Imagine That

                I walked in to Alaska Coffee Roasters and to my dismay, the café was nearly empty. Of course, the one time that I need it to be filled with different kinds of conversation by a full room of people it would be empty. The usually bustling coffee watering hole was barren even though it was nearly lunch, and the only occupants were a small group of older people mostly women and one man. There were 5 women, 4 of whom sat around a larger round table. The 5^th woman sat with the man who I presumed was her husband or lover if I had chosen their barely audible conversation and put my own spin on the star crossed lovers.

                I almost decided that I would simply have to add to my work load at the gym I work at and try to find someone I didn’t know to eavesdrop on. Then the clouds of the coffee god’s opened and two gruffy men walked in Carheart clad and by fate, they chose the table right in front of me. I chose to finish my salad before I dug into my bag for my note book, allowing the men to get settled into a conversation worth spying in on.

                The man with his back towards me had a very clear voice that boomed, which I appreciated after my failed attempt with first group (I’m sure they must have been informed of my undercover status and took extra precaution).  I could smell the cologne of the working man over my mango Italian soda, and made the assumption that these men were hard working and probably members of the Republican Party. I take out my writing pad, clicked my pen and pretended to be writing another of my award winning screen plays and secretly listened. The big voice was telling a story, “…oh! But it gets better, they were actually complaining about the price of oil, when there they sat clutching their $49 a gallon coffee. Imagine that.” The man drinking the smaller cup barely said a word as his collogue consumed the conversation. Perhaps he was the informant…

                After listening to the conversation for a few minutes after I had put down my salad fork, I began to piece together what the dark side of the table was talking about. – “When hippies take over the world, we won’t need fossil fuels anymore. They’ll be cars that run on pure coffee. And the only thing that oil will be useful for is shaping and forming dread-locks. So they’ll make bumper stickers and t-shirts with tie-die that say “save the dreads” on the front, and big pot leaves on the back. So they’ll complain about the price of oil again because without it hippie hair would just be dirty hair. When there they sit clutching their $49 a gallon coffee, then they could just ride bikes and have all the dreaded happiness in the world. Imagine that.”

                The original sound clip I had heard from the two men made sense to me because I had them to observe, to study. I could tell by their jackets that they worked for a company that handled some kind of machinery. They also smelt like gas, and were a little dirty down the front of their clothes. They were middle aged blue collar working men, who typically tend to be republican. The conversation (though it really takes at least TWO people talking to consider it a conversation..) was about people complaining about the prices of oil. The speaker seemed well informed because who really knows the price of coffee in gallons. The conversation, like all political banter, could have been misconstrued as uninformed complaining.  Context is important because each person has a different imagination, context is as important as the word choice in writing because in order to convey the message the writer intends the reader to take away from the piece.

Listen to People

    

                As human beings we constantly search for our identities as individuals. Some of us do so by finding groups to belong to, while some of us prefer to privately seek out ourselves. I have never had the need to belong to a group and often played by myself when I was a child. Because I knew no one could really live into the make believe stories and adventures I could. As I grew older I had opportunities to travel because of Taekwon do, and no matter where the tournament took me, I fell in love. A trip I took at the age of 15 to Connecticut for a Taekwon do tournament was a trip of many firsts for me. It was the first plane ride I could remember, it was the first time I met my cousins in New Jersey, and it was the first time that I knew I did not belong in Fairbanks, Alaska. I knew that in order to fully come into my own identity I could never belong in just one place.

                That trip was the first of many that I took for the soul purpose of coming home with a medal and a black eye. But with each trip, I became more and more attached to the feeling of being able to jump on a plane and leave a world behind, entering a completely new and romantic one. In the essay “Going Native” by Francine Prose, the subject of adopting another culture as a means of self-discovery is explored. Prose gave examples of how different people with many different backgrounds could seek out another culture to belong to because the one they were born into never felt right.

                I made up pretend mountains to climb over fences with rope as a child, pretending I was climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. I used to line up my stuffed animals on my bed while I performed to them from Madison Square Garden. Since I was young, I dreamed of more than a small town life with a 9-5 job. I wanted to meet people who I had to struggle to communicate with as I had to find a route to a small village in a foreign country. I craved adventure and weaved in that great adventure I wanted to meet interesting and different people. I wanted to have experiences that I knew I could not have living in one place for too long.

                My greatest travel experience to date has been a trip to the World Championship in Benidorm, Spain. It was my first trip outside of the U.S. and is still my most fond. We spent most of the time training, warming up, and competing. I found time to introduce myself to the athletes from different countries, even practicing what little German I knew with team from Germany. We didn’t get any time to do the touristy things like sight-seeing or laying on the beach all day, but I was never interested in any of those activities. What most interested me were the different kinds of people and their culture. Once we took a taxi to down town to get some mid-tournament lunch, the taxi driver told us the difference between Americans and Spaniards, “you run around with your watches, get tan lines from your watches.” The taxi driver had never worn a watch his entire life.

                I’m going to travel the world to my heart’s content one day. I will not be wearing a watch as I sit at a small café on the side of a small cobble stone road as I watch people walk by and have their conversation and laughs. I won’t spend my mornings planning my sight-seeing, exhausting day ahead of me. I am going to wake up, have some coffee and live the day as a native of the land.        

MadLove

I wrote this poem for a friend who commited suicide. She was not a direct friend, but a friend of a few of my own friends. I saw the pain that her passing caused my friends. We will never really understand why she left us so early. But we can celebrate her life by remembering her as a brilliant artist and a beautiful soul.

No one knows when the tree falls in the woods,

silence breaks it down, tearing and ripping out the roots.

The birds fly towards the sky seeking solace

In this house of wreckage, this temple poorly cared for,

secrets inside could fill the biggest city.

Water can overflow its glass and not immediately break,

sticking together, it holds a daring shape.

Soon enough this tragedy will unfold

and shake this city to its very soul.

To the streets with the poor and the wasted.

Burn all the houses on the hills,

flee all the free to the sky.

Don’t drag your feet on this ground so unstable.

Be selfish this time, it’s all anyone will be able.

I heard today that you choose not to go,

you’re missing a love, the star of the show.

It’s a late night here on the set again

and we’re all missing dinner and drinks.

So now drown your soul and down your thoughts.

It’s more than likely you haven’t forgot

how this world remains cold despite this warm day.

It’s every molecule for its self as we cling to the rim of this glass,

the pressure of the others, just wishing it would pass.

You feel the overwhelming falling feeling

and close your eyes as your life’s moments flash

So bright and happy it’s as if they’re stealing

the most beautiful mess you’ll ever make.

This will never be done justice in word or paint,

you’ve created the greatest piece in the history

of these wrecked up friends.

The biggest books could never contain

the broken hearts, the destruction, sweet pain.

Soak this up with the thickest skin you’ve got.

Take this like a dagger to the heart.

You can’t ever undue what has already done.

Don’t let this glass over flow ever again,

one more time and the words will run.

Love What You Love

                When a human comes to accept the world as it is, is when it begins to change. As a race we are constantly reminded that change is a part of life. It is necessary to our survival that we adapt to the changes or get lost in the forward, over, out, and up motions. Judy Ruiz’s Essay “Oranges and Sweet Sister Boy”, explores the seeming impossible task of learning to embrace change. She plays with the real and surreal environments that shape her thoughts on change, and in this essay, the change of her brother’s gender.

                The story of her brother’s decision to have a sex change is almost over shadowed by her intervening recollections of dreams and past experiences. She struggles to make sense of her brother’s choice by peeling back (if you will) the layers of herself. There are many ways to peel an orange, in one brave rind, or in many tiny, painful pieces. Some are fortunate enough to have the patients and skill to spare the orange the unnecessary pain. But there are also people who themselves have been broken into tiny fragments along the way of life, and do not know any other way.

                Initially, Ruiz attempts to convince her brother that due to their childhood it’s natural to have sexual identity problems, although she cannot seem to convince herself of that. She talks of always hating her womanly shape, and never feeling at peace with who she was to the world. It was not until she brought a sack of oranges into a class of special needs students, that she believed the metaphor that had escaped her whole life. Upon giving the oranges to the children, expecting them to begin peeling as she explained that the orange was not unlike to world, she noticed that they refused to peel them. They were delighted at the orange gifts she had given them. “And I knew I was at home, that these children and I shared something that makes the leap of mind the metaphor attempts. And something in me healed.”  

                The orange is like the world in that it has a tough, bitter layer. That layer encases a sweet and rewarding inner. It takes time to be able to have the patients and skill to reach the sweet. There are many way to peel, but no matter how time consuming the method the rewards are delicious. The children, who were given the oranges, saw the orange for what it was. They did not see it as just another piece of fruit in a bowl, waiting it’d death sentence, to them it was a gift. They accepted it for all it was and for what it was not. An orange, is orange, round, and patient. An orange is not a banana and it has no rhyming partner.

                This essay was written in pieces that all fit together in the end differently for different people. The message that is inescapable is that of acceptance. The last two sentences of the essay are two of acceptance, not only of her brother but of herself as the sister, “Sister, you are the best craziness of the family. Brother, love what you love.”  It is not easy to be open to change constantly, to have what you know be contradicted and challenged. But upon accepting the inevitable shifting, we can begin to accept ourselves.  

Remembering Janka

       

The second floor of the Museum of the North is home to a very special woman. Her name is Janka Glueck Gruenberger and she has been made immortal through the work of artist Robby Mohatt. “I Remember Janka” is an oil and alkyd based painting done on a canvas approximately 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide. Despite it being one of the larger paintings in the museum, its size is not what shocks you. It was the vibrant red stain in the center of the canvas. At first, you cannot seem to pull your eyes away from this focal point. After some time you begin to notice lines of yellow, grey, and black attempting to hold a shape that could be deciphered as some kind of written language. It is not until after a few minutes of frustration burning through your eyes, much as the red paint seems to burn a hole through the dark stained canvas around it, when you rejoice at the sighting of a recognizable word about one-third of the way down from top of the massive painting.

It is not loudly written, nor does it seem to demand any attention as it speaks the name “Janka” without any expectations. Etched into a stroke of grey paint are the numbers “6174319”, reviling the focal red beneath it, to once again steal your attention. The edges of the painting, extending beyond the red blur in the figure-ground, is a dark grey layer stained with brown and darker grays. The piece makes you feel sad, almost disturbed, but it also demands your attention. The brush strokes are heavy and deliberate.  The angry small paint lumps strewn about give it a careless feeling. The yellow scrolling of non-existent words catches your eye and attempt to distract you. These brush strokes appear light and effortless.

While I was observing this piece, a fellow class mate walked up to the description and immediately I told her not to read it before simply looking at the piece first. While there is much going on to the eye, even more is going on in the mind. Before diving in immediately into the why’s and who’s of the work, we should first let the painting ask us those questions. We look at it with no idea what it is about, allowing the red to ignite your mind into understanding that although it is at first large brush strokes on a dull background, there is truly a story and purpose inside.

This painting was done as a memorial to Janka Glueck Gruenberger. The artist visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C, and walked around with the Auschwitz victim’s biography. He was moved by the experience that he decided to honor the silent life, one of too many whose lives were written on cards. This painting is painful to look at, even before you notice the description, it also demands to be noticed. The tragedy of the Holocaust is similar, being that the loss of lives were many, so significant that we want to look away from the sadness it brings in us. But it is not something that can go unnoticed, it too demands our attention. Every individual life lost in the Holocaust deserves to be remembered in our memory, just as Robby Mohatt remembers Janka.

This Moment, as a Gift

       Standing at this first place of exploration, seeming to stand above the entire city. I feel empathy to the people in those buildings, unknowing of the sun's arrival. Snow clothes the branches of the sad, cold trees; hot breath suffocates in the brisk 8 degrees. Noses turn red, and cheeks get rosy, bodies get restless as we impossibly try to take in all that we see. This place is a place of memory for me. I've been here before, multiple times. My friend and I used to cut class in high school and come here with our coffee and conversation. This place at this moment is still unique, despite the amount of class participation points I lost to this outlook. My friend and I have taken pictures on the hood of his car, leaning over the railing, capturing a moment that has come and gone. This place is the same as another, in which it plays host to memories held on to for a lifetime, or forgotten as soon as they are made. I will always remember this as a brilliant place to waste away time.

        Defrosting, we find our own areas around the open Wood Center. I would usually seek out the most secluded space to observe my surroundings. Instead I take one more step on the deep green carpet that surprisingly had very few stains, and sit there on the open stairs. I too often get distracted by conversations of others, so much so that I do not come to the wood center to do anything but grab a drink, or some food. In the moment, I allow myself to become distracted. I honestly forgot my purpose for being in that place. I observed students gathered around lunches and coffee, talking about anything other than their class loads. I see this is a place unwind from the mornings of lectures and drafts. I see this place as a serene place to come and listen to your IPod while doing homework. For me, this place is full of potential. I came here while in elementary school with my band class. Coming into this building, with its abstract windows and tired students clutching their coffees, made me curious. A feeling that I never forgot all throughout grade school, and I still had sitting there on that shallow stair. I believe this place will always hold that familiar, mysterious lure for me. Knowing that in the Wood Center, there are people who are in many ways similar to you in their hopes and curiosity for the world.

         I come home to my cabin at the end of every day. I could easily say that this fact makes it my place for just being my "home". It is not only a place in which I start and end my days. It is the place that my husband and I first called "ours". It is the first place I live in independently when my husband leaves for training for months. Living in a cabin outside of the city I used to rush around in, has made me grow as an individual. I went from being a daughter and living with my father, to being a wife and living with my husband. In my husband’s absence, I see it not as a time of being alone. It is a time that I appreciate, a time that I can use to become more secure in the person that I want to be. I learn to enjoy the sound of silence that surrounds my little log safe house. I find myself wishing I could spend weeks here at a time, just walking around the forest that waits so patiently outside my door. Just as when my husband leaves, being away from my place just makes me miss it more. Perhaps my attachment to this small cabin, located in what they lovingly call "the Ester ditch", is because not only does it recall memories of past hunting trips with my father, but it also brings thoughts of what could be.

           Home is where fond memories are created and where the possibilities seem endless.