As I may have mentioned, I am taking a trip to SAN FRANCISCO as part of a summer course. What kind of course, you ask? Well, technically it's in the Women's Studies department, but really it's gay (Ah, you say, That makes sense now.) and movies. We get to attend the Frameline Film Festival and write critiques of the films, as well as film our own documentay. My group's assigned topic is activist filmmakers, which we kind of morphed into film festivals as sites of social change.
We are staying in a condo owned by a fantastic Australian man and his partner. In the back there is a lovely bamboo garden that is going to be a refuge for many of us during the hectic coming weeks. I had a picture, but my computer is being weird and won't let me show you.
That first night after we unpacked, half the class went out with the professors for sushi. Have you ever had sushi with a professor? It's intereresting. Especially when they drink sake. It was only sometime that night that I realized I was actually IN FREAKING SAN FRANCISCO, and it made me a little loopy. I'm still a little loopy.
Because today I got to see the HRC building that used to be Harvey Milk's camera shop, and the Harvey Milk Memorial Elementary school (seriously, everything's named after that guy here. He's like L.E. Phillips is in Eau Claire.) And THE Pride Flag (which I don't think is as big as the, what, 20x30 one we have in EC? But it was actually flying, so who could tell), and I wandered through the Haight (which I learned is not spelled "Hate," which makes a lot more sense, since it's where all the peace and love hippies hang out).
But if you go to San Francisco, and you're queer, the Castro Theater is the gay mecca. Harvey Milk appears on the screen, and the whole place bursts into cheers and applause - because everyon knows who he is, everyone worships him, and they're not afraid to show it.
It's not like a janky old movie theater. Think of a fancy opera house - like the Ordway in Minneapolis, though I was put more in mind of the Semperoper in Dresden. I was seated on the end of our group, next to a nice stranger who explained the references in the old Frameline trailers that they always play on opening night, and I told him about us being a student group from Wisconsin.
This year the opening movie was "Vito," a documentary about the life of activist Vito Russo. If you don't know about him, you should, and a good way to learn about him is through that documentary. First the guy spent ten years writing a book on Hollywood portrayal of gay characters while running an activist group, and then in the eighties he got big into AIDS activism - even before he himself was diagnosed with AIDS. Around that point in the film, you could hear the entire theater sniffling. I was literally handing out tissues left and right - one to my classmate and one to the nice stranger next to me. Seriously, they say Minnesota nice, but we're also reserved - we don't talk to strangers in the theater.
I love this city. I thought going to college and befriending other gays was a mind-blowing moment for me, but coming here, and seeing the gay everywhere - it's changing my worldview. But since I am a cynical bitch (and proud!) I realize I cannot live on a gay island for the rest of my life. And it makes me think of what kind of narrative I want to create. The worlds where sexual orientation doesn't matter and everyone is effectively bisexual - those are nice fantasy and commentary, but that's not what we aspire to. Gays and straights are always going to be different, the way men and women are always going to be different. But that doesn't mean we can't get along. What we need is more peaceful crossover between the gay and straight worlds.
Looking at the odd little shorts I've jotted down since I started this course and have had queer theory coming out of my ears, I realize that is something of a recurring theme: a gay jock rooming with a straight nerd, a sibling too young to understand what her brother means when he says he's gay, a straight-identified girl whose attempts to find her lesbian friend a date cause her to question her own sexuality. Crossover. Communication. And with increased presence and visibility, I believe that we can show straight people they have no reason to fear us, and gay people they have no reason to fear straights.
But I do love this city. I have decided, with the help of one of my professors who has lived just about everywhere, that I would much rather go to Monterey than New York. I have a plan for my life! I know what I'm going to do when I graduate! And I'm no longer panicking! San Francisco has done wonderful things for me.
Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Monday, June 13, 2011
Home?
I'm sitting in my room, with the posters on the walls and too many books to count and more clothes than i remember and all the random items and junk that I have accumulated over the past two decades, unpacking my baggage from the past five months. The suitcases are the easy part.
It is strange to be back. Not like I never left. Little things are different. It has been five months, after all. But five months does not seem to have been as long here as it has there. Five months in Germany was a lifetime.
It looks like I did build a life for myself there after all. It just was not one I thought it would be.
So now I'm a different person than the one who left here in January, but I'm not the one who lives in Germany anymore. It's like putting on an old pair of shoes after you've broken in a new one.
Once you return from a trip, you throw open all of your suitcases, and there is a big chaotic mess while you try to put everything back in its old place, and find place for the new items you brought back with you.
But I think, at least for a little while, I'm going to leave one of the suitcases closed. The one whose contents are safely packed away where they can't do any harm. It will have to opened eventually, of course - I can't be dragging it around for the rest of my life - but not now. Wait until everything is unpacked and putback in place. Wait until I know where I am again. Then I can carefully find a place for the last of my baggage.
It is strange to be back. Not like I never left. Little things are different. It has been five months, after all. But five months does not seem to have been as long here as it has there. Five months in Germany was a lifetime.
It looks like I did build a life for myself there after all. It just was not one I thought it would be.
So now I'm a different person than the one who left here in January, but I'm not the one who lives in Germany anymore. It's like putting on an old pair of shoes after you've broken in a new one.
Once you return from a trip, you throw open all of your suitcases, and there is a big chaotic mess while you try to put everything back in its old place, and find place for the new items you brought back with you.
But I think, at least for a little while, I'm going to leave one of the suitcases closed. The one whose contents are safely packed away where they can't do any harm. It will have to opened eventually, of course - I can't be dragging it around for the rest of my life - but not now. Wait until everything is unpacked and putback in place. Wait until I know where I am again. Then I can carefully find a place for the last of my baggage.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Magical Narnialand Venice
Just spent two days in Venice, which was AWESOME.
It was the weekend before Carnivale, so there were mask shops everywhere selling everything from cheap glitter-and-glue to elaborate artpieces of gold and feathers. Not to mention the weather, which was warm and sunny, something that isn't going to happen in good old Deutschland for a while, and the gelato. Need I say anything besides Italian gelato?
Bridges are to Venice what bakeries are to Marburg - you can't go a block without finding one. Yet even with so much water, it is hard to remember that the city is sinking. It looks so old, one can only imagine it will be there forever. Narrow alleys are everywhere, so that not even the most cautious person can avoid them. Luckily it is a big tourist town, so they try to keep the crime rate low.
How bizarre must it be to live in a place where you have more tourists than neighbors?
In any case, what struck me as most wondrous about being in Venice is that when you think of it, it is almost a mythical land. Like Narnia, or Atlantis. People write books about the place (see Cornelia Funke's The Thief Lord, auf Deutsch, Herr der Diebe; also Mary Hoffman's City of Masks) and the magic that takes place within. Of course, people write stories about magic in London and New York as well (neither of which I have been too), but those cities star so often only because that is what most writers are familiar with. Still, it brings up an interesting point: Nearly every single book that takes place in London - or any city - takes place in a different universe.
I am not just talking about fantasy, for once. I mean that the universe a book takes place in is necessarily different from the one we live in - we cannot meet the characters in ours. Often, too, the characters do not meet each other. Here, fantasy is a good medium to demonstrate this - the London from which the Pevensie children go to Narnia simply cannot possibly be the same London that housed Clive Barker's mystif (Imajica - like Abarat, but for grownups).
Yet going to a place in the flesh makes it real. To think that the Venice I went to is the same Venice that my relatives have gone to, that my friends have visited, where Cornelia Funke drew her inspiration for The Thief Lord. No streets had been rearranged or buildings added to suit the plot or the author's memory. It is the Venice that exists on its own, independent from the imagination of a writer or reader.
It is also worth saying that Venice is a magical city in its own right, without authorial additions. Even when it is overrun by tourists, you can tell that it truly deserves to be a tourist destination, and that it is appreciated. No one goes to Venice to drink and party - they go to Venice for the magic, to be able to say "I have been to Venice" the same way one would want to say "I have been to Narnia."
What is the magic of Venice, then? Is it the architecture, the history, the age? The canals and gondoliers and bridges? Palaces and churches - but can those not be found all over Europe? The glassmakers and mask-shops? Is it something in the air, the water, the light, a mystical aura? Is it simply the fact that I have read too many fantasy books about the place - though the same could be said for London? Though it occurs to me that most fantasy stories that start in London end up going somewhere else, but the magic in Venice is actually in Venice. Why was it that when I was aimlessly browsing Ryanair for cheap tickets, that as soon as I saw the name Venice I knew I had to go there?
In this life, Venice is the closest any of us can get to Narnia.
It was the weekend before Carnivale, so there were mask shops everywhere selling everything from cheap glitter-and-glue to elaborate artpieces of gold and feathers. Not to mention the weather, which was warm and sunny, something that isn't going to happen in good old Deutschland for a while, and the gelato. Need I say anything besides Italian gelato?
Bridges are to Venice what bakeries are to Marburg - you can't go a block without finding one. Yet even with so much water, it is hard to remember that the city is sinking. It looks so old, one can only imagine it will be there forever. Narrow alleys are everywhere, so that not even the most cautious person can avoid them. Luckily it is a big tourist town, so they try to keep the crime rate low.
How bizarre must it be to live in a place where you have more tourists than neighbors?
In any case, what struck me as most wondrous about being in Venice is that when you think of it, it is almost a mythical land. Like Narnia, or Atlantis. People write books about the place (see Cornelia Funke's The Thief Lord, auf Deutsch, Herr der Diebe; also Mary Hoffman's City of Masks) and the magic that takes place within. Of course, people write stories about magic in London and New York as well (neither of which I have been too), but those cities star so often only because that is what most writers are familiar with. Still, it brings up an interesting point: Nearly every single book that takes place in London - or any city - takes place in a different universe.
I am not just talking about fantasy, for once. I mean that the universe a book takes place in is necessarily different from the one we live in - we cannot meet the characters in ours. Often, too, the characters do not meet each other. Here, fantasy is a good medium to demonstrate this - the London from which the Pevensie children go to Narnia simply cannot possibly be the same London that housed Clive Barker's mystif (Imajica - like Abarat, but for grownups).
Yet going to a place in the flesh makes it real. To think that the Venice I went to is the same Venice that my relatives have gone to, that my friends have visited, where Cornelia Funke drew her inspiration for The Thief Lord. No streets had been rearranged or buildings added to suit the plot or the author's memory. It is the Venice that exists on its own, independent from the imagination of a writer or reader.
It is also worth saying that Venice is a magical city in its own right, without authorial additions. Even when it is overrun by tourists, you can tell that it truly deserves to be a tourist destination, and that it is appreciated. No one goes to Venice to drink and party - they go to Venice for the magic, to be able to say "I have been to Venice" the same way one would want to say "I have been to Narnia."
What is the magic of Venice, then? Is it the architecture, the history, the age? The canals and gondoliers and bridges? Palaces and churches - but can those not be found all over Europe? The glassmakers and mask-shops? Is it something in the air, the water, the light, a mystical aura? Is it simply the fact that I have read too many fantasy books about the place - though the same could be said for London? Though it occurs to me that most fantasy stories that start in London end up going somewhere else, but the magic in Venice is actually in Venice. Why was it that when I was aimlessly browsing Ryanair for cheap tickets, that as soon as I saw the name Venice I knew I had to go there?
In this life, Venice is the closest any of us can get to Narnia.
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