Presidential Paintball

So the beginning of the semester was a slight shock. That is, a shock in a cultural sense as well as a shock to the weather and to my body (Thank you Carl Flink), and to my cognitive skills. I did, however, sit down in my Mass Communications 1001 course yesterday to this.

Presidential Paintball Hillary, Obama, Giuliani & more play paintball for the USA Presidency!

Play this free game now!!

My professor, TK Chang, a bubbly Chinese man in jeans and a navy blazer, didn't claim to be very good as he (as Barack Obama) was pelleted by Hillary Clinton. It was more apparent that his giggles were obscuring his aim. The freshman behind me was muttering, "f-this" and "f-that" under his breath in the lecture hall of 150 people and I began to remember how I'm not cut out for lecture classes with people who don't care. It could be a long semester.

From "Four Quartets"

Burnt Norton

II

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.

Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time is time conquered.

(64-92)

T.S. Eliot

Double Stuffed?

I have this theory that if I keep sweet things in my apartment I won't be prone to eating them. My other option of course is to buy sugar only occasionally - though this usually results in a swift ingestion of their entirety. So I bought oreos the other day, and so far so good. This, along with the fact that I'll be leaving the country for a good ten days on Saturday, makes me feel sort of home free.

I am returning, however, to the land of brown faces, fresh tortillas and taquitos, helados y crema: the place where I gained an extra few pounds last spring. And I cannot wait.

I cannot wait for deteriorated roads, and stalls in traffic where people wait without question for the construction workers to reopen the roads. To see fellow Americans who have never been in the country scream as rock falls from construction around the busses, or to believe we are going to fall directly off the unguarded sides of CA-1 as we switchback into the mountains.

More still I cannot wait to travel through Chichicastenango on a Sunday - the largest day for market in the country and the largest market in its borders.

I can't wait to be mobbed by small children who call me gringa and hug me with runny noses as I read them El Arbol Generoso - The Giving Tree. They usually crawl into my lap and latch around my legs as I walk through the hospital. The last time this happened they wanted to take apart my glasses and wear them. I had to convince the kids that I wouldn't be able to see or do my job without their lenses. But they didn't seem to believe it would be a problem.

It is my idea of vacation - translating in the middle of nowhere, and I often forget how normal such an idea is for me. And because Guatemala has been in my family for so long, I sometimes forget that medical missions, traveling for purposes other than tourism or studying makes me sort of an anomaly. But the whole thing makes me feel less self absorbed, espeically in the midst of studying and a new semester. By nature to be in school is to be selfish. Hell, just yesterday I was wrapped up in an A- that affects my GPA and my potential as high honors graduate. I forget that being at a University makes me privilieged. I'm worried about the oreos in my cupboard. So what does that make me?

Pistachios and Public Speaking.

Back in July, my grandmother called me and asked me - as I was still afresh from Guatemala - if I would like to be the January speaker for the St. Cloud Reading Room Society. Being that Gram is one of my best friends and she is head of the Speakers Committee, I obliged and only learned later I would receieve a stipend for my efforts. But as it turns out, this women's society has been around for some 100 years and made some big changes in the history of the little town in which I grew up. They began with a book collection for women near the end of the Civil War. While most would now consider St. Cloud the size of a suburb (and to this there may be relevance as it's almost entirely filled with things like Barnes and Noble and Starbucks), the local grocery chains prevail. Still, the downtown area is a far cry from the booming place it was back in the 20s. The origianl 44 women promoted literature among themselves, and Andrew Carnegie donated some $25,000 to the buildling of the St. Cloud public library that housed even a Shakespeare club in the late 19th century. While the original buildling was replaced in 1979, these women are responsible for the fact that I had a library in which to read when I was a kid. Reading, and well, old apple computers with word munchers.

A few weeks ago, I receieved an official letter signed, "Sincerely Yours, Helen Catton" in the mail. It cordially thanked me and breifly explained the meeting. The trouble now, is that January 10th is Thursday, and I'm alloted 45 minutes to speak and answer questions. And I'm the granddaugther of one of the leading ladies.

And I don't know what the hell I want to talk about.

I tend to let public speaking events fly slightly off the cuff - to write a "speech" for myself would be an excruciatingly long endeavor. And I supposed my casual attitude toward speaking events is probably the remnants of the speechie I was in High School. (I guess least 4th place in the State meet still does something for me, right?) This time - due to the duration of the talk - I feel like I should have some kind of direction. At the moment, though, I seem to have only directed my pacing between my desk and my kitchen counter, where I've opened a bag of pistachios - hoping the salt will do something more than make me thirsty.

But once I'm down to the nubby shells that I couldn't possibly pry open with my bare hands I'll have no other choice than to drink my water or go back to my book.

I'd like to be effective in my speaking as Tracy Kidder is writing. I'm reading Mountains Beyond Mountains, and while it's about Tuberculosis in Haiti, I feel like it's also about Guatemala. Kidder has the cabaility to infuse a reader with the feeling of traveling in a packed pickup through the mountains and their desolate, desperate confines. Babies living in shacks with TB are babies in Guatemala, malnourished and surviving on coffee because a mother won't lactate. Kidder underwhelms the nature of what he writes to effectively allow the reader to meet his text with his or her own sentiment. He is fantastic - and does well, what I seem to garble about Guatemala in my own writing.

Mostly I want to tell stories to these women. I guess it's time to begin scouring the journals again. I'm not out to hound some kind of message, but to talk about another place I tend to call home.

Brimnes and Bill Holm

Bill Holm makes me want to move to Iceland. Really.

On my first of three errands to West Photo yesterday, (Three, because the "printing technichian" thought I wouldn't know the difference if they cropped the foreground, sideground, background - basically anything other than the subject in my photo - in order to cram the frame uncomfortably into an 8x10 that makes me look terribly inept as a photographer. All I wanted was an 8x12 - but I had to bring them back of course. Thank God its only a five minute drive.) I was listening to MPR - and the entire morning was a discourse about fetal alcohol systematic disorders. Long story short - there hasn't been a minimal safe tolerance of alcohol established for pregnancy. Bottom line: don't drink while you're pregnant. But one snipt did jingle my ear - Bill Holm was to be on at noon.

My solace in his writing came from his collection of essays, Coming Home Crazy. It was recommended to me after I went crazy, too, during a little period of readjustment back in June. The book is a series about a year long endeavor teaching English in China, and it was a comfort to know I wasn't an anomaly and that Guatemalan banks aren't the only places that change their rules from day to day. Perhaps I love him a little.


I love being read to, and I've always wondered why we quit reading to one another after we gain the skill on our own. Why is reading silently such a big deal in elementary school? Why did I get pissed when the kid next to me wasn't really reading silently, but muttering the words under his breath?

But I do remember the seventh grade. Mrs. Johnson was my English teacher and she opened every class with a few pages or a chapter from The Outsiders. It was one of the best times - and one of the only times in English class in junior high that I remember. The buildling was old - most Catholic schools are - and we sat at hexagonal tables in the room, four or so to a table. Mrs. Johnson, a middle-aged woman with gray-blonde hair, sat in her directors chair when she read - mostly because she was scarcely five feet and it was more comfortable than the slate backed, pastel seats of the room. Her voice matched her stature, and I'd sit and gaze up at the cork board borders of the room, considering Ponyboy and his gang. And she frustratingly stopped at the most inopportune moments. But that was, of course, intnetional on her part.

So I opend my ibook and tuned in and stopped answering my phone. For an entire hour. And a 65 year old author with a raspy, velvet voice read poetry about small town patriotism and Walt Whitman's Brooklyn Ferry. And he told me about Iceland. Which, as it happens is the subject of his latest work, Windows of Brimnes. He spoke of its intricate and beatiful language and its cake-frosting houses by the sea. "Almost everything in the country is within spitting distance of it," he said.

He spoke of not having an address - but living in a place where people can find you if they ask. Where windows are open to the evening tide and houses hold old Steinways and conversation. His home sits quietly in a crag and he keeps computers away from it.

And he read of his mother, and Icelandic woman from America who spoke the language well. He putters through sentences.

But in English, he made me wish for travel again.

Weather Report.

There's nothing like a romp in the leaves to make you feel like you're six again. While shooting engagment photographs for Mallory and Traivis last week, we came upon a jackpot of oak leaves. This was the kind of pile you dream about when you're a kid - one you could take a running leap into, and forget about the ground that was beneath it all. It produced a most satisfying crunch. Playing professional with my camera, I didn't have enough time to utilize this pile of bliss entirely, and so that evening I talked with my friend Kelli and convinced her that she needed experience it with me. It's a good thing I was an Original Orator for high school speech. My skills were necessary in persuasion, because the idea was to get up at 7:30 on a freezing Tuesday morning, after her three hours of sleep and before her 8:15 midterm.

She must trust me or something, becuase she came. Bundled in jackets next to Edy Hall on campus, we made our way to the pile - just in time to see the man scheduled to clean it up head into a building to warm himself. He didn't return for another twenty minutes, which was ample time to have our fun. People passed by and cranned their necks, and some laughed but it scarcely mattered.


I've also realized that I don't remember what cold weather is like. You see, I skipped winter last year and spent it in Central America. But when my reading was interrupted by flurries of snow out of the picture window in my apartment this morning, I sort of felt like I wasn't cut out to be a Minnestoan anymore. Don't get me wrong, leave piles and oranging trees are spectacular, but this gray, drab stuff is a little scary. And I only know it is going to bluster harder and the temperatures are going to drop into the subzero category. It wouldn't be winter otherwise.

Al's at Eight

With my failure to note my neighborhood's famed breakfast niche's opening hour, I stopped for a cup of joe before entering the line at Al's this morning. As I was alone, I pretended to read Conrad's Heart of Darkness as I eavesdropped, sandwhiched between conversations. The robust man to my right was speaking rather loudly into his cell phone. Clad in a quilted flannel jacket and large leather boots, his beige plastic rimmed glasses reminded me of Milton and his stapler. To my left, a couple from Santa Barbara, California were freezing in the 55 degree morning. It was quite the juxtaposition.

"There's some kind of goulash already prepared," the Milton Man reported to the unknown on the other line. "No, GOULASH," he more loudly retorted. "Yeah, the neighbor lady made it and is bringing it over this afternoon for the party." "Yeah, it was real nice of her to prepare the goulash."

"I hear there are only 14 stools in the entire place," her husband said as he counted the ten heads ahead in line. "I think we're just squeezing in."

"Some people just want to talk and talk," Milton Man yammered to his friend. He tucked the gray plastic into his breast pocket. As he buttoned it, the anntena poked out of the corner.

"That man is wearing flip flops!" the woman said. Her long aburn hair flitted in the breeze and her shoulders shurgged toward her ears beneath her black wool coat. It was 8:40 or so, and we had another twenty minutes before the original Al opened the diner.

At this point I looked up from my monotonous text and felt the need to comment on the mild October morning. "This is nothing," I said, as they laughed in reply. Our conversation settled on traveling to Minneapolis and local coffee chains both here and in their original Seattle. California couple inquired and desired one more sight before their flight home and I recommended the bridges neare St. Anthony Main, or a soft sunny walk around Calhoun.

As Al, a man in 50s black rimmed glasses and a black windbreaker from the 80s, opened the door and the fourteen fire engine stools were filled, coffee cups were turned up toward full pots of steaming liquid. I was the only of the fourteen who chose orange juice. My breakfast mates and I quickly settled and ordered and bodies filled into the narrow spaces behind the stools. California couple ordered an abundance of food, and Milton Man had the eggs and peppers titled "huevos". I set down with Bill Holm's vignettes of his year in China and two pumpkin pancakes.

Successfully meaningless conversation settled across the yellowing counter, and Milton Man suggested the addition of black beans to the Menu.

"I've been coming here since 1970," he told me, "and the menu hasn't changed, let alone added beans."

It perplexed me that this man from Minnesota seemed to understand my sentiment for legumes. Since my return from Guatemala, I've always felt breakfasts without beans seemed sorely lacking.

"If I were to bring black beans, would you cook them for me?" I wondered aloud to the waitress. It seemed every time I entered the breakfast spot (which is perhaps once a month) she happened to be the individual adding my tab.

"... Probably." She laughed.