02 July 2007

As She Sits With Fur


Thus, the beginning.

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posted by Christolf @ 1:51:00 AM 0 comments

23 November 2006

The Airport (transcribed)

In an airport. Aeropuerto. Or something. Heading back to SLC for t-giving. Or something. In this nation of fear, the airport is incredibly important. They're probably watching what I'm typing right now. Lucky for them, I'm not willing to pay the 6.95 USD to get the wireless internet access. It just isn't worth it. Social change can wait.

For what an incredible city Chicago is, O'Hare is incredibly disappointing. Your run of the mill 21st century airport, with Homeland Security announcements running every 15 or so minutes. It's incredible, the "Meter of National Security" has been at Orange for months, and they still play the same recording as when it was first raised. Even in my strangled apathy, I was alert and attentive when the man with the deep voice asked for my attention and announced with deep purpose and energy that Orange was the new, by now tired, national color.


I'm very early. My flight doesn't leave for another three hours and here I am sitting in this radically familiar boarding 'lobby' waiting for the time to count down. I could have made it to Japanese class. Luckily I'm retaining the vocabulary.


They're playing Fox News. Great. Ultraconservative advocacy journalism really "gets me off."


I can easily tell who is from Salt Lake City. Who is returning. It's like this inherent radar built into my brain from my Utahn upbringing. There's nothing wrong with us, but there's definitely something different.


WHY AM I SO EARLY.




* * *

Several hours later. The 'waiting room' has become crowded with children. Small ones. There are also many other people who are not children but they're much more tolerable.


Oh! The navy is here. They are dressed perfectly, their black and white uniforms, black patent shoes with waxy laces; the men wear the traditional long collar and the women have ghastly berets with a black rim and white top, emblazoned with "USN" and the eagle.

Interesting to note-- they walk around in same-sex clusters. Even in each respective gate to each respective part of the country there are only men or only women. Why? Perhaps the government has rules about these sort of things. I also begin to wonder if the garish makeup the women sport is government mandated. You know, to increase their overall femininity and combat the rampant spread of lesbianism in US soldiers. One male cadet drowns in his formal gold-buttoned blazer. His crew cut betraying the pink in his ears.


There is a woman across from me crocheting. A scarf perhaps? The mother on my right reads some government-funded magazine. Time or something equally partisan. It's quiet. Is this normal for an airport terminal? I forget. Maybe it's the holidays. As my Japanese sensei would say, "SANKUSUGIBINGI." Incredible. People louder than me have arrived. Fantastic.

Meanwhile, Sean Pasinski's twin sits a few rows across from me, eating a Big Mac. The fluorescent lights flicker meanwhile, the Fox News is still on the television screen.


I wonder what Salt Lake will look like after Chicago. I wonder if I see it differently. Or if I won't see it differently at all. I don't know which I'm more afraid of.

This woman has a fantastic skirt. If I didn't know better I'd say I saw something like it some Yohji show sometime. Then again, I really don't know any better.



1.

there is the c h i e f stewardess
L O O K ! she boards.
so full graceful,
so grey
haired :

she is a b o m i n a b l e


a snowwoman.

2.

there is a n o t h e r sailor. with collar. with a penis. without a woman. without government mandated makeup.

King Navy, your Seaness.

3.

where have you gone? on a flight? on a plane? there is a loud leopard print in your place.
impostor! the o is out of place!

posted by Christolf @ 4:42:00 AM 1 comments

05 November 2006

Not Insomnia but...

I just got in. I haven't been asleep for 24ish hours. It's nice, strangely. I'll write about it after I sleep and sleep and sleep.

posted by Christolf @ 7:32:00 AM 0 comments

23 October 2006

One Month In

Alright, so I've been in this Nice place for over a month now. That's longer than a vacation. That's significantly longer than a camping trip. I have a favorite coffee shop in town and I know what kind of people to avoid. That initially wounding shock is more or less over. I have taken my first mid-term (B) and recieved my first paper (A-) and everything and everyone is very collegiate.

A month isn't a long time, though. It's not a year, and it is most certainly not four. And then the dreaded question comes up, did I make the right choice? A ha! Self conscious self doubt never fails.

posted by Christolf @ 4:59:00 PM 0 comments

08 October 2006

Transcribed from journal; 6 October

On the El. The train. Meeting people 30 minutes away. (30 minutes of city). Can I call them friends yet?

* * *

The train is not full. It is 'express' going Downtown. The Loop. Passing next to public housing, mixed income areas, strained class battles. They pass by as pictures, fast and unreal. The trees are starting to turn. They shed on porches and windows close to the tracks. Framed by dirty deep brown brick. Boarded up windows like empty eye sockets. Tenements? Poverty? Gentrification? Home to someone.

On the train they fly past unnoticed, close but miles away by glass panes and electric currents and speed. The old woman asks for help navigating the stops and finishes her crossword.
She has to wake the other woman up to get directions. Most people sleep, or pretend to.

* * *

On the other side of the graveyard wall, past the barbed wire and stone and sanctified ground, two men sleep in a parking lot. Blankets make up their camp, hung on shopping carts and under their heads. They guard black plastic bags filled with anything. The dead sleep on the other side of the barbed wire, safe; the men sleep on their blankets. The train doesn't stop: it's express.

* * *

The spider web on the stoplight, the things you see from these elevated tracks.

posted by Christolf @ 2:31:00 AM 0 comments

01 October 2006

The Lab

Evanston is a nice place. As is the Northwestern campus. But there times when it becomes impossible to stay in these nice places, no matter how much they try to suck you in.

Against an entire dorm floor filled with naysayers, tonight my friends and I got on the El at 1130pm and braved the hour long ride into Chinatown. What were we looking for? For the well hidden and completely out-of-the-way warehouse club, The Lab.

Clad in strange lamé and fur attire, with garrish makeup and glitter nails we walked the midnight streets, dodging 'panhandlers' and meth addicts; trying desperately to avoid those horrible situations one hears about on local 5 o'clock news. Crossing a pathetic excuse for a Chicago river we found our warehouse, wandered in through a door marked 'Lumber', and rode the service elevator up to the 5th floor.

Instant satisfaction, so to speak. Hard core electro-trash. Cowboy Bebop movie projected on the wall. Swanky couches and 'sophisticated' decor. Wasted 20 somethings and booming college students. This fabulous unnamed foreign woman. Photographs at every angle. Absolutly drenched (literally) in sweat.

Nothing in SLC could ever compare, sorry 80's night. Although, I doubt I'll go there again anytime soon. But it was more than worth it. +++

Now for sleep.

posted by Christolf @ 4:04:00 AM 1 comments

08 September 2006

Ogalalla, NE

It does exist!

posted by Christolf @ 10:25:00 PM 0 comments