Ohio.
Monday I got up, had breakfast, quietly panicked, found a camera, took pictures of hats and masks, packed, and left for Pittsburgh with my mother to start on our great Ohio college tour (which consisted of two schools).
There's something about a road trip, I think, something about the endlessness of the road ahead, that makes conversation freer and deeper. Over the course of the five-hour drive to Pittsburgh, my mother and I talked about: Psychedelic drugs, meta-fiction, shamanism, hearing voices, the boundaries between the perceived and the real, writing, dreams, and the collective subconscious. It was perhaps one of the best conversations I've ever had with her.
After a night in Pittsburgh (and I'm sure I've rambled here about how I love my aunt and uncle's house so much, how it's three stories with a roof-deck that is the most inspiring place I have ever been - literally surrounded by wind, the stories are so much louder, like being under water) we headed to Oberlin. I had my interview at 11 AM, with someone who turned out to be a senior attending there. It was a very informal interview. He asked me, among other things, what person, living or dead, I would talk to if I could, and I answered that today it would be Toussaint L'Ouverture, as I'd just been reading about him the week before, and I imagined that seeing his thoughts on Haiti today would be utterly fascinating. It turned out that not only was my interviewer's brother named after L'Ouverture, but he'd recently picked up a Haitian friend from the airport, whose family was still in Haiti - unhurt, but hardly unharmed. We talked quite a bit about the strange divide between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and then he remembered that he was supposed to be interviewing me.
We met Tappy, after that, and we went back to her dorm for a bit. She went to class, and I attempted to nap but mostly stole her internet. When she got back we walked into town and had lunch and saw kittens! In the back of an art gallery! Man. Point one for them, Oberlin has kittens. On the way out, the kindly one-eyed shopkeeper decided to take it upon herself to sell me on Oberlin. I nodded and smiled and shrugged and all the right things, and we made our way to the library.
I really only have one thing to say about the Oberlin library: womb chairs.
...If it weren't supposed to be a quiet zone, you would have heard my "I am the new Number Two! Information. Information. Why did you resign? Mwahahahaah!" from all the way...wherever you live. Yes, even you, California. However, there is little I have as much respect for as the silence in a library (and I don't just mean the awesome Doctor Who episode), so I kept it to myself.
I also took the opportunity to re-read Ray Bradbury's Kaleidoscope, which...remains heartbreaking, incredible, and one of my favorite plays of all time. I think if I had to make a list, it would look something like this:
1. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
2. Kaleidoscope
3. Everything by George Bernard Shaw
...and then collapse into chaos.
...I have more to say! About Oberlin and Wooster and plays and science and. But I am literally falling asleep on my keyboard, so it is a time for sleeping. I love you all.
There's something about a road trip, I think, something about the endlessness of the road ahead, that makes conversation freer and deeper. Over the course of the five-hour drive to Pittsburgh, my mother and I talked about: Psychedelic drugs, meta-fiction, shamanism, hearing voices, the boundaries between the perceived and the real, writing, dreams, and the collective subconscious. It was perhaps one of the best conversations I've ever had with her.
After a night in Pittsburgh (and I'm sure I've rambled here about how I love my aunt and uncle's house so much, how it's three stories with a roof-deck that is the most inspiring place I have ever been - literally surrounded by wind, the stories are so much louder, like being under water) we headed to Oberlin. I had my interview at 11 AM, with someone who turned out to be a senior attending there. It was a very informal interview. He asked me, among other things, what person, living or dead, I would talk to if I could, and I answered that today it would be Toussaint L'Ouverture, as I'd just been reading about him the week before, and I imagined that seeing his thoughts on Haiti today would be utterly fascinating. It turned out that not only was my interviewer's brother named after L'Ouverture, but he'd recently picked up a Haitian friend from the airport, whose family was still in Haiti - unhurt, but hardly unharmed. We talked quite a bit about the strange divide between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and then he remembered that he was supposed to be interviewing me.
We met Tappy, after that, and we went back to her dorm for a bit. She went to class, and I attempted to nap but mostly stole her internet. When she got back we walked into town and had lunch and saw kittens! In the back of an art gallery! Man. Point one for them, Oberlin has kittens. On the way out, the kindly one-eyed shopkeeper decided to take it upon herself to sell me on Oberlin. I nodded and smiled and shrugged and all the right things, and we made our way to the library.
I really only have one thing to say about the Oberlin library: womb chairs.
...If it weren't supposed to be a quiet zone, you would have heard my "I am the new Number Two! Information. Information. Why did you resign? Mwahahahaah!" from all the way...wherever you live. Yes, even you, California. However, there is little I have as much respect for as the silence in a library (and I don't just mean the awesome Doctor Who episode), so I kept it to myself.
I also took the opportunity to re-read Ray Bradbury's Kaleidoscope, which...remains heartbreaking, incredible, and one of my favorite plays of all time. I think if I had to make a list, it would look something like this:
1. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
2. Kaleidoscope
3. Everything by George Bernard Shaw
...and then collapse into chaos.
...I have more to say! About Oberlin and Wooster and plays and science and. But I am literally falling asleep on my keyboard, so it is a time for sleeping. I love you all.