elevate

earlier this week we drove in my little blue car through several mountained places, between majestic canyon walls, into valleys and out of them again, up and down, back and forth, out across the plains, down and down and down. toward home. inexorably away from vacation-time, back to regular life (whatever that means).

the elevation here in Louisiana is 118 feet above sea level. that's not even 40 yards. not even half a football field above sea level. no wonder our backyard becomes a giant puddle every time it rains.

last week, miles and miles west of here, I was no less than 4,000 feet above sea level at all times, and sometimes almost as high as 8,000. we hiked. we picnicked. we chased nieces and nephews around and took family photos. 

and then we had to leave.

I imagine I felt every foot of the descent as we drove, this time. every mile of it.

by the time we crossed into Texas on Tuesday, I was starting to feel as flat as the stretching llano estacado plains. one part of me was eager to be home again, ready to work and finalize preparations for fall semester... but most of me was already really missing the mountains and family.

it might be another full year before I see my family again. that span of time didn't used to seem so long. being several thousand feet below and almost fifteen hundred miles away didn't used to seem that far really, either. but now it does. 

I'm trying let gratitude keep me lifted up, even though it feels pretty depressing to have left all the relatives and mountains behind us. I'm really lucky and glad we were able to travel so many miles and make so many good memories this summer. so lucky.

I guess now it's time to anticipate the next family gathering. and in the meantime, work, write, teach, and try to do some bits of good in the world.

as a postscript, I've got a few decently good things to show off about lately:

publications!
a reworked version of one of my dissertation chapters is now officially an online article in a special issue of Digital Humanities Quarterly. you can read it here if you like.

a collaborative article I've been working on with some Purdue Polytechnic colleagues has also just been accepted for publication in the Journal of Technology Studies. not sure when it will come out, but that's another exciting thing to anticipate.

presentations!
I got to be a part of a twitter conference last month. it was pretty different, but also fun, to share my scholarship for a new audience on such a platform. I hope people liked it. the thing still exists in its original twitter thread and here in a "twitter moment." it's always cool to talk about LibriVox, I say.

and speaking of LibriVox, my most recent LV contributions have been to an early twentieth-century feminist novel called With Her in Ourland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. it's incredibly interesting stuff, and some of it seems relevant now, a whole century later.

next on my list of things to record for LV: City of Din by Dan McKenzie. I've got the 100-page text split up into suitable sections and now I just need to start recording them. soon, hopefully...

witnesses, multiple

this blog has changed a whole bunch over its decade or so of existence. some of the changes are probably more obvious to some of you than to me.

if you have paid very close attention, you may know that I've referenced (twice!) the seed of an idea that once upon a time and eventually (today) would become this blogpost. back then, it was in draft form. and it stayed trapped like that in draft form for at least five years.

of course, now I've fiddled with the draft over and over again, for at least five years, and I cannot tell you what the original seed of the idea actually was.

five years ago I put the idea in a list of things I wanted to blog about: "something about Marc Chagall + 2 Corinthians 13:1" 

two years ago I listed it again, as something "about Chagall and repetition and shared-ness," alongside several other ideas, this time hinting that these might be ideas to give up on already.

whether or not I've given up on the idea remains to be seen. I'm writing this, but will any of what gets published in this blogpost match up with what I was thinking about in 2012?

my memory tells me that I may have been thinking about the remarkable sense of one day knowing nothing about an artist named Marc Chagall and the next day hearing seven different people mention the artist Marc Chagall. or it could be any artist. any name. any concept that's new and interesting. the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, it's called. while I didn't remember the term, I know I've learned it before. what I didn't know, and just now learned, is that the phenomenon got its name in 1994 from a West German terrorist group. interesting.

somewhere in between 2012 and 2016, I actually experienced some of Chagall's art. the images from that trip to the Chicago Art Institute are probably 40% of the reason this old draft of a blogpost has survived so long. 

the textual evidence that has accumulated here over the years tells me that past-amelia, at some point between then and now, was also thinking about ownership.

creative and intellectual property have long been scholarly and philosophical interests of mine. who owns things? when and how does the ownership of things make a difference? why?

Chagall has nothing in particular to do with these thoughts, I don't think. but he is an artist. this stained glass design is his work. nobody else's. his art exists in the world, and it belongs to him in some sense.

but also... it doesn't. Marc Chagall died a year and a half after I was born. his art belongs to his estate, perhaps. to art collectors. it is owned by other people. museums, galleries.
 

and even if Marc Chagall were still alive, the galleries and museums and collectors and other audiences would could still own--in some sense--this art.

there are many kinds of ownership, just as there are many kinds of authorship, performance, and other art-making-ship.

if not to share some of one's own art with someone else, why does anyone make art?
 
here are a few other pieces of art and history we saw in Chicago five years ago:

the Art Institute's ownership of the Chagall stained glass piece, and of every other piece of art in their grand space, has made a difference to my experience of Chagall and of life. which is nice. I like to think that art (and non-art too, probably) gathers more and more meaning when more people experience it. more witnesses, more part-owners, more connectedness. maybe.

and now, if the sudden evening downpour has paused, it is time to walk the pug, make dinner, and bake a cake.

sharing

as of two weeks and three days ago, this is our new place.

it is a very nice place, freshly painted with all the windows and light my plants and I could ask for. and it is where we are finding places to keep our things. old things and new things. some things that once were mine and some that were once his (and a few that were once other people's, too), most of the things don't really need those separate pronouns anymore.

the dog is ours. the furniture is ours. the dishes in the sink are ours. I have hung clocks on at least one wall in every room, and there are piles of books and notebooks on at least three different tables.

we still don't know where (or if?) to keep our bikes, there are shelves that don't have anything on them yet. but most of our things have settled in with us now. and we get to share this balcony and a bench swing here, for one more year of phd-ing.

conferences and art

for the past two weekends I have been whirring here and there to and from academic conferences. they were pretty fun, if a little nervous-making. the first one, two weeks ago now was in Washington, DC. having an excuse to go there was fabulous. freund Jeremiah came with me, I got to meet his most charming aunt and uncle, and when I was not conferencing, we saw as much of the city as we could drag ourselves around to see.

the brand new National Museum of African American History and Culture.

the treasury, and a statue of that Alexander Hamilton guy.

this dashing fellow, waiting with me for the streetcar to take us down H street, near Capitol Hill.

the gallery we wandered into had some interesting art.


we also took in some theatre; this is the playbill from a pretty hilarious 5-woman comedy.

an inscription on a statue outside the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. "The voice of reason is more to be regarded than the bent of any present inclination." I imagine the guy in the statue is the guy who said these words, but I didn't ever figure out who it was.

the next conference, last weekend, wasn't so much attended by fancy sight-seeing. are there sights to see in East Lansing, Michigan? if there are, I did not take time to see them. I only saw Michigan landscapes on our way there, the insides of conference rooms most of the rest of the time, one hotel room, one Thai restaurant, and one coffeeshop.


the Michigan State University conference center had this cool piece of art. I promise, it did look less gloomy in real life.

and in one of the conference workshops, I got to make this little double-walled basket out of reeds. I don't know what I'll keep in it-- maybe coins? or jewelry? or ... dried flower petals?

in conclusion, count me grateful that my life gets to have conferences and travel and art in it. I came away from both conferences with some pretty clear threads of inspiration, and now I'm gonna use the rest of the semester and year to make some serious scholarly things happen.

lists and dreams

eight days and a bit until a new year.

I have dozens and dozens of things to blog about. I have photos all lined up from my Blue Apron adventures (Patti has begun blogging about that already and I am way behind on my side). I have reflections on my final fall semester of coursework, and in-progress thoughts on winter break projects, and daydreams about future things. I have books I could review and places I could muse about.

when I have too many things to blog about, but haven't blogged in too long, and cannot decide where to start, it seems the best thing to do is set the vague list aside and throw something random together. photos usually work pretty well.

so. let us take a whirlwind snapshot tour of this amelia girl's past few months. summer feels both like yesterday and an entirely different country. I saw some new places. Kentucky in the spring. Michigan in May. New Orleans in June. Wisconsin in August. New England for October. 

ponds and gardens. lakes and boats.

we waded in Walden Pond. I collected a few acorns.

I saw some old places too. Indiana trails and creeks. city blocks and tucked-away parks.


and I went home for a wedding in September. met some new nieces and nephews.

my crazy brother's wedding day was perhaps the most windy day I have ever lived to see.

and I'm home again now, reshuffling and unwinding after a crazy semester, breathing in and stretching out before the next one begins.

there is snow. and chocolate. music and family.

I'll blog more about all the other stuff later. 

a string of well-spent days

some things are beautiful. and some things aren't. which is which really depends on where and how and when one looks at them. and who the one is.

friend Sherri today mentioned the existence of wooden bow ties. for the most part, I find them pretty ridiculous-looking. but maybe--somewhere in all the surprisingly extensive mass of so much crafted hipster neckwear--there are a few that look kind of lovely. like maybe this one.

depending on when and where and who you are, you may have seen the state of Maine. maybe through smudgy car windows. maybe from the slopes of mountains or ocean shores or city intersections.

I went there last week for the first time and saw it from all these points.

it is more than kind of lovely this time of year. I dare you to disagree.

friend Sam and I hiked a bunch. first, three (and a half ish?) trails in Acadia National Park. the Great Head Trail out around one of the park's peninsulas, then the way-too-crowded Beehive Trail, some of the Bowl Trail to skirt around a shiny inland lake, and most of the Gorham Mountain Trail. it was the most gorgeous October day. why did we have to quit hiking?

well, that afternoon we had to meet Eric in Bar Harbor. he spent the day climbing a bunch of ocean cliffs. and right after that we had to find Stephen King's house and eat lobster and drive north.

but I want to go back someday. let's pause fall-time, and life, for longer than a two-day break. I could spend way more time breathing in the ocean and blue and green and moss and forest.

after Acadia, we went up to Baxter State Park. we camped outside a town called Millinocket. where the highways are haunted.  

we hiked some more. clambering over rocks, trying to avoid the mud.

another gorgeous October day of course, drifting clouds, gentle sun.

it was nothing less than magical. the wind was wild. the world was wrapped up in colors, streaked with brilliance.

my shoes got muddy, my arms and legs collected some scratches, and all my muscles are still a tiny bit sore.

all this awesome hiking in Maine was sandwiched with nigh-insufferable amounts of driving and driving and driving. along our way, we stopped to visit genius brother John and his family. we took a moment to see Walden Pond in Massachussetts, where I stole a few acorns. nearer to home we veered off to see Kirtland, Ohio.

many miles covered, beauties appreciated, and memories made. 

more of more

there are more miles on my car. there are more freckles on my face. more states on the list of states-I-have-visited-or-at-least-driven-through.

more waves of glorious possibility and excitement and hope.

more candy. from this adorable little candy/toy/comic shop in a town called Ypsilanti, Michigan.

more games. Bananagrams and Set and Ticket to Ride and Catan. maybe I'll work on Portal 2 a bit, inbetween studying for exams?

more tofu. like at that Thai place last week, or at the Vietnamese place a few days later, and also that very lovely fried tofu pasta red-pepper garlic thing we made last night. way good. three weeks and three days ago I began a second summer of meatlessness. there will be no excuses for actual haggis in actual Scotland this time, I promise. but I might eat fish every once in a while. cuz sushi. yeah.

speaking of fish though, this is an interesting thing to read, full of research and stories and thoughts. maybe I should learn all the names of all the fish someday. or at least the edible fish. the alphabetical list here doesn't seem too crazy long.

I also want to learn the names of trees. and the names of pasta shapes. why?

so I spent almost a week in Michigan and just got home today. my brain is reveling in that shifting, transient sensation of having recently moved between brand new territory and old, comfortable territory. it's not quite disorienting, and it's rather pleasant to notice that hmm... the windows here at home don't face south, they face west. they are not pretty bay windows with bench seats around the inside. these floors in my apartment are not beautiful hardwood.

and those roads outside aren't Huron Street and Washtenaw Avenue. the river just down the hill is just the Wabash, same curves and mud as ever. the traffic humming and rumbling by is normal, local Indiana traffic tracing its way around all the same roads you trace your way around when you drive from here to anywhere nearby.

but yesterday you woke up somewhere different after a whole string of days waking up there, and it became familiar enough. all those streets and bridges and Michigan license plates. Ypsi is now a little lightbulb on a big, beautiful, mostly blank map.

I should get a large wall map of this country someday, or maybe of the world, and mark all the other places with lightbulbs. places where I know some people, places where I've seen a few sidewalks. places with some important, personal, experiential resonance of some kind.

while I was in Michigan, June arrived. now there are fewer days left of this glorious summer break. fewer days of farmers' markets and fewer days of reading whatever I want. fewer days for figuring out how to prepare for preliminary exams. fewer days left to wrangle a new syllabus together.

let's quit talking in terms of fewer for now, though. more freckles. more smiles. more ice cream. it's still summer for a good long while yet.

voodoo blue and flame metallic

I still need to take proper photos of my new little apartment. but it needs a little more preparation than this thing did to count as photo-ready.

this thing, all "blue flame metallic" and shiny, is my new mode of transportation. it is less than half as old as my old car was when I acquired it five years ago. twelve whole years younger, now. and it runs, which in itself is a vast improvement compared to the status of my car last week. we don't even need to talk about the quality and quantity of paint here or the CD-player to realize I have massively upgraded.

before I trekked over to sign a good chunk of my savings away for this thing, I got to spend nine whole days in a carless (or car-free, depending on which sort of spin we want to put on the situation) cocoon. this wasn't as awful as someone so used to having a car around might expect. there's a sort of herd-immunity-esque entanglement to this modern, connected life I live. even if I ever did decide that from this day forward I would never again set foot in a regular four-wheeled sedan, I don't know that I'd be able to keep such a vow. there is too much that seems to expect and require us to use this mode of moving ourselves and our things around in the world. for nine days I didn't have a car to drive, and for a full seven of that I didn't even own a car at all, having sold the poor, dead thing to a junkyard for $200... but despite my being technically carless, my world was anything but.

so much infrastructure supports this car-full society. I was remembering this quite strange string of moments and thoughts from four years back. but for fossils and asphalt and rubber and traffic laws and assembly lines and departments of motor vehicles... well, everything could be so different. our footprints could be so otherly-shaped. my brain can't shake the shadow of all this privilege that lets me transform my carlessness--a very slight lack of freedom--a very slight inconvenience--into a shiny new(ish) blue Ford Focus within less than one week. one week of carlessness. it seems like nothing (though it isn't, and privilege comes with its own costs).

possibly my longest stretches of carlessness have included time spent in other countries. traveling abroad with a car is not a thing most people even think about doing. as an undergrad I didn't own a car. I let my driver's license expire while I lived in England. who needs to drive at all when you live on a small island with excellent trains?

before I came back from that island (ten years ago! ten!) I spent a long afternoon at a hair salon for the sake of looking a little more cosmopolitan upon my return to the states. it was copper that time. pretty tame, not too garish.

but this time it was blue. just at the ends. nothing too obvious, no, of course not.

and it's so non-obvious in most lights that I'm not even sure it shows up properly at all in most photos.

voodoo blue, they call this color. it is a color of hair dye that most people very happily do without. I could have, too, but maybe this minor, counter-culture-esque fashion choice will somewhat counteract the major, herd-mentality-esque surrender of buying a new car after one mere week without one...

lunch date with Dublin

on Tuesday last, I landed in Ireland at something like half eight in the morning (also known as half three in the wee hours of what could almost still count as Monday five timezones back). I'd only slept a little on the plane, but since my flight from Dublin to Paris did not leave until six o'clock that evening, I had nine hours for adventuring. plenty of time.

friendly Irish airport staff pointed me toward the city, handed me maps and bus routes, and made recommendations. I sat sleepily on the top level of the bus, relishing so much green, wondering what I would find exploring Dublin.

first I walked around Trinity College.

there were beautiful, chained off grassy spaces and whimsically fat trees. I wanted to climb them, but: fences.

I saw this sign propped up against a wall, and big green ribbons tied around the columns of buildings. I guess it was green week, though I don't know what that means here. green as in College Green? green as in sustainable and eco-friendly? green as in Irish and St. Patrick and luck? not sure.

doesn't that look like the most glorious tree for climbing? in a few months, when (or is it more like if at this point?) summer returns to Indiana I will designate a 'tree climbing week' for myself.

I felt both like a student (like any other student) and not like a student. I am, of course, endlessly a student. an endless student. but I am not a student at Trinity College. that makes perhaps more difference than it seems to.

then I got hungry and made my way to the Temple Bar district for food. I peered at menus outside cafe after cafe until this one on Essex Street caught my imagination. Brick Alley Cafe in dark shabby slab serifs over the door, window-menus boasting dozens and dozens of hot chocolate varieties, a long narrow bar above which stood a really neat clock, tables covered with local indie-looking zines and cards and such--I should've stayed there all day reading the Aristotle I'm supposed to be reading.

this is the lovely white chocolate with marshmallow the shy-seeming barista served me. not pictured: an even-more-delicious-cuz-I-was-so-hungry-by-then tomato and cheese ciabatta sandwich.

I did not sit all day in the cafe reading Aristotle. I walked across and along and around the River Liffey, people watching and looking into shops every once in a while. I bought a few postcards.

I took lots of photographs.

I browsed a few awesome bookshops, considered buying a magnet with Oscar Wilde's quote "Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong" on it, decided against that idea, and then had a berry scone with butter on it while I wandered back to the bus stop on Dame Street.

I was no less sleepy on the top of this double decker bus. the sun was setting out there behind the reflected bus-innards. it kept setting as I skipped through short security lines to wait by the windows for our gate to open, and it kept setting as I found my window seat, and it kept setting as we took off for Paris.

I'll have to write about Paris some other time.