The Story and the Saga

First, woo hoo for four comments on “Brief Interlude.” Now I see why people do the whole reposting thing – it’s exciting to get other people reading what you write.  Thanks to Mark for posting his pics; Thanks to Kate, who doesn’t have any idea who I am and is perhaps my first real visitor to the site [Kate, I played at Oberlin college in Ohio, I now go to the University of Oregon and play with a club team, Denial.  I sure do know Bucky, I captained her freshman year!]; Thanks to Erica for promising to call, I’m looking forward to hearing your summer adventures and smiling at serendipity.

Which I need to do because I’ve been on a downward slope since leaving Vermont (for the visit, not since June).  I’ll start with the story of Vermont, because it’s far more fun than the saga since.

Warning: This is a long post

THE STORY

I arrived after a long, but quite pleasant day of travel to find Seth waiting for me at the train station – a lovely surprise and much better than climbing the steep mile to his house with my two heavy bags.  We got back to the house, watched a bit of Deadwood, and made a lasagna in a cast iron skillet while Stefan mowed the lawn and Colin went out to find Mark N.  The evening was relatively quiet, preparing for the yardsale; Jeff joined us midway with freshly baked pies, and Colin stayed out at the bars all evening after finding the house empty during one of our errands.

We woke up early Saturday morning and went through the familiar ritual of bringing out everything to sell, and then trying to convince people that they’d want to buy the things that had been stored in the less than lovely shed all summer long.  Towards the afternoon we went to the little league field to play a few rounds of double disc court, for which I had an uninterrupted loosing streak.  Post DDC, we began grilling and partying, which as previously stated went smashingly well in the majority, with my usually gloomy iPod actually serving up a good deal of the dance party.

Sunday morning I had my pleasant brief interlude at the computer, went to Mocha Joe’s with Noah, then went back with the whole crowd of folks that had stayed at South Main.  As the day progressed, folks floated away, until we drove Andy down to Springfield to catch his train.  We ate pizza at the Red Rose, a Springfield institution, then headed to Amherst to watch The Illusionist, then grabbed drinks first at the Amherst Brewing Company, then at the Moan and Dove.  Having lived close to there for a year, it was great to finally get to the Moan and Dove, which has very expensive imports of all sorts.  I had a yummy Belgian Farmhouse beer, and in the process of deciding, tried a beer that tasted like white wine.  Very nice to sit around the table with the boys drinking tasty drinks, never want that sort of moment to end.

But it does, and other good moments come. After some house clean up Monday morning, I visited Building Green for Monday staff lunch, where I picked up my new copy of Your Green Home, the book that Alex was writing while I worked there. It’s beautiful, and at least on preliminary glance looked to be chock full of good stuff. All the hard work I did on the bibliography will soon be up online, and the Islandwood case study is about to be posted. The office was full of energy and late summer sunlight. I stayed so long that I had to hurry down the hill to catch up with Tori, my former housemate. I picked up my mail and toured her new gardens, and then we went up to Pisgah, where we climbed up for the view to Monadnock, then down for a chilly skinny dip in Kilburn Pond.

Tuesday we loaded up a truck full of furniture and carted it to Leyden, Mass, the idyllic town where Colin’s parents live. Then Colin and Stefan and I went to the strawbale house Colin worked on this summer and got the first layer of plaster done in all the places it was still missing. The homeowners came back about a third of the way through our time there, and David, the husband/father came out and worked with us. I didn’t get to see Stefan’s strawbale, but it was cool to see how confident and knowledgable they both are about building these days. They’re applying to the Yestermorrow internship for this winter, and I personally think they’d both do very well there. We headed home, watched some Youtube, including my favorite video, Chris Bliss juggling to the end of Abbey Road. Noah came just as we were watching it to pick me up for bowling, which was great fun. The two of us shared a lane next to the whole Putney crowd, and I actually bowled very well, with two games in the 130’s and one 181! After bowling I went to the rennovated Weathervane with Mariah and Emyli for a drink, and then went home and crashed, exhausted.

Wednesday I finally got around to business, after another trip to Leyden. I arranged my hotel for Albany, closed my bank account, withdrew my shares from the coop, mailed myself some of the stuff I acquired on the trip, picked up a couple of cute new shirts, and visited Karamo. At the end of my errands I went to Mocha Joe’s and ran into Mark B, and we got to talk for a half hour before the boys came by. Then the four of us headed to Top of the Hill Grill, the local gourmet grill shack, for a tasty dinner, since the South Main kitchen was stored in Leyden. We hurried back to the house afterwards just in time for George to pick me up to go to Albany in his Prius.

There’s your extended summary of my fantastic Vermont trip, the kind of trip that makes you just really want to stay where you are. And this is where the Story turns into the Saga.

THE SAGA

When I checked into the Howard Johnson, late at night and a little befuddled, I scheduled my cab for the morning, headed out to my room, and got ready for bed. Early Thursday morning I awoke, got ready, checked out and caught my cab. But, I didn’t catch my plane, because I had scheduled my cab an hour late in my readiness for bed the night before. I saw it leave from the gate, turned, and wondered what to do. Luckily, Southwest is awesome and immediately rescheduled my flight through BWI, then Salt Lake, to Portland. So I called Herman to tell him of the change, forgetting that it was 4:00 AM in Portland.

So I had perhaps the longest day of travel in the whole trip, during which I caught a cold, lost my very expensive sunglasses, and had my luggage delayed. Boy was I glad to see Ruth and eat some of Herman’s tasty spinach pies that night. 

The next morning when I picked up my luggage I got caught in accident traffic, but then got to Eugene before two. I immediately started to move and look for furniture. I headed to Springfield at three, and headed home by 4:30 having bought a mattress.

Saturday morning I continued moving, hit up about 15 yard sales, and had no luck finding reasonable furniture for my room. The queen sized mattress took up almost the whole room, and I just wanted cheap, repaintable furniture. I felt sick and alone – my computer couldn’t access the internet at my new house (we just got it going tonight), my phone had gone dead and I realized the charger was in Vermont. So I went to Best Buy, Target (where I squished my finger in the bathroom door), World Market, several “real” furniture stores, and finally home, without having made any progress. I searched online, ate a pitiful dinner, and went to bed.

This morning I went to the Flea Market, then went back to World Market and Target, again mostly unsuccessfully. So I spent a lot of money on organic groceries, went home, and got down to work on the IKEA website. After I meticulously found a set of furniture that would outfit my room for $250, all of which was available online and which matched reasonably well, I checked out, just to find that the shipping and handling would cost another $250. So, I decided that I’d be heading to the Seattle IKEA tomorrow.

So, now I’ll go to sleep since I’ll be driving 4.5 hours up and back to Seattle tomorrow, and shopping til I drop in between. But then, hopefully everything will be better when I return some order to my life, so I think it will be worth it…

What a day, what a day

Actually, a couple of days.  Let’s go back, back to…Tuesday.  I stayed up late on Monday night, watching movies On Demand.  Tuesday morning I woke up and decided that it was the perfect moment to begin shaving again.  Since it’s been about a year since I last shaved, and I haven’t shaved regularly since high school, this is an undertaking for me.  I got prepared and then took my shower, which was at least half an hour of bending over in the hot water, focusing on my lower legs.  They’re lovely, let me tell you.  Well, upon exiting the shower I felt faint, and stumbled over to my bed, where I collapsed.  I worked hard not to fall asleep, and managed to get myself upright once again, angling for downstairs and a glass of O.J. to get my blood sugar back up.  Well, I didn’t make it.  I fainted right outside of my bathroom, collapsing in a heap on the floor.  I was lucky enough to not hit anything and to come to almost instantly, as my stepmother yelled to ask if I was o.k.  I yelled back that no, everything was not o.k., and she ran up to help me back up.  We made it down half of the stairs before she set me down, telling me that I was actually gray, and went to get me that glass of O.J.  Almost the instant that I started to drink it, I felt better again, but it was really quite a scare that the combination of staying up late, being quite dehydrated from the previous day, and taking a long hot shower could cause me to faint.

After my fainting spell I ate breakfast, read for a while, and then accompanied my dad to Winnie Palmer Hospital, where he works, to see the new building.  He worked closely with the architect, Jonathan Bailey, during the design of the building, and as an architecture student I wanted to check out the building.  It’s a beautiful building, not what you’d think of if you imagined “Hospital.”  It looks more like a hotel, with a lovely open waiting area and café seating on the first floor, and semi-private rooms throughout.  It’s truly state of the art, and I think they did an excellent job of balancing the requirements of the building for privacy and maneuverability.  The concept of the panopticon, that dreadfully unpleasant 19th century (?) prison scheme, is transformed and reapplied here, so that the centralized nurses stations in the various pods of the building have sightlines, which means that doctors and nurses can quickly see where their attention should be focused.  The greatest drawback of the building that I noticed was that wayfinding would be difficult for an inexperienced user: the building is made up of clusters of circular pods, and looks uniform throughout.  There are few obvious landmarks and the color scheme is a constant black, beige, and white.  There are subtle indications of location and there is signage to direct you, but the building isn’t inherently clear.  Still, it’s a lovely building, and I think that as the staff gets used to it, they’ll really begin to value its many great features.

We returned home after the visit to the hospital, and shortly before we headed out for dinner, my mom called to tell me that our dog, Max, had died the previous night.  Max was 13 years old, and was sort of an old curmudgeon, but despite his character flaws, he was so loveable.  He’d bark at anything and wouldn’t quiet down when you asked him to, he’d freak out when a storm came, or when a tall male would approach him, and he’d dig in the backyard, and I spent most of my time being upset with and annoyed at him.  But I’m so sad he’s gone.  He was my quintessential pet, the pet for me against whom all other pets will be measured.  I had other pets before him and have already had other pets since, but he’s Max, my archetypical pet.

Anyways, I tried (and succeeded for the most part) not to cry at the news, since it could have really set me off, considering that it happened to be a year, to the day, since my stepgrandfather had died.  Thankfully, we were heading out to dinner with my stepaunt and stepgrandmother, so I put Max’s death out of mind and just enjoyed the dinner, despite the fact that conversation somehow came around to the various dogs in the family.  I made it through dinner, went home, and got down to packing.

Throughout the day on Tuesday, we watched as Hurricane Ernesto traveled across Cuba and made landfall in Florida, trying to determine whether my plane would be able to leave the next morning.  I was lucky to find that the signs posted at the Southwest terminals on Wednesday morning stated that planes leaving at 8:50 and later would be delayed; my flight departed at 8:10.  I’m not sure that they did actually delay the other planes, since the reports of the day that I received said that it was mostly dry and that the storm was no worse than any other storm, but I’m glad I didn’t have to find out.

I spent pretty much the whole of Wednesday traveling.  My flight was uneventful, the way I like it, and then I waited an hour at the
Albany airport for the bus to the bus station.  There, I waited three and a half hours for the bus to Great Barrington.  That wait was less than pleasant, but the bus ride itself was actually rather nice.  I decided to stop reading, since I was going through my book much too quickly, and instead, I just looked at the passing landscape and thought about life a bit.  I pondered how Oberlin orientation was going and made a note to check in with Caitlin and Anna before they began trying to co-captain the Preying Manti.  I thought a bit about the previous day’s adventures, and about the four feature films that I’ve watched so far this break (Match Point, The Lord of War, Supersize Me, and My Summer of Love).  I got excited about visiting my Grandparents.  

But, the sort of revelation that I had pertained to the upcoming
Vermont visit.  It struck me that with the going away party for the
South Main gang, and just the fact that I’ll be there towards the end of summer, I imagine the visit will feel like the end of summer camp.  You know that time when you’re staying up late at night, going through these rituals of trying to get the most out of being with another human that you are particularly enamored of?  When you’re trying to get the last drop of a place, trying to suck that last little bit of marrow out of that particular part of your life?  Except that while I imagine that will be the emotional setting of the situation, I can also see the distinct possibility that I will in fact be on the outside of the rituals.  In my mind’s eye I can see this plate glass wall dividing me from those moments of deep experience; after all, I’ve been away for the past three months, and since it’s summer in Vermont, that counts for a lot, since everyone has come out of hibernation.  I’ll do my best to make sure that those mental pictures don’t play out that way in reality, in part by making this trip full of new things, not just replays of old times, but at least I’m prepared for the possibility of that lonesome feeling of being the outsider.

As a counterpoint to all those thoughts, however, I just want to say that I really do like being in this part of the world.  The mountains are about the right size for me, about the right distance apart, and there are lots and lots of trees.  There are lovely old houses, and the sky is blue.  Particularly in Brattleboro, people are comfortable with one another, and there’s a lot going on at the small scale.  I know why it was hard to leave here, and why I thought I might end up returning.  I think that this trip is confirming for me that it’s a real possibility that I would move back to Vermont at some point in my life.  The similarity between Wales and Vermont also still pleases me (Back story: I wanted to visit Wales, inexplicably, for many years while I was growing up, and finally went in 2003 when I was studying abroad in London.  It was my first real adventure totally alone in the world for just over a week, and I walked around the countryside just absorbing it and pondering life.  It was a fantastic and formative experience).

Of course, as always, there’s more to tell – of today’s stroll around Great Barrington, where I ran into Emily and arranged to tentatively get together with her on Saturday, and where I tried on a fabulous and fabulously expensive sweater by “Amiee G;” of last night’s conversation with Grandpa about the merits of thinking and the wonder of life; of how I can’t get enough of the Diamond Age – there’s always more.  But for now I’ll get going and spare you from this grandiloquent mood I’m in.  Hooray for making it through such interesting times with such grace and flair.

The Close of Another Chapter

I’m officially done with my first semester of grad school, and in fact I’m already a few days into my vacation.  I’ll be bopping all over the east coast in the next few weeks, and I didn’t bring my laptop for security reasons, but I’ll probably still be writing more often than when I’m in school.  Especially since I have a lot to ponder after this first semester.

Since I last wrote, I finished the paper, went to the tournament, scrapped the design I was working on for an entire redesign of the cube house, completed the final design including model and three sheets of ink on mylar drawings, completed my sketchbook, had my exit interview, and started these intercession travels.  There’s a lovely picture of Herman and Ruth at the tournament that you should check out as a teaser to further stuff…for now I’m going to go enjoy pizza and conversation with the fam, who just walked in the door – Liz and Ricky and B.  Lovely!

All Drawn Out

Back from our two-day trip all around Oregon, and I'm all drawn out. We stopped at the High Desert Museum, Warm Springs Museum, and Timberline lodge yesterday (Tuesday) and today (Wednesday) we left the Timberline lodge and drove to the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center and Multnomah Falls. At each stop on Tuesday we drew interior, exterior, and detail drawings, plus we were supposed to draw diagrams of the landscapes and a section of our drive from Eugene to High Desert and from Warm Springs to Timberline. Today, we only had to draw at the Columbia Gorge Dicovery Center (plus finish the Timberline drawings), so we got to just enjoy the falls and the Vista House.

As much as it was a bit of overkill, and a lot of riding on the bus, the trip was enjoyable. Still, it was exhausting, because when we weren't drawing, we were all still in the getting to know you mode. I think it's particularly strange - we've spent a lot of time together, but in individual pursuit of the same goals, rather than in collaborative work towards a single accomplishment. That means that we have a lot to compare, rather than a solid baseline shared experience. So conversation tends to revolve around school, or other points of comparison (in particular, our opinions of each other, which makes me feel like I'm in middle school again, but sometimes our previous lives), rather than moving into new territory. It's somewhat frustrating because it takes a lot of work to continue the conversations, but the payback is relatively low. I'm looking forward to some mellowing out of the group.

One high point - last night I stayed at the Silcox Hut (7000 ft elevation) on Mt. Hood. Twenty-six of us shared the bunk house. I signed up late, so I was on the floor in front of the huge fireplace. Before we went to bed and after a good hour of casual conversation in the fireplace hall, Jake and Eric (the guy I was going to live with originally) were headed back out to sled a bit more on some lunch trays they had lifted earlier in the day. Kyle and I headed out with them, and we had a great time sledding down Mt. Hood on the tiny little trays. Throughly out of breath and much colder, we headed back in to the warm fire. It was a nice little snippet of time without the pressure to impress anyone, and some much needed physical activity after the long day of sitting.

I have a couple of drawings I'm very happy with, some that are quite a bit more rough to put it charitably, and lots that I didn't get done. I hope to clarify tomorrow what level of detail and preciseness vs. expressiveness and expansiveness we need to be capturing, which is probably a question that I should have asked before the attempting the assignment. Oh well. On a happy note that relates both to the drawings and to this little bloggy-poo, I was doing my reading today and came accross this quote from Edward Fischer: "Judged by the days, life does not make sense. Judged by the years, things add up and a plan emerges. A good reason to keep a journal is to have the consolation of seeing patterns form." A lovely sentiment, if expressed in a melancoly mode.

Hoping to get some fun/free time this weekend, along with doing a lot of drawing, starting the next project, writing the History/Theory midterm, and dealing with loose ends that have been hanging since the beginning of the term. Good news, though - I can now take my computer in to the studio, which means that I can spend even more time there...

Where is that large automobile? This is not my beautiful house!

Sometimes things don't work out the way you hoped they would. Like yesterday, for example. Erik and I met at the house, looked around, and asked for the application. The landlord suggested that we think another second, since we had asked about him reducing the rent. So we thought for a second, looked for another second, and by the time that we got his attention again, the landlord had given a young, soon to be married couple an application. He refused to give us an application, and we were tossed to the street, out on the apartment hunt again. After a while of driving around we looked on Craigslist, where we saw one good spot, but when we visited, we realized the place was really more for a family, and we gave up on the idea of living together, at least for now.

So I drove to the furthest west house I had looked at, then drove back to the furthest east house I had looked at. I called my mom to help me make the decision of which house to live in, and since I was tired of sitting in my car all the time, I drove up to Hendricks Park, which is right next to the eastern house, parked and sat on a picnic table about 100 feet from the car.

Five or six minutes into our conversation, I hear a car alarm go off. I think it's pretty rude. Then I think maybe it's mine - I could have hit the button when I sat down. So I turn around and walk to the car. Then I see that there's broken glass at my car.

Evidently a pair of young guys busted my little back window to try to get to my stuff. When the alarm went off, they peeled out of the parking lot, and as far as I can tell, they didn't get anything. So that hurried along my decision making process, and I picked a house right away. I called the house to make sure it was still available, then called my dad to tell him what had happened, then called the police. With all those calls done, I drove down the hill and immediately started to unload the stuff from my car into my new house.

It wasn't exactly the way I had imagined things happening, to say the least. But, the house is nice, and the housemate is a frisbee player named Adam. By this point today I've got my room pretty well set up, my clothes all clean, the window of my car fixed, and I'm feeling pretty well oriented to town. So I'm off to the University to figure out how to pay tuition and to set up a P.O. Box so that I have a stable address for everyone to send me care packages!

Exit Interview

It's 10:42, and I'm planning to go out to a movie. Do I feel like that's a silly idea? Yes, but I'm full of silly ideas right now, and not sleeping enough is one of my favorite new silly ideas. But to get to the real crux of the matter, I had an exit interview today for work. In my world, it's awesome to get an exit interview in the first place, and what's even more awesome was how well it went. I talked about what I liked about work, and what I didn't like, and realized that there was much more that I liked than that I disliked.

It started out with my bosses asking me how I felt that I was different than at the beginning of the year. Basically, my answer came down to the fact that I've attained this whole new plateau of independence - I was already independent when I started, and, in fact, I've always been an explorer and self-starter, but now I don't need as much reassurance along the way that the path that I've so boldly started down is acceptable and that I'm doing things some perfect way. I attribute this in large part to the friends that I have right now, whose friendship has taught me that I am most valuable as myself, and not as some unattainable "awesome friend." Although who wouldn't want to have an "awesome friend?"

Anyway, it's nice to realize that you are your own person, and also that all of the work you've done has been appreciated. I'm hoping to write up a list of accomplishments, and if I do I'll post them here...

Part 2:

I just stepped out to watch The Da Vinci code, which, having not read the book, I enjoyed in that way that you can enjoy mediocre movies. Way too many flashbacks, and the guys (Seth, Colin, and Stephan) were saying it was cast poorly, plus fairly predictable, but fun nonetheless. I suppose it's analogous to the book, i.e. great story plotwise, but not that great delivery-wise. Even the plot is see-through if you put any thought into it at all, though.

It's fun to go to late night movies, but it also makes for late nights. So, perhaps I had more to say about exit interviews and training your replacement (which I did Wednesday), or about winning games at your local small-town frisbee league (which I'm so proud of Brattleboro for having this year). But, I can actually hear my bed calling to me, "Rachel, come sleep on me," and if you're to the point of hallucination, you should generally go to sleep. So off I go, like a good little girl, resting up for this weekend's fun.