Run

A Saturday morning, spent finishing a marvelous and wrenching novel Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje, whose name is very, very fun to say exuberantly (On-da-che!). He is, you may know, the author the the highly-esteemed The English Patient. It's been a while since I've picked up a novel without any expectation of it or the author's previous work (I haven't read The English Patient) deciding, in one of five fiction aisles at the Pike's Peak Rock-rimmon branch library, to add it to the pile after reading the first few pages. The chapters are short, and some of them are in italicized print, which means that while the POV remains in the third-person, the focus switches from Anil to Sarath to Gamini to Ananda and, when italicized, back to time of the murders and chaos that the three investigate. I generally don't like when novels juxtapose characters and events like this - I think I actually groaned when I found this - because it seems like such an easy way to reveal plot twists to the reader, like Tarantino and his incessant out-of-sequence editing. Ondaatje doesn't do that. Much of the exposition the novel gives, the ideas and elusive journeys that drive the characters, that idea of forensic studies and archaeology as ways to discover truth and life - studying the bones and be able to glean your hobbies, injuries and occupation; studying the soil in which the bones were buried to see where, and when, it took place - do just that. They shed moments of life from war-torn Sri Lanka, the stretched life of a forensic residency and etc. It's a beautiful novel, I encourage you to pick it up and I am not, in any way, benefiting from mentioning this novel. For the record.
OK. I had to get that out because I went for a brief run today in the cool, fresh mountain air and came back with a bloody nose and a wrenching headache. Stupid, stupid, stupid body not yet adjusted to the elevation and less oxygen available and storms off in the distance. So, this and a few cups of water slowly ingested helped. Thanks all. What have YOU been reading/watching this summer?

Bleck

I am unsatisfied with that previous post. What's the point of it? Eh. It's a series of poorly executed snapshots of insignificant parts of my Colorado daily, bumbling across and weakly reaching for... I'm not really sure what. I spent a lot of my initial efforts here interfacing and introducing and letting my gracious hosts and employers know that I'm competent and approachable and willing to give input and not an abrasive prick. I like to think I succeeded, they're all smiles so far and I'm working to keep it that way, of course. My brother texted me today and said, "Middle-aged women love the boys in our family for some reason..." I wonder if that's true. Well, no - really, I wonder WHY that's true. Because it is true. Awesome... ?
OK. This cavernous home is lovely and there are, of course, the necessary creaks and hitches etc. to keep us on our toes when we get too comfortable. And I'm getting back there (to comfortable) but I'm still carrying around this solid steel meat tenderizer/mallet. Yes. I've practiced quick, furtive (and deadly!) swipes into the dark. One recent night, while working away on my laptop in the kitchen, the fireplace in the nearby sitting room turned on. This means, the gas was released and lit and a fire was burning pretty aggressively. All of a sudden.
I know! I was just sitting here! EITHER it's on some strange timer... in May... or the obvious answer, there's someone(s) else in this house with me... but they don't want to kill me (yet) because, of course, they lit the gas... otherwise, they would have merely released the gas and slowly fill the house, and my mind, and I would have gone with a sudden blaze or a gradual, catatonic slumber.
I FOUND the switch for the fireplace a handful of frantic hours later BEHIND THE TELEVISION where I had never been remotely close to venturing... Carol and Jerry, if you're reading this from Tajikistan, you could have mentioned the wandering souls in your home... I'm still cool with it, I still have the mallet, but it could have been brought to my attention. Not a big deal. Also, I didn't take the garbage out on Monday night because I accumulated half a bag, so I just didn't bother.
What else? Creaks, inconsistent shade positions, water dripping, toilets randomly flushing, pale English children in antiquated riding clothes playing in the basement/watching me sleep from beneath the bed etc. I'll keep an eye out for the next really freaky thing though.

Barb Wire Fences

It's an interesting sensation to walk up to a barb wire fence in the middle of the woods. The wire is rusty and worn, drooping down to the countless hikers who, if they have boots, simply grab the post, step on the line and continue on their way. If they have light hiking shoes, like me, they sling their bag and tripod over before bending down to slide carefully over.
It's been raining semi-heavily every day since the weekend. Today was the first with consistent sun and I wanted to see what the camera could capture at dusk. Cacti, boulders, wildflowers, brooding and engulfing trees etc. This is all much more invigorating in person, with the cool mountain air, and not read in Georgia font on your computer screen, but just imagine if you feel like it. I've still to completely adjust to the elevation and...

NOTE: Columbia Winery, Cabernet Sauvignon 1998 is maybe the WORST wine I've ever had. I wish I could go into some passionate Paul Giamatti soliloquy about why this sucks so bad, probably using the word 'vapid' a few times... the thing is... after going through the ceremony of uncorking, unwrapping, pouring and swirling and sniffing - all in eager anticipation - and then tasting nothing until the faint finish... there is disappointment.

crouching down to squint through a tiny viewfinder and adjusting the focus THROUGH said tiny viewfinder and tinkering with that tripod and then

standing up

and taking in the multiple depth of fields of real life and having your eyes automatically adjust to the groves and tall grasses and the breadth of "I climbed up here, from down there, and I'm looking down at where I stood looking at this rock I'm currently standing on and it's minuscule." Hiking down must be a steady, gradual trip if only to balance the necessary fluids reaching and fleeting from your brain. And, anyway, it's so very calm.

I've been telling friends, through various digital communication means, that I haven't spoken to anybody near my age since I arrived here. I have no money for casual cups of coffee or microbrew sampling (until June, if then) and there's always work to do in several different departments etc. I'm keeping busy, but the solitary situation is getting to me... and, somehow, the Pikes Peak Public Library had Forgetting Sarah Marshall in its collection and I'm freaking out with it. It's good to write and read and watch films alone, plot the day for myself etc. but there's that scene in the bar with, "Let's pump the brakes," and I laugh hard before sighing and missing hanging out and, AND there's even that insipid exchange with the girls pretending to be nice to each other and the "...and you're so pretty." "Oh my gosh, you're, like, so much prettier than I am..." which, if it were to happen two weeks ago, I would vomit and/or leave but I laugh here - hysterically, in this cavernous home and the noise comes back to me, adding to the laughter that continues so I get... freaked out by the volume of my own laughter.

Same with the outtakes and the extended scenes and the initial table read with the final cast and I start to get excited about production again, thinking about... how we would do things differently, all that we've learned etc.

All right. Send me your address if I don't have it. See you soon.

Injustice and Failures

I usually don't title these, and I'll probably regret it later. I can't sleep. I can't sleep. And there are various factors and details, complex threads to even begin resolving these issues for those living below the poverty line, even those right above it, in the US... and it has me up thinking. Someone else please, please read it and tell me if there's anything to be done. Or do we say, "That's horrible" and go back to our day? I'm exhausted. Before I read the article, I was ready to shut my eyes. So I picked up a book I got at the library today - Cannery Row, John Steinbeck - and read just up through the most anticipated and wrenching part of the novel (so far).

"So long. Say, Mack -- what happened to your wife?"
"I don't know," said Mack. "She went away." He walked clumsily down the stairs and crossed over and walked up the lot and up the chicken walk to the Palace Flophouse. Doc watched his progress through the window. And then wearily he got a broom from behind the water heater. It took him all day to clean up the mess.



In the Philippines, in the trash pile slums and I don't speak Tagalog except for 'Hello' and 'May I take your photograph?' so the kids that flocked us from the moment we stepped out of the vans and pressed up against the windows when we got back in were still kept at that distance. The older ones eagerly smiled at us, shook our hands and beamed while their younger siblings trounced about in a language we didn't understand, but would hear for ten enormous days. I asked Ate Rachel to ask one girl what she wanted to do when she grew up, expecting the same kind of answer we'd been receiving from the school children (doctor, doctor, lawyer, nurse). She answered timidly, but quickly, and Rachel threw her head back and laughed. "She wants to marry an American." Hahahahahahaha. The girl's younger sister (it's hard to tell how old they are because filipinos are short and, even as they grow up, they don't age... at all) bravely, enthusiastically grabbed our hands and took us around her home and I wish I had been able to speak to her and her sister and ask them, ask their parents, what they needed most. It might be that what they need most is cash - they're fumbling for it all day to feed their kids and keep healthy, stay energized. Cash that might keep the older sister from submitting her body at night, that she actually lives a life we feared in our suspicions and then heard about later, from Ate Rachel and Ate Marian. That it's a common, ugly fact. What does that do to self-identity? For a growing person's already complex, and confused, understanding of value and worth? God damn it. It might have been that what they, like some impoverished families in the States, need most was a few weeks in an apartment, with plumbing and steady food and a phone line and a chance to work towards progress instead of barely scraping by. Some families managed, somehow, to send one of their kids to school. It's an appalling thought to be fortunate enough to send ONE child to school, when you have five. That's enormous pressure and urgency to put on one child. Who is there to encourage that child, attending a school where one teacher leads a classroom of fifty/sixty kids? If the family is dependent on that one child to "make it" and bring the family out of poverty, where the economy has been faltering for much longer than it's been "bad" here in the States, what happens when the child fails? For that matter, how can that child possibly succeed?

Jeremy told me about visiting the orphanage in Nicaragua. Mike did later, briefly, as well. I'll be spending roughly twelve days there after the program is over, with the still and video camera. OK. I'm expecting desperate, almost-feral children falling upon us as we step through the door, soaked in piss and shit and there aren't enough workers to wash their bodies. Orphans - having had given up on the notion of existence, trained to carry out their days with glue-soaked rags wrapped around their faces, covering their noses and mouths. Twelve days documenting them and then I step on a plane to go back to class. What do they need the most? Funding? Workers? Books? Tutors? Families?

University of Colorado - Colorado Springs.
They have a nice library, and tons of literary events/discussions going on all week, and the people (students, staff, community people milling around) are very comfortable and friendly. The large windows give a great view, of course, to those mountains surrounding this school that's actually situated on a hill. I'm here working on some papers I need to finish from last semester, and two hurdles.

1) the wifi is password protected, and they regretfully explained that there is no GUEST login... so I'm researching here, like a chump, on the THIS IS A PAY-FOR-PRINTS machine... which totally ruins my "I'm a local kid, don't worry about me" angle... damn. I'm here with the Gary Busey look-alike, sitting on these high stools like, as I said, a chump.

2) They close at 7:00. It's about 5:30 now. I realize they had their final day of exams yesterday... but this is still, from what I can tell, an active community where students from small Iowa schools come to work and make use of their resources.

Give me a guest login, you jerks. Just kidding. Once I have my resources in place, I won't need the internet to punch out these papers. I've become a much stinkier geek since the summer started, everyone. You don't, and won't, even realize.

I don't want to... self-promote... very much. But the photoblog listed over there.. um, the one that I started (it's at the way bottom, titled Where I've Been)... is updated... and will continue to be now that my computer has more than 512 RAM and can actually run Lightroom. Thanks very much. Be brutal. But don't stare for too long because digital photography is great, but staring at a screen for long periods of time is not. If you want, please ask for a print.

Here's the thing... I hope to do a lot of writing - letter, fiction, essay - this summer, so this will be brief. Colorado Springs is lovely. I'm appalled that I get to be here. But let's start at the beginning.

Driving through the state of Nebraska and partway through Colorado is a great way to spend twelve hours of a summer day, but it is taxing. And expensive, now that I think about it. Darn. At one point, I felt my senses go dizzy (vision included) but not startlingly so. Was it the large volumes of coffee consumed, the handful of sleep hours, the lack of food intake or the hours and hours of singing? Probably all of them. All of those, in some way, were able to be resolved. Nebraska is a great state to drive through alone - even if others were riding with me, and I still maintain that there should have been, I don't imagine we would have done much talking. There was a long stretch where I didn't play CDs or scan for public radio, choosing instead to speed through (when there wasn't road work every twelve miles) and think of My Antonia and Frazier's Great Plains and imagining watching your dog run away for days. The land is that flat. The sun on the trees illuminated their branches - they seemed to be glowing. And then Colorado hit. I remember Russell Brand, who is hilarious, saying that physical borders are an illusion (instead, the only thing that exists is universal love... which is less illusory). Do with that what you wish, but I was different when I drove out of Nebraska. The air, the smell of it, was restless. Where Nebraska felt like the earth was ancient and worn and dependable, Colorado was boulders stretching from the ground and dragging everything with it.

It's good to be, at least for a while, in a place alone - with new people. I could talk with Carol all day. Working with Linda is constant gratitude, and excitement, for what this summer is turning out to be. Jerry is tired and I'm looking forward to drinking more wine with him.

Today was my first day of work. Tomorrow, Saturday, I plan to explore the city, get some reading and writing done, take some photographs and, again, explore the city. I'm so tired. My limbs ache and the neighbors wave back to you. So do the other drivers on the road. I don't know why that makes me so comfortable. There are so many stories and opportunities- like when you visit a new place and want to photograph everything.

This is the most inspiring radio story I've heard in a long time - it's the culmination of everything I've written for the advocating a life of arts and literature. If you click it, you should listen to the story instead of reading the provided type. That's all - I'll let it speak for itself. (Hint: this is the Massachusetts high school producing the In the Aeroplane Over the Sea play. Wanna go?)

Also, I went to the Dordt animation graphics end-of-semester showcase a few weeks ago and had a blast and laughed and vomited and all that (more blasts than vomits) but I noticed that the ones that were really solid all around for content, concept, timing, technical ability and communication etc. the REALLY good ones, and not just the ones that got outrageous points because "Hahaha! What the hell? Ha!" had the music to their pieces end appropriately, with or without a fade. Ads and promo. spots on the internet are phasing out the TV commercial so, if you have any hand in it, please DO NOT cut the audio abruptly when your fifteen seconds is up. It's jarring to the viewer and, especially when you're using someone elses music (which you probably are), please respect them enough to not cut the timeline at some random spot thinking that the viewer's mind won't be bothered because our attention switches over so fast.

I feel like there's more of a desire to read - blogs in particular - when the semester is wrapping up and we're up to our chins with review reads, take home test questions, research and the like. There's an increased intake of information and it needs to even out with something more elusive and less blatant.
Unless you're taking literature classes this semester.
I lay in bed the other morning and my instincts began to relay the entire year back to me. It was exhausting and I feel like I've grown a lot.
A big part of why I'm writing this right now is because I appreciate others that post often.
Another reason is because, as stated before, I think it's more needed now.
A third is because I think I have something to say, and I'll try my best to bring it forth, but I seem to be struggling.
I feel like a lot of my friends have grown a lot as well, and it's lucky for me to be able to see that. Others haven't - they've remained stagnant. That's the best way I can think to put and if you ever needed a reason to call me a jerk, or a liar, there it is.
The chairs are all set up in the auditorium. In two days, they will be filled and everyone will struggle with how to express what's screaming inside of them. I don't like goodbyes and I'd much rather be the one person on campus packing up and leaving to start my summer before everyone else does.
I'm tired, I guess.
Maybe I've just begun to feel how others have for months already - that this campus is too small, that the same varying groups of people start to chip away at your joy and sanity, that living in a close-knit community means giving up a notion of freedom.
It is, they do and it does to a varying extent.
I have so many papers to write - one of them will discuss the use of fate and decision in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'urbervilles and No Country for Old Men. Status and ambition are always the big deal - Americans didn't invent it. And I've been relaying these stories against each other for days now. Tess runs the gauntlet for the entire span of the novel and is manipulated by exterior characters and her own morals. Llewelyn only smiles as he tells his wife that she doesn't work at Wal-Mart anymore. "You are retired." But after he finds two million dollars in cash, and though he knows better, he still gets out of bed to bring water to that dying man in the truck. He is also aware of his morals, keeping up with them. It's a stretch to say completely that Tess and Llewelyn both gave/lost their lives because of them, but I wouldn't agree that their initial good intentions had very much significance to their common end.
(spoilers)
Why is it, Coen Brothers, that you bluntly kill off the guy we're rooting for right after he smiles at that lady by the pool?
"I'm waiting here for my wife." Holds up his left hand, the ring shining in the sun as if to say Sorry ladies, I'm taken.
"I can bring the beers out here. You can stay married."
"No ma'am. I know what beer leads to."
And then she laughs, sits up and tilts her head (note to guys: when the lady tilts her head, DANGER).
"Beer leads to more beer."
And then he smiles, and then he's dead. And, cruelly, the shot we're given to understand that is dark and at an awkward angle - we don't clearly see his face.