freakin’ huge. We walked around it, and around the surrounding park, filled with joggers slogging through the heat.
According to the City, Elliston is a “young, trendy neighborhood.” We headed there hopefully, anticipating folks who had tattoos and liked The Magnetic Fields. There would be bicycles! Vanderbilt students carrying copies of Proust! Older folks playing chess with younger kids!
Not so much. Nope.
Elliston wasn’t really a neighborhood, but a street. An okay street, but a street. The two rock clubs weren’t anything during the day and there were only a few open stores. The interwebz announced, “No trip to Elliston Place is complete without a stop at the Elliston Place Soda Shop.” So, we stopped. I believe the trip would have been complete without the Soda Shop. The food tasted like high school lunch.
We were also told about “Elder's Bookstore, which has been serving Nashville's literary set since 1930.” Elder’s Bookstore was, as Yoshi put it, “the worst kind of library.” Dark, dank and unwelcoming, the walls were plastered with signs to be quiet and threats against small children. Conservative agit-prop decorated bookshelves. The bookshop owners sat in overrun desks, quiet and solemn.
From there, we saw Donny Smutz, a contemporary surreal artist who uses politically-loaded images. My favorite piece was called Rapture, showing a man staring at a painting that depicts him, moving through a space. At his right was an unplugged TV, showing a similar image. Upon seeing the art, the man had unplugged the TV. Or vice-versa – there’s no clarity of time. While my description doesn’t do it justice, it evoked feelings of introspection, artistic relevance, consumer culture and passivity, conception of self… It did a lot for me.
Next to that gallery, the Tinney were a few others, once showing SCAD artists, the other one involving redone bicycles.
Then, the Frist. The Frist was fascinating. A former Post Office, remodeled into a museum had an amazing art deco style. “Like Brazil,” Yoshi said. It looked prepared for a high-class cocktail party or a dystopian show trial.
The Frist alternated between traditional shows and new displays-- we just missed one on Body and Flesh. The first show was found was an interactive display to teach children how to make all sorts of art, from abstract representations to figure drawing and printmaking. It was very cool and very simple – a set of stations, most unmanned, with precise instructions on how to start artistic processes. If I had a child, I would totally take zir there. Also, the museum was very inexpensive: 3$ per college students, and kids were free. I will be using my Oberlin ID for much savings.
The second show was on museum design, displaying new structures from across the world. My favorite was the “friendly alien” museum in Graz, Austria. The idea of a building as a presence with personality and charm is hardly new. However, the Pixar-like charms of the museum strike me as something new – magical realism intruding in.
Besides having large reproductions of the architectural drafts, and models of the completed structure, the Friendly Alien building also had a video of how each nostril of the beast was made. it was totally a Miyazaki monster.
I also enjoyed the futurism museum in France, the Stonehenge visitor center and a totally unfeasible planned art/tech building in NYC. Many of the new museums took into account details like LEED, multi-use spaces and architecture’s relationship with the overall feeling in the museum. Form complimenting function. The Frist itself was an excellent study. The retro sleekness and the trappings of a post office made the building a foil for its works. The space itself required creativity, and added a layer of dept to each display.
After Frist, we went to 12 South, one of the allegedly cool walking areas in Nashville. While it wasn’t as empty as Elliston, it was a yuppie daydream, lots of restaurants, a salon, clean-cut kids. Alas. After driving through disappointed, we parked on a hill, and looked at a monument. erected on Armistice Day to memorialize the end of the Civil War. It showed the Spirit of Unity, personified by a rather bishonen boy holding two horses, the emblems of the North and the South. Rather like Equus, really.
We strolled around the park. Some squirrels had sex in front of us. We felt uncomfortable with the level of consent displayed.
Realizing that our blood sugar was tanking, we went to the “Frothy Monkey,” a coffee shop, for ideas on where to eat. The barista was a sweetie, a musician who was now taking university classes. Also, after a bazillion hours of only Yoshi and I, it was fascinating to speak to someone who was under thirty who wasn’t… us.
His best recommendation was a café/grocery in the town where the elderly stars of the Grand Ol Opry lived out their sunset years. At this cafe, especially on Sundays, they’d flock together on the porch and scratch out some tunes.
Imagine Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird playing some ball on the street. The best players in the business, not worrying about being the best. Just having fun. Now take out the basketball and make it country music.
Apparently, the café made pretty good fries too.
While that sounded amazing, we were hungry. After a few false starts, we ended up at Bosco’s: expensive and unsatisfying. Had a good talk, as a result. Not an easy talk, but something that need to happen.
Night driving. A false hotel, too pricey and full. A new hotel. Sleep.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Road Trip! Day 1: The Epic Kentucky.
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Thursday, June 4, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Graduation: Suits, Sundresses and Speeches!
Say "commencement" and I think of the iconic hats in the air, formal attire, caps and gowns, long speeches, hugs, final goodbyes, traditions, pomp and circumstance, Latin diplomas.
But Oberlin students don't really do traditional. So I had no idea what to expect.
We got up at 6:30, leaving the house close to 8, so we could get our placement card in time (the placement office closes at 8:30). Then, we did nothing for a while. I got some coffee. Walked around. People-watched. Only about a third of the school wore caps and gowns. More folks wore caps, some decorated the tops. Some folks were really fancy, dressed in prom-best. Most folks I knew wore simple dresses, suits, button-down shirts. Yoshi wore a suit and a top hat.
And me?
Wednesday of Senior Week, Conversation with Beloved Parents:
Mom: What are you going to wear?
Aries: Uh. I don't really know. I don't have time to buy a dress.
Mom: You don't have time to get a dress? I thought you were done with finals now.
Aries: Guys, circus. Circus every day. No time to take a scenic trip to score a dress. I'll look nice. I got a few dresses from the swap.
Mom: ... all right.
Dad: No cap or gown? There's going to be a lot of photos.
Aries: No.
Mom: Wear what you want--
Dad: Just don't do it naked, okay?
The next day, I looked at Weather.com. Sunny, they predict. Warm, they say.
Perhaps... a sun dress?
Sundress. Not a shower curtain.
At 9:00, I lined up, though the illustrious "I" section was pretty small. Then, we waited and waited some more. I skipped to the bathroom, running into professors in their official regalia, as well as Ben Jones, Captain-in-Chief. On their parts, the professors were wearing formal academic regalia, fascinating costumes indicating what kind of degree they held. Their robes were huge, adorned with collars of all different colors. They looked like ... well... Harry Potter characters.
The marshals, who led the graduation procession, held batons that looked suspiciously like magic wands. As if they were charming the whole event to go according to plan.
Wands out.
As I left the bathroom, I heard the blast of trumpets. Before I knew it, we had marched to our seats. The ceremony begun: a prayer, introductions, greetings, then Honorary Doctorate Degrees. Though the winners were really cool people: pioneers, activists, scientists and administrators ... some of the introductions were on the long side. The presenters told us the accomplishments of the award recipients, talking about the awards they had won, the councils they chaired, and the foundations they founded...
Meanwhile, Weather.com didn't lie -- the sun was pouring down. As the speakers went on and on, I could feel my arms and legs heating up.
Ary and San. Notice the sunlight?
My favorite presenters were Lynn Powell and Dan Stinebring awarding degrees to Mary and Steve Hammond. It was a perfect match. Mary and Steve are the pastors at Peace Community Church and serve as amazing community leaders. Their work supports so many different groups at Oberlin, from long-term residents to homesick first-years. Dan and Lynn, a physics professor and a poet, are deeply involved in political and arts work. They opened up their house to the Obama campaign, to which they and their children contributed thousands of hours. In Dan's astronomy class (which I loved), he stopped class the week before the election and gave us a lot of voting-related information.
Dan, looking super-serious.
Lee Fisher, Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, gave the introduction for our commencement speaker, Richard Haass. It was an amazing introduction as the two were friends, graduating from Oberlin in the same year. While Haas won immediate success, Fisher had 7 rejection letter from top law schools. The speech was funny, unlike all of the introductions before. Fisher also shockingly humble, never mentioning that he's running for US Senate.
And then, the Commencement Speaker, Richard Haass, speaking on dissent. ... It was interesting. Take a peak here, if you like. Haass gave an apology, not a speech. He didn't make a strong case for showing dissent by working within the system, or how to gracefully duck away from a diseased organization (as he allegedly aimed). The trouble? He used himself as an example. Haass was a foreign policy adviser to both Iraq wars, and stands within the line of bureaucrats that enabled the current situation.
Moreover, the question of dissent in the workplace is not uncommon, but the extremity of Iraq is a bit... enormous. And, at this time, very clear. Most office issues are gray; they're tragic choices for employers and employees to make. They're personal, confusing and unclear. This was not a speech about shades of gray, the kind of thing a recent Oberlin grad is likely to experience.
That said, it was interesting. A speech from a top-notch alumnus speaking on really, really high-security decisions is pretty fascinating, regardless of whether it clarifies my office-place moral quandaries.
Conveniently, President Marvin "Much Adored" Krislov gave an excellent talk that was everything I could have wanted from a commencement speech. From Krislov, we expect brilliance. He's a Rhodes Scholar who took a case (Grutter/Gratz v. Bollinger) to the Supreme Court. His speech was about his unability to get a job after college until he took a part-time job at the YMCA ... it was encouraging. Sometimes, opportunity takes a while, he said.
We stood to receive the diplomas, crossed the stage to shake hands/hug the President-Much-Beloved Krislov and the Class President, Sir Derry. President Krislov gives good hugs, the sign of a great leader.
I walked back to my chair, dazed. When we'd all finally gotten our diplomas, the hats flew into the air. Folks started to hug all around me, wishing each other well.
Liz and I see each other...
And strike!
Everyone loves hugging Yoshi. Especially pretty girls.
But Oberlin students don't really do traditional. So I had no idea what to expect.
We got up at 6:30, leaving the house close to 8, so we could get our placement card in time (the placement office closes at 8:30). Then, we did nothing for a while. I got some coffee. Walked around. People-watched. Only about a third of the school wore caps and gowns. More folks wore caps, some decorated the tops. Some folks were really fancy, dressed in prom-best. Most folks I knew wore simple dresses, suits, button-down shirts. Yoshi wore a suit and a top hat.
And me?
Wednesday of Senior Week, Conversation with Beloved Parents:
Mom: What are you going to wear?
Aries: Uh. I don't really know. I don't have time to buy a dress.
Mom: You don't have time to get a dress? I thought you were done with finals now.
Aries: Guys, circus. Circus every day. No time to take a scenic trip to score a dress. I'll look nice. I got a few dresses from the swap.
Mom: ... all right.
Dad: No cap or gown? There's going to be a lot of photos.
Aries: No.
Mom: Wear what you want--
Dad: Just don't do it naked, okay?
The next day, I looked at Weather.com. Sunny, they predict. Warm, they say.
Perhaps... a sun dress?
Sundress. Not a shower curtain.
At 9:00, I lined up, though the illustrious "I" section was pretty small. Then, we waited and waited some more. I skipped to the bathroom, running into professors in their official regalia, as well as Ben Jones, Captain-in-Chief. On their parts, the professors were wearing formal academic regalia, fascinating costumes indicating what kind of degree they held. Their robes were huge, adorned with collars of all different colors. They looked like ... well... Harry Potter characters.
The marshals, who led the graduation procession, held batons that looked suspiciously like magic wands. As if they were charming the whole event to go according to plan.
Wands out.
As I left the bathroom, I heard the blast of trumpets. Before I knew it, we had marched to our seats. The ceremony begun: a prayer, introductions, greetings, then Honorary Doctorate Degrees. Though the winners were really cool people: pioneers, activists, scientists and administrators ... some of the introductions were on the long side. The presenters told us the accomplishments of the award recipients, talking about the awards they had won, the councils they chaired, and the foundations they founded...
Meanwhile, Weather.com didn't lie -- the sun was pouring down. As the speakers went on and on, I could feel my arms and legs heating up.
Ary and San. Notice the sunlight?
My favorite presenters were Lynn Powell and Dan Stinebring awarding degrees to Mary and Steve Hammond. It was a perfect match. Mary and Steve are the pastors at Peace Community Church and serve as amazing community leaders. Their work supports so many different groups at Oberlin, from long-term residents to homesick first-years. Dan and Lynn, a physics professor and a poet, are deeply involved in political and arts work. They opened up their house to the Obama campaign, to which they and their children contributed thousands of hours. In Dan's astronomy class (which I loved), he stopped class the week before the election and gave us a lot of voting-related information.
Dan, looking super-serious.
Lee Fisher, Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, gave the introduction for our commencement speaker, Richard Haass. It was an amazing introduction as the two were friends, graduating from Oberlin in the same year. While Haas won immediate success, Fisher had 7 rejection letter from top law schools. The speech was funny, unlike all of the introductions before. Fisher also shockingly humble, never mentioning that he's running for US Senate.
And then, the Commencement Speaker, Richard Haass, speaking on dissent. ... It was interesting. Take a peak here, if you like. Haass gave an apology, not a speech. He didn't make a strong case for showing dissent by working within the system, or how to gracefully duck away from a diseased organization (as he allegedly aimed). The trouble? He used himself as an example. Haass was a foreign policy adviser to both Iraq wars, and stands within the line of bureaucrats that enabled the current situation.
Moreover, the question of dissent in the workplace is not uncommon, but the extremity of Iraq is a bit... enormous. And, at this time, very clear. Most office issues are gray; they're tragic choices for employers and employees to make. They're personal, confusing and unclear. This was not a speech about shades of gray, the kind of thing a recent Oberlin grad is likely to experience.
That said, it was interesting. A speech from a top-notch alumnus speaking on really, really high-security decisions is pretty fascinating, regardless of whether it clarifies my office-place moral quandaries.
Conveniently, President Marvin "Much Adored" Krislov gave an excellent talk that was everything I could have wanted from a commencement speech. From Krislov, we expect brilliance. He's a Rhodes Scholar who took a case (Grutter/Gratz v. Bollinger) to the Supreme Court. His speech was about his unability to get a job after college until he took a part-time job at the YMCA ... it was encouraging. Sometimes, opportunity takes a while, he said.
We stood to receive the diplomas, crossed the stage to shake hands/hug the President-Much-Beloved Krislov and the Class President, Sir Derry. President Krislov gives good hugs, the sign of a great leader.
I walked back to my chair, dazed. When we'd all finally gotten our diplomas, the hats flew into the air. Folks started to hug all around me, wishing each other well.
Liz and I see each other...
And strike!
Everyone loves hugging Yoshi. Especially pretty girls.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
The Job!
A week after the first interview, I got an email that I should come in to "answer a few questions." I flipped out a little. Put on a dress, my nicest/tallest heels, tried not to vomit. From the email, I wasn't sure who was getting a follow-up. 38 people applied for the two fellowship jobs, many of them very qualified.
When I arrived at the office, a bit shaky in my heels, Ben Jones was smiling. He asked me a few hard questions which I stumbled through.
Then, he shook my hand and offered me the position.
So... I got the job! I'll be in Oberlin for one more year!
Have a lovely summer.
PS:
From the Source:
Aries Indenbaum -- Web Fellow
Aries works in the Office of Communications assisting the director of new media explore third-party social networking opportunities for Oberlin, managing the Oberlin Stories Project and the admissions blog site, and generally maintaining a connection to the student body. She graduated from Oberlin two days ago with a BA in creative writing. Aries was born in Point Reyes, California, and went to school in New Rochelle, New York. "In my free time, I tell stories, contra dance, write, run, and do circus," she says. Before graduating, Aries worked in admissions and blogged about her experience as a student.
When I arrived at the office, a bit shaky in my heels, Ben Jones was smiling. He asked me a few hard questions which I stumbled through.
Then, he shook my hand and offered me the position.
So... I got the job! I'll be in Oberlin for one more year!
Have a lovely summer.
PS:
From the Source:
Aries Indenbaum -- Web Fellow
Aries works in the Office of Communications assisting the director of new media explore third-party social networking opportunities for Oberlin, managing the Oberlin Stories Project and the admissions blog site, and generally maintaining a connection to the student body. She graduated from Oberlin two days ago with a BA in creative writing. Aries was born in Point Reyes, California, and went to school in New Rochelle, New York. "In my free time, I tell stories, contra dance, write, run, and do circus," she says. Before graduating, Aries worked in admissions and blogged about her experience as a student.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Senior Week (in Webcomics!)
There are two questions of commencement:
1. What are you doing next year?
2. How are you feeling?
I
The job search, in this economy, is very difficult. It causes a lot of stress for graduating seniors who aren't set up with something by commencement. Given the recent strains in journalism, publishing and academia, a lot of upcoming alums have difficulty getting jobs in the fields they want.
It's not a dead-end, but it takes longer than normal. More students are moving into entrepreneurship and starting up with new companies. There's a silk-screening collective start-up, a Chinese learning software company, a music clinic for kids, and a fair-trade Moroccan crafts business.
Environmental studies majors get more luck with the swell of green jobs. Given the billions in stimulus funds given to science research, biology, chemistry, neuroscience, physics and engineering majors (in total, about a third of Obies) are sitting pretty.
I just got a job for which I'm incredibly grateful and happy. And I'll talk about soon, I promise.
And it's not a job like this:
Yeah, I don't think it'll be like this.
II
As for the more difficult "how do you feel" issue...
Everyone takes Commencement differently. Seniors run though several different emotions:
1. Joy! No more papers! No more tests! No more cramming! It's beautiful and there are parties with cool people whom I need to say goodbye to!
2. Sorrow. Where are all my friends going? Should I live with my parents? I'm going to be so lonely...
3. Bliss! I'm ready for the real world! College was amazing, and I'll continue the things I learned here way out there!
4. Anxiety. The real world is scary. People are mean and cruel. What will I do after I get out of work?
5. Confused. I don't know what to feel. I'm going to miss Oberlin, but I'm okay with my plans.
6. Everything All At Once. Like below comic.
While other folks have had the time to feel/think about graduating, I really haven't. Between organizing another circus (we do a commencement show), finishing up a Creative Writing Anthology (Little Leaf), going to functions and freaking out about how cool my job is going to be... I haven't really been self-reflective. Surprised?
Savage Chickens understand me. Even if I don't really understand me.
But I'll try.
College has been better than any other time in my life. When I think about who I was when I arrived here, and who I am now... there's a huge difference. I am a fundamentally different person now. I met amazing people, learned great things, made many stories. I grew up in Oberlin. That's something that doesn't change when finals are over, or during Senior Week, or after I throw my cap into the air and hug all my friends. That change lasts for years.
1. What are you doing next year?
2. How are you feeling?
I
The job search, in this economy, is very difficult. It causes a lot of stress for graduating seniors who aren't set up with something by commencement. Given the recent strains in journalism, publishing and academia, a lot of upcoming alums have difficulty getting jobs in the fields they want.
It's not a dead-end, but it takes longer than normal. More students are moving into entrepreneurship and starting up with new companies. There's a silk-screening collective start-up, a Chinese learning software company, a music clinic for kids, and a fair-trade Moroccan crafts business.
Environmental studies majors get more luck with the swell of green jobs. Given the billions in stimulus funds given to science research, biology, chemistry, neuroscience, physics and engineering majors (in total, about a third of Obies) are sitting pretty.
I just got a job for which I'm incredibly grateful and happy. And I'll talk about soon, I promise.
And it's not a job like this:
Yeah, I don't think it'll be like this.
II
As for the more difficult "how do you feel" issue...
Everyone takes Commencement differently. Seniors run though several different emotions:
1. Joy! No more papers! No more tests! No more cramming! It's beautiful and there are parties with cool people whom I need to say goodbye to!
2. Sorrow. Where are all my friends going? Should I live with my parents? I'm going to be so lonely...
3. Bliss! I'm ready for the real world! College was amazing, and I'll continue the things I learned here way out there!
4. Anxiety. The real world is scary. People are mean and cruel. What will I do after I get out of work?
5. Confused. I don't know what to feel. I'm going to miss Oberlin, but I'm okay with my plans.
6. Everything All At Once. Like below comic.
While other folks have had the time to feel/think about graduating, I really haven't. Between organizing another circus (we do a commencement show), finishing up a Creative Writing Anthology (Little Leaf), going to functions and freaking out about how cool my job is going to be... I haven't really been self-reflective. Surprised?
Savage Chickens understand me. Even if I don't really understand me.
But I'll try.
College has been better than any other time in my life. When I think about who I was when I arrived here, and who I am now... there's a huge difference. I am a fundamentally different person now. I met amazing people, learned great things, made many stories. I grew up in Oberlin. That's something that doesn't change when finals are over, or during Senior Week, or after I throw my cap into the air and hug all my friends. That change lasts for years.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Addicted to Bad Ideas: Punk-Metal-Rap-Ska Music Shows
Time: Tuesday Morning
There are tiny, intense bruises on my knees and elbows. My hearing is still iffy.
I can still feel the crowd's moshing, dancing and pushing, the way the ocean still moves you even after you've gotten out of the water. I can still see the crowd: folks making a space in the center of the dance floor to let couples kick-dance a demented carnival homba. When the Inferno changed the tempo, the circle exploded into a flying moshpit.
World Inferno Friendship Society. Bucketkickers.
This feeling is familiar.
Time: Sunday Morning (two days previously)
My ears hurt. My thighs hurt. I am super-duper happy.
Tonight: Music party at Harkness, with Andrew Gombas, Birthday Kids, and Dos Mil Días De Fuego. Before that, I saw Spring Back, a dance show, so it's been... a long night.
Spring Back!
The dance department here is growing, with more folks than ever enrolling in classes. We took in two new members of the faculty: Holly Handman-Lopez and Ashley Thorndike. Spring Back is part of the block of dance shows hitting around now -- Sprung, Colors of Rhythm, Essence's Steppin' in da Beat, Oberlin Dance Company and a lot of senior recitals. Warner, the main dance/theater building, is booked. If you dance, this is a good time for you.
The main focus of the dance department is modern, with contact improvisation, capoeria, bodywork and ballet getting some love too. Half of the pieces in Spring Back were modern, the others hip-hop, folk or break. As I have the dance awareness of a child, I seperate dances into:
- Emotive: You're communicating how you feel!
- Movement: You move amazingly! Your body is a work of art, a tool of creation!
There was a nice combination of both.
I must admit to a certain narrative inclination, which poses a problem in an unfiltered enjoyment of movement. Whereas in circus, I see tricks as, well, tricks... dance is an art form. It has meaning. So, to my plot-centric brain, it should have a narrative and relationships.
In the dance piece with three women, they were totally a mother with two daughters who had recently lost their elderly father in a tragic threshing accident. The daughters adjusted to the lost by throwing themselves with childish abandon into their farm tasks; while the mother dejectedly resumed normal functioning.
There were monks in brotherly love, a bride left at the altar, spirits of global warming wrapping their warlike arms around one another with apocalyptic glee...
Or, at least, that's what I saw.
I've had a few conversations with Kai about the difficulty of writing about dance. I can talk about how it made me feel, but not always so clearly about what occurred, without creating childish scenarios. The moves themselves were impressive: many of the performers wore kneepads, given the amount of times they flung themselves at the ground. All of the modern soloists controlled their bodies precisely. Their handstands landed slowly and gently-- they cartwheeled over and around one another.
With the folk/hip-hop/break dances, I find there's more of a vocabulary, because I'm less caught up in a search for story-meaning. They picked the crowd up. The hip-hop group did an incredibly tight piece that looked straight out of a music videos. SPARK rocked, showcasing their old heavies with their new blood. They popped, locked and broke, making Warner into their space. I've seen them do more ridiculous stuff in the past, but this act was so seamless.
I ran to Harkness, ready for action.
Question: Why don't dance concerts end with the audience having a dance party with the cast? Does strike really have to happen the instant the show ends?
Harkness Concert
Harkness Basement is a place of great joy. Amazing bands have played there, amazing food eaten there. It's a cafeteria: there are chocolate milk stains that will never leave the ground. The tables were rolled away and the ground was mopped. On the wall, there were still the co-op food posters on the wall by the drum set:
"Pros and Cons of Soy" and "Report Ideas to the "Fun Committee!""
Fun Committee of Harkness?
Andrew Gombas went first. You may remember him from Ma'ayan's post about Organs... He does music too! Acoustic and electric guitar and brilliant songwriting. Most of his songs are about some twisted, mangled love... like that time you went home with the prettiest girl and she was really into roleplaying games. Like the role-playing game where she's the "dominant young woman" and you're the "stupidface who took her to your home, got stabbed 19 times and robbed blind." That was a good song. It was a singalong.
I love this photo. Andrew looks like Mr. American Psycho.
Andrew:: "You may now know this, but I used to be an improv-style spoken word performer in the south side of Chicago. A rapper, one could say. So, I'll need two words from the audience to let me go..."
Audience :: "Watermelon!" "Somali pirates!" "Elk!" ""
Andrew:: "I heard... ''gun-related violence" and "attractive women."
So, Andrew rapped about ''gun-related violence" and "attractive women," which has a refrain that's so virulently not-PC that I don't think I should share it. Despite all of his evil-doing and disturbing lyrics, Andrew is a truly kind, warm and amazingly stable man. His nickname is Pickles.
Birthday Kids went up after: Liz, Ralph, Jim and Jesse, playing jam rock. Liz sang like a mellowed Janice Joplin; Ralph played the bass like a bear locked in a cellar for a few months. Jim controlled his drum set perfectly, and Jesse loved that guitar like a lover long-separated. The boys were all Connies (conservatory students): Jim is TIMARA, Ralph and Jesse are composition.
They have a lot of fun when they play: one of their games was "Mess with Jesse." Game was: Jim and Ralph would make a rhythm, and Jesse would solo. When folks got bored, they would raise their hands and Jim and Ralph would set a new tempo. Five hands determined the game, so it changed a lot. It also proved how ill Jesse is. That boy loves his guitar.
Liz and Jesse. Note how Jesse cannot see how gorgeous Liz is, due to his overwhelming love of his guitar. This is devotion, people.
After that... Dos Mil Días De Fuego!
Grey on rap/vocals; Sam on vocals; Khari and Sarah on the turntables, Ryan on bass; Jim on drums. It was awesome to hear them in a better venue (not a living room), even if I still didn't hear all of Grey's lyrics.
Grey spreads the word. Word, Grey.
They're an interesting band, with a lot of fluidity. Some songs are really furious and hip-hop/rap/metal, others are silly. Grey makes an excellent emcee, really pushing the crowd; Sam makes jokes and keeps things light, leading interactive dance sequences. She has a low, sweet voice, like a cup of hot chocolate in the morning. Khari and Sarah are sick-- they played amazing dj sets between each band, keeping the energy high. Their samples were tight. Ryan makes superb faces when he plays and holds the beat steady. And Jim? Jim is incredible. He played drums for both bands and after their intense, kickin sets, he smashed out a crazy solo.
Note: Ryan's face. It is superb.
Jim declared King of America.
It was an excellent crowd. We had enough space to dance -- Harkness basement is able to serve over a 100 members for each meal, so it certainly had space for 100 people to dance. There was a lot of good energy there: most people knew someone in the band, or really liked their style, so we had less general-party people and more open, happy, high-kickin' folks.
I left happy and sore, the way it should be.
There are tiny, intense bruises on my knees and elbows. My hearing is still iffy.
I can still feel the crowd's moshing, dancing and pushing, the way the ocean still moves you even after you've gotten out of the water. I can still see the crowd: folks making a space in the center of the dance floor to let couples kick-dance a demented carnival homba. When the Inferno changed the tempo, the circle exploded into a flying moshpit.
World Inferno Friendship Society. Bucketkickers.
This feeling is familiar.
Time: Sunday Morning (two days previously)
My ears hurt. My thighs hurt. I am super-duper happy.
Tonight: Music party at Harkness, with Andrew Gombas, Birthday Kids, and Dos Mil Días De Fuego. Before that, I saw Spring Back, a dance show, so it's been... a long night.
Spring Back!
The dance department here is growing, with more folks than ever enrolling in classes. We took in two new members of the faculty: Holly Handman-Lopez and Ashley Thorndike. Spring Back is part of the block of dance shows hitting around now -- Sprung, Colors of Rhythm, Essence's Steppin' in da Beat, Oberlin Dance Company and a lot of senior recitals. Warner, the main dance/theater building, is booked. If you dance, this is a good time for you.
The main focus of the dance department is modern, with contact improvisation, capoeria, bodywork and ballet getting some love too. Half of the pieces in Spring Back were modern, the others hip-hop, folk or break. As I have the dance awareness of a child, I seperate dances into:
- Emotive: You're communicating how you feel!
- Movement: You move amazingly! Your body is a work of art, a tool of creation!
There was a nice combination of both.
I must admit to a certain narrative inclination, which poses a problem in an unfiltered enjoyment of movement. Whereas in circus, I see tricks as, well, tricks... dance is an art form. It has meaning. So, to my plot-centric brain, it should have a narrative and relationships.
In the dance piece with three women, they were totally a mother with two daughters who had recently lost their elderly father in a tragic threshing accident. The daughters adjusted to the lost by throwing themselves with childish abandon into their farm tasks; while the mother dejectedly resumed normal functioning.
There were monks in brotherly love, a bride left at the altar, spirits of global warming wrapping their warlike arms around one another with apocalyptic glee...
Or, at least, that's what I saw.
I've had a few conversations with Kai about the difficulty of writing about dance. I can talk about how it made me feel, but not always so clearly about what occurred, without creating childish scenarios. The moves themselves were impressive: many of the performers wore kneepads, given the amount of times they flung themselves at the ground. All of the modern soloists controlled their bodies precisely. Their handstands landed slowly and gently-- they cartwheeled over and around one another.
With the folk/hip-hop/break dances, I find there's more of a vocabulary, because I'm less caught up in a search for story-meaning. They picked the crowd up. The hip-hop group did an incredibly tight piece that looked straight out of a music videos. SPARK rocked, showcasing their old heavies with their new blood. They popped, locked and broke, making Warner into their space. I've seen them do more ridiculous stuff in the past, but this act was so seamless.
I ran to Harkness, ready for action.
Question: Why don't dance concerts end with the audience having a dance party with the cast? Does strike really have to happen the instant the show ends?
Harkness Concert
Harkness Basement is a place of great joy. Amazing bands have played there, amazing food eaten there. It's a cafeteria: there are chocolate milk stains that will never leave the ground. The tables were rolled away and the ground was mopped. On the wall, there were still the co-op food posters on the wall by the drum set:
"Pros and Cons of Soy" and "Report Ideas to the "Fun Committee!""
Fun Committee of Harkness?
Andrew Gombas went first. You may remember him from Ma'ayan's post about Organs... He does music too! Acoustic and electric guitar and brilliant songwriting. Most of his songs are about some twisted, mangled love... like that time you went home with the prettiest girl and she was really into roleplaying games. Like the role-playing game where she's the "dominant young woman" and you're the "stupidface who took her to your home, got stabbed 19 times and robbed blind." That was a good song. It was a singalong.
I love this photo. Andrew looks like Mr. American Psycho.
Andrew:: "You may now know this, but I used to be an improv-style spoken word performer in the south side of Chicago. A rapper, one could say. So, I'll need two words from the audience to let me go..."
Audience :: "Watermelon!" "Somali pirates!" "Elk!" ""
Andrew:: "I heard... ''gun-related violence" and "attractive women."
So, Andrew rapped about ''gun-related violence" and "attractive women," which has a refrain that's so virulently not-PC that I don't think I should share it. Despite all of his evil-doing and disturbing lyrics, Andrew is a truly kind, warm and amazingly stable man. His nickname is Pickles.
Birthday Kids went up after: Liz, Ralph, Jim and Jesse, playing jam rock. Liz sang like a mellowed Janice Joplin; Ralph played the bass like a bear locked in a cellar for a few months. Jim controlled his drum set perfectly, and Jesse loved that guitar like a lover long-separated. The boys were all Connies (conservatory students): Jim is TIMARA, Ralph and Jesse are composition.
They have a lot of fun when they play: one of their games was "Mess with Jesse." Game was: Jim and Ralph would make a rhythm, and Jesse would solo. When folks got bored, they would raise their hands and Jim and Ralph would set a new tempo. Five hands determined the game, so it changed a lot. It also proved how ill Jesse is. That boy loves his guitar.
Liz and Jesse. Note how Jesse cannot see how gorgeous Liz is, due to his overwhelming love of his guitar. This is devotion, people.
After that... Dos Mil Días De Fuego!
Grey on rap/vocals; Sam on vocals; Khari and Sarah on the turntables, Ryan on bass; Jim on drums. It was awesome to hear them in a better venue (not a living room), even if I still didn't hear all of Grey's lyrics.
Grey spreads the word. Word, Grey.
They're an interesting band, with a lot of fluidity. Some songs are really furious and hip-hop/rap/metal, others are silly. Grey makes an excellent emcee, really pushing the crowd; Sam makes jokes and keeps things light, leading interactive dance sequences. She has a low, sweet voice, like a cup of hot chocolate in the morning. Khari and Sarah are sick-- they played amazing dj sets between each band, keeping the energy high. Their samples were tight. Ryan makes superb faces when he plays and holds the beat steady. And Jim? Jim is incredible. He played drums for both bands and after their intense, kickin sets, he smashed out a crazy solo.
Note: Ryan's face. It is superb.
Jim declared King of America.
It was an excellent crowd. We had enough space to dance -- Harkness basement is able to serve over a 100 members for each meal, so it certainly had space for 100 people to dance. There was a lot of good energy there: most people knew someone in the band, or really liked their style, so we had less general-party people and more open, happy, high-kickin' folks.
I left happy and sore, the way it should be.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Introspection: Aries versus Aries
A friend of mine was looking at one of my stories the other day and noticed something, "Your characters don't think very much, do they?"
"What do you mean?" I replied. "They aren't stupid." She's read a lot of my pieces, so her opinion matters to me. We were in the library, in the Commons. I had just started drinking my every constant cup of soy milk.
"No, not stupid. Just not introspective."
"But why would I want them to be introspective?" I asked. I sipped at my milk.
She paused. "Aries, most people are introspective. Most people here at least."
"But I'm not."
"Really?" she seemed surprised. Her eyebrows did a cute wiggly-thing.
"No, I plan things. But I don't really think... about stuff." I paused. "Actually that's weird. I don't. I mean, I do think. Like this milk, it could be better. They should replace Silk with Edensoy cause it's a zillion times better."
"Introspection isn't thinking about milk. It's thinking about yourself."
"But I'm pretty boring on the inside." Even saying it, I felt disinterested. I looked around. The boy next to me was reading BBC News. He looked pretty unhappy. The girl at the other section of the desk was working on a Powerpoint presentation on the Black River Watershed.
"Really? Don't you have a blog? Don't you have things to say about yourself?"
"Bloggers don't have to be introspective," I protested.
"Blogging implied introspection. It's self-reflection," she clarified.
"I am not self-reflective. Reflection clutters narrative."
She put her hands up, "It's not a bad thing. You just... might want to think about stuff. Sometimes. You don't have to, but it's good. Sometimes."
There was no more milk. Dammit, I thought.
"I have to go to class," she said. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," I said. We hugged and she left for class.
Questions:
How many happy introverts are there? Why would I want to be introverted? What could I gain? Aren't most writers introspective so they can mine the human spirit? Do I have to care about the human spirit? Do humans have a spirit?
Maybe I can come up with a motto. That's just like self-reflection, yes? Is it useful to include introspection in a narrative? In a blog? Do you care about what I think (do I?) or just about what I do? Is 'show, not tell' a good rule to apply to life? Can I be introspective without being crippled with self-doubt?
Are you an introvert? Are you happy?
Can't I just have a daily motto? That's like introspection. It's a game plan. I like game plans.
Like this one:
"What do you mean?" I replied. "They aren't stupid." She's read a lot of my pieces, so her opinion matters to me. We were in the library, in the Commons. I had just started drinking my every constant cup of soy milk.
"No, not stupid. Just not introspective."
"But why would I want them to be introspective?" I asked. I sipped at my milk.
She paused. "Aries, most people are introspective. Most people here at least."
"But I'm not."
"Really?" she seemed surprised. Her eyebrows did a cute wiggly-thing.
"No, I plan things. But I don't really think... about stuff." I paused. "Actually that's weird. I don't. I mean, I do think. Like this milk, it could be better. They should replace Silk with Edensoy cause it's a zillion times better."
"Introspection isn't thinking about milk. It's thinking about yourself."
"But I'm pretty boring on the inside." Even saying it, I felt disinterested. I looked around. The boy next to me was reading BBC News. He looked pretty unhappy. The girl at the other section of the desk was working on a Powerpoint presentation on the Black River Watershed.
"Really? Don't you have a blog? Don't you have things to say about yourself?"
"Bloggers don't have to be introspective," I protested.
"Blogging implied introspection. It's self-reflection," she clarified.
"I am not self-reflective. Reflection clutters narrative."
She put her hands up, "It's not a bad thing. You just... might want to think about stuff. Sometimes. You don't have to, but it's good. Sometimes."
There was no more milk. Dammit, I thought.
"I have to go to class," she said. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," I said. We hugged and she left for class.
Questions:
How many happy introverts are there? Why would I want to be introverted? What could I gain? Aren't most writers introspective so they can mine the human spirit? Do I have to care about the human spirit? Do humans have a spirit?
Maybe I can come up with a motto. That's just like self-reflection, yes? Is it useful to include introspection in a narrative? In a blog? Do you care about what I think (do I?) or just about what I do? Is 'show, not tell' a good rule to apply to life? Can I be introspective without being crippled with self-doubt?
Are you an introvert? Are you happy?
Can't I just have a daily motto? That's like introspection. It's a game plan. I like game plans.
Like this one:
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Mammoth Cave: the longest entry in the world.
Oberlin is a small town. A lovely, charming town, but a small town nevertheless. And sometimes, it's great to just get out of town. Thus: Spring break in Mammoth Cave!
Our Heroes: Yoshi, Erika, Andrew, Iris and I
Our Place: Kentucky, Mammoth Cave and Louisville
Our Enemies: Winter, rain, nighttime.
Highlights of Our Adventure:
Mammoth. Mammoth Cave is the world's longest cave. Its held a tuberculosis hospital, a Methodist church, saltpetre (an element of gunpowder) and millions of tourists. We took two tours of the cave - a total of five hours underground. One tour guide was amazing: Jo Duvall had been working in the cave since the '60s and knew everything about everything. When President Reagan visited the cave, he talked to Jo to get information for his soundbites. He was a self-identified hillbilly with the articulation of a college professor.
The other tour guide was less amazing, but did have a great sense of humor. When we entered a wet portion of the cave and started seeing stalactites and stalagmites in formation, he explained, "When stalagmites and stalactites conjoin, we call them columns. Some people call them pillars, but I'm a Kentucky man, so pillars are what I sleep on."
We camped out about 10 minutes away from the main cave entrance. Our tent and a bunch of our supplies came courtesy of the Outing Club. Outing Club is so cool - they give free camping funds for food and gas, as well as backpacks, tarps, tents and anything you need for a week/weekend away from school. They've sponsored trips to the Rockies, the Adirondacks and places near and far from the college.
Team Family. Our second tour of Mammoth Cave was a lantern tour - we were given one lantern per family. Given we weren't a family, but yet we were a group, we bunched together and declared ourselves Team Family™.
Friendliness aside, groups take a while to bond. I'd never hung out with Erika, Andrew or Iris before for a long period of time. There's an easy way to tell when an Oberlin group bonds (cite: Yoshi) - it's when we all say we're from Ohio. Decisively. For the first day or so, the "Where are y'all from?" question yields... "Ohio, but-" "California" "Texas" "Wisconsin" "Pennsylvania, by Philly" "California, then New York."
After another day, we are from "Ohio." No ifs, ands, or buts.
Not us. Still, it's a big cave.
Delicious food. The benefit of going camping with co-opers is that they can cook like nobody's business. With excessive amounts of rice, pasta, potatoes, mushrooms, garlic, olive oil and mozzarella as bases, Erika/Andrew/Iris made some pretty incredible food. Also, there was much less snacking than other road trips I'd been on. The focus was much more on meals and eating together.
Flutes. Andrew, a double-degree classical saxophone/anthropology major, was playing in the pit band for Reefer Madness. Though he has very little flute training, they wanted him to play a specific line from Peer Gynt for the show. So, he needed to learn flute in two weeks. Who better to teach him than Erika? Apparently, Erika played classical flute for over a decade. So, each morning, as breakfast cooked away, Erika would teach Andrew how to relax his embouchure and play gorgeous music. It was amazing to watch how fast Andrew learned the instrument and how well Erika taught it.
Badass Hiking. I am virulently afraid of falling - I have trouble with any sport involving mountains. I love hiking, though, as long as the paths don't try to kill me. On our first real day, we went hiking, in search of the river. An ice storm had ripped through the parkland in late January and had felled thousands of trees and blocked off a number of roads. As a result, we had to take a more circuitous path to get to the river - a windy little path past tiny waterfalls and giant downed trees. Andrew found a tick on his leg, but the rest of us escaped (I hope). While there were hundreds of birds near the campground, we didn't hear so much as a peep up in the hills. Just miles and miles of woods.
Late March is not the gorgeous time in KY - it's still winter, there's not so much green. But there was gold. Some of the trees held little golden leaves that make a whooshing sound in the wind, similar to rain. It reminded me of the wobbly-headed tree spirits (kodama) in Princess Mononoke.
Kodama! Keep reading, it gets cooler.
After a while, we got a bit bored of this. We couldn't see the river, but according to the map, it was all around us. We went off the trail, which meant a sliding descent.
Given my violent acrophobia, this excellent idea turned uncomfortable very fast. Fear is a somatic emotion - I can feel my heart speed up, sweat pour, and a redness settle over my face. My voice becomes harsher, stomach acid sloshes around my gut. I wanted to be alone. I stared at the river for a few minutes. It was a shining aquamarine, gorgeous and clean.
However, it turned out that Erika was also afraid of heights. After a few minutes of descent, we crawled up to the trail.
Below us, the trio kept going: Iris and Andrew are rock-climbing geniuses and Yoshi has massive upper body strength. We could hear their voices, but not what they said. After about 15 minutes, they rejoined us on the trail, Andrew looking sheepish.
"What happened?" Erika asked. "Did you get to the river?"
"No. Andrew did something really stupid - " Iris said.
"For the sake of testosterone, can we replace stupid with badass?" Andrew interjected.
"Okay. So?"
Andrew had been climbing and saw a steep drop a few steps ahead of him. Aloud, he said, "This will be so much easier if I drop my bag down first."
After dropping the bag and hearing the smack a few minutes later, he said, "Shit. Guys? I need to get my bag back."
So Andrew jumped down and found he had no way to get back up the sheer cliff. There were a few minutes of frustration.
In order to retrieve Andrew, Iris gripped onto a tree, Yoshi hung onto one of her legs, and Andrew climbed up their human ladder.
"Badass," we said.
Our Heroes!
Iris. I didn't know Iris at all, before this trip. But over the days, I started to really enjoy her company. She's from Madison, Wisconsin, and is a life-long co-oper. When she was younger, she lived in a family-focused cooperative and grew up in a much larger family than most other people. We talked about co-ops a lot; I'm thinking of trying to live in one after I graduate for cost/community purposes.
Iris was a founding member of After Midnight, Oberlin's only coed a capella group that sings jazz standards. Whenever Iris or Andrew sat next to each other in the car, they would practice "Lush Life," one of the saddest ballads of all time. Gorgeousness. Iris also had some of the most insane camping stories of going out to odd little islands in Wisconsin to see gorgeous lakes and climb giant rocks. She's also one of the most cheerful, strangely ethereal people I've met -- someone who doesn't get brought down by the little things.
Iris wants to save humanity from becoming extinct. Like this guy to her left.
Yoshi. You know all about Yoshi, gentle viewers. He's my favorite person. On the second day, when he was driving, turkeys attacked the car. Yoshi was terrified. Whenever he drove after that, we pantomimed turkeys, playing into his gobbler-trauma. Though he hadn't gone camping as much as he'd like to, being outside of the school-world is good for him. When we told stories by the fire, I really loved to hear his. I know most of them, but he's a really skilled speaker, so it just gets better and better. He's really good at pausing.
I like him a lot.
Sleeping Yoshi is unaware of the panda about to devour him.
Andrew. I met Andrew as my co-lead for a play that Erika's girlfriend Sarah wrote for David Walker's Playwriting class. We portrayed wanna-be cultists who would do whatever it takes to get into "The Order." Andrew's character kicked the snot out of me while I creepily insisted that he do it. It was so much fun. But that show was at the end of the semester, so we never got a chance to hang out. (Also, I had a gigantic crush on him at the time so I found it difficult to speak in full sentences when he was around.) We did a lot of singing along in the car to Cake songs. Andrew was also a super-mega-tastic outdoorsman. He worked at a nature camp for seven years and thus knows all the less-dangerous ways to have an excellent time. He knows the dangerous ways too, but sometimes keeps mum on them.
And he speaks Czech. This boy is too hardcore.
Timmy and Andrew (Andrew on the right, looking like a Scottish folk hero. Timmy looks pretty foxy.) Credit: Ma'ayan.
Erika. Erika's been composing/playing for circus for as long as I've been around, but as a double-degree student, she's been busy. This year, she's sharing a house with Liz Hibbard, one of my favorite people in the world. Despite her practicing five hours a day, I get to see her more often when I chill in her house. This is excellent, as Erika is simultaneously chill and focused. She's got the easygoing Bay Area feel (her parents are Japanese hippies) but the ambition of a pianist. She's also endlessly curious, charming and considerate. We spoke about environmental politics for a while and I found out that Erika went to MLK Jr. Middle School, Alice Water's Edible Schoolyard. I've read about her middle school in academic papers on sustainability. Craziness. Also, as a shout-out to the project, she's working on urban food sustainability and wants to work in that field after college. Pay it forwards?
Erika, looking chill, photo courtesy of Yitka, who takes sweet pictures.
Our Heroes: Yoshi, Erika, Andrew, Iris and I
Our Place: Kentucky, Mammoth Cave and Louisville
Our Enemies: Winter, rain, nighttime.
Highlights of Our Adventure:
Mammoth. Mammoth Cave is the world's longest cave. Its held a tuberculosis hospital, a Methodist church, saltpetre (an element of gunpowder) and millions of tourists. We took two tours of the cave - a total of five hours underground. One tour guide was amazing: Jo Duvall had been working in the cave since the '60s and knew everything about everything. When President Reagan visited the cave, he talked to Jo to get information for his soundbites. He was a self-identified hillbilly with the articulation of a college professor.
The other tour guide was less amazing, but did have a great sense of humor. When we entered a wet portion of the cave and started seeing stalactites and stalagmites in formation, he explained, "When stalagmites and stalactites conjoin, we call them columns. Some people call them pillars, but I'm a Kentucky man, so pillars are what I sleep on."
We camped out about 10 minutes away from the main cave entrance. Our tent and a bunch of our supplies came courtesy of the Outing Club. Outing Club is so cool - they give free camping funds for food and gas, as well as backpacks, tarps, tents and anything you need for a week/weekend away from school. They've sponsored trips to the Rockies, the Adirondacks and places near and far from the college.
Team Family. Our second tour of Mammoth Cave was a lantern tour - we were given one lantern per family. Given we weren't a family, but yet we were a group, we bunched together and declared ourselves Team Family™.
Friendliness aside, groups take a while to bond. I'd never hung out with Erika, Andrew or Iris before for a long period of time. There's an easy way to tell when an Oberlin group bonds (cite: Yoshi) - it's when we all say we're from Ohio. Decisively. For the first day or so, the "Where are y'all from?" question yields... "Ohio, but-" "California" "Texas" "Wisconsin" "Pennsylvania, by Philly" "California, then New York."
After another day, we are from "Ohio." No ifs, ands, or buts.
Not us. Still, it's a big cave.
Delicious food. The benefit of going camping with co-opers is that they can cook like nobody's business. With excessive amounts of rice, pasta, potatoes, mushrooms, garlic, olive oil and mozzarella as bases, Erika/Andrew/Iris made some pretty incredible food. Also, there was much less snacking than other road trips I'd been on. The focus was much more on meals and eating together.
Flutes. Andrew, a double-degree classical saxophone/anthropology major, was playing in the pit band for Reefer Madness. Though he has very little flute training, they wanted him to play a specific line from Peer Gynt for the show. So, he needed to learn flute in two weeks. Who better to teach him than Erika? Apparently, Erika played classical flute for over a decade. So, each morning, as breakfast cooked away, Erika would teach Andrew how to relax his embouchure and play gorgeous music. It was amazing to watch how fast Andrew learned the instrument and how well Erika taught it.
Badass Hiking. I am virulently afraid of falling - I have trouble with any sport involving mountains. I love hiking, though, as long as the paths don't try to kill me. On our first real day, we went hiking, in search of the river. An ice storm had ripped through the parkland in late January and had felled thousands of trees and blocked off a number of roads. As a result, we had to take a more circuitous path to get to the river - a windy little path past tiny waterfalls and giant downed trees. Andrew found a tick on his leg, but the rest of us escaped (I hope). While there were hundreds of birds near the campground, we didn't hear so much as a peep up in the hills. Just miles and miles of woods.
Late March is not the gorgeous time in KY - it's still winter, there's not so much green. But there was gold. Some of the trees held little golden leaves that make a whooshing sound in the wind, similar to rain. It reminded me of the wobbly-headed tree spirits (kodama) in Princess Mononoke.
Kodama! Keep reading, it gets cooler.
After a while, we got a bit bored of this. We couldn't see the river, but according to the map, it was all around us. We went off the trail, which meant a sliding descent.
Given my violent acrophobia, this excellent idea turned uncomfortable very fast. Fear is a somatic emotion - I can feel my heart speed up, sweat pour, and a redness settle over my face. My voice becomes harsher, stomach acid sloshes around my gut. I wanted to be alone. I stared at the river for a few minutes. It was a shining aquamarine, gorgeous and clean.
However, it turned out that Erika was also afraid of heights. After a few minutes of descent, we crawled up to the trail.
Below us, the trio kept going: Iris and Andrew are rock-climbing geniuses and Yoshi has massive upper body strength. We could hear their voices, but not what they said. After about 15 minutes, they rejoined us on the trail, Andrew looking sheepish.
"What happened?" Erika asked. "Did you get to the river?"
"No. Andrew did something really stupid - " Iris said.
"For the sake of testosterone, can we replace stupid with badass?" Andrew interjected.
"Okay. So?"
Andrew had been climbing and saw a steep drop a few steps ahead of him. Aloud, he said, "This will be so much easier if I drop my bag down first."
After dropping the bag and hearing the smack a few minutes later, he said, "Shit. Guys? I need to get my bag back."
So Andrew jumped down and found he had no way to get back up the sheer cliff. There were a few minutes of frustration.
In order to retrieve Andrew, Iris gripped onto a tree, Yoshi hung onto one of her legs, and Andrew climbed up their human ladder.
"Badass," we said.
Our Heroes!
Iris. I didn't know Iris at all, before this trip. But over the days, I started to really enjoy her company. She's from Madison, Wisconsin, and is a life-long co-oper. When she was younger, she lived in a family-focused cooperative and grew up in a much larger family than most other people. We talked about co-ops a lot; I'm thinking of trying to live in one after I graduate for cost/community purposes.
Iris was a founding member of After Midnight, Oberlin's only coed a capella group that sings jazz standards. Whenever Iris or Andrew sat next to each other in the car, they would practice "Lush Life," one of the saddest ballads of all time. Gorgeousness. Iris also had some of the most insane camping stories of going out to odd little islands in Wisconsin to see gorgeous lakes and climb giant rocks. She's also one of the most cheerful, strangely ethereal people I've met -- someone who doesn't get brought down by the little things.
Iris wants to save humanity from becoming extinct. Like this guy to her left.
Yoshi. You know all about Yoshi, gentle viewers. He's my favorite person. On the second day, when he was driving, turkeys attacked the car. Yoshi was terrified. Whenever he drove after that, we pantomimed turkeys, playing into his gobbler-trauma. Though he hadn't gone camping as much as he'd like to, being outside of the school-world is good for him. When we told stories by the fire, I really loved to hear his. I know most of them, but he's a really skilled speaker, so it just gets better and better. He's really good at pausing.
I like him a lot.
Sleeping Yoshi is unaware of the panda about to devour him.
Andrew. I met Andrew as my co-lead for a play that Erika's girlfriend Sarah wrote for David Walker's Playwriting class. We portrayed wanna-be cultists who would do whatever it takes to get into "The Order." Andrew's character kicked the snot out of me while I creepily insisted that he do it. It was so much fun. But that show was at the end of the semester, so we never got a chance to hang out. (Also, I had a gigantic crush on him at the time so I found it difficult to speak in full sentences when he was around.) We did a lot of singing along in the car to Cake songs. Andrew was also a super-mega-tastic outdoorsman. He worked at a nature camp for seven years and thus knows all the less-dangerous ways to have an excellent time. He knows the dangerous ways too, but sometimes keeps mum on them.
And he speaks Czech. This boy is too hardcore.
Timmy and Andrew (Andrew on the right, looking like a Scottish folk hero. Timmy looks pretty foxy.) Credit: Ma'ayan.
Erika. Erika's been composing/playing for circus for as long as I've been around, but as a double-degree student, she's been busy. This year, she's sharing a house with Liz Hibbard, one of my favorite people in the world. Despite her practicing five hours a day, I get to see her more often when I chill in her house. This is excellent, as Erika is simultaneously chill and focused. She's got the easygoing Bay Area feel (her parents are Japanese hippies) but the ambition of a pianist. She's also endlessly curious, charming and considerate. We spoke about environmental politics for a while and I found out that Erika went to MLK Jr. Middle School, Alice Water's Edible Schoolyard. I've read about her middle school in academic papers on sustainability. Craziness. Also, as a shout-out to the project, she's working on urban food sustainability and wants to work in that field after college. Pay it forwards?
Erika, looking chill, photo courtesy of Yitka, who takes sweet pictures.
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