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I N  T H E  N I G H T  K I T C H E N

First Day of School

Yesterday was my first day of classes. It went fine. I stay in the art building for everything. The campus is not that large so it's easy to figure out where you are. In fact, it's too easy.

I never really thought of the University of Oregon as being that big but in comparison, it's huge. I've been on big campuses before where you have to drive or take a bus across campus. You could walk everywhere at UO. Everything here is on a smaller scale. The library is small the bookstore is small the lounge areas just aren't big enough. At UO, I had all sorts of hidden nooks and crannies throughout campus where I could find peace and quiet or sleep if I wanted to. I don't think there's enough nooks at my new school.

It rained all day yesterday. I walked from my house the five blocks to the bus stop and caught the number nine. I sat on the bus and thought about how calm I felt. I guess it's something that you lose with age. Or, maybe you gain it; gain the ability to face new situations without obsessing over your hair or clothes or your ability to navigate an unfamiliar situation. Gone is the fear that I will do something so utterly stupid that I will be marked as a pariah for the rest of my days. I will admit that I was a little bummed not to have butterflies in my stomach even though I remember how exhausting those flutters could be.

I had two classes. The first one was my basic design class. The classroom was nice and large with big surface areas for working. There were a variety of students including one older, annoying, post-bacc student. I must be careful not to inadvertently align myself with him.

We had to go around the room and introduce ourselves and talk about why we were art students. I was first and unprepared. I blah-blahed about having worked in graphic design and on computers for six years and that I wanted to get my career away from computers. The instructor arched her eyebrow at me and said, "Really?" More than a few other people said, as we went around the room, that they were looking to combine art and computers and make a career out of it. One girl even said she wanted to do web page design. Poor kid.

My second class was drawing II and I like that teacher. I think it will be a good class. We did a quick in-class exercise where we were paired up to draw charcoal portraits. My first one looked pretty good for never having done portraits before and only recently grasping the concept of charcoal. My second one was pretty bad.

The girl I got paired up with was pretty cool and friendly. She said she was working on the six year plan and had tried college a couple times but kept taking breaks. She was younger than I as most everyone was, though some looked right around my age. It feels very weird being around people who haven't had a career yet. It feels even more weird to call what now feels like a brief foray into the real world a career.

I can't tell if I'm a grownup or not. Anyone have any clues?

3:57 PM link

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Each Night

I had a good night of sleep last night. Pretty surprising as I went to sleep with a headache. I used to get headaches all the time but they had been less this summer but seem to have suddenly returned.

Since being in this new place, I haven't had very many good nights of sleep. It's been hot and the noises are different. I think we had a lot more privacy in the old place though I didn't notice it too much when we lived there.

The cat is very restless. This move has been hard for him. He's kept me up a number of nights with his own paranoid trips around the house in the dark of night.

Lately, I've been having dreams about planes and war and blood. Not very restful dreams, you can imagine. Last week, I dreamed that I was housing people here who had to evacuate their own homes. Our little duplex was filled with people sleeping on any available space of floor. I kept waking up halfway, confused as to who exactly was sleeping next to me and ashamedly pulling my covers over me as I had a housefull of people and bare legs should probably be covered up. Somewhere around 5 a.m., I realized what was happening and woke myself up completely and made myself recognize that it was just me and T. and the cat and that I could sleep soundly.

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Let's pause for an amusing anecdote about life in Portland....

A couple weeks back I was at my bank on Hawthorne depositing money. As I waited in line at the ATM, I kept hearing this sound, "BeeBoop... BeeBoop... BeeBoop." At first, I absently attributed it to a cell phone of some sort. I added up my checks and then it was my turn at the machine. "BeeBoop... BeeBoop." The sound continued. Finally, I finished and turned around and saw the source of the sound. Across the street, two seriously dred-locked hippies were maneuvering with some difficulty a very long, beat up couch balanced precariously upon a shopping cart. They looked frustrated as the couch seemed to dictate where it wanted to go, namely into the street or up on the lawns. The sound couldn't have been making it any less frustrating as it emanated loudly from the anti-theft device now installed on the bottom of all Fred Meyer shopping carts. "BeeBoop... BeeBoop... BeeBoop," it lamely called for help all the way down 39th.

9:13 AM link

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