Animal House

Thinking

Okay, first of all, you should check out the movie that this post's title is based upon. Animal House is probably the mother of the entire college movie genre; American Pie and so on.

But our house is literally an animal house. Cats, deer, birds, squirrels. Everyone loves it here.

Boxing

Ever since I met her in January, I've intended to dedicate a blog post to Natalie's cat Sumaya. Sumaya is probably the softest thing in the world. A cat that consists of 80% fur and 20% body. Approximately. She's easy going; she's fine with being stroked, being held upside down, being picked up and carried around the house, or with just sitting in a box or a bag, thus entertaining us like nothing else ever could. Everything Sumaya does is cute. And we're pretty sure she's aware of that. She can become a little aggressive when she's hungry.

Checking the Oven Drawer

Every time I'm not sure if Nat has fed her yet or not, she meows to me and walks around my legs and tells me how hungry she is. That might go for about five minutes or so, and then comes the point when she strikes your leg, first with the right, then the left front paw, and then tries to bite through your pants, and then she just looks at you again. Meowing. Luckily, that never happened to me when I wore shorts. She also likes to leave the house. Our house does not have the best doors. Sometimes, a gust of wind is enough to open our front, side, 

or kitchen door. Mostly, Sumie just sits next to it and stares outside. But very often, too, she runs outside if we are not quick enough to close the door. Then she hides under our porch or a car, runs onto the neighbors' premises, or, as just yesterday, she just climbs in through an open basement window. This morning, I didn't even realize she was out until she knocked on our living room's screen door, meowing, begging to be let in. But, aside from all of that, I think the selection of pictures here will convince you most effectively of Sumaya's undeniable greatness.

Then there's the deer gang. At least four of them, but sometimes only individuals show up in our back yard. Eating leaves from the branches, or just hangin' out. I think they're almost considered a plague in some parts of Athens and by some citizens. It's probably true, but they are still pretty beautiful. I grew up in a pretty rural area, but I never lived as close to supposedly wild animals as here in Athens.

We also have at least three feral cats sharing our basement and backyard. There's a hole into the basement (or, one that I know of; there's probably more) that has granted those felines access to our basement since winter. We've heard them a couple of times, and Sumaya is often incredibly excited for no apparent reason, running from the kitchen to the living room, jumping onto the couch, and then back into the kitchen. I think that can only mean she's sensed her colleagues downstairs, and then tries to do something about it. Cat logic. One of those cats has recently spent some time behind our house with the deers. Looks like they were on friendly terms. All enjoying the sun.

See the Squirrel?

The squirrel and the blackbird share an apartment complex in our house's southern outside wall. There's a little porch, and a pretty big hole on the porch roof's underside. That's their front door and their access into the wall. I've seen the squirrel once or twice, and I've heard it move inside the wall almost every other day or so. And Sumaya knows about him, too. She's spent hours sitting before that wall waiting for the squirrel to move, trying to pound the wall so he would come out, or whatever Sumaya has thought might happen if she raps against that wall. The blackbird, I only know it from hearsay. Sophia's seen it fly in there twice. I wonder how the two of them get along.

Yesterday, I discovered what we first thought would be a spider's nest in the undergrowth behind our house (which, THANK GOODNESS!!! it was not) to be a caterpillar or butterfly larvae nest. I've been incredibly fascinated with its intricate structure since day one; it's located right at the intersection of three or four branches for maximum stability, and it's made all out of this fabric that looks like a spider's thread or silk. Fascinating and beautiful as long as it's at a decent distance to my body. Anyway, I've realized it's not a spider's nest when I saw dozens of little black larvae/caterpillars crawling around on its surface. Below this outer surface, I could see another one on which even more larvae/caterpillars were sitting, these ones less active, so they were probably in an earlier stage of their development. I guess. Disgusting, fascinating, compelling. 

Bart

And then, there's Bart!!! I introduced him in the last post. Rosa's parakeet, almost abandoned, but then saved. She brought him over again today and told us that his name is Bart now. We can only assume his sex, though. Blood tests are expensive. Anyway, he was here again today, in his makeshift D.I.Y. habitat, in our backyard with all of us. He still looked pretty insecure and somewhat scared in the beginning, but then started climbing the branches in his box to the top crossbeam, and then pulled his little self up the wall with his little beak, then grabbing the ledge with his little claws, and then jumping and fluttering down onto the grass where  I watched over him, pretty successfully once or twice, but not the third time.

He ran right into a thick bush, and I had to crawl after him through some rough twigs and thorns, and finally got him back into his box. My most heroic deed in Athens so far. For my boy. He seemed happier then than in the beginning, chirping around a bit, even scolding at me every now and then for letting him walk upon my hands instead of back into the bush. Sumaya also had a look at him, but seemed only mildly interested. Probably because he didn't do too much at that moment. Bart's now in another apartment, but Rosa wants to bring him back for a visit on Tuesday.

Catching Up

You may use this blog as an indicator. The less I write the more real work I have to do. That's why I didn't say hi for ten days.

   After Harrison Ford (still a beautiful song you should listen to!) I came home--back from our trip to New York--at around 4a.m. Took another hour to come up with a somewhat thoughtful summation on that David Foster Wallace essay I had to read for this day's Pop/High Culture class. Sleep until 9 or so, then off to the library around 10, get some other readings done, print the summation. Go to class. Then Editing and Publishing, then Literary Theory. From this point onwards, the days were basically filled with class work, especially for my literary magazine, The Transatlanticist. Had to read and reread the submissions, edit them--some barely, some heavily--and format them all in one document which was probably the most annoying part. Reading texts and cooperating with the authors to turn good manuscripts into great essays and stories, that's time-consuming, and it is work, to be sure, but it is fun! I like working close on the text, in the text. All the notes and corrections in Word, Did you really want to say that? Because that's what it sounds like. Maybe rephrase? or This sentence is too long, too convoluted. or simply This doesn't make sense. It is some sort of translation, of refining, of digging for meaning, scrubbing for clarity, polishing for elegance. But the formatting, the layout? Fun if you figure out how to do the things you want to, but the software I had at my disposal, it doesn't allow for too much creativity, at least not on the level that I am familiar with it. And I tried a lot. The cover design was even more strenuous. I am not a graphic designer, and I didn't have one close at hand here, so I manipulated the maps that Julia had created for the front and back covers. Played around with the contrast, brightness, and colors, oh and resizing them, dpi and stuff, because it didn't fit the online cover creator I had to use to create the mag. Then added the title. Once, twice, thrice, 15 times because something was wrong again and again. Anyway, The Transatlanticist's first (probably only, 'cause this is a cruel world) issue has been sent to the printer this Wednesday after at least one night with too little sleep. Supposed to be here on Tuesday. More than just a tad excited, to be honest.

   Easter was great. We invited all of our friends over and had some very very very (I mean very very very) good food. Fruit salad, mixed vegetable salad, mac & cheese, nachos and home made dips, and so on. Made some Radler (3/4 beer, 1/4 sprite; we also introduced the concept in the bars around here) and started a fire after sunset. It was a genuinely good afternoon and night. One of those days you keep looking back on for months afterwards. Also, with a timing unmatched since the day that Jim Morrison met Ray Manzarek, fellow ASL student and BA+ alumnus Richard came to visit us from Detroit exactly on that Sunday. He spent three days in town and we went out a lot with Nat, Geeg, Sophia, Sam, and some others. Sam took the two of us for an early bike ride around Athens on Wednesday morning at 7:30. Not even 5 minutes outside of town, I felt quite a bit in rural Appalachia already. Crooked old shacks, abandoned cabins, rusty trailers. Some beautiful countryside as well, nice views upon Athens, and this dog without a leash that chased and scared us a good deal, but then was really afraid and just stood there. 

   And then my take home final was due for Literary Theory. Explain some concepts by Butler, Cixous, Foucault, Irigaray, Freud, and others. Then three two-page analyses of Drown, My Life in Pink, and What's Cooking?. Very short, not much you can do on two pages. But that's fine. Anyway, very very unfortunately, we did not go into postmodernism. At all. Might have to go back into that on my own. Might have some time in the summer.

   On Wednesday, we gave our final GLC presentations at the Edison Biotech Institute of Ohio University, located at the Ridges. Wasn't too bad; I think all of us did a better job than at the German Center for Research and Innovation in Manhattan, which was already pretty okay. Got very good responses, anyway. So I'm glad we're done with that, and I'm glad it was good. That same evening, GLC dinner. Good pizza at Jacky O's. Got our certificates and, on top of that, our professor (a philosopher and biker) gave me a book titled Harley Davidson and Philosophy: Full Throttle Aristotle. I was really surprised about that, and still am very thankful. Spent some time at the Smiling Skull Saloon afterwards and then went back to Jacky O's to meet the roomies and homies.

 

   Yesterday, I was pretty much lying in the sun all day. Our friend Rosa was visiting, and we saw that those guys across the street were messing around with this little white bird that couldn't really fly. So she went over there and talked to them. Turns out they bought the little parakeet to play with for a couple of hours and then intended to just release it in a bush or something. Yes. I know. Poor guy has clipped wings (apparently, that's what they do so pet birds can't fly away. Horrible), so there's no chance he would have survived. Rosa had asked if she could take it home with her later so they wouldn't just leave it out to die, and they agreed, or didn't really care, for that matter. Found a box and some branches and turned that into a little home for the bird, and brought it over. In the end, I think she couldn't take the bird home for some reason, but she made sure that the guys would keep it in their house for the night, and I don't know where things'll go from there...

   All school work I have left for next week is one exam and one paper, both in Pop/High Culture. So I will try to write more regularly again. Tell you about my upcoming summer internship and other stuff.

Harrison Ford

If you ever find yourself sitting in a car at night as a passenger, driving on a highway or an autobahn, listen to 'Harrison Ford' by Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin! Then close your eyes. Open them again and look out the window. At the forests and the fields. The silhouettes. The distant lights that signify a town or a city. The clouds illuminated by the moon.
Then repeat until you are home.

SSLYBY - Harrison Ford: http://youtu.be/rVUdxBjTebg

Postmodernism

Modernism

Got up this morning between 10 and 11, left the hotel alone because Byron was already out while Matt and Michael were still sleeping, grabbed some breakfast here in Jersey and took the PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) to Christopher Street, reading Above All Men on the ride, then walked through the warm and sunny streets of Manhattan noon towards Strand where I browsed through the cheap used books outside for half an hour, finding a book with two short novels by Salinger for $ 0.48

and Proust's Swann's Way (Vol.1 of In Search of Lost Time) for a dollar, then went inside for more endless browsing through innumerable shelves and displays of paperbacks, hardcovers and collector's editions of nearly everything that has ever been printed, limiting myself to buy Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian for $7.??, got out again and went to Washington Square Park where I intended to flee the rush, grab some sun and sit on the grass reading - an idea that was, however, immediately thwarted when I caught sight of all the commotion happening in the park, all the locals and tourists, the hipsters and squares, the children and parents, the dogs and the pigeons, and most of all by Tic and Tac who attracted my attention just as easily as that of almost anybody else around the fountain by having their drummer play a tight beat and hollering around, advertising their show which was about to begin shortly, introducing Tic's or Tac's young son who was also participating in the shouting, which all eventually led to a great performance that was a mixture of very self-aware politically

incorrect comedy and break dance/acrobatics that elicited much applause from the audience which afterwards dispersed, dismissing me onto a lawn next to those cosplay kids looking weird and acting crazy, distracting me once more from reading, just like this hipster jazz trio to my left that played some really good stuff and kept on going, song after song just as I kept on going from jazz band to jazz band in Washington Square Park, oh and then seeing these quiet introvert indie kids playing songs for a few amazing modern dancers who even incorporated this one monument into their performance and didn't let go, me finally going adrift, walking to the Caffe Reggio on MacDougal where I had been before and now wanted to go there again because it seemed like the perfect place to have a first look into Swann's Way 

because both the cafe and the novel might have been created around the same time at the beginning of the last century, and then I read into it and it felt a bit like falling in love with Proust's very beautiful and sometimes suggestive and elusive prose which makes a (reportedly) difficult book seem easy to read while it doesn't really reveal the direction this might go into and what it is gonna be about so I sat for another minute or two thinking and then left, tipping not too generously because today's lousy and standoffish service seemed even worse in comparison to that very friendly waitress that I had chatted with in January and who was the first person out of a few to tell me about the Strand which had eventually brought me back here today, all before I went back to the 9th Street station to catch the PATH back home because we were supposed to meet at 7:30 in the lobby in order to go to that awesome Indian restaurant here in Jersey not far from the hotel where I and Rene and Paul shared a table discussing courtship and marriage and where I might have had too much food because it was so delicious, after which I finally headed back home finishing part I of "Combray" in Swann which has taught me how to write a long sentence.

GLC Road Trip

On the road to New York. Our GLC class will give a presentation in Manhattan on Monday. Good reason to go there for the weekend already.
I left the house at 8 this morning (after having gone out last night 'for just one beer.' But in Athens, there is no such thing as just one beer. So once again, home after 2). Sat on our porch and started reading my newest purchase - Above All Men by Eric Shonkwiler - and was once again amazed by how beautiful Athens is in the spring. Especially mornings. The yellow tulips and daffodils on our small patch, the clear blue sky traversed by plane tracks, the mist rising out of the not too distant woods, the incessantly twittering and chirping birds that seemed to surround me by dozens. Didn't make the reading easier.
Around 9, the group arrived and picked me up in a van. Since we have one more person on board than seats in the vehicle, and I was the last one, I had to share a seat first and then squeezed in between the two seats of the middle row. On the floor. Riding backwards. It was okay, though, and now it's Mitch's turn. We're somewhere in  Maryland on a perfectly sunny day, driving through a still somewhat barren but very green countryside. Couple of hours left until we'll arrive at our hotel in New Jersey. We're very quiet now, some are sleeping, others reading. On the stereo some very good indie electro pop with a female vocalist provides a somewhat surreal atmosphere.

Scenes

Beat Heaven.

Serengeti: animals from different continents living together in perfect harmony.

English Department humor

Our deer hangin' out in the back yard

Pub Art: "Steroid-Speedo-Astronaut-Chimp"

abandoned house, great source for firewood

Sleepy Hollow

See the squirrel? She lives in our walls.

Fest Season!

Mill Fest

Spring's here, and Fest Season in Athens is almost over. I think it starts in March, and—to my understanding—it’s basically comprised of some fests that are named after the streets that they are happening on, like Palmer Fest, Milliron Fest, Mill Fest (MILF fest, according to my professor), and High Fest. They’re all privately organized ‘festivals’ along certain streets, which simply means that from around 10 a.m. onwards tenants turn their front porches and lawns into party zones where (almost) everyone is welcome. Some houses have dj’s, a few might even have a band playing, others just turn up their ghetto blasters. And OU students go there; and they go crazy. 

Mill Fest

If you’ve ever been to a music festival—it’s pretty close to that experience, except for the fact that this is an ordinary street, and not a field closed down for the purpose of a festival. People just know that everyone who lives on the respective street will participate in the fest. Which doesn’t mean much more anyway than to play some music and allow people to hang out and get wasted on your lawn. And apparently, these fests have been around for more than twenty years. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Mill Fest

The sidewalks and lawns are crammed with people, many of them dressed very very casually or in some kinda crazy way—as a hotdog, or in their pajamas, or whatever. And you just stand around or walk from house to house, hiding your open beer can from the cops because it’s not allowed to drink on the street (on the private lawns, however, it is), or you dance. As you can imagine, some people are better at handling that than others. I’ve heard of a guy who’s lost his job because his employer saw a video of him on a fest. I don’t know what he did in it, but it’s probably nothing to be proud of. Anyway, these fests usually get shut down by the police (some of them are even there on horseback!) pretty early, sometimes around 5 or 6 p.m. And for no apparent reason. I’ve heard of a burning couch, even a fire inside a house last year, but this year, I didn’t see any of that, but the police was still going from house to house, telling us kids the party’s over.So the first fest I’ve witnessed was Milliron Fest, but only for the last hour or so. We arrived there after nightfall, and the police hadn’t shut down all of it yet. I and my buddies have been invited by my good friend Blake who lives there, and we were there for maybe an hour before most of the people were gone, and we’d eventually left as well. Being the first fest for me, though, it was relatively impressive to see about 150 or 200 people on a very short section of the street.

Mill Fest

Next day’s Mill Fest, however, made Milliron look like a bad joke. It’s located downhill from the way we came, so while it was comparably quiet uptown, the view and the noise on Mill Street were pretty stunning as we approached. Hundreds of people walking and standing around on sides of the street (warm and sunny weather, by the way), music, singing, and conversations everywhere. I had the feeling that we just went from lawn to lawn on the left side of the street, pausing on many premises to have a beer or dance or meet people, and then went back in the same manner on the right side.

Mill Fest

I wore this kind of (artificial) fur hat—an inside out hood of a winter jacket—and this one guy on a porch  told me that he liked it (like many others on the street before him), but I didn’t catch his words due to all the noise, so I went up there, and we got into talking. And he tells me how he travels to Alaska (Alaska!) every now and then for hunting. Killed a bear once, supposedly. “Dude, shooting that 500 pound bear, it’s like killing a fuckin’ person!” Yeah, he wasn’t a bad guy, but then again…Recreational hunting isn’t exactly the kind of hobby I wanna relate to. After that, the group kinda dissolved, and Rene, Justin and me had some Chinese buffet at that place where that poor huge white fish lives all alone in a fish tank that is maybe twice the size of its inhabitant. Depressing politics, good food.

High Fest

Then, High Fest. When I joined the gang, we hung out more on Justin’s and Michael’s porch than on High Street. Most of them had already been there (while I was studying diligently). So Rene, Lisa and I just walked along High where party was still going on, passing a parked van that was full of empty PBR cans, uphill and then down, and then back again while the mounted police were putting an end to people’s peaceful celebrations.

Palmer Fest was on the weekend that we were in D.C. (maybe there’ll be a separate post on that trip). So I don’t know how that went, but Rene did apparently have a good time there. This weekend, Number Fest will close fest season. But I’ll be out of town again, going back to New York, this time for the presentation of our GLC project. Maybe that’ll spark another post.

West Side, Best Side!

Geeg (who ranks very high on the list of best roommates ever) was born and raised in Cleveland, OH. Two weeks ago, she took me and Sophia to her hometown that is located on the southern shore of Lake Eerie. She had to do some business, and knowing that the two of us had never been there, Geeg wouldn’t take no for an answer. And, of course, no wouldn’t have been our answer, for that matter. Since we do not have class on Fridays (unlike Natalie, who would have loved to come along, but didn’t want to miss class), the matter did not need much discussion. So, when classes were over that Thursday, we left Athens at around 5 p.m., and I sat in the back of the car because I wanted to catch some sleep. And I seriously needed some sleep; the previous week had not been too good to me.

It started with a great Monday: St. Patrick’s Day! Unlike the probably totally made up (that is, without any religious or traditional background) Green Beer Day, which was celebrated furiously on all of Court Street the Wednesday before St. Paddy’s (while I had tons of work to do) , St. Patrick’s Day is not really a big festivity in Athens. It is, however, a great day for Irish-American (and some Italian) Geeg, and thus for us. So we all had a good time at Lucky’s, along with a drink or two. That day, I must have caught some kind of infection or cold or whatever. Because the next day, I did not feel too well. And it was not a hangover!

"Jack the Ripper." Get it?

Unfortunately, that very Tuesday, our Global Leadership Center class made a trip for an overnight stay at two lodges in the Hocking Hills, about an hour’s drive from Athens. That was ill-timed because I was not really in the mood for partying all night, which was probably the (unofficial) point of going there. We had a good dinner and hung out a bit, made a fire outside, played some pool and foosball, and we even had a bath in the hot tub. Yes, pure decadence. But since I still felt kinda sick, I was neither really enjoying all of that, nor was I in the mood to nag, especially about the bourgeois temptations of the hot tub that I had fallen prey to. But some kind of Marxist deity (I know—what a profane idea!) was quick in judging me. After a short night of no more than four hours of sleep, I woke up jaded, and with a sore throat. And the entire Wednesday was mostly a sick day. Thursday wasn’t much better, but since we did not plan on going out in Cleveland, I thought sick in Athens, sick in Cleveland—what’s the difference? And I really wanted to see the city and visit Geeg’s family.

So, back in the car to Cleveland. All in all, I might have caught an hour of sleep on the three-hour drive. The girls were able to tell from my eyes being shut while my mouth was open wide. At least I didn’t snore, they said.

When we arrived at Geeg’s home in a nice residential area in West Cleveland (West side, best side!, I’ve been brainwashed) we were greeted by her parents and grandma, and a huge black cat by the name of Clarence Clemens, I think. We had a great dinner (first pasta since I don’t know when, great salad, and a tasty desert), and later the girls and I watched some Portlandia until I had to go to bed in order not to fall asleep on the couch. Still being sick, the prospect of falling asleep in a warm and comfy bed has rarely felt so good.

View from outside Sokolowski's

The next morning, I already felt better. First highlight of the day: Sokolowski’s. Geeg had been talking about this Polish restaurant the entire week, promising the best food ever, and she wasn’t exaggerating too much; it was very good indeed. My meal consisted of chicken paprikash, pierogi, and sauerkraut, and it was great, but way too much for me to finish. So I took it home in a container. Just as good as the food was the place itself: very cozy atmosphere, and at the service counter, Polka music was playing, while in the restaurant’s main room, a guy played the piano.

Afterwards, Geeg’s mom chauffeured us around town; we passed the Indian’s baseball stadium, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, saw the shores of Lake Eerie, went to a market hall, and visited the national gardens, a big park where many nationalities are represented with statues and monuments. The German Garden featured a replica of the statue of Goethe and Schiller in Weimar along with a smaller bust of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, that old gymnastics guru. Finally, since we were there during the International Cleveland Film Festival, we saw a good movie, Bart Van den Bempt’s “82 Days in April,” in which a Belgian couple travels through Turkey in order to retrace the trip of their son who had died in a car accident. Very touching story, a bit lengthy at times, but probably intentionally so. Great visuals.

And then it was time to head back home, the car loaded with food that Geeg’s mom gave us poor students.