Room 170

Room 170. The year is 2012, in the spring semester--after an evening in the Songs & Places: International class. Jashvina sent it--and I hadn't seen it for years, until now working on these posts. It's me and Rosemary McGowan, a student in the class. One of those late after-class talks where important things can be said--are often said--just because the time is so compressed. Or, it may have been not so important--something about registration or grades. But I never worried about those things --and from the way I'm standing, it feels like a significant moment. Rosemary was an independent type, in any case--her forthright posture. Scottish highlands, I'm thinking, in some previous life.

But more, what Jashvina saw here. The run of lumber there to the side, the squirrely diagrams on the chalk board, the marks on the wall--all of Wurster's roughness when glimpsed under fluorescent light. The light of day, some might say--I always preferred to get rid of them--turn off the overheads, leaving just the warm incandescent lamps on the walls. But then, I'm particular about such things. Like the way you touch someone...
____

All schools are like this, in some sense. A measure of chaos as each young person sorts things out, tries on the new. (Although on my occasional visits to a place like Yale, for example, I remember how decorously the spaces were maintained--how this was instilled.) But Wurster, no. Catch as catch can. The roughness almost celebrated--except that I think it was an unintended result. An attitude about the world...
____

Here's another photograph that Jashvina sent me--from the year she spent in South India, in the village of her family. Tamil Nadu. Her home in the states was Moscow, Idaho, so I knew this scene was a stretch. But I loved it, too. (She's there on the divan.) And I loved what Jashvina made of that time... Maybe it allowed her to also take (appreciate) a picture like the one above?

.