What I Taught Myself Thirteen Years Later

Of all the amazing moments in the fascinating and weighty American Beauty, it’s Lester Burnham’s last words that I recall most often: “Man, oh man.  Man, oh man, oh man, oh man.”  He’s looking at a photo of his family that seems untouched by the psychosis and pain that’s haunted them throughout the film.  They are young, happy, united.  His words are at once a meditation on the depraved and surprising nature of humanity, and a simple inability to express one’s feelings about said nature.  In this state of transcendent meditation, his life is cut short, and the movie effectively ends.  This is its thesis statement.

I feel something similar when I look at my own life, or at least at the period about which I wrote so much in those letters I republished last month.  It’s hard to read them, in part, because I see so many failings in them. Failure to see things as they really were: I was foolishly optimistic about the situation there for far too long. Failure to see almost anything beyond myself: I wanted to leave the letters untouched, but couldn’t bring myself not to edit out the most navel-gazingly offensive passages.  Failure, above all, to see that what mattered most was very far from what I spent most of my time trying to do.

Above all, I was surprised to learn that although I had always believed these letters were the start of my writing career, the writing itself wasn’t that great.  At times there was a glimmer of something real, but in the main it was simply what it sounded like: me telling stories about my life, which although amusing at times, was pretty ordinary.  That fact was both shocking and freeing.  God knows I need to be reminded more often about how ordinary I am.

Two things inspired me about this experience.  The first was the similarity of my seventeen-year-old self with my only-very-slightly-younger students of today.  As the age gap between us grows (I am now roughly twice their age) I find it harder and harder to relate to them, and I can be especially unforgiving of shallow self-centeredness. But reading my own entries from that time has reminded me that this is how teenagers are, and I was like that too. So if I don’t rush too quickly to judgment, my own students may follow a similar path to a greater understanding of the world.

The other was the space between my letters.  A weekly missive may seem extreme for a college student, but in fact it was barely enough; I remember keeping lists in my head and on paper in preparation for Sunday, when I’d include the thoughts and anecdotes in my pre-blog entry.  Having time to think before I wrote — imagine! — is probably what I miss most about that style of writing, and there’s no reason I can’t institute that here.

So my posts will probably be less frequent, at least for awhile.  Thanks to everyone who has checked up on me, but honestly, I’m fine.  I just want to wait until I have something to write that’s worth the space.

Cooper Chronicles: III.1

(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.)

Between yesterday’s post and today’s lies a whole year of time and countless experiences, most of which are lost to the cold indifference of Microsoft (who knew I’d be looking for those e-mails over a decade later?!) Below is something I did think to save: the very last letter to this list, the one sent after I had returned home.

When I began to tell people I was leaving Cooper Union, possibly never to return, the most common reaction was “What happened?  I thought your story about the [insert reference to quirky personal anecdote of choice] was so funny.  I thought you loved it there.”

Well, I did love it there.  But in answer to the “What happened?”  I can offer some brief (ha!) insights.

Here’s what happened: John Hejduk got cancer.  Five years ago, before I was even admitted to the school or had heard of it, the disease was crippling him.  His huge, brontosaurus-like figure grew wasted and thin, and he spoke haltingly; each word was an effort.  He simply couldn’t carry the weight of the school on his shoulders any longer.  He retired in June and passed away a month later.  Hejduk was a beautiful person, a talented architect and a dedicated Catholic, and he made Cooper Union what it was: a highly respected institution of architecture.  In one of his last public acts, he inspired me to stay there last year when I was just about fed up. 

Here’s what happened: the underlings were given too much authority.  When the cat gets cancer, the mice will play – and there’s been a lot of that in the last few years.  In this case, there was a catalyst: Peter Eisenman took a semester’s sabbatical to work on a series of lectures, and he left his class in the authority of three junior professors.  They simply could not control the class.  In later months, Guido lapsed into desk crits where he discussed the X-files instead of architecture, and he said things like, “Do whatever you want; it doesn’t matter.”  Then he failed a whole bunch of us, including me, and left the country.

On a sunny June morning, the day before I was scheduled to leave for a two-week full-scholarship art seminar at the University of Notre Dame, I opened my report card to find it marked with an F in Design and an invitation to defend myself before the Academic Standards Committee, pending possible expulsion from the School of Architecture.  It’s funny, how God never gives us more than we can handle; I remember my first C (first year, first semester) when I grudgingly accepted it, and my first D (first year, second semester) when I cried for months.  This time I calmly picked up the phone and called the architecture office.  “This is Emily Oren,” I said.  “Has there been a mistake, or have I really failed Design class?”  The secretary got out the grade sheet and checked.  “That was the grade that Professor Zuliani wrote down for you,” she said.  “All right,” I said.  “Give me his home and work phone numbers.” 

I called both and left messages.  When he called me back the next morning, as I was about to leave for the airport, I spared no words in communicating my disgust and frustration for his actions.  If I deserved to fail – accepting that ridiculous premise, when my hours and effort were at least on par with the rest of the class – why had I not been warned?  Why had he let me go on thinking I was doing fine, given such positive reviews, been completely encouraging (almost complimentary) about my work over the semester?  His response was, “I didn’t want you to get depressed.”  I’ll spare you further details about that conversation; if you want to duplicate it in terms of coherency, try to get Raymond to fly to LA on United.  

The Academic Standards Committee had to pick up the pieces of this disaster, and they were none too thrilled about it.  I was in frequent contact with the Dean of Students over the summer, who was largely sympathetic to my problems.  This is perhaps the only reason I didn’t quit and move to a sanitarium in the South of France.  But the bottom line was, they couldn’t second-guess his decision as a professor.  They could only advise me to take the bone he had thrown my way and work all summer on my project in hopes of a grade change in the fall. 

I did.  I didn’t get a job; I didn’t have a vacation.  I spent some time with my family.  But mostly I holed up in my apartment on Forsyth Street and worked.  Though I worked hard, it was by the prayers of my family and friends that I got a grade change; I’d given up all hope of being graded fairly with Guido.  On the fateful day, he was pleased and said that – congratulations! – I had passed the “test.”  He had wanted to see whether I was really dedicated to architecture; that was why he had failed me and made me work all summer.

Here’s what happened: I grew tired of thinking I was crazy.  While this story sounds preposterous, it is but one of many.  My final project last year was never returned to me; my professors lost it, and then gave me a D because they thought I hadn’t turned anything in.  In the crazy flip-flopping of professorships in the last few years, one class managed to miss all the big-name luminaries and got stuck, year after year, with second- and third-rate teachers.  Last spring, a third of them were not allowed to graduate because their work was found to be “sub-par.”  Well, duh.  There is the famous story about Raimund Abraham asking a student to leave the room after a particularly decimating crit and get him a glass of water; when she returned, she had to use it to put out the flames that were tearing through her model.  There are so many stories like this.  Everyone has one of his own – not just rumors, personal experiences of being treated badly.  Maybe this is common to art-related programs everywhere; maybe it’s mainly because of the de facto absence of an academic dean in the last five years.  That doesn’t make it right.

Here’s what happened: my health was slowly deteriorating. When you stay up all night frequently, when you have a lack of sunshine and exercise and home cooking, and your emotions and the weather are highly volatile, your body doesn’t have a chance.  In the month and a half since I’ve been home, I feel a thousand times better.  The effects of stress on the body are real, severe and debilitating. 

Here’s what happened: I was reminded that there was life elsewhere.  The most devastating thing about a program like this is that it sucks you in – it makes you believe that you are the one that needs fixing.  You are the one who can’t “get” it; you are the one whose priorities aren’t in order.  If you don’t want to spend all of your time in the studio, then get out of the class, get out of the school, get out of architecture.  We don’t want you here.  It’s scary how real everything feels.  In the movie “the Cell” (which I don’t recommend seeing, although it’s lush and intriguing visually) the main character is endangered by the possibility that she will believe what she is experiencing [through some kind of mind-portal telepathy] is real, and therefore become trapped within the fantasy.  It’s a very real possibility, and chilling, and sad.  And, had I not had the family that I do, I might have tried to stick it out for another year.  

The possibility of a leave of absence first surfaced during one of my conversations with the Dean of Students.  She agreed with me that the school was in a very precarious position – its future depended on what kind of a person would replace Hejduk.  The associate dean, who was instantly promoted, was also very sick and on the verge of retiring.  The Board was going to have to think fairly fast and hire someone that could turn the school around, back into the kind of place it was when Hejduk was in his prime – a sanctuary for ideas, a place of learning and [good] hard work.  She all but ordered me to take some time off, if for no other reason than to wait them out and see if I should put in another year.  I could apply to other schools and have other options ready if Cooper was still limping along in a year, and if not, I could return well-rested and ready to serve my time.  As I talked to my parents, it began to look very appealing; I could get a job in an architecture firm and further investigate the profession ( I still maintain that the possibility of my *being* an architect is dim; I love learning about it, but can’t see myself in the field – maybe just for lack of experience there.)

Penley practically packed my bags for me, he was so concerned.  My mom and brother actually did: as I sat through that most final of final crits, they loaded up a rented SUV with my worldly possessions.  That one giant favor was exactly what I needed. I sat in the car, balancing models on my lap, and stared numbly out the window as I tried to comprehend the great gift I had been given – the gift of one year of time that would be all my own.             

One reason I waited so long to write this was that I wanted to make sure I was in a stable and optimistic frame of mind.  With God’s grace, I have survived all that has happened to me, and can even give it a positive spin: every experience that we go through shapes us into who we are, and I have certainly learned a great deal in my two years at Cooper.  I’m not bitter or resentful; with a program like that, the only option is to go in and glean everything possible from the knowledge there, while remaining grounded elsewhere.  There’s a philosophy about being “In Cooper Union but not of Cooper Union.”  That’s what I’ve tried to do, and that’s what I’ll continue doing if I go back.

I’m very sad about having left the city, but content in the knowledge that I will return – if not next year, sometime – and in the weekend visits I’ve been taking.  It’s much more enjoyable to visit than to live there as an architecture student; I can plan my trip full of things I want to do, and really soak in each minute of the experience.

I plan to write more frequently and share everything that happens to me there – and here. Life in the Oren home is never lacking in entertainment value, and Baltimore has a charm and color all its own.

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.

People

My best ideas often come when I’m supposed to be doing something else.  This morning I was presentable and out of the house early: I drove into town and did a few errands, then settled in upstairs at the divine Atwater’s, where I can breathe in gingersnap steam and stare out at the bleak December sky.

And, supposedly, grade exams.  But instead I’m thinking about people.

Because I’m helpless / hopeless to improve the kitchen situation (and, in fact, the more hours I spend at home greatly increases the probability of a huge fight with my husband — two spouses, three opinions) I did the only thing I could think that might be useful later: gathered samples for a new wall covering that will complement the finishes we’ve chosen.

The cabinets and counter are neutral — sand, beige, warm beech — so I was thinking green for the slivers of exposed wall that run around them: a large, leafy pattern with maybe a few flecks of red to compliment the bevy of red appliances we already own. But once I was walking the floor of the funny old wallpaper store in downtown Catonsville, I settled on half a dozen patterns that were nothing like that: wide stripes, Provencal olives, and a Far East-influenced paisley in rust and blue that’s secretly my favorite.  (I’m a sucker for blue anything.)  I was really starting to enjoy myself, considering the possibility of a border paired with solid paint, relishing the first step of a design process in which nothing is certain and everything is on the table.

Then I remembered, abruptly, what jerks the store employees are.

I say this, honestly, with love.  My grandfather had a soft spot for surly waitresses, and I am frankly tickled by the way these acerbic ladies treat their customers with such disdain.  I overheard a conversation today  in which a novice customer questioned a price, and the door had hardly closed behind her before they whooped it up at her expense.  “Can you imagine?!  She didn’t know that a double roll meant double the price!”

Years ago they worked on commission, and every single sample had to be signed and numbered by a specific, pushy saleswoman.  The woman who helped me today didn’t do that, but I did get a stony glare each time I brought her a roll to request a sample (God forbid I tear it myself!)  Then she told me to put the rolls back while she read the paper. When I asked for help reaching a high shelf, citing the sign on the ladder to ask for assistance, she rolled her eyes and said, “I guess you can get it yourself.”  

I was, again, too amused to be offended, especially at the end when she asked me, “What are you doing with all these, anyway?!”  I said that I was choosing a pattern for my kitchen, and she eyed the samples, gave me the world’s most condescending grimace of a smile, and responded, “Oooookay.”  I explained that my husband, a designer, liked to have a variety of choices.  “Well, you should have brought him with you,” she snapped.  I politely responded that he was busy installing the cabinets, thanked her for her time, and left.

What makes people like this?  Does she hate her job?  Does she resent giving out free samples, even if it results in subsequent business?  Does she not see what a miracle it is that a dumpy, drafty old-lady shop is still afloat in these economically troubled times?

And, further: what would make her happy?  Would she be genuinely grateful for a customer who dropped hundreds of dollars on the first thing he saw, without requesting a single sample — or would he receive the same contempt for disturbing the silence behind the counter? What about at the end of the day — does she relax a little during dinner with friends, or is she just as scornful when the waitress is late with her martini?

There are many stunning scenes in the movie Crash, but one of my favorites comes toward the end when the gangster-turned-noble shakes his head and laughs, “People, man.  People.”  It’s all the more fitting that this remark precipitates a misunderstanding that leads to his tragic and undeserved end.  Our inner workings are, and always will be, a mystery.  The group of loudly-cackling women who has commandeered the upper floor of the coffee shop, punctuating each five-minute interval with a deafening burst of laughter; the college boy who, glued to his Kindle, passes an hour in blissful ignorance of his surroundings; the mom who presents three toddlers with full glasses of milk and then is shocked and exasperated when one of them spills.

And the girl in the corner, who came here to work but has done nothing but sip coffee and blog since she came in.  She’s a mystery too.  But she’d better get cracking on those exams now.

On the Upswing

It’s been a rough week.  So rough I don’t really want to talk about it.

Things are looking up a little, though.  After a student-father meeting that went about as badly as it could go, I got a kind e-mail from another mom which ended, “Thank you for all your work with our daughter.  She has enjoyed your class this fall.”

The house is an undecorated, dusty mess, but I know that the pounding, drilling and other craziness will very soon give way to a space in which I can cook, clean and move around without tripping over myself every five minutes.  Is it obsessive to organize cabinets in your dreams?  I don’t think so.

Tests and quizzes are over and graded, and now just final exams stand between me and a long vacation.  If a half-page list of works and principles labeled “Review Guide” can make me as popular as Santa Claus this time of year, I’m happy to do what I can.

The puppy whines, jumps and generally terrorizes the cat, but her habit of wrapping her front paws around your waist in her best imitation of a hug brought me to tears one dark afternoon.  She knows “sit” and “no,” and is learning “lie” (no animal of ours will be raised on incorrect grammar, thankyouverymuch.)

I have attended my last class and written my last paper for grad school.  LAST.  One more semester of occasional observations and meetings, and then I will be a teacher in the eyes of the state.

In a long line of students with questions, complaints and paranoia, one waited patiently for her turn yesterday and then said, “Merry Christmas” with a pretty green candle.  I don’t know if I’ve ever smelled anything so sweet.