adjust

I have been here less than two days. I have replaced my student I.D. card with a CTA Transit Card. Car and bike keys for a train map. The Pacific Ocean for Lake Michigan. The sound of waves for the purr of air conditioning and of traffic. My sweater with an umbrella… except today when, to my surprise, I stepped outside and it was chilly. I don’t know quite what to think about all of this, so I’m boarding the busses and trains like a native, with my CTA card the right way (cut corner toward me), acting like I have somewhere to go and that I know how to get there.

a new adventure

Beginning tomorrow, a la deriva will become a travel journal yet again. This California girl is moving East. I'm off to drift again, so to speak, this time in Chicago.

And you know, they say hot dogs are a specialty of the city.

Romantic Without A Cause

I am printing out my last English paper. Eight-and-a-half wondrous pages of disorganized thought. It's not nearly the best paper i've written, but it's not often that I concoct the title and the concluding sentence with phrases so cleaver that I finish reading with a sigh.

Sure the vivid descriptions of cooking up may stroke the curiosity of some, but anyone who experiments knows he could end up just like Mark Renton: an addict without a future, emotions without an outlet, wandering with no destination, an 18th century Romantic without any 19th century Victorian ending.

On the eve of my entrance into real life I am strangely obsessed with Trainspotting. A bit of an inappropriate book and/or movie to live by, certainly, but I think they have good intentions. As do I.

I'm going to be just like you.

when is not all the time

I just decided to do my English last paper on a topic that would allow me to deviate and make my academic career go full circle. I'm going to touch on Romantic poetry (which I studied most in 12th grade) , and modernism (which I have always liked). I came across this gem from a paper I wrote four years ago that I was always so proud of: He suggests that despair is temporary in the line “but when the melancholy fit shall fall” (223) with the use of the word “when,” because when is not all the time. This is the kind of line that reporters would sometimes turn in (you know, when I used to edit at the newspaper), and the whole office would laugh about it and repeat it before I would finally delete it.

I'm rather embarrassed. This is precisely the reason why I generally refuse to read my articles after they've been published -- especially the ones that sit collecting dust in big red memory books -- they may remain clearly good in my mind, but my refined eye won't be able to read them now without cringing.

now what

Freshman year -- and even sophomore year when we had time -- I frequently ate dinner with a group of three other girls who lived on my floor. We'd eat, we'd laugh, and we'd sit there for hours procrastinating the evening's studies. Junior year we all went our separate ways into I.V. or abroad; we didn't see each other quite as frequently and it became more and more difficult to get us all in the same place at the same time. But this year, we made an effort every few weeks to have lunch, not lingering as long because of various time conflicts, but nonetheless sitting together, laughing, and catching up.

This evening we had dinner. We lingered just as long as we used to at the dining commons, this time in the natural light of a restaurant and not under the horrible gaze of that mural in Ortega. It was pleasant until I started to think about it as the last time. When I started college I never thought it would end. I remember so clearly walking around campus the day I moved in, talking to my neighbor who would later become my good friend, wondering at the experiences that lay ahead. And here it is, ending. I'm ready for it to be over, i've taken from it all I could have -- i've grown up -- but it's terrifying looking ahead because I know it will never be the same. My life here is such a bubble. I have a dozen good friends within arms reach and all the intellectual stimulation I could ever need a five-minute bike ride away. What is the real world like?

I've been riding the last few months on the excitement and adventure of graduation, or at least the big decision, and now as i'm about to begin my last day of classes, write my last paper, take my last final, complete the last day at my internship, it's beginning to feel real and i'm not quite sure what I should do. Run around and celebrate? Stay quiet and soak in the nostalgia? Go about my business as usual? Try to forget?

-----

I've had an obsession for the last four years with the hot dog stand on campus. Whenever I am fortunate enough to pass by it (which has been quite often this quarter due to the location of my classes) I am treated to the potent aroma of beef, turkey, and veggie hot dogs sizzling on the grill. I have never smelt anything quite like it, so juicy and so flavorful, and I suspect I never will again. But even though I have long harbored this obsession, for whatever reason I have never actually bought a hot dog there. Now, because I only have a week left here and i'm safe from the possibility that I would also become obsessed with the taste of these hot dogs, I have decided to walk up to the stand and order.

uncovered

Two people were playing chess at a card table set up on one of lawns on campus this morning. It wasn't particularly sunny, nor were the bike paths and sidewalks humming so early on Friday morning, but nevertheless there they were, a man and a woman, playing chess.

I didn't think anything of it until I glanced again and realized that the woman was naked. Completely naked, sitting with a crossed leg and arms in front of her chest, in the middle of campus.

Things just outside of the realm of "normal," even for a university, generally occur this time of year. One of the advanced art classes unleashes its artists and their comments on society upon the campus, artists who set up public displays that are designed to raise the eyebrows of the passersby. This year there was a man hidden in a tree, yelling compliments and insults down to walkers on the busy sidewalk underneath; a few students sitting in the middle of a saran-wrapped group of trees; a man riding his unicycle around and around the main roundabout on campus; an unbirthday party; and my personal favorite (aside from the naked chess player), a woman pretending to fish in the grimy campus pond.

I wondered why I hadn't noticed the naked woman before; surprised that my mind would see the other details of the scene, the chess pieces and the man's colorful hat, but not acknowledge the woman's obvious nakedness. I was also struck with concern, both because there was a chilly wind blowing and because one of the last sexual assaults that occurred on campus was in the early morning. And why did she choose Friday morning - the volume of visitors to campus, especially in the morning, is comparatively low after the Thursday night bar specials. The point behind such a performance was to incite thought, and she certainly got me thinking… so I rode by again about an hour later, just to see how other people reacted - especially boys -- now that the sun was a little higher in the sky. I didn't see much out of the ordinary, but as I was passing a man yelled at her, "Aren't you cold?" She replied cheerily, "Well I was a little before but now the sun's out."

It was interesting that she answered, chose to step out of her world, her objectivity in the eyes of others and interact with the student. She was just that when she wasn't speaking: an object. An object that was there, but wasn't, masked behind her art project. Talking to the student made it seem normal. Maybe it wasn't all that strange.