Images of Me (12)

 

 

Kalamazoo College yearbook photo - 1969

 

Something Tangible After a Bit of a Break

I've been thinking . . .

Yes, this little blog has been moribund for nearly two years; but I have something nostalgic to share and not all of my friends of the last 10 or 30 or 50 years are on the proper social media websites. Hence a mild resurrection of my blog for this bit of personal remembrance.

It seems I have a quilt.

 this is the 1997 side

and this the 2018 side

Of course there is a story (or three).

Back in about 1997, a good friend [Janet] offered to make a quilt for me. She wanted it to be personalized, so I dipped into my t-shirt drawer and came up with half a dozen or so culturally significant cotton visuals.

For instance: 

this is the oldest image on the quilt, from my 1980 excursion to Antarctica

This whimsical logo sets the quilt images into a particular segment of my life. I was departing L.A. in 1991 and heading down a new path in San Francisco. Leaving my partnership in a mortgage firm and a somewhat typical Southern California lifestyle for a Ph.D. program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in Haight-Ashbury. With this shirt, two of my dear friends, Bruce & Faith, summed up the South vs. North feelings among my friends about my pending transition.

I knew not a soul in San Francisco, but uprooting was and continues to be a signature move in my wanderings. Still, leaving Hermosa Beach wasn't without deep rumblings of emotion and loss. My best friend and business partner, dear Tom, had disappeared far too soon from all of our lives. We had both developed plans for what was to be next for us, mine was to be a doctoral program, Tom's future was cut tragically short.

In the summer of '89, Tom & I plotted a month-long roadtrip and invited family and friends to join us for bits & pieces of the chautauqua. A gang of Carl, Deanna, Gary and his parents joined us for Yellowstone and some local color around the Schorzman homegrounds in Idaho.

Leap ahead several years, this naughty (look close) knot artwork comes from my friend [Tina], life in San Francisco had become transformational.
That was the plan afterall.

One of the highlights of my time at CIIS was a 1997 excursion to Indonesia, specifically Bali. My friend and professor, Daniel and his partner Fariba led a group of spirtual adventurers into three weeks of Balinese immersion. Note the masques.

Friends from the L.A. days, if the colors of the quilting thus far seems evocative, tis perhaps because the pinks and greens are made from leftover pieces of the cloths we used in Tom's AIDS quilt panel.

lower left

Now on the to 2018 flip side. I gave Mo, another new friend, a whole mess of chopped up t-shirts and left it to her artistic sense to cast the imagery for side two of the quilt.

I found her edging (non-quilter terminology) to be fascinating; all of the bits and snips woven around the splashes of t-shirt memories.

Interesting, the Indonesia masque t-shirt on the '90s side and this one many years later. You see this painting of me was done by a street artist in Ubud, Bali on that same trip. A much longer story about the masque and dance that went with it, but the shirt was with me for twenty years before it too found its way onto the other side quilt.

Another enduring feature of my time in grad school at CIIS ('91-'99) was the annual conference of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness. Life long friends were met and remet at these yearly gatherings, t-shirts often reflected the ongoing happenings at those meetings. Strange though they may have been.

The artist of many of these images was and is the previously mentioned Tina, now a successful professor and still a wonderful artist.

this one should wrinkle a few in time

My friend Scott gave an amazing presentation at this meeting. Seems like a lot of mushrooms . . .

 and then there are the deep flashbacks, the shirt was obtained at one of the many reunions we have attended but the years actually at K College were 1965-69.

Weed, California: I have been visiting long, long, long time dear friends Gary & Cyndi there for three decades. They and their blissful place with a full compliment of critters both wild and semi-tame.

The 2018 side of the quilt was commissioned while I was residing in a solitary aerie in Berkeley (2010-2015), the room with the magnificent view of the San Francisco Bay and the beyond belief landlady.

What more can I say.
You know what that's like, right?

p.s. it's a big quilt, room enough for two

More Reunion Photos

The gang at the B&B

 Welcome to campus

Hoben Hall on the Quad

 Kalamazoo House B&B

Tom, Tim & Jim

 Pat & me

Stetson Chapel

photos compliments of Tom Matzell

Early Reunion Photos

Yes, there are more to follow as soon as everyone gets home and  the girls photoshop out the ones they don't like.

The weak backs relax after a long day of reunionizing.






photos from Marci Cameron

Road Trip -- Kalamazoo

This weekend saw the unfolding of one of the ceremonially significant events anchoring this lengthy road trip.

Forty-Fifth College Reunion

Class of '69

pictures to follow . . .

For those not familiar with my Alma Mater - kzoo.edu

Road Trip Total: 3750 miles

Forty Year Observations

The memory should be specially taxed in youth, since it is then that it is strongest and most tenacious. But in choosing the things that should be committed to memory the utmost care and forethought must be exercised; as lessons well learnt in youth are never forgotten. Arthur Schopenhauer

I do believe in my last post I promised not to write more about my college reunion, it appears I was mistaken. Offered for your consideration several random observations and bits of a oft told story or two.

First, I would like to say to all those many hundreds of thousands of music lovers out there who tend to say: "I like all kinds of music except rap" or "I love any type of music but none of the twangy country." Well I want to offer for your consideration that when you share a hotel for an entire weekend with a barbershop quartet convention; you will definitely change your mind about your musical exception. Sweet Adeline can put you into a diabetic coma from several rooms away.

One of my friends observed this weekend that graduating students from the sixties seemed to fall into three groups: those who did not have a master plan for their lives; those who did and actually followed that plan and by far the largest group: those who had a plan followed the plan and are now on plan #2, #3 or #19. I, myself, am the poster boy of the first group, having no idea who I was or what I was going to do. I believe I now also qualify as a card carrying member of the third group as well, being that I am now on my twenty-somethingth career. These may be more universal traits of all youthful graduates but methinks the late 60s and early 70s produced a lot more young people who kept looking for their path long after commencement.

I've got several more interesting "career twist" stories from the weekend but I think they belong in a short story not here. What I am fascinated by are the people who every five years really enjoy a cocktail party, a box lunch, a class photo and a bad hotel rubber chicken dinner with old friends versus those classmates who never come back to campus and who actually have told me via phone and facebook that the entire idea of talking with a friend not seen in 40 years is downright frightening.

What is nostalgia and how much of it remains logged in fantasy and the midsts of memory, not to be ripped into the light of reality by seeing friends now wrinkled and worn with the living of the intervening forty years. Our gang had a great time and anticipate our 45th reunion just around the corner. We expect the Boston and Washington contingents to show up in '14.

====

photo credit: archives

Kalamazoo, Kazoo, Kazoo

Although it shocks my avid followers when I say it.... I am heading to my 40th college reunion this weekend. It appears it will be a damp and chilly weekend so I think the interior activities will draw us more than the football game. A small if incomplete complement of old friends will be showing up. We have mostly managed to make the rendezvous every five years but will miss the few who have other commitments this weekend (the Band took one and Obama got the other).

I am sure reading about someone else's reunion is almost as tedious as attending one with a spouse or partner. You know no one, you miss all the inside jokes and you realize your favorite bed buddy was young and immature sometime in the distant past. So this will be the first and last mention of the happenings from this weekend.

For those who are alums but won't be making the trek to Kalamazoo, here is a musical reminder of those long ago days. Turn up the volume.

Nostalgia

[Content Disclosure: Nostalgia 68%; Pondering 12%; Other 9%]

"Nostalgia from the Greek nostos, 'a return home,' and algos, 'pain.' Pain of the return home. A very accurate description; despite their blurs, words can sometimes be so exact." -- Kim Stanley Robinson

Emotional nostalgia is what is murmuring around in my soul these days. Not so a much a longing for a long ago place on the planet, but a return to a feeling of peace and joy. Music, of course, is a prime excavator of such times. As we all know "the good olde days" really weren't; but that doesn't prevent the warm sadness from percolating up to the surface when one of those melodies drifts by.

I am not really going anywhere specific with this post today. Just reflecting on how some memories are shared and others are not. A silly love song is just silly to some and so trenchant to others. Same for a movie, a book, any moment in time. For some it stands out like a beacon to all that was good and simple; hmm, that reeks of a Darth Vader quote from Field of Dreams. What surprises me is how even the most romantic people in my life will shy away from such a moment when it does not resonate from their experience. One wonders why falling into someone else's nostalgia is so difficult. Is it the lack of a shared anchor or is it perhaps the encounter with pain other than one's own?

. . . .

Addendum: A couple of regular readers pointed out that I seemed to be going somewhere with this topic and then sort of ran away from it. I confess, there are still times when my tolerance for self revelation gets in the way of just bloggin' along. I mean do I really want anyone to know that 'Moon River' actually tugged at some spot in my psyche? Sure classic rock but Andy Williams? Where are those blog lines of privacy?

Oh and for those who care (and I am shocked that you do), the photo is of Stetson Chapel on the quad at Kalamazoo College.