cis 84.54a beginning dreamweaver summer01 home page | river mortenson | e-mail
segundo | pink lady | the ghost | superslug | pines | the ocean
"There it is." I tell my wife.
"I don't see it."
"It has a four foot 2 on it."
"That's why I didn't see it." UCSC, University of California at Santa Cruz, Stevenson College, dorm number 2 (numero segundo). We're about to ask for Claire's room number when we see Mark in the doorway. Mark's my daughter's boyfriend that drove her down the day before. He takes us back to Claire's room.The room's small; my daughter's roommate has already been there and I can tell by her possessions that she's a little bit more prissy than my daughter. Makeup kits with rows of lipstick and eye shadow, frilly edges to her pillowcase edges, knick-knack boxes with delicate designs. There hardly seems a place to sit. My son Jack and Marylou my wife squeeze on the bed with Mark and Claire while I stand uncomfortably fidgeting.
"You want some pizza?" asks Mark. We help ourselves to the pizza.
"Have you seen your roommate?"
"No. We've been here since eleven and haven't seen her." Mark and Claire are precariously holding their slices over their laps as they sit on the high bed, trying not to make a mess. I'm anxious to take photographs of Claire because I know that sometimes she doesn't want to be bothered with them. So I jump in right away.
"Well, we better get the serious stuff over with first." I look at Mark and Claire and grin, "I need to do photos." Not much reaction. I look around to find somewhere to put my camera bag and can only find a place under her desk chair.
"I need to get you somewhere close to the light. Sit higher up on the bed." The room is pretty dark, two slots of lights at each end of the cramped room. I've gotten some good shots with window light but I had a tripod for those. I didn't want to intimidate Claire with a tripod. There's not much hope with these shots. I'll have to go to down to 1/15th of a second to get anything and there's nowhere to brace the camera.Mark and Claire finish their pizza slices and I try to create a good composition. They're not spending much time smiling but there's a pensive quality that might be worth capturing. Maybe they're quiet because Mark will be taking off for Europe in a few days and they won't be seeing each other for a while. I get Claire to move closer to the window. She poses for me as Mark moves near her. He studies her features and seems to forget the camera. There's that very long minute that it takes me to focus and adjust the speed of the shutter for the poor lighting conditions. I sense I'm watching a drama. I'm relieved after I shoot off a couple of shots.
"I don't think these will come out, not enough light. Don't worry about them." I try to cheer them up and squat down on the ground to get a shot of their feet. Claire still seems distant. Mark moves his feet into the frame mingling them with Claire's. I click a few more shots.
"Let's to outside, there's not enough light in here."
"Go outside! I don't want people to watch." Claire's emphatic.
"Hmmm, maybe I could get some through the window from the outside."
"Can you get close enough from the outside?" my wife asks.
I bend over to peer out the window. It looks like it might work. I go outside and around the side of the building and call to Claire and Mark. Mark hangs himself out the window but he can't get Claire to come. He tries a couple of times but fails. I snap one of him anyway. The dorms of Goddard keep popping into my mind. Having memories come up of the college I went to 25 years ago seems very natural. This campus has so many similarities. It was in Vermont and even though the climate was quite different, it had this woodsy feel to it like a summer camp rather than a university. But Goddard keeps pushing me away. I don't want to remember it but I keep on having recurring dreams about it. It's usually about the first day of college and I'm trying to find my dorm and I'm confused about signing up for classes. In one version of the dream I finally find my room and there are three or four Italian boys who hardly look at me and sullenly talk to each other in whispers. Their jet-black hair is slicked back and they have thick eyebrows that almost meet across the top of their brows. I don't speak to them either.There's something happening with Claire, maybe all of us. The conversation doesn't roll along and I'm not a great conversationalist. I look at my watch; 15 minutes till the provost speaks. "Well, I guess we have to kill time for another quarter hour." I'm trying to be funny. It will take that much time to walk there. No luck, everyone just seems uncomfortable.
Finally we leave for the general orientation meeting. Mark and Claire linger behind. We stand outside for awhile but we're getting jittery waiting, we're already late. Finally we start walking to the dining commons. Still no Mark or Claire. We're almost there before they catch up to us. There are no more seats and the talk has already begun. We stand for awhile and then sit on the heating ventilators by the edge of the curtains.
"When we originally founded the university, we envisioned a student teacher ratio of 1 to 11. The ratio was never that small; I think we started out with something like 1 to 17 and we've grown from there. But the fundamental ideas of teacher and student interaction has been preserved." I think about Jack's high school where he has 39 kids in his smallest class. I was having trouble concentrating on the speech; the heating ventilator was uncomfortable. I was studying everyone around me. The heating ventilator, which extended around the entire back of the hall, was filled now with balding men and gray-haired women in bright summer clothes and their similarly dressed kids. It was back to school for everyone.
There's a reception for the parents, students and friends in the afternoon, which is really pleasant. We have some wine and hors d'oeuvres and sit underneath redwoods in one of the dinning commons courtyards. I start to think about the history the provost gave of UCSC and Stevenson College. It was difficult for me to believe they had created the ideal liberal arts college atmosphere in the California University system. But they seem to have done it: an emphasis on classics, three intensive courses per semester, and a cluster of small colleges. It was almost too good to be true. I keep wondering if any of the school's ideas are based on Dewey's philosophy like Goddard's.
"I think I'll go and ask the Provost if they heard of Goddard. Maybe he knows about Dewey."
"Go ahead." Marylou tells me. We both just sit there.
"I guess your right." I mulled and procrastinated and finally got up and went over to ask my question. There are several people with the provost. They're talking about kids leaving home and returning with loads of laundry. Marylou finally comes over too. One fellow is very effusive and is politely trying to include us in the conversation.
I took a plunge. "I'm not too worried about dirty laundry. I'm worried that she might come home with a degree in psychology that never uses."
"Oh, I think psychology is a good field," said one of the women. She has broad features that seem to widen and brighten when she speaks and close back up when she listens.
"Oh it is. It's just that I went to a college a lot like this and I never really used my degree in psychology. I have friends who never used their degrees in literature, psychology or biology."
"It's difficult to go on after you get your BA," Marylou adds. I turn to the provost.
"I began to think about the value of education when you were talking about languages. The way you were talking I thought you were leading into philosophy or religion. My daughter's been reading the Bible, the Bagavad Gita and the Tao Te Ching this summer to prepare for her core course."
"I could haveŠI could have, it does follow that religion would provide a different view of life." The provost seems to be listening to his own words as he speaks. He seems rigidly mild to the point of creating his smooth cheeks and muted gray eyebrows.
"I may have not used my degree but I'm sure the backgroundŠthe general education I got at college gave me a different view of life." I was probably sounding tentative.
"It's a good time to grow up and start picking up after yourself. Time to take care of your dirty laundry." The same lady again. She's plump with pink earring and pink shorts.
"No mom this and mom that," Marylou adds. Oh no not that laundry again I thought.
"Well I was thinking more in terms of seeing beyond how much money you make a year and how recently you bought a new car."
"People can't afford to buy new cars that often these years especially with the cost of education." Her husband tries to mediate.
"I know what you mean," the plump woman says to me. "Remember that group we did those trainings with," she asks her husband.
"We meditated and did what do you call themŠdyads?"
"You mean Daybreak? We did that too," Marylou says.
"I had a hard time in those trainings." I say. "I think they had everything mixed up. They were talking about eastern philosophy, then they were using modern psychology, and then it was this Horatio Alger get ahead training. It didn't really mix."
"I enjoyed it," the woman continues. "It was real people talking about real things. It wasn't some spacey drug trip. It bothers me when people act like they are more with it than someone else." She pauses and smirks when she looks at me, her features collapsing again except for her eyes. "In MY college days I had a room mate like that. I think you know the type. She'd smoke some pot and throw the I Ching and act like she was so AWARE. I remember the day we asked the Weegee board what we were going to have for lunch. It said we were going to have meatloaf and string beans and lots and lots of potatoes. It didn't hesitate in picking out the letters. Of course when we got to the cafeteria we ended up having tuna casserole."
"We've had a lot of fades come and go at the University. Recently students were supposedly missing classes to watch soap operas. We had some competition there." The provost's laugh seems to come from underground. I give up and laugh with the Weegee board lady. After we leave I realize I never asked the provost about Dewey. We all rendezvous for dinner in the patio.
There's a lull and we watch the kitchen crew set up the buffet in the patio. They'll eventually move everything under shelter because of the rain. It was an electric night. We had heard that it was supposed to rain but hadn't paid much attention to the news. It started to thunder while we waited for dinner and during dinner it started to pour. The lightning would periodically up the large plate glass windows turning the evening to a blue daylight. Roast beef or ham with fruit, salad and potatoes. We sit quietly eating while Claire talks to an old acquaintance from El Timpani High School. Marylou joins in. Another friend from High School joins them and they begin to talk about everyone that's come to Santa Cruz from the High School. Mark begins to play with this napkin. He puts his fingers between the folds and drapes the napkin around his hand. It looks like a puppet.
"Help me, help me. I'm trapped in a napkin!" We laugh at his antics. The women stop briefly and then go back to their chatting. I start to play with my napkin. Mark folds his like a paper airplane and throws it over toward Jack. It's a complete failure as an airplane of course, which makes it funny. The ladies are completely ignoring us now.I take Mark's example and warp the napkin around my hand like a kid would wrap a sheet around himself to make a ghost at Halloween. I toddle the little ghost along the tabletop, wobbling rather than hovering, making enough commotion to distract the ladies again. "I'm Ghost Rainman, I get my linen at K Mart." I laugh
"I get my underwear from K Mart," Marylou tries to correct me.
"No, it's linen, you know like the napkins." She turns back to Claire and her friends and they continue their conversation. Mark begins to roll his napkin up and holds it up like the two ends were horns. I anticipate a good line but none comes.I try again. I huddle my shaking hand under the napkin and quaver. The hand speaks in a falsetto: "I'm afraid to go to college, I'm afraid to go to college. My head is already full." I stole the line from a Gary Larsen comic. The girl who has been talking to Claire stops again and gives me an "Are you for real" look but maintains her smile and goes back to talking to Claire.
I give up on napkin comedy and soon after Claire's friend leaves. We talk about napkins; Mark's a waiter at the same restaurant that Claire worked at in the summer. " At Antoine's you roll then up like this and put them in the wine glass." He rolls up the napkin he had made horns with earlier and places it in a glass. "Then you pull them our when people are seated for dinner." He demonstrates.
"I know how to fold the ones at Antoine's," says Claire and both she and Mark start folding their napkins in a series of triangles.
"I'm an expert," says Mark, "three years experience and now I'm highly paid at five dollars an hour. Every time things get quiet, we sit there folding napkins." When we leave the dinning hall, we hug the walls under the steel polls of the breezeway. The redwood root sculpture in the courtyard, the trees, the bulky looming forms of the buildings are suddenly silhouetted on the ground with a brilliant blue flash. Our faces have pallor for a moment and then recede back into the darkness with the coming of the booming thunder.
"What?" I say. Someone's beside me but I can't hear whoever it is over the rain and thunder.
"Dad." Claire's nearly touching me. "Claire." I'm surprised by her nearness. "I really wish you wouldn'tŠfool around like than in front of my friends: it's really embarrassing." The words come out quickly as if she were rushing to get the sentence finished before the words get stuck in her throat. Another flash of lightning reveals taut lines in her face.
"I didn't mean to embarrass you." She walks beside me without looking at me. The freak September storm whips through her hair and she pulls it back out of her face. "I thought I just needed to say something. It's difficult for me to speak up sometimes." I can't think of anything else to say and she slips back with Mark.The next day it's bright summer again. We reach the campus early and head down through a redwood grove to the Bay Tree bookstore. We need our souvenirs: pins, T's and sweatshirts with UCSC logos on them. I identify with the banana slug, which is the university's mascot. I like the idea; it's like the tortoise beating the hare. I think it's daring using a slug to represent the school on all its paraphernalia.
"What do you think?" I hold up a T-shirt.
"I like it but it's kind of silly." Marylou studies the large yellow slug in a lotus position. "Do you think you'd wear it?"
"I don't know." Actually I can picture myself laughing about the T with friends. We find there's calligraphy on the back and the little tag that comes with the T-shirt says it means: "You must see with the entire body what you cannot perceive with the eye." It makes me like it more. Jack picks out a slug T-shirt that's a little more conservative and my wife finds a sweatshirt in black with raised letters that spell out UCSC.We check out the upstairs. All the books for the academic courses are piled almost head high in cramped rows, the rows filled with students getting a head start on the semester. I wander a little and begin to look for the books for Claire's core course. There it is: the book that saved me from the Daybreak Trainings. The year I was clean-shaven was one of the worst years in my life. Whenever life would get too confusing I'd pull out the Tao Te Ching to clear things up. Most people thought it confusing. Paradoxical. When I first became enthusiastic about it I began giving copies to my friends. I thought the photographs with their wonderful mists and open spaces would beguile them into spending time with the words. But no one seemed to get excited as I did. Perhaps a banana slug in a lotus position would be just as incomprehensible.
It reminded me of a passage in the book. What was that? I think it was in the forties. I leaf through the book on the stack. I'm very uncomfortable because people are squeezing through the aisle every few seconds. I find a spot on the corner where I can search without getting jostled. Here it is.
The wise student hears of the Tao and practices it diligently.
The average student hears of the Tao and gives it thought now and again.
The foolish student hears of the Tao and laughs aloud.
If there were no laughter, the Tao would not be what it is.
Fourty One, tranlslation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English, Vintage Books New YorkI laugh out loud. "Ha!" I look up and notice someone looking at me. Looks like another father, well-trimmed beard with a cast of white around the fringe. He wrinkles his brow but smiles as our eyes meet. I'm still laughing inside. I reread the passage. I'm at least average, I think about it now and again. But wise? Do I practice it? Can I laugh and practice it at the same time? The Weegee lady looms in my mind with her pink earrings and shorts, her plump legs and cheeks and her fierce eyes. Neither one of us would probably spend much time sitting in front of Seinfeld in lotus position. Maybe I'm the biggest hypocrite of all. I see myself wandering through the bookstore in my bright yellow slug T with a beaming smile. Oh here it is enlightenment all in these books, in this wonderful bucolic environment, even on my front and back. More images start to jumble in my head. There's a William De Kooning nude with slashing yellows and pinks. Well Will, what does all this culture mean? His painting is kind of a blender treatment of the Weegee Lady and my slug T.
I keep thumbing the Tao Te Ching when Marylou and Jack find me. Jack leans on my neck. "Hey big guy."
"Is that one of the books for Claire's course?" Marylou asks.
"The Tao Te Ching," I answer, showing her the book.
"Doesn't she have that already?"
"Yeah."
"So why are you looking at it?" I put the book back.
Eventually I decide to buy the T and feel more like a tourist than a student.
We tumble down the parking lot after brunch. Mark slides down the banister but we all pick different routes through the redwoods around the dorms. I follow Marylou on the high path through some young saplings that seem to spring every where. There's only a few bright blue patches stitched in the deep blue canopy but the colors positively glow. Jack runs ahead. I watch him weave in and out of the trees like a hare caught in the headlights of a car. Claire follows trying to catch up. He sees her and appears to laugh but I can't hear him. He picks up his pace and so does Claire. He stops suddenly and tries to hide behind one of the saplings. I don't think he is seriously trying to hide: it's a game for his sister. She comes up and jumps on him.The scene at the car is a little more somber. Mark has disappeared among the Hondas, Volvos and BMWs. "Guess it's time to go," says Marylou.
Claire goes up and embraces her. "I love you, Claire," Marylou says in tears and they hug. Jack and I watch. Lou rubs her eyes when they separate. She takes a deep breath and tries to find a Kleenex in her bag. I hug Claire and hear a muffled deep sob through the ear I have pressed into her hair. I finally let her go. Marylou is still recovering and says, "Well aren't you going to hug her?"
"I already have."
"Oh, you did?" asks Marylou.
"You didn't even notice," says Jack smiling.
"I'm going to miss you guys," Claire's still choked up.
"Go hug big guy," I say motioning toward Jack. Jack looks a head higher as he holds his sister. She's a little awkward when she let's go and Jack stumbles a little himself. She stands in front of me as if she doesn't know what to say but I'm wrong. She's just having trouble saying it. "Sorry about not wanting pictures taken of me." We're all quiet for another few seconds.
"I love you," Marylou tells her. "I love you," Claire tells all of us.
"I'm going to write," Marylou says.
"I'm going to write too," I tell her.
"It'll be the first letter I've written in a long time but I'll write you a letter."
"Now call us if you need anything," says Marylou.
"Of course." We successfully get in the car and take off. While we drive through the parking lot we see Mark sitting forlornly on the curb. He doesn't notice us when we wave.
We go up the coast on Highway 1, all of us quiet, nothing to listen to except for the road noise. I thought back to last week, an early morning before work. I was sitting out in my truck thinking about how I was going to tell Claire the secret of life before she went to college. After all it was my obligation as a father. But of course I couldn't explain the secret of life in words because words couldn't express the real secret. Nothing that was put into words could be trusted. That's the paradox. That's what I needed to tell her. The secret is going by the feel of things. Did it feel right? It was an intuitive perspective on life. And it's advantageous to become aware of how words create boxes that are difficult to find your way out of. Language. I wonder if was easier to become confused in Latin, Spanish or English. Now that's the beauty of the Tao Te Ching. It explains in words why everything is hard to understand in words. It's the perfect book about imperfection.
The secret of life is simple. That's why it's so hard to keep track of. And everybody knows what it is so it's no big deal for me to tell her what it is. But telling someone to follow your heart sounds a little like a cliche. And she seemed so busy. I feel my eyes moisten.
"I told her I use it all the time," I say suddenly to Marylou.
"What?"
"The Tao Te Ching."
She looks at me quizically as if to ask "so what?""I got my brother a new copy and it seems I've given my copy to a dozen people and they never read it. You know my brother quotes it in his book."
"Then he must have read it."
"No, he didn't. I asked him and he told me he was looking for quotes in Chinese and found it in the library. He didn't even know he had it." I look out in the Pacific Ocean. The ripples deepen in the slant of the setting afternoon sun. It was beautiful with the pumpkins, Brussels sprouts and the cabbages growing in the fields between us and the sea. But I couldn't enjoy the dying afternoon. I was unsettled. I suddenly felt like laughing as I remember a passage I was reading in the morning.The sage is shy and humble–to the world he seems confusing.
Men look to him and listen.
He behaves like a little child.Fourty Nine, tranlslation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English, Vintage Books New York
Maybe I do practice the Tao in my own way: a sort of non-verbal paradoxical way of knowing. Ha. I think about Ghost Rainman. I'm Ghost Rainman; I'm SuperZen Slug wandering through the bookstore. It made me feel good about Jack and Mark and Claire. I get this overwhelming feeling of well being; they all practice the Tao in their own way. They'll be all right. I look out at the Pacific Ocean, listening again to the hum of the road and it's hard to tell where the sea ends and the sky begins.
