431. The Walking Stick with a Big Black Suitcase (Poem and Flash Fiction)

The Walking Stick with a Big Black Suitcase

There was a girl
who was a stick
of six feet tall
and 110 pounds.
She walked all across
the random campus
with her head down
perhaps to hide
her internal uneasiness,
her confusion,
her eyes glazing,
not knowing how to pinpoint
or identify this confusion--
this void--
where it came from,
where it's going--
but at that split moment
of circumstances
in space and time,
the confusion took form
of a big black suitcase
she was trailing behind her,
lugging and slogging around
in awkwardness
as if the suitcase
were at least equal
to her own weight
or biomass
or weight,
and she was angry
simply angry
to think she had to choose
her classes
of two from column A
and one from column B
but didn't know
any other road of thinking
and no one asked her... yet--
to wipe her mind to a blank slate
as if she saw all 1 million classes
in the book of all books
of this random campus
which one would she choose
to take?
Out of her own intrinsic interest?
Intrinsic hunger, desire?
Intrinsic pathway and journey to life?
Endemic to her own unique conglomeration
of neuronally-housed experiences?
Maybe she didn't deserve to have
this question asked to her.
Maybe she just wasn't ready for that question.
But the subliminal aggravation
always seemed to amplify.
So this walking stick
with a trailing big black suit case
crawled across the campus
to a random building of brown
to a random second floor
to a random, dimly lit office space
leading to a semi-random person
she met only a second time.
Eric Zimmerman' the name.
of somewhat youthful, moderate liveliness--
his skin had no layers
but his conversing interplay
had shown he'd been around the block--
perhaps it was the day of only moderate liveliness--
glum gray skies--
that influenced all moods around--
Eric's, the stick's, everyone's.
He shuffled papers that showed
her information in numbers.
They only need numbers, you know.
And Eric reviewed the stick's sheet:
To become an "environmental studies major"
You need to take physics, economics, geology--
And the walking stick
then sitting on a seat,
boiled with increasing anger, frustration, confusion--
agony, her mind craving to explode
because this world wanted her to repeat
repeat repeat
repeat repeat
the same information
she tried to learn so hard in high school--
the same information
that made her consume herself into a stick
in the first place--
her hands shook and jittered
on the verge of pseudo-epilepsy
as she pulled up the black suit case
to her bony knees
and rapidly unzipped the top,
struggling to pull out a big black binder
neatly stuffed with hundreds and hundreds of papers
three-point-five inches thick--
no, not ONE folder, but TWO!--
and what could these two binders
embody, represent, possibly mean?--
all those notes from lectures and labs and exams
from two years of painfully pleasured memories
of bootcamp physics with Madame Lieux
at John Wesly North High School--
an island of education extraordinaire--
yet the rest of all her classmates
placed those notes in the bombfire
of post-high-school graduation
in the cult ritualistic celebration
that my-ten-years-of-mass-produced-public-education-
was-a-bunch-of-bullshxt--
but no, this walking stick
could not throw away--her efforts,
her meticulousness, her potentially gained knowledge
of new universes
of seemingly potential practicality
in her daily life
that were only mildly mentally sketched
in space and time--
then blindly repulsed and rejected by
the bureaucracy of MegaUniversity
who knew not her name, just her number
and her tuition and fees
all put to brain-time-and-space-waste
and redone again?
All over again?
As if 1% of her knot of confusion
that upwelled in her at this pristinely struck
moment of all moments
started to unravel right in front of the
poor innocent, random culprit of Eric Zimmerman
as she slammed her two massive binders
totalling 7-inches worth of two-year militaristic efforts
and she stared intensely, perhaps awkwardly--
this time not with a glossy gaze
but a rare, rare moment of acute, definite, yet absurd vision--
that seemed to lead Somewhere,
but Nowhere and Anywhere in particular--
at least a rationale, logical battle, fight she could stand for
as she roared in quiet, very quiet control,
oh no!--It was just a fight to spare her sanity
as the Future an endlessness
of flipping hamburgers of bombarded information--
"You are NOT going to make me take physics,
EVER again."
A pause, yet
only a vibrant chuckle, peaking into a deep-rooted laugh
emerged from the facial muscles
and jovial voice of Mr. Zimmerman,
as he flipped open one book and skimmed lightly
through the extensivity of the rabbithole of Lieux Physics
only again to shake his head,
"You know what, Victoria?
Ever since I've been here,
no one has EVER done THIS to me before!"
He continued to be self-humored
out of her own determined innocence
and downright intrigue to reveal piles and piles of evidence
on how-this-school-cannot-repeat-torture-to-me,
resulting in two boxes being checked off
on the paper with the walking stick's numbers.
No, no. The stick did not have to take physics.
Again.
She had won the most strangest of minute battles,
all with a few more thousand
knots in her twisted head that needed to still unravel.
Eric made her fight a little more difficult
to check off those economics and geology boxes...
but the suitcase filled with Effort and Legitimacy
was still quite heavy
without those two physics binders
and through the shuffling of her Past in Papers
Across the Random Office of Mr. Zimmerman
she learned that it was worth keeping evidence
in the closet, the Personal Library of Victoria,
back in the knowns and comforts of Riverside--
despite the qualms of her mother
desiring a Roomie Bedroom,
Not an Office Space or a Warehouse--
the stick finally zipped up her backpack,
her big black suitcase,
and left Mr. Zimmerman with a memory,
with one fleeting wobble and stumble,
leaving the random room,
the random hallway,
the random building,
the random walkway
with a slight smile,
with a slight ease
knowing she could move forward
into Nowhere in Particular
rather than repeat Backwardness
yet upon her lengthy walk
she was nevertheless
swiftly consumed
and subsumed
by the other 99% of the void.
The stick struggled once again
to hall a heavy load
across the campus
to the free, yet sparse parking boonies of
Isla Vista.
It was a week before the school started.
The campus was a ghost town,
but her head was far from it.
It was just the very beginning
for this walking stick--
just the beginning of a chronically internal battle
on how her rowdy, fiesty mind
could just never fit in these boxes
that the Cow Herders of Academia
were trying to fit her in.

"Zen of Rock Crab: Parts to Whole" / The Black Box Series

I took this image of myself using the self-timer on my Nikon D80. This image string was ultimately used in my Zen of Rock Crab film. You never know what can possibly be useful until the end. You can't tell, but I am very sleepy and tired and stressed in this image, though I posed "enlightened." I just came back to UCSB and had an opportunity to meet Hannah's friend Charlie, who is a crab and lobster fisherman. [I was very stressed because I didn't have roommates, or housemates to calibrate my lifestyle to. I become easily overworked and lacking in sleep. I am very thankful now for three graduate student housemates, though I have my own room. Amen!] Anyhoo. I was filming the temporarily unused lobster and crab traps that were laying in the back of Charlie's rented home amidst the avocado groves of Fairview. When Charlies left, and after my filming of major components of the 17-shot series. I saw this black tar box where Charlie actually dips his traps. And you know what I saw? Figuratively (science-wise) and literally: A BLACK BOX. *Duh* Fine fine fine. But honestly, you don't see a lot of black boxes hanging around. So, my being an opportunist of an old-stale idea, I started taking pictures of myself in this black box, inevitably of my MockHollywood Self-Portfolio and Zed Card (to get back at IMTA). So, such is the story of this picture. I can look good at a distance, even on three hours of sleep. It took a lot of shooting to get this image though. I am difficult to photograph. And since I know this, I just shoot myself. I am not optimally mathematically aesthetic at all angles, but I have a certain small proportion of angles (less than 20%) where I can tolerate looking at myself, and say that I'm not an aesthetic ogre to society. Say for example, I bet Natalie Portman has close to 100% aesthetic mathematical optimality. You can take mistake pictures of her, and she STILL looks good. For me, either I look good, or just really BAD. So I worked very hard during my leave of absence to find my spatial regions of optimal mathematical aesthetics. *sigh* And this picture is the byproducts of my learnings. Blue Horizons made all the things I learned in pained isolation, all these things... actually count. Blue Horizons made my entire leave of absence an extremely useful experience.

Nuts-and-Bolts for Film Pre-Production Package, Shotlist Sample from Michael Hanrahan for Ty-Warner Sea Center

In class, Michael Hanrahan explained to us that a "Shotlist" is like a grocery-store to-do list for film. It's very important to collect shotlists, especially if you have a very specific style you are shooting for in a film, and need to string the images with a unique level of connectedness. I admit I did not have an on-scene or pre-prep shotlist, primarily because I was thrown into a Black Box of crab fishing and didn't know what to expect. Ultimately, randomness of a black box slowly started to sort out into patterns and rhythmic behaviors and predictability. And then, with each trial of filming, my motions became more smooth, rhythmic, and creatively daring! I think I become more daring and experimental with each trial of filming, simply because I get bored of the mechanics of the previous trial. I always escape reptition, and try to break habits. I always try to expand my box of perception and action!

Once a system becomes predictable (like the rock crab fishing industry system), then I can make a shotlist, because I know what to expect! I think in part, Michael was expecting us to plan and predict too much, to a point where no one was going out and filming. I kind of knew the only way I would learn is to drop myself into the black box of the outdoors. I kind of knew that I had to set aside all this "planning and predicting" of filming in class, and just go fall off a log, and bruise my knees! Because ultimately, planning and predicting doesn't apply to the FIRST TIME you ever do anything!