Successes and Failures of the Day

Success 1: I read a poem in Arabic in front of my class.
Actually, I read two stanzas of a poem, rather than all five, because we were running out of time, but still. Four weeks ago I couldn't read the alphabet, so I'm rather pleased. And here is the poem (in English!), lest you were curious:
This Is Forgetfulness by Mahmoud Darwish

This is forgetfulness around you: billboards
awakening the past, urging remembrance. Reigning in
the speeding time at traffic lights,
and closing up the squares

A marble statue is forgetfulness. A statue
staring at you: Stand up as I do to look like me.
And place roses on my feet

A hackneyed song is forgetfulness. A song
chasing the housewife in celebration of the happy
occasion, in the bed and in the VCR room,
and in her vacant salon, and in her kitchen

And a monument is forgetfulness. Monuments
on the roads shaped like bronze trees
adorned with eulogies and eagles

And a museum empty of tomorrow, cold,
narrating the seasons already chosen from the start.
This is forgetfulness: that you remember the past
and not remember tomorrow in the story.

Words that I have actually learned thus far: remembrance, housewife, room, trees, and tomorrow. Darwish was Palestinian, so read into that what you will. My professor recommended him and he is quite good.

Failure 1: I cannot spell in Arabic.
I'm really, really close most of the time, but that doesn't really count, does it? I put in the wrong "s" or "d" sound (d vs dal vs dthal vs dthol) or put in a long vowel when it should only be a short vowel. It is slowly getting better, but I have been pulling only a 75ish on quizzes. The last time I got a C was in high school math. I reallllllly do not want a C. I have a quiz tomorrow, so hopefully that will go well!

Success 2: I can sort of write in Arabic!
Exhibit: A snippet of homework from a few days ago. I've been experimenting with a fountain pen.
I think this is particularly relevant since Indiana public schools are not requiring cursive to be taught as of next year, which I am really sad about. Because I love love love handwriting!!

Failure 2: I totally missed the bus
And not just missed it, missed it in pathetic fashion. I was standing at the bus stop tonight to head back to campus for a workshop on Ukranian Egg painting (Pysanky?) and looked up as the bus was driving away. The fact that I was zoning out enough to NOT notice a bus right next to me suggested that I would be better off staying home anyway. I've been feeling sick to my stomach the past few days--I blame either stress, having to eating too many dinners on the run or standing next to my kitchen sink, or some bad shredded cheese, but in any case--I stayed in, studied with a friend, heckled the kids on Jeopardy, and ate that all-curing food: toast with cinnamon sugar on it. And now I'm (almost!) going to bed!

Focus On: Muqarnas

My usual Art of the Week format (which actually happens every, oh, 2 months or so) is to discuss art from the IU art museum. However, as that building is closed for the summer for restoration (because IM Pei is not very good and we have a leaky giant glass roof which is a wee bit of a safety hazard) I am bringing you something very different today: MUQARNAS.
Muqarnas domes are some of the most amazing, awe-inspiring things I have ever seen--and I've never even seen one in person! I first heard of and saw them in my Islamic Survery class last Fall, so most of this info is cribbed from my notes. Muqarnas were the brainchild of the Mongol-Ilkhanids. In my very not-well formed opinion, the Ilkhanids are the most fascinating era of Islamic art. Their dynasty lasted from 1250-1350ish, and they were Mongols who moved into Persia (now Iran) and conquered the land there--but actually, the land conquered THEM, too. They converted to Islam and settled down, bringing some Mongol-nomad architectural styles with them and making them permanent (I almost said "concretesized them," but that is nerdy and I don't think that is even a word!) AND Ilkhanid artists produced stunning stunning stunning manuscripts, because many of the artists were from other areas and the Mongols brought them with them to Persia as war-booty. Hint: I wrote a paper about the Ilkhanids a few months ago. And I totally dig them.But ANYWAY. Muqarnas. In 1275, the summer palace of Takht-i Sulayman was built, and is the only Ilkhanid palace that is currently extant. The building is constructed of circular or octagonal areas, which is weird since those shapes were usually used for mausoleums, but Mongol Yurts (tents) were usually circular, so this may be a nod to their heritage. And found in one of these octagonal areas was a slab, an early blueprint (which is super cool, by the way) of a Muqarnas dome.
Muqarnas means "place of cornices," and is a dome composed of many, many niches. They are often described as faceted, prismatic, or honeycombed--or at least, that is how my professor described them. The woman has a way with words! There are many benefits to a muqarnas dome: they add volume when you need volume (the Ilkhanids liked to make things as big as possible), there are no intrinsic limits in size, and no finite composition, so you could make the structure as big as your resources would let you. The mathematician al-Kashi described it as "a ceiling like staircases with facets". They are almost gemlike in their appearance, like you live in a diamond. I've had a rotating series of muqarnas images as the background on my computer for the past week, as they remind me that this is why I am taking Arabic.

More images!
(I'm not going attempt to identify all of these, as I don't know enough about them all, nor do I trust Google to steer me correctly! I know some are from Isfahan and at least one is from the Timurid Gur-i Mir, but I am not sure about the rest.)

Intrigued? Check out a post that my friend Aleah over at Artgazer wrote a while back about the Gur-i Mir. The Timurids, as you will see, were also Mongol descendents and nearly as interesting as the Ilkhanids--all of those rulers had so much hubris! (Why DO I love rulers with hubris AND their art?? This explains my love of 17th century popes, too.)

Thursday Slack-Off

Things that I have done today that do not involve Arabic or anything remotely productive:
--spent two hours at the pool at my apartment complex (gorgeous day, by the way)
--watched three episodes of How I Met Your Mother
--ate a whole avocado
--went for a long walk
--got my bangs cut
--went out for usual Thursday night drinks, which among the five of us involved a piece of cheesecake, nachos, a veggie burger, onion strings and four Long Island Iced Teas
--went to another bar to say hi to a few more friends (and now I have a stamp on my hand and it will not come off...I'm going to be one of "those girls" in class tomorrow...)
--went and got ice cream
--went back to a friend's place and watched an episode of Swamp People. If you don't know what Swamp People is, you are a better human being than I. It's a reality show about alligator hunters in the bayou. The same things happen every episode (spoiler alert: capturing alligators) but for some reason we are all riveted. The best guy, Troy, sings random songs and has a hired gun named Elizabeth, and he says, "SHOOT 'EM! SHOOT 'EM ELIZABETH" pretty much every episode and it has become our catchphrase. No good.
--did about three-quarters of the NY Times crossword puzzle between three of us. Not too shabby!

So that is why I have to get up in less than six hours yet am not remotely done with homework. At least tomorrow is Friday! And that means: naps.

Cultural Wanderings

So although my last few posts have been about class, there is a lot more going on. Even when I've been studying vocab (which is, like, all the time) I'm not by myself: for instance, the past two nights have been study-heavy since we have our first test tomorrow, but they also involved cooking dinner with friends, going for walks, eating ice cream, and watching Funny Face while we practiced spelling. (also, I can't get with Funny Face, although I'm glad I saw it. The plot is weird and feels super dated. Good dancing though!)

Anywho, more important than school (always, especially in the summer!) is fun and adventure. So on Thursday, we surprised a friend with tickets to see David Allan Coe for her birthday. I'm not big on country music in general, unless it is older and rock-based, ie Johnny Cash. Coe was actually quite good, too. He is a rebel/outlaw country singer with a whole bunch of tattoos (see below) and a whole bunch of raunchy stories (involving Willie Nelson among others) but he was very personable and really fun. I only knew one of the songs he sang, "Mama don't let your Babies Grow up to Be Cowboys" but I think his most well known one is probably "You Never Even Called me by My Name," and it's a fun one too.
If you are wondering what the deal is with those beard pig-tails (as was I) he used to have long hair to match them, but then last year at a gig in Alabama someone threw a whiskey bottle at his head! During a show! And his head got cut and infected due to his hair dye, so he had to shave it. We were totally baffled by this--how did they get a bottle? (the bar we were in doesn't even let people have bottle caps on show nights, in case people flick them on stage) and why were they so angry that they felt the need to throw it? Questions, questions.

None of those beers are ours, by the way! And this is Coe's son (Tyler?) who was really, really good. His whole band was really talented, and his roadie has the most perfect curly-mullet that I've ever seen. The opening act was actually great, too--The Cox Brothers, a local band from Brown County. This is country I can appreciate! Also, my friends are super cute:


Then yesterday, two of us ventured to the Farmers Market (I got local honey, she got Thai basil) and an antique store where we fawned over old jewelery before meeting another friend for lunch. I've been making the rounds of the restaurants here, but I had never been to Roots, which has a prominent place on the square. It's vegetarian/vegan, and has outdoor seating which is always a plus (although we actually ate inside which is pretty too, a lot of wood and plants). I had a portobello-spinach melt with sweet potato fries and the "house juice". I'm a recent mushroom-convert, but this was nice as it was portobello strips on hearty wheat bread, so it wasn't soggy like some portobello sandwiches tend to be. Plus, put caramelized onions, spinach and melted cheese on a tin can and I would eat it. The "house juice" was like natural ginger ale plus limes. It would be especially refreshing if you had a cold! Then we booked it over to the Buskirk-Chumley to see...MY FAIR LADY.

My Fair Lady is arguably my favorite musical, but I've never seen it on stage before now. It was spectacular, I think because there are not many (any?) subpar songs in it, because it is funny, and most of all because the cast was tremendously good. The three leads--Eliza, Higgins, and Pickering--were not locals, but I believe everyone else was. The English accents were spot on (I'm always a bit worried about Americans doing English accents, as it could result in a Dick Van Dyke-Cockney Accent fiasco) but they were really very good here. This Higgins could actually sing, and sing well, which Rex Harrison (as wonderful as he was) didn't do as much. Since I was used to hearing Higgin's songs sort of spoken, sort of sung, this musicality was different, but equally good. Alfred P Doolittle, Eliza's gin-swilling father, was perfectly slapstick and weaselly, and his dance numbers were fun. The costumes were stellar--the hats! The dresses! Especially at Ascot. The three of us were so excited. I just rewatched a few clips of the movie and the stage version (as is often the case) feels freer, funnier, and less staged (pun intended!), maybe because no one was lip-synching. I still am so ambiguous about the ending, though. Are they friends? Should they be more than that? You really get a sense of Higgin's loss and bewilderment when he sings "Accustomed to Her Face" on stage--it was heartbreaking. I decided this time that she absolutely should not have married Freddy--he is too weak. But I think I'd rather have Eliza open a flower shop on her own, than be simply coupled with someone. For more on this production, see here and here. Oh, one more thing--the music was provided not by an orchestra, but by two grand pianos. And it worked really well!

Afterwards we were all giddy with sensory overload and sexy Freddy Eynsford-Hill singing "On the Street Where you Live" and we got chocolates next door to celebrate. Blu Boy Bakery actually connects through the theater, which is very convenient! I had a chocolate mudslide cookie--I don't know how they make them, but it is like a brownie in cookie form with chocolate chunks, but then there is also melty chocolate inside. One of my friends said she once put one of them in the fridge and it was STILL melty. Mysterious, but oh so good. Then we walked around campus in the late afternoon sun.

The agenda for today is less exciting--grocery shopping, studying and more studying, a few phone dates with good friends. But no matter how much I might tweak out about Arabic, let there be no doubt: I love this town!

al-arabia, week 2: flash card explosion

It is a good thing I put off posting until today, because if it had been yesterday it would have been all about how much I hate Arabic, how this is the most boring, frustrating, hermit-like summer I've ever had, and how I don't know why I'm doing this. Now, those feelings are still there a bit, but I've calmed down. Because here is the thing--I'm understanding it, bit by bit. I now know the alphabet, and my professor has been speaking to us almost constantly in Arabic--I've mostly had no idea what he was saying until he gestured, but today I totally got, "turn in your homework, please," "write with your pen or pencil" and "are there any questions?" and I was really excited. We started our second textbook a few days ago, so I'm getting used to that, too. Texts are usually unvoweled, as all of the short vowels are shown through diacritical marks over the words and not as actual letters, and suddenly the vowels are gone. So I was totally freaked out yesterday. I couldn't read our syllabus (which is suddenly all in Arabic), homework took me eight hours, and I just felt stupid. But then I got to class and most other people were just as baffled, so that is reassuring, in a way.

The thing of it is--I really do genuinely refuse to be stressed out about school. I like to get good grades, but if non-great ones sneak in there, so what. But the stakes are a bit higher now than they were in the past, and I don't want to totally wreck my GPA, and I would LIKE to pass. Well. I'm hopelessly Type A (I'm sure you're shocked to learn this, ha ha), although certainly not as bad as a lot of academics, and I'm just trying to loosen up and have fun with this. I try not to stress out about school, but I stress out about stressing out about it. Does that make sense? I don't like how I feel when it takes over my life. Nine arduous weeks is not very long in the grand scheme of things, and I am having fun, even though all of my daily details are completely uninteresting, which does not a gripping blog post make. I'm serious: my only two pieces of "news" when I talked to my mom tonight were that I've been really good about drinking milk (she harasses me about calcium) and that I used my dishwasher for the first time ever and didn't flood my kitchen with suds.

But, as I said, fun is had. We went to an art fair this past weekend and I got a small print--I'm not usually big on impressionism, but the way this artist had applied paint it was almost 3-D, which was cool. Then we got delicious Thai food and stopped at the best chocolate-bakery here for a truffle each. Tomorrow we're celebrating a friend's birthday, then one of the girls in my class is having a dinner party Friday, or there might be birthday celebrations for another friend, and then Saturday there is the Farmer's Market, then maybe a lunch-session with the other members of the art history association exec board (I'm treasurer for next year, despite not having the greatest track record with math), THEN My Fair Lady at one of the theaters downtown. Sunday I might go looking for a used-bike.

So, goals: keep perspective. Memorize the stack of vocab that I have to for a quiz tomorrow. Read some for fun before I go to bed (although does Anna Karenina count as fun? I'm dubious. Another goal: finish that). Speak more at our language tables. And learn some stuff. Doable? Doable.

Oh, ACK. I'm lying on my living room floor (just so you get a sense of this) and a big ol' spider is shuffling along my baseboard, so I'm going to go usher him out now.

al-grad student

All the news from here is that I survived my first week of intensive Arabic! There are 28 letters in the alphabet (none of which are vowels, exactly, by the way) and I have 25 of them learned. Normally, classes spend two months doing the alphabet, and we'll be done with it by Monday, which is a little bit crazy. I just don't know how much I can force into my head at once--there isn't that much available space, if you take into account random facts about 90's British TV or General Hospital plotlines or Renaissance art nuggets of knowledge. Trying to learn an alphabet is a weird sensation, too. I mean, I did it once, and I've added in tildes and umlauts and such throughout the years, but nothing this in-depth or immediate.

So, since Monday, I've had class for four hours each morning, then homework until 5ish, then dinner, then homework, then phone time and/or walks/drinks with friends for my sanity. I've been doing NOTHING intellectual for the past month (I don't think the jumble counts..) so it's been hard to get back into the game--plus homesickness, general laziness, etc. All in all though, I'm excited. My classmates are a nice bunch, and I actually like the professor a lot. It's a different mix, since about half of the class is ROTC-affiliated or Army-bound, so that's eye opening. Anyone who knows me knows how I feel about the US industrial-military complex (and if not, well, you can guess), but it's been cool hearing about what my classmates want to do in Somalia or with linguistics or the CIA.

A few days ago we were learning how to say, "I like, do you like, he/she likes," and my professor was asking us questions. He asked me if I liked to read (hibti kitab'a? something like that) and I said yes, "na'am," and he asked if I liked to write (hibti qira'a) and I said "na'am" and he said, "al-grad student?" and I said "yep." (I forgot to "na'am.") He asked the guy next to me, who was nursing a large mug of coffee, if he was "al-grad student," and he was, too. You can usually pick us out, for sure, from our excessive notetaking to caffeine consumption. They both were totally offended because my professor (who is a phd student) was talking about how much he loved coffee ("ah heb" coffee, I can't remember the transliteration for coffee and I can't be bothered to look it up) and he asked if I liked coffee, and I said "laa." (no.) He looked at me in confusion--"laa?" "Laa. No really. Ah heb shayyi (tea)."

Those are about the extent of my sentences, and it would take me awhile to write them. It's odd--even though I'm learning the alphabet and can sound out words, they still don't MEAN anything. So I can decipher what still looks like symbols--and not letters--and realize the word sounds like "dthob" or "ashwuala," but that I still don't know what it is. And, the sounds are so guttural that I always feel faintly ridiculous practicing them, even alone in my apartment. I caught myself at the library yesterday, touching my throat and trying to drop my tongue back to try and produce a "ghoch" sound, which sounded like I was gagging. Fortunately, no one witnessed that (I hope!!).

What is cool is that I have been writing words now and recognizing some of them. "Baab" is a door (we talked about them a lot regarding Medieval Cairo architecture) and is one of the first words you can write, since alif (A, sort of ) and baa (B) are the two first letters you learn. Another fairly easy word is "hijab" which we all know. So that's exciting.

My main motivation for sticking with this is that even if I never end up being able to read anything in Arabic (which seems unlikely, as I already can), it is a nifty thing to be able to write in it. I like how it sounds (not as much as Italian though!), and I LOVE how it looks. And, at the end of the nine weeks we get to go to a mosque for a service and follow along in the Qur'an, which I would love to do.

Oh, and I picked my Arabic name--Khadijah. I need to practice the "kh" sound, so that is helpful, but mostly Khadijah is just awesome. She was Muhammad's first wife, and by all accounts was strong and independent. She was a merchant in her own right, she was 25 years his senior, and she proposed to him! He treated her as a confidant and was devastated when she died. Cool lady and a cool name.

So, I'm bruised, but still standing. I just had a delightful dinner (pasta with tuna, escarole and olives, caprese salad, ice cream with blueberries, and dry pear wine) with friends and am going to an art and food fair tomorrow, if the weather holds. But right now, I'm going to bed and it is gently raining out and I'm very excited about all these things! Goodnight, or masaa' al-khayr! (you'd respond masaa' an-nuur, FYI.)

Back on Track

Every single post that I write upon returning to school could follow the same basic formula: 1. relief at being back on land and not in a plane, 2. homesickness, loneliness, being tired of traveling and transitioning, etc., and 3. happiness at being back here. And so it goes. So I am back in Indiana, after a relaxing, very necessary month at home, which was followed by a few days with some dear friends in the Finger Lakes before I hit the summer class grindstone.

I was all set to be grumpy and sad when my plane landed in Indiana. I was missing a whole bunch of people, fiercely (still am!) and was ready to dismiss the Hoosiers around me as too loud, too alien, too much NOT my people. “I don’t belong here,” I kept thinking, “but then, where DO I belong??” Never a great feeling to have, especially at 11 pm, after seven hours of airports and no food, with the last flight including a crying infant in the seat next to me (he was SO cute, which helped). One of the things that I find so unnerving about air travel is that it can be two hours later and BAM, you’re suddenly seven states away. As much as I am not crazy about flying, at the same time, everyone was so nice yesterday, from flight attendants to seatmates. And just as I began spiraling into self-pity, a friend picked me up, and we were so busy catching up that we missed our exit and ended up by some random warehouses south of Indianapolis, but rather quickly we got back on track, and made it home without further ado. I crawled into bed with a few pieces of very good dark chocolate, a present which fortunately did not get confiscated en route.

Today again followed the usual pattern of post-travel life—grocery shopping, cleaning, unpacking, visiting, and general unproductivity—I spent the last few hours at a friends eating apple pie and watching Bridget Jones Diary, then have a phone date scheduled in a few minutes, and later am going out to dinner with more friends. I’m spectacularly unprepared for class tomorrow (apparently I have homework due on the first day, and don't have my books yet! whoops), and my to-do list for on-campus things afterwards is huge, AND I have to catch the 7:37 am bus, which is painfully early, but—it could be worse. It could be lots worse. At the end of the day, I think what we all want is people in our lives who are willing to drive us to airports and pick us up there; families and friends who form the backbone of our lives; to love people and to miss them when we are not with them, but to know that they are always a phone call, email, or walk away from us. I have all those things, and holy cats, I am glad that I do!

As I type, Buddy Holly is singing, “you may be a million miles away/ please believe me, yeah, when you hear me say/ I love you/ I love youuu.” And, gentle readers, I do.