It's November now, but outside the wind is still quite warm, and the rain has been discrete. The grandmother back in England told the mother to tell the idiot, one weekend a few weeks ago, that there was a storm over Portland, but really it was just a little damp and grey. Oregon is not satisfying the hyperboles of News 24, neither the crazy apocalyptic weather I had come to expect. Leaves are orange, squirrels are nutting, pumpkins are pumping. All the necessary Autumn imagery: deployed.
Fall break seems like a long time ago now, as the
intradiegetic temporality at Reed (to steal popular phrases from the idiot's Henry James class) is somewhat speedy. Actually, I guess it
was quite a long time ago. The royal we have just been lazy.
In typical fashion, the idiot scheduled and apportioned her time into nice square pockets of fun, so as not to waste a second. She is fully conscious of the fact that there is only SIX WEEKS this year with which she can travel America outside of Reed. And as much as she loves Reed, it could be anywhere in the world, existing in its own hermetic microclimate of unshoed vegetarians and hipsters brewing tea in jam jars. So anyway, here was the schedule for fall break: the first of the six weeks.
FRIDAY 15TH OCTOBER: We go to our first ever ballet with host sister Amelia. It is Sleeping Beauty. Host mum/mom Karen gives us special chocolates in the interval, and then we share a pretzel, and Amelia eats too many skittles. The boy who dances Bluebird, right at the end, is beautiful.
SATURDAY 16TH: She procrastinates over Charles Olson paper, gazing at her self-imposed deadline as it approaches, meets her, and then fades into distance. We take a trip to Hawthorne to clear the head. Eat that bowl of chili, buy a proper quilt, convince ourselves that we see Johnny Marr in that ridiculously huge vintage place near 34th. A bum looks up at her from the sidewalk and says 'I need you for my experiment'. She thinks of the
Human Centipede and hides for approximately an hour and a half in the cereal aisle of Fred Meyer.
SUNDAY 17TH: She wakes up at 5 in the
morning to finish Charles Olson paper. Fails. We keep to the schedule of fun regardless and catch an early bus to the coast. We drive up into the clouds, and all the pine trees are from
Twin Peaks. The best of days ensues. We wander, read, write, pretend to write, lunch on chowder, take far too many pictures of the same rock, and fall asleep in the sand. The idiot starts
The Unbearable Lightness of Being as her 'non-course' book for the break. The sun goes down, then we sit in a cafe and eat an incredible ham and cheese sandwhich. Bus home at 7.30pm, back in her room by 10pm. Everything falls together, the centre holds, and she finishes her paper with salty Pacific fingers.
MONDAY 18TH: A day for downtown Portland. The sun is still astonishing, and the idiot buys some tomaytoes from the farmer's market in Pioneer Square so we can eat them on the sunny Eastbank Esplanade, while segway tours hum around. People as space age meercats, truly silly. Find a shop called Reading Frenzy, dedicated to zines and making zines. The nice lady directs the idiot to the IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center) upstairs, which is in fact a cosy library of more magnificent zines. The idiot sits and reads things for a while. I go to Whole Foods and buy 450g of strawberries. 'We' (mainly the idiot) consume the entire box during the 10 minute walk from the bus stop back to the dorms. A trail of hulled stalks maps our route.
TUESDAY 19TH: Abundance of good weather becomes disconcerting. We take a day trip to Washington Park, up and to the west of town. View from the Japanese Gardens covers all three mountains. She falls asleep on a bench in the International Rose Test Gardens. Day ends with quite an attractive homeless man, nicknamed 'Scurvy' by his friends. She gets angry with me for flirting, but she knows that I know that she's only angry because her less proper self would have flirted if given the chance. Scurvy tells us about heads-up pennies. If you find a heads-up penny, it's good luck and you've got to keep it. The idiot leaves a heads-up penny at the bus stop for someone else's good luck. My eyes verily roll. We return back in time for a lovely meal with Annie and George.
WEDNESDAY 20TH: First day of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with Gray Fund. Road trip down to Ashland takes 5 hours, but we chat to nice new Reed people on the way, and cashew nuts are in circulation so things remain amicable. Ashland Hostel is far too nice to be a hostel. Reed has the entire basement to itself, and we play Apples to Apples into the night. The idiot misjudges the adjective card CASUAL, and takes a risk in offering up SCHINDLER'S LIST as her noun card. Collective disapproval. But she wins the round anyway.
THURSDAY 21ST: Exploration of Ashland in daylight. Hilly. The 'healing' lithia water in the main square tastes of fart. Our first play is a matinee of
Throne of Blood - an adaptation from the film, a sort of Japanese noh-ish
Macbeth. Traumatic. We have an early and ginormous dinner (they feed you well on Gray Fund trips) before
Hamlet in the evening. I am, of course, a purist, and a bit too conservative for such a liberal interpretation, but the idiot approves for the most part, and thinks this Hamlet must have seen Tennant's Hamlet from two years ago. That crazed pop-eyed soliloque looks familiar.
American audience behaviour is diverting. Random claps in impressive moments, as if to say 'well done, that was pretty good, so I'm going to make some noise and interfere with your next line'. Also, standing ovations are pretty much obligatory.
FRIDAY 22ND: A cheesy matinee of
She Loves Me, then home. First experience of Burgerville on the way back. The idiot finishes
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and is very much moved. She is perhaps too pleased with herself for completing, and for prioritising 'non-serious' over 'serious'.
SATURDAY 23RD / SUNDAY 24TH: Seriousness begins, and all that has been deferred needs to be dealt with. The idiot rushes a presentation on Kamau Brathwaite. On Sunday we meet the Dubays (cousins of friends) for dinner. There's a log fire, and a lovely family, and a spread of food like you wouldn't believe. Cranberry and pear pie, then a Halloween 'party bag' from Inga containing Reese's cups, chocolate digestives and a mini pumpkin. Fall break ends fatly.
Consette x
ently have all been significantly better than Halloween's Harvest Ball, which I thought was a load of twaddle. Being existentially attached to Mrs Rochester (yes, she dressed up as Mrs Rochester - see badge) was just too much. And having to listen and 'dance' to Reel Big Fish with the house lights fully up is not something I should be expected to tolerate.
