Category: Uncategorized

The UGLI/Shapiro/Undergrad (library)/Mordor is an interesting place—on one hand, it can be a “cool place to study if you are doing group work or want a louder environment,” or so I say during orientation tours by which I mean you’ll have an entire sorority house screaming about a mixer they just came from—which isn’t bad, but just a fun surprise when you’re a freshman wandering around looking for a seat to read The Odyssey and to cry yourself into an early sleep, and on the other hand, it can serve as an unusual space for a reading event.

I was running from an interview with a friend and knew I was already late; prepping by taking off my sunglasses (yes, it was 7:15pm) and headphones, I jolted through the automatic doors that always open up just slow enough so as to hit me as I slide through, and I moved a chair into the back of the audience. I once again realized how much of a beautiful stereotype/cliche/wonder I am: I flourish as I take off my circle scarf, almost fall off my chair as I get tangled in my harem pants, and gasp as I spill sparkling water on myself, all as I get my notebook out to “take notes” aka write my own poetry for when I get bored, or, more accurately, when I can’t hear writers present their work.

I was not the only cliche around. The speakers went in and out and I was positioned in the far corner, and so most people’s voices blended quite nicely into the already formed ambience the UGLI has. Some voices wafted above the chatter to sit atop like the descant line while others formed the bass line and sent a rhythm through my chest. I thought I was either in a movie or being punk’d. Either way, I came to the reading for two of my greatest friends and for me, their voices shot through the air as if I was their target.

Being distracted by life as I usually am, I noticed when the light bulb went on and off (unexpectedly I might add—no it wasn’t morse code, no it wasn’t timed, no, no, no, just a lightbulb); I noticed when people jumped down the main stairs, colliding on each of the landings; I noticed when obnoxious people walked by, stopped, and then proceeded only after pointing and talking louder about how they were “confused . . . like what is even going on here?”; while I thought it was fitting for a literary reading to be done in a library (because books), it seemed that most passersby were flabbergasted.

“What’s a sugar daddy?”

My attention snapped back to the reading.

This particular reader ended and another arrived at the podium to read a work of fantasy fiction. By this point I was noticeably tired from my day and in full blown free association mode. Why fantasy? What is the value of fantasy? *cocks head* What would it be like to be a young adult author? What aspects of life would you ignore or erase? *stroke facial hair* Why did I used to love fantasy? When did this fascination stop? *stares into the void forming in the corner* Questions came and questions went but my face remained perplexed throughout this person’s story. I quickly wrote a poem about my confusion.

All of a sudden, however, my first friend was at the podium—the announcer was too quiet to be intelligible. I heard the change of voice, the change of posture, the change in the eyes—from everyday into the writerly, readerly position; my friend owned a podium like none other. She was flawless in her delivery, I was absorbed into her poetry: into her words and stories and images and thoughts and, to be frank, her magic.

A while later, another friend (who invited me) took over and had a grace that was unmatched. Although it was now late and people were leaving, my line of sight became unobstructed, and the closer I leaned in the closer I felt my tunnel vision closing in on the sound of her voice. From history and moving into her own work, she presented fact and fiction, blending and mixing, but always remaining lucid, artistic, and full of beauty. Had the audience been not so sober (in any interpretation), I would have cat-called and snapped and hoot and hollered (more than I already did). Goosebumps were a plenty and my face beamed.

There is something so indescribable that happens when watching people you love share their art.

Readings are some of my favorite events to attend. It’s at both comforting and alarming: the creativity that is so present in people around me, and it is in this space where it can be shared, ignored, and proclaimed. I become an audience member and this becoming is overpowering. Words fill my brain, my ears, my mind, my eyes, and my fingers. This page.

So yes. Café Shapiro proved quite the event.

Finally…after several failed tries and tons of disappointments, I finally made it to a Japanese prints exhibition—though a different one—the Hiroshige exhibition at Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibit features Utagawa Hiroshige’s works, most of which are landscapes that depict winter scenes, corresponding to the recent snowy and freezing weather.

Entering the museum after a long walk along N. Michigan Avenue made my glasses fogged up. My legs and fingers were numb and I had to sit on the bench for a few minutes to warm my body up before going into the galleries. This scene seemed a bit ironic because this girl who kept complaining about the unloveliness and horribleness of this season was going to see an exhibit called Winter Scenes and appreciate the beauty of the snow as if she had never experienced the rigors of it.

The exhibit was tiny actually, and I almost missed it while walking through different galleries because it only occupied a quiet in-between corridor. Prints of snow scenes were hanging on the walls on both sides of the corridor. Some depict people toiling across the bridge in the heavy snow; two depict geisha walking out of the house however hanging back by the snow; several depict birds in the winter firmly fighting against the severe weather.

An interesting thing I noticed was that although all prints shared the theme of snow, snow itself was not even printed. The dominating white color blocks covering each print were actually just the unpainted paper itself. Presenting the most prominent part of a work by leaving the paper blank—this may be the simplest and the most candid way to depict nature itself.

I am a bum with a soft spot for lost things. Lost things to make other things with. I believe in second lives, third lives even; an object’s character comes from age and use. Like an old fork, faded spots where most people grip, oil fingers stabbing food to mouth, minor teeth marks and chips from being dropped on the ground. Floral decoration at the end, crevices blackened in contrast to clean iron. Not just any fork, this fork.

My bedroom is made for two people, but I fill it out myself. In all the corners are cardboard boxes of unusual proportions, tall thin boxes I can fit in, like cheap coffins or suitcases for carrying many long panels down the street. I keep crates that stack up and become a portable studio, easy to bus with, especially ones with cryptic geometric designs on the bottom that would make nice stencils, pop crates my mother used to stock her vending machines in dad’s warehouse. There are nine blocks of Styrofoam in various sizes stashed behind my Lay-Z-Boy, for packing fragile things or even just to make form studies, a pile of squeaky blank space. Fiberboard scraps lean on the opposite wall, MDF to stack and glue, a block to band saw, sand it down, nice and smooth. Blocks of wood are even better, grain to carve and hack, prime and paint, nail together and pry apart, construct a hut from crap pallets spied by the dumpster and they become a new and living thing. I’ve always got at least a small stack of panels, good for painting heavy textures, long planks in which I always vision landscapes or turned vertical become ancient Eastern compositions where you only get one sliver of a horizon but a little of everything from top to bottom. In the closet so many gallon gesso buckets now random mixing buckets, large amounts of color, also good for keeping old clay slip for an extended amount of time, shake it around every once in a while or it layers up and gets all bottom heavy. I put Sri Racha on everything and always keep the bottles, they make good solvent bottles with perfect flow and clear so you can see the color and consistency, I have about five lying around any given time. Little glass dishes or old cutting boards, even small plates make good painting palettes, especially if they have a small incline at the edges for no spill, white plates best to see true color.

I hoard tools to make stuff, hammer and screw drivers all sizes, putty and steak and palette knives, nails and screws for building and eyehooks to hang from the ceiling. I hoard all the brushes, never too many brushes; hard wire ones for cleaning, some strictly white paint and gesso brushes others acrylic and still others just oils. This summer I worked for housing and was given brushes, buckets, rollers, sponges, drop cloths – enough to run my own painting business, should I ever feel so inclined. I re-appropriate utensils, things like chop sticks, sporks, toothpicks, Q-tips, drum sticks (I don’t have drums [anymore]), folded unplayable Bicycle jokers, big rubber bands, blue and pink and orange, good old string, fishing wire, steel wire, glue and rubber cement, strange plastic disks with grey plastic grain and a peel-off wrapper, chipboard scraps from architecture 3D print-outs, old plaster molds and casts, canvas, plastic, rags (T-shirts), bags of bags of bags, more damn plastic, metal rods, dry crusted paint chips, bits of charcoal, many rulers, stale ink and rusted Exacto blades, rolls of paper, paper towel rolls, toilet paper rolls for smaller jobs, paper clips, wax, graphite powder, old spray bottles and spray paint, all glowing.

It’s all in my room with this crippling potential to make stuff, raw matter of the trash heap age. There’s always something to be found, and it’s best when the find is unexpected, when you’re not looking for anything in particular. The best feeling is standing before a half finished painting, maybe a still life of the greenest plants in the world, and needing a specific something and not knowing what it is but what it has to do, and looking through loosely organized drawers boxes stacks in my closet, organized chaos is what I call it, and finding some potato masher or spatula picked up on the sidewalk and extracting it from the depths with force and purpose. The discovery is almost better than needing something and knowing what and where it is all at once, there’s no anticipation there, it’s too easy and I often keep looking for something better and by better I mean more surprising.