Cooper Chronicles: I.8

(An ongoing series for the month of January, these are letters written to my family and friends during my college years in New York, when I discovered my love of writing.  Introduction here.)

last sunday night, i had to do some research for a presentation.  i faced a major dilemma.  the cooper library was closed, and anyway, i was looking for some very specific books written in the early 1900s that i didn’t think they’d have.  i knew what i had to do; just go to the NYU Bobst library and check them out.  it’s open 24 hours a day; the facilities are spacious, with a marble-floored lobby; and there are 14 floors of volumes, countless cushioned chairs, and plenty of studying cubicles.  it sounds great, right? 

the thing is, i have this hangup with going to NYU, the land of 30,000 students.  the fact that they let cooper students use their facilities seems to me a condescending pat on the head: “well, until you guys get your *own* library, you can use ours.  try not to get lost in it.  we know you’re not used to such opulence.”  

they have reason to act so superior.  the cooper union has one dorm; NYU has one on every corner in the east village.  we have “frankie’s kitchen,” a little privately-owned restaurant that serves everything deep-fried; they have a huge four-star cafeteria with thousands of choices ranging from vegetarian to kosher to ethnic meals.  our “school spirit” consists of two different t-shirt designs and an ugly bumper sticker that no one uses; they have a whole store clad in purple and white, and huge NYU flags flying from all of their buildings.  heck, they even get their own stop on the subway. 

the funny thing is, we *still* think we’re better.  “money can buy state-of-the-art gym equipment, but not intelligent students,” we say. “how many of *their* students are on full-tuition scholarships?”  we mock their “trendy” school colors and collegiate attitude.  and we take every opportunity to boast about what our school has that theirs doesn’t. think of an american and a canadian holding a conversation:

A: well, i was listening to the radio during breakfast this morning, and i heard alanis morisette —

C: alanis is canadian.  you knew that, right?

A: noooooo … so then, this advertisement came on for that great john candy flick —

C: john candy is canadian too.

A: okay, that’s great.  can i finish?  anyway, i’m eating my pancakes —

C: did you know that the guy that invented pancakes is canadian?

well, maybe not.  but you get the point — massive inferiority complex.  (incidentally, i hope i’m not offending my darling canadian friends here.  i love their country.  even if they are a little too polite.) 

well, dear readers, i haven’t much to report.  school is relatively the same.  i have shakespeare’s plays to read, pericles’ buildings to ponder, and paper to scribble on.  (our art teacher tells us that we need to scribble for a few pages before drawing anything.  it loosens “both the arm and the mind,” apparently.)

and then there’s studio … and more studio … and more studio … raquel and i decided that our main problem was that we kept listening to our professors.  every time we say, “well, you said to —” they respond with “but it doesn’t matter what we said!  it’s not about what we think!  it’s about what you know to be right!”  high-sounding talk, but i like the principle.  they offer advice; we accept or reject it, but we’d better have a pretty good reason for either.  they use enough abstract language to make your head spin, too.  it takes at least two hours to recover from a conversation with them.

we decided to stick the same idea as the last joint, but alter a few little things and do new drawings (of course — they *always* want new drawings.)  so we’re making a new model, incorporating the alteration, which means more aluminum (we’re going with a smaller, and cheaper, version this time), more wood, and more sanding, sawing and filing.  this weekend was spent almost completely in working, except for friday night — when i escaped from the general clamor of Pasta Night (the RAs set it up; there were 5 different kinds of pasta and sauces in different rooms, and you just wandered around the building with a plate and fork, sampling) to seek solace in a nearby starbucks with a book.  i really needed it.  our next big crit is on tuesday, when we will decide on the final model of the joints and start work on the full-sized cube (9 feet on each side.)  the professors are famous for encouraging you one week, making you the scapegoats the next — so our rave review last time is inspiring fear now.  prayers on tuesday would be appreciated.   

wednesday was one of those days when i was late for everything, and every time i was late more things seemed to pile up to delay me even more.  sara and i went grocery shopping before class and got stuck in the Slow Little Old Lady Line (family: think of that Mr. Bean episode).  one of them wanted to know if we were getting ALL THOSE GROCERIES, and could she please get in front of us, since all she had were these two bags of frozen ravioli?  then the checkout lady, philanthropically feeling for our state of college-student-poverty, decided to take a few minutes to tell us about their coupon-card program.  it’s so easy; why don’t we just go and register right now?  no, we explained, we were late for class … of course, we had to walk home, and the crosswalk lights were decidedly not in our favor; then we had to put our perishables in the fridge, and i tiptoed guiltily into architecture history about 15 minutes late. 

after class, raquel, raphael and i went uptown to fulfill our drawing requirements.  that was an adventure in itself; first we tried to go to the natural history museum, and found that it was on the *other* side of central park (tip: central park is a LOT wider than you think, especially when you’re walking) and up 15 blocks or so.  after finding it, we entered (curiously) without any sort of payment or admission and asked where the monkey skeletons there.  the receptionist at the information desk acted a bit like the woman from groundhog day (“i don’t even know how to SPELL monkey skeleton!”) and referred us to the wrong floor.  by the time we found them and got through one drawing, the museum was closing — two hours early.  an extremely angry investigation on our part revealed that there was a party going on in the evening, and (for our convenience) ONE sign to that effect had been placed in the building, *behind* the huge display at the entrance.  we huffed and puffed our way out and to the central park zoo, where we drew monkeys for 40 minutes, much to the amusement of the other patrons.  as our teacher had promised, there were plenty of stares, impudent questions, hoverings, and whispers; the only way to get rid of them, she had cautioned, was to look and act “fierce”.  there were certain rules to avoiding unwanted contact:

1) volunteer no information.

2) answer “no” to anything they ask.

3) mutter to yourself constantly.  try a foreign language; if you don’t know any, try something that sounds like a foreign language.

4) if all else fails, look desparate and snap, “i’m not a REAL artist, okay?”

it worked — here’s a vignette:

Lady With Grocery Bags: ohhhh, you’re drawing!!

Emily: (no response, wishes she had her book of Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.)

Lady With Grocery Bags: are you from an art school?

Emily: no.

Lady With Grocery Bags: ohhh.  how nice.  you two just decided to get together and draw, then?

Emily: no.

Lady With Grocery Bags: well… when *i* was in art school … (here she realized she had no audience but the said Grocery Bags, and marched off telling them the rest of her story.)

despite our audience, the monkeys were extremely cute and we finished in high spirits.  we were then late to drawing class and had to scrounge for our own easels.  but we had a great story …

i’m starting to go to bed and get up earlier than in my first few weeks; the result is more “me” time, precious moments spent sipping tea and reading quietly in the morning before the commotion starts.  it’s these times that i miss home the most — i miss my mom, who would have sat there with me — and i miss the soft, cushiony chairs in the living room — and i miss looking outside at the green trees and green grass and blue sky.  the sky seems so much closer there.

Cooper Chronicles: I.7

(An ongoing series for the month of January, these are letters written to my family and friends during my college years in New York, when I discovered my love of writing.  Introduction here.)

we’ve been starstruck!!  

as i was reading my architecture history homework for the next day, i heard a noise of screaming and stomping of feet up the staircase, growing increasingly louder.  a few seconds later, pete and raquel burst in the door screaming a bunch of jibberish —

“SARA-EMILY-OMIGOSH-YOU-WON’T-BELIEVE-SHAQ-MCDONALDS-JUST-NOW!!”  they had been in mcdonalds when they saw an unusually large figure at the counter — a closer inspection revealed that it was, in fact, *the* shaquille o’neal of NBA fame.  he was with his wife, MTV veejay Idalis, ordering an extra-value meal right next door to the dorms.  pete had his camera and snapped a few pictures.  i wasn’t *that* impressed, but maybe you had to be there.

stars are everywhere in the village.  dave saw mel gibson on the corner a few weeks ago; pete and al saw a famous boxer and damon wayans at a club in the same night; and damien swears he saw claire danes, but i think he’s just trying to make me jealous.  (i *love* claire danes. )  seeing these household names on your block really makes you feel like you’re in the middle of something great, important, cutting-edge.  or maybe just like an incredibly uncool gawker.  (depends on your point of view.) 

the studio has almost become my second home here.  last sunday i spent some serious time there in preparation for our crit on tuesday.  it was while i was drawing a closeup model of our joint that i realized something astounding: i was *really* enjoying this.  i’ve never taken a drafting class, and they don’t offer any at cooper.  they expect you, not to have learned previously, but to learn as you go along.  get the supplies and experiment with them.  ask the more advanced students if you need help.  and above all, don’t shy away from something just because you don’t know how to do it. 

i really like that mentality.  what better way to learn how to do something really well?  architecture students are their own worst critics, and we can tell when something looks professional and when it looks half-baked.  it’s completely different from anything i’ve ever done, and i love it.  i love the newness of it, and i love learning how to do it — and most of all, i love the creative process that goes into each assignment.  there’s no formula for building the joint; we have to invent one.  that’s what’s so cool about it.

anyway, after 4 hours of studio time, i took a break and went out with a group of friends to celebrate pete’s birthday.  we walked to an adorable little italian restaurant called “tanti baci” (“many kisses” in italian) and had a really good, fresh, inexpensive dinner.  on the way home we stopped at Smoothie King, which is run by a bunch of new york boys that act really “tough-guy,” but are actually pretty nice.  oh, and they make the most incredible fresh-fruit shakes you will ever taste.  mmmmmm. 

the next day was spent entirely working on our project.  raquel and i walked to Space Surplus Metal, a tiny shop smack in the heart of Chinatown, to get some hollow aluminum tubing for the model.  the people were from india and very, very courteous (“you the ones that just call?  aluminum?  just one moment please — ” with lots of nodding and smiling), but the metal didn’t come cheap — the cost of the whole model, including the wood and screws, amounted to over $100.  (it reminded me of a cartoon that our roommate and R.A. kerry drew on our message board: a picture of peter cooper saying, “cooper is free!  except for books, supplies, food, room and board, transportation, personal expenses … “) 

we returned to the studio and stayed in the shop until 10 pm when it closed.  the model was almost finished, and we worked on drawings late into the night.  at 12:30 the guard came to chase us all out.  raquel and i panicked — we still had work to do!  we consulted with steve, a fourth-year friend of ours that was wise to the ways of cooper.  his advice: “hide.”  so we crouched under his desks at the far end of the room, stifling giggles and feeling a bit like guilty children hiding from their parents and certain punishment.  (as we were hiding, steve grumbled: “at other schools, kids get in trouble for drugs, shootings, and skipping class — at cooper, we get yelled at for working too much!”)  if you don’t hide and refuse to leave, you have to write your name on a paper that they pass around, and the papers land on the dean’s desk — and you *do* get yelled at.  i finished around 3:30 and sneaked out, following steve’s advice and feigning deafness to the guard’s questions on the way out. (“excuse me, miss?  hello?  HELLO?” )

the next morning, there was no rest for the weary: raquel and i got up and went to the Met on an assignment for architecture history class.  the teachers here delight in sending us all over the city just because they *can*.  in most college-towns, the farthest they could send you would be to the gas station on the corner; but here in the great city of new york, there’s any number of educational sights to see.  (not that we mind.  hey, it’s an excuse to get out.)  upon returning, we nervously put the finishing touches on our model and pinned up our work in the crit room. 

after being ripped apart at the last critique, we had no idea what to expect.  it was a tremendous relief, therefore, to have our hours and hours of hard work praised with as much vigor as they had been disdained last time.  we had worked a lot harder and put a lot more energy into this project, and they all loved it.  abraham used the word “beautiful” so many times i lost count.  they were intrigued by all of our “test” models and encouraged us to develop all of them, not just the main one (although they loved it).  they praised my drawings (i had spent 8 hours on one and 5 on another) and thanked *us* for our efforts.  i could have kissed that man!  raquel and i were flying high — we sat there for the rest of the critique, gripping each other’s arms, trying to suppress our huge smiles of satisfaction.  our work had paid off — as abraham put it so eloquently, “you don’t work hard, you don’t learn shit.”

wednesday’s architecture history lecture was really interesting; that class has become my new favorite.  reading about the egyptians and greeks and how their styles of architecture came about is really fascinating to me — i think it’s taken the place of the history classes that i loved so much in high school.  on the way home i went to the union square greenmarket to satiate my graving for fresh salad — i ended up getting a “few other things,” forgetting that it was quite a walk back home.  my bags gained a couple of pounds, it seemed, with each street i crossed; by the time i got there, it felt like my arms had stretched a few more inches.  :) that night in drawing class we had a contortionist model.  it took a few tries for me to be able to draw her without wincing at her positions — positions i was *sure* the human body had not been intended to take.

my church has a few services every week, and although i usually can’t make it to the evening ones, i love to go early in the day.  so on thursday, i was there for a 9 AM service — although i couldn’t stay for the whole thing, it was a good way to start my morning.  then it was off to english class to watch the much-anticipated “much ado about nothing,” starring kenneth branagh — a near-religious experience in itself.  :)  after lunch and an art-history lecture, i dashed uptown to fulfill a drawing assignment — going to the central park zoo to sketch monkeys.  i got there 20 minutes before closing, but found that they sell the last ticket a half hour before closing time.  luckily, i had only wasted 2 subway tokens and 40 minutes — it could have been worse.  things got a little confusing after that, though — i had to go to the NYU library, look up “snow monkey,” ask three or four librarians where the magazines were, go to the microfilm archive, scroll through old issues of “discover”, and print out pictures to draw from. luckily, dave had come with me, so he helped me unravel the complexities of the computer system; otherwise, i think i would have done something rash out of frustration.  just goes to show you what procrastination will do … 

friday brought much excitement with it: it was my first time seeing my family since move-in day.  they got here around 4 and took a tour of the studio and shop (my dad was drooling!) looked at my projects, acted amazed, took lots of pictures (“now hold up the joint and smile, honey”) and did all of those wonderful, embarassing things that families do.  i didn’t realize how much i had missed them.  my sense of “oren humor” was sadly depleted, i discovered; more than once they laughed at me for taking their jokes seriously.  it took almost a full day for me to remember what “sarcasm” was.  :) 

that night we went out to dinner with youth-pastor greg; after hearing about mars 2112, they all wanted to see it for themselves.  they had a great time, especially elliot, who spent time in the arcade (i didn’t even know they had one, but leave it to him to find it!), and greg, who had fun hitting on all the martian women.  after dinner we walked through times square and made a mental list of all the shows we wanted to see.  (ha!)  my sis spent the night with me in my apartment. 

the next morning, beth (my friend from baltimore, who’s stydying dance at juilliard) came over and the six of us drove up to St. Vladimir’s seminary for “education day.”  we had a time finding the place — my mom, after insisting the directions said to turn RIGHT, suddenly realized she was looking at the wrong set.  we didn’t let her hear the end of that one.  of course, greg was the main attraction at St. Vlad’s, but there were discussions, talks, ethnic foods and services throughout the day.  Holy Cross (my home church) sent up a busload of people, and i was overjoyed to see so many of them in one day — much of the time was spent catching up on all the craziness i had missed.  the day was chilly, a foreshadowing of the infamous NY winters to come, but it warmed to the rekindling of friendships.

that night we did some midtown exploring and ate at a diner (in an effort to placate the members of the family with *less* adventurous taste).  abby stayed with me again, and we hung out with my friends in the dorms — even going for a late-night ben & jerry’s run with us.  i can’t wait until she sees the light and comes to cooper union with me.  :)  this morning we witnessed an amazing spectacle at church: at least 18 clergy members, including three bishops, processing around the altar and into the sanctuary.  it was rather imposing — i think elliot might have regretted his decision to volunteer as altar boy for the morning.  he looked a little overwhelmed up there in the sea of white and gold and green vestments swirling around him.  of course, Father Christopher made us all feel at home despite all the pomp and circumstance.  (“this is NOT a normal Sunday!” he reassurred my dad as he greeted him.)

well, just as i thought these letters were starting to get to a more normal length … oh well.  such is the fate of a long-winded girl with a good memory for detail.  thanks for sticking around for the end.  tune in next week for more adventure, excitement and romance (?) … 

Cooper Chronicles: I.6

(An ongoing series for the month of January, these are letters written to my family and friends during my college years in New York, when I discovered my love of writing.  Introduction here.)

i realized quite abruptly on friday that i’ve now been a resident of new york for an entire month.  i was looking at the receipt for some groceries i had bought, and the printed date nearly jumped out and bit me on the nose: september 25, 1998.  a month ago i was moving in, nervous, excited, scared to death.  now i walk the streets — and ignore the pedestrian signals — just like another native.  only there’s a difference between me and, say, Joe the Average Guy Who Lives in East Village — i may look as indifferent as he is, but it’s actually barely controlled enthusiasm.  i feel like i could never look enough at the crazy, wonderful, strange things this city has to offer.  i still escape whenever i can and go for long walks, by myself or accompanied by another wide-eyed kid from out of town.  i can’t stop looking at the people, the storefronts, the buildings … my friend matt says that if you look up at the skyscrapers when you pass them, it means you’re either a tourist or an architecture student.  i guess i’m a little of both.

i know all the regular panhandlers now.  there’s the Pringles guy — he has a very old empty can of sour cream ‘n’ onion Pringles that he constantly shakes, rattling the change inside.  his extraordinarily quick wit could make him at least mildly famous.  he’s the active type: stands on the corner in the midst of the crowd and talks loudly to anyone who catches his eye and anyone who doesn’t.  

although i can admire him from afar, i’m actually terrified of him.  last week i was hurrying along, eyes downcast, my braids bouncing against the textbook i clutched to my chest — just as i thought he was going to let me off, he exploded with “hi!  nice pigtails!  don’t forget your homework!”  i suppressed my laughter until i reached the lobby of the dorm and then frightened the guard by bursting into giggles as soon as i opened the door.  

then there’s the british guy who sits in a slightly different place each day.  he has curiously striped hair: it looks like his natural color is dark brown, but someone did a very careful job of dyeing bleached-blond stripes all the way through it.  “spare a bit o’ change, mum?”  he asks unfailingly.  i actually feel bad for him — he reminds me of a punk version of Bob Cratchit.  there’s the couple that sits in front of the McDonalds with a sign: “when you go home, we’re still here.”  she is constantly removing something (i don’t care to know what) from his hair, with his head in her lap.  there was the guy who approached matt and i late one night as we were coming home from the jazz club: “one joke for you and your pretty wife,” he kept saying.  “one joke.”  it turned out he wanted a dollar for his services.  such a deal.

my monthly budget has gone well so far: i ended up with 60 extra dollars at the end of the month.  so i celebrated in true emily fashion: by blowing it all, and some of october’s money, on a long-coveted pair of birkenstock sandals.  i’ve never been in love before, but i think i know what it feels like now — these shoes are absolutely amazing.  the Payless sandals went into the garbage, and i can now walk blisterless for hours. 

often i like to cross over into West Village and stroll up 5th avenue, counting the number of Gap stores and listening to the various foreign languages that surround me.  my roommates and i have taken to addressing each other in British accents after i saw one couple in the store having an animated discussion over whether or not they needed Cheez Whiz.  “i told you, love, i got some already,” the girl kept repeating loudly, a la Eliza Doolittle.

lest you think i’m having too much fun enjoying the theater of everyday life in new york, i’ll tell you that school has been much harder than anything i’ve ever done before.  i only have a few hours of class a day, which is great — but that means more homework and lots of studio time.  we have a huge critique on tuesday, for which we are all working feverishly.  it’s not at all unusual to walk into the studio at midnight and see 10 or 12 freshmen still working, reluctantly trying to wrap up before the guard chases them all home.  there are a lot more expectations here than in high school, and we’re expected to meet and exceed them.  we’re cooper kids.  we should know how to do this stuff — and if we don’t, well, we’d better teach ourselves.  it sounds tough, but it’s really fun to be able to rise to a challenge like that. 

it’s that way in the other schools too, but less so: sara and i showed up for the first meeting of “jello” (a literary / cultural group, named after one of peter cooper’s less-glamorous inventions), and jaws dropped as the members realized they had an *architect* joining their club.  (popular opinion is that architecture students leave the studio an average of once a month and scoff at extracurriculars.)

yesterday morning i walked out the door and almost ran into a table of austrian-crystal bracelets.  a street festival had sprung up overnight, and six or seven blocks of third avenue was solid booths of clothing, art treasures and ethnic food.  there was lots of supercheap brand-name stuff (“i bet it’s stolen,” raquel said) and a platform where someone was making speeches about very serious political issues and being completely ignored.  kadar, sara, raquel and i wandered around for hours and spent lots of forbidden money on winter clothes.  (i’m such a sucker for those big, thick sweaters!)

street festivals abound here.  there’s one every weekend, sometimes more.  last sunday’s “college-kid dinner” was at a really nice italian restaurant that was smack in the middle of the “festival de san genarro,” a weeklong party that covers all of little italy and is renowned for its no-ID alcohol policy.  the restaurant was beautiful, elegant and full of drunken people, all singing and clapping behind us.  nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves immensely.  Father Christopher had us all cracking up with funny stories and caricatures of people he knows, and the other students (two NYU guys and one from Queens College) and i had a blast, laughing and eating really, really good italian food.  they all promised to make it a regular occurrence, and i can’t wait for the next one. 

Cooper Chronicles: I.5

(An ongoing series for the month of January, these are letters written to my family and friends during my college years in New York, when I discovered my love of writing.  Introduction here.)

we call her the Petition Lady.  she is tall, nicely dressed, with stylish, very short brown hair.  she stands directly in front of the engineering building where we have some of our classes, behind a self-erected booth with literature about her latest cause strewn about.  “SIGN the pe-TISH-UN!”  she says.  she doesn’t yell, but speaks very loudly and with force.  she makes eye contact with every person that passes her, which i find kind of creepy.  she doesn’t offer a choice.  “SIGN,” she ordered me the first time i ever saw her, pushing the paper in my face.  “HELP the AN-I-MALS.”  i scurried away, frightened.

the puzzling thing about the Petition Lady is that she isn’t always pushing the same cause.  the other day it was animals; before that it was the “WO-MEN” who need to “END their BAD re-LA-SHUN-SHIPS with a-BUS-IVE MEN.”  

once you’ve avoided her successfully several times, she becomes funny.  we all joke about her in the dorms.  “SIGN the pe-TISH-UN!”  we say to each other at random.  she’s funny because she’s such a perfect example of a new yorker — individual, uncompromising, not apologetic in the least.  what you see is what you get.  “SIGN.”  she is like my friend pete, who insists that the correct pronunciation of “sauce” is “SOO-aahse.”  no number of pronunciation guides will convince him otherwise; it’s simple.  everyone else is wrong.

despite the colorful personalities, it’s been a relatively quiet week here in the big apple.  the reality of school is starting to set in, and i have to resign myself to doing homework frequently.  there’s even more of a tendency to procrastinate when the assignment isn’t due for a week (“a whole WEEK!” you keep thinking, until it becomes the day before it’s due).  but i’ve been pretty good about it — no all-nighters so far.  the wonderful thing is that (except for fridays) i don’t have any classes until 11 or 2.  so, if i need to stay up late, at least i can make up for some of it. 

literature is actually becoming more interesting.  the work is easy, since i’ve studied it all before. (my first paper is due in two weeks, and i think i can use the one i wrote last year on the same subject — woo-hoo!)  the in-class discussions, though not as lively and animated as last year’s AP english class, are fun.  computer applications and shop techniques continue to be horrifically boring.  i’m amazed at the amount of tedium that can be squeezed into three hours.  last week in computers, we got a twenty-minute lecture on neatness.  then our professor was called away, and on his way out, he yelled over his shoulder, “you guys can do e-mail or something until i get back.”  we didn’t need a second invitation.  upon his return, we went on a tour of all the computer facilities in the engineering building.  then we were assigned homework which nobody understood.  i wish i could have fallen asleep, but my boredom was keeping me awake.

that night we stayed in the studio until 10:30 in preparation for our first architectonics critique the next day.  when we left, some people were just arriving; some of them had been there all day.  the puzzling thing is that none of them need to be there — it’s a psychological thing.  they sit there and listen to CDs and order pizzas and chat with the second- and third-year students, but they don’t do work.  it’s very odd.  we returned home relatively early.  at around midnight, i was aroused from my homework with a terrific banging out in the hallway.  i rushed out to find my next-door neighbor matt and a huge cardboard tube.  he was holding it over his head and letting it fall; each time he dropped it, it made a loud crashing noise. “what is that … THING?”  i finally asked.

he grinned like a kid that’s been found with his hand in the cookie jar — half-ashamed, half-proud of his behavior.  “it’s a ruckus-maker,” he answered.  “it makes ruckuses.  see?”  he hurled it like a javelin, down the length of the hallway.  i had to admit, it made a rather satisfying sound.  people were emerging from the elevator and the other rooms, drawn by the noise and all wanting to try making a nice ruckus.  i guess even cooper kids need a break from time to time.  

our first critique went rather well, i thought.  abraham (the main guy) wasn’t there, but his second-in-command, professor gersten, came and talked to us.  he liked our design; there were some problems, he said, but we could rework it to incorporate the main idea without starting from scratch.  we were pleased, therefore, and not at all prepared for the verbal lashing we received from abraham on thursday at our second critique.  he was pretty hard on everyone — definitely NOT from the suzuki school of thought.  one group had misunderstood the directions and built a cube without the required extensions on each side; he refused to even look at their work.  i tried to take everything he said with a grain of salt, and to hold the more optimistic view of “there’s no such thing as a bad critique.”  we learned a lot, and i guess that was the point.  thankfully, we don’t have to worry about grades — we don’t get any until the end of the semester.  we can concentrate on learning and working hard.

art is more of the same — she said i had improved since last week, and i’m learning a lot about how to begin a drawing (we aren’t turning in finished drawings, but short sketches) and about technique.  at our second nude-drawing session, she told us all to fill up several pages with scribbles to free our minds.  then (being careful not to actually say it outright) she insinuated that those of us who were too uptight in our work might loosen up a bit if we had a drink or two.  (“only if you’re legal, of COURSE.”)  i’m actually starting to enjoy drawing these stupid bell peppers.  we’re doing them again this week.

the 18th (friday) was *my* 18th birthday, and i was stuck in the dilemma of whether or not to go home.  i had originally intended to, but things were going so well here that i didn’t want to chance a bout of homesickness by seeing everyone from maryland again.  so i stayed — and my new friends rose to the occasion with hugs, cards, gifts and plenty of embarrassment.  (i was getting congratulations from people i didn’t even know — they must have spread the word surreptitiously.)  my family and friends from home called and sent gifts all day long, too. 

we had a great night — a  group of us went to “mars 2112,” a brand new theme restaurant just north of times square.  it’s hilarious — you’re met at the door by actors who, deadpan expressions on their faces, greet you by wiggling their fingers and saying, “bah-beh-nu.”  you can banter them all you want, and they continue treating you as a foreigner.  (“all earthlings must form a line beginning here.”)  then you’re escorted to the “shuttle,” a small room shaped like a spaceship where you go through a ride similar to Star Tours at disneyland (the kind where they jerk your chairs all around while showing you a video of a spaceship going through wormholes at light speed).  you’re dumped out into a large eating area that really looks like martian terrain — the walls look as though they were carved out of red stone.  eerie music plays in the background and red lights glow on the walls and floor.  while you’re eating, costumed martians mingle among you and harass you without speaking.  one came up to dave, who was sitting next to me — he picked up dave’s hand and took a huge sniff of his armpit.  then he dropped it, jumped back and saluted him.  of course, when my friends told them it was my birthday, they had to kiss my hand and serenade me with gurgling noises (the only sound they made).  it was great fun.  we had planned on going swing dancing at a club on the top floor of the world trade center, but it was 21-over only and they wouldn’t even let us on the elevator.  (hhmph!)  so dave, matt and i went to small’s and enjoyed the live jazz into the early hours of saturday morning. 

so i’m now a legal adult — i can drive here, vote, enlist, become a consenting adult and purchase tobacco.  i’m not sure if i like it.  with freedom comes responsibility, and all that stuff.  darn it.

saturday brought more homework time, sleeping and quite an adventure with Nationsbank, my bank from home.  i had been with them for exactly five days when i tried to use my card to pay for some groceries at K-mart and was told that my account was not valid.  a call to the bank brought the news that there was a system-wide problem, and i couldn’t withdraw or pay for anything unless the store called to request verbal authorization.  they called, spent thirty minutes on the phone, and told me it couldn’t be done.  i called the bank again, spent an hour on hold, and eventually handed the phone to the K-mart manager, who talked with them for another thirty minutes before finally telling me i had to wait 24 hours for my account to be re-activated.  I tried to take this as a lesson in patience, and i’m living off of canned goods until tomorrow.  anyway, after that adventure, it was decided that we needed to watch austin powers.  it’s amazing what a cult following has generated around that movie — all it takes is a sign in the elevator to bring in 30+ people, all ready for the miracle. 

one thing i’ve been missing a lot is my music — so yesterday i went to the art building basement for an hour of pure ecstasy.  the room was cramped and the piano slightly out of tune — but i was in heaven.  i also found out how to work my radio and located a classical music station, and i’ve been blasting it all afternoon.  happiness is …

well, i have to leave in a few minutes to go to dinner and a movie with my pastor and the other college kids in the parish.  (“this is on us.  don’t bring ANY money,” he said sternly.  it’s a good thing — because i don’t have any!)

Cooper Chronicles: I.4

(An ongoing series for the month of January, these are letters written to my family and friends during my college years in New York, when I discovered my love of writing.  Introduction here.)

the weeks are flying by — i can hardly believe i’ve been here for three of them!  then again, in one sense, it feels like i’ve always been here — like i’ve never left.  you know how sometimes, every once in awhile, you meet someone so akin to you in personality, interests, and creed that you think you must have been friends with them forever, and just not known it before?  i feel that way about my school.  somehow it feels as though i’ve always lived here — i’ve always walked these dirty and beautiful streets, always looked out of my window and seen skyscrapers instead of oak trees.  i know it’s just an illusion, of course.  probably one day soon i’ll wake up and realize what a stranger i am to this city.  but, for now, i like that it feels like home.

e-mail has been, for the most part, my only contact with my “former life.”  after i sent last week’s letter, i spent most of the rest of the day writing to individual friends.  (avoiding this was exactly what i was trying to do by starting this series, but i suppose it was inevitable.  i love you all too much!)  monday was our first rainy day here, and we enjoyed it.  we stayed indoors and worked on our homework for drawing class (which was, among other things, to draw that same darned peapod AGAIN.)  i’ve really enjoyed watching my roommate sara’s progress in her art classes (she’s an art major.)  she gets to take fun classes like “color,” which focuses on how colors affect other colors and how to use them to one’s advantage in a design.  she had one assignment which was to take a sheet of paper of one color and find two other colors that, when behind the first color, made it look like two distinctly separate colors.  (confusing?  well, it looked really cool.) 

we had our first encounter with the ne’er-do-well maintenance crew in the dorms at the beginning of the week, when the air conditioning broke.  i knew something was wrong when i woke up hot and sweaty instead of freezing (i swear, the temperature drops at least 20 degrees in a normal night.)  so the rest of the week has been spent with the windows opened, wearing shorts around the dorm, and taking long walks at night when it’s cool.

my classes have been going well.  we had our first “real” architechtonics assignment given out on tuesday: to create a frame for a cube.  sounds easy, but professor abraham talked at length on the integrity of the vectors and how they should be preserved (and unwittingly created a catch phrase among all the arch students — “preserving the integrity of the vectors.”  it makes anyone sound horribly intelligent, even when thrown into conversation.  “why, i’d love to accompany you to the art museum — i’ve always thought it did such a good job of preserving the integrity of the vectors.”  “you know what your problem is?  you have no respect for preserving the integrity of a vector.”  “well, i was going to do my homework, but i decided that the integrity of the vectors would be better preserved if i didn’t.”) — which, translated into modern english, means that the structure should have as few holes, joints, and blobs of glue as possible.  in addition, it should be stable. 

our first solution, the only one to completely preserve the integrity of the vectors (HA!), was to use dowels of varying sizes and drill holes in them.  that way, the imaginary lines inside the sticks meet at one imaginary point in the middle.  this created other problems, though — namely, that it’s impossible to drill exact holes in something round, and the sides of the cube would be of different thicknesses — creating imbalance.  i’m sure this is boring you all to death, so i’ll stop — let you know what happens. 

literature continues to be interesting, but repetitive.  the administration is still dragging its feet on the AP credit issue.  in drawing, we had our first experience with nude models.  i’ll be honest and say that it took about five minutes to get my shock under control and look at the model (he’s actually a funny guy — known around campus as “naked bill”) as an object to be sketched, not a scene from a rated R movie.  we’ve also moved from drawing peapods to drawing cut-up bell peppers.  (“you’re going to think this is turning into a cooking class!” my professor lamented.)  we also had our first critique on friday, where our work is pinned up for all the world to see.  it was relieving to see that i’m not the most inexperienced in the class, and she didn’t rip anybody apart.  (that comes later, i’m told.)  i had my first session of architecture history also, which looks to be very fun.  we started with the ancient cities of Babylon and Ur on wednesday.  it’s our only stereotypical “college class” — i.e., lecture format, lots of photocopied reading handouts.  all the others seem to tend towards discussion and group work.

this has also been a great week for one of my favorite pastimes — swing dancing.  i had no idea the trend was so huge in new york — but should’ve guessed.  we went dancing three times this week.  the first time was in the TV room, where we pushed back the chairs and cranked the stereo — some of the R.A.s tried to give a lesson, but it was more fun to grab someone and teach them yourself. i taught all kinds of people, and i don’t even know that much besides the basic step and a few variations.  my friend damien was absolutely ecstatic when he picked it up — he was screaming, “i’m dancing, i’m dancing!”  ah — the rewards of teaching.  the most fun was on saturday night, though — we went to a club and heard 5 live swing bands, all local.  i danced mostly with my friend kadar, who was an amazing partner, considering he had never done it before.  i think he enjoyed feeling powerful by making me dizzy and dipping me so close to the floor i thought my head would hit it.  we were making up our own moves by the end of the night.  swing dancing is the most fun kind of dancing — invigorating, exciting, a little daring when some guy starts swinging you around and almost hitting other people.  when it’s done right, the girl looks like a toy being bounced, swung, and twirled around.  my sense of balance, which was extremely poor before, is slowly improving with all these spins.  i’m taking advantage of all these free nights now, though.  i understand there won’t be many more.  as professor abraham said, “we expect you guys to live here.  it’s not a class from 2 to 5; it’s 24 hours.”  shiver. 

thursday night pete made ravioli again, and armando made strawberry sorbet in his ice-cream maker.  raquel and sara and i love it — there’s so many good male cooks around here that we don’t have to fend for ourselves much of the time!  then we rented “a fish called wanda” and watched into the wee hours — very, very funny movie.  the next night matt and i went to a campus-crusade party at someone’s apartment — i don’t think i’ll have time to become really involved with the group, but it was fun to meet people.

and, on saturday morning, i was pleasantly surprised with a visit from my beloved youth pastor greg!!  it was so good to see someone from home — we took the subway all the way uptown and visited the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which is more like a museum than a church — but very beautiful and interesting.  then we had a time finding a place for lunch — after wandering up the ghetto street of Harlem, he said, “when in doubt, go over a block.”  it was a different world over there.  i went shopping at the farmers’ market in union square later that afternoon, and did some exploring solo.

this morning Father Christopher announced that next week he was taking all the college kids out to dinner.  i’m telling you, this church is looking better and better …

right now i’m feeling very peaceful — dave (next door) packed us a picnic lunch and we went to battery park, right across the water from ellis island.  he took pictures with his way-cool camera and did calculus homework — i read my new favorite book, ayn rand’s “the fountainhead.”  it was a going-to-college present from daddy.  i’m afraid it might become a substitute for sleep in the next few weeks.  a few hours in a real park — grass, trees, water — have a lasting effect on you when your day-to-day life is so *urban*.

as a city-dwelling veteran, greg’s advice to me was: “i know you’re going to be busy here — but you should really try to see EVERYTHING.”  the more i’m here, the more that’s what i want to do.  every corner brings a new surprise.  everything i do, everything i see, encourages me to do and see more.  i’m cautious — if i decide to take a walk late at night, i grab some other people and several formidable-looking boys to come with me.  but i’m not scared.  even the infamous panhandlers make me laugh.  (today I saw one who houted, “hey there!” at me, as if i were an old friend.)  i’m loving every minute of it.

Cooper Chronicles: I.3

(An ongoing series for the month of January, these are letters written to my family and friends during my college years in New York, when I discovered my love of writing.  Introduction here.)

one of the things that i think will take a lot more getting used to in this city is the elevators.  at home, when i was going somewhere, i had to factor in traffic problems as well as distance.  now, whether i’m going downstairs to the dorm lobby or up to the seventh floor of the Foundation building for my drawing class, i have to tack on about ten minutes of elevator-waiting time.  elevators are sneaky.  they pretend to be going up and then grind to a halt and begin descending.  meanwhile, the passengers are frantically pushing buttons and cursing and pounding on the doors.  i’m not sure, but whenever that happens i think i can hear a very faint snicker emanating from the floor. 

when you’re waiting for one, you can watch its progress by the digital counter on the wall above.  14 … 12 … 11 … 10 … 10 … 10 … 10 … 10.  “what’s going ON?” you wonder.  your fingers drum impatiently as you imagine someone in the elevator, blocking the door while they finish up an involved conversation with a passerby in the hall.  this can cause another interesting phenomenon: Elevator Rage.  it could be your best friend in there — but when he/she is the cause of an imagined delay, they had better scurry off in a rush, or else face your righteous wrath.

the other day another man and i were the lone witnesses of a very sketchy occurrence: both of us boarded the elevator at the fifth floor of the cooper main office building.  i was currently the victim of a run-around by the administration in my quest for AP english credit, and had just been told to go to the third floor. i pushed the “3”; he pushed the “1”.  we began to descend.  this elevator is perhaps the slowest in the western hemisphere to begin with; coupled with this languor is its habit of stopping at every floor on the way down.  thus, i was prepared for a long ride.  however, it surprised me (as they often do) by going all the way to the basement floor, ignoring both of our requests, and stopped there.  the doors opened to reveal a typical basement-type atmosphere: buckets and mops lying around on the dirty concrete floor.  the other passenger and i looked at each other and smiled nervously.  after about 90 seconds of absolute silence, a dirty, hairy arm emerged from around the door, reached in and pushed “10”, and withdrew.  the doors closed and we began to ascend.  we looked at each other and burst into laughter. 

New York life has given me so many experiences like that one — random, strange occurrences that some would find annoying and some hilarious.  in my opinion, the most important thing is to retain your sense of humor.  if you can laugh, you’ll get by just fine.

but — on to the story.  last week, after writing, my roommates and i went grocery shopping (maybe the novelty will wear off after awhile, but the three of us love to go together and buy our own food) and then hosted an impromptu dinner party in our apartment.  it happens often; people conveniently stop in when they smell food, and we don’t mind sharing.  (especially because that means it’s *their* turn next.)  i had just made a huge batch of tabouli.  we had salad, too, and fresh bread.  pretty soon we had attracted a few hungry boys.  pete repaid us a few days later with ravioli and  — wonder of wonders! — totally made-from-scratch tomato sauce.  it was heavenly.

monday was our third or fourth “orientation day,” and by this time it was getting old.  we had “AIDS 101” in the morning, a three-hour, extremely frank and uncensored lecture/discussion about HIV, its causes and results.  it was a little frightening, but i guess that was the point.  then they scattered us into groups all over the Village for a free lunch at one of the local restaurants.  that’s one thing we all love about cooper; besides free tuition, they offer free food — lots of it.  we get pizza parties, pancake breakfasts, and, that day, a wonderful seafood lunch at a classy italian joint a few blocks from the school.  then it was back to the safety stuff — we were separated by gender to watch a video on date rape, followed by a discussion.  with all the pains they had taken to segregate us, i was surprised that the discussion was being led by an all-male student panel — i wondered if the guys had *girls* leading them.  typical administrative goof-up, i guess.  when the forums let out at around 5, we were all feeling sufficiently “blah” to get a movie.  there’s a great TV lounge on the fifth floor of the dorm, and we piled into chairs and couches to watch “the zero effect,” a hilarious movie with bill pullman and ben stiller.  two thumbs up, if any of you care. 

the next morning it was up at 6 AM to get ready for the annual “desk run.”  (please excuse any malevolent feelings that may be unwittingly exuded on this subject — i assure you, i am attempting to keep them under control.)  the desk run *sucks*.  it is perhaps the most primitive and uncivilized way to distribute materials i have ever encountered.  i’ve heard about it before, but i always thought they were joking.  here’s how it works: first through fourth year architecture students are given workspaces in a giant studio on the third floor of the foundation building.  at the beginning of each year, kids sleep outside the building to get closest to the doors.  when they open, a few at a time are allowed to scramble up the stairs, dash into the studio and fight to the death for the desk, stool and space of their choice.  it can get downright ugly; “this is when you make your enemies,” one veteran cautioned us.  this year they improved things by the smallest fraction; numbers were distributed by a lottery system so that staying outside all night wouldn’t improve one’s chances to get a better number.  still, when we arrived at 7, we were near the end of the line.

we got our numbers and then had to wait until 8 for the doors to open.  none of us were quite willing to take the risk of going back to the dorms for an hour (so infused were we with their desk-run propaganda).  so we stayed outside, talking as if we were indifferent to the feeling of intense, fearful anticipation that was thick all around us.  finally, we were allowed, in groups of five, to run upstairs.  we survived, somehow.  my number was 13, and i got the space i had wanted originally, although cramped a little by the ferocious second-year students.  after i was settled, i sat on my desk with my feet on the stool to protect my space as the rest of the students pushed and strained and plotted for spaces all around me.  soon some fourth-year students came up to me, introduced themselves and congratulated me for making it through what they called “the toughest experience all year.”  we chatted for awhile; they told me not to believe anything i’ve heard, but to learn for myself how hard the work is and how hard i’ll need to push myself to excel. it’s an individual thing, they said.  (one guy said that for his first week, he stayed overnight in the studio every night; not because he had to, but because other people were and he thought he was *supposed* to!)  i think it was the best advice i’ve had so far.

the afternoon brought our first “real” class to date: computer applications and descriptive geometry.  if the first day was any clue, it will be every bit as boring as it sounds.  the teacher’s soporific bass voice droned on and on in a monotone that sounded more like a lullaby than a lecture.  more than once i remember wondering what it meant if you were fighting the urge to doze off in your first college class ever.  we were told to purchase a textbook, about the size of a small Bible, for 96.00.   my friends and i cut it down to 14, though, when we discovered that photocopying isn’t illegal if it’s for educational purposes. 

next was “literary forms and expressions,” which turned out to be an exact reproduction of the english class i took last year.  i worked superhard in that class and aced the AP so that i could avoid exactly this sort of occurrence, so with fire in my eyes i strode to the main office to straighten the problem out.  (cooper doesn’t always give credit for AP classes; in fact, it’s rather rare.)   after two hours of going from office to office and building to building, i was informed that the administration had not decided on a policy “this year,” and i would have to come back in a week.  on the bright side, though, next week we get to watch the kenneth branagh version of “much ado about nothing.”  (this revelation prompted a suppressed squeal from my side of the room.)

i had two more classes the next day — the first, drawing, was led by a suspiciously bohemian art teacher who made us draw peapods for two hours.  then she read us a column about how peas are not the least bit alike (her personal vendetta against the “two peas in a pod” expression) and, as a homework assignment, gave us another drawing.  (i’m trying very hard to be open-minded in this area, because i know i need the instruction.  i’ve never taken freehand drawing before, and it will prove invaluable to me as an architecture student, i know.  so, for now anyway, i’m swallowing it.)  she also gave us a list of art supplies to buy — i dragged my artist roommate with me to untangle the mysteries of HB, B3 and B6 drawing pencils, kneaded erasers and vine-versus-compressed charcoal.  another wonderful thing about this city — student discounts abound.  i got 10% off of everything at the art store, which is only a 10- or 15-minute walk from here. 

the second class was shop tech.  the shop at cooper union in one reason my dad was delighted with the school, and also, i think, why he’s considering enrolling there himself.  it’s a handyman’s paradise; a huge kiln, piles and piles of lumber, band saws and jigsaws and instruments that look too scary even to approach at this point.  we all filed in and stood, a crowd of about 50 of us.  it took me about 15 minutes to realize there was a teacher in the front, and 15 more to realize he was talking.  by then, he was done and we were filing out.  i was a little confused; i later learned he was just giving the “welcome to class — i’ll see you next week” talk.  actually, all of our classes so far have let out early — often by an hour or more.  no complaining here. 

that night, we engaged in a very heated (unplanned)”discussion” of “The Simpsons vs. South Park.”  i escaped to 14A after two hours of argument. (they’re a bunch of really fun guys that remind me of my buddies back home — we hang out so much that they’ve taken to calling me their “fifth roommate.”)  when i arrived back, my roommate raquel had suddenly contracted a pretty serious UTI, and we had to rush her to the pharmacy for emergency medication.  it was scary, but she recovered partially right away, and went home the next night to see her doctor.  the plus side of this was that we learned where the 24-hour pharmacy is, just in case.

on thursday, we had our first encounter with the “real” architecture classes.  architectonics (the study of space, structure and visual composition) is the tough one.  actually, i was encouraged even before i went in: my friend eliot told me that the person who made the final decision on our home tests was professor peter eisenman, no less.  (all of you non-architects — well, that would be all of you. :) eisenman is one of the “new york 5,” a group of elite architects from the city.  though never licensed himself, he is highly respected in the field. we haven’t met him yet.  he’s the one who has, according to rumor: drawn on projects; ripped projects up; burned projects; told first year students that there’s too many of them and he’ll have to fail at least 5 by the end of the semester; and been in a porn film.  students here swear by that last one, however ridiculous it sounds.)  

when we were all assembled, the four professors introduced themselves.  the main one, who called himself “the godfather of the architecture program,” was raimund abraham.  he’s the typical small-in-stature, big-in-personality guy, with a thick unidentifiable accent.  he told us that in his 35 years of teaching he had never taught a class before labor day, and he wasn’t going to start now.  (we all liked him immediately.)  we were told to come into the next room in groups of 3 to introduce ourselves: they asked us our names, where we were from and for a story about ourselves.  i told them about how i was in “the sound of music” last spring.  the punchline, for those of you who don’t know: my romantic lead was too shy to kiss me on the lips until closing night, and when he finally did it shocked me so much i started to fall over.  i had to draw on all my impromptu work to make the fall look intentional.  they were all laughing except abraham, who got the joke about two minutes later and cracked up, interrupting one of the other teachers.  “ha, ha,” he guffawed, “there will be no sound of music for you this year!” 

apparently, the fact that i would have no free time at all from now on was pretty funny.

after that kind of pressure, we again needed to dip into the selection at Kim’s Videos for some relief.  we got “the man who knew too little,” a lot like the Pink Panther movies but not quite as funny.  then, at exactly the right time (1 AM) we popped in Mystery Science Theater 3000 and laughed ourselves silly.  friday was a holiday, so we could sleep in; we went uptown to the Met (i was with a bunch of guys and two other girls, so we spent much of the time in Arms & Armor.  inevitable, i suppose), explored a little, and ended up at a quaint Vietnamese restaurant on 5th Avenue.  that night a bunch of us went out and played pool — one thing you don’t have to be good at to enjoy.  i’m living proof.  :)  then somebody had the bright idea of watching “shaft.”  it was possibly the most pointless movie i’ve ever seen — well, check that.  i didn’t actually *see* it after the first five minutes.  i was fast asleep, along with most of the other crew.

yesterday i spent a leisurely afternoon on a picnic in central park with my new friends, rod and julie dreher (“rod the reporter,” for all of you Frederica fans).  we visited, ate, napped and read under the trees in strawberry fields.  among other things, we witnessed the swiftness of the NYPD in finding lost children; watched a man ride his bike around with a radio on full blast playing opera music, and discovered (by accident) a man enjoying the summer breeze, reclining and reading a book, naked as a jaybird.  every once in awhile, you are reminded of where you are.  :) 

ast night my friend dave took me on a tour of the village in our quest to find a starbucks that would honor our free-coffee coupons.  he told me the story of the nearby restaurant that was erected in a mostly-residential neighborhood by cooper alumni, whose profits benefit the institution: it’s become a hot spot for celebrities and is bringing unwanted commercialism to the area.  on the side of the building, one New Yorker has voiced his thoughts as many of them do, in big black letters: LOOK WHAT COOPER UNION HAS DONE TO OUR COMMUNITY!!

this morning, for the first time, my alarm clock failed me, but i was at church ten minutes after the service started.  more kisses, more handshakes.  one lady came up to me, very sweetly, took my arm and began speaking to me very earnestly in another language.  “i’m sorry?” i volunteered sheepishly.  “mmmm.”  she shook her head angrily, dropped my arm and stalked off.  i guess, with my dark hair and head scarf, i looked a little too ethnic for my own good.  i continue to be impressed and very thankful for this church that is so physically and spiritually close to home.

Cooper Chronicles: I.2

(An ongoing series for the month of January, these are letters written to my family and friends during my college years in New York, when I discovered my love of writing.  Introduction here.)

if i could choose one word to describe my emotions in the past week, i think it would be “amazed.”  amazed at how quickly it all took place; amazed at how easily i fell into dorm life; amazed at how nice everyone here is; and, most of all, completely amazed at the amazingness of this amazing city.

i’m sitting in my roommate sara’s room. out the window i can see the tip of the chrysler building and the brooklyn bridge.  all around me, there are huge skyscrapers; some with mod-looking glass pyramids affixed to the tops, some with graceful sloping points, and one apartment right across the street with outdoor terraces full of greenery that makes me envious.  peering down from the bed, i can see the lower levels of the city; nail salons, ice cream stores, and a cheese shop that sara and i discovered a few days ago — sells fresh bread, cheese and olives at prices that are affordable even for impoverished college students.  yellow cabs are everywhere, of course, and people bustling around like ants — it makes me think of the “pick-a-little-talk-a-little” song from “the music man.”  To say that new york city never sleeps is an understatement; never *blinks* is more like it.  on thursday night sara and i went across the street to one of the four starbucks in a three-block radius of the school.  it was pretty late, about 11; i wasn’t sure it was safe to leave.  but then we walked out onto the street and it seemed as if everyone was just waking up.  there were groups of businessmen sitting at the outdoor cafe a few stores down; well-dressed couples looking like they were on the way to the theatre; and, of course, the usual plethora of homeless guys rattling paper cups and singing to themselves in other languages.  we had to laugh.

well, this week’s story really begins on monday afternoon, when we left the house about three hours later than we had wanted.  i had been running around all morning; throwing last-minute additions into the slowly growing pile in the living room, bidding fond farewells to several friends, and trying to straighten my bank account out before i left.  we drove to new jersey, had dinner and did some dorm-room shopping at ikea, and arrived at the hotel about 9.  there was still time to swim (although i believe i re-contracted a form of bacterial infection common to users of not-very-clean hot tubs) and stay up late talking, not really believing anything was going to happen the next day.  we had been talking about college for so long that i felt like someone else was going, not me.  *i* would return home and live at 106 north rolling road and go back to chapelgate with all my friends.

nonetheless, we were roused at the criminal hour of 5:30 to eat our free breakfast and dawdle some more before leaving the hotel.  we drove into the city; i remembered the lincoln tunnel, the noisy honking and (i was surprised!) many of the street names and landmarks along the way.  we arrived at the dorm, where a highly efficient operation was underway; the “orientation staff,” as their shirts read, piled our stuff onto rolling baggage carts, and carted it up to the 14th floor, all so quickly that there was no time for a major traffic jam outside.  directly after our car, my roommate raquel pulled up; although i had met her parents during the summer, she had been in europe for three months and we had never actually talked in person.  she looked about as uptight and nervous as i felt.

when we got to the room, i was a bit disappointed; the one that we visited, i was sure, had had a nicer kitchen and cleaner bathroom. we also discovered right away that the “bunkbeds” were actually two bottom beds, and wouldn’t stack; and since our room was the smaller of the two double bedrooms, this was a problem.  so we shyly entered the adjoining room and asked sara (whom we had known for no more than five minutes) if she would mind switching beds with us.  she and her mom were very gracious, especially considering the bed was made and had piles of things on top of it … this catastrophe out of the way, we set to work making these four white walls and stark furniture look like home.

when packing the car, we had purposely left out bulky items like paper towels and laundry detergent, since there was an extremely classy k-mart across the street that we could take advantage of.  moving in reminded us of a zillion other little things that we had forgotten to pack, so we added those to an ever-growing list.  i think we actually made three trips before we had everything.  i think that k-mart did quite a brisk business this week; everyone i’ve met so far has said they’ve been there a few times.  as one mother put it (rather loudly, in her lovely brooklyn accent) on the elevator that afternoon: “Oh my God, K-mart is just the best place for school shopping.”

once we were moved in, we went to the various orientation activities — a president’s address and college-kid panel (i confess i was dozing the entire time) for the parents and students, distribution of college id cards and anti-drug brochures, and an all-student meeting in which we were warned about spending too many nights in the studio right before deadlines. “a lot of times you just *have* to do it,” they said, “but it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.  the dean can get pretty mad, especially if a whole lot of you are there all night.”  we sat in stunned silence; one kid, speaking for the rest of us, raised his hand and said, rather dazedly, “so, like … how long before we start having to spend the night in the studio?”  

these culminated in a “barbeque” in the peter cooper park, the one green spot on the “campus”.  it consists of a triangular fence enclosing a huge statue of the founder and a well-kept, but always locked, garden.  then we visited a neighboring Orthodox church — unassuming on the outside, but inside it’s a mini-cathedral; beautifully handpainted icons everywhere.  i’ll probably visit there on sunday. 

then, finally, we said our goodbyes.  they were rather anticlimactic, actually; nothing like my friend pete’s (incidentally, he’s egyptian and Coptic — my first Orthodox friend in new york).  i’ll tell you his description of the scene, but it won’t be half as funny without his comical queens accent and hand gestures. 

pete was standing on the corner with his parents.  “goodbye mom, goodbye dad,” he said.  “see you soon.”

“GIMME A HUNDRED BUCKS!”  he heard, right next to his ear.  he was being assaulted by an extremely strange beggar.  “sorry,” he said.  “i don’t have a hundred bucks.” 

“gimme a hundred bucks!” the guy said, with less force this time.  pete chuckles.  “i’m telling you, i don’t have anything like that.”  his mom, he says, was screaming in arabic, telling him to tuck his cross inside his shirt and maybe the guy wouldn’t hurt them.

“well, at least gimme a nickel!”  the guy was back to screaming again.  “i’m tellin’ you, i’m crazy like that!”  pete gave him a quarter and he went on to someone else.

ah, the congenial spirit of new york.  (don’t worry, they haven’t hit me up for that much yet.)

anyway, i guess i wasn’t too upset because i knew i would see my family soon, and talk to them even sooner.  like it or not, though, everything would be different from now on.

the next morning we left for a summer camp in port jarvis (in the very bottom part of the state — about two hours from the city.)  it was a great experience — a 36-hour orientation, basically.  no cheesy get-to-know-you games, just all of us in a delightfully stress-free setting, free to get acquainted at our own pace.  the ride up was entertaining, to say the least; the bus driver, a typical New Yawkah, shouted questions about directions to us in the back. 

“hey!  anybody know where eighth street is?”  when he received no answer, he tried again, a bit louder:

“HEY!!  i SAID, anybody know where eighth street is?  come on, people?  you speak english?”

we just sat there, a little overwhelmed, murmuring polite “i-don’t-know’s” and exchanging nervous smiles.

“oh, f—- you all,” he muttered.  “don’t even know where you live.  don’t even speak english.”  ahh — friendship.

i met tons of people; i haven’t seen one yet with an attitude.  everyone is nice, funny, accepting — and there’s this wonderful, collaborative spirit among us all.  we all made it in; now we have to stick together if we’re going to make it out.  there was a ropes course, a zip-glider, swimming, a huge primitive toy called “the blob” that, when inflated, made it possible for one person to jump on the back and send the person sitting on the front flying through the air, and lots of shade and greenery.  we savored it, tried to store it up for future use when we would be craving the sight of a tree.

we arrived back at the dorms on thursday; that night, raquel, sara and i went around to all the doors on our floor and a few of the other floors and introduced ourselves to all the people we hadn’t met.  we went grocery shopping and had a dinner that i think will be quite common over the next few years — salad, fresh bread and hummus.

i’ve made a lot of friends here, and i feel comfortable around people whether i know them or not.  we’ve done a lot of exploring — went to chinatown, which is only about a 20-minute walk, visited the museum of modern art (one of many that we have free admission to with our cooper ids — woo-hoo!), braved the subway and went to a pizza place with slices the size of small children.  the great thing about it, though, is that i can explore all i want — and then, when i’m done exploring, i can come home and curl up with a book and a cup of tea and close the blinds, and it feels almost like i’m back in catonsville.

this is all so exciting.  i’m in a completely different world from the one i left behind.  i’ll get used to it soon, i think.  in fact, i think i’m pretty much used to it now.  except for the real work hasn’t started yet.

saturday night a group of us went to a jazz club called small’s — appropriately named, because it was hard work squeezing all of us into the tiny underground space.  10 dollars’ cover charge got us free juice, crackers and a long night of wonderful live jazz music.  the next morning, i went to the Orthodox church i mentioned earlier.  it was great — lots of old russian ladies pinching my cheek and introducing me to the choir director and the other college kids.  wow — i’m a college kid.  it gives me such a thrill to say that. 

A Look Back

I am a thinker, a reasoner, and a questioner.  This is an asset in many ways and a great burden in others: I can wear myself out without moving a muscle, just puzzling and debating and agonizing inside my own head.

After the past couple of months, I need to take a break while I contemplate the future of this blog.  There are so many reasons for this that I won’t bore you with the details (if you want them, please e-mail me privately.)

While I do this, I’d like to leave you with something to read, though; nd I thought it would be appropriate to go back to the very beginning of my writing career – the Cooper Chronicles, a series of weekly e-mails I sent during my time in architecture school in New York. 

Sometimes things are clear, and at the time it seemed very clear that I loved writing, people loved reading it and I should continue for as long as possible.  None of those things seem clear thirteen years later, so my hope is that a break, coupled with some inspiration from my past self, will provide that.  I’ll continue to read your comments, of course (one of my greatest joys!) and I’ll be back in a month, God willing, with a fresh perspective and a plan.

So, without further adieu: the story of a little girl in the big city.

august 23, 1998

well, the time has come — the time is now — for me to move on.  i’ve been slowly packing my life up into cardboard boxes and duffel bags, gathering up the memories, the hippie skirts and the kitchen utensils for loading into the car.

this letter is an introduction to the latest phase of my life. in less than 24 hours i will be leaving for college in the east village of manhattan, going to study architecture at “the cooper union for the advancement of science and art.”  it’s a disproportionately long name; there are only 30 freshmen architecture students, and about 850 in the whole school — which offers art, architecture and engineering majors — combined.

if it sounds like i know anything about what i’m doing, don’t believe it.  i have no idea what to expect.  in tenth grade i experienced an architectural epiphany and decided that i had to try it.  never mind that i had no experience in the field, had never taken an architectural drawing course (or any kind of drawing, for that matter) and my father was saying things like, “if you think you’ll get to design houses, you’re wrong.  you’ll end up restructuring storefronts for wal-mart!”  i was hopelessly smitten.

as in any love affair, though, i was unsure.  what if i got to school and discovered i had no talent for it?  what if i *didn’t* get into school at all?  where was i going to school, anyway?  was i supposed to be worrying about these things?  to his credit, my father eventually reversed his position on architecture; in fact, i never would have applied to any of those schools if it hadn’t been for him.  he was the one who bought the college catalogs and “u.s. news” ratings, called his architect friends, and got the inside info on where to apply.  i had thrown up my hands in despair a long time ago, back when i was being inundated with piles of mail from schools that all looked good to me.  cooper union looked better than any other on paper, because it was free.  every student who was admitted got a full academic scholarship.  of course, they neglected to mention the price of living in manhattan.  the other catch is that it’s not so easy to get in; for me, it required a miracle.

the criteria for admission is primarily how one scores on the home test that they send out.  i have no idea what they were thinking when they looked at my scrawls — i also have no idea what i was thinking when i drew them.  i think i was trying to be even more ambiguous and bohemian than their instructions were (example: “Box Two.  Self-portrait with no reference to body.”  huh?), but i’m not sure.  maybe they were just tired of my once-a-day phone calls for a week to find out if i had been accepted or not.  (i was sure i had been rejected; i just wanted confirmation.)  either way, i got home from church one fateful friday night to find a message from dean richard bory on my machine.  he apologized for the delay (“i’m sohrwy i haven’t cooled soonuh”) but, to give me “some cause for celebration,” i had gotten in.  whoo-hoo!

somehow i had gotten into the school of my dreams.  i visited it the next weekend … i was awed by the urban atmosphere, the spacious studio and the number of body piercings on our student guide.  i had to go.  we took out loans, signed housing forms — and i got a hepatitis vaccine, which the doctor explained was “always good for kids who are moving away.”  (yikes!)

so soon we’ll be on the road … wide-eyed innocent me in the back seat, surrounded by family members and bags that wouldn’t fit in the trunk, off to a much bigger world than i’m leaving behind.  i have no idea what to expect.  i haven’t even met my roommate yet — she’s been traipsing about europe for the summer and just flew back this afternoon.  i don’t know if there will be a piano that i can play when i’m frustrated with schoolwork and need to vent.  i don’t even know what i’m going to eat for dinner on my first night without parents.  (but it will probably involve bagels and hummus, if i can find somewhere to get dried chickpeas.  i’ve heard that manhattan is famed for gourmet food, but the only grocery store we visited last time had aisles so small you couldn’t turn around inside the store.  you had to inch your way out sideways.) 

i guess that’s what’s so cool about this stage of life.  there are so many choices to make.  if it turns out that i hate living in new york city, i’ll transfer somewhere else.  if i discover that architecture is not my “bag,” i’ll change my major.  for now, though, i’m following something that started as a fancy and blossomed into a dream.  i can’t wait to find out where it takes me.

Dinner for Eight

Recently, Rod posted an interesting conundrum about a fantasy dinner party for you, your spouse, and six other well-known people (living or dead, but in separate groups.)  Here is my list, which took me a couple of days of hemming and hawing to complete and a couple of weeks to write about:

Rod noted that your list wouldn’t necessarily be the people you’d most like to meet or even the people you most admire; they should be people you really think would make good dinner guests.  I like diversity, so I tried for an even mix of occupations, religions and gender (classic dinner-party etiquette mandates boy-girl seating, anyway.)

The Living:

1. Bono (Musician and Activist) He can make me weak-kneed with one soaring descant, and his occupation as a rock musician would certainly make for some interesting stories, but I’m actually most interested in his take on African politics and hearing about what it was like growing up under the specter of the IRA.
2. Carla Bruni (Model and Musician) No fantasy dinner party is complete without a French presence. She’s stylish, talented and completely classy, and the fact that she’s married to the President of France helps lend an air of political importance to the gathering.  (The air is the important thing; actual politicians couldn’t possibly be interesting dinner companions.)
3. Atom Egoyan (Filmmaker) I want to know where his ideas come from (I wrote my senior thesis on The Sweet Hereafter) and I want to hear about Armenia — what it means to him and what he thinks its future will be like.
4. Peter Eisenman (Architect) Believe it or not, this pompous philosopher was one of the first on my list. Back in my undergraduate days, we’d all drag ourselves to Tuesday crit, sleep-deprived and nearly suicidal, only to hear about his latest dinner party. They included the most unusual guests (German philosophers and rock musicians) and he always had something interesting to say about the zeitgeist that inspired them. So I guess I’m taking a gamble that he’s more fun over a bottle of wine than in front of a wall full of blood, sweat and Rapidographs.
5. Sharon Astyk (Writer, Activist, Mother) I respect Sharon more than almost any person I know [of.] Her deep faith, commitment to traditional ideals, and desire to create a better world for her children are amazing.  I also think she could hold her own against Eisenman in a debate (and could certainly make him feel like a bad Jew.)
6. Mother Aemeliane (Scholar, Nun) I couldn’t feel right hosting a dinner party without at least one Orthodox Christian guest, and I can’t think of anyone else who would be a better addition to this one. You may have heard the story of her miraculous rescue from a collapsed building, but unless you have been in her presence you can’t understand the tremendous force of spirit, combined with an even greater humility, that enables her to guide so many people with such grace.

The Eternal:

1. C. S. Lewis (Writer) He should be a required guest for any Christian taking part in this exercise. Brilliant, creative, thoughtful, funny, likes to smoke after dinner.  Yes, please!
2. St. Brigid of Kildare (Nun) She’s my patron saint, a disciple of St. Patrick.  And she once turned an entire bathtub of water into beer, so she’d be a handy person to have around!
3. Frederic Chopin (Musician) The token Frenchman: he lived a short life, filled with suffering, but bequeathed oceans of beauty to the generations that followed.
4. Anne Frank (Martyr) Another short, painful life, but one which inspired many. I worried about her young age at first but then remembered: teenage girls always have plenty to say.
5. e. e. cummings (Writer) Many poets are accused of being artists with words, but he really was one. The way he saw the world was truly unique.
6. Hester Prynne (Seamstress, Outcast) I was really stuck on this last one until I remembered there had been no injunction against fictional characters.  Considering how thoughtful and introspective this group is, I think she would have a lot to add to the conversation.

Your lists, please!  Answer or link below.

The Five-Minute Pitch

It started innocently enough.  My students had just read “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and were, fittingly, incensed:  

“How can he just say this stuff?”  

“People will never listen!”  

“This would NEVER work.”

So although he did, and they did, and it did, I tried to channel their outrage into a more productive endeavor. Imagine you only had five minutes to change someone’s life by telling them about Christ.  What would you say?

I called it the Five-Minute Homily, but it was really more like the Five-Minute Pitch; the sales metaphor is less distasteful if you really do believe in hell and think you may never have another chance to help someone stay out of it.  Plus, it’s a useful exercise in self-analysis: how well do you really know your own beliefs?  And how can you distill them down without watering them down, intrigue and ignite without glamorizing and smoothing over?

After grading theirs, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and — you guessed it — ended up writing my own.  You can read it if you want, but before you do, I encourage you to try your hand at the same exercise.

Belief is a funny thing.  When someone says, “Believe me … ” you may profess that you do, but a part of you is always waiting — isn’t it? — to see if he really means what he says, because part of that belief can’t happen until later.  You need to see that she’s sincere by watching what comes next.  “Believe me, I hate to be late” can’t be true, really, if he’s always late, and “Believe me, I love kids” sounds a little less plausible when you’ve only ever seen her frown in their direction.

So, although believing that God exists is hard enough without a vision or sign, that’s actually the easiest part of faith.  The difficult part is the lifetime that follows: will your actions, words and innermost thoughts profess that belief, or will it be another “I don’t believe in holding grudges” from one who can’t bring himself to forgive?

If you believe, your life will change.  That is a fact.  It will not be perfect, but your job is to keep trying, while at the same time admitting you can’t do it on your own.  Loving your enemies?  Honoring your parents?  Giving to the poor?  A life that is centered on God will include them all, and yet none of them are easy to practice.

In fact, life itself is far from easy: everyone knows this.  The world is full of beauty and light, but there are also moments of darkness and pain so acute we almost feel we can’t bear them.  Some of us have more of the first kind, and some much, much more of the second, but we all have burdens, many of them secret, all of them heavy.

And here’s what you may find incredible: your whole life, each joy and sorrow, the note from a friend on the day you really needed it and the car accident on the day you really didn’t — each of those moments were created for you by a being more powerful than you can imagine, who somehow saw fit to be involved in the smallest and humblest details of your existence.  You don’t have to do this alone.  He doesn’t want you to.

It’s incredible, really.  So is the world, and yet we open and close our eyes to it every day.