...but is not at present sure what exactly that means. Wait, that's sort of the point. Some explanation later.
I'm now up in Boulder. I didn't quite manage to find a place to stay the first night. I asked Whitney to just drop me off on campus, did a lot of e-mail and stuff at the library, found out about a big sustainable resources conference, which sounded cool and also seemed like a good place to meet people who might be able to offer me a place to sleep. Unfortunately it was after the weekend when most of the conference had happened and the thing that had been going on that day had ended about a half-hour before I found out about any of it. Even so I went over to try to find it all and ended up being able to help carry a box from one place to another. But just that one box, so didn't really get a chance to meet people and mention that I'm looking for a floor to sleep on.
So I walked around the main campus some, got my bearings in that part of town, went back to the library, wasted too much time, looked up Bowdoin alums in Boulder (I think there are 37) and tried to get in touch with Jane Hummer, who was a year ahead of me, did theater stuff together, and is now in the next town over. I didn't then, because she'd moved, but got her phone number today and we'll be meeting up for lunch tomorrow.
Eventually I decided that it was time to go somewhere else and get some food, and so walked down Broadway, on the south side of campus, a ways until I found a Noodles & Co., where I could use the first sticker for three free potstickers that I'd gotten for filling out a survey at another location in Denver when I'd gone there with Whitney, her friend Sarah, her twin brother Michael, and his roommate Steve, who is also Whitney's boyfriend Dan's younger brother. The guy behind the counter was a little grouchy, in part because they were just about to close, I hadn't realized it was that late. But I ate there, quickly, and then continued on eastward.
At this point I should clarify that I was then directionally confused. I was right about Broadway being south of campus and the direction I was going in being east. I was wrong about the campus being north-west of the downtown area. So when I got to 30th street, and had wandered around in circles for a little while, trying to feel which direction was the right one, I decided it was time to ask someone. That someone was a young guy wearing black pants, a red shirt, and a black cowboy hat in a beat-up little white car at a gas station. He told me that Pearl Street, where most of the cool city-type (as opposed nature-type) stuff is was about 2, 2 1/2 miles north on 30th.
So I started walking, cutting back west where the streets ran through, as I was starting to think that I'd have to go to my plan B, stay at Justin's aunt's and uncle's house up by Mapleton and 19th. His aunt said that'd be cool. Along the way I asked at a couple college apartments if it might be at all possible... and was, surpisingly pleasantly, turned down. When I finally got to Pearl, I saw this book shop across the street, the Beat Book Shop. Seemed like as reasonable a place to ask as any. As I was entering the door though, the proprietor, Tom, asked me to back slowly out the door. To take off my backpack(s), because the room was full of piles of books and stuff just kind of loose, along with the occasional shelf. Tom was actually pretty helpful, although he didn't let me stay at his place because when he lets people sleep over he doesn't sleep. He and Dan, who might have worked there, or might have been just looking, suggested that, since it wasn't supposed to rain, and should stay above 50 all night, I might try sleeping on the lawn behind Naropa University, a Buddhist academic institution not too far away, or I might try in at the Midnight Sun bar up the street, which might have contain a few people amenable to me sleeping on their floor. As I was considering my options and reading an interview with William S. Burroughs, Dan decided to leave and offered me a ride over to Naropa. So I accepted. He drove me around back and dropped me off and left, then I put on my long underwear and fleece hat and tried to go to sleep.
Then I remembered that I needed to call Whitney to let her know that I'd found a place to stay, so I went over to a nearby apartment complex, saw a guy go into the laundry room, asked him if I could borrow his cellphone, and called and told her I was okay, because she'd said that if I couldn't find a place there'd probably be space on the floor at Dan's, where she'd be staying the night. So I actually had a Plan C too.
Which is kind of a difficult thing when I'm trying to be all independent and meet new people and ask for help. It's so easy to get help from people who know me, even if just barely through a connection with someone else. And that makes it hard for me to feel honest about asking people who don't know me for help, because I can't claim that I don't have access to some level of financial resources, I can't say that I don't have a place to stay and need help. Well, I can, but then I'm lying, and if I find someone who's willing to help me out and we start talking, the lie will become apparent. But I don't know that I want to just ask for help from people I know. I want to meet people I don't know, people I might not get to know otherwise, get out of my safety-assured bubble at least a little bit, not be trapped in this circle of well-educated and/or liberal-minded people. I think.
But then again, if I'm in some way (as I have been) selecting who I ask for help, I'm not very likely to select someone outside of that circle. Especially not in Boulder. So do I just go the whole Franciscan hog and knock on every door? Do I try to emulate Jacob Holdt (if you haven't read American Pictures, you should)? Do I get rid of all my liquid assets? Probably not, because I could wind up in serious trouble with no way out. But where does that leave me? I probably do have the resources to stay at a youth hostel and eat at inexpensive restaurants in those places where I don't have a job. But only maybe, since most of the money I earn just goes into savings/investment, where it can act as a kind of health insurance, since Massachusetts doesn't really have any reasonable options for someone without a steady, in-state job. More importantly, a large part of the reason for doing this is to break down, at least for myself, some of the massive dissociation that occurs between the production of a good and the consumption of a commodity. To see and show that food and shelter are dependent on human needs and human interaction on a more fundamental level than that of market values, buyers and sellers.
So what does this mean for me? I guess, unless I decide to follow one of the more extreme options, it means I accept help as offered and find work to make up the difference. I can live with that for now. But further input is welcomed.
Anyway, after calling Whitney, I went back over to my stuff and eventually fell asleep. And woke up a few hours later to discover that the temperature forecast I'd been given was a little optimistic. After spending a tired haze longer trying to decide whether or not I should tough it out, I eventually got up and walked briskly over to Justin's aunt's and uncle's (Sue and Mark) house. Looking at the microwave through the window I saw that it was about 2:30, wonderful, and felt kind of bad about waking everybody, especially the two little boys, John and Alex, up. I was hoping there'd be some window down to the basement, where Tyler was sleeping, but I couldn't see one, so I rang the doorbell a few times, knocked on the door... no one woke up. I tried a few more times, with the same result, and just couldn't bring myself to make the amount of noise that would probably be required to get someone to the door, so I hovered between sleep and cold on their porch. I've had worse nights, but most of those have involved really vivid nightmares or an unintended amount of alcohol consumption. In the morning Mark opened the door to get the paper, and took me in along with it. I slept curled up in a sleeping bag, and drooling a lot more than normal, I wonder if that's related, until about 1. I spent most of the rest of the day hanging out with Justin and Tyler and the twins (fraternal, not identical, although both boys), except for a lecture on peace economics that was happening back at Naropa University that I'd seen advertised in the Boulder paper, which seemed to have borrowed a surprising number of it's national news articles from the Christian Science Monitor. Which, while not at all a bad thing, was not expected.
The lecture was pretty good, given by a Dr. James Quilligan who's working on the Commission for Africa right now, worked on the Brandt Commission 25 years ago (if you want more details, look it up). He took a lot of what I'd been reading about earlier this summer in my textbook on international political economy, summarized and updated it, and then suggested that we need to be concerned about the structure and regulation of global finance and monetary policy and not simply retreat into localism. Oh, and mom, do you know if it's possible for me to transfer my saved dollars into saved euros? Apparently, and it does follow from what I had read, the U.S. has been increasingly supporting it's massive consumption and trade deficit by extending credit to developing nations and increasing debt and I should probably be able to write more clearly about this but can't at the moment. Anyway, it seems that we currently have many of the financial attributes of a developing country and are in the biggest bubble economy ever, which is quite likely to collapse in the next few years. So yeah, I'd like my hard currency stored in something a little more solid than dollars. Does Cape Ann Savings Bank allow that? I might go see him give another talk tonight, but that's in 20 minutes, so I'll probably just go back and see about watching the VP debate.
This morning Tyler, Justin, and I hiked up Mt. Sanitas, which isn't at all far away. It was a nice, somewhat steep but at least the air's thicker down here, hike, which gave us a sweeping view of Boulder. It's strange to see how suddenly the Rockies seem to rise out of the great plains. East of here it looked pretty boring. West we could just see the Continental Divide over lots of other mountains. So it was nice, but the most interesting part was not trying not to psych myself out while getting back down from this big steep slab of rock Tyler and I had decided to climb.
After we got back and a shower, finally, I went back to CU this afternoon to talk with Sam Gill. It was a fun, informative discussion. Although the way I'd arranged it kind of put the onus on me to ask questions and him to answer them rather than being particularly conducive to a wide-ranging discussion. That and he seemed, like me, to be prone to allowing others to provide information while he listened so long as they want to, but not so much the type to directly ask questions, while also being very willing to talk about his thoughts on things, but only when asked a direct question. Anyway, to first answer Professor Buckley's inquiries about what he's doing with play theory, he's finishing up a book about it right now, although most of the manuscript is revised from a book he started about 12 years ago. It didn't seem like he's necessarily doing a lot directly to expand its use in academia, but he does seem to feel strongly that it's a valuable and integral part of honestly and responsibly viewing the world. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about I will not try to give a detailed explanation of play theory, but I do suggest you look it up and find and read some of Gill's articles or books in which he deals with it, which would be more in the last ten years. But, in some sense and very simply, it's being able to hold an idea while also being cognizant of the fact that such an idea and its interpretation are very much shaped by both personal and broader historical and cultural context, and that other possibilities of interpretation or reality, be they theoretical or lived, may exist in which this idea does not accurately reflect the changed reality. And Coleman, if this answers any questions from that discussion we had last semester, his interpretation of play very much allows for its application in everyday life. As an example he compared George Bush, as someone who is not at all playful, who sees things in a very fixed, black and white way, with John Kerry as someone with a good deal of play, looking at things from multiple perspectives and adjusting his opinion as his interpretation of reality shifts, keeping pace with the change that occurs in the surrounding environment. And any errors of explanation or paraphrasing are mine, because I didn't actually write anything down. But what he actually seems to be getting very into right now and actually for a while is dance. He's also working on a book on dance, teaching a course on dance and religion, and teaches salsa dancing at a Bantaba World Dance & Music, a dance school he opened a few years ago. He's actually got a very cool essay about dance and play on the website, dancingcircle.com, if you go to the site map and then click on the link that says Education. It's academic and a little long, but if you're interested in dance, play theory, or what interests me, I highly recommend it.
We talked for a while, until I ran out of questions, by which point he had to go anyway. And then I came down to the library to use the computers. It's so nice to have high-speed internet again. And now I think I'm mostly caught up. There's a little more from the ranch I wa thinking of talking about, but I think most of that will be covered in the captions of my pictures, once I get them up. Now I should call Justin and Tyler and find out what's going on.
