![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
July 3rd, 2008
I landed here in Fresno with a thud. It's only a four hour car trip away from where we live but flying in the air for an hour is a lot like bad sex. It happens very quickly and with your eyes closed.
I was grateful for that.
The last two days have spun me around in a circle. Meeting with other teachers and dealing with 42 students has been mind blowing. I’ve realized how untrained my brain is at remembering who’s who. I’ve now taken to associating each person with someone famous.
Oh…Paula….like Abdul.
Oh…Elizabeth…..like Montgomery.
Oh…..Diatra……like nothing I’ve ever heard of in my life.
And so it goes.
On campus here there’s more than just the Steppenwolf roaming around with pencils and papers and books and various copies of “The Cherry orchard” tucked under our arms. It’s alive with millions of other artists from all over the world. Dance troupes, photographers, painters, writers, sculptors, people from all walks of life coming together for a month to learn and share their knowledge and get bigger and broader and wider and come out the other end, whole.
Sitting in the cafeteria brings up a smorgasbord of relentless terror for me. In High School going to lunch was always a gamble. Who was going to throw their Jell-o at me today? Where would I get hit? Could I make it to gym class without getting shoved into a locker with a mouth full of pizza burger? Angst filled me. Looking around the room at the popular people at their popular tables laughing, touching each other, slapping backs and cracking jokes made me feel unwanted and alone. I usually drifted toward the theatre kids which only propelled my tormentors to ridicule the entire group of us instead of singling me out.
So, here in Fresno, going down the line with my little tray and my pile of tasteless chicken surprise riddles me with memories I thought had long since been buried.
Then I realize, as I head into the main dining room, that I have tags. I’m a teacher. I have things around my neck that tell each student there’s nothing they can do to me. I’m protected. I’m an adult now. You can’t hurt me. I have my Tag Shield.
As I sat down with the rest of the Steppenwolfians, I notice the kinds of people around the room. This wasn’t the same High School gaggle of rag tag collectives I remembered. Everyone was everywhere. Colors, shapes, sizes and ages. No one was judging anyone. No one was smashing into anyone. People were talking Art. Their love of it, there need for it, and how to get more.
I was enthralled.
I wandered over to an adjoining table get a Coke and sitting next to me was a young 23 year old artist named Jose, who spoke very little English. I sat next to two of my students, and the smile on Jose’s face widened. He was alone and around him was language that made very little sense to him. My students and I smiled at him, and finally I leaned into him over my dry and brittle chicken sandwich, and said:
“Hola. Me llama Alejandra. Y tu?”
His smiled got bigger. He looked up at me with his humungous brown eyes, batted them a bit, and went into a diatribe of Spanish that left me breathless.
When he finally paused, I said to him:
“Enchilada.”
It was the only thing I could think of to say.
I tried as best I could to speak to him, and he tried as best he could to speak to me, the rest we dealt with in laughter and rotten sign language. We left the table and congratulated each other on how well we thought the other one did.
As night came and my classes ended and the magic of these amazing students began to wash over me, I headed back to my dorm…which is about the size of my kitchen at home. In the grassy knoll that separates the students from the teachers, there was a female drum circle going on. Five African American women and a drummer in the middle of the grass with the night air raining down on them and a light summer breeze they were stomping, grinding and writhing in circles. The beat of the drum and the black, back night somehow gave me this strange sense of peace. Here were these women from another part of the world dancing in the middle of Fresno California with me carrying plays from Russia. It was but much at the moment. Completely stunned at what I was looking at, one of my students Gabe turned to me suddenly and said:
“I have to dance.”
“Then you should dance.” I said back to him.
He threw his books on the ground and bounded to his place in the circle. It was amazing. Worlds colliding 10 feet away from me, and without any casualties. No judgment, just pure joy at the thought of someone else coming in a speaking their language.
I seemed to have been thrown into paradise without warning. I’m taking it in one step at a time, but I feel before this is done, they’ll be hundreds more worlds to peek in to. And I'm walking around feeling changed in a way that’s not possible to put down on paper. Something is turning in me. Something real and scary and huge. And I don’t want it to stop. I’m just praying that while all this is happening, someone in the cafeteria learns how to make chicken that actually has taste.
I was grateful for that.
The last two days have spun me around in a circle. Meeting with other teachers and dealing with 42 students has been mind blowing. I’ve realized how untrained my brain is at remembering who’s who. I’ve now taken to associating each person with someone famous.
Oh…Paula….like Abdul.
Oh…Elizabeth…..like Montgomery.
Oh…..Diatra……like nothing I’ve ever heard of in my life.
And so it goes.
On campus here there’s more than just the Steppenwolf roaming around with pencils and papers and books and various copies of “The Cherry orchard” tucked under our arms. It’s alive with millions of other artists from all over the world. Dance troupes, photographers, painters, writers, sculptors, people from all walks of life coming together for a month to learn and share their knowledge and get bigger and broader and wider and come out the other end, whole.
Sitting in the cafeteria brings up a smorgasbord of relentless terror for me. In High School going to lunch was always a gamble. Who was going to throw their Jell-o at me today? Where would I get hit? Could I make it to gym class without getting shoved into a locker with a mouth full of pizza burger? Angst filled me. Looking around the room at the popular people at their popular tables laughing, touching each other, slapping backs and cracking jokes made me feel unwanted and alone. I usually drifted toward the theatre kids which only propelled my tormentors to ridicule the entire group of us instead of singling me out.
So, here in Fresno, going down the line with my little tray and my pile of tasteless chicken surprise riddles me with memories I thought had long since been buried.
Then I realize, as I head into the main dining room, that I have tags. I’m a teacher. I have things around my neck that tell each student there’s nothing they can do to me. I’m protected. I’m an adult now. You can’t hurt me. I have my Tag Shield.
As I sat down with the rest of the Steppenwolfians, I notice the kinds of people around the room. This wasn’t the same High School gaggle of rag tag collectives I remembered. Everyone was everywhere. Colors, shapes, sizes and ages. No one was judging anyone. No one was smashing into anyone. People were talking Art. Their love of it, there need for it, and how to get more.
I was enthralled.
I wandered over to an adjoining table get a Coke and sitting next to me was a young 23 year old artist named Jose, who spoke very little English. I sat next to two of my students, and the smile on Jose’s face widened. He was alone and around him was language that made very little sense to him. My students and I smiled at him, and finally I leaned into him over my dry and brittle chicken sandwich, and said:
“Hola. Me llama Alejandra. Y tu?”
His smiled got bigger. He looked up at me with his humungous brown eyes, batted them a bit, and went into a diatribe of Spanish that left me breathless.
When he finally paused, I said to him:
“Enchilada.”
It was the only thing I could think of to say.
I tried as best I could to speak to him, and he tried as best he could to speak to me, the rest we dealt with in laughter and rotten sign language. We left the table and congratulated each other on how well we thought the other one did.
As night came and my classes ended and the magic of these amazing students began to wash over me, I headed back to my dorm…which is about the size of my kitchen at home. In the grassy knoll that separates the students from the teachers, there was a female drum circle going on. Five African American women and a drummer in the middle of the grass with the night air raining down on them and a light summer breeze they were stomping, grinding and writhing in circles. The beat of the drum and the black, back night somehow gave me this strange sense of peace. Here were these women from another part of the world dancing in the middle of Fresno California with me carrying plays from Russia. It was but much at the moment. Completely stunned at what I was looking at, one of my students Gabe turned to me suddenly and said:
“I have to dance.”
“Then you should dance.” I said back to him.
He threw his books on the ground and bounded to his place in the circle. It was amazing. Worlds colliding 10 feet away from me, and without any casualties. No judgment, just pure joy at the thought of someone else coming in a speaking their language.
I seemed to have been thrown into paradise without warning. I’m taking it in one step at a time, but I feel before this is done, they’ll be hundreds more worlds to peek in to. And I'm walking around feeling changed in a way that’s not possible to put down on paper. Something is turning in me. Something real and scary and huge. And I don’t want it to stop. I’m just praying that while all this is happening, someone in the cafeteria learns how to make chicken that actually has taste.