Last night, I dreamed I was I there when the first Irish colonists arrived on the moon. They were, of course, Rory Macaffey and family.
Returned from Ireland on Tuesday. There will be another week or so of restless homelessness before I settle into my internet-free summer existence at the Global Youth Village; hopefully some dense and invigorating blogging will happen in that time. But right now, I need to catch a train…
Until then!
Yes, it’s been a while. There’s a fan and a crockpot and a pile of books and a stuffed tiger on the floor, along with a LOT of packing tape. More complete updates soon. But in the meantime…
Yesterday (May 13th) my Polar Bear Pictures had an entire day to themselves on the Cute Overload 2009 Page-a-day calendar. Anddd…final evaluation:
Elizabeth’s project is at once ambitious in scale (it weaves together many voices, points of view, narrative perspectives) and controlled; it’s never chaotic–even in describing place and a situation of chaos. This effect didn’t emerge effortlessly: she is a ruthless editor of her work, and she constantly makes difficult choices about emotion, structure, style, and language. Indeed, the problem of language(s) is situated at the very core of her project: like Adam or Saint Francis, who according to some sources, could understand the language of birds and animals, the ideal reader of her prose is expected to have enough empathy to care about/for not only English or Romanian, but also the languages of hungry dogs, lonely children, disappointed philanthropists, cows, birds, and many others. Her world is speaking to those who care to listen, it’s speaking about pain (lots of it), alienation, beauty and the possibility of warmth.
Overall, ORFELINAT is extraordinary, a publishable work. We have no doubt that in the future, Elizabeth, with time, luck, and her remarkable talent, will make her mark as a writer.
…
I’m too tired to form sentences, but if you need entertainment…
The pita bread recipe I made for my final Div 3 meeting.
A free audio version of Captain Blood.
A picture of the ramp from “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” the movie I took out of the library, because how better to celebrate being Div Free than with German expressionism? None! It is of course on YouTube.
Phhhhhhheeeewwww….
What was that? Could it be? A sigh of relief? Maybe…
I don’t know if it’s just the weather (gorgeous) or all the final performances/projects/events going on around me, but all of a sudden it’s spring, undeniably spring. Even an avowed grump like myself can’t trundle on quite as grumpy and stressed out as before. Bind Their Wombs wrapped up with a sold-out final performance on Saturday (more when I get the pictures!). The trees outside FPH are getting their bloom on. And on Friday I went for a barefoot walk at the Hampshire Farm and saw a mass of second-year bullfrog tadpoles and a very excited flock of White Throated Sparrows.
The sparrows shouldn’t be that much of a surprise – they winter in Massachusetts – but both they and I have been cold and reclusive for months, and anyway I’ve never seen quite as many of them altogether as I did on Friday – there must have been fifty at least in the brush between the tomato fields and the cow pasture. Along with the song sparrows, white throats were pretty much the first sparrows I learned to pick out from the lumpy subcategory of “little brown birds.” They’re bigger than house sparrows, and their striped heads and bright yellow nares make them an easy spot once you know what you’re looking for. Also, they’re just uncommon enough in the places I tend to walk that every time I see one I get a little thrill, something like doing laundry and finding five dollars that I’d forgotten in the pocket of my jeans. They make me feel lucky. Hope a thing with feathers, etc. Someday soon, when I’m done with all this – and I’ll be working until at least the afternoon of May 6th – I have to get myself up to Mt. Holyoke and go birding.
Finished up my Div 3 retrospective last Wednesday. The idea of the retro is to reflect on the process of your project, recapitulate what you did, identify what problems emerged, the things you’re proud of and the things you need to work on. The actual requirements vary from Committee to Committee. Action Deb told me to write something informal to remind her of what exactly I’ve done this year so she can include everything in my final evaluation; my friends Joe and Pete are writing more involved artists’ statements, of which I am jealous and which I plan to do myself when I have a little more time. Still, all this retrospecting got me to thinking about Higher Education (it doesn’t take much to get me thinking about ‘higher education’), so it was amusing to me to read Mark Taylor’s op-ed in the New York Times about The End of Universities as We Know Them. He’s talking about grad school, of course, but many of his points about the structure of teaching and learning in your typical institutions of higher learning are the same ones that Hampshire faculty and administration are always pointing to when they try and explain how different and valuable the Hampshire education is. Our system hinges on direct interaction between undergrads and their faculty – we have no web of graduate students and teaching assistants propping up the system. [Instead, we have visiting professors and an overworked faculty. What can I say - you can’t have everything…] We’re already heavily invested in institutional collaboration; honestly, we couldn’t exist without the Five College Consortium – we’re practically the parasitic orchid sprouting from the better-funded resources of Smith and Amherst. Our professors don’t have tenure, interdisciplinarity is built into our academic structure, and Div 3s (structured as “mini-dissertations”) often take untraditional forms. We have our own problems (MANY of them. Don’t even get me started on what they’re doing to the office of Residential Life next year…), and as an institution we waste a lot of time and energy designing programs and “improvements” to the curriculum/school structure that generally end in disappointing compromise and wasted money. I don’t think Taylor knows quite the organizational mess he’s getting himself in to when he talks about replacing departments with flexible programs. But still – I love my school, and it’s a kick to see someone arguing for a more Hampshiresque mainstream in education, at least at the graduate level.
I would argue with (or add to?) Taylor’s article that not only are graduate students being trained to do jobs that aren’t available (jobs as university faculty) but also that the whole concept of higher education as a career path – as a single “field” – is untenable. I might be committing treason here: as the daughter (And niece. And granddaughter…) of academics and as a soon-to-be college graduate, I owe a hell of a lot to the institution of American higher education. I wouldn’t for a second argue that colleges and universities are outdated, or even that they’re quite as removed from the world as some (whoever finds it convenient at the time to talk about how incurably cloistered academia is – ahem, FOX News) would have you believe. There’s certainly been a lot of changes in education “as we know it” in the last thirty years. But just as there is much criticism of business schools (and, to a lesser degree, other career-track educational fields) for turning out graduates with no breadth of knowledge and no skills in critical thinking, I think we could – I think we need – to be more critical of how the current system of graduate schools and universities allows (hell – encourages) those widely read critical thinkers to go straight into grad school, specialize, then spend the next thirty years frantically publishing and teaching and arguing about the structure of higher education. I’ve got a lot more to say about that than I have space or time (that old excuse), but in short…In CalTech’s commencement address last year, Radiolab’s Robert Krulwich made a plea to scientists: that they do their best to explain what they do in plain language, to the average unscientific listener, because (he says) the other side, the religious luddites, sure do, and it’s important for the ordinary people without advanced degrees to get both sides of the story. (I’m paraphrasing badly – to hear the address, search WNYC for the show ‘Tell Me a Story’). In the humanities, I think the opposite is true: we need to free ourselves from advanced degrees. The greatest advantage graduate school bestows upon its suppliants is the academic community, a place where ideas and opinions are supported and refined, where (ideally) students are constantly exposed to new ideas and opinions. Why can’t this kind of community be created outside the confines of an institution? I don’t know. I’ll get back to you…
And with that…phew…back to work. In case you were interested, here’s that rough draft of my retrospective. I really want to expand the middle part into something like an artist’s statement on how fiction is inherently empathetic and cross-cultural, but I’ll save that until I have time to breathe. The original had footnotes. I’ve put some of them in brackets, but I’m not pleased about the change. [It’s just less classy…]
Sixteen months. Four of them writing…
Read the rest of this entry »
Ah, ze edeeting. Zhe eez ze beetch.
Believe it or not (and I don’t), it’s April the 20th. Aside from being a Not -So-Secret-Holiday (the article’s eh, but the headline is downright eyerollable. Oh New York Times. You’re so the opposite of hip. Remember when they picked up on Sexting? ), 4/20 also happens to be the day Deb and Polina gave me back in February as my final Div 3 due date. Okay, so they’ve told me I’ve passed. Okay, so the final meeting on 4/29 is just a formality and Deb’s told me I can keep feeding her stuff until as late as May 5th. Okay, the dates have always been arbitrary and it isn’t about passing or graduating or pleasing the Committee anymore, anyway. Still, it’s a deadline, and I’m not going to meet it, leastwise not with the complete, fully-edited draft I’d like. Is this thing EVER GOING TO END?
The reasonable answer? “Probably, eventually.”
The answer that has been screaming in my head for the last two weeks? “NO! NEVER EVER EVER!!!!”
I have a couple of days break from acting (the play ran Thursday through Sunday, and then again for Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week), so for tonight I’m going to try and finish a rough draft of my retrospective and edit as many of the Vassilike and Hannah pieces as I can – editing Dog usually ends with me curled on my floor with a towel over my head, whimpering. Those will go to The Committee tomorrow. Then I’ll work on any pieces that still need to be written. But this can NOT go on indefinitely. After this Sunday (4/26), I am not allowed to work on this thing any more until graduation. I need a break.
Anyway, I haven’t had anything new to post in a while, so here’s the edited (final?) draft of the first Vassilike piece. If you’re feeling masochistic, you could compare it with the earlier draft that I posted March 18th. And if you’re in the camp of waiting until I’m done with the whole thing to read it, well then – suffer. Serves you right…
Thursday, Evening – Vassilike
Editing. What’s new?
- Today was the last day of The Clothesline Project at Hampshire College this year. It makes me sentimental. For the last three years, the Clothesline has been the thing that signalled to me that spring is finally here and that the school year is almost over. Every year, the Counselor Advocates (the peer advocate group that I’ve been a part of since my second year at Hampshire) pick three days in late Spring to set up a circle of clotheslines around the Hampshire library lawn and hang up t-shirts decorated with the stories of victims and survivors of sexual and domestic violence, all of which come from one of the five colleges. It’s emotional work, obviously, and it’s physically demanding – there are over three hundred shirts that we hang every morning and take down every afternoon. At least one CA has to sit nearby at all times to answer questions and talk to people about their emotional reactions to the project. Still, we never get anything but positive responses from people interacting with the shirts, and there’s something about sitting outside on a beautiful, sunny day with a bunch of multicolored shirts fluttering in the wind…it always reminds me of prayer flags. For three years running, staffing the Clothesline table has given me my first sunburn of the year. And today I was so busy running around and editing and meeting and getting ready for the play that I didn’t get to touch a single shirt, or go to the last Sexual Violence Speakout of my Hampshire career. It made me a little sad. I’m ready to move on, but I do love this place…
But on to happier things! Take note: Señor Jeffrey Allen Fenstermaker, also known as “Joe” (long story) became the first of my friends to officially pass Division 3 this afternoon. His thesis, a 60 minute documentary on the Quaker peace testimony called A Film About Friends hasn’t gotten much press on this blog thus far, mostly because I’m horribly jealous about how hardworking and on top of things Joe is, and of course now he’s finished, landed an excellent internship with a professional filmmaker in New York, and even has his very own apartment in Brooklyn with windows and everything. Isn’t it disgusting?
As easy as it would be, though, we can’t hate Joe. For one, he gives us cheesecake. For another, he’s just such a nice guy and, really, who could hate the man who takes nightly gondola rides around the living room? Also, he kind of rocks at this documentary thing. A segment of the film can be seen here on YouTube, but anyone in the Amherst area should drop by the FPH Main Lecture Hall on April 24th at 7pm to see the whole thing on the big screen. Yeah Joe!
Finally – I know I keep hollering about it, but Bind Their Wombs opened tonight (finally), and it was magnificent. The music! The masks! Me!!!
Ha. But really, even playing such a little part in such a talented ensemble has really been a pleasure, and it’s Brennin, and it’s Euripides…I don’t know what else to say, it’s such a good time. Not the play, I mean. That’s sort of gut-wrenching. Just the being in the play is good. Yes.
I’m not allowed to see pictures of myself in mask until after the production (Note – Theater kids. Wicked superstitious.), but after that I’ll post pictures and give Brennin a shout-out like the one I just gave Joe. I don’t know how I ended up with such talented friends, but thank God for them anyway. Otherwise, what would I write in my blog?
Now I’m off to wash the gray out of my hair and keep on plugging. Fearless Deb reminded me today that I don’t have to stress, that’s she’s considered me done for two months and that I can keep turning in stuff until May 5th (the date of my reading with Elena, by the way…) if I want. I reminded her, in the nicest way possible, that THIS ISN’T HELPING! I need deadlines. I WILL have deadlines. That way, I’ll know when to start in on whatever it is you do when you finish Division 3…
…?
The problem with editing is that it really gives me nothing to post on. “And then I changed the comma to a semicolon. And THEN I changed “snuff” to “snuffle. I know it sounds a little hokey, but it’s just more realistic!” The trials of my life.
I feel that I’m much more laid back than I have any right to be, but considering no one actually expects me to finish, I feel it’s fine not to beat myself up about it; I just have to monitor the line between “laid back” and “hostile apathy towards others who are working.” A major issue at the moment – titles. They’re due today. It’s not that I won’t be able to change the title of the novel, ever, but what I decide on now will be printed in the Commencement program and probably on my transcript, so it’s rather important. The Dog People has been roundly shot down. Orfelinat might be my best choice, but it annoys me. Polina really likes the idea of a title taken from Ovid, specifically Tristia or Ex Ponto where he was in exile in Romania, but I spent all night browsing and I just couldn’t find anything that really applied. Deb googled ‘orphan’ and read the list out loud: Orphan Train. Orphan Foundation of America. Orphaned Baby Bunnies. Oprah. Polina also liked ‘orphan disease,’ but there’s just no way of making that elegant. I would love to just use random Romanian words: încurcătură (confusion, trouble, ,mess, plight), traduce (you imperative form of translate), asteptare (to wait). But it’s just all too silly. I’ll probably just use Orfelinat. But I’m not going to be happy about it.
In other news, Bind Their Wombs opens in six days! The poster looks thusly:
Bind Their Wombs
…and according to Deb, this stuff is called “Jewish Crack.”
It’s raining. I guess that isn’t unusual, but it’s exciting in the morning. I got a call an hour after I woke up – I’ve officially been offered the job to work this summer as a cook at this international youth camp. It’s great news, though I wish I could’ve acted faster on that census job. The idea of being stationary for another eight weeks is a little maddening. I want to get to Texas.
With that thought, instead of an excerpt, a poem.
lyle
a tall quiet man
with hands like saucers
one who moves slow
is all i can bear
sometimes, you know
the one who walks his fences every morning
and talks to his horses
a quiet hand on a soft nose
mothy ears flickering
to his voice
and when he goes
back along the fence
the wet eyes like a doe’s
but not afraid reflect him
a long back sinking
in a round lake
In the midst of a new Dog piece. Work work work. Exciting news – did I happen to mention that I’m going to be doing a reading? Indeed! My friend Elena Petricone (who is writing a truly terrifying and emotionally compelling zombie novella) and I have been in writing groups together since last year, and since HER project involves zombie kittens and MINE involves dogs that may or may not be dead…well, we figured we might as well give in an have a demonic pets themed Div III reading. We haven’t a set date yet – sometime after April 30th – but here’s some pictures we may be using on the invites:
I’m going to tweak them until they’re sized proportionately and are basically silhouettes with highlights against a sort of dark grey speckled background, since they both have the concrete thing going on already [Interesting fact - These animals are Matilda and Gunther, respectively, and both of these pictures were taken on porches. Fascinating!] Nothing too fancy, but hopefully mildly threatening. Ominous, even. I’m excited, anyway…
EXCITING UPCOMING THINGS!
April 16th – Bind Their Wombs, Opening Night. This is the Euripides play I’m in, directed and translated by the fantastic Brennin Weiswerda!
April 20th – Div III due date!
April 29th – Final Meeting!
May 2nd – Aliya’s Div III in Northampton!
May 6th – Romanian final exam (wait? A test? Ahahahaha.)
May 16h – GRADUATION!
May 25th – Joe and I fly out of JFK Airport. Ireland, here we come!
