Dear friend,

Allow me to introduce myself, I am a man of taste, if not wealth. My name is Nick, and it’s a pleasure to meet you, though perhaps you won’t feel as if you’ve met me quite yet, know that I’ve met you. That’s right, because as you read these words that are so silently, insidiously slipping into your brain, I’m there too. Introductions are much easier when you’re already in somebody’s head, wouldn’t you agree?

Still, in case you weren’t born with Professor X’s rather marvelous mutation or studied fervently over bent spoons, we can discuss the more commonplace modes of introduction. I feel that’s an appropriate topic for this first of blog posts, don’t you? Seeing that you do, or you wouldn’t have continued to give voice to these words (I wonder whose voice you’re hearing now in that beautiful brain of yours, is it mine or does the voice inside your head have its own sound?), we shall strive onwards!

I must admit that this is the most thought I’ve given to an introduction in quite some time. It’s a rather intriguing art to consider though, wouldn’t you agree? We introduce ourselves in so many different ways to so many different people, and even this diversity expands exponentially if you want to factor in all the methods of introduction that have been employed throughout the ages of the human condition (not to leave out other animals, as butt-sniffing is a perfectly respectable canine introduction). The formality one might find in Pride & Prejudice presents a stark contrast to the “hey” and “sup” you’d punch into your phone or find waiting for you after a shower.

This is not to disparage new forms of communication, I rely on texting and Facebook chatting to get things done as much as I imagine most do. However, what are the ramifications of replacing courtly gestures and mannerisms with blind Facebook friend requests sent desperately out into the darkness of the internet? Introductions these days seem all too fleeting, as greetings become shorter and more dismissive. “How are you,” is no longer a question, but an excuse to walk by someone or continue ordering your meal through the speakers at a drive-thru. Is the art of introduction lost, or merely changing? Perhaps there is something to be said for conciseness (brevity being the soul of wit, after all), but is it possible that a “hey” can be jam-packed with as much meaning as a bow or curtsey? I’d argue very much yes, because not all “sup’s” were texted equal. A “hi : )” from that cutie you met at the bar or a “yo” from a best bro can mean entirely different things. Who you’re texting and why, whether you throw in an “lol” or “: )” can change the entire tone of a internet conversation’s dreaded tonelessness.

Perhaps you feel that you still don’t know me, but I believe in showing rather than telling and by now you’ve had my voice in your head for quite some time. I really can’t think of a better introduction than that, so having met you, now I shall leave you. Until next time, fare thee well.

The other day I had new mad craving for the fresh air, so I wandered straight into the woods at a particularly deep looking spot off one regular path I walk to class. Soggy leaves and fallen trees everywhere, trees fallen all over other trees; I walked up and jumped down each one I came across. Five trees and five thuds later was a road I pass literally every day by bus or car and realized at that moment that I’d never crossed to the other side on foot, and the woods over there are pretty vast. It was decided and off I went.

There were many more leaning column-trunks on this side of the plain and I shimmied up each one in order to know its intricacies and discern whether it was the Path or just another path. I rose and descended probably twenty-seven times, and such is life, all ups and downs and always something new, and on the twenty-seventh landing I shot snow sparks into the air with a little more oomph than the previous twenty-six and even though I displaced a large amount of snow I looked down and smack in the middle of my feet was a deer print, clear as day. The tracks wandered up over the horizon to uncharted mysterious landscapes and I followed into the void to get lost, which is only a good idea if it’s completely intentional.

Right off the bat I spotted the perfect walking stick which I would have paid real money for and gotten a deal – about my height, thick and sturdy but not hard to wrap my hand around, smooth and devoid of jagged splinter shards. I had really found companionship and balance in one scrap of forest, a new friend whom I assured could do the leaning on me whenever he got tired but he never did. I had forgotten about the sounds of cars because I hadn’t been able to see any and now they began to return to my consciousness, whoosh-tossing spray dirt mist into my clean tasty air and I was still way back in the woods but I could taste it from there. I saw the distant strobing lights through a web of foliage and they looked foreign and ominous, glowing and dodging around trunks and branches.

It was here that the single set of tracks became five, seven, ten sets as I had a vision of deer hordes at marathon parties for days and dancing mad to the strange rhythm of the cars and dramatic lights. Past the dance floor seemed to be bedrooms, if deer have bedrooms then this is what they would look like, little mats of patted grass bare of snow and too close to the loud bright road for my liking. I squatted hearing the city whisper from my dry warm bed patch, a scraggle tree canopying over me with five spindle fingers and I wondered how anyone could ever sleep here it was so loud. The rushing wheels made me anxious and I wanted to leave when there must have been two red lights simultaneously on either side of my sanctuary and everything went quiet and still for exactly three seconds before the whoosh resumed and everything began moving again and I saw it all crouched amidst dull pink snow in my bare leaf spot. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with the sense that I had overstayed my welcome being part of that sharp metal world which felt so cold from out here, colder than the night air which was really more wet than anything and I had truly forgotten about my soaking feet. I began to fear that the deer whose bed this was would smell me on it and never want to sleep there again, the way it’s truly difficult to feel comfortable in a house that’s been broken into. I tried to give off friendly smells and vibes. I took it as a sign and returned to the depths of the forest.

Next thing I knew the ground was all steep underneath me and I was descending a hill, which I would have fallen down if it weren’t for how fast I went all whooping feather joy in strides like running down sand dunes and this time cleared into a field with reeds and a frozen silent pond. On the other side of the pond stood a deer, my deer and trailblazer with bilingual instincts. I bowed as I passed directly opposite from him, giving thanks for showing me the way and the bed and the twisting trees and glowing pond and path home.

On Tuesday, the Center for Education of Women marked its 50^th anniversary with a celebration of women in film at the Michigan Theater, an event that included screenings of six short films as well as a question and answer session with director Cynthia Wade. The exhibited short films addressed a variety of complex, intersectional issues -  ‘Stairs To No End (http://www.oanim.com/5384)’ explored freedom of thought, ‘You Can Touch My Hair (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpak8kkVT4U) ’ followed a provocative interactive art exhibit and probed the racial, social and gender dynamics surrounding black women’s hair, and ‘Undressing My Mother (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x65waoOY6B0)’ painted a loving portrait of age and beauty.

With a run time of 48 minutes, Cynthia Wade’s documentary ‘Mondays at Racine’ was both the longest featured film and the most emotionally exhausting. The film follows a salon on Long Island that offers monthly free services to female cancer patients, exploring the convergence between illness, appearance and marriage in the stories of women who frequent the salon. Salon owners Rachel Delmolfetto and Cynthia Sansone also provide pedicures, makeovers, and emotional support in addition to head-shavings for clients who are losing their hair from chemotherapy treatments. For the women featured, the head-shaving represents a reluctant embrace of the inevitable physical changes caused by chemo – they describe the change in appearance as a kind of forced confrontation with the ways that illness changes their self-identity, repeatedly articulating the fear of looking in the mirror and only seeing a cancer patient. The film uses the salon’s services as a jumping off point for profiles of two different salon customers, 36 year old Cambria and 58 year old Linda.

Wade explores Cambria’s struggle to combat her diagnosis of Stage 3 breast cancer while parenting her young son and continuing with her husband in the adoption process of a foster child. As her husband provides firm support and partnership, Cambria voices her personal doubts and fears about her future to the camera. Her desire to live manifests itself in her expressions of love for her children, her fears that they won’t remember her, and her longing to see them grow up.

When Wade focuses on Linda, who has combatted her breast cancer for 17 years, we see the latent stages of the isolation caused by her years of illness and treatment. Linda and her husband Warren fail to communicate with each other, explaining separately and sorrowfully how the suffering caused by Linda’s illness has slowly eroded their relationship. As Warren acknowledges his burgeoning alcoholism, he expresses his feelings of helplessness in gendered terms – he feels that he has failed Linda because he hasn’t been ‘enough of a man.’ Towards the end of the movie, the couple separates and Warren moves out of the house – however, in Wade’s question and answer session directly after the movie she explained that Linda and Warren reconciled after viewing the movie together and hearing each other’s separate interviews. Wade described how the couple enjoyed attending festivals to promote the film together, often sharing their perspective on illness and marriage in question and answer sessions. The film ended with Linda’s decision to discontinue treatment, and Wade responded to questions about Linda’s well being by gently informing the emotional crowd that Linda had passed away peacefully last summer.

As Wade explained in her introduction, the stories of chemotherapy and suffering were heavily intertwined with themes of endurance, marriage, partnership and love. At the end of the film, a woman with long auburn locks enters the salon cheerfully, calmly explaining that she is undergoing chemo and ready to shave her head. Before her head is half shorn, she is trembling and weeping. “I hate it,” she says weakly, as Cambria and Linda offer support. Her boyfriend meets her at the salon and cradles her shorn head as she cries – he holds her, quietly reassuring her of his love, telling her that she is still beautiful.

 

The only thing better than a powerful spoken word piece is a powerful spoken word piece performed as a duet. Kai Davis and Safiya Washington deliver this intoxicatingly sharp, hard-hitting, spot-on, middle-finger-to-white-hipster-racism slam poem as a part of the Brave New Voices competition in 2012. I love this poem for many reasons, not the least of which is how aesthetically pleasing it is to hear. Their voices work together to infuse energy, passion, aggression and force into their poem. Their belief and fervor in their words is unmistakable. Moreover, it is so evident that this poem is grounded in their daily thoughts, relevant and directly related to their lives. As such, the stage and microphone become tools to elevate voices, which, given the subject matter, is essential to the art of poetry. Their rhymes are quick, pointed and direct. They portray precisely the images they want to with few words and laudable brevity. Best of all, their ability to bounce off one another, sometimes sharing lines, sometimes alternating, is unique and spectacular to watch. And, of course, their critique is warranted. May this always serve as a reminder to make sure our privilege is not the most prominent thing about us.

Brave New Voices

Fate is a concept that has always seemed very real to me, along with pretty much every cliché that has to do with it — most significantly, that everyone comes into your life for a reason. Now, I’m not saying that this sentiment is as ultimate or profound as it sounds. For example, you could bump into someone on the sidewalk, and the most “reason” it might have is a small bruise the next day. And of course individuals have agency to change their lives. However, I do believe that external forces can be at work in this equation as well — that certain people can truly and positively affect you — whether that be through presenting you with the meaning of life or just catching your eyes and smiling when you need it most.

Because I am so enamored with this somewhat idealistic notion of destiny, I saw it as serendipitous when I came across this line in Truman Capote’s short story, “A Christmas Memory,” when the narrator is explaining to whom he and his elderly cousin give the fruitcakes that they bake during the holiday season: “Who are they for? Friends. Not necessarily neighbor friends: indeed, the larger share are intended for persons we’ve met maybe once, perhaps not at all. People who’ve struck our fancy.”

Before moving on, let’s just pause for a moment to reflect on the beauty of those last three words: “struck our fancy.” To me, this is less a British romantic thing (as in, someone ‘fancying’ someone else), but more a testament to how people can enter and exit our lives, striking a chord within us, so that we are forever altered by the experience of being in their presence.

I was very inspired by this story, as it helped me understand that I should probably be expressing more gratitude in my life. So I have compiled a very short list of people, some of whom I’ve never met, two of whom have passed away, one of whom is a fictional character, and most of whom I may never see again. But they all deserve my thanks, nonetheless, for shaking up, calming, and in some cases, awakening my mind and heart. They are some people who have “struck [my] fancy” . . .

To Arion: Thank you for playing music in ballet class that didn’t come from any standard book. Were they your own compositions? I may never know, but I cannot express how appreciative I am for your rescuing of us from the monotony of that same damn plié song in which all the other accompanists seemed to take comfort.

To e.e. cummings: Thank you for convincing me to believe in the power of poetry.

To little Sam and Abby, mes chéries: Thank you for being the smartest, most loving children and for not letting go of your hugs until I was safe from falling apart at the seams. I know that you will never let society corrupt you. Je vous adorerai toujours.

To the woman on the T that one time in the summer of 2010: Thank you for discussing how talented and gorgeous Robert from So You Think You Can Dance was on the orange-line commute with me after a long and lonely day.

To Dorothy Gale: Thank you for helping me redefine “home.”

To James: Thank you for being the first boy with whom I ever danced and for trying not to cry when I nearly broke your nose in a pirouette.

To the security guard outside the elevator in Centre Block: Thank you for understanding and sympathizing about how much wearing high heels all day sucks and that there was no way in hell I was walking home in those things, even if I looked ridiculous in tennis shoes and tights.

To the drummer of pots and pans at Faneuil Hall: Thank you for being so passionate about creating a rhythm that gives pedestrians a beat of hope. You are inspiring.

About a million more of these are awaiting structure in my head and I could make another (maybe longer?) list of instances where I have witnessed “ordinary” people positively influencing others in extraordinary ways.  There is something incredibly poetic about crossing paths, if only for a moment — something that is impossible to distill to words. In a brief attempt, though, it allows us to avoid becoming static. We move and grow, and through our encounters with others, we connect the world.