a kentucky summer...free style

Saturday, July 18, 2009

I was supposed to pressure wash the concrete and wood in the garden behind the chapel today with Marilyn, but Marilyn bailed on me. This is not particularly surprising. If she doesn’t set something in stone, then it’s set in nothing at all and free for the changing or canceling at any time. And so I decided to go work some more on the labyrinth pattern and hopefully finish it.

Finish it, I did! And it’s damn impressive if I do say so myself! And my quads are killing me because of it. All the standing and squatting and standing and squatting and crawling around on the floor gave me quite a workout, apparently. I was preparing to fold up the labyrinth and carry it over to the garden to see how it would fit when I ran into Marilyn in the student center. This may not seem strange except that it’s Saturday, a day she doesn’t work. But a friend of hers is in town and she was showing her where she works, so Marilyn, excited I was finished, took the friend in to the gym to show her what I had done and to see it herself for the first time, and needless to say, I blew her out of the water. She was shocked at how well it turned out. I mean, this thing is all but perfect. Marilyn was impressed and on her way out of the building, she called back to me, “I owe you lunch!” “You owe me cupcakes, too!” I reminded her. “I know!” she replied and I laughed as I wandered back into the gym to pack up the labyrinth.

A few minutes later, I wandered over to the garden with the pattern and again ran into Marilyn who was telling her friend about the garden and what was going to be done to it. When I got there, I realized I had not taken into account some of the measurements of the place and panicked for a moment that it wasn’t going to fit. These are the times when I realize that as detailed as I can be, over all, I do not have a detail oriented personality. Marilyn and her friend helped me unfold the nearly 15’ by 15’ pattern and to my great relief, it fit perfectly. And Marilyn was excited. It was fun to have her there as I unveiled the temporary version, and her friend gave some advice on how to refinish the currently tattered built-in wooden benches. As Marilyn and her friend got in the car and they prepared to go their way as I prepared to go mine, Marilyn smiled and said, “You know, I have to admit I doubted you.” I smiled with a rather cocky grin and said, “I know, Marilyn. But I didn’t. I may doubt myself in many things, but art is not one of them.” It is good for me to remember that there is something in my life that I am inherently gifted in and as much as I may be unsure about many things, my gifts are something I should never lose sight of.

Later, in the evening, Morgan and I went to Brewster’s to grab some ice cream and then went out to Highbridge and stood on the lookout that overlooks the railroad bridge to the right and a fork of the Kentucky river to the left.

I love that lookout. Looking down at that river with the Kentucky tree covered hillsides all around makes me think of Huck Finn traveling up the Mississippi river (or was it down?) in his exploits, because I always imagined it looked like this. It’s always delightful when the things you imagine end up actually existing.

And so I go to bed feeling as if today was a day that filled me well. I am not stuffed at the end of this day, but I am satisfied. I was successful in finishing the labyrinth and was delighted to spend time with a friend. Tomorrow, it’s Hebrew all day. Alas, back to regular life.

Friday, July 17, 2009

It is two weeks into my four week class which means today was our midterm. This class may kill me, but maybe I’ll kill it first. I sit here at my desk and let out a big sigh. In truth, I’m simply relieved it’s done. Now for the last two weeks! I’m not sure how I did; though I don’t think it was too bad. Certainly better than the last two quizzes!

When I walked out of Hebrew today, I didn’t want to look at anything even resembling Hebrew, and so I didn’t, and it was great. For most of the afternoon, I worked on figuring out the labyrinth pattern for the prayer garden Marilyn and I are designing. I spent about four hours in the hot gym attempting to lay it out and I feel as if I didn’t get much of anything done for the hours I worked. But that’s how it goes with art, especially art that takes a lot of math to get it right. Math. Oh my. My tenth grade geometry class has come back to bite me in the ass. I even had to utilize the Pythagorean Theorem today, which really means I had to find something online that would calculate it all for me.

The labyrinth is set to be fourteen feet ten inches across and will largely resemble the three-circuit one shown in this picture. It took three hours to roll out all the paper, draw the lines, find, measure, and cut string, tape them to the paper, calculate all my measurements, and finally draw out the outer circle with my make-shift compass, which, I will say, I was quite proud of coming up with. And then I was hungry and ready to go home for the evening. In three hours, I got a circle drawn. Well, hopefully the slowest part of the process is over—getting the initial lines measured on the paper.

Tonight for dinner, I sautéed up some of the vegetables from the co-op and tonight I had local organically grown potatoes and orange tomatoes for the first time in my life. It was quite amazing. It’s exhilarating, I have to admit, to eat vegetables right out of the dirt. I’m such a city girl. I know nothing about these things.

And then afterward, Morgan and April and I watched the movie Wonder Boys. It had been a while since I’d last seen it and I was in the mood. The mood was satisfied. I always enjoy that movie and it’s dark, witty, cynical humor.

I debated going to bed after that, but I decided to watch another movie. For Marilyn’s vacation, I lent her some of my movies, one of which was Pieces of April. I find this movie fascinating and always good to watch.

A few days ago, Marilyn handed back over to me the movies she’d finished watching. She took out Pieces of April and said to me, “You are that girl.” “What?” I said back. “You are that girl. That girl is you. She is totally you,” she replied as she tapped the movie cover. I had never thought of that character as much to do with me, let alone as me, so I was curious and thought I needed to watch that movie again soon. Tomorrow, I am meeting up with her to do a little work on the garden and so I decided I would watch that movie tonight and then ask her about it. In light of her comment, I laughed at a few things in this movie I hadn’t laughed at before, because, well, some of these things were things I would do. But is this character, in essence, me? What did Marilyn mean by that? Hopefully, I will get some answers tomorrow. But I won’t put much stake in it, because when you’re with Marilyn, the conversation can go anywhere, and it can fly out of your control quicker than you thought you had it. Of course, it’s always an interesting one.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Today, I had the opportunity to teach Marilyn what the term “hooking up” means. I would like to give the original credit to MTV, the place for all things young and stupid, for first explaining this to me. Wait, did I just admit I watch MTV? In the process, I also taught Marilyn what nicmo means and maybe even DTR, but maybe she knows that one. This came up loosely in a conversation about her son and his relationship exploits. She used the term and I thought it wise to tell her what it actually means. If you don’t know what it means, well, you can Google it. Such terms are not difficult to find. I will not disclose the definition here. Educating on the next generation—always interesting, often inappropriate.

Beside that, I’ve spent all my time studying Hebrew and it’s possible I have gone insane. I think if I put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger, I would destroy myself much quicker and more efficiently, and maybe even learn Hebrew faster. Who knows?

Our midterm is tomorrow and I’m in no place to take it at the moment! What did I get myself into??? That is what I keep asking myself. I may be digging my own grave here. We’ll see.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Can't spend much time here tonight. I bombed out in Hebrew today. Big time. It was so bad that when we were given a break, I left and did not return. So I've been spending all the rest of the day catching up on vocab. What this meant was that I missed the lesson on verbs. Lovely, but at the rate I've been going, I'm not sure I would have understood it anyway. So I'm reviewing the slides from that presentation now and then will be back at it with the vocab. Ugh. Whoever thought it would be a bright idea to pack a semester's worth of a language into a month should be deemed legally insane (if there is such a label) and never allowed to be a part of the formation of curriculum ever again. I don't know if this was such a good idea for me.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Today, I am experiencing, for the first time, the southern and midwestern phenomenon commonly known as chiggers. And it sucks ass! It's a very miserable experience. Chiggers are a mite that climb onto humans and other animals from grassy and woodland areas. They do not technically burrow into your skin but they feed off your skin cells and sit on your skin doing so until you most likely scratch them off. They are almost invisible to the human eye and so often go undetected until the itchy little bumps begin to appear. The worst part about it, though, is that they will stay on your clothing and it can be days before you feel well enough to not scream. I am not to that point. Today, these little bites began to itch, and they itch bad.

And so today I mentioned this to Marilyn while standing in her office talking about garden plans and she said, "I wish I had something to help you with. Oh wait! I do! Windex! No, seriously, it works." Well, these are the things that happen when you hang around Marilyn Elliott long enough.

You end up doing crazy things like spraying Windex on your bug bites. Marilyn is obviously the mom of multiple children because she grabbed the bottle, shut her office door and said, "Here, I'll spray you." It took a bit of effort, but I convinced her I could go to the bathroom and do it myself, as chigger bites happen under your clothes and my bites were far enough under my pants to require me to remove them.

Surprisingly, it works. And it works quite well. My Big Fat Greek Wedding was right.

So I am going to bed now. I have done four loads of laundry in order to wash these devil creatures away, but as one last precaution, before I jump into bed, I'll spray a fine mist (or not so fine) of Windex on my skin and hope the itch free feeling will last long enough for me to fall asleep. And I'll hope for a little less misery tomorrow as I study in the student center, but if not, I can always ask Marilyn for the Windex bottle.

Monday, July 13, 2009

written the following day

I spent most of my time today working on Hebrew. Tomorrow we start up class again after a four day break, so I spent many hours in the student center working, working, working. And then I got to hear this gem around four o'clock. Marilyn came out of her office, turned off her lights, closed the door and came walking out to the front desk with her floor lamp in one hand and her bag in the other. She turned to John, the desk worker, and said, "I'm taking my lamp to get fixed and I'm off to Jazzercise and I'll be back at 7:30. If anyone asks, I'm in a meeting with the president," and smiled like a child who knew she'd just said something witty and walked out of the building. When she was gone, John said, "I hope someone asks."