In your own words, what is Thoreau's view on man's relationship with nature? Can we see this philosophy in any of the Romantic poetry we've read in the class so far?
Sometimes I just wish I could connect with these writers. Thoreau to me is particularly difficult (though not quite as hard as Emerson). Yeah, I know his other works are different, but it's hard to take it when a writer is so insensitive to the limitations that he himself isn't subject to. Still, I guess I should give the guy some credit; he wasn't rich or anything--quite the opposite from what we heard in class--but I'm so not impressed by his ability to take daily four-hour walks. I saw the English Romantics as pretty out of touch with reality, but they've got nothing on the Americans, as far as I can tell.
But, please, forgive me. I'm currently dealing with real life, which, quite frankly, sucks.
So. Thoreau.
I guess his view of man's relationship with nature is pretty good compared to Emerson's. Though there is this myth building and the implications of potential exploitation, I don't think he really planned it out that way. I think he honestly does see unspoiled nature as important in and of itself, but he expresses his appreciation in terms of conquest because that's the language and mentality he's familiar with.
His is a more engaged approach to nature than that of the British Romantics, from what I can tell. In America, it's apparently all about getting your hands dirty. The Brits, on the other hand, seem more detached in their appreciation and perhaps more self-conscious of their invasion when they do interact, as in the nutting poem. Thoreau seems to take it as given that he belongs there; the British poets appear less sure.
I don't know. That's really all I can say right now.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
part 2 of The Walk Blog
(See below for Part 1)
I don't know about vision or sound or language. The hardest part of this assignment for me was just trying to get out of my own head and observe the world around me. I've been taking a lot of walks lately, not so much to enjoy nature, though that's a bonus, but to get away from home. I feel a lot of frustration and so the silence out there helps me become more settled inside. But it generally takes the entire walk before the inner rant subsides.
How relaxed Cardiff sounds, letting her mind wander this way and that, letting sights and sounds take her from one moment to the next--present to past, day to night. How surprised I was to know that she actually took the time to edit in sneezes so that her art more easily speaks to us, drags us in, makes us believe in her--it all sounded so natural.
How enraptured is Emerson, with his disembodied eyes, becoming one with nature. For him, it's all about beauty and communion. He says, "The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon" (14).
But for me...gah! It's all just a blur. Neither sights nor sounds really stick. The health of the mind demands a reprieve from both, so I'm halfway home again before I even start to really see or hear. And then...and then it kind of hits me. The absence of sound, the expanded horizon. Suddenly, I remember once again that there's something in this world beyond me and my petty little resentments. Emerson has an explanation for this one perhaps: "To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone" (14). He says it's the sight of nature in all her beauty. I don't know. For me, I think it's just a matter of being alone with my dog and simply getting out of my apartment, feeling the wind and smelling the open air.
I don't know about vision or sound or language. The hardest part of this assignment for me was just trying to get out of my own head and observe the world around me. I've been taking a lot of walks lately, not so much to enjoy nature, though that's a bonus, but to get away from home. I feel a lot of frustration and so the silence out there helps me become more settled inside. But it generally takes the entire walk before the inner rant subsides.
How relaxed Cardiff sounds, letting her mind wander this way and that, letting sights and sounds take her from one moment to the next--present to past, day to night. How surprised I was to know that she actually took the time to edit in sneezes so that her art more easily speaks to us, drags us in, makes us believe in her--it all sounded so natural.
How enraptured is Emerson, with his disembodied eyes, becoming one with nature. For him, it's all about beauty and communion. He says, "The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon" (14).
But for me...gah! It's all just a blur. Neither sights nor sounds really stick. The health of the mind demands a reprieve from both, so I'm halfway home again before I even start to really see or hear. And then...and then it kind of hits me. The absence of sound, the expanded horizon. Suddenly, I remember once again that there's something in this world beyond me and my petty little resentments. Emerson has an explanation for this one perhaps: "To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone" (14). He says it's the sight of nature in all her beauty. I don't know. For me, I think it's just a matter of being alone with my dog and simply getting out of my apartment, feeling the wind and smelling the open air.
The Walk Blog
It begins with noise and the cessation of noise.
Touch the back of your tongue to the roof of your mouth, as if you're going to make the sound a "k" makes. Now form your lips to make an "o" sound. Then blow.
Softly and then louder and then softly and then louder...
and so on. It should have a sort of guttural harshness to it.
This is the wind blowing
[The voice fades to memory, even as the irritation lingers on.]
The wind ruffles your hair. The leaves crunch underfoot. [She's going to expect us to rake 'em before they've even finished falling from the tree. I'm just waiting for the snide comments to begin.] Take a deep breath; put everything out of your mind.
Breath in.
Breath out.
Breath in.
Breath out.
See, now isn't that better? [We'll pretend it is, or the weight of this awful life will become too darn much to bear.]
But you've only just stepped out the front door, and Ricky's tugging at the leash. Best get a move on.
So down the steps--one, two--and along the sidewalk and then up the neighbors' drive. [The stack of pizza boxes and other assorted trash has expanded even more just since yesterday. It could be worse, I suppose. At least the cooler weather alleviates the stench. Bastards.]
Now you're heading up the block and Ricky's stopping to pee about every five feet, but it feels too nice out to hurry anyway. They'll be time enough for that later.
But go ahead and cross the street. At least that'll give you a moment or two of uninterrupted locomotion. [Nope, he's stopped again. Ah, there he comes. God knows what he's sniffing at in the middle of the street.]
Oh, fine, let's just skip all this. You were bored anyway, no point in lying.
So you're at the edge of town, heading away from the high school and up the hill behind. The wind's blowing so hard that your hair's standing straight up and all other sound is silenced.
This is the sound of silence--it feels heavy on the ears. [In case you wondered, it sometimes helps to yawn.]
About the silence, though: it isn't really, is it? After all, you can still hear Ricky panting, gasping for breath even as he drags you up the hill. And you can hear your heart pounding in your skull. But how do you describe the sound of blood throbbing through the brain?
Ahhhh, finally! You've reached the top. And the hills surrounding
But focus in. Look at your feet. Okay, not that close. But if you let your eyes wander from the fields to the little patch of weeds right in front of you and then allow your ears to follow, you might notice the slither of wind through the tall, fading grass. Stalk rasping against stalk, multiplied by…well, a lot.
It's not always so dull and lifeless out here, of course; only a month or two ago, the fields were golden and before that a sea of emerald. [I remember the first time I saw this view. It was early summer and the fields were a millio…er, a dozen shades of green. And the smell…. Oh, so hard to describe, but the exact opposite of Vegas with all its asphalt and sand.]
Thursday, October 9, 2008
my 1st draft--okay, really 1st freewrite
Okay, to be honest, I haven’t even done enough reading to refer to any sources. I’m afraid I’m going to end up with a close reading because that’s usually what I end up with, but anyway I’ll start.
V.Woolf is the quintessential modernist, and yet she, like any other modernist (or most any other writer, for that matter), is drawing on a long literary tradition. In the past, I’ve looked at woolf’s engagement with classical antiquity to see how she incorporates elements of Greek lyric poetry, philosophy, and drama along with Latin neoteric poetry and the atomic theory of Lucretius into her work, with an emphasis on the Waves. I called this incorporation an appropriation and was especially thinking of it in terms of her using predominately male traditions—and one enthusiastically used by men in later literary periods—to create a new modernist (feminist?) aesthetic.
When I come to Orlando, then, I’m already looking at it through this lens of appropriation and re-creation. Orlando, however, seems to me a book almost entirely informed by romanticism/romantic principles. Of particular interest to me is the author’s depiction of the artist as a romantic figure inspired by nature and motivated by high passions. At one point, the narrator follows the lead of one of the writers we’ve encountered in this class (keats?) in saying that Orlando is in love with death (great, I’ve forgotten my book).
From what little I’ve been able to gather from my sources (having looked at them only cursorily), others have also noted the romantic temperament of this protagonist. What I thought I might do to go beyond that is to look at how nature itself is so intimately tied to that same temperament and to the temperament of people in general in this novel. Woolf seems to suggest either that the weather/environment is creating the character of the age or that the character of the age is influencing the weather/environment. If possible, I’d like to know in which direction this influence flows. Or is it perhaps a mutual thing? Are the two—the character of the people and the natural world—so intimately intertwined in this novel that the influence goes both ways?
What part, if any, does gender play in this system of interconnectedness?
Another aspect I’d like to explore, which may perhaps be closely related to the question concerning (wo)man/nature’s interconnectedness, is the definite tension between the sublime and the beautiful I see in this piece. To me, it seems that the novel highlights this tension, but mainly to disrupt the traditional masculine/feminine dynamic given to us by Burke. I guess it’s not really all that surprising that she should do this in a novel all about gender slippage.
V.Woolf is the quintessential modernist, and yet she, like any other modernist (or most any other writer, for that matter), is drawing on a long literary tradition. In the past, I’ve looked at woolf’s engagement with classical antiquity to see how she incorporates elements of Greek lyric poetry, philosophy, and drama along with Latin neoteric poetry and the atomic theory of Lucretius into her work, with an emphasis on the Waves. I called this incorporation an appropriation and was especially thinking of it in terms of her using predominately male traditions—and one enthusiastically used by men in later literary periods—to create a new modernist (feminist?) aesthetic.
When I come to Orlando, then, I’m already looking at it through this lens of appropriation and re-creation. Orlando, however, seems to me a book almost entirely informed by romanticism/romantic principles. Of particular interest to me is the author’s depiction of the artist as a romantic figure inspired by nature and motivated by high passions. At one point, the narrator follows the lead of one of the writers we’ve encountered in this class (keats?) in saying that Orlando is in love with death (great, I’ve forgotten my book).
From what little I’ve been able to gather from my sources (having looked at them only cursorily), others have also noted the romantic temperament of this protagonist. What I thought I might do to go beyond that is to look at how nature itself is so intimately tied to that same temperament and to the temperament of people in general in this novel. Woolf seems to suggest either that the weather/environment is creating the character of the age or that the character of the age is influencing the weather/environment. If possible, I’d like to know in which direction this influence flows. Or is it perhaps a mutual thing? Are the two—the character of the people and the natural world—so intimately intertwined in this novel that the influence goes both ways?
What part, if any, does gender play in this system of interconnectedness?
Another aspect I’d like to explore, which may perhaps be closely related to the question concerning (wo)man/nature’s interconnectedness, is the definite tension between the sublime and the beautiful I see in this piece. To me, it seems that the novel highlights this tension, but mainly to disrupt the traditional masculine/feminine dynamic given to us by Burke. I guess it’s not really all that surprising that she should do this in a novel all about gender slippage.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
amare est lacrimare
Truly it sets
my heart to pounding in my breast,
for the moment I glance at you, I can
no longer speak;
my tongue grows numb; at once a subtle
fire runs stealthily beneath my skin;
my eyes see nothing, my ears
ring and buzz,
the sweat pours down, a trembling
seizes the whole of me, I turn paler
than grass, and I seem to myself
not far from dying.
But everything can be endured, because….
~*~
No, Sappho, I’d have to disagree: not everything can be endured.
~*~
The love Sappho describes, the one I’ve felt myself at least once before is…
Agony.
But it is an agony that we both desire and rebel against throughout our lives.
Longinus and Burke would like to tie sublimity to greatness in art or to the majestic in nature, but I think that what we seek in literature and nature is simply the agony that we feel while in the heights and depths of love and sorrow—that pure, delicious agony that lets us know we’re alive…however unfortunately.
Burke denies this. He says, in fact, “When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modification, they may be, and they are delightful…” (1.7). I agree with the idea that pain and danger pressing too closely are simply terrible, not delightful; what I disagree with is Burke’s definition of the sublime: that it is something that is full of delight and, worse yet, that it is something that must be experienced at, at least, some distance. For, as Burke himself says, feelings of “…pain and danger…are the most powerful of all the passions” (1.6), and, as with any passions, they are most easily felt not by proxy, but in the flesh.
No, I feel that the most truly sublime is generally also the most truly terrible. It is nothing more or less than the ecstasy of pure agony.
And it can only be known firsthand.
When we sense the sublime in nature or in a piece of literature, we sense it with…well, we sense it with our senses—and in the painful tingling of our nerves. Like poor Sappho’s speaker up above, we are indeed overpowered by a certain awful “Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror” (Burke 2.1). The juxtaposition of images and sensations that Longinus celebrates in this poem has the power to stop me and, yes, to cause me pain. Not because my mind says, “Wow, what a great poem,” but because my body reacts in sympathy with the speaker. And, independent of that, it reacts to the overload of ideas that are being desperately processed by my mind. It’s a pleasant pain, but painful all the same.
But that pleasurable pain is numbness compared to the pain of love I once (not so very long ago) experienced firsthand.
And that, in turn, was less than nothing to the ecstasy of agony I felt after losing a friend to suicide about a month after I turned 22.
Was it pleasant? No. But it sure as heck was the most powerful thing I’ve ever felt. In the days and weeks that followed, sometimes I felt like my heart would burst from all the anguish inside it. In fact, I was so full of feeling—a horrible passion of despair—that it was one of the few times in my life that the words actually poured out of me. I, who have struggled with writer’s block, couldn’t stop writing. I’m not claiming any of it was good, but it certainly reflects the tumultuousness that was inside of me at the time, the anger, the bewilderment, the desperation, and the despair. At the risk of being laughed at, I’m going to share a couple of the works that resulted—though, again, with the disclaimer that I know it’s pretty embarrassing poetically speaking, and I’m definitely NOT saying that the poems themselves are sublime, but I do think they quite honestly capture something of the sublime agony I was feeling back then:
Do you love me / now that I’m dead? / Do you cry for me / now that I’m gone? / Or does the game go on / one more player down? / Was it all for nothing? / Did you even learn one thing? / Did you learn how to love? / Do you know how to care? / Will you ever see / how much it meant to me / just to be held / just to be touched? / Couldn’t you even give me a smile? / But now that I’m gone / do you cry for me? / And now that I’m dead / do you love me? / You played me a fool / treated me like a dog / kicked me aside / when you found another pup / I could have survived / tried to move on / but you couldn’t let it be / You had to have me / on a string / like a puppet / to be played with / when you were bored / Now who’s your toy? / Do you cry for me / now that I’m dead? / Do you love me / now that I’m gone? / And in the night / do you long for my touch? / When you’re all alone / do you remember my kiss? / Do you care? / Did you ever care? / Now that it’s too fucking late / Do you finally care?
Remember me
(Note: Yeah, his wife left him for another man. Needless to say, we were all looking for someone to blame, and she was an easy target.)
~*~
Blue sky above me,
dark clouds surround me,
heartache engulfs me,
a nightmare that just won’t end.
I hear your voice in my head,
see your smile in my dreams,
hold you in my memory.
Tomorrow if I can just go on—
and the next day once again—
I can take it day by day,
and eventually the pain will fade.
But when I’m alone
with all my defenses down,
every memory comes back to me:
I hear you in a song,
see you in the sky;
driving down the road,
I wonder if you’ll pass me by.
And so little to hold onto,
so much I had to miss.
I just got to treasure
every minute,
remember every look,
and
memorize every word
I ever heard you speak.
And the tears inside me,
fighting to be free…
I’m so afraid I’ll forget you,
but it hurts almost as bad
to remember.
I love you—
“Been there, did that!”
I miss you—
“What’s up with that?”
I won’t forget you—
“Keep knocking and someday I’ll answer!”
Someday, I hope to see you again….
In memory of you
Feb. 25, 1993
25 days in Hell
my heart to pounding in my breast,
for the moment I glance at you, I can
no longer speak;
my tongue grows numb; at once a subtle
fire runs stealthily beneath my skin;
my eyes see nothing, my ears
ring and buzz,
the sweat pours down, a trembling
seizes the whole of me, I turn paler
than grass, and I seem to myself
not far from dying.
But everything can be endured, because….
~*~
No, Sappho, I’d have to disagree: not everything can be endured.
~*~
The love Sappho describes, the one I’ve felt myself at least once before is…
Agony.
But it is an agony that we both desire and rebel against throughout our lives.
Longinus and Burke would like to tie sublimity to greatness in art or to the majestic in nature, but I think that what we seek in literature and nature is simply the agony that we feel while in the heights and depths of love and sorrow—that pure, delicious agony that lets us know we’re alive…however unfortunately.
Burke denies this. He says, in fact, “When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modification, they may be, and they are delightful…” (1.7). I agree with the idea that pain and danger pressing too closely are simply terrible, not delightful; what I disagree with is Burke’s definition of the sublime: that it is something that is full of delight and, worse yet, that it is something that must be experienced at, at least, some distance. For, as Burke himself says, feelings of “…pain and danger…are the most powerful of all the passions” (1.6), and, as with any passions, they are most easily felt not by proxy, but in the flesh.
No, I feel that the most truly sublime is generally also the most truly terrible. It is nothing more or less than the ecstasy of pure agony.
And it can only be known firsthand.
When we sense the sublime in nature or in a piece of literature, we sense it with…well, we sense it with our senses—and in the painful tingling of our nerves. Like poor Sappho’s speaker up above, we are indeed overpowered by a certain awful “Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror” (Burke 2.1). The juxtaposition of images and sensations that Longinus celebrates in this poem has the power to stop me and, yes, to cause me pain. Not because my mind says, “Wow, what a great poem,” but because my body reacts in sympathy with the speaker. And, independent of that, it reacts to the overload of ideas that are being desperately processed by my mind. It’s a pleasant pain, but painful all the same.
But that pleasurable pain is numbness compared to the pain of love I once (not so very long ago) experienced firsthand.
And that, in turn, was less than nothing to the ecstasy of agony I felt after losing a friend to suicide about a month after I turned 22.
Was it pleasant? No. But it sure as heck was the most powerful thing I’ve ever felt. In the days and weeks that followed, sometimes I felt like my heart would burst from all the anguish inside it. In fact, I was so full of feeling—a horrible passion of despair—that it was one of the few times in my life that the words actually poured out of me. I, who have struggled with writer’s block, couldn’t stop writing. I’m not claiming any of it was good, but it certainly reflects the tumultuousness that was inside of me at the time, the anger, the bewilderment, the desperation, and the despair. At the risk of being laughed at, I’m going to share a couple of the works that resulted—though, again, with the disclaimer that I know it’s pretty embarrassing poetically speaking, and I’m definitely NOT saying that the poems themselves are sublime, but I do think they quite honestly capture something of the sublime agony I was feeling back then:
Do you love me / now that I’m dead? / Do you cry for me / now that I’m gone? / Or does the game go on / one more player down? / Was it all for nothing? / Did you even learn one thing? / Did you learn how to love? / Do you know how to care? / Will you ever see / how much it meant to me / just to be held / just to be touched? / Couldn’t you even give me a smile? / But now that I’m gone / do you cry for me? / And now that I’m dead / do you love me? / You played me a fool / treated me like a dog / kicked me aside / when you found another pup / I could have survived / tried to move on / but you couldn’t let it be / You had to have me / on a string / like a puppet / to be played with / when you were bored / Now who’s your toy? / Do you cry for me / now that I’m dead? / Do you love me / now that I’m gone? / And in the night / do you long for my touch? / When you’re all alone / do you remember my kiss? / Do you care? / Did you ever care? / Now that it’s too fucking late / Do you finally care?
Remember me
(Note: Yeah, his wife left him for another man. Needless to say, we were all looking for someone to blame, and she was an easy target.)
~*~
Blue sky above me,
dark clouds surround me,
heartache engulfs me,
a nightmare that just won’t end.
I hear your voice in my head,
see your smile in my dreams,
hold you in my memory.
Tomorrow if I can just go on—
and the next day once again—
I can take it day by day,
and eventually the pain will fade.
But when I’m alone
with all my defenses down,
every memory comes back to me:
I hear you in a song,
see you in the sky;
driving down the road,
I wonder if you’ll pass me by.
And so little to hold onto,
so much I had to miss.
I just got to treasure
every minute,
remember every look,
and
memorize every word
I ever heard you speak.
And the tears inside me,
fighting to be free…
I’m so afraid I’ll forget you,
but it hurts almost as bad
to remember.
I love you—
“Been there, did that!”
I miss you—
“What’s up with that?”
I won’t forget you—
“Keep knocking and someday I’ll answer!”
Someday, I hope to see you again….
In memory of you
Feb. 25, 1993
25 days in Hell
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Letter to a character
My Dearest Emily,
I hope you'll allow me to call you Emily. I know we don't know each another, but, honestly, I can't stand to see you being presented as a nameless thing--an object of pity or scorn--when you have an identity of your own--even if no one took the pains or even simply the time to discover it.
You see, in many ways I identify with you, with your plight. Abandoned by the man you loved...there was once a man I loved. Left to raise your child alone...I had three little ones, two of them before I turned nineteen. Treated as if you were mad...well, maybe I was mad. Maybe I am. I was. I am.
But we go on, don't we?
Only...
Only, I know that poet lied about you. He pretended to hear your voice. He pretended to know your mind. He told the world the secrets that you whispered to your child, the consolation, the commiseration, the promises, the pain.
But he knew nothing. He felt nothing. He saw nothing and heard nothing at all.
Maybe rumors.
And, to be fair, even poets can be deceived. By an ill fame with slobbering lips and stoppered ears, even poets can be misled.
Oh, but Emily, how long must we endure these lies? How long must we allow others to pretend to speak for us? If they leave you to wander about, an abandoned mother, with an abandoned child, searching for something in a world of nothing, what right do they have to call you the crazy one?
Emily, I don't know what to do for you. He called you mad--then he taught me how to call you mad as well.
But I've been played the fool too long.
So if it's madness he wants, madness they want, then...
Then maybe I'll be mad too.
With all affection,
In solidarity,
Another Mad Mother
I hope you'll allow me to call you Emily. I know we don't know each another, but, honestly, I can't stand to see you being presented as a nameless thing--an object of pity or scorn--when you have an identity of your own--even if no one took the pains or even simply the time to discover it.
You see, in many ways I identify with you, with your plight. Abandoned by the man you loved...there was once a man I loved. Left to raise your child alone...I had three little ones, two of them before I turned nineteen. Treated as if you were mad...well, maybe I was mad. Maybe I am. I was. I am.
But we go on, don't we?
Only...
Only, I know that poet lied about you. He pretended to hear your voice. He pretended to know your mind. He told the world the secrets that you whispered to your child, the consolation, the commiseration, the promises, the pain.
But he knew nothing. He felt nothing. He saw nothing and heard nothing at all.
Maybe rumors.
And, to be fair, even poets can be deceived. By an ill fame with slobbering lips and stoppered ears, even poets can be misled.
Oh, but Emily, how long must we endure these lies? How long must we allow others to pretend to speak for us? If they leave you to wander about, an abandoned mother, with an abandoned child, searching for something in a world of nothing, what right do they have to call you the crazy one?
Emily, I don't know what to do for you. He called you mad--then he taught me how to call you mad as well.
But I've been played the fool too long.
So if it's madness he wants, madness they want, then...
Then maybe I'll be mad too.
With all affection,
In solidarity,
Another Mad Mother
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Have I ever felt trapped?
Drawing on Coleridge for this question is so appropriate because in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" it seems that so much of what the characters suffer springs from feelings of guilt and compulsion. I've felt trapped in both literal and metaphorical ways: literally because of finances, family obligations, and--most often--a simple lack of knowledge and intellectual and/or emotional resources; metaphorically because of guilt and fear. Most of the time, I feel trapped by myself. I feel like I don't have the keys to access certain possibilities. And I never stop second guessing myself. And like the Mariner, I often find myself compelled to inflict my doubts on the poor, unsuspecting innocents around me.
Hmmm...I sense that this could easily turn into another one of those moments of self-pitying self-confession. So I think I'm going to switch prompts mid-blog. (How's that for a grand escape?)
So revisiting Tuesday's in-class freewrite:
The most foreign environment I've ever visited is probably--ironically enough--Pullman, Washington. But I should qualify this with "in comparison to where I was accustomed to being."
For me, Las Vegas has been home for over twenty years; it's the town where I came of age and where almost every horrible, agonizing, happy, wonderful thing has happened to me. There are also so many things I took for granted while living there: 24-hour grocery & even department store shopping; movie theaters with twenty screens; 112 degree heat three to four months of the year; lots of sun; lots of places to eat; lots of entertainment; all the places my kids and I haunted from the time they were born; and the ones I haunted even before that from the time I moved there when I was fifteen oh so many years ago (like the high school I dropped out of and the university where I made my way back up).
Then I moved to Pullman.
When I first moved here, despite missing all of the above, the biggest shock was the cold. Even though I moved in at the beginning of June, I felt cold all the time. And it rained and rained (and rained) until I felt like I'd never see the sun again. And even though July brought an end to the rain, it remained chilly (again, only by comparison to what I'd known for the last 20-something years, of course) so that I felt about ready NOT to start classes but to go into hibernation by the time September hit. I imagine the bodies of those Antarctic explorers must have felt a hundred times more out of wack than mine did--especially dependent as they were on a sun that never stood quite where it should (i.e. where they were used to seeing it) in the sky.
But gradually I've become acclimatized--though, admittedly, only after inflicting a year of whining about the weather on anyone and everyone who would listen. Sorry, guys.
One thing I haven't become accustomed to is the quiet and the darkness. I intentionally rented off of College Hill, thinking that I didn't want to be around all the undergrad partying, and, for the most part, this was a good decision. I've come to appreciate the chirping of crickets and birds. However, although I don't really miss the noise of cars and helicopters and people shouting and the occasional gunshot at all hours of the night, I do feel lonelier somehow and isolated here--especially when it's dark out. During the day, there are all sorts of people walking dogs and such, but at night, if I take a walk around the block or down the street, I might not see anyone the entire time I'm out there.
And the dark! Oh gee, sometimes I long for the glitter of the Strip or the glaring bright lights of the corner gas stations. At the same time, I have to admit that the stars haven't been this lovely to me in years. When I look at the sky, I'm not seeing it through a haze of smog and city lights. Again, I guess in a very distant way, I can compare my experience with those Antarctic explorers.
What I miss most about Vegas:
Hmmm...I sense that this could easily turn into another one of those moments of self-pitying self-confession. So I think I'm going to switch prompts mid-blog. (How's that for a grand escape?)
So revisiting Tuesday's in-class freewrite:
My Grand Antarctic--er, make that Pullman--Adventures
The most foreign environment I've ever visited is probably--ironically enough--Pullman, Washington. But I should qualify this with "in comparison to where I was accustomed to being."
For me, Las Vegas has been home for over twenty years; it's the town where I came of age and where almost every horrible, agonizing, happy, wonderful thing has happened to me. There are also so many things I took for granted while living there: 24-hour grocery & even department store shopping; movie theaters with twenty screens; 112 degree heat three to four months of the year; lots of sun; lots of places to eat; lots of entertainment; all the places my kids and I haunted from the time they were born; and the ones I haunted even before that from the time I moved there when I was fifteen oh so many years ago (like the high school I dropped out of and the university where I made my way back up).
Then I moved to Pullman.
When I first moved here, despite missing all of the above, the biggest shock was the cold. Even though I moved in at the beginning of June, I felt cold all the time. And it rained and rained (and rained) until I felt like I'd never see the sun again. And even though July brought an end to the rain, it remained chilly (again, only by comparison to what I'd known for the last 20-something years, of course) so that I felt about ready NOT to start classes but to go into hibernation by the time September hit. I imagine the bodies of those Antarctic explorers must have felt a hundred times more out of wack than mine did--especially dependent as they were on a sun that never stood quite where it should (i.e. where they were used to seeing it) in the sky.
But gradually I've become acclimatized--though, admittedly, only after inflicting a year of whining about the weather on anyone and everyone who would listen. Sorry, guys.
One thing I haven't become accustomed to is the quiet and the darkness. I intentionally rented off of College Hill, thinking that I didn't want to be around all the undergrad partying, and, for the most part, this was a good decision. I've come to appreciate the chirping of crickets and birds. However, although I don't really miss the noise of cars and helicopters and people shouting and the occasional gunshot at all hours of the night, I do feel lonelier somehow and isolated here--especially when it's dark out. During the day, there are all sorts of people walking dogs and such, but at night, if I take a walk around the block or down the street, I might not see anyone the entire time I'm out there.
And the dark! Oh gee, sometimes I long for the glitter of the Strip or the glaring bright lights of the corner gas stations. At the same time, I have to admit that the stars haven't been this lovely to me in years. When I look at the sky, I'm not seeing it through a haze of smog and city lights. Again, I guess in a very distant way, I can compare my experience with those Antarctic explorers.
What I miss most about Vegas:
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