I've begun a new blog on Wordpress.com, called Jasminetree, because of it being my favorite Portland blooming tree specimen of all time, and if there is still anyone checking here for a new post, follow the link to the new page, if you like.
Twelve page paper due tomorrow, so here I show up, if only to stall long enough to say I have found some great ideas for the new blog format, and that two compressed summer term classes at once is the height of stupidity. Never again, unless I'm not working and drive instead of bus it.
Avoidance is like a slow poison---building and building, greater and greater tolerance of it, now I've reached the point of there being no return to it, I cannot think about this now I have a 1000 word essay to write (and start even thinking about) and post before midnight, and it's now 9:30pm OMG.
First there was the lovely Friday evening beer cafe with the group known as 'the usual suspects', followed by the most sublime Thai garlic eggplant chicken I think I've ever had. Celebration #1.
And I'm in the front row, on my porch, doing the last weekend of Astronomy homework EVER, and trying to get some solar remedial treatment for my head and chest cold. Alas, it is breezy and in the low 60s, a tad chilly to be in this tanktop and shorts, but I just keep moving into the widening band of sun.
It feels like I've been somewhere, even to me, like Spring Term was some sort of season on Survivor, a show I don't even watch. And I'm still on the island, somehow, holding the soggy torch and looking very pitiful. Sort of how my tomato plants look right now, waiting for the heat and sun, limping along, in their fixed tomato plant way. When we were through with April, I was happy to be done with it and don't need a three week nostalgic rehash of it in June.
Almost 4pm and the wind is still chilly, tarnation! Perhaps I should put the books and notes away, to show the proper sunshine readiness, to call in the blazing rays.
My neighbors' raised bed gardens are doing so much better than ours, with their fresh black sifted organic soils from Portland Nursery, and more shelter from the wind than ours. The inches of new mulch look great still, the herbs and roses look splendid, the lavender and lamb's ears are purple as far as the lot line. Next weekend, when exams and work are done for the week, I will come out here and make up for all the lost time I spent studying and writing papers for Keanu.
Who I am not giving a copy of my paper to after all. What if I wind up being a TA in the department and he's got students reading my paper on a sensitive chapter of my life? Eeww.
It's flattering and all, but I'm already over that and experiencing the relief of being done with his class and all the folderal of the dynamics in there.
Besides, he revealed that his real full-time job is being a writer and editor for something or some place, and this is just his part time gig, jacking people around in the name of anthropology.
This only raised my hackles some more. That's why he was grading my syntax and not the substance of my anthropology work. Putz! But I've moved on. Really.
Sure, this is merely stalling, taking a break from the second half of the dreaded-A practice exam. My head feels like a skewered cork you found under your refrigerator from a previous tenant, the dry coughing has blown my eardrums back and forth too many times to be good. "All I wanna do is have some sun..."
Oh krist, now he's asking me for a copy of my Pilgrimage paper, and being all nice to me.
As Jon Stewart said to John McCain last year, "Don't make me love you!!"
How to dither-dather a woman who writes? Sincere praise on her writing and wanting a personal copy will do it every time. Yikes, I fell right into flattery pond.
So, now I have to figure out what to say to him when I walk a copy to his office.
How about, "So Keanu, how do I get an A in your class? You nit-picked my first paper, quibbled over syntax on my midterm, and took off one symbolic point from my latest paper that you actually liked. What gives? I got an A in a much harder anthropology class last term when I had to learn human genome 101 in 10 weeks. What's the deal?"
Or---just slink in and slip it into his mailbox cubby and bolt.
As a former boss lady and ex-administrator, I am just dying to tell him how to improve his teaching methods, but then the Kwan Yin compassionate lotus fairy sees him struggling and wishes I could offer some support like a colleague who's in the weeds with a group of cashier trainees. He asks the class a question on the reading assigned for that day, and there's all this restless silence in the classroom for what seems like minutes, until I can't stand it anymore and offer the answer. He turns from the board and realizes it was me. This can happen three or four times an hour, unless I just won't play along. Yesterday it was political history with the Iran-Iraq war and Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, or which earlier anti-immigrant backlash occurred with which peoples in the early 1900s. And why?
Okay, so I don't have the student loan debt load (yet), years in the field on site with a trowel, multi-degrees and office in the department, but the guy is only a year older than I am and I just can't defer to him. He's more like a neighbor standing out in front of his house with a dead smoking lawnmower and you want to just hand him a cold beer and offer your weed whacker.
One more week of classes, one last exam, then it's all just a smudge on my transcripts, how I couldn't manage an A in a class in my major that was basically writing assignments with no math or human genomes or science. Little dings, all in a row.
But he talks about his dog all the time, so I know he's not just a total creep.
One more week of watching the doe-eyed nursing student in the front row bending over in short skirts to retrieve her bookbag and looking to see if he's noticing.
Class dismissed.
please read today's Poppalina
Washed my hands long enough to throw a load of clean clothes into the dryer, and check Poppalina, otherwise known as Shula in Australia, whom I adore and want to have a drink with someday. Okay, one of those swimming-pool sized mojitos complete with umbrellas and plastic jewel-colored monkeys hanging from the rim.
And pulling weeds in a misty rain rewards me with the complete 8" long withered roots of the freakin' dandelions and their cousins the thorny variety, and that is a Warm Fuzzy to we gardening types.
This has been a stiff term for me. It's almost over, no more Professor Keanu and astrophysics will return to being a hobby, thanks for all the software and the Hubble websites!
I got the job on campus with the bankers hours, and was beat tired after only the first week. Too funny. It will all blend in nicely with the rest of my life and classes, so I will sleep more, big deal. Having today off both work and school to make a a three day weekend was very restorative, hurling me out to the weed bed between loads of washing and chatting with neighbors, talking tomatoes. I added some borrowed mint varieties to the herb rock garden, cleared away some of the lambs ears obscuring the blooming thyme and blooming sages, and left space for the basils yet to be procured. My echinaceas came back, and now I'm thinking yarrow, both red and yellow. Portland Nursery again in my future. Another neighbor has some bronze fennel---wonder if he'd want some of these lambs ears? Another neighbor has some beautiful monarda, and Steven's getting rudebeckia. If it were up to me, I'd pull out all but one clump of the lambs ears and plant more lavenders, there are sweet white and pink varieties. A bunch of my mammoth sunflowers are emerging from the dirt, and four cucumber plants are ready to put in.
If we had a goat, these weeds would get eaten and recycled as fertilizer. I want to be an urban homesteader...
My interview for work went well enough on Monday that I was offered the job on Friday. The job I was iffy about for more money, not the library job I was excited about for less.
So after mulling it over for a few hours, I decided to sign on and re-join the working class, take the plunge, and as Dr Strangelove would say, "How I stopped worrying (about $$$) and learned to love the bomb," or Job. Whatever. Being two terms into the student experience, and actually looking at graduation for Summer 2009, I am not as worried about being sucked into a work situation that I enable by making myself indispensable to my boss, then finding my feet captured by quick-curing cement into the foundation workings of the established business. I can balance things better now after the hiatus and back-to-school trail, and I'm actually thinking how higher income can help me out with some things, like modern dentistry and and the urban homesteading ideas germinating in my noggin.
This Spring Term was tougher on me than I'd have thought, the astro-physical strain was high, and all those many equation-analyzing hours would not have been available to cover a real job and still squeak out a decent grade for this degree-requirement class. It's somehow all working out, and when the hiring manager replied to my acceptance email, she said my current class schedule was perfect for their scheduling needs for now, and being term oriented, schedules are always readjusted to accommodate the students' classtimes. I like this. Going forward, I'll be packing together as many Anthropology classes into each term as I can and don't see anything ahead as brain-reconfiguring as teaching myself Trigonometry by doing forensics on equation fragments to determine cause of impossible results. All that effort will now go back into my major classes, and brainspace for learning a new workplace culture and software system.
And it is summer, after all. Finally picked up some plants for the garden yesterday morning, some hearty tomato starts at Fred Meyer's Founders Day sale, and those quaint forget-me-nots I've been craving since forever for that shady corner under the mock orange bush. In Michigan my grandparents had a pink version of it too, and the blue with some pink carpeted the shade under the huge lilac bushes by the rhubarb patch. The cheerful purple and yellow faces of johnny-jump-up pansies rounded it out as a border. They all reseeded and came back after every harsh Michigan winter. Slowly, but steadily, I am gaining ground in the ultimate conversion of this home into a facsimile of the family 1902 homestead that I loved so much growing up. Okay, a mix of that and the Bath Street house, the two old houses I hated to leave behind. We double Cancers are just a mess with this house business, I've surrendered completely to it and have much more peace now. It just is this way.
Four cucumber plants, five types of tomatoes, beans, peas, peppers, sunflowers, herbs, and now I'm thinking potatoes. A trip to the Limbo organic market for some specimens to let go spiky with sprouting eyes, to cut up and plant in a big pot like Kathy does, and where can lettuce fit in, and a bush soybean? Sprouts of Texas red grapefruit seeds are working in a shallow sushi tray and I started another avocado pit in water. These of course are hot climate dreams, or the beginnings of cultured trees in a conservatory to be built when the neighbors gather to re-claim the lot where Steven's house is. He still plays along that it's okay to have his house moved off the lot and donate it to charity, so his 'friendly' neighbors can converge on the plot and create the communal garden space with bamboo tea house I've been dreaming of. What a great sport.
Bad, as in thoughtless, careless, unwittingly mindless, self-absorbed happiness foot in mouth stupid.
The other day, while chatting with my gorgeous neighbor Steven, I realized I was going on and on in a bubbling brook of happiness sort of way, and upon hearing the actual words coming out of my mouth, I stopped, and had to apologize, in a very female sort of way.
It sounded like bragging, and I was horrified. "Steven, ohmigod, you do understand, right, that all of this wonderful school miracle good fortune that is surrounding me these days makes me pinch myself all the time in wonderment, I don't mean that I'm just so fucking fabulous, I am just in complete amazement after all those years of slogging in the B-store trenches and the 25 years of not being able to do this, that I'm giddy happy and---" and he cut me off.
"Of course my dear, and it is so nice to really talk with someone at length about good things going on, and I get it, I really do, you're genuinely happy and it's great! Don't worry about anything with this and me, okay?" What a generous pal he is. But it happened today with someone else, and after a comment they made off-handedly, I realized "Oh oh, oh no, I just meant to communicate that they shouldn't worry, things were improving and financially were on the upswing after some tough times, it wasn't meant as a boast, really!" Oh bloody hell, now I just have to sit quiet and say "Fine," when asked how school is going, limit it to "great!" and not reveal my amazement that it's all still happening, it isn't being yanked out from under me somehow, inexplicably, just stop there. Shit.
There is still this feeling of it all being unreal somehow, it can't last, it will get ripped away somehow like it did the last time, this thing that meant everything to me. It's unfair for me to assume people I know here in Portland would just know this about me, they haven't known me that long, they met me as a B-store drone, and so, okay, fine, you're finishing a degree, great, so shut up already. I can get carried away, but never ever meant to offend. Crap.
Of course, there is a volume of back-story about this, and I won't pour it all out here except to say that there was always a pattern of my academic achievements being sloughed off as no big deal, pipe down, go do your chores, don't act so big. So more unfinished business regarding school, as well as the plowing through the final credit hours. I'm just happy this is all happening, and I want to go all the way, and I don't want to be a jerk.
My girl is not winning the race and it's affecting me in a truly deep way, I feel very subdued. It's hard to explain, because I'm suffering from campaign fatigue like everyone else, and wanted it to be August 6 months ago already. She was ahead then, if I had only known what I was wishing for.
So many of my hopes were pinned on her winning, and of seeing her run against McCain, and the thrill of watching her inauguration as the first woman president of my country, I lived to see it, and I voted her in, and would probably cry watching the magnificent moment of her taking the oath, with Bill holding the bible tearing up himself, like he does. It had already all played out in my heart and after 8 years of Bush Purgatorio, 2009 was going to be off to such a great start.
So, now the re-grouping. It has been a high tide of many emotions, and my wave is now a mere line of bubbles in the sand, hissing into silence. Silly me, I let myself get carried up in it, all those years of feminism in my hair was now the real world. My satisfaction was tangible. She was my highest ambition coming true, liberal values and equality taking over at last! I feel kinda lost.
Of course, Barack Obama is another great candidate, another history-making moment to be alive and witnessing, and I am proud that we've reached this point, certainly. As candidates, they weren't that far apart, and I'm not a Democratic Party zealot, I go for the person more than the affiliation. But my heart isn't in it for him, he's not my guy. I'm not sending him any of my money, I'm tired of hearing about how he never was for the war, as if anyone but Bush/Cheney had a hard-on for American soldiers and Iraqi civilians being killed. That slant may sway the kids I go to school with, but to me it sounds empty, Obama wasn't even a Senator yet and wasn't in a position to even vote on it, so shut up already about it, it sounds lame. Inexperience speaks loudly for itself. But my disappointment is making me bitter. Barring some horrific October Surprise, I'll probably be voting for him, knowing he is gathering a SWAT team of movers and shakers that Hillary would have hired, so it may all even out some.
Besides, there's all those girls and young women who now take this new threshold as the New Reality Base, and will go on from here, and that does warm my heart. Always forward, no more Disney-style Neo-con Nostalgia for a Myth that never was real for the majority of us. I hope Obama exceeds my expectations and graciously moves us ahead, and shows the Republicans how it should be done. I like all the boxing gloves I see at Hillary rallies, and I wonder if she'll try again. As all women in the trenches know, you cannot quit, you cannot wimp out, you cannot whine or make excuses or do anything to appear weak and ineffectual. There's those sneering critics just waiting for a chance to gloat that "she couldn't take the heat!" The women pundits know why she hasn't quit, and sit there with their hands folded pretending to listen to the guys go on and on about it back and forth, and don't reveal the reason. But we know why. You cannot quit, ever.
At last, ma cherie, it is time for the languid and curried hours of porch love---oh, how we have missed you, fickle mistress, during your endless stay in your sister Persephone's guest cottage in Hades, finally over until October.
Yet you taunt us in February, a lozenge of warmth from two until five on a Wednesday afternoon, only to flit off again with the giggle of a teenage girl--so cruel, yet so delicious. It helped me remember the winter sun in the tropics, also gold and cool, burnishing the world with an amber glow before suddenly slipping away behind a man-o-war cloud.
In March there were a few false starts, one splendid stretch on a Saturday afternoon that tanned the tops of my feet, and I succumbed to the decadence completely by dozing off for an hour or so. My anxiety was gently treated by these brief embraces and promises of an extended stay soon, perhaps with your next visit. My role as the porch priestess was to keep the watch for the first hint of clear blue skies after one pm, have some urgent reading material ready, some cold and refreshing liquid tribute accessible, and position the solar seating at the correct angle to the position of the sun. I take my duties seriously.
Finally, Enchanted April, as you began to venture away from your winter digs more frequently, dragging out those last damp goodbyes with the Hades', with some hail and sideways freezing rainy days tossed in just because you can, because your games always turn out so beautifully in May, because you know we can't help ourselves that we love you, tolerate the infidelity each fall, and will always make ready the best chambers in our hearts for you. That first day-long picnic with you in May, those endless warm days in June reading poetry from the inside of my eyelids to you while I hover in the still blue air---I live for this, and you know it.
Why do I fight you? So silly of me, but there is work for me to do, tasks of living with my feet on the ground that must be done, reading and cleaning and working for that coin and paper that mean so much down here. But you don't understand, you are the ultimate source of energy, of light, what makes everything else go.
I know it. And left the tropics in spite of it, and there are rare times when I remember that day of my first summer there, in early July, when the humidity was so high, and I had no shadow standing by that giant fuschia bouganvilla. I looked around and the sky was bleached white, there was no blue, yet no clouds at all, the light was coming from right over my head and pressed down like a white-hot anvil, the only shadows were lying deep under a giant banyan grove across the white coral dirt alley. There wasn't even a breath of air or breeze, the palm fronds hung heavy and slack like sweaty hands. Nothing moved, the white heat shimmered and I could feel my bones melting. Complete seduction, I was now forever a servant to the rays of the sun and follower of the changing light.
Whatever I'm doing, whenever it is, if there's a sustained sunbreak, I drop my piddling little task and bolt for the outside. It's just time for winter to be finally over, and time to sit on the porch in something other than black solar-magnet clothes to ward off the chill while waiting for the blaze.
How funny is it that in Astronomy class we are studying the Sun, being tantalized by films of solar flares, boiling radiance of the photosphere, waving heat coronas in eclipse---and I get to walk home from the bus in sideways frozen rain. Brrrr.
The astonishing thing lately is that I am starting to begin to understand some of this trigonometry.
The calculator I bought has helped, and the professor is focusing more on the 'what' instead of the 'how', but neat pieces of this whole snarl of Greek letters, exponents and subsets are falling into place. Slowly, I should add, so as not to challenge the Math Gods with my arrogance.
There are all these websites to visit with animations of a full day's Sun rotation, seeing sunspot frequency, the granulations of convection cells rising to the surface and cooling (to 5 million degrees Kelvin) and sinking back under the surface to be reheated. In the presentation, there are all these cooking and stove analogies, and who knew that neutrinos came in three flavors?
During the break after the first hour of class, I saw my face in the ladies room mirror, and I looked sunburned.
This is the official Midterm week, and I just found out today I am getting an aid package for the summer term that starts the end of June. It's what I was hoping would work out, to stay at it and make up for some of all the lost time. Hopefully, there's going to be something offered that I want to take, now that I'm committed. Until the summer schedule is posted, I hover in the mysterious cloud of unknowing. Flirting with the sun.
We were advised in class today that we'd taken our professor too literally, and followed his directions so unswervingly, we took it right over the cliff. The paper assignment, I mean.
And again, he threatened us that he has much much higher expectations for the one we're beginning after the midterm next week. I hope he gives us the topic parameters more than just a week ahead of time for this one, and maybe if he quit threatening us, we'd not step on the backs of his heels trying to do it exactly right.
I was surprised to hear two fellow classmates behind me on the stairs after class saying how they are having to do more research just to figure out who the main figures are in the field, because the prof keeps referencing them but never really had us learn about them, but expects us to know which guy said what, and why are we reading about baseball superstitions when we could be reading about these founders of the discipline? He has us read these assignments, but then never discusses them in class. Our textbooks don't even give an overview of the terminology, list the definitions or significant breakthroughs, or what's going on in the field now. And I had thought these two young women were so busy playing with their text messages to even think about this, so good for them, and shame on me. But it's true.
So he's going to hate my paper, now I know it for sure. Someone told me to just withdraw from the class, get an incomplete, and take it again next year with hopefully a different professor. Now that the term is almost half over, let's just get it over with and move on, is my thought. The ultimate irony is that this was going to be the focus of my major in the subject, and now I'm all put off. It just feels like a no-win all the way around.
The weather isn't helping. After that 80 degree sunny weekend almost two weeks ago, I feel like a barnacle on some barge under the Morrison Bridge. I've changed all my slide shows on my computers to tropical islands, Rocky Mountain wide blue skies, and Saharan Dunes under pure azure. My retinas need sunshine and blue above me, HELP! Saturday's supposed to be nice, high 60s and some sunshine. Reading the Odyssey on my front porch and doing laptop astronomy homework are my only plans. I got a scientific calculator today that promises fewer hours and tears, but ha ha ha, I have to learn how to use it. This is a different term entirely.
Hillary won in Pennsylvania last night, and I am so happy that she's fighting on, and not caving in to the pressure from the pundits that a national civil race war will break out if she wins the nomination by super-delegates. What kind of crap is that? How freaking racist is it to have white guys on CNN promising riots and mayhem bringing down the whole election if Hillary doesn't quit now and go home? That's like telling Obama to bug out now because if he gets the nomination by only a slim popular vote, every woman and blue collar worker will riot against African Americans and threaten the safety of the country. Like that would happen. We have two candidates that we don't want to see go all mean, to stoop to those old dog tactics of yesteryear, and I think they've held onto that position for themselves for a good long time. But the Republicans are catching a whiff of fresh air that maybe John McCain isn't so bad after all, and maybe they can win. I think Evil Rove is resting up for the summer so he can sharpen his teeth on whichever Democrat is left standing after the convention, and then this race will start to look like those ultimate cage fighters on cable---and that Democrat had better be able to suit up and let it fly. And I really want it to be Hillary, let Obama serve another term or two in the Senate, and then run and win.
Thinking about this the other day, I totally 'get' the generational thing, and why the average 25 year old is all hyped for Obama. None of these kids want to have a president that reminds them of their mom or one of their mom's friends, it's still a little weird yet. Much of my support for Hillary is for her personally, because I know her story and I know what a huge part she played in Bill's presidency, I was there and hoped she'd have her own shot at national politics afterwards. Part of it is her being a woman candidate, naturally, no shame in that for me, but I have always liked her, mostly because some of her story resembles mine I think. And I want her to go all the way, over the guardrail and fly out over the resistance and win this election, and be my president. If she weren't running, I'd most likely have the Obama buttons on, knowing he's going to need some on the job training, rattle the political science faculty of higher institutions now.
Ahhhhhhh----the supreme delight and satisfaction of finishing a paper assignment. And it only took me about three hours, is a bit too long and will be tightened up tomorrow, and is absolutely true and rather funny, if I do say so myself.
My young prof asked us to write of a personal experience of having a cultural misunderstanding. My personal experience of this assignment is that it's kinda voyeristic of him to require this, but when reflecting over the last few days, I realized that most of the 18-20 yr olds in my class (and I) would have a difficult time writing of an abstract cultural misunderstanding in 3 pages. Can't really do justice to the Israelis and Palestinians in 3 pages. Or the situation with Ellis Island or First Nations. So let's keep it breezy and first hand, right? So against the advice of my pal who worked with me through this certain period of time in the 1980s, I plunged into my story of Midwest Gamine moves to South Florida and emerges from her naive realism into the diverse and much louder Southern Branch of the Gotham City Culture.
I think my pal was afraid I'd come off sounding too bitter, or bigoted, or bitchy, but I think that it's possible to write about how overwhelmed a person can feel being immersed in a totally new cultural environment, being completely ignorant of how it all works, feeling very young and inexperienced about life in general, and be honest in describing it without being any of those b-things. Plus, since it's all true, and I remember parts of it so well, there is a bit of actual recreated dialogue. The part in the bagel place changed my whole attitude about living in South Florida.
Okay, so seeing as I was the one in the minority in the BocaWorld, I get to be the one who lost her naive realistic innocence and joined the greater Gotham Culture. Naive Realism is the anthropology term for when people think that the entire world is the way that they see their own particular piece of it. That got smacked right out of me the first month I worked there. I learned a lot of things, including some bad Yiddish words I used to be able to use but have now forgotten, I learned how to give shit and got better at taking it when I had a name tag on. I also learned how to hold my own, and wished I'd have been able to learn that better in my teens instead of in my 20s and 30s.
And now I get to write about it for college credit. So so cool. And what's really funny, is that if I were even bolder and still had more of my East Coast on, I'd have included how living in Gotham Culture for so long is sometimes why the Snark Episode happened with this young prof in the first place, and also why he reacted as he did, being so West Coast as he is. But I am not so bold, at least for this graded writing assignment. Maybe sometime, since I'm staying in this department for my degree, he and I will laugh about it all.
He'll laugh reading my paper, and that's my strategy.
Uh-oh, in the weeds already. After I finished the hysterical laughing part, the 7 hour, two page homework assignment began.
There was the 90 minutes of teaching myself the astronomy software program (that we were told not to rely on to do the homework--more laughing). Then the time looking up fun facts of scientific notation, that I went ahead and did the long way instead so I could see how the math magic happens with all those zeroes and exponents. Then the drawing of the earth and imaginary planes of reference with wonky angles and imaginary horizons and trying to use common sense instead of reading Greek letters. Some tears, a bowl of cereal, and back at it.
I want the Carl Sagan Experience, damn it! Michio Kaku doesn't ruin a romantic night looking into Deep Fields by whipping out his Texas Instrument. I'm into Big Screen Astrophysics, there's people who can be hired to plot out this swarm of ant-like troll-script, don't bother me with this crap, I've got massive theory to polish in my mind.
Professors must dread people like me taking their specialty courses. This may truly wind up being a pass/fail course for me. Why not a "Science for Right-Brainers" or "Astronomy for Painters" or "Physics for Philosophers"? In perspective, the writing assignments for my other classes feel like email letters to my best friends. But I go on too long...
It was funny to be sailing along in the midst of the Iliad this morning, admiring the smoothness of the translation, thrilled to be using the same copy I used in 1979 in my Great Books class my freshman year. Which shows that a person can expand the neuro-synapses after years of dry-dock, only reading corporate manual jargonese and lighter non-fiction bestsellers, and be able to drink in the un-watered wine of classic Greek epics. Only to hit the rocks in the afternoon with astronomy. This Renaissance Woman program demands a high price of her aspirants, math entering into the process again. There just has to be a trick to this, some smoke and mirrors so I can plunge the swords into the basket and arrive at the white dove flying into the footlights. I mean, there really is, right? Silk scarves, presto-change-o, abracadabra, alacazam! Trig-o-nom-it-tree!! Whammo!
Battle cry of the Dilettante.
I fell off, it's true.
It may have been the 12 straight episodes of Deadwood DVDs, or the complete freedom of no classes, no job, no worries. Or too many hours on the phone with Florida. This week I have been remembering Bruno and not in the mood to write anything. Last week I was reeling from how tough the Astronomy class was turning out to be.
Today I sat on the porch after school, soaked up the sunshine, and read textbooks, all the while realizing that there's been such a shift in the whole picture. A change of season brings these bubbles floating to the surface of my mind, along with wanting to do some mental spring cleaning as well.
No, going back to school has not yet become day-to-day la-de-da no big deal. It is still a huge big deal, although the walking along the park blocks marveling that I'm there is ebbing. I'm busting my ass some days just race walking to get there on time, taking the flights of stairs without gasping, not wanting to sit in a sweat through a class. I snarked off at one of my professors last week and am still cringing when I meet his eye in class, sitting silent through animated discussions like a mushroom, not contributing, now enduring every minute of a class in my major that I had been really looking forward to doing well in. Shit.
But getting thoroughly saturated in this new endeavor has definitely shut the door on any lingering vestiges of my old retail manager's life and mental space. One of my old employees is in my astronomy class and we got caught up afterwards yesterday, and it was really the first time the whole B-store episode felt done done done and dead to me, really fully behind me and in the past. Can I be allowed the slack to take a bit long to move beyond a ten+ year period of my life and identity? Stockholm Syndrome, I think it's called, otherwise known as drinking the Kool-Aid, Corporate Culture. I did go into it kicking and screaming, as I recall. But then you find yourself accepting that first promotion and going salary instead of hourly---your soul is signed over and you bitch about it every moment until you get out. The relief is overwhelming.
Of course, I'm looking for work now, and going over all of this in my head again, how do I go about this again, doing the work part without signing over the soul part? What do I know now, to do better this time? They don't need my soul, they just need me to show up and do a good job while I'm there. Whatever it is, a campus office type spot would be perfect.
Last spring about this time I had just put Betty on a plane after 12 days and was recovering by spending intense time in the garden. After getting all the dandelions, I put in the tomato starts and some herbs, weedcloth and mulch, marigolds, nasturtiums and lobelias. This spring I'm lagging behind, spending more time enjoying the season, watching Peg shoveling woodchips, cheering her on. "Isn't it beer-thirty yet?" I hollar out. "Can't slow down yet, I'm on a roll," she throws over her shoulder on her way to another load. I go back inside for another beer, I'm getting exhausted just watching her. Gotta start those pea and bean plants, I'm thinking, there's enough sun now. Zzzzzzzzzzzz
Spring break is begun, and I'm not sure why, but I'm grumpy. Is it because I'm already missing my regular class routine that ended over a week ago before exam week started? The lectures, the rapt absorption of every fun fact in art history, the Olmec carved heads that make me want to sculpt big things, the smug satisfaction that I felt upon realizing I knew more skeletal bones' names than I thought and that wasn't going to be tough after all---basically, the last week wasn't fun as usual, today I feel seized with the pending home invasion of Homo habilis, (a handyman installing a window) and knowing I have weeks of unmade plans to catch-up on in this tiny shrinking little week of break. Fah! (I want to watch more Deadwood DVDs and eat ice cream, but the hours tick by relentlessly.) I already hear the jingling of H. habilis' toolbox coming up the walk. It's all for the greater good, I know. Make the effort, do the dishes, vacuum, deal with the pile of magazines. Iron. Fold and put away the clean laundry from Thursday. Grrr.
It's like Betty's coming to visit all over again, I think that's what is making me crabby about this. I resent it for no reason other than I'd rather be doing something else that's fun, not necessary. Like going to get a new laptop, or seeing a movie, find a couple orchid plants on sale at Fred Meyer's, starting a new knitting project, falling into some margaritas with friends. Bah humbug.
There's no one to blame but myself. Clearly, at some level I'm too in touch with my inner 13 year old and she and I are sulking upstairs in our room, waiting until we turn 18 and our lives will really start. Those were 5 long long years, as I recall. Let's fast forward, shall we?
Someone else over the weekend remarked that an anthropology degree was a gigantic waste of time and money, what were my real plans, and that may be the real catalyst for the slump today. Either I am a complete and indebted fool, or too many people in the world have no imagination and bigger vision about handling practical reality. You can buy a $40,000 SUV and make crazy payments on that for years and that's normal today, but racking up some bills on a college education and a degree or two for about the same price is foolish. Explain this to me.
Okay, I'm going to "get real" for a few hours anyway and do some hausfrau stuff, see my favorite dog a bit, and then maybe pick up some mint chip. Betty's not coming, stand down and relax, spring break is only a week and it will be school again in no time. A smart anthropologist can create her own dream job, mull that over while vacuuming.
('Mars Needs Women!'--- I know, I thought it too)
Whilst all of Portland was returning to their work stations from lunch yesterday, they had no idea that a brain trust meeting was being held in an office at PSU that would be gathering steam to completely change the future of urban life on the Willamette as we know it!
No, not free Cirque du Soleil tickets to all.
Some students and members of the Anthropology Department were discussing a new class being offered for the Spring 2008 Term on Community Archaeology, and how this can be a great threshold for educating and encouraging the people who live in an area (Portland, for the sake of this idea) to get involved in preserving the cultural resources surrounding them. No mere coincidence that I was there, seeing as I wholeheartedly believe that this is just what Portland needs, as well as being encouraged that one of the organizers is Wendy Ann Wright, a volunteer in the office of Sam Adams. The focus of the class will be creating an annual hands-on event, that brings together local land history with ways to investigate and preserve it, and ideally get attendees interested to get involved at different levels. There can be fun things for kids and their parents to do, as well as some more involved things like foraging skills, tool-making, indigenous plants and how they were managed by native peoples, techniques of archaeological digs, the devastation of site looting, before and after depictions of how the Portland waterfront was developed---and as dedicated as we Portlanders are about our city's well-being, I think we can accomplish some good things by getting started with an event like this.
Looking out over the Portland skyline, I see all these mega-cranes, new towers under construction for new Portlanders, 4 foot trenches in the roadways exposing old brick, holes the size of a square city block 50' deep near the river, restored 19th century homes with abandoned urban lots behind them, and I see all this hidden history. No where do I feel that this developing of places should be made difficult, but there are all these lost chances to know more about our town and the brave people who wound up here long ago when this was the frontier, and the thousands of years before all that. There was a creek through there? Really? This family had an orchard there, that bend of the Willamette was an early refrigerated warehouse (no way!) that shipped fresh seafood to Denver, that site was where native peoples from all over the Pacific Northwest came and harvested obsidian. Sitting in that meeting yesterday, I knew that there are hundreds if not thousands of people here who would love to know this, especially if they're walking over it everyday or live in the neighborhood built on top of someplace so important back then. Back in my book retail days, we had one of the most heavily shopped local interest sections of any store I'd ever seen, and we had to put a display table up, so the big Photographs of Historic Portland coffee table book could be left out for browsing over, and the Portland Streetcar book, and the Portland Baseball teams book, and the Portland Gardens book, the Hill Walks of Portland, Underground Tunnels, Portland Jazz and Blues, Portland Confidential, end of the Oregon Trail. We sold hundreds of these books.
So how is this going to change life on the Willamette as we know it? I think it could, I really do, because we can create a source point for further work going forward, create a living history of a place, a block, a neighborhood, a building, a shore, a bridge, a house, a street, and ultimately, a community. It's fascinating to hear the story of a place you know, who doesn't like a good true story?
These moments keep happening to me, but I have learned to just roll with it, and not try to explain it anymore, the weird looks from people started to get to me.
Again today, standing talking to someone, great conversation, making meaningful connections with new people, and that almost-creepy wave came over me from behind my head and washed out past us to sweep up the entire roomful of people, to splash up along the walls then out the doorway. This has so already happened to me, right here right now, with this person, with that feeble light from the grown-over window, the mid-century furniture, I know what that person is going to say next---bang, there it is, the other person has to go, I say my line, we laugh...
When I get home, I write my best friend that a current of low resistance is happening right now, that a step in this certain direction is the right step for me, there's no fighting against anything, whatever "the Flow" is for an individual, I seem to be in mine. My friend has always been great at surfing that momentum in her own life, willing to work hard, but knowing when to ride a high tide. For many years, I was not knowing how to do that, although she's been a great friend who's always leading by example. And she's humble about it, too. The magnitude of the pure relief I experience when looking at today versus last year or last decade, flabbergasts me. She laughs when I tell her; "That's the pay-off for all that thrashing around back then girlfriend!" she cackles. Like a spooky reflection, I remember hanging out together by her fireplace at her old place in Florida, a few beers gone and more in the fridge, and we wove out our visions for the Good Life in our futures. She was going back West, New Mexico or Colorado, and she wanted horses and two kids, Sam Elliott in the saddle and the mountains on the edge of her acres. She was going to let her hair fly in the dry wind and get all that South Florida humidity out of her system and her books. Plant a million bulbs and some trees, and grow herbs on her front porch, and have about three dogs.
We were all so much more Florida then, though we fought against it. Not in the right element.
I wanted to have a funky artsy place in an old farmhouse or bungalow with a big porch, some cats, room for all my books yet walls for the artwork, ground to get some tomatoes, herbs and flowers going, windchimes and suncatchers, music and light, writing and school, no suburban ambitions or homeowners' associations, cool neighbors and be either in Provence or Northern California probably, somewhere with ocean, mountains, woods, and decent coffeehouses and art film theaters.
Our enchantments must have flown up that chimney and started the winds of change to blow. Other than the Sam Elliott part, she's pretty much right where she saw herself back then, including her nephew being her other kid in the house. Slick maneuvering, there. And it didn't even take her ten years to do it all. Or me, either, and I can still afford Portland.
So the Deja-vu thing is not too scary to me. It's usually always a good re-run. Foreshadowing or looking back, it's the same loop, I get it now.
My last week of classes for the Winter 2008 term have been this week---finished already. Crazy.
One more archaeology class Friday, then exams Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday.
Then let Spring Break begin!
Not that I need a break, I'm still all fired up and being a goof about it all. Still.
As the week went by, more and more of the syllabi were getting shortened, running out of term, less to have to cover for the finals. Then today, one prof said "I've decided the exam will not be cumulative, just cover what we've done since the mid-term." The class of 90-something students broke out into rowdy applause. She smiled in relief and her shoulders fell about a foot from around her ears. She doesn't have a TA this term---poor soul.
Next term looks bright, too. The last Intro Anthropology class, the last PSU-peculiar "university studies cluster course" requirement (I picked Medieval Studies), and Roman History. However, this class may or may not work out, the 10-minute break between classes to get from one building to the other won't be enough time to get 5 blocks and at least four stories up from the Engineering Building to central campus Cramer Hall. What's a history class doing at the Engineering Building? Is this class heavily chosen by engineering students or something? I'd need a golf cart to do that sprint, so I may have to change it out if they don't reassign it to a closer building. The Roman part of my art history class was my favorite section, so I want to know all about Rome now. Everything. This happens to me all the time. You should see all the books I have on Egypt...
It's fun to read the texts and go over the notes and feel like you know this stuff, no need to cram. The idea I heard about is that your short-term memory files things you learn straight into your mid-to-long-term memory if you study, then take a nap or call it a night and go to bed. So while I'm dreaming about Bruce Campbell as a trapeze artist like Errol Flynn in a technicolor movie in my brain theater complete with a glass harmonica orchestra playing circus tunes, all that biological anthropology and paleoanthropology material is becoming part of my mental office studio (this happened). There it will be, all that information, forever close to the tip of my tongue to horrify and bore my friends, "Hey, that reminds me of this group of hominids who walked across an ash field---wait, don't go, okay I'll stop."
Now that Garden Season is here, prepping the Garden anyway, it will serve as the great balancer of brain and body. Being in the dirt releases a trip-switch in my head, and I work out all kinds of things while weeding, planting, gathering marigold seeds, or ripping out last year's wintered-over stems and stalks. What could be wiser than reading textbooks while enjoying porch time and the tomato starts?
All is well.
Here's a perfect example of the essential usefulness of knowing some anthropology...
Setting: backyard hot tub at dusk, sneaking in while neighbor is out of town.
Cast: half-buzzed sneaky neighbor in hot tub; one resident of house of said hot tub;
Scene: Roaring hot tub jets, growing twilight, just as a chilly sprinkle starts, house resident tentatively approaches occupied hot tub, saying name of sneaky neighbor repeatedly so as not to startle her. Finally she hears him---
Sneak: He-e-e-y, neighbor! Wow, hope it's okay, I called---
Resident: I didn't want to scare you, it's cool, did it warm up yet?
S: Yeah, it's gettin' there, almost 100 now.
R: Mind if I join you? (climbs in, resets jets, louder roaring and churning)
S: Nope, just relaxing after a long week of classes, I brought a beer, TGIF! (they laugh)
S & R don't really know each other well, they each know the owner of the house pretty well, the one who isn't there. A few moments of loud but awkward silence. They discuss Portland, other places they each used to live, until suddenly---
R: Like that place in New England, where they found that ancient place with the rocks and the coins---
S: ---and the petroglyphs---
R: Right! Like before Columbus and the Vikings!
S: I saw that show on the National Geographic channel where they think it may have been the ancient Phoenicians or even post-ice age Europeans that followed the melting ice shield to North America---
R: Yeah, I saw that, and the native peoples had European DNA before North America was colonized---
S: Like Kenniwick Man had Altaic or Ainu DNA, not recent DNA from more recent peoples in the Pacific Northwest----
R: So what about the Nazca Lines? I took one of those classes where the teacher said none of any of it was true---
S: Yeah, 'The Pseudo-sciences' myth-busting thing, like 'NO, the Aliens did NOT build the pyramids!'
R: Exactly!
R & S go on, getting redder and redder in the face in the 106 degree water for another 30 minutes.
S: (feeling faint) I think I have to get out---I'm poached. (sloshes out, grabs towel)
R: Yeah, me too, right after you. (climbs out, covers hot tub)
They stand there steaming in the dim evening, bi-pedal lobsters:
S: Great chat!
R: Yeah, good soak, this is easy to get used to.
S: I owe _____ a case of beer, for all the kind lending of the hot tub goodness. (stops herself from launching into the brewing history of the Fertile Crescent peoples)
They each drip towards their respective front doors. S drinks a large glass of water, once again grateful for the ever-readiness of Anthropological knowledge to save the day and gloss-over faux pas of all kinds, remedy social situations, and claim common interests to make new friends. S frantically searches her freezer for an ice pack, to avoid the popping of the top of her head.
curtain
After some comfort remedies of panang curry and strawberry Haagen Dazs last night, I bravely flipped back over to CNN at 10 and saw the happy almost-sweep Hillary made of Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island.
This grrrrrl starts YELLIN' at the television set----so happy, so happy, so happy. Hillary looked so happy delivering her speech, and as much as the pundits like to slam her for tearing up, she seemed truly humbled at the very very end of her speech. Her voice caught, that her supporters surged like almost a force of nature to keep her from going down in flames last night. Believe me, this woman may be a seasoned politician, but she was moved and understands that she can't do this all by her self-sufficient self. But I've been a fan for almost 20 years, she and I are both feminists of the second wave who don't apologize for it, and now in our middle age, girls grow up being able to almost take it for granted that they can run for office and not just be the "coffee girl".
This is a huge stride, just as huge as the civil rights stride that makes Barack Obama the other "this is so cool right now!!" candidate. My friend's 13 year old actually asked her mom to tell her about the 60's so she could understand better all the references to it culturally and politically, and she was truly astounded at what the status quo had been. These are the moments that humble me. 'Cause I was a little kid then and remember the snarling white faces live on black and white TV, and heard people say out loud the most horrible things when Martin Luther King was killed, and saw my friends' moms ostracized and belittled for going to work and being one of those "god-damned women's libbers". I used to tell my parents that I was born a liberated woman, and it pissed them off. But it's true, and makes me want to holler at my television today when I see these bitter nasty pseudo-preachers slam Hillary Clinton because they are still feeling insulted that she "didn't stay home and bake cookies" but became an attorney and worked on the Watergate hearings--didn't know her place was in the home and to stay there. And shut up.
That's why I want to see her as Madame President. Like Benazir Bhutto, or Chancellor Angela Merkel, even Thatcher or Meir or Indira Gandhi, it's not like Hillary would be the first and only one ever. Because I know she can do it. No one could have a better kitchen cabinet than hers. And that's not a lame joke, FDR had one, too.
I'm not anti-Obama. If it were he and anyone else running, that sticker on my car would say "Obama '08". It could yet, who can say today who clinches the nomination? The two people I was watching CNN with last night both said they wished Michelle Obama was running instead of her husband. That too may come to pass. She's a high-power attorney. She doesn't stay home and bake cookies all day. That is how far we've all come (thank god) in the last 40 years, that we can know that and it is not an attempt at humor. It is where we are today.
So so happy about that.
Can a person hold their breath for an entire day in primary season?
All the way home on the bus today, I'm thinking, "Turn on CNN and see how the voting is going," and then the trap door drops out and I hear, "Don't put yourself through this, it seems even Democrats want to be preached to, he'll hire all her best wonks to do what he doesn't know how to anyway, start moving on."
I'm watching Wolf Blitzer with the sound on really low.
This summer, when McCain wasn't doing so well, I thought of how I had told my co-workers 2 years ago that McCain would win in 2008, really not much doubt about it in my mind. I was amazed his campaign seemed to be on life-support and Romney was doing his best SNL Reagan impersonation and actually being taken fairly seriously. I knew Giuliani was way too New York for everyone but South Floridians and their kids who still live in New York and New Jersey.
So I was really wrong about Barack Obama. Man oh man, was I ever. He's hip, he's cool, he can do the hanging loose with everybody thing, he's never said anything while his wife was running for president that is still being bitterly held against him over 20 years later (the staying home and making cookies thing) and he can even admit to doing drugs and not be held to an executive office standard. Wow, who'd have thought it? The right wingers hate him less because he's a guy, and he hasn't done anything yet that they can nail him about.
So even though I was right that McCain is the Republican nominee, and the least of all Republican evils, he just may loose to Obama. And it hit me the other night seeing Barack on TV, that he seems kind of familiar, and I don't mean the MLK oratory style. When he's standing there just talking, and walking back and forth on a stage, it finally hit me who it was: Bill Clinton.
And then I realized that's why he might win, McCain will seem like the first George Bush, and Obama will seem like the younger, new generation, hipper (the ladies like 'im) fresh from state government Bill Clinton. 'Cause we all know that if Bill and Hillary ran against each other for office, who would win.
It's so great that we are having such an unusually exciting election season, and one of those rare changing of the guard thresholds we see about every 20 years or so, but this week I'm experiencing that weird anxiety of this suspense. My hopes were riding so high, she was the front-runner all this time, and it's hard to see her so desperately hanging in there. I had already thoroughly started imagining her first term in office, maybe Barack could be Attorney General or something juicy like that. Now...I'm just feeling so uneasy about it all. He is being naive about global protocol, and will hire on a slew of Bill's crew to help him get on his feet, but if anyone should be leading Bill's crew, it should be Hillary who helped put it together in the first place. It reminds me of the female executive who trains the young male hotshot, who then replaces her in the corner office. The middle-aged woman issue is this--- She isn't a woman most men want to have sex with, and she reminds men under 40 of their moms and who wants your mom for president, right? But if she's too sexy, that's not good, either. Geena Davis had good presidential charisma.
This is nuts. I'm going to shut it off until at least 8pm, another 4 hours away. With all of my term paper absorption over the weekend, there is all that housework I didn't do. Someone remind me to never change paper topics a mere 10 days before the due date ever again.
Or rather, I'm getting warmed up for the composing of the term paper.
sigh
Chicago Manual of Style, I detest thee. Already, I'm thinking, "Isn't there software for this crap?" I want to spend time on the meat and potatoes of this project, not the alignment of the grains of salt. There is software for this, and all the nagging ninny voices warn the slacking paperer not to rely on them to be accurate or appropriate for their project. Details. Hate them.
And I did put it off until the last three days, didn't I? The research and sourcing was done, the creating of the illustration page was done, and somehow Friday and Saturday got away from me. So now it's today and tomorrow (and tomorrow night) and that's it. Lesson learned. Dumb-ass.
So, what about a 30 minute hot tub to relax? (no)
What about taking the bassett hound on a afternoon walk before her people arrive home? (later)
Watering plants? (no)
Washing a few dishes? A load of laundry? (no)
Okay, a hot shower and a fresh pot of coffee? (hmmm, alright)
Cue up classical 89.9, unwrap that block of French shea butter soap from New Seasons, hit the 'brew' button----then get to work.
Great, now the sun is coming out....
Back in the Ann Arbor days, the early 80s, when I was doing a lot more writing, I composed another front stoop poem, on a strangely warm, sunny day at the end of February. The house on Bath Street was perched next to a woody ravine on a dead end street, surrounded by bungalows with rampant herb gardens. Purple sage can survive a cold Michigan winter, shrinking under the snow and waiting for spring. I sat on the listing plank steps with my face to the sun, and waited for the clear sign of what to chose next for my life; go to Florida and a new life, or stay here and find another job. Re-reading the poem, I knew I had already made up my mind, I was going to go, and I'd never sit in the warm sunshine in late February on these steps again.
Waves of that day came back to me this morning, walking downtown and seeing clumps of drowsy purple sage next to gray lavender and blooming rosemary in a large planter. What was a complete anomaly in Michigan, is a normal winter's day here, and I much prefer it this way. I can sit on my stony concrete steps with my face in the sun in late February in this place, on these steps, and it all comes washing back. That I am finally back in school, dealing with the Biggest Incomplete of my entire life, but outwardly doing much of what I was doing back then in Ann Arbor, is kinda funny. Almost like the last 22 years didn't happen. More and more, it even feels that way.
To some, this may look like Being Stuck. As in, "Ma'am, it's done already, move on, get over it, drop the baggage!"
And I reply, "That's what I tried to do those 22 years." I did the Job Thing, the 'My Beautiful Career' Thing, the 'Serious Adult Relationship' Thing, the Survival Strategy Thing, and even the Not-Caring Thing. Years and years spent in the wilderness. One or two major choices I may have done differently, looking back, but if presented with the same circumstances, my path would probably look much the same. I mean, living in a condo on Highland Beach, Atlantic Coast South Florida for free for eight months at 24 years old---who is going to say, "Uh, no thanks, really, I much prefer my unheated room in a run-down house with flaky roommates in a Michigan winter, a chronic respiratory illness and being unemployed,"?
Today was the first time since that last day at the B-store that I walked past my old workplace downtown. It felt weird. Past the bank where I spent so much time each weekday afternoon waiting to make a bag of deposits, past the parked FedEx truck of my old driver, with a ticket on it (as usual). Past the mall, past the Russian 'kofe' place, smelling the Mexican lunch place; how many hundreds of times did I make that walk, but veer left to the wall of glass doors? Today, I was smiling and just kept walking past, towards the river, towards home in the middle of the workday with my class notes in my book bag. No big deal, I know, but for a fraction of a second I was time traveling, 22 years, then 13 months, but also into the near-future. Because Portland is the place to navigate from, for me, and no condo in a warm place could change my mind. PSU has no clue what mad power it has to change the stream of Deep Time.
Daphne, violets and trilliums. Crocuses, narcissus, daffodils and camellias.
Standing in the full sunshine, facing south in a sheltered spot, it feels like June. Then, step into the breeze that's wafting all that perfume towards you, and it's a gentle mid-50s, your black t-shirt soaking up enough warmth to keep you perfectly comfortable sitting out in front of Stumptown Cafe on Division this afternoon. Or Common Grounds, or Fireside, or Javaman---or your own sidewalk stoop. I won't wave at you, I don't want to disturb the vibe we're each riding, I know what listening to ancient French court music in the sun while inhaling fresh violets does to me, I can imagine how amazing your trip is right now. You still have the laptop open before you, but your gaze is a million light years away.
You can stop time, for a little while anyway, by taking a deep breath and releasing it like an evaporating shadow, and disappear along with it. Then just pay attention to all the wonder flowing along around you, over you, through you like a smooth rock in a strong river. Like the faint mandolin floating from somewhere, the violets again, the bus and the dog barking, the bell on the cafe door, your coffee keeping your palm warm, the sun through your eyelids, a crumb of that scone on your lip melting yum, skateboarder growling past, that guy must be playing mandolin on his porch----
Hours can pass this way in clock time, but you've just enjoyed a lozenge of eternity that will remain in your neuron memory the remainder of your life. Sometimes the moment feels like an illuminated spiders web humming, or cool damp and comforting beach sand when the waves rush out again. Pick your talisman, they're your treasures.
Repeat often, as necessary, wherever, whenever you are
A strange kind of weekend off, for a student person. The big lead-up to my Friday morning exam was all consuming this past week, cramming, making study-guide outlines, craving that "A". By 11:10am Friday, I was free, and felt just like I did after driving away from Pioneer Place Mall for the last time with my car loaded and no 'God' key on my keyring anymore, just over a year ago.
The sun was even out, it was about 50 degrees, and I had nothing pressing at all. My term paper wasn't due for two weeks yet. I stopped by FedExKinkos and got the artwork for it printed in color from my flash drive, and it wasn't even noon yet. what to do, what to do, what to do?
Caught the bus home, bought some beer, walked Miss Daisy Bassett, and basically goofed off.
It is a weird feeling, to be a "grown-up" and know in your head what you should be doing, or could be doing, and still just slack like you were born to be one, because nothing is a crisis right at the moment. I like this.
So, being the adult, I am spending a part of this afternoon being responsible, doing laundry, reading over my art history research notes for that paper, running over to New Seasons for a couple of things, but I may just be getting better at time management after all. Or getting better at power-slacking; like power-napping, in the right amount at the right time, I feel like I'm getting away with something. Or taking art classes, leaving the library with a $200 book on the history of still-lifes, and it was okay to do that, too.
It all sounds so silly, I know, but I just thought all of this was going to be so much harder than it is, and I had that idea since I began thinking about going back to school in 1986, 5 years after I had had to quit. The cost, the job-juggling, the shitty local Florida college, the re-locating to one I would want to attend, the relationship, the commute, the age difference, the unmet expectations, the Magic Golden Perfect Job at the end of the stage when I got my diploma, the debt to repay, yadda yadda yadda. It was all too much. Abandon ship! Just get a job and work your way to some mid-level with some insurance and make Life be about something else. Don't listen to that little voice going on and on about dreams and being real, get real about paying the bills instead.
Also, now is just the right time, it came together without the moving of Heaven and Earth effort it would have required before. There was some noticeable remorse when I was sitting in that room of my peers at the Anthropology Dept. lecture a few weeks ago---they have their Masters and PhDs already, shit, I'm still just an undergrad---and it did feel crappy. It really did.
But I realized I'm not interested in excavating all my regrets and reasons, it would take a long time and just make me feel worse, so don't do it. Keep moving--- advice I gave friends and employees for tough times, just keep going forward. Take naps---my other bit of advice. Put on some great music and something will surface. Lay in some snack-age, frosty bevs, and chill. Take a long brisk walk, come home to a hot shower, then snooze for 20 minutes. Then---get back to your task. Or not. slacker
When the 10' high image flashed up on the white screen at the front of the lecture hall, I experienced a moment of utter delight and the thrill of seeing why Art is so crucial to education.
This is a mosaic on the floor of a Roman villa, in what was a sumptuous dining area with reclining couches for feasting, and this charming floor to toss your lobster shells, peacock bones, sea urchin spiny shells, bruised olives, lemon rinds, etc. So it all would blend in with the tromp l'oeil cast-offs already tiled with faint dimensional shadowing beneath your chaise. Don't hit the mouse.
So I think at least 50 of my cohorts in the ancient art history class are ditching their previously researched research topic for something as fun as this. We'll all say the same thing 50 different ways, our poor professor. She'll regret slipping this slide into the lecture, it wasn't in the textbook.
So maybe some more art history classes for me are in store, I am really enjoying this one, and there are specialized classes spending an entire term on one era or cultural movement, not just a week like this Intro class. Romanesque, Ancient Near East, Ancient Asian, Islamic, Renaissance architecture...if I only have 54 more credits to fulfill my major, I'm going to need some electives.
Honestly, I knew I'd like this class, but I didn't know it would be this much fun. Mosaic artists do their modern version of this, with RedBull cans, cigarette butts, gum, lipstick, underwear, dust bunnies, Cheetos---the average dorm room floor. Mine would be books, magazines, cat toys, recycling in the corner, bus tickets, shoes and bookbags. This type of art is basically a snapshot of popular culture of the time---Roman villa to PSU dorm floor. Full circle.
Wow---
Is this a great town, or what?
I took this from a bus roaring over the Morrison Bridge this afternoon, what an amazing view!
All the rain we had, I knew that the mosses would be peak with the sun sneaking out now and then,
so I was disturbing the homeowners hanging out on a Friday afternoon, "Who is that taking pictures in our front yard?" But look at those pussywillow shots, can you stand it? Got the curly willow at Kath & Harv's, and the extreme plush velvet at Matt & Emily's. They weren't hom
e.
I'm sitting here with the Spring term course schedule already.
This is week 6 of the Winter term, half over, midterms behind me, I shoulder the bookbag up and down the hills filled with library books loaned to me from all over Oregon about the ancient Hittite Empire, the Research Paper to write, then only the Final Exams ahead.
Afterwards, the 10 days off before Spring term starts on March 31st.
What do I need to do to retrieve my photographic memory of the first lap of my schooling? Only needed to read something twice, and I not only could remember it for exams, but could visualize it on the page. Before anyone calls out the AGE card, I think that the working world had it's own level of memorization requirements, as in unpacking 150 cases of books and remembering that in the flurry of sorting them into storage bins whether the third Spiderwick book came in and whether it was in paperback or hardcover. And how far back in the bin you stacked it.
So my memory skills were merely redirected to assist me as a customer serving boss instead of a student (or singer of rock lyrics).
Six weeks in, and my stair-taking is less embarrassing, I know which of the busses running through the fare-free zone stops have a drop-off stop at PSU (Portland, she rains) and which cross-over bridges between buildings are enclosed so I don't have to passively smoke a cigarette or two on my way to Neuberger Hall. If only there was one to the library...
I love that library. It has that mid-century smell that I remember from before the digital age and it comforts me when browsing through the stacks and finding an irresistible book on 1930's Mandarin Chinese poetry in translation, or repaired bindings on 100 year old books so they can still be read. Libraries are treasuries, attracting serious students, snoozers, and today a table of fully chadored young women playing with their cell phones and giggling when a young man sat down at their table. BTW, the Hittite books are fascinating, how am I going to narrow down which works of art to compare for the paper? I love these kind of dilemmas.
But I need a new laptop, clearly the 2003 Sony is so slow and noisy and almost 9lbs, it's not going to be hanging off my shoulder on the bus and throwing out the other side of my lower back. There have been days when I've come into a lecture hall and the whole back half of the room is wall-to-wall upright laptops, and the pitter-patter of Apple keystrokes has become just as integral to the lecture as the whir of the slide projector over my head. Free wi-fi access is everywhere on campus, so I could work on my online research at the table by the window with my hot organic coffee gripped in my hand, then speed off to my next class. I get a student discount if I get one through the online Apple Education store, or I can check Best Buy, but being able to carry around my files and add to them while on campus will really come in handy. As Steven would say,"Well, some bitches better get a job!" I'd rather get a grant, and shake some Apples loose from the money tree. Some bitches get wicked crafty...
My neighbor John was snickering at me today, he's a retired teacher, that I'm just so happy to be doing what I'm doing, loaded down with books late in the afternoon, coming home from the bus. Sometimes I feel seven years old again, can't wait to break open the books after class and mentally run like hell. There is nothing else in the world I'd rather be doing.
Who knew? I thought it would be a bunch of wonks, Star Wars alumni, Tolkien freaks, time travelers, anti-Indiana Joneses, Outcasts of the Curious Anachronism Society and RenFest drop outs. Well shame on me, although I'm a tad disappointed to see that they seem to look alot like me, except for the manly men with earnest expressions and one or two with Merlin beards. At least here in downtown Portland, it isn't a Summer of '69 reunion either attending the Anthropology Department's "First Thursday" Lecture event at 4pm yesterday afternoon. Of course I was going to go, and it has nothing to do with the extra credit essay, because the topic was establishing a Cultural Resources Preservation Program for the City of Portland, to enforce the national, state, county and municipal historic sites' laws as well as bringing it to a higher profile in the community.
Honestly, I was stunned. You mean Portland doesn't have this already? I thought. You've got to be kidding me.
The presenter was Wendy Ann Wright, a PSU student in the Anthropology department, a Powells Books alumna, mom, and passionate member of Sam Adams' staff at City Hall. OMG!!
What better person to catalyze this idea in the city, and she had a great slide presentation of the research she's done in other cities nationally, to find models that are community-based and effective already. Again, I sat there looking at her slides of St. Mary's Academy Wall demolition that she may as well have downloaded from my blog, as well as hurried excavations of privies and Chinese cemetery graves with a row of bulldozers and backhoes hovering in the background.
Portland doesn't have this in place already? I can't believe this! When she concluded, my hand shot up. "Hi, I'm really uninformed about the whole City permitting process, but everyday I see the progress of the building project at the base of the Hawthorne Bridge, and they're already 50 feet down---before the contractor started digging, he had to find out about gas lines, water lines,
how strong the soil barrier is between the hole and the river---I would think historic maps of municipal locations are available to check this just like the gas and water companies survey and OK going ahead with excavating, right? Couldn't a City of Portland Archaeologist or Historic Site Manager Office be layered in here at this point so at least within the city limits sites aren't just plowed up?"
Well, she mentioned the standard fire maps, and archived city maps, but no, there isn't really anything like this in Portland at this time, it would be a budget issue certainly.
An older gentleman stood up. He was concerned that there was a punitive attitude coming off of archaeologists and site preservationists that would actually have the opposite effect of discouraging people from coming forward with asking for site assistance if an artifact showed up in a shovel of dirt or their basement bricks collapse and there's old bootlegger paraphrenalia falling onto the floor. Why couldn't the utilities and industrial corporations be asked to underwrite some of these efforts and also cooperate with the city in recovering some of their own industrial history and be seen as caring about the community preservation movement instead of being told to absorb the time and costs of investigating sites all over the city? He started out seeming a bit hostile to Wendy's anti-looting attitude that makes all collectors and antique markets suspect, but she was able to agree with him and turn his question into an approach almost everyone could agree with. She said there was an African American Art exhibit that Sam Adams' office was involved in that had had an antique bottle collector involved, but he pulled out after getting some flack from the archaeologists in town about his collection being "looted", which in strict trade terminology means removed from its historical context (or dump pit). It is a comment on we everyday townsfolk that most of us need to be educated that saving a cloudy antique bottle (it's blue and says 'poison', cool!!) from your backyard compost pile of 103 years ago constitutes "looting". But it is. Strictly speaking. Even if you own the property.
This is where the contact sport part comes in.
Needless to say, in Wendy's research to find a working preservation model that has widespread and cooperative community involvement, she finds that there are plenty of struggles with individuals' and commercial property rights when it comes to designating something 'historic' or a 'cultural resource' , and different cities have varying levels of success with this issue. She mentioned Alexandria, VA and Vancouver, WA as two cities with viable programs and great community involvement and support. These agencies get the kids involved with introductions to archaeology with a "kids dig"; artifact copies that the kids get to use methods of excavation to "find" and analyze. Also, many Native American Nations are active in community awareness and education to preserve sites and ways of life, often coordinating with municipal and county agencies to work with the public and commercial interests. Often, she said, there are laws in place already that are poorly enforced or thought of as arcane, and educating officials about these laws would be a place to start with raising preservation with the public.
There's already a faint sound in my head, "You should do this, you love Portland so much, what a great project this would be to get involved with and help launch!" I haven't had a huge ambition in a few months, it's about time to have a new one, isn't it? Halfway through my first term, after 25+ years out of school, and already I'm the department expert in my own delusional brain. Too funny, isn't it? And the fact that these "First Thursday" Anthropology lecture attendees are about my age, already have my interests, and go to a pub afterwards to eat and drink and talk shop would be the perfect arm-twister to get me to keep going. And earning extra credit. And blogging about it. Until maybe I finally dive in and present Sam Adams with a plan.
I have a mid-term tomorrow, so this will be short.
My dear friend Jolie took her 13 year old daughter out of school last week to go to a political rally at Denver University, knowing the experience of 'politics as rock concert' would have a lasting impression on her youngin', and here she is. (they grow up so fast)
She shook Bill's hand, and took pictures of him going through the reception line. Jolie was so proud, and happy to be the shining blue light in her red state neighborhood, and that her daughter got the political bug of how important this election is in her lifetime, and to be aware and awake for it while it's happening. Talk about handing the torch to the next generation, Ted Kennedy's got nothing on this one.
I stayed home from an Anthropology Department after school lecture on 'Myth-busting CSI Forensics' to watch the Clinton-Obama debate last Thursday live on CNN, and found out the next day that the lecture was packed, and the kids in class didn't even know there was a debate or who was debating or that only two Democrats were left in the race. I already knew that no one under 25 listens to the radio anymore, which guarantees the final death rattle of neo-Cratzies talk radio shows, but other than Obama buzz online, the GenYers don't watch news or CNN either. No newspapers, no radio, no landline telephones, no tv news---we're undergoing a complete media revolution and over 40 people don't know it yet. The campaigns who 'get it' will lead the way to the political future and everyone else will be wondering what just ran them over.
I'm watching the bug-eyed furious conservative 'faith' party implode because a reasonable man who wants to work with Democrats will win the nomination, which is another example of how crazy this 'moral majority' crap is and that it's finally drawing to a close in the light of reason. This new generation who loves Obama won't fall for this line of narrow exclusionist thinking, Rushbaugh can fade away with Cheney and the rest of the Nixon/Reagan interns and we can get on with leading our country into the future. It's a nicely odd feeling when I can choose between a black candidate, a woman candidate and a white republican I respect in a presidential election, and they all have an absolute chance of winning, AND will all work together after the election. I have hope again.
Back to the wall saga----
I didn't have my camera with me today, plus it was a snotty rain in the afternoon, almost freezing and never getting beyond about 7am bright. I'll bring it along tomorrow, but the scoop today is that they have left the huge deciduous (oak) tree in the center of the lot, while the large pine is gone, leaving a raw stump about 20ft in the air. Yeesch! The cracked corner is knocked down to the height of a knee-wall and it continues at that height along to where the quaint arched gateway cuts through. Above one gateway is a carved stone arch that says "St. Mary's Academy" in a gothic Victorian script, above a gray slat door, and the teardown stops there on the side facing East. Packed earth berms slope away from the edge of the wall up to the level of the carpark, covered with gray plastic membrane and sandbags, keeping the dirt solid and dry. The old flagstone knee-wall turns the corner and heads west up the hill for about 30 or 40 ft, until the second arched gateway filled with a gray slat door. The original height and capstoned wall continues to the corner as if nothing is happening down the hill. The little ferns and mosses are all still soaking up the rains and thriving, green as glow worms on the flagstones.
My favorite dog is leaving the planet and my heart is breaking. There's nothing I can do except hug on him, pet and scratch him, give him some yogurt and doggie cookies, push the water dish over, and help him up if he wants to go outside. Nothing but everything I can to help him and give him love and touch.
You're never ready, you just aren't, unless you're good at keeping your heart in an insulated place far away from where it's supposed to be. I'm no good at that with animals, and even though he's been sliding in that direction for a while, it was still a shock to see it so baldly and with no other meaning than this. I'm tired of saying goodbye to animals, but I can't quit loving them, there's no other way than to love the hell out of them, so a fresh heartbreak, another raw grief, and time to say goodnight again. I know what unconditional love is because I've learned it this way, over and again, the noble animal souls who leave me behind blessed with their unconditional acceptance and love for me. There's no 'right' way to do grief, you just shoulder into it and keep breathing. Hugging other animals is a fine solace.
As pleased as I was to see the wall mostly still standing, I was then horrified to see what they were doing today to the huge trees on the lot. It seems they're removing the back fill that was put in at least 40 years ago to create a parking lot (by the size of the trees) and maybe leaving the wall intact? The backhoe operator is very delicate when digging near the wall facade, and is working on taking out the big slabs of asphalt and pounding them into smaller chunks that can be scooped up with a bulldozer. He takes out a chunk of the old concrete that's behind the flagstone with the vest guy guiding him, then he comes back for the soil. None of the rest of the wall is being disturbed (today) but since they're taking out the trees, maybe the wall is part of the preservation of whatever the future use the site will have.
This is what's on the other side of the street, facing the moss wall, the modern alternative.
Say it ain't so.
I know, why do I care, right? I don't work or live there, it didn't belong to my family or anything, so who cares? This wall is an historic part of the whole St. Mary's Academy & Church complex and is at least 100 years old, if not 175, and there's no replicating it if it's torn down. I mean, look at this gray nothingness---
The moss, the placement of each stone by human hands and mortared generously, the quality that has lasted this long, that's what I value in my urban surroundings, why I love Portland so much. If it's gone in a few weeks, someone noticed it happening, and took some last pictures of the beautiful stonework and inner-city mid-winter greenness of it. It's a living wall, it really is.
