place

I'm finding it harder and harder to post because at home I have fleeting thoughts, I'm perpetually sleepy because I know I can sleep, there's little structure to my life and I feel little need to impose one. Though that last feeling is waning. I have California for two more days, and I so want to get back to school, and see everyone, and get settled into our room, and start our last year of classes. I can't wait for A-entry, special-meat Wednesdays, Professor Parker, sweaters, Bernard, frozen yogurt in cake cones.

Not to say that home wasn't wonderful. Basically, I saw a lot of movies and a few people. I watched Broken Flowers, 2046, March of the Penguins, Transporter 2, 40-Year-Old Virgin and The Constant Gardener. *Broken Flowers was a little slow and Sarah thought it was pointless, but I liked the concept of revisiting the different people that run through your life, and thinking about what each one says about your own character. It was after she saw *2046 that Sarah texted me, telling me to come home. After seeing the movie I understood that impulse. It was a lot about reaching out, and trying to grasp people who are more like air, smoke even...visible, with presence and movement, but without outline. I don't have the means to describe what it was really about; it would take more expression than I have. Images and lines and phrases come to mind. The line that I referenced once and that both Stephen and Sarah referenced, separately and at different times, was: "Love is about timing." The right time is just as important as the right person, and with that comes the right place because sometimes that's dependent on time. I liked how the main character's experiences flowed into the stories that he wrote, so that you couldn't tell which was informing the other, because it worked both ways. *March of the Penguins was so simple, it was amazing. It didn't need any artifice to convince you of its beauty. This is just the way it works, creation and the affection and sacrifice that come with it are just natural. That's the most optimistic thing I think I've ever seen in a movie. *Transporter 2 was pure entertainment, and fun to see on the big screen since I saw the first one on DVD. *The 40-Year-Old Virgin wasn't as good as I thought it would be, based on its cheesy poster and word of mouth. I didn't think it was that funny, but I can see why people thought it was unique as far as raunchy movies go. It was ultimately really sweet-natured, and about a growing up process, and it managed to support both theories of sex-isn't-everything and sex-is-really-important at the same time. *The Constant Gardener was on par with movies like Schindler's List and Hotel Rwanda, the kind that induce a mixture of inspiration and frustration. You want to prevent and stop such things, you want to help, but the reason you do is the same one that makes it hard to--these are big problems, fueled by the very human tendency to ignore what isn't in front of you. And then afterwards, when you're aware, what do you do? What causes do you choose to pursue and which do you have to leave behind, and will you really help? Africa is so beautiful, and so full of mysteries. That must make it all the harder for those with good intentions to go there.

The people were better than the movies. I saw Richard, ate ice cream with him (Ben & Jerry's, minus the life advice) and drank with him (and got a drunk dial from him a few hours later). I had lunch with Kristina today, and we had our usual updated discussion of the Real World and the actual real world. We talked about her moving houses, and I still can't believe that there will never be another birthday party on Prairie View, no more loitering in her driveway. I visited Steph's new place in Los Altos, and it was so nice to see her again, and strange to see my SoCal rival enjoying and living in NorCal. We hung out with no obligations to study later, and that was also different. I ate sandw(h)iches with Aud before she went back to Portland. Besides the company I like getting together with her because we can stay in Fremont. I know that Fremont residents don't share any particular qualities but there is that natural connection of coming from the same place, especially when we went to a high school comprised mostly of San Josians. It was during our conversation that I started consciously thinking about the role of places. She talked about how home wasn't exactly home anymore, and I told her about my feelings of displacement and the illusion of permanence that I attach to home, and a few days later in her journal she likened herself to water, dispersing to various areas but eventually flowing back to one place. That made me think about how I'm not built to change shape with place in exactly the way I thought. I think adjusting to the East Coast made me downplay the importance of my surroundings. I thought home was a feeling I could assume anywhere that interested me, and I didn't give much thought to how I create that feeling, or how it's created.

When Andrew came to California, and we made our way through San Francisco, I could feel how linked place and not just experience but character are. We both knew we were sharing something different with his visit to my home, and I remembered why I relish opportunities to show people places, college to my friends from home, and home to my college friends. We saw so much of the city, from so many different viewpoints--on the ground, from the car, from the middle of the bay, atop towers and hills, along bridges.

Adventuring with Sarah, in Pacifica and downtown San Jose, made me think about it more too. Driving along the coast to Pacifica, we followed a curve and suddenly, we were driving into the sky. It was just blue, the ocean melted seamlessly into the sky ("where's the horizon?"), and we kept moving and it moved too. Then the completely opposite atmosphere of downtown, a place I should totally feel distant from now--seeing it at the peak of nighttime revelry, seeing the dressed-up and made-up girls, the top-down cars playing loud music--that's not my downtown. My downtown was lines of uniformed high schoolers walking from Notre Dame to the cathedral; it was traipsing around the water fountains and Starbucks and the Tech in summery tank tops and jeans; it was musicals and science fairs and pre-winter-ball dinners. But still, it felt the way the new ND building feels--not mine, but still mine.

The truth is, certain places do move me by nature of more than pretty scenery or tall buildings, or even remaining the same as when I'd known and loved them first. I can't pinpoint all the actual reasons, there are so many and the majority are subtle. I don't have any real questions or definite statements, only that the idea of place is more complicated than I thought, the feeling of it simpler, and my love of it stronger.

san francisco in two days

At Coit Tower, on the ledges that extend beyond the windows, there are a bunch of coins, mostly pennies but also some nickels and dimes, a few quarters and a handful of foreign pieces. We weren't sure whether we were supposed to add a coin to the collection, or to take a coin as a souvenir. Both were difficult to do, and our first instinct was to add a penny. In our attempt we actually retrieved a quarter someone else left in the pile, and were quick to put it back, not wanting to disturb someone else's interaction with the place. After several tries (none of mine were successful) he managed to get a penny on the very edge, just safe enough to remain there, for who knows how long. As we circled around to see the city through these odd openings, we noticed a lot of other people working very hard to get coins from outside the ledge to the inside, the opposite of what we'd been doing. The idea seems to be an exchange, both ways, instead of one or the other, and I thought that was the simplest and sweetest notion for a place like that. I feel the same about the entire experience, and it's one of the few ineffable experiences I've had that I'm content with leaving that way, unexpressed. Some images instead.