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I remember all of this. Buses pulling in and out of CC Little, quirky shops in the Nichols Arcade, deer crossing the street right in front of Bursley Hall. Even the weather—early September Ann Arbor weather is in a distinct category all in its own for me. I remember taking my first-ever bus down to Central Campus (a Commuter North bus) and being disoriented like no other, because both sides of CC Little looked identical. I had my first meal at Pancheros, because that’s where I ended up after a series of random turns that somehow felt right.

It all feels eerily familiar the second time, the same exhilarating sense of independence tinged with a slight shudder for the responsibility that accompanies it. But it’s different as well—I’m coming back to my home from another home. Ann Arbor is no longer a place full of unknowns, where I know I’ll be forced to search for answers that exist somewhere in this place. Instead, I know where to look for the answers (well, at least some of them) that I’ve carefully stored away in nooks and crannies. I know I’ll have more questions and more answers I’ll need to tuck away in places around town. I know my playing ground, and I can’t wait to start playing again.

A new beginning means changes—moving into an apartment instead of a dorm room is one of them. It’s an aspect of this year that I’m looking forward to the most, but one that will undoubtedly be very different. My freshman dorm experience as a member of the Michigan Learning Community called Living Arts was unique in that I had the chance to live in a hall filled with people constantly engaging with each other on many levels. I was always surrounded by many people who shared my interests, from art to theater to engineering. Living in an apartment after a year in Bursley will be a welcome change, but I will definitely miss the communal aspect of bustling dorm life.

New and improved schedule: after the infamous ‘Foundation Year’ at the Stamps school, I am so glad to have control over my classes that more accurately reflect my interests. It’s going to be an interesting semester, with my full load of classes ranging from Acting 101 to Linguistics to Programming and Data Structures. After my first week, I can safely say that I genuinely love all my classes and am excited to go to class every day. It’s going to get challenging as the semester goes on (I can already see the storm coming) but even that makes me more excited for how much I’ll have grown at the end of the semester.

So, here’s to the new, the old and the in-between. To a (somewhat) new beginning.

First: Hello again to this small pocket of the ever-vasting Internet and you wonderful people who actually read these things – it’s good to be back (on campus, in classes, to not spending eight hours a day at a full-time job, etc.)! It’s been quite the summer, full of travels and eye-opening experiences that I just CAN’T WAIT to share with the World Wide Web, whether it likes them or not.

The most significant thing I did this summer was spend a month in Ireland with fourteen of my fellow art-schoolers on our questionably mandatory study abroad experience. There were many many laughs and smiles, there was much gasping at rocks (SO MANY ROCKS) and mountains and infinitely green fields, there was a whole lot of personal expression and learning and all that good stuff, some tears, new friendships, ALL THE FEELS, and most importantly (for me at least), a new way of perceiving my surroundings, a new kind of vision that has grabbed me by the eyeballs and refused to let go.

This is more pleasant than it sounds.

What I mean is that I’ve been possessed by the sense that everything I see and hear and do and feel is NEW and EXCITING, each time I see a tree or rock or a person’s face, it’s as if I’ve never seen it before. This is due to the fact that most things I saw in Ireland were actually completely foreign and unfamiliar to me – the rocks that literally explode from the ground, literally everywhere you look, were not just rocks (a cab driver once threw those words at me on the way back to Ballyvaughan from the city of Galway, and I nearly threw a punch, the only thing stopping me being that it would have been left-handed, him sitting on the right side of the car, of course) – but in my ecstasy of adventure and freedom, these rocks became a visible, physical connection to the Earth I come from, we all come from, the same Earth that we will return to in time (too morbid?). It was the most inspiring, comforting, eye-opening experience of my life, and this is one of the few things I now write that is not exaggerated. I spent a month waking up as if I’d just opened my eyes for the first time. Every solitary rock amidst miles and miles of drystone walls had been given meaning, had the traces of ancestors’ fingerprints written all over it; every leaf and twig and slug in the road became these glowing meaningful important things that I couldn’t bear to overlook, to ignore, to forget – in short, I heard the hallelujahs of Mother Nature, saw her hands working the land, in a constant state of creation and destruction, the whole process beautiful and amazing to me.

I think it’s easy to get stuck in our daily routines and comfortably familiar experiences – the faces of friends and family we know and love, the places we feel connected to, restaurants with “usuals”, streets with names we know, beds that smell like home – these are the things I definitely missed while abroad. But at the same time, if we mistake routine for knowledge and wisdom, and let comfort veil our eyes to the new and exciting things that happen to us every day, our surroundings and experiences lose the meaning that I now try to see in literally EVERY thing. This is not me saying I’ve achieved instant Buddhahood, or am now walking around more “enlightened” than you beautiful people who’ve happened to come upon this digital collection of words, hell, maybe checking this site is part of your own routine and you’re on here daily. MORE POWER TO YA! I’m not even saying that I feel the same excitement and wide-eyed amazement at everything, every moment of every day. I don’t. All I’m saying (bear with me for meta-cheesy feels here) is that if we stop every once in a while to pick up a leaf or rock off the ground and wonder how it got there, or think about how we would describe a sunset or trees waving in the wind or the infinite ripples of currents in some body of water (even the less-than-Mighty Huron River) to someone who has never seen them before, that maybe we could learn to appreciate it all a little more, and learn that our puny human problems are not so bad, that we will keep on living as we always have, us little piles of up-sitting mud who are lucky enough to get to sit up and look around for a while (thanks Vonnegut). All I’m saying is that it’s nice to get excited about things, about life, and to have that excitement come from inside; it’s nice to think of everything as new and fresh and meaningful because it IS, nothing is the same twice, I myself am now a different person than I was when I started writing this, metaphorically and physiologically, my atoms are new, they are excited to run my hand along the bark of that tree I’ve passed daily for a week and a half, knowing it too is not the same as it was the last time I saw and felt it.

This has been a rant. Long story short: I had fun in Ireland. I’ll probably be posting about it for a while. Hope you don’t mind.

🙂

Whilst trying to sing an out of tune impression of a fabled summer you read or saw somewhere; a stretch of road steaming beneath the burning sun, surrounded by desert; you see only the way ahead but it is blurred beneath the waves of heat; does it matter?; beside you rests the head of a dear friend sleeping like the gravestone of a cherished family member long past; you know…ya that one; don’t pretend like you don’t know, it isn’t flattering; vroom, swing me around the tree again and tell me there is no hell cause you heard about it from your older brothers friend; reason to me that all bad things don’t exist because it would be uncomfortable for both of us; but you can’t anymore; constant reminders never fail to slap us across the face and flash a finger before you even realize why you are so sad; but it is okay, you got bananas and the tombstone on your shoulder; eat that fruit and suppress your hunger cause dinner ain’t ready yet, wait 30 minutes, maybe an hour, I am not sure; so stuff that face full and read the epitaph of your fabled summer.

Run little rabbit run; there is a hole nearby but you know you won’t fit; speeding bullets and sprinting boats; chucking meal down to bait you back up out of the back of your throat; don’t you know, everyone left an hour ago; if you aren’t moving you are taking up space; move out of line and let the blazers echo songs of potential success; wasted potential is more real than that which is fulfilled; you won’t be alive for long; take yourself to the vet; leather jacket and leather boots; reverberations unrecognizable to the trained ear that earns to rebel against something that it does not know, lucid conviction regarding that which is shrouded.

But you need not fear little rabbit; stretch your neck daily so you can become a giraffe; then reach that high leaf; chew slowly; tastes like shit doesn’t it?; you don’t know?; I guess that makes sense; the grass always tasted better.

Even Behemoth doesn’t want to terrorize this city; overgrown shit; stop whipping it out every single time you see a lovely pair; it is not gonna spew ichor one day you…you…fuck; hold on, radio signal from up high, rooftop winds, murderous crow on a bass and an owl hooting away; peacock hiding behind sensuous feathers with elegance; no sound but the devil and his retinue partying away; it is a carnival of drums and gun smoking gumshoes reveling in the amount of curious ladies out tonight; Oh! Steamboat Willy! Whistle my worries away! Chief, I want a cheeseburger and two pills.

Wake up now there is a stop nearby, it looks shitty, but I really have to piss.

These are the last days of my childhood, and since I’m 22, that’s a weird statement to type.

I’ve been a student since I was six years old, which makes it one of my longest standing identities, but as of this Saturday, that’s about to change. Graduation is coming, and with it shatters the protective barrier that academia has provided between me and the real world. I feel like Superman being shot off of my home planet into a strange new world, only instead of being granted super powers I’m left only with the thought that I should’ve learned something. My uncle asked me the other day what skills I’d actually learned from my time at U of M, and since I’m graduating with a double major in English and Creative Writing, I told him that what I know is how to bullshit in spoken word and in written (and if you’ve been reading my poems on here than you know all about that ((or do you, who knows, now I can’t be trusted muwahaha (((are there better things in life to aspire to than being an unreliable narrator?)))))).

I’m not proud of what I just did with those parentheses.

What does any of that have to do with art though? That’s a great question, one that I’m hopefully weaving my way towards an answer to at the same rate that you’re reading along with this post. I guess the thing about being a student that really matters is not what you learn from your classes or writing essays, but what you learn about what it means to be a student. I’m not talking about figuring out how to calculate how many espresso shots it’s going to take to write that last 8-9 page essay that’s standing between you and a cap and gown, but what being a student really is–and I’m going to assert that it’s not as much an identity as a mindset.

Being a student isn’t about what you learn, it’s about being a seeker of truth who is open to knowledge from all sorts of sources. Sure I might be leaving the university world of burritos and books written about articles written about things that were written about people who died a long, long time ago, but why in the hell would that mean I’m no longer a student? Sure it’s cheesy, but what’s wrong with being a student of life?

Nevertheless, where does the art come in? And I guess my only answer to that question is how should I know?

Okay, that’s not exactly true because my other answer is this: if art is the process of gathering up all these crazy things that appear to be separate and then putting them all together (be it on canvas, a marble slab, a sheet of paper, etc…) in such a way as to reveal that they’re not actually separate at all, then art is absolutely about learning. When we look at art, we are students to a lesson in perspective shifting the way tectonic plates form new landmasses, only these continents are cranial and the eruptions are expressions of a soul that everybody shares! Art is about beauty and about passion, but it’s the learning of these that allows for their celebration and understanding only ever fleeting at the periphery of perception, consciousness only ever condescending for a moment to lower itself into the stars of the cosmos.

That’s what I’m going to follow, or at least to try–those split second snapshots of reality through the constant illusions of my own limited perception. Because that’s what art is about (or what I’m choosing for it to be about for me) and what life is about (same disclaimer) and what being a student is about (no qualifier this time, deal with it). So these might be the last days of my childhood, but I’ll spend all the rest of the ones allotted to me as a student.

Has it ever occurred to you that something you may do well (cooking, writing, styling) is being imitated by one of your friends right now? Something you thought to be a silly technique or preference that you’ve adopted, may be an action that has inspired the people around you to change their spaghetti recipe or their hair style. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Some people in this day in age get so worked up over the idea that someone is ripping them off, trying to be like them, and are unoriginal, that they haven’t stopped to realize who would we all be if we didn’t imitate the great ideas of others and bring them into our everyday lives?

I decided to start wearing my hair curly. I switched out all of my products for all-natural sprays, conditioners, shampoos, you name it. I stopped using heat and progressively my curly hair became poofy and healthy. Friends and family members saw this, admired the dedication I had to this one aspect of my life, and…well…imitated it! They asked me what I did to get it this way, what technique did I use, how did I style it, and of course I explained it all, but I was a little taken aback. I thought, “jeez, why is everyone trying to rip off something that I’m doing?” But then after awhile I realized, these people that are asking me for tips on my hair are asking me because they enjoy what I’m doing, they think it works, and they want to be just as adventurous in their life as I seemed to be in mine. I couldn’t help but feel flattered.

Of course there is the fine line between imitation and straight-up stealing. In the creative fields, whether you put your all into a project, a song, a design, seeing it reproduced by someone online or in your community, without giving credit, can be the greatest insult ever. When someone works hard at creating an expressive form of their own art, whether it be a song, poem, or dress, it means something to them that is beyond a silly attempt at creating a similar hairstyle. Inspiration is an uplifting feeling, giving us the ability to think beyond what we’ve been capable of, and utilize the thoughts of others to show us a new path. Be yourself, but also don’t be afraid to be inspired by others and imitate a little. This world is full of splashes of imitation mixed with innovation; you never know what could come of showing a little flattery.

Sometimes, when I’m in Ann Arbor, I walk to Main Street, just so I can see people over the age of 25. Then I imagine I’m somewhere else.

I wish I could say that I love college. I really do. And my dislike of the environment isn’t that I haven’t learned so much about others and myself in my three years here. It isn’t that I haven’t been inspired by certain instructors. I think it’s mostly that I feel an overwhelming sense of exhaustion that comes with living in this bubble of a college town. I feel like the sleepless nights I’ve spent writing and studying have made me age at least 40 years. I feel like institutions of any variety naturally suppress creativity.

For instance, a few days ago, I handed in an essay about the pedestal in this poem.

Please let that sink in.

I spent hours upon hours of my life writing about a pedestal.

One of my greatest fears is that we each have a quota of creativity — a set number of words or ideas in our minds of which we can possibly run out. In fact, in a class this term, we learned about Joseph Mitchell, the reporter for The New Yorker who wrote Joe Gould’s Secret. We learned that that was the last significant work he produced. After its publication, he would go to his office, shut the door, and go home at the end of the day. His coworkers have stated that they barely heard typing and that he never yielded much else. I wonder if he was happy at the end of his life, because the way by which people have described him in his later years makes me terrified. They say he was detached. They note that he would nod at people in the hallways and keep walking and sigh and cut himself off from others. I am so scared of becoming a ghost that haunts the Earth while my heart is still beating.

And this semester has amplified my fear . . .

For a month, I had been researching and writing on the refugee shelter, Freedom House, in Detroit. Residents who were seeking asylum here in the U.S. trusted me with their stories in interviews and I viewed it as my responsibility to portray them accurately in my final piece. After pouring so much time and energy into this project, I moved on to my pedestal essay and simply could not bring myself to care about it. Like Mitchell, I was detached. I ignored phone calls and text messages and stared at my Word document, thinking that I just didn’t have it in me to string sentences together. I would walk to class and nod to acquaintances on the sidewalk and sigh and keep walking.

After spending so much time listening to both optimistic and heartbreaking stories from the residents at Freedom House, all of my other class work seemed so utterly meaningless. I wanted to print my pedestal essay and burn it out of rage. I often found myself wondering — what am I even doing here? In my walks down Main Street, I wanted to just keep going until I passed the city limits and left all of my problems behind me.

One day, after having one of these walking existential crises, I became particularly annoyed when a professor with the most uncaring attitude and a monotone voice to match literally called himself “an intellectual” in class. Now, he may very well be that, but to grant yourself such an title . . . God. I realized that I cannot stand professors who take their job name so literally — i.e. they feel that the only responsibility they have is to profess. It’s as if they are those people who shout that we’re all going to Hell on the Diag — thinking they’re helping the world by pointing out how wrong it is. To be a professor, you need to prove that what you’re professing matters. You need to teach. You need to inspire your students to give a damn. You need to realize that your Ph.D. does not make you invincible. I’ve spoken to so many refugees with advanced degrees in their home countries over the past year. They are struggling with the fact that they will need to essentially start their college education over in America. However, as I listen, what strikes me most in their voices is an unwavering sense of hope that gaining another degree will absolutely be possible. And after hours of staring at my horrible poem analysis, I started thinking of these people and truly understanding how inspiring they are. Because if they’re willing to spend years writing pedestal essays again, I shouldn’t be struggling to finish mine once.

I will graduate from this university eventually and I’m looking forward to it. I’m excited for the day when I can gaze at my elaborately scripted name on the diploma I’ve lost so much sleep and money for. But I don’t expect to feel some sort of magical transformation upon holding that paper in my hands. In my interview with Freedom House’s Case Manager and former resident, Lucy Neighbor, she explained how she helps asylum seekers when they are doubting their abilities to begin again in the U.S. “It’s not a degree that defines you,” she tells them. “It’s what’s in your heart.”