Raw Materials

Mitch and I were in the process of missing the eleven p.m. train. It was a Saturday, and he had told me specifically that morning that he did not want "to be in the city forever." The "L" was simply not going to get to the Metra station in time, and there was nothing we could do about it.

I had The New Yorker out on my lap, reading, in an attempt to make the best of things. In it there was an article about a Dutch engineer/sculptor who makes huge mobile "beach animals" out of PVC pipe and zip ties. Ultimately, he wants them to be able to, powered by wind, shovel sand from the ocean shallows up onto the beach dunes. Holland is very low-lying and it seems in danger of massive flooding if the water rises just slightly. For now the Strandbeests just trot around.

I keep thinking about something Theo Jansen, their sculptor and creator, said:

"The walking Strandbeest is a body snatcher. It charms people and then uses them so they can't do anything else but follow, and I am the worst victim, you could say. All the time I think about them. Always I have a new plan, but then it is corrected by the requirements of the tubes. They dictate to me what to do. At the end of my working day, I am almost always depressed. Mine is not a straight path like an engineer's, it's not A to B. I make a very curly road just by the restrictions of goals and materials. A real engineer would probably solve the problem differently, maybe make an aluminum robot with motor and electric sensors and all that. But the solutions of engineers are often much alike, because human brains are much alike. Everything we think can in principle be thought by someone else. The real ideas, as evolution shows, come about by chance. Reality is very creative. Maybe that is why the Stranbeests appear to be alive, and charm us. The Strandbeests themselves have let me make them."

I'm not a fan of motivational posters. Slogans, "Attitude is everything," "Everything happens for a reason," etc, strike me as willful delusions undertaken to make the world more friendly and coherent. That said, I also do not prefer to be absolutely fatalistic or to admit only bleak beliefs(which, at least, do not smell of sentimentality) into my personal canon because I do not want to be depressed and petrified in earnest -- I only want to seem that way cause it's edgy.

Jansen's quote, therefore, has worked itself into a nice little corner in my brain. What he's saying makes sense to me, and I had not thought about it before. He talks about the relationship between him and his surroundings, the raw materials that he has to work with. For him, it is his subject's limitations that enable him to make something fresh and astounding. Whimsical, even. A leap in creativity and innovation precisely because he does not have materials that are exactly suitable to his needs.

Extended, he could be talking for me. I have a supportive family, wonderful friends, degrees in English and Physics, and some talent and a love for art, but little direction and less experience. In true form, I could say that I've been stupid and naive or that I've been lied to about the nature of reality or that the world is cruel and there's not a place for me in it. (Don't let those edgy people convince you that there's not sentimentality in being pessimistic.) Or I could see those as my raw materials and be thankful that they insure me a life that looks different than the standard career launch and race to acquire things of escalating price. It says to me that creativity thrives when possibilities are obstructed.

I just hope that this damn beest will let me make it.



*Top photo by Lena Herzog

Annie in August.

"They pulled out."

"What?" I was in a tea shop. I had just stuffed a cream puff in my mouth before I got the call. I tried to gather the information while wiping off the powdered sugar garnish that landed on my lips. Mark was not good at filling in the necessary blanks of his message. Normally conciseness is good, given that everyone within the conversation knows what's going on. I bet he was good at breaking up with girls. Actually, I'm pretty sure he was on the other side of that equation.

"Chase middle school, they're out. Could you still get that other job you were looking into?"

No I cannot. Alright America, if you really don't want me to help you I'll back off.

"I'll figure something out, Thank you for informing me."

"I'm really sorry."

"Well, thanks."

I've got two flesh-eating blisters on the bottom of both feet. I have to walk on my tiptoes. I used to walk on my tiptoes by choice when I was three. I had to wear a cast to correct my bad habit. I also have a popped blood vessel in my left eye that is itchy and dry and somewhat terrifying to look at.

***

My sister squeals. "I AM SO EXCITED!!!" "I move into my dorm room in 2 days! Elizabeth hall 218!"
"Annie, how should I pack my clothes? Should I put everything in boxes? I cannot wait to live in my little room! I wish I could bring the puppy!"

***

"So, Annie."
"What's up, mom?"
"Because we are remodeling my bathroom and your bathroom at the same time, we are going to have to shower at the neighbor's. It actually works out perfectly!"
"I see."
"It will be a cottage theme. Granite counter tops."
"That should look nice."

***

"I am officially a student!"
"Congratulations, Dad! Are you excited?"
"Oh yeah, it should be a blast. I have orientation tomorrow and I'll sign up for my classes."

***

I turned down a teaching assistantship in France, a Masters in Teaching program, received rejection e-mails or phone messages from 19 out of the 20 Americorps positions that I applied for. I was hired by one position and a week later the job disappeared. The one thing I am good at is fucking up. (I don't actually believe that, but it almost needs to be said.)

I went for a bike ride today. Applied to another job. Read for awhile. First the newspaper, not so good. One teacher from every school in the Portland district will find out in the next week that they don't have a job come the first day of school. Many of them have families, mortgages, and a hopeful, but not an optimistic travel fund to see Europe for the first time next summer. Six million Pakistanis who were affected by the flooding are without any humanitarian aid. People are tired of giving funds to natural disasters. Haiti, Katrina, Sri Lanka. Besides, aren't there Taliban extremists in Pakistan? Yeah, and what about that mosque they want to build near ground zero?... you get the problem. I digress...

I switched my attention to Michael Charbon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and a dictionary. He is a good writer. I wrote down my favorite words because of how they sound aloud. craggy. subsumed. sumptuous. limn. insalubrious. incongruous chrome. I never thought to pause and take note of how beautiful the English language can be. I've been stuck in French phrases and conjugations. I have so much to learn. So much to read.

A bird took a shit yesterday on my copy of Kavalier and Clay, my sundress, and my left knee.

I write this out of sheer wonder and amazement, not a cry for pity. In a strange, twisted way it's quite comical. After all, sometimes words of comfort lend greater credence to my fears of Annie in August and beyond.*

aplomb.
i'm surprisingly aplomb.


*= "...words of comfort lent greater credence to his fears." -Kavalier and Clay. Can't take credit for it.

The KyleJacobean Era: in which I should have mentioned Arsenal

Yikes! So this needs some work. But it is an experiment: I've been reading a lot of Tom Wolfe. He wrote in the late sixties about various groups and their lifestyles. At first I wondered (in dismay) why we Westovarians did not live more like THAT, but I decided that, though we are not hooking down LSD until we are out of our gourds, we still have a lifestyle. This is my shot at documenting some of it. I'd love to hear your comments.


They are a part of the first generation since World War II to be worse off financially than their parents. The money-soaked air of the sixties and nineties has dried up.

Previous generations have been able to slough adulthood—they live the LIFE. Hippies, Surfbums, The Whole Sick Crew. Escaping the job market—meat market! humans as goods—by working only occasionally and making it because there was money in the US bloodline and oil in the ground.

Whitworth grads! Bright-eyed straight out of an incubation of Mind and Heart. Children of intentional development who know words like mentor and s, d, or t groups. S.T.D.? not an issue with this crowd. An education not extended so far as the curious ailments of Body.

Three sit under the florescent lights of the kitchen. The Westovarians or Satellite Persons (WOSPs) expand to fill houses and duplexes built in the seventies—wallpaperophiles, have landlords ranging from uninvolved to bedfellows. They put down their 300 a month and have space, ah space enough to fit their crap... smooth their crap to a fine dusting over everything. Annie Dugas and Amy Brown had spent a month after graduation looking for a job—willing to take almost anything. They considered serving coffee as bikini-clad baristas, diapering and bathing the elderly, and booking hotel reservations for truckers. Dugas went from one interview to another churning through her vast assortment of sundresses and brightly-colored scarves. Amy researched obscure companies and slid between job search sites in hope that some sorry menial position might accept her with open arms. Carrie Bowers talked to some folks she knew and got seven jobs.

But what is there to afford? WOSPs know the kindly benefits of approving parents: plane tickets home, cell phone and car insurance covered, a quick influx of money if it really gets That Bad. But of course, there is beer to afford. Really good beer. From towns that ducked away into the mountains. Beers with body and complexity—oh the deep love of complexity. Beers from the bottle and on tap, from Germany, Belgium, Colorado, and Oregon. Porter, Stout, Hops! bliss.

The best of consumption for this crew.

Jon Fox sits in the coffee shop. He wears earmuff Houston-we-have-liftoff-type headphones—the kind that block the outside howyou’vebeens? and goodtoseeyous which is necessary because WOSPs listen to music with full concentration. Lyrics, composition, complexity (Complexity!), and unintelligible words make good music. They focus to enjoy it. Their music habits are quite free thanks to grooveshark and Jon Fox, whose source of the tremendous bulk of his collection is a touch mysterious. They speak of it with reverence. You think Jon has more Bony Bear?

Dugas thumps her hands against her Subaru steering wheel to the likes of Keisha, popular. . . state-school music. The WOSPs concede to this as a quirk of hers on the account of her big hair (a muggy spot in the brain the same area that would cue her for appropriate times to laugh). Jon Fox hopes that she will someday drop her defiant Taylor Swift fanhood and get down to the serious business that is listening to his Top Ten of the Decade.

And you should see the books they read. Ones by verbose theologians and existentialists, by authors with gaggles of consonants in their last names, and by the rascaliest new eggheads and the dustiest old stuffs. They read for pleasure, sure, but they read to EXPAND. To become, ever increasingly, the coolest and cleverest person they know, with the best sounding questions and comments in class. ... er, life.

See, that’s the thing. They work hard. Concentrate. On the things that other people consume in their time off work. The WOSP thinks, “Once I am cool enough, clever enough, well-rounded, bolstered Heart and Mind with the right tastes and insights and topics of conversation, then OH THEN! The rest of the best people will come find me with opportunity, with a job, and with a fine recognition for what I’ve accomplished.” The warm and encouraging $30-thousand-per-year light from Whitworth persists in their memories and self-perceptions.

For now, the false work of minimum wage jobs to cover expenses—somebody’s got to buy Spaten Optimater. And the occasional eeking out of a résumé, but what’s the use? The only way this crew looks good on paper is if they are creating a piece of art—if they’re writing something that’s worth reading in the first place.

What to do?

Without constant homework assignments and social activities to keep me busy, I’m thinking about the ways I can spend my time. This is a rest-of-life sort of thing. In the US we spend a lot of our time at work. What are good ways of spending our time off?

There were two guys in my basketball class last Jan term who said that they spent three hours working out every day. It was a hobby “with great benefits.”

I read a David Foster Wallace essay on television that said that, on average, Americans spend six hours a day watching the tube. Three hours of weights and cardio doesn’t seem so bad as long as it’s a substitute for six hours of TV.

I’ve broken down positive activities into some categories. If you can think of an activity that does not fit into one of these, then please add a new category. I’ve got: fixing, preserving, adding, and observing. Each of these categories can be either personal or communal.

Preserving includes all those things we do to perpetuate what’s already happening. I think we spend most of our time on this. Communal preserving is doing the dishes (if you live with other people), parenting, etc. Personal preserving is making enough money to live on, staying healthy, and keeping in touch with friends.

Fixing requires something to be broken or in the red. Communal fixing includes: saving the world, the green movement, fighting injustices, etc. Personal fixing could be weight loss, a night of heavy drinking, or doing whatever to relax or unwind.

Adding is like fixing. The difference is that fixing adds from a negative to zero, and adding starts from zero and increases. Art is generally addition. Communal adding is creating anything for other people: a meal, a painting, a piece of music, etc. Personal adding includes education, reading, and whatever else adds to your character or abilities.

Observing only applies to activities that are not for one’s own benefit. So I guess it has to be communal. You are observing when you are paying respect or noticing details because the thing has details or deserves respect. It’s reading a book because it’s beautiful – not in order to educate or amuse yourself. It’s listening in order to create space for something to be said.

I’ve listed the categories in order of appearance in life. (I really mean life after college. In college, the primary thing we spend our time doing is personal adding.)

A list of non-rhetorical questions:
Is this how it should be?
What would life look like if the order were different?
Is one category better than another? Is communal better than personal?

I’m just kicking this around today and would like to know what you think.