It’s the end of the first week of a new term. I don’t know about the rest of you, but things are already piling up for me. I had five hours of reading Tuesday night. On Wednesday, I ran on four hours of sleep, getting up at 6:00am and making ten-minute transitions between classes, work, and extracurriculars until 8:00pm. So I am understandably relieved for Friday, but overwhelmed by the nine weeks left to go. Fortunately, I found an outlet for the stress and the sense that my time is no longer mine own: art.
I started my weekend by going to the Grand Re-opening of the Oregon Poetry Collection at the Knight Library. The special collection was founded in 2007 “to provide a single, increasingly comprehensive collection of work by Oregon poets and to make these works accessible to all Oregonians.” Writers ranging from Oregon Poet Laureate Elizabeth Woody to a member of the UO Poetry Slam Team read their work. David Hedges read selections of Charles Erskin Scott Wood’s “The Poet in the Desert”: “She is cruel and invites victims/Restlessly moving her wrists and ankles/Which are loaded with sapphires/Her brown breasts flash with opals.”
Tim Whitsel from his own poems, the lines “the woods grow renegade/the stars fidget” displaying an ear for skewed syntax and diction. How often do we think of stars as “fidgeting,” although their continual winking fits this characterization, like anemones at the bottom of a tidal pool. Placing “renegade” at the end of “the woods grow” lends a musicality to the line.
Later in the evening, I caught the tail end of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art’s opening reception for fall term exhibits, including San Francisco-based artist Gay Outlaw’s Mutable Objects. A porous conglomeration of red clay sprouted rainbow-colored clouds. A mannequin leg clad in a white ladies’ stocking printed with pink roses hung from a white wall adorned in paper cut-outs of roses. The exploration of space and form felt very refreshing. I also signed up for a free student membership to the museum, which earns me a ten-percent discount in the museum gift shop and Marche Cafe. Considering the number of Turkish rose lattes I consume, this was a most opportune arrangement.
Overall, I returned to my apartment that night feeling relaxed. Yes, it was a stressful week and yes, I have hours of homework to do this weekend. But I got to see and hear some beautiful and thought-provoking words and images. Ones I would not have found otherwise, but did because I was courting serendipity. True, a few taps on my keyboard and I could summon up any number of poems and art displays and never have to leave my bedroom. But it feels better to go out and see things in person. There’s a dimension of space, of community, and also a dimension of time, of being a college student, in going to local art happenings. As I look over the long, work-laden expanse of my syllabi, at least I know I’ll have plenty of art fixes to buoy me to winter break.
