Wurster... A school is a strange and beautiful thing—a kind of home, even if it’s too big to really be a family. With its great aspirations and many contradictions. Students, as if in a dream, sitting together at the bottom of the main stairs—maybe a dozen or so, talking with each other, or just being in each other’s company. The feeling of walking into the building (it’s always called, “the building,” with heightened attention), the chance encounters—as when I saw Jarkal one evening, at the tower elevator door on the second floor—I ‘d walked in that direction, not knowing quite why—and there he was… a friend. Back two years to when he’d be studying on the fourth floor, just outside my officer, sitting with his laptop display of extremely elaborate drawings—a world—and Reem would come up, smiling, excited—they were friends, too.
That kind of place—known and unknown. Or known just enough, snatches of people’s lives—their children’s lives, even (Paul’s daughter, Rivka, this fall, sitting at that same fourth floor table)—or looking down the long hallway on the first floor, late on a Tuesday night, catching sight of a small group in the distance—the real estate class, maybe—Callot, jacket and white shirt, distinct—and the animated figure of a girl alongside, her arms raised, expressive—Lucy, I knew…
Or Edward, last week, 10pm, as we were standing together in the south tower elevator—his thoughtful face, not young, a pair of new work boots. “They’re waterproof,” he tells me… Or Tyler, in his own realm, coming in to work, unassuming, a touch jaunty, glad that I call him by name…
The courtyard on an early evening—walking in from the parking lot in back, lights on inside the second floor, and maybe a few in the tower. The expanse of brick, someone sitting on one of the wooden benches, or there inside, seen through the glass. Sky above gray concrete—it’s own color, the sunset to the west, beyond, unseen, at dusk, the building interceding, it’s presence, rising up. Everyone’s life exposed for a moment—a figure at a window—or no one at all…
Photo and writing in this post are from November 18, 2017
________________________________________________________________________________________
How to navigate this blog:
The opening post will remain (at least for now) Wurster with Campanile. The subsequent posts are chronological, with most recent at top, earlier posts below. You can also locate individual posts by title in the side-bar menu. As you'll see, this is a work in progress...
So, read the first post, at the bottom--Tony's Office--then dip into the rest as you wish! They're in order of their creation, but the narrative is one of association...
_____
At best this is a sampling—so many people that I value have been left out—but remember that I started with the photos—the available photos—the ones I made in my office, and then from recent years of classes, particularly VS185X Songs & Places—and it’s these experiences that are reflected here. Each post started with a photo, the writing followed, so the process of inclusion was intuitive.
One thing that struck me throughout was how attached I am to so many of you—and how this can be seen in all the appurtenances. A good word, no? Vladimir Nabokov used it in his book on Nikolai Gogol—the effects in the manor houses on each of the estates in Dead Souls—where the meaning of each item—a book, a bast shoe, a small conical pile of ash tapped out from a pipe smoked long ago—becomes a point of entry into the lives of everyone involved.
In addition, relative to my office—the layers as they’ve built up over time mean that it’s not just the objects themselves, and the memories they evoke—but the alluvial process per se—the layers becoming valuable in their own duration…
Alluvial is a good word, too. Maybe a little grand, since what we’re taking about are simply the effects of a lifetime teaching—books, grade sheets, notes, project assignments, reports. But each of these touch on individual lives, and in that they are like a river…
I worked on this for something over a month—May and early June 2019. The entries are individual, but they’re not really blog posts. I don’t think of this as a blog at all. Maybe rather the compact chapters in what’s turned into a fairly elaborate book!
All the associations and connections that often don’t get stated in a class. Can’t be shared, unless everything’s to be a digression. But here, digression is essential—it’s the whole point—how we discover which connections are most important.
Is the project finished? An impossible question! For now let me share what I’ve done to date, and afterwards (afterwards!) we’ll see. Does one continue to open these doors onto the past—or turn to something new and unknown? I have feeling it will never be either/or…
Feel free to send me your comments—best by email to chambersstreet[at]hotmail.com
________________________________________________________________________________________
_____
At best this is a sampling—so many people that I value have been left out—but remember that I started with the photos—the available photos—the ones I made in my office, and then from recent years of classes, particularly VS185X Songs & Places—and it’s these experiences that are reflected here. Each post started with a photo, the writing followed, so the process of inclusion was intuitive.
One thing that struck me throughout was how attached I am to so many of you—and how this can be seen in all the appurtenances. A good word, no? Vladimir Nabokov used it in his book on Nikolai Gogol—the effects in the manor houses on each of the estates in Dead Souls—where the meaning of each item—a book, a bast shoe, a small conical pile of ash tapped out from a pipe smoked long ago—becomes a point of entry into the lives of everyone involved.
In addition, relative to my office—the layers as they’ve built up over time mean that it’s not just the objects themselves, and the memories they evoke—but the alluvial process per se—the layers becoming valuable in their own duration…
Alluvial is a good word, too. Maybe a little grand, since what we’re taking about are simply the effects of a lifetime teaching—books, grade sheets, notes, project assignments, reports. But each of these touch on individual lives, and in that they are like a river…
I worked on this for something over a month—May and early June 2019. The entries are individual, but they’re not really blog posts. I don’t think of this as a blog at all. Maybe rather the compact chapters in what’s turned into a fairly elaborate book!
All the associations and connections that often don’t get stated in a class. Can’t be shared, unless everything’s to be a digression. But here, digression is essential—it’s the whole point—how we discover which connections are most important.
Is the project finished? An impossible question! For now let me share what I’ve done to date, and afterwards (afterwards!) we’ll see. Does one continue to open these doors onto the past—or turn to something new and unknown? I have feeling it will never be either/or…
Feel free to send me your comments—best by email to chambersstreet[at]hotmail.com
________________________________________________________________________________________
.
