Chronos

I have redeemed myself. She is being less brutal this morning; we have Automatic for the People on the ipod, and I was allowed to share some of her Bunny Grahams for breakfast . It is still, however, 07.23am. The day ahead is meticulously portioned - at 9am ring the parental unit on Skype, at 10.30am go to Commons for a social breakfast (Chris has a friend visiting from Florida), 12pm is for gymming with Nancy Grace or Jon Stewart and claiming the cross trainer before the lady with the pink umbrella takes it, from 12 till 6 she must research and/or begin that Modernism paper and read Book 10 of The Ambassadors, and finally from 6pm we can go to Thai Peacock for dinner. If it wasn't for this last fixture, I think I might be less compliant with the whole parade. The parade that is her life. Yes, if it wasn't for thai installments (or, equally, sushi), Consette would be quite the problem child.

Yesterday's post was a hotchpotch mess, and the idiot has insisted that this one reinstates some semblance of chronological order. As it turns out, all the significant events of the last three weeks can, however tenuously, be connected back to food or drink. This does not surprise me: love handles are emerging. Arrangement of the blog shall be chaptered accordingly.

(according to food, not love handles)

VODKA SCOTCH TRIPLE SEC AT MATTHEW'S 23RD BIRTHDAY, FEBRUARY 12TH: Someone - thankfully not the idiot - uses triple sec as a mixer. Up to an hour in weaving home. A great party, though, with a memorable rendition of Happy Birthday and the ceremonial burning of a christmas tree in the yard. Like a thousand sparklers all at once, leaving the smell of pinewood on my jumper.

FIRST 'FRO YO' EXPERIENCE, FEBRUARY 13TH: Vanilla frozen yoghurt, granola, gummy sweets and blueberries from the shop on Pioneer Square, followed by an International Film Festival screening at the NW Film Center - an Irish documentary called His and Hers, which I guess was kind of touching. But there was a huffy lady to the idiot's left who wasn't so persuaded. She sighed and grizzled at her poor husband for the full 90 minutes, at one point hissing, 'I'm never going anywhere with you again.'

SABURO'S ON BYBEE BLVD, FEBRUARY 13TH: An aforementioned sushi installment on a Sunday night. Fat roll for only $6.

VALENTINE'S DAY CHOCOLATE DODGE, FEBRUARY 14TH: Fred Meyer's Valentine aisle might be a glut of pink and chocolate, but the actual day of Valentine was fairly inconspicuous. No one invited me to dinner, no one gave me a box of candy, no one bought me a drink. I can assure you, I am relieved. Definitely relieved.

ETHIOPIAN INJERA, FEBRUARY 18TH: We won a spot on Gray Fund's African Film Festival trip, preceded by a meal at one of Portland's Ethiopian restaurants. We go 'family style', which, on reflection, was not such a great idea. There is certainly a workable method for eating injera and tibs, but our end of the table failed on every level, lacking in both hygeine and decorum. The idiot got stuck in, but I joined Aurore and Michael at the other end for a more slow-paced, less saliva-flecked, approach to consuming food. Afterwards we went to the antique Hollywood Theater in NorthEast for a screening of The Athlete, and return only 2 hours later with Justine at 11pm for Rubber (about a homicidal car tire).
She is going to go easy on the movie screenings for a while. As much as she loves the cinema, I advised her that she can watch movies back in England, and she only has 4 months left in America to do American things. You don't get a Hollywood Theater in England, though, and I appreciate that half of the appeal for her is in the neon vertical signs and the old-fashioned billboards. On February 25th we went to a screening of the Portland-based Cold Weather, which achieves this city's Oregon grey with pristine accuracy. We had to queue up outside Cinema 21 for at least half an hour for tickets, and everyone was taking pictures of themselves beneath the billboard, it being, of course, the coldest day of the year so far.

MONTAGE, FEBRUARY 20TH: Portland had a jazz festival. Gianmarco, the idiot, and I went to a wonderful show at The Blue Monk on Belmont. They play a jazz cover of Paranoid Android within 10 minutes of our arrival, and we get an insight into GM's fantasy life soundtrack. Justine kindly lent us her car for the night, so afterwards we (ie. GM) drove to Montage on Morrison and ate gumbo, catfish jambalaya, and oyster shooters for a latenight dinner. Montage is an incredibly cool southern restaurant, poking out from underneath Morrison bridge just before it hits the river. It has big, high ceilings, and tables about thirty settings long, and when you order an oyster, the rock and roll waiter with a bandana throws back his head and shouts 'oyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyssssteeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr' at the open kitchen.
On the way home, Justine's car began to smoke from the bonnet, smelling distinctly of hot rubber. For once, the idiot and I were united in our protestations, and demanded that Gianmarco pull into the Trader Joe's parking lot to take a look. Nothing could be surmised, so we drove back to Reed with the warning lights on, at 10 miles an hour, with the idiot blubbering about exploding all over 39th Avenue.
Justine was very understanding - apparently it wasn't our fault, thank goodness - but the car is still (2 weeks later) at the garage.

PULLED PORK, FEBRUARY 25TH: She has decided to do her dissertation next semester on Gerald Vizenor's trickster. Vizenor is a Native Theorist, poet and fiction writer who lectures at Berkeley. The other day she was waiting for the restroom, just before a great performance of The Ghosts of Celilo at the Newmarket Theater, and got chatting to a lady in the queue, who ended up inviting her to the annual Delta Park Pow Wow in June. It's happening less than a week before her flight leaves Portland, but I think she's pretty keen on going, for more than 'dissertation research'. Anyway, the proposal deadline for UEA was on Friday 25th Feb, but she actually blagged something fairly okay and handed it in early. Still, though, the deadline date warranted celebration in its own right. She also required comforting from a minor migraine, which later launched into a major migraine and a mid-class collapse, not aided by the brightness of some February snow days. So on Friday afternoon we ate freeze-dried blueberries from Fred Meyer and meandered down Hawthorne for a wax at the Aveda salon, announcing our arrival with a purply, black-toothed grin. The nice, pretty, expertly-arranged ladies looked a little alarmed. Then we walked to Belmont for a foodcart lunch: pulled pork from Namu's Killer Korean BBQ, with sides of sesame spinach, sticky rice, peanut sauce, kimchi, chinese cabbage, and cucumber salad. This was as beautiful as it sounds - something that cannot be said for the 'snack stick' she purchased from the 7 Eleven later in the day, just 'to see'. It contained, amongst other things, 'mechanically separated chicken'.

WAFFLE WINDOW, FEBRUARY 26TH: One of the 7 Eleven men, upon hearing her accent, told the idiot that she looked like a 'small princess Kate'. I choked on my twinkie, and someone at the coffee bar had to perform the heimlich maneuver on me. My god it was funny. From there we went to the House of Vintage Sale on Hawthorne, where we found Aurore all dazed and flushed underneath a pile of clothes, having been there for over 2 hours already. Despite claiming to hate shopping, the idiot ended up buying 5 tops for less than $40, one of which was a ghastly USSR shellsuit with a map of the world on it. Lunch was a leisurely affair at the Waffle Window. Three Bs for the idiot (Bacon, Brie and Basil), Hot Apple Pie for Aurore, and the Granola and Fruit one for me. I didn't really want to leave Hawthorne, but the idiot had to go back for work - the whole road has this excellent smell, one long road of British festival SMELL, which makes both of us nostalgic. A mixture of patchouli and fried food and doughnuts and smoke.
That night we attended the Renn Fayre theme unveiling at the S.U.
GOLD RUSH, mofos. GOLD RUSH.

BLACKBERRY GIN RICKY, MARCH 1ST: For $4 at Holocene. Some bands played or something, but I stayed at the bar.

GAIL GIVES US COOKIES, MARCH 2ND: The professor who teaches 'James and Ozick, Faulkner and Morrison' is called Gail. She is amazing. She sent the idiot an email about migraine specialists in Portland when the idiot had that migraine. She brought in cookies to apologise for being tardy every day. Some of those cookies were snickerdoodles. She has promised to bake everyone their own personalised cake if she is late in returning paper comments.

UNCOMMONS AT RAW, MARCH 2ND: Reed Arts Week is going on at the moment. Uncommons, Reed's gourmet collective, did the catering for the opening party in Winch, but we didn't stay for the whole thing - just the chips/fries and ketchup, pâté on toast, and beer, but apparently there were seven courses. More than anything, I am putting this in the blog to remind myself to remind the idiot to sign up for one of their dinner events.

FISHY CHIPS, MARCH 5TH: Yesterday we had fishy chips for lunch from the Eurotrash foodcart on Belmont. Breaded fried Spanish anchovies with sea salt and lemon and signature 'trashy sauce'. The sun came out. She turned to me and said that fishy chips are the best thing she has eaten in PDX to date, and I find it hard to disagree. Although I did enjoy that Twinkie, before the Kate Middleton choking incident.
Belmont is probably my favourite area at the moment. Movie Madness is just nextdoor to the foodcart camp, and it has Drew Barrymore's first day back at high school costume from Never Been Kissed in its collection. This alone makes Belmont cool. I also like the view down the Morrison St hill, where all the cranes from downtown remind the idiot of her posh South-of-England fetish for the Northern-industrial-city. We caught the bus to the Saturday Market and people-watched for over an hour - supping thai ice tea, grinning along to the idiot grinning along to Portland's Zimbabwean Marimba Dance Band (Boka Marimba), who have over seven marimbas coordinating on stage at any given time. It drizzled a bit, but really we can't complain. Four umbrellas have fallen by the wayside since arriving in Portland, and I think we're finally going to give up. Does that make us proper Portlanders? It is said, by someone, that a proper Portlander does not own an umbrella, because to do so would be to admit that it is raining.

HOW TO CHILL BEER IN YOUR DORM WINDOW, MARCH 5TH:











AN EMAIL FROM THE GRANDMOTHER WHO IS ALMOST 89: Yeah not connected to food, but possibly the best thing ever. She got an iPad over Christmas:

Darllng whizbizz. I am amusing myself and getting a bit better on the magic box,! It is such moody little thing with a mind of its own.Sometimes it decides to cancel everything I have laboriously typed ,or writes everything in red which is quite jolly but uncalled for! I do hope you are happy and not working too hard ,All my love. Xxxxxxxx Granny

Yes? Yes.

Consette x

Brit

She is quite literally poised above my head with a sharp implement (pencil) pressed against my scalp. This must be against some law or other. It is a SATURDAY NIGHT, and she wants us to stay in the dorm and get our shit together with the blog. I have not written for over three weeks, and am oh so penitent. As punishment, she has forbid me control of the music; we are listening to the Animal Collective radio stream on Last.Fm, and some hideous things are filtering through - currently that Wavves mess, previously Panda Bear, gah gah gah. Once upon a time she let me have my fill of Simon & Garfunkel to nurture the creative founts, or Fleetwood Mac or R.E.M, or any of the bands she loves but pretends not to. Neither is my concentration aided by the amount of times per minute a door slams in Sequoia, nor the amount of times an unnamed individual at the other end of the corridor achieves orgasm. Please Reed, stop supplying the students with free condoms. For the rest of their lives, in the (gasp) real world, they will no doubt take it for granted that a little bag of johnnies exists in every bathroom and public toilet. And when one isn't there, they will look around in a perturbed sort of way for the nearest H.A to bait for this injustice. The poor H.A - house advisor - on our floor in Sequoia has a white board stuck on his door for requests and notices, but it is mainly devoted to a running commentary on the condom situation, or lack thereof, in the bathroom. BUY YOUR OWN BIRTH CONTROL YOU LAZY LAZY HUMAN BEINGS. Or at least make the effort to go to the health center. And, while you're briefly considering things of this nature, maybe take the meagre width of the walls into account, and please don't think that having sex in the shower cubicles is appropriate when some of us are brushing our teeth.

And oh my god the SHOWERS, that's another rant altogether. Each cubicle has cultured its own happy ecosystem of body hair, discarded food stuffs, and ants. The idiot found a pitted date in the end shower the other day. Hair hair hair, though, is my primary complaint. Balls of it waft around like tumbleweed, and I retch to look at the walls.

The idiot tells me that I'm being middle-aged, and that my job is not to whine and moan about the nice dorms we have been given at vastly reduced expense. So - what in three weeks to talk about? A lot has been going on. Last weekend, she and I and Gianmarco and Aurore went to a screening of the Oscars at the Bagdad Theater, which involved a lovely bucksome compere (day job in burlesque) saying silly things during the ad breaks, and awkward moments when Portlanders were given the opportunity to make their own acceptance speeches. In the real Oscars, meanwhile, Christian Bale looked as if he forgot his wife's name, and The King's Speech won all the important ones. The idiot felt genuinely patriotic, especially amidst the toddler grumbles of many surrounding Americans who think that British movies should be in the foreign language category. Colin Firth gave an exemplary speech, I thought. Later on, an email from the mother stated, 'Biz [ie. the idiot], you are True Brit', which is the sort of heinous pun-crime parents over 50 can just about get away with (but not really). Afterwards, the four of us went to Fred Meyer for a rice puff, trail mix, ginger beer and dried apple chip dinner, which seemed an appositely glam end to the evening.

Hey, by the by, who knew Christian Bale was such a geezer?! And what a beard! I think the idiot has spent most of her life assuming his American-ness, so the accent came as a bit of a surprise. Gianmarco had to look him up on wikipedia to persuade her that he really is British after all. Shiiiiit. And as it turns out, she too is most definitely ...True Brit. With regards to blood, there was never any question - 1/4 Scottish, 1/8 Irish, remainder English - but her susceptibility to the Portland charm has been rather 'gooey love affair' over the last few months. At one point she sounded pretty adamant about moving out to the Pacific NW after graduating, and growing cider apples for 'hard' cider. But when the right person says the right things (remaining nameless), she is a fickle idiot. Americans are nice, but Brits are cool. S'just how 'tis. She and I even make time for the Craig Charles Funk and Soul Show (BBC 6Music online) on a Saturday morning, English evening, for a dance and nostalgic transportation back to her second year dishwashing job at Frank's Bar.

And thank god they don't have Monster Jam in England. Well, they probably have it in Norfolk, but Norfolk is different. She dragged me along to a Monster Jam outing with the International Society, and the less said about it the better I think.

Before I go to bed, the idiot wants me to plug a blog called Far From Home, which is written by her friend Olivia. There is an excellent picture of American 'dancing' a few posts down. That's another aspect of England the idiot prefers - the lack of expectation when it comes to being sexy, and the knowledge that to 'dance' can just mean bob about a bit, smile benignly, hope for the best.

Consette x

PS. Some great things on the internet that were introduced to me recently:
1) GREAT GATSBY PLATFORM GAME FOR NES.
2) DRUNK HISTORIES.

Elk

It being the weekend, she should be working, but is instead loitering somewhere in the region of my right shoulder and shouting out spelling corrections. I am prone to slipping in the odd American z. She is much more concerned about English propriety than I am.

Classes started just under 2 weeks ago, and there are many more writing assignments and/or presentations to juggle this semester than last semester, but, in a sort of fair exchange, a good deal less reading. I attended her classes in the first week, out of solidarity. She can get quite nervous about starting all over again and having to gauge the levels of intellectual prowess within the room. Each class has its own standard: although always impressive, it's just a fact that some students gravitate towards some classes, and some students stray away from some classes. Anything with the word 'theory' in it pulls in flashers of terminology (diegesis, all the -isms, all the -ologies), and anything with the word 'James' attracts those keen on self-flagellation. This semester she's taking: 'James and Ozick/Faulkner and Morrison', 'Film Theory' and 'Poetry and History: Modernism'. Here's a quote from her diary on Day 1:

'Oh for shame: first class of the semester, and I forget how to pronounce the word 'preface', neglect to say anything insightful about Henry James despite being the only person in the room who had taken Henry James through Theory before Christmas, and, finally, faithfully repeat a tragedy of a typo when reading out loud ('Faulkner's achievement ...was foremost to articulate truths about the Sout and Sputherners'), looking perplexed when everyone, correctly, sees cause for amusement.'

Writing, for her - maybe for me too -, is an antidote to everything: embarrassment, shame, inferiority complexes, so much happiness you feel nauseous. Make it into a sentence and things instantly improve, become solid and manageable. Since then, though, that JOFM class has turned out fairly well. It's very small and is the most loaded work-wise out of all of them, but from the third lesson onwards, after Miles produced this incredible crucifixion allegory for a Faulkner short story, the atmosphere turned. That third class was something of a phenomenon for the idiot. They had all received an email in the morning informing them of Gail's absence, but with a request to carry on regardless sans professor. Only at Reed: everyone turned up, started at 1.10pm, and conducted a very civilised discussion which ran overtime. In the second week they moved onto Cynthia Ozick, and the idiot got all wide-eyed and in love. She has never read Ozick before, and is now experiencing that 'oh my goodness' sensation of all the treats to come, like jumping into a ball pool when you're a kid. Sorry - slap on the wrist - child.

Perhaps to counteract all these bloody novels, I suggested we visit the MLLL for the first time. The MLLL is Reed's comic book library - secretly coded and more silent inside than Reed's actual library. The idiot didn't really know where to start, so she did what all neophytes tend to do and headed for the comic original of a movie she recently watched. Thus, a cosy hour with the first episode of Scott Pilgrim.

There have been two screenings for Film Theory so far. In the first week we watched Intolerance by D. W. Griffith (3.15 hours of silent movie, 4 narratives, Lillian Gish rocking a cradle over and over), and in the second week we watched Eisenstein's The General Line (2 hours of complete silence, not even a soundtrack, sexualised interactions with farm machinery). On top of this we went to see The Illusionist at Cinema 21 last weekend, followed by fat food and supreme microbrews from Oregon. It was glorious, but the scenes in the Highlands made me quite teary. I haven't been home, let alone Scotland, in nearly 2 years now. Then on Saturday morning, the idiot and Aurore and Gianmarco and I watched The Kings of Pastry at the Living Room Theaters, to take notes for their 'Going to the Movies' assignment. It took almost an entire day to get in and out of Portland, which is probably the only fault I can count against this city. Too bloody relaxed: very few places open for lunch ON A SATURDAY, and then the only place that was open dawdled for about 45 minutes in serving us a - truly delicious, I concede - sandwich.

Last Saturday evening the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble played in the chapel as part of Black History Month. We wandered in by accident, but ended by dancing down the aisle with the rest of the 'congregation' to this crazy amalgam of jazz and Chicago and bongos. Afterwards, Justine deviously drove us to a strip club (we thought we were going to a bar for happy hour). I had a pretty fabulous time, doing market research on latex (there's so much you don't know) and chatting to the lovely girls who work there, but the idiot has never looked more uncomfortable in her life. She spent the half-hour of our patronage determinedly watching the skateboarding competition on TV, not really knowing where else to put her eyes. Gyration = a definite hazard. The Bob Marley birthday dance, at Mt. Tabor Theater, was much more suited to her needs. On Sunday it was Superbowl, which I feel compelled to mention in passing just because we're in America and that's what happens in America on the first Sunday of the month. Packers won, people ate pizza. Whatever.

It turns out that she has already spent $100 more than the suggested spending for board plan C, so nutrition for this week has come, predominantly, courtesy of the cinnamon apple chips in Homer's Hut. Avoiding Commons is also an excellent excuse to hit some of the food carts. Yesterday we went to the 'A la Cart' (haha) site on 50th and Division, as a celebratory start to the weekend, and ate an ELK BURGER from this beautiful little place called 'Over the Top' which sources game from the Oregon wilds. It came with a pot of apple slaw and sprinkled smelly cheese. Gastro-bandic heaven. We walked all the way back home, stopping only for a Stumptown coffee on the way, and then descended into a food coma for the rest of the night.

Consette x

PS. Hey Reed! Mubarak stepped down!

Paideia

The idiot and I have been in eachother's company now for a week. She got back into the country on January 21st, but I didn't see her until the morning of the 22nd when Karen and Amelia (host famille) dropped her off at Sequoia. She gave me a hug, which was bizarre because neither us really approve of public affection.

You would be correct in thinking that Reed College students have too much holiday, and that January 22nd would be a timely date to go back to school. This is what I had inferred from the idiot's arrival day - that I would have her to deal with for the weekend and the weekend only, and then she would be busy back to classes by Monday. But as it turns out there's this thing called Paideia (cue wikipedia), thinly veiled under the description 'festival of learning', which affords these tiresome 'reedies' a further 9 days of frivolity. It's basically just a free-for-all opportunity for any aspiring teachers to teach whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want ...wherever this hell might take them. She dragged me along to something on the apocalypse on Monday afternoon, led by a Reed alumni who had done his thesis on apocalyptic texts from a denomination I can't remember. He heralded each newcomer to the classroom with the words: 'Hey! Are you looking for the end of the world?' I glowered at him as if I really was looking for the end of the world. And at the end (of the class, not world - although by that time I was wishing for armageddon) I was sure to shoot him a penetrating gaze that clearly stated: 'You may be wearing a smoker's jacket, but that's not going to save you and your jolly self when the monster with a trillion heads comes gambolling down Woodstock Blvd'. The idiot told me to stop being so contrary. On Tuesday we attended 'alcohol desserts' briefly, but the ingredients never showed up so we defected to baklava-making in the next door dorms. For someone who claims to love cookery, the idiot did a remarkable job in safeguarding the recipe from possible ambush, and supping gin from a plastic cup, and alerting the others to dropped pistachio nuts. On Wednesday there was an adorable anglophile convention at the Doctor Who paideia (teacher = student in a fez and a bow tie), and then at night she and Aurore competed in the 'Homer's Hut cook-off' from 11pm-12.30am, getting placed third out of five teams with their (judge quote) 'actually quite delicious but not sophisticated enough for a competition of this calibre' knickerbockerglory. Homer's Hut, by the way, is the campus late-night food outlet, mainly selling E number snacks, and the concomitant pharmaceutical solutions to deal with said E numbers. Accordingly, the people's favourite entry (placed last) was the 'pepto-cano': an open jar of pepto-bismol, spilling wiggly jelly worms, encased in a squidge of chocolate cake and a creamy substance of unknown origin, scattered elegantly with fruit loops. The knickerbockerglory assemblage bridged the division between the 26th and the 27th of January, giving the idiot a pretty good start to her birthday. On Thursday (birthday) I put my foot down and refused to attend the 'comicsocalypse' with her in the afternoon, and the same went for that 6 hour calligraphy class on Friday, but she returned from both with sudden and unnerving pretensions to artyness. Gross.

The rest of this 'learning' love-in week mainly took place in Portland, which I must admit is turning into quite the town. It even warrants its own comedy show on IFC. Over break the idiot's mum read an article in The Times about Oregon being the new foodie destination, with particular showcasing of Portland. The food cart list is proving to be, perhaps, too ambitious, but we're going to try our hardest to get through as many as we can before May. I'm not going to want to leave here. Neither's she. On Monday night of Paideia we went to see this wonderful animation in the NW Film Center (My Dog Tulip), about J. R. Ackerley's love affair with his alsation bitch, followed by a buffet meal in Whole Foods (nom). Thursday, as I've mentioned, was the first birthday the idiot has spent away from the parental realm. There were no tears (she can be a bit of a sop), but instead a blush at receving the comments on her ironic treatise from last semester, a further blush at the sight of homemade scones courtesy of Aurore - cream and jam inclusive - and finally a sweat and a snot from the Miang Kham at Whiskey Soda Lounge in the evening. Then back to the Spanish House for S'mores.

(GLOSSARY PARENTHESIS: S'MORE = a sandwich of honey graham crackers and Hershey's chocolate and marshmallow, cooked in a microwave.)

And if that wasn't gluttony enough, she discovered some delicious carrot cupcakes on her desk at 1 in the morning. Special mention goes to the now-departed-quite-by-surprise roommate, Stefie: baking expert, dubstep expert, and all round quite cool Reed drop-out. Although the idiot is of course sad about the empty half of the double room, she's also certain that Stefie would not resent the inauguration of a film club - some point soon, just to fill the gap.

Saturday night was joint party night, held at Annie's house on 34th. In the morning the idiot discovered her lip piercing was still open after a year of non-occupation, and was quite tempted to put her coronation crown brooch in there. It would have added an interesting, if speech impedimenting, aspect to her Queen Elizabeth II tribute. The theme for the party was icons: Annie was Grace Jones, Holly was Princess Di, George was a cursor, Justine was the statue of liberty, Matt was the absence of iconograhpy, Erin was emoticons, Dorothy was Campbell's soup, Stu was Jimi Hendrix, Rachel was the Virgin Mary, and Vicky was Dolly Parton. It made for some unprecedented pairings. Annie really did everything, and the idiot sort of trailed in her wake and made arbitrary cucumber sandwiches. At midnight or so the party decamped to the S.U for cheesey dancing, and then further decamped to the Spanish House until 3 in the morning.

But seriously kids, go back to school already.

Consette x

Reedgloss

Here is a long and boring glossary of stuffs at Reed College, which I have been meaning to post since last September:

THE CANYON: We need bridges to cross it (one is bouncy, one is blue), there is water, there are trees, it divides the campus in two, it is therefore a CANYON.

THE REACTOR: The only nuclear reactor monitored by undergrads in the whole of the world, or something. It looks pretty and blue when you turn the lights off.

FELLATIO RODRIQUEZ: Reed's improv comedy group. Consette could do better, but the idiot has so far prevented me from auditioning.

ELIOT: Eliot Hall is a nice old-school school building. It has tiny alcoves for water fountains, indented along all the walls.

CSOs: The Community Safety Officers keep everything ticking over. They ride segways. Only once have we felt in danger - when someone set alight to a car on the other side of The Grove dorms and we all had to evacuate. But the CSOs segwayed in calming circles, and everything was okay.

DOGS: Dogs are everywhere. There is one called 'woof' (I think) who sleeps under the desk during the idiot's poetry conference.

MLLL: The famous comic book library, requiring a secret password.

SCROUNGE: Can be either a verb 'to scrounge', or a noun denoting the activity of 'the scrounge', or the table given to scrounging is 'the scrounge', or the person who practices the scrounge is 'a scrounge' or 'a scrounger'. It basically means eating everyone's leftover food in Commons and to contract/spread disease.

SEQUOIA: Our posh dormitory in The Grove. There are rocking chairs in all the rooms.

GRAFFITI: Everywhere.

TOILET DEBATES: On the walls of any given bog.

BLUE LIKE JAZZ: Pending movie on Reed, for Christians.

GRADES: There are none. Or, at least, the idiot can't see them unless she asks nicely and signs a request form and gives good reason for wanting to know her academic achievements or failures. Halfway through the semester the students receive a note in their pigeonholes stating either 'satisfactory' or 'unsatisfactory' work, so if you're failing you shall definitely know about it.

CONFERENCE: Seminars are called conferences here. The idiot is a conference parasite, in that she doesn't really think for herself, but is actually one of those hideous sorts who jumps on the end of others' originality and adds something of no use whatsoever, before retreating once again back to gormlessness. She once equated her conference style to defecating in the middle of the floor, and leaving everyone else to clear it up.

DEADBEATS: There is a strong tradition of beatness at Reed, and The Deadbeats are the spoken-word/poetry/random performance group who meet on Wednesday nights in the SU. Much howling, some of it pleasant.

ANGEL DAVID RIVERA: Runs the International Society. A hero.

THESIS TOWER: What is the plural of thesis? Theses? Thesises? Anyway, they're all in the tower.

FREESTYLE FRIDAY: Rich kids rapping in Sallyport every Friday night. Not 'authentic': they don't have gun wounds, says Annie.

SALLYPORT: Archway passage running through the ODB (Old Dorm Building). On Freestyle Fridays, ODB = Old Dirty Bastard.

SLUR: Every other week. Sing Loudly Unto Reed. What it says on the tin.

GRAY FUND: Puts on cool things for students, thanks to Betty Gray who gave a whole load of money to the college when she died. The best last semester was the Night Kite Revival spoken word group. They opened with Anis Mojgani, draining us of cynicism like a catheter to the analytical vein (a relief in worky mid-November). We also went to see Howl, opening the LGBT film festival Portland, and ate a gourmet meal at Bluehour. Sissyboy was actually kind of moving, and Billy Collins grin-ful.

FOUCAULT: One of the professors here says he had sex with Michel Foucault in the 80s. This is Reed lore. Is he aware that Foucault died of aids?

R. KNAPP'S OFFICE: Books: breeding, towering, building little subsiduary houses of books.

JARS: Hipsters brew their own tea and drink it out of jam jars. A hazard, one would think, for that American Apparel rucksack?

PRETTY BOYS: So many, even Consette is admiring. Reed students bifurcate neatly into two separate groups: either you are so beautiful you can barely move, or you are so awkward you can barely move. In both cases, this paralysis benefits hard studying and academia. Coolness is a bit more complicated: to salivate over Harry Potter movies, eg, is very very (unironically) cool.

MADNESS: Occasionally we encounter someone with borderline schizophrenia, but we turn a blind eye and hope for the best.

TAI CHI ON THE FRONT LAWN: The idiot's P.E. credit last semester was in Tai Chi. Before the British weather hit Portland, the class had all their lessons outside, soundtracked on Wednesdays by heavy DnB pulsating from the student radio window (seemingly the only broadcasting medium through which the 'radio' transmits).

PORTLAND: The city in which we live, but never see.

BUT, SERIOUSLY, PORTLAND: It looks like Sim City, has amazing food, and a bookshop called Powell's which is so pleasurable you might blind if you spend too much time in there.

HOST FAMILY: The idiot is fortunate enough to have Karen, Kevin and Amelia as her allocated family whilst in Portland. Amelia is ten years old with bouncy ringlets and a precocious vocabulary. A delight.

THE SIMPSONS: Matt Groening is from Portand. An English Professor at Reed (incidentally a prospective prof for the idiot's next semester) was, they say, the inspiration for Lisa Simpson.

GAPS IN BETWEEN THE TOILET CUBICLES: What is with this? You can be seen.

PARADOXES: Two cafés on campus (the old Paradox, and the new one), where all the pretty boys slouch. Generally very nice coffee. Also, sellers of some tea latte kind of drink called a 'London Fog'. Ask for a London Fog in a British accent, and get slightly close to a flirt with a pretty barista.

THE HONOR PRINCIPLE: These lot are experts, and I tend to say something dishonourable when I try to explain. It's amazing, though, that mid-terms and final exams can be taken away and done in your free time. Every single Reed student who we've spoken to so far has baulked at the suggestion of cheating, or going over the time limit. Whatever this Honor Principle is, most people get quite into it.

PUB (AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE): 'Pub' at the end of 28th street. Or in the middle of. Pub at the end of my tether anyway - makes me, for a split second, miss England.

TWINKA: Twinka from Imogen and Twinka. Her wikipedia says she used to live with Henry Miller. Now a checkout lady in the Reed dining hall. Still got it.

Consette x

Finals

Can one die of tired? Caffeine certainly. Prudent, I thought, to stay out of her way during Finals Week in December, observing things from a safe distance. Reed was supposed to turn her into a more competent, efficient human being, but the fact is she dealt with the increase in word counts (or page counts) by simply sleeping less, not working faster. Gum and coffee reacted in undesirable ways, and for some reason she thought it would be safe to dilute all her hot drinks with the 'French vanilla' latte from that grotesque machine in Commons. Heart burn reigneth. And beware of sorbitol in sugarfree gum.

This problematic relationship with coffee extended beyond digestion; on the Sunday before the shit hit the proverbial fan, the idiot knocked some syrupy concoction all over her Dell keyboard (more than anything a caveat against adding sugar, thank you Baz), and the P, B, M and space bar keys were at once unusable. This occurred just hours after completing that irony paper for Knapp. For at least 15 degrading minutes the idiot scrabbled at the keyboard in an attempt to type her Windows password (containing two out of the three redundent letters), eventually surprising everyone (me and her) with success. But from this point on, the computer opted for flight over fight, trailing incoherency in its wake: bdlsjdgjdpppdssfppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppfuckerppppppppppppppppdsaljfbsfmmndppp. So after a deft USB rescue-job, she was forced to spend the entirety of Finals week camped out at the ETC (the computer center) on the other side of campus.

Even in the early stages of the week, the library was too sweaty and strained to deal with: Eye of the Tiger playing in the foyer once an hour, 6am glazed looks in passing, and the rapidly atrophying 'stim' table - raisins, energy pills, spaghetti, cereal, regular pills, tobacco, nutella, the smell of small animals dying. The ETC, on the other hand, just a few steps to the East, was a bed of calm. She stayed there Monday through Thursday morning, sleeping intermittently on that sofa in front of the fire, the one everyone sleeps on, and only once or twice returning to dorms for a wash. On Tuesday night we saw a tiny hummingbird in the 7/11, sucking syrup from the syrup dispensers at the coffee counter.

You know it's the last week of school when the News Feed on facebook becomes more active than usual, as competitive idiots all over the world - not merely mine - vie for the most stressful work situation. My idiot, for example, wasted a lot of time translating the Reed system of page counts into the equivalent UEA word count, just so she could stick out her negligible chest in gloatation at having to write 7000 words on one essay. She sent that one off to Knapp on Sunday night, so there were then three whole days in which she could write something barely passable on James and Derrida. Most of that time was spent in panic, not understanding 'Form and Meaning', and not understanding The Sacred Fount, and then trying to combine these obdurate blocks of bemusement into a 10 page paper. By the early hours of Thursday morning, it was done.

Reed looked beautiful at 8am, all in fog and sunlight. We walked around for a bit. Then a celebratory breakfast in Commons with the last of the semester's board points, then daytime sleep and packing and, in the evening, our first sighting of a corona moon. She said something about an overwhelming sense of achievement. I didn't make fun.

Consette x

Break

I spent my Christmas Day in the company of the boys at the 7/11, where we ate corndogs and chicken buckets with Minute Maid cranapple on the side. I have been left all alone at Reed; she flew back to England on the 17th December. So my holiday season has been pretty lonely, but I suppose that's what I wanted. Distance makes the heart grow fonder and all that. The last time I saw her, she was being humiliated by the United airlines check-in officer at PDX airport for having a suitcase 12lbs over the weight limit. From there, anything could have happened. She hasn't been in touch. For all I know, her plane from Vancouver to Heathrow might have been redirected to Paris, and for all I know, she could have been stranded there for three days, with only her quilt cover for warmth, and FOR ALL I KNOW, her baggage could still be lost somewhere in the purgatory of the Charles de Gaulle luggage network.

And why haven't I been writing? With so much free time on my hands, you would think I'd take this idiot-less opportunity to write a blog post a day and finally catch up with everything I meant to say 5 months ago. But the thing is - the crippling, disabling thing - is that I'm too like her to do anything of the sort. Procrastination is her way, and thus tis mine. I spend my days writing lists of intent, and adding things of no consequence just in order to cross them off. Yesterday, for example, I walked down to the canyon and failed to make a fish hook from the shell of a Mountain Dew can. I then wrote 'survey fresh food situation' at the bottom of my list, and crossed it off.

But now I have a week before she gets back, and I'm going to get this done, messily and illiterately, with too many adverbs, with too many commas, whether the rest of you (8 of you) like it or not. Post by post. After this post, and a cup of tea.

Consette x