If you know me well, you know that I am not a morning person. I'm actually not a late night person either. I'm the most productive at around 10 am, and my ideal wake-up time is therefore at about 8, with my ideal bedtime at around 11:30. Yet, this morning I decided to try something else--I set my alarm for 6:20 (mergh) and was on campus by 7:30. And it was actually...really great. It was the perfect early morning cool temperature on my walk through campus, the art building was deserted so I got to crank Regina Spektor in my office, I printed 8 articles without having to wait for a printer, and managed to lesson plan some powerpoints before class at 9.
The reason behind going to campus in the dark was that I've become really unproductive at night. I blame the fact that I'm usually on campus for 8-9 hours straight a day now, and when I get to my apartment I either immediately go for a long walk or watch 30 Rock (which is now on syndication, no good), before making dinner, and climbing into bed with a mystery, crossword puzzle, or phone (or all 3).
Since I got to campus at 7:30, I didn't feel bad about not going back after a hair appointment at 3. I had the blue streak in my hair touched up, which meant that I got to sit there for 45 minutes and read cheeseball celebrity magazines, and then got my hair washed and dried and went on my way. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if I ever become a fascist dictator (unlikely), the only perk I want is a daily head massage and hair washing. I went grocery shopping, entered some grades, ate some quiche, and am watching 30 Rock (of course) as I type this. Tomorrow is full of meetings, lesson plans, laundry--and I'm ok with that.
And on that note, it is 8:30, and my bed is calling.
Edited: I did not go to bed at 8:30 (it's 10:15ish now). Instead, I ate some ice cream, a friend popped by for a visit, I talked on the phone, dealt with some dirty dishes, and jumped around on my exercise ball for a bit. For real going to bed now though! (Might push my alarm back to 7, hmm.)
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
Friday, 23 September 2011
Strange Fruit
The Lotus Festival is this weekend and I am going tomorrow--and will hopefully write more on that later! Lotus is a world music festival that is here every fall and everyone gets SUPER jazzed about it. I was sick last year and so slept through it, but I am really looking forward to checking out events tomorrow. (I'm also going to a big cat rescue center in the morning--like, with lions and lynxes and such. Tomorrow should be awesome.)
Anyway, as a precursor to Lotus there have been some events on campus, and today outside the Art Museum was a performance by an Australia group named Strange Fruit. Two friends and I ventured outside to watch, and they were so cool! It is three women and they do a performance art that is a combination of acrobatics, dance, and high-wire walking, all set to various types of classical music. It is hard to describe. They each have a 14 foot long flexible pole, which is affixed to the ground. They each shimmy up their pole, while wearing what look like bloomers, bustiers, and really elaborate hair styles. One had a Tower of Pisa shaped building balanced in her hair, and they all had a lot of gold and glittery eye make-up. Once they get to the top of the pole, they lock their legs into an apparatus so they stay put, and then pull up these hoop-skirts from the ground and put them on, so in the end they resemble bells. And then they spin and flop back and forth, sometimes in unison and sometimes not, and sometimes acting out scenes. Here is a video of what they did today, titled The Three Belles. Here is another video of the same program, but in a different setting.
It was such a surreal looking thing: three belles who look like...bells, floating through the air with seemingly no effort at all. All in front of our museum, with people milling around--older folk, little kids, students, etc. The sky was perfect, blue with puffy white clouds, and floating women. It was, actually, pretty magical.
My day could have used some magical, truth be told. I made a student cry by giving her (really, really gentle) criticism about the first draft of her paper. We *told* them to pick one thesis and stick with and she had six, so I told her she had to commit to one. Which then made her paper a lot shorter, so she started panicking and then started crying. I got on my kindest tone and told her that everything would be okay and that we could look at her object for awhile and come up with some ideas together. [their assignment is to analyze an "unknown" object visually and then hypothesize about its use. The objects are "unknown" because the professor lied about the dimensions and the materials so they really can't look anything up, and then he tells them the real purpose of the objects at the end of the semester. Rather sadistic, but actually a pretty nifty assignment.] Anyway, by the end of the meeting she had calmed down, but she was right at the beginning of my THREE AND A HALF HOURS of constant student paper meetings--seriously, I ran to the bathroom once and that was it. Although, rather nicely, one of my friends texted me in the midst of it and said, "I just walked by your office and saw you earnestly molding a young mind, you're so adorable" so that made me feel better about myself. Also, I missed a departmental luncheon while doing this, but was able to get some delicious leftovers from the secretary, who understands graduate students and our need for free food.
Then I went to the library for a few hours--with a Strange Fruit interlude--went to a really disappointing lecture about film, and then went to another departmental reception, where I got to talk to my friends, drink pinot grigio, and eat canapes. Also, relied crying story to my advisor, whose response was, "aw, your first crier! Congratulations! I really hate it when they do that." Then I came home, because ten hours on campus on a Friday is just a bummer. I video-chatted with my family which improved my day a hundredfold, and now am eating oreos, going to take a bubble bath, and curl up with a Nero Wolfe mystery (just started this series--verdict so far: delightful.) Bed before 10 on a Friday? Sounds good to me.
Will leave you with one last video: the goddess-like Billie Holliday singing the haunting Strange Fruit.
Anyway, as a precursor to Lotus there have been some events on campus, and today outside the Art Museum was a performance by an Australia group named Strange Fruit. Two friends and I ventured outside to watch, and they were so cool! It is three women and they do a performance art that is a combination of acrobatics, dance, and high-wire walking, all set to various types of classical music. It is hard to describe. They each have a 14 foot long flexible pole, which is affixed to the ground. They each shimmy up their pole, while wearing what look like bloomers, bustiers, and really elaborate hair styles. One had a Tower of Pisa shaped building balanced in her hair, and they all had a lot of gold and glittery eye make-up. Once they get to the top of the pole, they lock their legs into an apparatus so they stay put, and then pull up these hoop-skirts from the ground and put them on, so in the end they resemble bells. And then they spin and flop back and forth, sometimes in unison and sometimes not, and sometimes acting out scenes. Here is a video of what they did today, titled The Three Belles. Here is another video of the same program, but in a different setting.
It was such a surreal looking thing: three belles who look like...bells, floating through the air with seemingly no effort at all. All in front of our museum, with people milling around--older folk, little kids, students, etc. The sky was perfect, blue with puffy white clouds, and floating women. It was, actually, pretty magical.
My day could have used some magical, truth be told. I made a student cry by giving her (really, really gentle) criticism about the first draft of her paper. We *told* them to pick one thesis and stick with and she had six, so I told her she had to commit to one. Which then made her paper a lot shorter, so she started panicking and then started crying. I got on my kindest tone and told her that everything would be okay and that we could look at her object for awhile and come up with some ideas together. [their assignment is to analyze an "unknown" object visually and then hypothesize about its use. The objects are "unknown" because the professor lied about the dimensions and the materials so they really can't look anything up, and then he tells them the real purpose of the objects at the end of the semester. Rather sadistic, but actually a pretty nifty assignment.] Anyway, by the end of the meeting she had calmed down, but she was right at the beginning of my THREE AND A HALF HOURS of constant student paper meetings--seriously, I ran to the bathroom once and that was it. Although, rather nicely, one of my friends texted me in the midst of it and said, "I just walked by your office and saw you earnestly molding a young mind, you're so adorable" so that made me feel better about myself. Also, I missed a departmental luncheon while doing this, but was able to get some delicious leftovers from the secretary, who understands graduate students and our need for free food.
Then I went to the library for a few hours--with a Strange Fruit interlude--went to a really disappointing lecture about film, and then went to another departmental reception, where I got to talk to my friends, drink pinot grigio, and eat canapes. Also, relied crying story to my advisor, whose response was, "aw, your first crier! Congratulations! I really hate it when they do that." Then I came home, because ten hours on campus on a Friday is just a bummer. I video-chatted with my family which improved my day a hundredfold, and now am eating oreos, going to take a bubble bath, and curl up with a Nero Wolfe mystery (just started this series--verdict so far: delightful.) Bed before 10 on a Friday? Sounds good to me.
Will leave you with one last video: the goddess-like Billie Holliday singing the haunting Strange Fruit.
Sunday, 18 September 2011
Veiled does not Equal Gagged
This event happened a little over a month ago, but it is something I've been thinking about since then. For the first time ever, I went to a mosque. As most of you know, I spent my summer taking intensive Arabic, and my professor, who is a practicing Muslim, invited us to go to a Friday service with him and his wife. It was during Ramadan, which is the Muslim holy month (usually corresponds to August, time-wise) and a large part of Ramadan is that you fast during daylight hours. I have never fasted for religious reasons (and there is a very good chance that I never will), but one point of fasting during Ramadan is to instill humility in the participant, so they think about people in the world who do not have food and who do not eat (or eat enough) on a daily basis. This is something that we, especially Americans, should really, really be more aware of, and I like that aspect of it.
During Ramadan, fast is broken at sundown with a dinner called iftar (which, if I remember correctly, means "breaking of the fast"). Many mosques will have community dinners, followed by the usual recitations of the Qur'an and prayer. Instead of going to the mosque in town, we went to the Islamic Society of North America's mosque/headquarters, which, for reasons that continue to baffle us all, is actually located in Plainfield, Indiana, about an hours drive from here. ISNA has a well-deserved reputation for being more open to non-Muslim visitors, which is a reputation that the mosque here does not have--also, the mosque in town is run by some old-school guys who still insist that women pray in a separate room (located in the basement). I would not have gone to a mosque with such a set-up, which is also the reason why my professor and many other people this community don't go there either. ISNA is much more egalitarian.
So we drove up and met up with some other people from my class and my professor and his wife (who are both so cool), and broke fast. I had pseudo-fasted that day, which (for me) meant not eating since breakfast, and as sunset is pretty late here in the summer (9 pm or so), it was nice to eat! The food was amazing, prepared by people who go to the mosque. There were many different rice dishes, some delicious curried eggs, salads, moussaka, kebabs, and dates and figs. Afterwards we had cups of chai tea and went upstairs to begin the prayers. I took two pictures when a classmate and I were poking around looking for a bathroom, so I was able to see the prayer hall without anyone in it, and it's a beautiful space. I study Catholic art and am aesthetically drawn to honkin' huge amounts of stained glass and gold and paintings, but those trappings do not feel overly spiritual to me. The relative simplicity of mosque art and architecture is a lot more soothing, and a lot more conducive to actually thinking about religion and reflecting on yourself.
This doesn't really do it justice, because there was a lovely portal and series of windows that you can't see, but this is the general view of the prayer space. The carpet is stripped so you know how to line up in rows (much like pews). As is common practice, men are up closer to the front and women are to the back. I totally understand that for women this might be a modesty concern (and frankly, I wouldn't want to have to bend and kneel in front of rows of men), so this arrangement does make sense to me.
This is the entrance area to the prayer hall, which is also clad in neutral colors and is a calming space--I think there was water in the center well, surrounded by plants. As you can sort of see, there are two carpet runners, one on the right and on the left. As you face the prayer hall, women enter on the left and men on the right. You line your shoes up against the wall, and then walk on your respective carpet in, stepping with your right foot first over the threshold. There were probably only 100 people at the service and the mosque can hold much more, so there was a lot of space in the middle, as the women stayed further back and to the left. There were 6 of us students (3 men and 3 women), so we split up and then sat against the back wall to observe. They start off with prayers, with a man (I'm not sure if imam is the right term, but it's usually an older, male member of the church) reciting. Since I didn't know the meaning of most of the words (especially when spoken so FAST), I could focus instead on the cadence of speech and the movement of people's bodies, which was very cool to see.
After the prayers, recitation of the Qur'an began. Our professor got us Qur'ans from one of the bookshelves and got us onto the right page. And I was actually able to follow along! Well, for the most part. At certain points you jump back to the first page and then pick up back where you left off, so once I figured out that rhythm, it went pretty well. We were there for about an hour (recitations would go on for another hour or so) and then we left. It's culturally very different in that you can congregate at the back of the prayer hall and talk, even while prayers are happening (as long as you're not right behind people praying) and the kids ran in and around the prayer hall and no one told them to knock it off (let me tell you, as someone who spent a lot of time in Lutheran churches as a child, that there is no running during services--least of all because the pews get in the way!)
All of this brings me to the title of this post: all of the women at the mosque were veiled, including me.
If you had asked me a few months ago what I thought about hijab or burqa I would have said something like, that it was a personal choice and that countries shouldn't regulate or force women to either not cover their heads (like France), or to cover their heads. I still stand by this assessment. One thing that is even more clear to me now is that judging people based on their religion alone is dangerous and stupid, and that judging a woman based on whether she decides to cover her hair (or not) is even more dangerous and stupid. There are plenty of reasons to veil, and plenty of reasons not to, and I do not think either decision makes a woman any less of a feminist. Case in point: my professor's wife, B., who follows hijab. She is also totally stylish, cool, young, smart, and hip. She's my age, and only recently decided to follow more strict guidelines about dress, not because anyone told her to--her parents are Syrian and pretty traditional, but didn't force veiling on their daughters, which is important. Yes, hijab is sometimes dictated by men (and that is where I start having problems with it), but a lot of times it has nothing to do with men at all. This is a concept that I think sometimes my friends/professors (ie liberal, secular, academics) have trouble reconciling, and I am certainly conflicted about it, too.
I took a really excellent class on women and religion in my senior year of college (taught by this blogger, actually) and we read a great book called Living Islam Out Loud: American Muslim Women Speak, edited by Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur. One of my favorite parts, and one which has stuck with me throughout the years, was a long poem by Su'ad Abdul-Khabeer, titled "A Day in the Life". In it, she discusses the pressure for Muslim women to conform, both from traditionalist Muslims, and Westerners who want to "liberate" them. I'm going to quote from it now.
some of my sisters
are in combat
with ideas newly born
and words older than the world;
yet, to cover or not cover
Is not my battleground.
...
See, clothes do not hide the woman
They announce her.
...
When they only offer scarves
studded with restriction,
the rear masjid entrance,
and a stay-home free card.
Then,
I don't feel beautiful
and I am.
...
If you had asked me
I would have told you
I don't have any brothers,
My father rarely prays
and when he does
It is for my happiness
and my scarf
did not come with detachable weapons
nor dyed with subversive messages.
No.
My scarf
is about
Claiming space.
but you didn't ask.
...
There is a lot more, and I would encourage you all to check it out. And think about it. I have been.
During Ramadan, fast is broken at sundown with a dinner called iftar (which, if I remember correctly, means "breaking of the fast"). Many mosques will have community dinners, followed by the usual recitations of the Qur'an and prayer. Instead of going to the mosque in town, we went to the Islamic Society of North America's mosque/headquarters, which, for reasons that continue to baffle us all, is actually located in Plainfield, Indiana, about an hours drive from here. ISNA has a well-deserved reputation for being more open to non-Muslim visitors, which is a reputation that the mosque here does not have--also, the mosque in town is run by some old-school guys who still insist that women pray in a separate room (located in the basement). I would not have gone to a mosque with such a set-up, which is also the reason why my professor and many other people this community don't go there either. ISNA is much more egalitarian.
So we drove up and met up with some other people from my class and my professor and his wife (who are both so cool), and broke fast. I had pseudo-fasted that day, which (for me) meant not eating since breakfast, and as sunset is pretty late here in the summer (9 pm or so), it was nice to eat! The food was amazing, prepared by people who go to the mosque. There were many different rice dishes, some delicious curried eggs, salads, moussaka, kebabs, and dates and figs. Afterwards we had cups of chai tea and went upstairs to begin the prayers. I took two pictures when a classmate and I were poking around looking for a bathroom, so I was able to see the prayer hall without anyone in it, and it's a beautiful space. I study Catholic art and am aesthetically drawn to honkin' huge amounts of stained glass and gold and paintings, but those trappings do not feel overly spiritual to me. The relative simplicity of mosque art and architecture is a lot more soothing, and a lot more conducive to actually thinking about religion and reflecting on yourself.
This doesn't really do it justice, because there was a lovely portal and series of windows that you can't see, but this is the general view of the prayer space. The carpet is stripped so you know how to line up in rows (much like pews). As is common practice, men are up closer to the front and women are to the back. I totally understand that for women this might be a modesty concern (and frankly, I wouldn't want to have to bend and kneel in front of rows of men), so this arrangement does make sense to me.
This is the entrance area to the prayer hall, which is also clad in neutral colors and is a calming space--I think there was water in the center well, surrounded by plants. As you can sort of see, there are two carpet runners, one on the right and on the left. As you face the prayer hall, women enter on the left and men on the right. You line your shoes up against the wall, and then walk on your respective carpet in, stepping with your right foot first over the threshold. There were probably only 100 people at the service and the mosque can hold much more, so there was a lot of space in the middle, as the women stayed further back and to the left. There were 6 of us students (3 men and 3 women), so we split up and then sat against the back wall to observe. They start off with prayers, with a man (I'm not sure if imam is the right term, but it's usually an older, male member of the church) reciting. Since I didn't know the meaning of most of the words (especially when spoken so FAST), I could focus instead on the cadence of speech and the movement of people's bodies, which was very cool to see.After the prayers, recitation of the Qur'an began. Our professor got us Qur'ans from one of the bookshelves and got us onto the right page. And I was actually able to follow along! Well, for the most part. At certain points you jump back to the first page and then pick up back where you left off, so once I figured out that rhythm, it went pretty well. We were there for about an hour (recitations would go on for another hour or so) and then we left. It's culturally very different in that you can congregate at the back of the prayer hall and talk, even while prayers are happening (as long as you're not right behind people praying) and the kids ran in and around the prayer hall and no one told them to knock it off (let me tell you, as someone who spent a lot of time in Lutheran churches as a child, that there is no running during services--least of all because the pews get in the way!)
All of this brings me to the title of this post: all of the women at the mosque were veiled, including me.
If you had asked me a few months ago what I thought about hijab or burqa I would have said something like, that it was a personal choice and that countries shouldn't regulate or force women to either not cover their heads (like France), or to cover their heads. I still stand by this assessment. One thing that is even more clear to me now is that judging people based on their religion alone is dangerous and stupid, and that judging a woman based on whether she decides to cover her hair (or not) is even more dangerous and stupid. There are plenty of reasons to veil, and plenty of reasons not to, and I do not think either decision makes a woman any less of a feminist. Case in point: my professor's wife, B., who follows hijab. She is also totally stylish, cool, young, smart, and hip. She's my age, and only recently decided to follow more strict guidelines about dress, not because anyone told her to--her parents are Syrian and pretty traditional, but didn't force veiling on their daughters, which is important. Yes, hijab is sometimes dictated by men (and that is where I start having problems with it), but a lot of times it has nothing to do with men at all. This is a concept that I think sometimes my friends/professors (ie liberal, secular, academics) have trouble reconciling, and I am certainly conflicted about it, too.I took a really excellent class on women and religion in my senior year of college (taught by this blogger, actually) and we read a great book called Living Islam Out Loud: American Muslim Women Speak, edited by Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur. One of my favorite parts, and one which has stuck with me throughout the years, was a long poem by Su'ad Abdul-Khabeer, titled "A Day in the Life". In it, she discusses the pressure for Muslim women to conform, both from traditionalist Muslims, and Westerners who want to "liberate" them. I'm going to quote from it now.
some of my sisters
are in combat
with ideas newly born
and words older than the world;
yet, to cover or not cover
Is not my battleground.
...
See, clothes do not hide the woman
They announce her.
...
When they only offer scarves
studded with restriction,
the rear masjid entrance,
and a stay-home free card.
Then,
I don't feel beautiful
and I am.
...
If you had asked me
I would have told you
I don't have any brothers,
My father rarely prays
and when he does
It is for my happiness
and my scarf
did not come with detachable weapons
nor dyed with subversive messages.
No.
My scarf
is about
Claiming space.
but you didn't ask.
...
There is a lot more, and I would encourage you all to check it out. And think about it. I have been.
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
Routines
Sometimes, life as a grad student is exciting and challenging, and those times are fun. And sometimes life as a grad student is super mundane and busy, and those times are usually a little less fun. The past few days have fallen under the second category, but I would be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy it. Take today, for instance:
--sat in on Art 102, Renaissance to Modern, which is the class I am associate instructor for. I like this professor a lot--he's an oddball, but he has a good sense of humor and is seriously smart (rumor has it he trolls on Jstor and reads articles to find grammatical errors, for fun), and he has been remarkably helpful to me as I start to teach for the first time. Today we were talking about Northern Altarpieces, which is one of his research interests, and it was great. I'm learning a lot from this class, actually, as I never took 102 as an undergrad (weird) and have never been that exposed to Northern Renaissance art. And as some of you have told me over the years, Northern art is amazing. It is. And the professor even cracked some David Sedaris jokes today, so what's not to love?
--did errands, ate lunch with a friend, and sat in on the professor's section of the class in the puzzle library. I am taking my three classes there on Friday. So I've gushed on here before about the rare books library and how it is mind-blowingly great, but it turns out we are also the only academic institution in the United States to have a puzzle collection, which is also housed in the rare books library. A man donated all his puzzles to us (he'd been collecting since 1939), because he wanted them to be housed in a place where people could actually use them. It was cool to watch the students, especially when they figured out something. A few goals in this class are to get them to 1. visually tackle problems, and 2. realize that sometimes the things that look really simple have hidden complexities, and that prolonged study and looking are not bad things. Either way, unlike in a museum you actually get to touch things. Intrigued? I finally figured out how to solve this one today:
Also try this on for size: a regular coke bottle with a wooden arrow stuck through two rectangular holes in the size. The arrow is one solid piece of wood. How did it get there? I thought I had a good theory but the professor shot it down.
--was in my office (I have a shared office! How cool--nerdy--is that?) and suddenly there was crashing from the secretaries office down the hall. My office-mate went to check it out, and it was the secretary, the Byzantine art professor, and my advisor playing ring toss. My advisor is pretty proper, so this is especially awesome, especially since it turns out that he is pretty good at it.
--went and got my hair cut which was a relaxing time. I got the purple streak in my hair dyed blue and so had to sit around and read People magazine while it set (I mean, I could have read my theory homework, but I have my priorities straight). My hairdresser is super cool (she is also a hen farmer, and has some great tattoos) AND I hedonistically love having other people wash my hair, so that was good.
--am now baking a peach cobbler, writing cards, and getting ready to start some reading.
My mom and my sister visited last week, which was great (so much eating out in awesome ethnic restaurants! so much shopping at cute stores! so much wandering around the town square and poking around in used bookshops!) and I have some really amazing weekends coming up, so it's not like my life is totally uneventful. Happily, so far, this year is reinforcing some things for me--that I want to (attempt) to get a PhD and that I want to teach. I've only had 2 days of solo teaching so far--3 classes each, back to back, with about 56 students total--but it turns out that I both like it and am not terrible at it, so that is nice. For now, though, I'm happy to have intellectually stimulating and busy days, as long as there is enough silliness thrown in too. So far, so good.
ALSO: blog housekeeping! Have added two blogs to my sidebar and y'all should check them out. One is by my sister as she navigates post-college life (with her usual wittiness): http://hueandcaste.tumblr.com/ And the other is by my sister's college roomate and Bloomington native, who is starting grad school in Cardiff, Wales next week for art conservation: http://talesofwales.tumblr.com/
--sat in on Art 102, Renaissance to Modern, which is the class I am associate instructor for. I like this professor a lot--he's an oddball, but he has a good sense of humor and is seriously smart (rumor has it he trolls on Jstor and reads articles to find grammatical errors, for fun), and he has been remarkably helpful to me as I start to teach for the first time. Today we were talking about Northern Altarpieces, which is one of his research interests, and it was great. I'm learning a lot from this class, actually, as I never took 102 as an undergrad (weird) and have never been that exposed to Northern Renaissance art. And as some of you have told me over the years, Northern art is amazing. It is. And the professor even cracked some David Sedaris jokes today, so what's not to love?
--did errands, ate lunch with a friend, and sat in on the professor's section of the class in the puzzle library. I am taking my three classes there on Friday. So I've gushed on here before about the rare books library and how it is mind-blowingly great, but it turns out we are also the only academic institution in the United States to have a puzzle collection, which is also housed in the rare books library. A man donated all his puzzles to us (he'd been collecting since 1939), because he wanted them to be housed in a place where people could actually use them. It was cool to watch the students, especially when they figured out something. A few goals in this class are to get them to 1. visually tackle problems, and 2. realize that sometimes the things that look really simple have hidden complexities, and that prolonged study and looking are not bad things. Either way, unlike in a museum you actually get to touch things. Intrigued? I finally figured out how to solve this one today:
Also try this on for size: a regular coke bottle with a wooden arrow stuck through two rectangular holes in the size. The arrow is one solid piece of wood. How did it get there? I thought I had a good theory but the professor shot it down.
--was in my office (I have a shared office! How cool--nerdy--is that?) and suddenly there was crashing from the secretaries office down the hall. My office-mate went to check it out, and it was the secretary, the Byzantine art professor, and my advisor playing ring toss. My advisor is pretty proper, so this is especially awesome, especially since it turns out that he is pretty good at it.
--went and got my hair cut which was a relaxing time. I got the purple streak in my hair dyed blue and so had to sit around and read People magazine while it set (I mean, I could have read my theory homework, but I have my priorities straight). My hairdresser is super cool (she is also a hen farmer, and has some great tattoos) AND I hedonistically love having other people wash my hair, so that was good.
--am now baking a peach cobbler, writing cards, and getting ready to start some reading.
My mom and my sister visited last week, which was great (so much eating out in awesome ethnic restaurants! so much shopping at cute stores! so much wandering around the town square and poking around in used bookshops!) and I have some really amazing weekends coming up, so it's not like my life is totally uneventful. Happily, so far, this year is reinforcing some things for me--that I want to (attempt) to get a PhD and that I want to teach. I've only had 2 days of solo teaching so far--3 classes each, back to back, with about 56 students total--but it turns out that I both like it and am not terrible at it, so that is nice. For now, though, I'm happy to have intellectually stimulating and busy days, as long as there is enough silliness thrown in too. So far, so good.
ALSO: blog housekeeping! Have added two blogs to my sidebar and y'all should check them out. One is by my sister as she navigates post-college life (with her usual wittiness): http://hueandcaste.tumblr.com/ And the other is by my sister's college roomate and Bloomington native, who is starting grad school in Cardiff, Wales next week for art conservation: http://talesofwales.tumblr.com/
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
Minutiae
Today involved:
--going with my supervising professor and the other associate instructor to visit the puzzle collection at the rare books library. We got to spend time in the puzzle curator's office (sidenote: WE HAVE A PUZZLE CURATOR!? how awesome is that!) and talk about puzzles. I solved two, but it took a pathetically long time. This professor is really, really into puzzles, and teaches a class on toys (I will not take it, because you have to perform yo-yo tricks, and that is not in my skill set..neither is puzzle solving in general, really.) We're taking our sections to puzzle it out next week! (the analogy to an art history class being that sometimes art is complex, even though it may appear simplistic, and that we have to feel things out using our senses.) I think it should be fun. I need to practice between now and then, though.
--a jaunt downtown to do errands, where I ate a wheat and local honey bagel with pumpkin cream cheese. I am very loyal to NY bagels, but there is one place here that is good (David Sedaris likes it, which is good enough for me), and the pumpkin cream cheese was most excellent.
--I am taking a seminar on Renaissance Venice, and today we spent the entire time talking about San Marco and looking at maps. I love Venetian art. I love San Marco. I love looking at 15th century maps. I really, really want to go to Venice. I have a very, very soft-spot for a Venetian art class which I took as an undergrad--it was a stupendously good class. I think this one will be good in different ways, so I can live with that.
--After that, I went out to dinner with six friends. We went to an Italian restaurant, and I had an old-fashioned (not very Italian, but my throat still hurts and whiskey is good for that, or so I justified it) and papardelle (wide-ish noodles) with chicken, mushrooms, and a garlic sauce. It was nice, since I got to see some people that I haven't talked to much since the summer, so it was good to catch up.
--I went for an hour long walk through the 'burbs on my side of town at twilight. I got slightly lost (there are a lot of cul-de-sacs over here!) but I navigated myself out, and the sky was wonderful at sunset, especially as I was listening to the Planets Suite.
Any Tuesday that involves all these things is a good Tuesday indeed!
--going with my supervising professor and the other associate instructor to visit the puzzle collection at the rare books library. We got to spend time in the puzzle curator's office (sidenote: WE HAVE A PUZZLE CURATOR!? how awesome is that!) and talk about puzzles. I solved two, but it took a pathetically long time. This professor is really, really into puzzles, and teaches a class on toys (I will not take it, because you have to perform yo-yo tricks, and that is not in my skill set..neither is puzzle solving in general, really.) We're taking our sections to puzzle it out next week! (the analogy to an art history class being that sometimes art is complex, even though it may appear simplistic, and that we have to feel things out using our senses.) I think it should be fun. I need to practice between now and then, though.
--a jaunt downtown to do errands, where I ate a wheat and local honey bagel with pumpkin cream cheese. I am very loyal to NY bagels, but there is one place here that is good (David Sedaris likes it, which is good enough for me), and the pumpkin cream cheese was most excellent.
--I am taking a seminar on Renaissance Venice, and today we spent the entire time talking about San Marco and looking at maps. I love Venetian art. I love San Marco. I love looking at 15th century maps. I really, really want to go to Venice. I have a very, very soft-spot for a Venetian art class which I took as an undergrad--it was a stupendously good class. I think this one will be good in different ways, so I can live with that.
--After that, I went out to dinner with six friends. We went to an Italian restaurant, and I had an old-fashioned (not very Italian, but my throat still hurts and whiskey is good for that, or so I justified it) and papardelle (wide-ish noodles) with chicken, mushrooms, and a garlic sauce. It was nice, since I got to see some people that I haven't talked to much since the summer, so it was good to catch up.
--I went for an hour long walk through the 'burbs on my side of town at twilight. I got slightly lost (there are a lot of cul-de-sacs over here!) but I navigated myself out, and the sky was wonderful at sunset, especially as I was listening to the Planets Suite.
Any Tuesday that involves all these things is a good Tuesday indeed!
Sunday, 4 September 2011
The End of an Era, and the Beginning of Others
I haven't been blogging much for the past few weeks, but it has been for good reasons--namely, that I was too busy having fun with family and friends at home! I also took the (financial and mental) plunge and replaced my six year old IBM with a MacBook Pro, and am still (SLOWLY) figuring that out. Then I flew back to Indiana in some hurricane rain a week ago, started classes, my cousin flew in for a visit, I got sick (the third day of the semester! personal best or worst?), so my cousin's visit was basically spent with her making me tea and jello, me napping, and us watching the entire series of Generation Kill. I taught the first sections of my class and survived to tell the tale--they went pretty well, actually, although I sort of over-dosed on cough drops in order to be able to speak. My cousin left (and I miss her!) and we had our annual art history picnic and I was so tired that I went to bed last night (Saturday) at 10:30, and slept for 11 hours. But the most important thing that happened in the past few weeks was this:
One of my best friends got married.
It was a busy, crazy, fun few days, as it was also sort of a college reunion as well as a wedding. It was a small wedding that the bride and groom basically planned and executed all on their own, because they are super talented and craft-y! There were 5 of us, including the bride, who all met in college, and it was the first time in over a year that we had all been together. One way in which you can tell that you are with good friends is that you get back together and it feels like nothing has changed. We're all spread out (although I'm the only non-East Coaster now), but still close. I wish I could see them all more, but we make do, and for now that is ok--and it just makes our reunions that much better.
Here is the (abbreviated) story about why this wedding and bride (T) are so important to me. I pretty much hated college for most of my first semester. My roommate and I got along really well, but she went home every weekend, so I was frequently bored, homesick, and wasn't making many friends. But then I met T through a mutual friend and immediately thought she was cool. She had really eclectic and awesome clothes, she was nice and super smart, and she was kind of a rebel. Case in point: we all had to go to this (stupid and sexist) rape training where they gave us whistles, and she blew her "rape whistle" in the hall of our dorm, which we were NOT supposed to do, and she did it because someone told her not to. Another case in point: two years later, when I was studying abroad in England, she stole some plastic grapes from the Studio dept. and mailed them to me. (Is it bad that I'm sharing this story on the internet? I still have the grapes and could return them, although I won't.)
Shortly after our first meeting we started hanging out a lot, and it turned out we had similar tastes in humor, books, and movies. We watched all of the Winter Olympics that year (despite not being big on sports, I LOVE the Olympics, and T is an ice skating fanatic), and after that we were friends. She was one of the reasons why I came to feel comfortable at college, she taught me how to purl, how awesome Ricky Gervais is, and the proper way to decorate sugar cookies. After college, we both had mind-numbing desk jobs for a year, and emailed each other near-constantly. Most of our conversations now occur in text form (neither of us being big phone talkers) with occasional calls and letters thrown in for good measure. I value her opinion more than I do many other people. Being there for her wedding was something that was very important to me.
At the same time that it was a joyous and lovely occassion, there was still a little selfish voice in my head, which kept whispering, "change, change, change." Although I have two other close friends who are engaged, this was my first close friend who has gotten married, and it is wonderful that is she is so happy, but afterward I kept thinking about distance and growing apart, for all of us. As we develop our own lives outside of college, will we remain friends? Or will life and grown-up responsibilities take over? I am quite confident that we will still be friends, but then I look at my parents, who so infrequently talk to their college friends, and I don't want that to happen. Maybe when you are in your mid-20s, as I am, change seems more scary than inevitable. I don't know.
Change can be great, of course, and it frequently is. But it hasn't seemed so this year. My grandmother died in April, and although I am finally able to go grocery shopping and look at the buttermilk without crying, I can't watch Jeopardy or the Weather Channel without feeling like someone punched me in the stomach. At the same time, I'm not sure I want that feeling to go away--I don't want to forget her. I think eventually there will be the remembrance without the sadness, but it hasn't happened yet. My grandmother had been the matriarch for the past 35 years, and things are different now. I'm not used to it.
In a less profound example of changing, Harry Potter ended, at least officially. And it was weird for me. I genuinely enjoy the books, not enough to read them over and over, but they were an indelible part of my childhood. They were also one of the first things that T and I bonded over when we first met. Harry Potter has been a constant in my life, a cultural touchstone that has linked me to my friends from home, from college, and from grad school. That first semester of college, whenever my roommate or I were sad we were turn on our Christmas lights, make a pot of tea, and read Harry Potter, and everything seemed ok. I have no book now that will do that.
This post is about change, but the wedding was at its core about love: between a couple, between friends, and between families. It happened the same weekend as a horrible hurricane, which seemed to highlight our luck--that we were safe, that our loved ones were safe, and that we all had each other. The night before the wedding, we had a pseudo-bachelorette party (if you know the bride, you'd know how lame she would think a bachelorette party would be) where we painted mugs with the 8 year-old junior bridesmaid (who is also T's niece). Out of the blue, the bridesmaid asked, with great concentration, "why is college the best time of peoples lives?" We looked at her. She continued, "people always say that college was the best time of their life. Why?" We thought about it for awhile, and came up with some reasons. It's the first time you're away from your parents, and you can sort of make your own decisions. You have more freedom in what classes you take, so you can (hopefully!) find something that you love and are passionate about. And you make really good friends.
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