Up Here In My Tree

Tuesday, May 10th
Reed College
Portland, OR

Yours truly, a liberated spirit, gives his personal perspective on his gracious college host. From a tree. :- )

Reed College
as viewed from my tree :-)

"Up here in my tree,
newspapers matter not to me.
I'm trading stories with the leaves instead."

- "In my Tree" by Pearl Jam.

I climbed a tree.

Reed College has been good to me.

Library

Late night WiFi. Free Gnutella sandwiches and Cliff bars at the library lobby. Their hours are 24/7 until Thursday at 11:59pm, which is all the time I needed to leave town on a bicycle as initially planned. Nearby Westmore park to sleep and camp. So it's always there.

24/7 free food in the lobby

O Reed College, I've gained profound knowledge through use of your lavatory facilities, having witnessed the writing on the wall.

"If there is a solution,
it's not a problem.
If there is no solution,
it's not your problem!"

“You were looking for the key for years
But the door was always open.”- Iqbal

"They remain slaves because they cannot see what is beautiful in this world"

But there is trouble in paradise...

Anger

"La chair est triste, hélas ! et j’ai lu tous les livres." - "Brise Marine" by Stéphane Mallarmé
(translation): "The Flesh remains sad, alas! and I've read all the books."* - "Sea Breeze"

Not very concealed, underneath its proper exterior is a darker underbelly. Students are overworked, stressed, at short ends. Tempers against their assignments and the establishment flare.

Vandalism, inked the night before.
'cuz I was here yesterday afternoon and that wasn't there.

There is graffiti all over, and even there the short temper surfaces. I mean, it takes time to write something on a wall, for someone to read it, and to have a short fuse argument to erupt... yet people are having short temper arguments through graffiti.

*The top graffiti photo has the opening line of Mallarme's poem "Sea Breeze".

I looked up a translation of the French poem, but varied their words slightly to capture my interpretation. "The Flesh remains sad, alas! and I've read all the books." means the following:

I have looked for all the answers. I have listened to all the sages. I have done everything I was instructed to do. Yet my condition is none the better.

I have seen enough to know now, there is no place nor under any rock you can convince me hides a redeeming truth. I am convinced that there is nothing behind the forbidden door. Your institution is a sham. And I no longer believe.

It evokes in my mind lines from T.S. Eliot's "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock":

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,	50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall ... And I have known the eyes already, known them all—         55 The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

Death of a soul

Furniture is placed outdoors, which seems all bohemian and free-spirited. Yet these signs are ironic. It's almost as if seeing these symbolic free college lifestyles deepen the hostility students have towards their extolling schoolwork and establishment, because that lifestyle is not there.

It's as if someone tried to evoke stress-free contentment by going through the motions of putting a couch outside, was appalled by the stark clash against nature when his work was done, and abandoned the Frankenstein.

The maker could not bear even to look longer at the abomination to put it away. And then people who pass by likewise are so paralyzed by the sight of it, and turn away, not capable to approach or dismantle the affront to their sanity.

'Petting the animals day' to relieve stress feels out-of-touch with the student's experience when I overhear conversations like: 'How could they do this? This is what has become of me,' only half in jest.

Even the stress-relief horse
is overburdened with responsibility

Zombies greet each other at 3 am in the library, and the only topic of conversation possible between them is how their thesis is going. And the response is an apathetic, 'I suppose I'll start it.' Like Browning's line: "I might go one. Naught else remained to do."

Leisure

But people *are* laughing and enjoying companionship with one another. You might now know how much pressure they have to deal with, until you notice the subtle details that are missing from their liveliness.

'Fun time' kicking around
their only beach ball which is deflated.
Later, all the air runs out and
they take turns pulling it apart

No talks of crazy nights out where someone did this or that. No mention of any weekend trips or planned activities. They'll find enjoyment out of comparing the weather if it means they can put studying out of their minds for a while.

It's not an un-eclectic student body. There's a bunch of lesbians in tank tops and hiking boots. Blue and purple and other flavors of color walk the campus.

Eventually though, everyone has a dread of a 5 am deadline that will rise from its grave to swallow her. They're all equal under the weight of finals. Burden is a great equalizer.

Breaking

"I always reach a snapping point when I'm like, FUCK THIS!"

Me using the Patriot Act
to record private conversations
while I write this post

'I'm so mad at seeing happy people. I hope they will fall down. They're all like, yay I'm done with finals and I'm like how is that possible. How could you be done already, how is that fair?!'

The girl next to her, who hasn't said anything the whole time, responds immediately with an emphatic 'I know!'

Better living through chemistry

There are caffeine pills at the library lobby, for general complimentary consumption. "ONLY TAKE ONE" is labeled in Sharpie. There's stacks of bottled pills nearby - no danger of running out. It must be for the avid consumer's well-being they placed a warning.

A box of birth control pills left on the railing too. Either someone's brain was fried and forgot to take all her belongings, or the students have been experimenting with over-the-counter medication far beyond my level of understanding.

I guess having to take the morning after pill would hamper one's ability to retain information. So it's better to remember prevention. Meh, I dunno - that's the best I could come up with.

Using academic performance enhancing supplements goes far beyond the limits of my personal experience. I guess that's why my classmates got jobs and I'm out here instead. There's things I won't do and there's things I won't be kept away from.

Hope

A girl was talking about graduating in a few days, seeing tents set up on the lawn for the Commencement ceremony. This year, it was for her - she told her friend over the phone, and seeing as she spoke this bit of observation with a natural emphasis, I could tell it struck her as remarkable.

She felt proud and also yet detached from it, like it was happening but it hadn't fully registered. Her thesis had not been submitted yet. She was overloaded with work, 'the final push'. She wanted emotional support badly. She seemed barely above water, but fought to stay positive.

Me, up in mah tree.
'The Graduate' below

She rationalized a silver lining, that she would have the time after graduation to regain her balance. That going through this was tough, even unnatural... yet somehow acceptable and normal. She could ease back into her stride as she entered a job. She could take care of her immediate needs at a later time.

Advocacy

Yet, my experience is - that never happens. The present is here and then it is gone forever. No future date can satisfy our absolute essential minimum needs that we miss - disorders develop when we go too long without a natural source of nourishment for our minimal basic needs.

We cannot 'make it up to you later, I promise'. It's 'now' that always needs our attention. Moving towards where we are going is always in 'now'. That is all we have. We must move to our futures, but 'now' is the only way we can.

My 'Catcher in the Rye' moment

I've seen pitiable pleas written in the bathrooms stalls.

"Where is that large automobile?
How do I work this?"
[lyrics to "Once in a Lifetime" by Talking Heads]

Something is not sitting right at this college. Its leaves are tender and show life, yet I feel something has gone rotten at its core.

Out of all the colleges and universities I've stopped at and mingled with... seeing the usual despondence and depression, bitter optimism, and exploitation of young people's dreams that are typical of higher education... all without being much personally affected... for once in a long time, for some reason at this place it saddens me to see it.

I think it's an impression I get that these students are not themselves. They are not like the other students who believe and convince each other of the good life, complicit to the status quo. They have been pushed beyond that possibility from stress and overworking.

They are suffering. They want to be set free, rise up and overturn the standard. They have not bought into the system, they do not take their pills willingly. And I think, for them, then it can be stopped.

That's why it saddens me so deeply to see them suffer.