Vistas Cambiantes

There are over thirty library books in my room right now. I haven't felt so right in weeks.

Here is the westward view from my window, as seen by my little dinky focus-free camera, maybe in August and September. (I have no idea.)

Towering Trees

Greetings from Salt Pond.

I never realized how watery Cape Cod really was until this weekend, which is perhaps a testament to my blissful, willful Midwestern naivete. The trees here are all basically the same, though: lots of pines and oaks. Not that I know anything about trees (I don't), but they're pleasantly familiar and nonthreatening in a way that much of the New England landscape isn't. The forests here feel dense and indifferent, as though they're older than those of Missouri simply by virtue of being further east.

But because my mind is drifting rapidly, inevitably back to the mountain of schoolwork that awaits me, I cut this short with a few words by Amy Lowell. In the fifty-degree air this morning, I took an outdoor shower, which was exactly as exhilarating as one would guess. This sounds exaggerated, but it was a simple reminder that the feelings of certain seasons are nearly always inside our heads, somewhere, if we can only dig them out. Even in late November.

This poem, to me, exemplifies that feeling well.

"Spring Day [Bath]"

The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air.

The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.

Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot and the planes of light in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white water, the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is almost too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright day. I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots. The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the window, and there is a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air.

- by Amy Lowell, from Men, Women, and Ghosts (1916)

Tive Razão

"I was right."

- "Tive Razão"  by Seu Jorge, from Cru (2004)

The Space Between

I bumped into these images this morning. They're by the artist Marc Yankus, and are taken from his website, which is full of fascinating glimpses of constructed spaces and the like. Surely this is only due to my context of familiarity, but these photos remind me a bit of the work of Francis Alys, several of whose cityscape paintings hang in the Davis Museum at Wellesley.

That's all I've got.

For reference, one of the aforementioned cityscape paintings:

Francis Alys, part of the New York triptych in the Art Gallery of New South Wales

Dusty

It's been awhile since this camera's seen the light of day.

Side note: I just discovered that there are like fifteen James Bond films on Hulu. I'm probably not going to get any work done for a few days.

Today I learned that the state motto of Wyoming is "equal rights"

Maybe Montana

Ugly

Does anyone else remember the episode of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch where she and Libby meet The Violent Femmes?

- "Ugly" by The Violent Femmes, from their self-titled debut (1983)

Amber (Scribbles about Ancestry)

Before my grandfather died, he wrote a brief memoir. In it, he talks about his parents Antanas and Amelia, both of whom were orphaned serfs. The little stories he shares about them as children in rural Lithuania are simultaneously funny and heartbreaking. They had very little, but it seems as though they did their best to be children and have fun when they got the chance, swimming in the river or playing the concertina. I've been thinking about them a lot, and how hard so many people have worked for me to be right where I am.

Even more than that, though, I'm stuck on the last two paragraphs Gramps wrote, about when he first met my grandma Katherine. They were maybe one of the most loving and complementary couples I've ever met. Grams could be infuriating. She was stubborn, witty, and nearly always right. In my fading memories, Gramps was almost the polar opposite: proud and demure, yet extremely learned. On more wistful days, I imagine what their conversations must have been like, piecing these ideas together with the clues they left. Almost teasingly, his memoir concludes right at the good part. My imagination fills in the rest, probably more happily or perfectly than reality ever could have been:

My law fraternity had one formal party each year, and as new members Al Ragan, Charlie Strubbe [my grandmother's brother] and I had to go. Trouble was neither of us had a “date,” or much money, or the required “white tie and tails.” Al and I dipped into our tuition savings for the next year, and got ourselves outfitted in tailor-made to measure garb for the exorbitant price of forty dollars. Next came the girl part. I was footloose. So was Charlie. It turned out that each of us had a sister of suitable age and free on that particular evening, and made suitable arrangements to proceed accordingly. On the eventful (for me) Saturday night in 1939 my life was to change forever. 

Charlie lived on the northwest side of Chicago and I on the southwest side, about twenty miles away. I had a car, a ’37 Chevrolet purchased by pooling the resources of my parents, Teddy, Emily and myself (the price was $778). Monthly payments were $35.54 shared by all. On that fateful (as it eventually turned out) Saturday night, Emily wearing a beautiful evening dress, and I, in white tie and tails took off for Charlie’s house. I had never been there before. As we entered, there in the living room stood this very good looking girl garbed in evening dress. No one else was in the room. Addressing the smiling girl, I said “You must be Katherine. I’m Bernie and this is my sister Emily. Is Charlie ready?” She said “Pleased to meet you both, Charlie is nearly…………………………………………………………

-taken from Amber, by Bruno Verbeck

The Berries Were Sour

While pretending to study for this astronomy exam, I'm reading newspaper archives:

"The Berries Were Sour."

The Washington Post says that a Washington physician owns a cranberry bog at Cape Cod. Two or three years ago he entertained an English cousin, and at dinner one night there was cranberry sauce. The Englishman was delighted with it. Indeed, he expressed his pleasure so much and so often that after he had returned to London the doctor sent him over a barrel of fine Cape Cod cranberries. A month or so passed and then came a letter from the Englishman. "My Dear So-and-So," it said, "it was awfully good of you to send me those berries, and I thank you. Unfortunately, they all soured on the way over."

- from the August 20, 1896 issue of the San Francisco Call (Volume 80, Number 81)

A Week in Cellphone Photos

This week, my phone camera saw:

Such light that couldn't be done justice by a camera

Salman Rushdie + a scalp

How to Be a Straight-A Student:
A guide to Saturday night sadness
(To whichever Wellesley student was camping in the stairwell,
I am so sorry.)

Missouri (Confusion and Reflection)

When people ask me where I grew up, my usual response is one of pride: "I'm from Missouri, which for all its problems is one of the most beautiful places I've seen."

This last week has challenged that belief extraordinarily.

Looking through my high school yearbook, I count fewer than five people of color in my graduating class of fifty-two people. I begin to wonder: as a middle-class white girl from rural Missouri, would I truly be as proud of my home state if I weren't a member of the group which benefits hugely from the oppression of others?

Weston, Missouri is an aesthetically gorgeous town full of honest and hard-working people. But since I've left, I've come to realize that--like a lot of small towns in America--it's a sheltered bubble away from the real world. Questions of race and privilege never came up, because the vocal majority of people chose to believe that those issues were irrelevant to our lives. People are routinely discriminated against; so what? That doesn't matter when nearly everyone in your town is white. Right?

As if that weren't enough, an alarming number of people seem proud of these beliefs. Scrolling through my Facebook news feed, I've noticed an unsettling trend. There are hundreds of posts declaring solidarity with the students of color at Mizzou, but 99% of those posts seem to be coming from my peers in the contrarily sheltered world of liberal arts colleges. I might know a lot of people who are openly expressing concern for the safety and expression of students of color, but it seems to me like very few people in my virtual "friends list" from Missouri are talking about the protests online. The ones who are talking about it are posting hateful comments about how "ridiculous" the protests were to cost the school "a five-star football recruit." In case it wasn't obvious, most of these people are choosing not to post about the valid and real motivations for the protests.

To nuance that a bit: I'm not in Missouri right now, and I don't wish to condemn any of my at-home acquaintances for keeping silent on Facebook about the protests. I have no way of knowing what sort of true, face-to-face dialogues about race are taking place right now. And those in-person conversations are vastly more important than simply copying and pasting three sentences into your Facebook profile for a day (which is what most of my Wellesley acquaintances seem to be doing).

What this trend does suggest to me is a reluctance to publicly open the door to these discussions. In the three years since I began college, I cannot enumerate the number of times I've been called out and corrected for being misinformed about privilege. Those discussions, though not always easy, have helped me learn a lot. When I first came to Wellesley, I was far beyond ignorant. For instance, I recently found an old high school journal, in which I wrote that, "as guilty as I feel about being white and never truly knowing prejudice," I found affirmative action "a bit unfair" because "how blacks were treated in the Fifties was a disgrace," but "the wrong we did sixty years ago" was over.

I look back on that passage and feel a lot of emotions: guilt, shame, disbelief and disgust are perhaps the strongest. How did I truly believe that racism wasn't still an issue? Only now, after having lived outside of a homogenous and insular "All-American" town, am I beginning to realize that the battle for equality is so far from over. It's thoughts like that--like the ones I wrote in my journal a few short years ago--which are quite possibly our biggest obstacle to achieving true justice.

But perhaps most importantly, I've learned that there's a lot I can't know. I can academically understand that life in our society is more difficult for people of color, but I will never be able to truly understand that experience, simply because I will never live it. Our society was built for my success at the expense of others. And though no one alone can change that, we can unify to work toward goals of equality and peace. We can acknowledge and even embrace the differences. We can have honest, open conversations about them.

I've spoken my voice. I'm ready to listen.

Why Go Out?

As the dregs of the semester grind away at everyone's motivation, I find myself reading more. This reading, more than anything, is propelled by a desire to procrastinate "productively." My astronomy problem set might not be started, but at least I'm challenging myself with this collection of William Blake poems. Right?

As one might infer, reading more has also meant that I'm staying in my room more. I haven't left the building yet today, choosing instead to clean, to stare at my ceiling, and to play musical instruments that I've no idea how to play.

This might not be entirely healthy, but my point is that everyone needs time alone. And if you're like me, you need a lot of it.

So it was serendipitous when I stumbled across this article by Sheila Heti. It's called "Why Go Out?" The entire article is hyperlinked in the title below, but I've included a few of my favorite excerpts. (Sorry, Ms. Heti, to bastardise your piece.)

Once I click "publish," I'm going to finish my astronomy homework and (eventually) make my way outdoors.

Maybe.

* * * * *

From "Why Go Out?" by Sheila Heti

For many years I have asked myself, Why do you spend time with other people? but I never really attempted to come up with an answer. I always believed I was asking myself a rhetorical question, but this week I thought I would try and find an answer, because a question you ask yourself a thousand times eventually deserves to be answered. 

And I figure if I know why I go out, I might feel less suspicious of myself for going out. I might criticize myself less. I might be able to look around a party without thinking, What a fool – why did you come – you should have stayed at home.

At home, you can wear your pyjamas. No one is going to snub you or disappoint you. 

I’m always super-conscious of how whenever I go out into the world, whenever I get involved in a relationship, my idea of who I think I am utterly collides with the reality of who I actually am. And I continue to go out even though who I am always comes up short. I always prove myself to be less generous, less charming, less considerate, not as bold or energetic or intelligent or courageous as I imagined in my solitude. And I’m always being insulted, or snubbed, or disappointed. And I’m never in my pyjamas. 

And yet, in some way, maybe this is better. Each of us...could suffer the pangs of withdrawal and gain the serenity of the non-smoker. We could be demi-gods in our little castles, all alone, but perhaps, at heart, none of us here wants that. Maybe the only cure for self-confidence and courage is humility. Maybe we go out in order to fall short… because we want to learn how to be good at being people… and moreover, because we want to be people.

Monster

If you like scary movies, I encourage you to watch this. It's a short film called Monster, created by the filmmaker Jennifer Kent. Eventually, she took a lot of the themes and ideas from this piece and wove them into the 2014 film The Babadook, which she wrote and directed. In case you haven't seen it, I'll refrain from writing any spoilers, but suffice it to say that The Babadook is a terrifyingly honest meditation on motherhood and mourning. It may be the most intelligent and truly scary horror film I've seen in the last several years. Monster is like the CliffNotes version: slightly less intense and experiential, but interesting enough to fill you in and make you sound smart.

- Monster (2005) by Jennifer Kent

One Sunday Morning

- "One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)" by Wilco, from The Whole Love (2011)

Hometown Pride (Fairweather Excitement)

Alright, so if you've ever heard me talk about Kansas City's sports teams, it's probably obvious that I don't have much confidence in them. I love to talk about how disappointing the Royals are and how bad the Chiefs are. (This might be a good point to disclose that I don't follow sports closely, or really at all, and that I'm also a contrarian, so my words should be taken with a large grain of unrefined sea salt.)

Despite this, I was a little excited when I heard the Royals won the "World Series" of American baseball. It had been thirty years since they'd earned the crown, and I like to think our humble little city deserved some love and recognition. When I found this cover from the Kansas City Star a few days ago, I felt unexpectedly emotional. Maybe it's because I've never seen so many people gathered at Union Station and I felt a rush of nervous claustrophobia. Or maybe I was just tired from doing homework until 2 a.m.

Either way, this visual affected me, so I'm sharing it here now.

I guess I'm trying to say that, although I'm not particularly fond of professional sports, I am so proud to have grown up around Kansas City, for all its flaws and imperfections. Even if I never live there again in the long-term, it'll always be home, and for that I am grateful.

Fools Rush In

Whenever I'm feeling worry for myself, I remember that Annabella Lwin, the lead singer of Bow Wow Wow, was fourteen years old when the band released this song. Bow Wow Wow was originally formed as a promotion tool for Vivienne Westwood's fashion line, which some might argue counts as child exploitation.

It's not that Vivienne Westwood didn't design remarkable clothing, because she did. More generally speaking, though, her role in the "punk movement" makes me uneasy. She took the superficial, aesthetic elements that characterized a lot of clothing worn by punks and introduced them to the mainstream, effectively creating "punk fashion." Maybe people would equate punk with clothing even if Vivienne Westwood hadn't existed--in fact, I'm sure they would. But I what I really want to say is that I can't decide if she was a forward-thinking, practical determinist who cashed in on an opportunity, or whether she was a capitalist appropriator (or maybe both?).

To conclude this brief discussion of things I know nothing about, here is Bow Wow Wow.

- "Fools Rush In" by Bow Wow Wow, from Your Cassette Pet (1980)