It was toasty here this
weekend –in the 100’s –even though summer has been over for a couple
weeks. While the nights cooled off
nicely and the heat was dry and not the unrelenting, penetrating kind that we
have at times here during the summer – a white heat as opposed to a yellow one,
as I like to think of it – but I have always particularly resented these fall
heat waves, since I feel they prolong the hot summer and cheat me out of my
favorite season.
Nevertheless, fall
is here in Claremont, with the weather cooling off, albeit slowly, and the
colleges going at full throttle.
Following are my two most recent Claremont Courier columns, reflecting
on this transition and various and surprising memories and issues that it stirs
up
THOSE COLLEGE
DAYS, THESE COLLEGE DAYS
“Old man” was printed in black block letters
on the back of the lifeguard tower, like
it was done with a stencil. This was the wrong tower – it was not the last one,
the next one down, Dog Patch, where the beach wheelchair was – but I knew about
Old Man. My friend used to talk about
it. He told me that the waves there are
always easy to ride, a good place for an old man to go to surf.
Even before seeing the Old Man tower, I was
thinking of my friend. Perhaps it was the strong stink that greeted my friends
and me on Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago when we drove down to the sand at
San Onofre State Beach. It was an
overpowering smell, one of salt and fish, lots and lots of seaweed. It was almost nasty. It was the smell of a true, wild beach, a
smell I get only a hint of when I go to my usual beach north of Santa
Monica. This was no city beach.
My old friend would appreciate this. He did appreciate it. I don’t know if he liked the stink – he would
probably say it was “stanky” – but I knew that he spent a good amount of time
of time at San Onofre. It was one of the
places where he liked to go surfing.
Surfing was a big part of his life. It may have been what it was about. He got a very good, stable job, but he made
sure that it was located in San Diego and that he was able to get off by 4
every day so that he could go hit the waves.
I knew that my friend was a good surfer,
that he understood the waves. I knew
that he was at home on the shore, that he was easy with the waves crashing with
the mix of sand and rocks unseen under his feet. I knew this when he would carry me,
full-grown, into the cold, salty water and lift me high each time a wave came
in.
The waves would keep coming, cold and
biting, and I would scream and yell along with my friend. And I would love it. Not only was it a blast, a terrific, fun, wild thrill. It was wonderful feeling so safe in my
friend’s hands, and I was happy to get a glimpse, an inkling,
of what it’s like to surf and why he loved it so. When I got tired, after not too long, my
friend would take me back to my wheelchair and sit with me as I shivered,
wrapped in towels, until I got warm, at last, in the bright sun. (At one point, he got a small wetsuit for
me.)
As I sat there on the beach at San Onofre a
few weeks ago, classes were getting
underway or were about to start at the colleges here in Claremont. Perhaps this was another reason I was
remembering my friend taking me into the ocean – something I hadn’t experienced
since I was a small child and one of my parents could easily carry me and
something I haven’t experienced since.
It was when I was a student at U.C Riverside in the early eighties, on
my own, away from my home in Claremont for the first time, that I met my surfing friend.
Who knew I would meet a guy who loved
surfing and would share it with me in such a gutsy, hands-on way, and who knew
I would let him? Who knew I would end up
being friends with this guy with his right-wing politics and punk rock
music?
He probably taught me more, or opened my
eyes more, than some of the classes I was taking. I certainly saw another world
with him. I also learned that I could be friends with someone I didn’t always
agree with.
I thought of this as I sat watching the
waves crashing in, white and frothy, that recent Sunday afternoon, getting
higher and higher on the shore, and I thought of how this happens again and
again in Claremont. With the college students
coming into Claremont and settling in for the year, it is no doubt happening,
It is pretty much inevitable.
It is one of the greatest things about
Claremont, as we should recall this month as the colleges get into their full
swing, more than the acclaimed professors and all the remarkable lectures and
performances. Year after year, young
people come here and meet others who are from different places and who like and
believe different things. Year after year,
these students here from all over who are not like each other discover that
they are not that different and can end up being friends.
An article last week in the Los Angeles Times mentioned , for
example, that incoming freshmen at Pomona College were invited to read and discuss “Americanah”
by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie during their orientation. The novel
is about Nigerians who emigrate to the U.S and Britian and return home and,
according to Dean of Students Miriam Feldblum, offers multiple perspectives on
racial issues and American and Nigerian societies and emphasizes that
assumptions about culture and history shouldn’t be made. The dean also suggested that it’s a good book
for young people because it examines long friendships and life’s unexpected
turns.
Life’s unexpected turns. I
thought about them too as I sat on the beach that Sunday afternoon at San
Onofre as the tide inevitably rose. I
don’t know where my friend is, and I don’t know why we lost touch with each
other about 15 years ago. Perhaps he
didn’t like my coming out as a gay man.
Perhaps he was trying to find a new life after his beautiful wife
committed suicide, leaving him with two little boys, and I was too much a part
of his old life. Perhaps our different
politics got to be too much, or we both didn’t try hard enough.
Returning to Claremont the next day, I was sad that summer was almost
over, even as I knew it wasn’t really – this is sunny So-Cal, after all, and I
was already planning another beach outing or three in the next few weeks or who knows how long -
and even as I couldn’t wait for the weather to cool down. I was also glad to be
going home to a community where people have once again come to discover and develop
their own lives, or their new-found lives, full of rich, sometimes surprising and not
easy, rewarding adventures.
AT
IT AGAIN AT THE ATH
The finger-snapping was new to me.
I have seen a lot of twinkling, when people raise their hands and
wriggle their fingers in approval. I
have seen people repeat in unison what a speaker says to make sure it is heard
by all. But I had not seen an audience,
or part of an audience, snapping during a speech.
A friend told me it isn’t new. He
said that it was common at readings and gatherings during the period of the
Beat poets. He also mentioned that it
was in the same spirit as the “human microphone” – the audience repeating what
the speaker says – which was often seen during the Occupy movement.
But there was something new about the snapping, something advent-garde. This was something different, something that
was a change. I won’t say it was ominous
or scary, but it was edgy.
Indeed, something was on edge
that evening a few weeks ago at the Athenaeum at Claremont McKenna College.
Janet Mock was the featured after-dinner speaker. Ms. Mock- emphasis on the Ms, thanks – is a
transgender woman, a woman who was born in a male body, a concept many people
have a hard time getting their heads around – not unlike, say, same-sex
marriage five or ten years ago. The
author of a memoir, Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity,
Love and So Much More, she has spent
years speaking out, in an effort to help people to understand it.
Perhaps her claim to fame most recently is responding to an interviewer
on television who asked why she changed from male to female by saying, no, she
didn’t change, she was always female and was stuck in a male body. It isn’t easy to stand up like this,
speaking truth to power, so to say, and
being African-American and Hawaiian doesn’t, I suspect, make it any less of a
challenge.
So she came to the Athenaeum in the early days of the new semester with
a strong, definite message. That she was
in conversation with Carol Williams, an associate professor of chemistry at
C.M.C who is also a transgender woman, was also a strong, definite
message. It was clearly a message that
many people at the colleges wanted to hear and many others at the colleges needed
to or should hear.
One question during the Q & A – tellingly, in an unusual if not
unprecedented practice at the Athenaeum,
anonymous questions written on cards were accepted if one was more
comfortable doing so – had to do with whether a women’s college should accept
women who were born in a male body. I
had the sense that the audience members who were snapping at times were those,
like Ms. Mock as she indicated in her
response, who are tired of questions like this being or having to be asked.
It is understandable that they are fed up and impatient, even
angry. I have heard plenty of these
questions, including, on some painful and wrenching occasions, in the gay community. There are also groups, such as the Rad Fems.who are adamant that a woman isn’t a
woman unless she was born a woman. This,
of course, is on top of the general bias in society, with many people, as I
said, having trouble getting their heads around the idea of someone being
trapped with the wrong gender. There was
almost a measure- one that would be highly divisive and hurtful - on the
upcoming state ballot to repeal the new law allowing people to use the public
restroom that they feel is appropriate.
This was indeed a brave way to start the year at the Athenaeum, with a
strong message. Just having the
participation of a transgender woman professor teaching chemistry at a college
that used to be a men’s school – Claremont Men’s College – was remarkable
enough.
But it wasn’t that surprising for the Athenaeum. Yes, it has hosted the likes of Newt Gringich
and Mitt Romney and lots of C.E.Os, but it has also featured the drag star
RuPaul and AIDS activists, not to mention Bill Clinton, as well as such
head-turning artists as Bono, Spike Lee and Ken Kesey. It has taken C.M.C a long way from its
reputation of being a school for conservative jocks and business majors and has
lately been referred to a daily salon of sorts, providing an “hour of art and
culture on campus.”
The presence of Ms. Mock and
Ms. Williams – emphasis, again, on the
“Ms,“ – wasn’t the only sign that evening that the Athenaeum is continuing this
practice. A striking, huge painting, a
new addition, all but dominated the large room.
It was full of tumultuous, inky, dark colors and had two long tubes of
bright neon light, in sharp contrast,
slashing across it.
The painting made for a bold addition to the room. As I found out the next evening there, when
Mary Weatherford was in conversation with Robert Faggen, professor of literature
and director of the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at C.M.C, it is very
much a bold addition not only to the room but also the college and also makes a
bold specific statement.
Mary Weatherford is the artist. I
had seen her speak at the Athenaeum in the Spring about her work, praised for
its strength and recent use of neon light, but I had forgotten that she was
going to teach at the college this Fall and that the college had commissioned a
work from her. This mammoth work is the
result of that commission.
As became perfectly apparent during that evening, the painting came
about with the college and Claremont in mind.
The tumbling and swirling blues and browns show the sweep from the rocky
slopes of Mt. Baldy to the crashing
waves of the Pacific. This wide-ranging
landscape is rough and wild, almost violent, full of obstructive rocks and
brambles, but, as evident with the bright lights, it has been tamed, if not
civilized, with industry, commerce, culture and, yes, education. Or perhaps they just coexist.
This artwork is exciting and monumental, reflecting the Athenaeum, along
with the mission and also the challenges and changes going on at C.M.C and the
other colleges here. It was no surprise
the next week when Anis Mojgani, the poetry slam champion, was at the
Athenaeum, saying he would “blow your mind” and doing exactly that.
