After watching Caddyshack for the first time (how have I never seen that movie before?) while patching my disintegrated jeans (no, not a fashion statement), I went to my drawing class and them promptly left after 10 minutes of utter boredom and frustration. No, I wasn’t frustrated because I was having trouble drawing, but because the teacher of the class is absolutely intolerable. She was drawing a picture of a sculpture visible out the window and the class was huddled around watching her as she used the same token phrases again and again. The only reason I had to stay was to observe what it is that makes bad teaching bad, but I decided it wasn’t worth it. Sigh. Oh well, now that I have all the drawing supplies I need I can draw wherever I want whenever I want without a class, so it wasn’t that disappointing.
All right…backing up further than a few minutes ago, I think I’m a few days behind on my “persons of the day.”
Wednesday’s person of the day was the blind man who almost sat on me while I was riding the T. As he was stumbling around in the vicinity of one of the hand rails, a courteous by-stander took his arm and guided him to a seat. He then got up from that seat and tried to sit in my lap. After generous apologies we started talking (general questions like “Where are you headed today?” and “Where are you headed in your life?”). It was a nice conversation. Speaking to him, I realized that I had never met a blind person before. I was itching to ask him what it was like to be blind--not that he would have had a satisfactory answer, because that’s like asking me what it’s like to be me—but instead we talked about how he’d never met anyone from Oregon who wasn’t friendly (I have).
In addition to sparking questions about how we perceive the world and how we communicate, my conversation with him also made me wonder (yet again) why I seem so approachable to strangers (blind people who try to sit on me, little old ladies, people rapping profanely about Jesus), but I seem so off-putting to the people I interact with on a daily basis. Obviously it has something to do with my body language and attitude, I just don’t know how or why those things change during the circumstances of my life. But that’s a ramble for another day…
Thursday’s person of the day was the visiting professor from Holland who co-taught my poetry and photography seminar last semester. She is in Boston for the week and she agreed to have coffee with me to talk about what graduate school is like in Europe. She teaches American Studies at the University of Amsterdam and is the cutest European I’ve ever seen. I ended up picking her brain about how she fell into her line of work and how her life developed.
Yesterday was, in general, a very good day. I spent the morning looking at possible courses to “listen in” on next semester (Jamaica Kincaid teaches a class at Harvard on Caribbean women writers…how hot is that?), then went to my coffee meeting, then talked to my dad on the phone while looking for a good place to sit and draw buildings. After struggling with my first attempt using color pastels (mixed feelings about those at the moment) I went to Pleasures of Poetry led by the professor who will be teaching the environmental writing class I’m taking next semester. He’s so animated an awesome, and his favorite poet, Galway Kinnell, is one of my favorites. So the verdict is: very excited about the class, even though it’s a HASS-D (sorry for the MIT-speak).
After that my day (though not my dad) took a turn for the worse. I won’t go in the details, but it’s amazing how the slightest bit of emotional turmoil (ok, slight is an obviously relative term) can leave me completely drained and more exhausted then a 20-mile training run.
I recovered as best as I could to head to a meeting (yet again) with my thesis advisor. He’s definitely growing on me. My partner was late, so we talked for a bit about my ambitions to travel the world and teach next year. That really seemed to surprise him (he said “I would have guessed astronaut for sure, definitely an adventurer, but this is quite amazing!”). Most people in the Aero/Astro department end up becoming boring engineers who follow straight and narrow paths.
Next up on my full plate: basketball game against Lesley. They aren’t the greatest program, so I got to play more minutes than usual (maybe 8 or so). I even scored two points (go me).
Wow, now that I’ve gotten myself into the rut of describing my day hour by hour, I might as well finish it. Running (on a treadmill, which still completely freaks me out after my heinous treadmill accident last spring), then dinner, then homemade mojitos (Chandler makes a mad mojito), then bailing out on barhopping to go to bed early so I could wake up early to prep for my radio show this morning, only to get woken up by a 3 am phone call. Phew. Done.
Ok, this morning I hit the snooze button for…let’s not say how long, it’s too embarrassing…and then did my first radio show in almost a year. So, my person of the day for today is (unless something happens in the next 8 and a half hours to change my mind) myself, for not making any glaring mistakes and performing somewhat non-horrendously on the air. Excellent. WMBR now has audio files of shows archived, so you can listen to me here. Just click on the Friday, January 27 Late Risers Club show (it will be up for 10 days, unless you are a hip station member like me and have access to the mp3 file). Don’t make fun of me too much…
That’s about all the incendiary news I have for now. Oh wait, incendiary isn’t the right word to use at all. If only there had been some way to use today’s word of the day, wunderkind…
A more contemplative less catalog-esque entry coming soon…maybe…
1 comment:
I hope it was actually your "day" that took a turn for the worst Thursday rather than your "dad". Personally, I always try to turn in the better direction.
AWB
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