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This season in Pittsburgh is: mosquitos, thunderstorms, books, sunscreen, fireflies, cardinals, bicycles, rivers, concerts, barbeques, rooftops, fireworks, the stinky Greyhound station, strawberries and nectarines from the Strip.
Laura Miller has just graduated from the art program of CMU and started PARTS, a non-profit organization devoted to promoting the arts in Pittsburgh--and we could never have enough of those (!!). It serves as a space for artists, an exhibition space, and an after-school programs for kids as well. This Wednesday they are hosting a poetry reading featuring some writing alumni from CMU.
As for myself, I am teaching arts & crafts at the Shadyside Boys and Girls club, where youth and markers alike often run haywire. It is a work-study position, many of which provide penniless students like me with a bit of salvation for the summer (and during the school year as well). Work-studies can be done off campus or on, depending on preference, and Carnegie Mellon has a Career Center and an online resource, TartanTrak, for job-search purposes.
In other words, there isn't much of an excuse to sit around and laze here, but it is tempting indeed.
The title of this entry may mislead you into thinking that I will go over the many different, er, "foods" offered in the city known as Pittsburgh, but it is really just a cover for me ranting about the folks over at Orient Express, an ostensibly "Oriental" restaurant on Forbes Avenue on one's way to Craig Street (which, for the most part, offers much better foodstuffs).
This is a warning to all prospective students or future CMU-ers, as it is knowledge that will benefit your general spiritual well being. The first time I went there, I was but a first-day fledgling, complete with my papa and my jovial naivete that Chinese food is for the most part yummy for the tummy.
Well, I was vastly deceived because we ordered our dishes and they ceased to exist for more than twenty minutes. After I asked the waitress where my food was at, she batted me off like I was an Asian mayfly and hissed, "Wait, wait, wait." After three more rounds of this dismissive condescension, I decided to abandon all hope and / or faith in restaurant humanity. My father soon followed suit.
Eventually as a CMU-ite, I pardoned Orient Express, mainly because of its proximity and quasi-Asianness. I ate many an okay meal there ever since.
So my sensitivity to its blah-ness did not appear this Wednesday as I entered looking for a quick lunch of Hunan Chicken, extra spicy.
Well kids, this is the kicker: When they gave me Kung Pao chicken and I said I ordered Hunan chicken, the entire staff had a fit and started accusing me of lying to them. One dude in a blue shirt said to me (about five times, in fact), that "You didn't order that! You ordered Kung Pao chicken!! I heard you!!" The first time was unnerving enough, but around the fifth or sixth time he accused me of ordering Kung Pao chicken, I informed him that I will in fact eat the Kung Pao chicken because it costed me a whopping $5.60, BUT he and the rest of the staff did not have to tell me I ordered Kung Pao because I think I would know, as the customer, what I wanted and ordered.
At this point in the commotion another customer came up to them and said, "You must have heard her wrong because you were on the phone."
Bingo. The lady who took my order asked for my order and then promptly, before I opened my mouth, she answered the phone and took some other person's order. She must not have been paying attention.
I took that Kung Pao chicken (which I never order and never eat) and left that place because it was too nauseating for me to stay there.
What does this all have to do with CMU? Well, everything, because being a part of CMU means being a part of the community at large, which unfortunately implies bad-serviced restaurants. As a current member of this community, I feel like I should strive to inform potential members about the quality of service in local food places.
So when you're feeling down for some foods, go to the nearby Lulu's Noodles (They have an excellent Spicy Basil and offer multiple Asian-ethnicity foods). Head to Subway or Quizno's. Grab some Mac N Cheese at Kiva Han Coffee (This is a regular place that CMU-ers like myself frequent for studying and procrastinating and writing papers. Right across Starbucks on Craig.) Unless you've got steel nerves for hastily prepared, unhappy service, then try to avoid Orient Express.
Annika has brought another interesting person to CMU; this time, it is Sasha Frere Jones, music critic/blogger for The New Yorker. I was pretty excited about this--the first time it was scheduled, it was canceled because of flight complications.
In his lecture, Sasha was really keen on informing the audience on the music world today -- how important touring is to artists, how much CD sales rank (not very) in terms of profit-making, how the tides are turning in the industry today. With the thousands of music blogs and the fact that any record is readily available on the Internet, he discussed many of the key things that keeps the industry vital.
On the whole it was an extended Q&A session. Some audience members made really long comments and asked broad or imprecise questions. One such comment, I remembered, was directed at the "intellectualization" of music-listening, and vaguely hinted at the emerging "math rock" scene that epitomized this trend. Sasha asked this person to pinpoint a specific band, and she wasn't able to, but he kept trying to see if the "math rock" she mentioned was what he thought of. I secretly hoped he was thinking about Battles.
Battles has been an obsession of mine for the better part of this year, and the head-pounding frenetic alien-sounding energy of their music has inspired many a skip down the street, however forlorn my surroundings may be. Note to YOU, reader of this blog, potential Carnegie Mellon person, get the album Mirrored. Yes. Souls will shimmer.
Later, he admitted he was thinking about Battles. Yeah, made my night for sure.
This year's Adamson speaker is Russell Banks, who published such works as The Continental Drift and The Sweet Hereafter. The Adamson awards are a yearly awards program offered by the English Department at CMU. Any student of any major may enter the contests, and the prizes are announced at the end of the year.
The categories that students can enter are fiction, nonfiction- literary or popular journals, nonfiction research-based journal, poetry, and screenplay. First place winners get $300, second place $100, and third place $50. There are also honorable mentions and other prizes, like the Academy of American Poets prize and the Carnegie Mellon Press Prize for poetry and fiction.
Along with the presentation of these prizes, a widely recognized author usually visits and does a reading before the announcement. Last year it was poet Elizabeth Alexander, and the year before it was novelist Stuart O'Nan.
Adamsons are always an exciting time of the year and a prelude to the anarchy of finals week...
I have a pretty stupid but universal handicap, that during the school year I almost never read for pleasure; if I can get a few stories in, I'm lucky. Everything I read is for a class, and because I'm a creative writing/English major, class reading tends to be a ton.
Recently however, I've been reading a book in my literary journalism class, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. It's a thoroughly interesting and well-researched book about Hmong refugees in Merced, California and their cultural clashes with American doctors and western health care. The meat of it has to do with the clinical efficiency, invasiveness, and the soullessness of Western health care - how for all their superiority and bravado, lack the intimacy and warmth of other forms of spiritual healing, such as the practices of the Hmong. What impresses me the most is how Fadiman portrays each culture with equal sensitivity and never lets the struggles of one overshadow the other. This is a struggle with no villain, just two sides with different ideas on how to save a life.
This semester in my Literary Journalism class, taught by Jane McCafferty, students are required to do field work as part of the writing assignments. The assignments have the general goal of an authentic journalistic experience, in which the journalist digs much deeper into his/her sources and proactively seeks the subject in person. This was the first semester this requirement has been installed in the class, and it's resulted in some pretty stunning work. Several classmates have pieces about adoption agencies around Pennsylvania and have gone out and interviewed workers in the field, and interacted with some of the children.
My professor, Jane McCafferty, is really passionate about helping the public school system in Pittsburgh. She is currently looking to start an initiative for the fall to create a public-private educational partnership that yields results in helping kids extinguish the anxiety of their schoolwork and really get one-on-one focused attention. After the Dave Eggers lecture, there has been excitement about starting our own nonprofit Pittsburgh version of an outlet of 826 Valencia.
With Jane, and the enthusiasm and support of locals and students, I do believe something great could start.
My reading list for the summer (I am stoked):
Drown by Junot Diaz Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami Empire of the Senseless by Kathy Acker Blue House by Bei Dao The Meat and the Spirit Plan by Selah Saterstrom Wide Eyed by Trinie Dalton
So my friend Annika arranged for Junot Diaz to come to Carnegie Mellon as part of the Activities Board, a week before he won the Pulitzer.
Yeah, it was wise of me to actually start asking authors to bless my Moleskine (instead of that Billy Collins fiasco, in which I waited twenty minutes and he didn't even sign anything, or that time when I shook ZZ Packer's hand and was too shy to ask her to e-mail me). In the case of dear Junot, I asked him if he were a fortune cookie, what would he tell me? This is what he wrote: "I can't tell you where I've been, only where I ain't".
That is what Junot Diaz would write if he weren't writing Pulitzer-prize-winning first novels. That is what he would write for fortune cookie companies ("Help! I'm trapped in a fortune cookie factory!")
Anyways, Junot's lecture was chill and sweet. He dissed Zadie Smith for not reading contemporary fiction (one of the highlights) and read from his story collection Drown and from Oscar Wao.
The people from AB (the student Activities Board) bring amazing bands and people to Carnegie Mellon. This week Annika brought in Naomi Klein, notable journalist, and recent visitors include John Waters (filmmaker) and Dan Savage ('Savage Love' advice columnist). In terms of bands, last year AB brought in Spoon, and this year they brought in Broken Social Scene. The Roots are coming for this year's end of the year Carnival event.
I'll tell you about Broken Social Scene: God, yet ANOTHER awkward moment with some random celebrity. This one echoes the Billy Collins thing embarrassingly well. So I told Kevin Drew I had a stomachache before going to the show but the music cured me of stomach indigestion. He gave me the same exact look Billy Collins gave me when I called him a limon. A little scared, a little confused, a little put off.
Anyway, I asked Junot to be my pen pal this time, conquering the fear when I met ZZ. But what with the Pulitzer Prize win and things, his inbox is probably inundated with slews and slews of other more important people.
Oh well.
Winter is a cutthroat animal. I am not the biggest fan right now. Walking anywhere, I feel a bone-chilling bitterness sweeping into my stomach. The ground is basically coated with a layer of slushy oatmeal that is especially unfortunate for those with dysfunctional boots.
To recap, well, the last month: the New York flu got to me. Everyone who went to AWP got really sick. It seemed inevitable, with thousands of people together in the Hilton sharing fingerprints and books and breath. I had a monstrous high fever, multiple dizzy spells, and finally a charming combo of sore throat and nasal congestion. I celebrated Chinese New Year at Rose Tea Café with Beverly and had hot mango tea. That stuff is lovely for the throat, though not really a cure.
A friend and alumn of the creative writing department, Adam Atkinson, is starting a Pittsburgh arts collective and journal, Open Thread, which provides local communities with outreach for the arts. Recently he hosted a fundraising event (Variety! Variety! Variety!) at the Brillobox, which showcased local Pittsburgh performances, one of which was the Carnegie Mellon writing department reading poetry. Following my week of nightmarish flu, my throat still bubbling and burning like an active volcano, I did a poetry reading there and sounded very much like a frog. Other acts included impromptu comedy, a DJ, Adam Atkinson being amusing, and a drag act (which was sublime).
The Co-op, which is where I live this semester, also recently had their Co-op week, where there was a slew of events including open mike, dessert scavenger hunt, vegan dinner, and dance party. The Co-op is an alternative housing option where students can go to live and partake in a community that values environmental sustainability, equality of gender/race/sexuality, and democracy. I’d recommend it highly if you want a more dynamic and passionate living environment and can’t stomach the sterilized residence hall.
This is a sort of boring list-like entry, but I figured I’d update on all the stuff that has been going on. Ah yes, yesterday was Jerry Costanzo’s (Professor of writing and the Carnegie Mellon Press Editor) birthday. Julie Brown and I spent all morning pummeling walnuts with metal and spool and mixing the particles with honey to make a nutty alternative piecrust. We then made raspberry banana smoothie and slathered it over the crust and stuck it in the freezer for a while.
It was a successful pie. Successful pies are one of the factors that totally increase a person’s will to live.
It’s funny how soon spring is on the calendar – a month now, really. I can’t WAIT for spring, despite how it really kind of twists up the brains a little.
For the third time I visited the Hill District today to work on a literary/arts ‘zine for kids as a part of the project ‘Take Back the Hill’. This project is sponsored by the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in Society, and it allows volunteers to mentor Hill District kids with art and writing projects. Last week we did list poems and comics. I showed all the kids an issue of Black Warrior Review, the Sad Animal issue, which featured the sad animal art of Howie Tsui, who also happens to be in The Acorn, a band I’d been listening to (I’d recommend them if you feel like taking a walk in the woods.)
I don’t know about you, but when I was little I was that silent zombie kid in the background who only came to life when the teacher involved drawing or writing in the projects. Sad animal art was what I lived for. I carried a little sketchbook and drew ducks, trees, pineapples, elephants, beavers and various fruits with muddy faces.
At my school, all kids did was math problems and grammar exercises. But to me, language arts was by far a superior subject because we created these gorgeous glossy laminated books. They were super sleek. It’s an amazing thing when kids create. I still remember some of that magic—the magic of an art project, the satisfying crunch of the pastel or crayon against the paper. It’s stuck with me through all these years.
At the Hill, the kids were rowdy and tough and brash, but their energy could clearly focus in on something rich and challenging. I am optimistic about making sad animals with these kids. This week they drew pictures of what they want to be in ten years. A lawyer, a judge, a journalist, a fashion model—they were vibrant, ambitious, careful. They put effort into every stroke. Each of the volunteers, including myself, drew one too. I think maybe ten years ago, I would have imagined myself an artist—a painter of sad animals, like Mr. Howie Tsui. And while it seems so far away from my ambitions now, I am beginning to see that maybe I can paint sad animals. Dead frogs, watch out.
Tomorrow (Thursday) I will be carpooling with a bunch of creative writing kids to New York City for the AWP Writer’s Conference. Every year or two, the Carnegie Mellon Creative Writing program sponsors a trip like this, usually to a literary event. Depending on budget and car availability, around 8-12 students go each year.
Last year this event was the Dodge Poetry Festival in New Jersey. This was around September 2006. That was a pretty raucous time, where I had an obscene amount of awkward moments with poets I admired. It seems like my tongue turns into oatmeal anytime I’m with somebody I admire. I uttered some incoherent jabberwocky to Tina Chang, who smiled and nodded as she quickly turned to her friend. I shook Tony Hoagland’s hand too vigorously. I gave Matthea Harvey what I hoped was a bone-chilling smile, but I probably came off looking like a psychopath. I told Billy Collins that from far away, he looked like a limon. This particular conversation went like this:
Me: Hi. BC: Hi. Me: From far away, you kind of look like a limon. BC: Huh? Me: A limon. A lemon-lime hybrid, you know? Sort of like a liger, but citrus fruit. Ha Ha. BC: Okay. Me: It’s because your shirt—your shirt is very green. And my eyes aren’t very good. BC: Well, it’s good to get your eyes checked, then. Me: Yes. Yes, it is, I suppose.
I had waited almost thirty minutes for this, braving the book signing line, and all; for telling Billy Collins that from far away, he resembled a genetically altered fruit.
I sincerely hope that at AWP, I will improve these rancid social skills of mine and come off as the graceful (Ha! Ha!) person I actually am. Not. I can imagine it now: me, running up to Ha Jin, asking if he knows my uncle’s cousin’s mother’s sister’s son. Here is the (imagined) dialogue:
Me: So, I hear you’re Chinese. Ha Jin: Yeah. Me: Like me. I’m also Chinese, you know. Ha Jin: So are many others. Me: How many? Like, a sixth of the world, right? Ha Jin: Something like that. Me: Do you know –so and so-? Ha Jin: Possibly. Do you? Me: Not personally. I know of him. But look here, both of us know him. Well, that’s a super coincidence, don’t you think?
Hopefully, the AWP will be anonymous and insane enough to spare the authors from my hopeless blubbering.
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