All things that rise...

The Silent Subterranean

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 04:18:59 GMT

Dear friends, I'm sharing with you a collection of photos I hope to get accepted by the Madison Arts Commission for exhibition in the Municipal Building sometime next year. Below is my exhibition narrative followed by the flickr link to the photos I'm submitting. Check it out, let me know what you think! Much love...

The world is filled with holes, hidden spaces, niches dug into earth and infrastructure. Some of them we never see, while others we pass through daily without blinking. Those hollowed portals and prisons shielded from light, the virtual (if not literal) subterranean, suspend us. They suspend time itself. They read our fears, and taunt us with a desperate desire to escape – to escape a place or, more broadly, to escape hard times.

Light sheds glittering flakes of hope in such places. Is there no conceivable space penetrated by mankind that is not simultaneously permeable to light? Is not the passage through the dark cavities and tunnels of life made winnable by its first sight?

These photographs attempt to explore those portals, and to capture the miasmic binding soul of the subterranean – as well as the immeasurable hand of hope through the light that grabs your eye and your attention without asking you. The scenes were chosen from a toiling adventure through the streets, alleyways, deep staircases and tunnels of Madison in search of the bleak constricted space…in search of nearly masochistic and anxious claustrophobia.

But it was also a search for possibility; or that space surprisingly open to man, solitary and in need of company – where the ground and the concrete are both the limit, and the limitless.

Working in the medium of photography, I strive to turn what seems to be a familiar image into something entirely unfamiliar. Who hasn’t seen a staircase, or a tunnel? In photographing those scenes, my goal is to influence an audience to ask a different question: “When was the last time I saw that same staircase or tunnel this way?” The still photograph traps the viewer in that space and time, and in this case it traps them in a space she or he would otherwise escape as quickly as possible.

The photograph suspends that anxiety, and hope for escape. My ultimate objective in this exhibition is to encourage Madisonians to join me in confronting their most binding and darkest situations, to face the anxiety and look for the light and the hope.

~Cory Schultz

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cory_schultz/sets/72157622477382506/

The only thing I'm truly devoted to: Impulse

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:08:46 GMT

So I decided today that I want to make one goal for my future be to get a reporting/photography job at al-Jazeera. Of course this decision was backed by tons of legitimate, albeit overblown and impulsive rationalizations...but that's me :)

I proceed to text John A. "A goal: to get a job at al-jazeera" and he promptly replies, "goal 2: take over a small Caribbean nation. Google friendly hostility. Skip the intro."

Friendly Hostility, I have just learned, is a webcomic about two roommates: a cute, pansexual ridiculous guys and his asexual exboyfriend - one of which is a reporter and the other constantly obsessed with world domination and future dictatorships. I'm not typically a fan of comics in general but this one is definitely worth checking out!

In the end I think my lesson was: recognize your own ridiculous and impulsive desires in life, remain flexible and don't be afraid to make fun of yourself, lest someone else decides to do it for you ;)

FRIENDLY HOSTILITY

Words I typically receive in silence

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:04:16 GMT

"Sometimes I just wish I could be a slut."

"It's not necessarily that I think there's anything wrong with having sex with men in their 50s...I just don't really want to think about it."

"Its a pretty awful place, filled with bar trash and single mothers."

"It wasn't because you were in the South that those girls threw sodas at you from the street. You went to White Castle...trashy people eat there."

"I don't see a single non-fast-food restaurant out here. These people have no culture."

"I once read that if you're raised on shitty fast food throughout your childhood, it pretty much destroys your sense of taste."

"Oklahoma? Isn't that where a bunch of white people killed a bunch of Indians?"

"My niece just graduated with a Ph.D." You must be proud of her. "Oh well I have one too, my whole family does, so..."

Words of the "enlightened."

With a flower in my hair, Part 6

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 18:20:32 GMT

Okay, so I really want to tell the rest of my amazing story in California with the same amount of detail that I told the rest of the story, but I realize it's been even longer now since it actually happened and it would take me at least 3 or 4 more installments to do it, so I'm going to spare everyone and summarize as best I can what happened when I was in sunny Cali.

Came down the High Sierras on a bus, the lake was clear and blue and beautiful. Lindsay met me at Mont Bleu, I was dirty and tired, she bought me a sandwhich at the restaurant in the Casino, she got a banana split for herself that I ate half of too because I was that hungry, and then we went back out to wait for a bus back to her apartment. Instead a fun trolley came by that was meant for tourists but we took it anyway. The guy that drove it was a hippie with long grey hair that was probably drunk, and he was constantly making fun of people walking on the street. "That guy's in his underwear...he's underwear guy. Ha Ha, alllriiight! That chick in the convertable pretends she can't hear me but she can, cuz this is a chick magnet...Ha Ha CHICKS! Hey look it's the Armenians....I love the Armenians....Ha Ha Chicks!!!" Needless to say the trolley ride was quite amusing. At one point I saw two Latino guys walking together and I heard one say to the other "I think there's a sale on shoes tomorrow at Merv's!" and then Lindsay I looked at eachother as one person, the way we tend to do, and said, "yep".

Lindsay's apartment was small and crappy, but only about as crappy as mine and with more booze and hash pipes everwhere... I guess I just expect more from someone that's almost 27. But I love her anyway. Her boyfriend (at the time, because apparently they just broke up yesterday and now she's in another living crisis apparently) I did not love. He was your typical douchebag trust-fund selfish 24-year-old-turning-12 snowboarder excessive pot-smoking asshole from New Hampshire just-moved-to-California-and-feels-the-urge-to-say-HELLA-before-every-adjective kinda guy! I was comforted when my sister assured he was just for temporary fun and she would never consider staying with him more than a couple months. That's what I respect about my sister. She's like a gay man; she knows what she wants in man and she knows how to move on when she has had enough of it. Maybe it'll bite her in the ass later but who cares about later? Certainly not Lindsay!

We were all tired that night so we settled with ordering pizza and I got the first shower I'd had since early Sunday morning and then went to glorious sleep. I forgot to mention that Lindsay had quit her job the day before I got there. She was working at Harley Davidson for a couple months, but despite the fact that she had scheduled the weekend of Janine's wedding off more than a month in advance and was promised it off, her bitch-ass boss decided to take a surprise trip to Texas out of the blue and schedule Lindsay on Saturday, which was a mistake on her part because any body that knows Lindsay knows that she's capable of quitting a job under such conditions without blinking an eye! Another reason to respect her. But anyway, all of us were free the next day so, given our limited resources, we spent the day doing cheap or free things like riding out to to see a more secluded area beautiful Tahoe and taking pictures. We also went to a place called Emerald Bay, an extremely high area up in one of the mountains that looks down on a small rock island in a greenish bay of the lake, which had a small castle on it. We took pictures and...smoked substances! Not that I'm promoting such a thing, but getting high on top of a mountain is truly a religious experience, and that's coming from me!

We went back downtown, grabbed some beers, went back to the beach and chilled. Later we made excellent fajitas because Justin had actually graduated from a Culinary program when he was in New Hampshire. A lot of good it did him working at a golf course in California! Then we watched Tideland, which is a truly fucked up movie that I loved, and then I'm pretty sure Lindsay and I got high again and watched the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Movie, but I don't really remember it. The next day we took a trip out to a mountain range that Justin loves in the winter because of its optimal snowboarding capacity. In the summer however it is mostly clear with patches of snow on some of the tops. It was amazing. These were probably the biggest and cleanest ones I'd witnessed yet, partially because some of them had been burned during the forest fires. Seeing one mountain filled with evergreen trees sitting right next to an entire mountain scarred by forest fire really opens your eyes to such a phenomenon! More pictures taken, it was a lovely time, Lindsay and Justin bickered a lot, then they got high and all was good with the world...

Come Friday morning it was time to leave for Los Angeles to see Janine get married. It was going to be another long trip, since we had to take the shuttle back to Reno, and then a greyhound to L.A. which was going to take about 15 hours in total, considering all of the lag time between trips. It also turned out to be quite expensive for me because Lindsay of course couldn't afford my ticket to L.A. so I payed $74 for my own ticket. On the way to shuttle while still in Tahoe we were miraculously rained on. I say miraculous because California (as evidenced by forest fires) was under a drought for months before I came, but apparently I brought the rain with me when I came. I have the power to do such things. Then after waiting in the Greyhound station in Reno for 3 hours because we missed the 3:30 bus by about 2 minutes, we finally boarded the bus at 6 pm, expecting to be in L.A. at 6 am.

I've had really bad experiences with Greyhound, and if you want to know more you can ask me later, but suffice it to say that this trip really brought back a lot! It was okay but it wasn't great. The biggest parallel that we experienced was when we had to make a transfer in Sacremento to go South. Remember this is Labor Day weekend and everyone is traveling to Los Angeles to visit family! Obviously when we got there, the gate to the bus that was going to L.A. had a line going toward the back of the terminal...4 hours in advance of the bus's arrival!!! "Oh Fuck" I thought to myself, but all we could do was just get in line and see what happens later. When the time came, and when I was about to sleep standing up, the bus arrived and Lindsay and I were lucky enough to be two of the last 4 people that would fit on the bus. The hard part was over, now it was just an uncomfortable wait until 6 am the next morning.

Okay I lied. I'll finish this story in just one more installment very soon. All I have left is Los Angeles!

With a flower in my hair, Part 5

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:02:26 GMT

During the night woke up at about 1 am, remembering that there was to be a lunar eclipse. I was excited because up to this point, all day long, the sky was filled with clouds. I was beginning to think it would last until after the lunar eclipse, but upon waking I noticed right away that the sky was in fact clear, and the moon directly outside my window in plain view. I called John immediately to confirm when the eclipse would supposedly take place, in the hopes that I either A) didn't miss it, or B) could try and stay up to that I could witness it shortly. It was to happen at 3 am Pacific (my) time. I did fall back to sleep of course....but woke up just in time to take a few quick pictures of it, and was satisfied.

It was my last day on the train and I was ready to get off. I hadn't showered since early Sunday morning before I left for Chicago, and since there were no sanitary washing areas on the train, I was never given the chance to even so much as wash my face for 48 hours. I was getting oily and gross, and I needed to change my clothes. The people were starting to annoy me too. Some of them even repulsed me. The woman with the roudy children that I had alluded to earlier, that looked like she hated her life, would frequently roam about the train with the brats, and one of them threw up all over the floor, whereafter the woman did nothing and walked away. There was also a girl, maybe 20 years old, with a baby on the train.

My first impression of her was one of empathy and almost admiration for taking the responsibility to raise a child at such a young age, and she really was doing a fine job. There was, however, also a mid-20s deadbeat guy from Idaho that smoked all the time and bragged about being an "artist" on many occassions. He was passing by the girl and her baby on the second night I was there, saw her drawing your typical eye and face drawing that people who can't really draw all that much tend to resort to, and then he started talking to her about art in general. I had my suspicions from the very beginning, though, that he was basically using it as an excuse to get closer to her, she being quite attractive for a girl who just had a baby, and then he began showing her his work, which turned out to be nothing more than copies of Dragon Ball Z characters over and over again. Forgive me for being condescending, but I found the whole thing kind of pathetic. Maybe she wants or needs companianship, maybe her standards are lower than mine and for good reason, but regardless of how one judges the situation, he left with her number and a heightened sense of self-confidence I'm sure.

In the last few hours I spent on the California Zephyr, I of course was sitting in the observation car and I started having a conversation with a really sweet woman from California with longer, curly Kira Sedgewick hair, who was in that stage between middle-aged and almost senior-citizen. She had been talking to the Aussie from the day before a lot and she told me that he had apparently departed spontaneously (he was going the whole way) in Salt Lake City, so that he could go to Burning Man! How absurd I thought this was. but then I continued to talk to this woman for the remainder of my trip and watch the unfolding of Nevada. She spoke about current issues, schools, her idea to start an adoption of endangered species program that would raise money for the wildlife fund....I took pictures of the washed-out desert floor and the equally washed-out sandy mountains behind it. Sometimes there were patches of irrigation where the grass was more green than I'd seen all summer in Wisconsin, and most of the time the ground was cracked and flaking and devoid of life or color. The sun shone so bright even at 11 in the morning that the hazy tint it left on the land made it appear closer to 2 or 3 in the afternoon.

But I was done; I'd had enough. At 12 noon on that Tuesday I stepped off the train in Reno, Nevada, said goodbye to the hippie lady, and made my across the street to Harrah's Casino. Reno reminded me very much of Detroit. It was smaller, clearly a tourist town for the most part, and surely it was brighter and hotter, but the atmosphere was similar. Downtown foot-traffic was limited, like Detroit, and it obviously was filled with casinos and hotels, much like the Greektown district of Detroit that I stayed at last summer. In any case, I did what Lindsay told me to do and I went to Harrah's and asked where I could find the free shuttle that supposedly takes you to the Reno International Airport. That shuttle was only offered to guests of Harrah's hotel, though, but the officer was kind enough to tip me as to where I should go to catch it. So he sent me down a number of hallways and through a number of doors, and out onto the street I was, waiting for the next shuttle, just like any other guest of Harrah's Hotel and Casino. Well, I was actually the only one waiting for it on that Tuesday afternoon so I don't think any driver would have cared anyway.

I then arrived at the airport, which was rather small, and quickly purchased my ticket for the South Lake Tahoe Express that would take me to whatever casino drop-off point in South Lake Tahoe that Lindsay preferred to pick me up at, in this case Mont Bleu. Getting out of Reno, however, and specifically out of the airport, was a strange experience. First of all, parked next to our shuttle bus was a grey-metallic ecologically-friendly bus that was filled with colorful hippies that put crackers into eachother's mouths, and wore flowers around their ankles and in their hair, one girl that would pull her blouse over her boyfriend's head in front of everyone in the parking lot. They were all, of course, going to Burning Man, which reminded me of the Aussie from before. Interesting...

But on top of that, I found out very shortly that President Bush was, in fact, in Reno. Well, he was leaving Reno on Air Force One, and because of that, traffic was backed up for security purposes to the point to delaying my departure from Reno on the shuttle by about an hour. Just another reason for me to not care so much for President Bush. But once on my way and newly motivated I began to get excited about the time that I would spend with Lindsay, relieved that my trip was almost over. In the mean time I observed Reno and its housing complexes, its dry-looking mountains, its road constructions projects, and its strange large white letters that were places on some of the mountains that I assume are used as signals for incoming planes, but nonetheless looked ugly and unnecessary. Passed Carson City on the way, and it wasn't anything special really.

But then, just as the train that left Denver started slowly climbing the Rockies, my shuttle bus began to climb the High Sierras on its way to Tahoe, a truly spectacular sight, almost as if to say, "you are almost in California, and what a sight it is!"

With a flower in my hair, Part 4

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 18:39:02 GMT

The Lord works in mysterious ways. Those who know me better might be wondering what it is that could possibly lead such a skeptic like myself to give thought to the existence of God. If I had to choose one event from this trip, it would probably be the very moment, the very second I woke up from the nap that I left off at in the previous chapter to find, while looking out the window, a couple Colorado River rafters standing up and bending over in their rafts to moon the train as it passed them by, and then watching one of them lose his balance and fall ass-first into the river. I like to think that God was really trying to tell me something there, but I never pay attention to people who don't clear signals so it's his loss I guess...

Making it further through the Rockies was mesmerizing; it reminded me of taking a "duck" through the Dells along the Black River, only in this case the river was powerful and raftable and the puny rock formations of the Dells were mountains! This was the one area of the trip that you truly could not witness unless you were simply on this train. No roads went here, no hiking trails, the only other people were the rafters down at the bottom of the valley dips who didn't see the views we did. This was arguably the most the beautiful part of the ride, and for that reason I was too spellbound in my chair, forhead literally pressed against the window, to take any pictures. This sight was for me, and it exists only in my memory, and if anyone else would like to see it someday I would be willing to travel with them again. But as Frost says..."nothing gold can stay," and eventually canyons opened up, flat land could be seen again in the distance and we were making our slow departure from the Rockies.

And what a slow departure it was! This is for one specific reason: during the entire interval of time spent going through the Rockies, there was only one track laid down. There was no two-lane system here, and naturally sometimes other trains have to go the opposite way on those tracks, mainly the huge coal trains from the mines. How do they achieve this without deadly collision? There are sparse designated two lane track areas along the way, where one train will wait on the side temporarily for the other to arrive and pass along the track just enough to pass the entry area for the other train to get on that track. So the Amtrak train, for instance, would have to wait, completely stopped, about 7 or 8 times during the trip for a coal train to pass by before it could continue the trip. Needless to say there was a lot of downtime.

When the Rockies were pretty clear the train made a stop at Glenwood Springs, which is actually a town just up the road from Aspen, Colorado, so there were a lot of tourists and seasonal people there. I went back to the observational car because although there were no more Rocky Mountains, that's not to say there weren't still mountains because there certainly were. Red mountains! We got moving again I started snapping pictures of my favorite overall scenery yet: mountains of solid red rock, covered just until the tip by patches of green foliage, and those more distant came with low-hanging, dense and dark clouds that accompanied them like a hat or or a headscarf. When the land became more open we began to pass little villages that lay at the base of these mountains, and they planted rows of vegetation that I wasn't familiar with, interwoven with large candelabra-style trees, much like the sight of an Italian vineyard.

I sat next to a woman with a demeanor that I found particular comfortable, and features that seemed familiar. She told me a minute or so later that said she was traveling alone to Emeryville, though she and her husband had taken the trip several times. I found out that she was originally from Oklahoma and that she was proudly half Chickasaw. It was delighted with this news and instantly formed a bond with her. I am of course from central Oklahoma, a moderately distant descendent of Cherokees and although you may not notice it in me, it is strikingly apparent in my grandmother Towana and her siblings Telesa, Winona and Luna, which is probably why this woman seemed so familiar. We exchanged stories about "the land of red earth" and I talked about my childhood and some of my adolescence spent in Oklahoma City, Mustang, Bethany, and Shawnee. She needed supper though, so after a little while she retired to the dining car.

Another man that I'd met while getting eating a packet of peanut M&Ms and putting my camera to rest was an eccentric and greying Australian, with long bushy sideburns and beady dark eyes. He reminded me very much of the sinister poacher of the Rescuers From Down Under movie, despite his friendliness. I told him about my sister and how she'd wanted to go to New Zealand and he told me "there are two things wrong with New Zealand: they have an inferiority complex, and they're inferior!" He had many fun and interesting things to say, being an Aussie who basically traveled the U.S. for a living, with an apartment in San Francisco. He became very popular in conversation with half the passengers of the obversation car, young and old, but my suspicions tell me that most of the people who spoke to him, such as an annoying retired business man from Iowa and his quiet, overly-obedient (probably hates her life) wife, did so in order to hear more of his accent and to instill their proud American Midwest sentiment onto an impressionable foreigner with too many questions. I also got the impression that he was merely dragging these things out of them for his own amusement.

One minute he asked, "Has anyone ever heard of that Burning Man? It seems interesting..." I felt like Scooby Doo when my head lifted and turned toward him in instant recognition. I had been raised playing around in my grandpa Vern's Jamboree Campground, which he often rented out to traveling rave groups. Burning Man is an event that's been going on for many years that I'd heard about on occasion and had been relatively exposed to. But it's basically a large gathering of people in in the Nevada desert in August/September where there are no rules, no commerce, no organization. It's just a bunch of colorful hippies at a giant dance party in the heat, where you bring all your own water or barter with entertainment or so on...and at the end they burn a giant man made out of sticks. It's totally rediculous, and I was quite surprised when this 50+ year-old Australian man started expressing his interest in it! So I told him a little about it and he too ended up in the dining car, which was the last I saw of him.

The rest of the evening for me was spent doing some more observing and taking more pictures. The landscape, constantly changing, never ceased to be amazing. It was almost as if everytime we passed a state line, the landscape literally became something completely different. The last sight of Colorado mountains looked like a post card of 3 specific snowy peaks that faced the desert before us. There were sandy, sharp hills backed by dark, high sky devoid of light, and on the other side of the train there would be flat and barren yellow rock-land with red mesas in the distance that reflected what little light that was piercing the clouds and shone bright amid the darkness of the canyons that they spurted out from. We were basically looking at the Grand Canyon, but from the northern side. Then we entered Utah. One woman sitting behind me with her children would read aloud from an informational packet everytime we entered a new state and inform both her children and eavesdroppers like me facts such as "70% of the citizens of Utah identify as Mormon."

Utah was different land...a different kind of barren. There were hills and flat areas and mountains to be sure, but these were not mountains of sedimentary rock or metamorphic stone; these were mountains of dust. The train had gained considerable speed by this point and looking out the window all that I could see was a sky of black clouds with one bright orange opening in the area of the sunset, and faded shadows of the dust mountains to the side. Soon there were no more specs of light or shadows, just one shadow that covered the earth entirely as far as I was concerned. When you pressed your forhead against the window to reduce the inside glare and look out, you saw nothing. It was a deep impenetrable, unimagineable blackness.

With a flower in my hair, Part 3

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 22:11:12 GMT

Cold. I woke up earlier than I'd expected, or maybe just earlier than I wanted. It was still dark and the train had already begun to reach an altitude vastly higher than that of the Midwest plains, although you might never have noticed from the seemingly flat land. And so I lay there for a while with no comforter and wearing only shorts and a t-shirt and sandals, clutching the expensive camera that I nursed in my slumber for fear that a stranger could come at any minute and snatch it. Eventually I decided to sit up and face out the window until I could detect the sun's slow emergence on the steady incline of Colorado. I chose the best spot that I could, considering some of the windows had scratches or bad views, and that the sun was rising behind the train, and not directly on a particular side that you could see out of, not until just before it actually happened anyway.

At first I felt accomplished, like I'd marked my territory in this spectacle, but before I could relish it one man came literally running into the observation car and landed in a spot chosen so strategically while he looked at me briefly with a false sense of secuirty on his face for having acquired said spot, almost as if he expected me to be jealous. In reality his angle offered no view of the sunrise and his camera was too amateur to take anything that would have satisfied at least me. I brushed it off until 2 or 3 minutes later when about 12 other people came in at the same time to fill in all of the voids with their cameras and camcorders and vexing presence. When light finally showed itself in all of its blood red beauty, I simply snapped a couple and moved on back to my regular passanger car seat, I'd had enough of the observation car for one night.

I didn't stay there long though, just long enough to put the book that I had finished overnight away. Then James offered for me to join him in the Dining car. I was particularly excited about this venture. Riding across the country on a train is one thing, but unless you take full advantage of the experience and use some of the services, like the dining car, you might as well just take a bus. It also doesn't hurt if the man that offers you to join him for breakfast is one that you can potentially sway to pay for you if you happen to be skilled in such things! When we got to the dining car we were immediately directed to a table with two other people so that anyone coming in after us would immediately have a seat available...they basically filled it this way. It was an old retired couple from Boston that had taken this route a number of times. They amused me to the core, the kind of married couple that spends the majority of their conversations bickering about petty little decisions like whether or not to get white toast or wheat toast. The old man worked at a communications company for about 30 or so years, taking delight in informing such a young and naive lad like myself that there was once a time without computers, where they did everything on paper and typewriters! That annoyed me, I hate being patronized, but I soon got over it when breakfast arrived. I just got cereal and a bagel, and I immensely impressed at how the waitress managed to carry that and everyone's drinks so well (remember what I said about the rockiness of the train?).

By now the sun was getting higher in the morning sky and when you looked out the draped window of the dining car you could see entire rolling hills of irrigation and yellow black-dotted flowers. "Look at all the dandylions!" the old woman said, in a heavy Boston accent. "Those aren't dandylions, woman! Those are Black-eyed Susans," her husband retorted. A field of Black-eyed Susans reflecting the sun like little broken pieces of mirror on the landscape. After breakfast was over James was getting ready to leave because we would be in Denver shortly, and he reasoned that "you're a college student, you're working 3 jobs, you need to enjoy this trip as much as you can..." and he paid for my (over-priced) breakfast. Score! He went back to his seat and I didn't think about him again.

Instead I returned to the dome car and waited for Denver. Suddenly, as I'm sure anyone who's traveled this area of the country might attest, something glorious happened. Since we took off in Chicago until that morning, all that could be seen in the distance, as far as the threshold of visual stimulus would allow, nothing accept the flat earth, reproduced over and over again for miles as if photostamped the whole time, could be seen. And then mountains. No haze, no low-hanging cloud, no fog, no buildings tall enough to block them out, nothing had ever previously interfered with being able to see them. It was simply a matter of one minute all you saw was flat, and the next minute the distance was filled with Denver, and with large, incredible mountains. The day that you experience your first mountain is quite the experience when all you'd ever known was never anything bigger than what man was able to build himself. I wanted to get my camera ready but I knew that I would have plenty of chances later.

Denver was one of our half-hour stopping grounds. I did some reading in my new book, Confessions of a Mask, about a boy in Japan who begins to develop homoerotic fantasies and tendencies toward sado-masochism. I found it quite interesting, especially since the author himself committed suicide in Tokyo by stabbing himself with a samurai sword in the '70s. I was half-expecting a new person to join me in the passenger car, thinking Denver would take on as many passengers as it let off. But I was relieved to find that not many people at all got on in Denver and the train was reduced to about 20 people until its destination in Emeryville. So I did some more reading, and when the train started moving again I returned to the dome car and waited until the good sights would reveal themselves. This is where I stayed for the remainder of the day basically.

As we were carried slowly further and further away from the city, the world became smaller, we were gaining altitude, the mountains that used to be structures of divinity in the distance were now the steps of a spiral staircase that we were climbing continuously. The train was literally wrapping itself around them like a snake and getting higher until you were on a ledge of one mountain that looked over the top of a mountain next to it. It was amazing. I sat next to a girl from Thailand with whom I'd had a conversation about our stories on the train and would share cool pictures we'd just taken. The train would enter tunnels, go over bridges, run side by side with with abandoned primitive power lines that were snapped in places or completely blown over in others. One tunnel lasted about a mile long and were were covered in darkness for minutes that were occasionally disrupted by second-long flashes of guider lights.

The rock was sometimes red, sometimes sandy and sedimentary, but the most stricking characteristic about the Rockies that, although I feel stupid for saying this, I noticed that day was that they are amazingly, well...Rocky! These are not mountains of metamorphic stone or sharp edges. These are mountains of boulders and grain piled on top of eachother in layers forming large mounds. That image never got across to me when I used to picture the Rocky Mountains! Eventually the landscape changed, though. Dark green grass became more prevalent and cattle could be found in flat areas between the mountains. Ocassionally we would pass a small Colorado town or even a Native American reservation area. A bunch of people took pictures of a Tee Pee like mad, which I found strange and condescending when the two main places I've lived in my lifetime were Oklahoma and Black River Falls, both of which had high populations of Native Americans.

When I'd had my fill with the afternoon sights I returned to my seat and read more of Confessions of a Mask and fell into a brief nap to compensate in some small way for all of the sleep I had lost in the last couple of days.

With a flower in my hair, Part 2

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:24:22 GMT

"Tickets! Tickets?!" I was startled. I'd almost fallen asleep reading Beirut Fragments, my seat partner James had actually fallen asleep, and when I looked up I saw a woman in what looked to be a more butch version of a flight attendent's uniform, but with a funny conductor's hat. She had sandy blonde hair and an aged expression of responsibility in her face, as if she were the kind of train employee that wouldn't tolerate nonsense. We handed her our tickets and she wrote our destinations up above our seats, and then she left. It was about 4 pm at this point and through the tinted windows of the train car the landscape seemed almost sundried, like dusk was approaching hours before it should have. I had been post-poning conversation with James until the appropriate time.

From the beginning he felt akward to me. Since I was 14 or so I've had my gaydar set to active in almost every public setting. It used to be for the desperate possibility that I might be able to detect someone like me, during my younger years. But at this point I do for it for mere curiousity, like trying to determine whether or not someone is seemingly intelligent, or if someone is batshit crazy. And I'm usually right about my assumptions, in the case of men anyway, but James confused me. Not that I'm trying to flatter myself or anything, but of all the empty seats available at the time he sat down, he chose the seat right next to mine without hesitation. He was a single man in his '40s that had divorced in his younger years for reasons that I never bothered to ask. He never spoke of women out of interest or even desire to stimulate conversation with a young college student like myself, and he seemed unnaturally interested in my affairs after the ice was broken. But I put it off, I wasn't really that interested to begin with. Eventually when the sun began to lower, he became restless and wanted to move about the train in order to find dinner, and I sat for a while by myself, listening to the two old men behind me jabber over-confidently about their military tours on the beaches of Normandy many great years ago, before I would too decide to roam about.

The California Zephyr is a train that was designed in the 1950s or '60s, one of the two, and grew to great popularity because of its combination of a route that explores some of the most breathtaking landscape in America, as well as a mostly glass dome observation car that allows you to see said landscapes in great detail along your trip. Naturally, it was my intention from the beginning to spend time in this dome car, but finding it was the trick. Of course, I did find it, after walking just two cars down! Half of the dome car was filled with cafe style booths next to huge windows, and the other half was seating that faced toward the windows for people looking straight out. Below the observation car was the snack and lounge car with basically the same setup but without window-facing seating, but a snack bar area instead where the price of a small carton of milk was roughly $2.75. A large man with a high, friendly voice and a shaved head worked that area the whole time.

Whenever you ordered something with a drink they would put it in a cardboard box with a slot that was attached to the box and a plastic cup with ice in which to pour the drink. They did this for a very specific reason: because trains are BOUNCY! You really could not take more than two steps without holding onto something above out of the expectation that, at any given moment, you could be thrown completely across the train! I saw it happen a couple times. Whenever the doors of one car would open onto the passageway that connected to another, and you could temporarily see the divide between the cars, it became quite noticeable how much the car in front of you really moved up and down and side to side at scary amounts! But you really get used to it.

By sundown we had entered Nebraska and the most exciting thing I had seen up to that point was the Mississippi River from the top of the bridge, but that spectacular sight was soon to be followed by hours of cornfields and prarie. I was certainly saving the battery of my camera for the next day. Sitting back in the seat with James I started finding it hard to sleep. I never can sleep on long trips, even on this one where I had lots of leg room and the ability to recline almost fully. I become too aware of my surroundings, and James was drifted occasionally too close for comfort. Instead I resorted to reading more of my book in the observation car, which at that hour included one sleeping person and two British college-aged travelers that had boarded in Omaha.

The book, Beirut Fragments as I mentioned, was a depressing war memoir about the civil conflict between Muslim Palestinian refugee organizations and Christian government officials in Beirut, Lebanon which eventually involved Israel's numerous interventions and bombings for roughly 25 years. I finished it that night, but unfortunately with no one around to discuss it with. Thinking that I would probably end up being more comfortable in one of the observation booths than in the seats, and also thinking that at any moment the train might enter the mountains before I would have the chance to take pictures of my first experience near such geological giants, I decided to spend the night there, and be ready with my camera at sunrise.

With a flower in my hair, Part 1

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 20:30:26 GMT

I am currently experiencing a rare, brief window of free time right now. Well, virtually free time, considering I am in fact at work in ICS Operations doing nothing. But I thought I would use this opportunity to finally share some of the experiences I had two weeks ago while in California in more detail. Before I begin that I'll quickly update by saying that Rush week is going well for DLP, and I'm particularly excited about the wonderful diversity of the rushees this time, in every respect, and my work schedules are also reaching at least temporary equilibrium, and all of my classes thus far have been quite manageable. I've also begun to think more seriously and plan more carefully about applying to the Business School and I'm currently in the process of exploring the organization AIESEC with the fabulous Mike Balen. We'll see how all of that unfolds in the following weeks...

Now, thinking back to the very first day of my trip, three Sundays ago, I realize how much of my story is probably going to be left out or somewhat unclear in my memory at this point, but I'll do the best I can. On Sunday, August 26th, I woke up at 6 am. Mind you, I had worked the previous night at the Overture Center because it was a no-ask-off night that I had purposefully scheduled my trip after, and I had to work very late, until 1 am in fact, so I clearly had not gotten enough sleep from the beginning. But regardless, I woke up, quickly gathered all of my travel things into one small carry-on case that Carly kindly lent me and walked down the street to the Van Galder bus that was waiting for people to go to Chicago at 7 am. I remember a transfer student girl saying goodbye to her parents who were getting on the bus to go to O'Hare, and I remember a rather goodlooking gay man in a red shirt putting out his cigarette next to a red car that his partner was driving, and then watching them wave to eachother after he'd boarded the bus. When it started toward Chicago I was relieved that this adventure I'd waited so long for was finally happening, and a little nervous that, considering I couldn't go back now, anything disastrous might happen within the two days of travel I'd expected ahead of me. The bus took off out of Madison, I spoke for two minutes with my Dad who was, of course, completely awake by that time, and I slipped back into sleepy content until I could make it to Chicago, catching one last glimpse at the girl whose parents were on the bus, reminded that the new school year was soon beginning, and that I would probably be returning to many more new students going through the same thing.

Two hours later...a miracle. After making one quick transfer in Rockford, IL to get on the bus that was going to Union Station (and not O'Hare), our bus arrived at the station at least a half and hour early. Why was this a miracle? Because it was the first time (among many times) that I had traveled to Chicago and not experienced hours of traffic! The roads were basically clear, it was a sunny day, and things were looking up. I'd had until 2 pm, about 3 1/2 hours, to wait for my train to Reno, NV. Meanwhile I was calling my sister to see whether or not I should get off the train in Reno, NV or in Truckee, CA, because both places were at least 45 minutes from where she lives in South Lake Tahoe, but the question was which provided better transportation there. While waiting in line for information I was reminded, as I usually am everytime I experience public transportation, of diverse this country really is. There are areas of polarity all over the world, and heterogenous communities everywhere you look, of common ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, religions, and even sexual orientations as demonstrated by the gayborhoods of cities like Chicago for instance. But public transportation has a way of demonstrating the true colors of society where you may not see them otherwise, because if communities experience segregation, even self-segregation based on something as basic as area of common habitation, then it's only in the realm of mass movement between those places do we see those communities mixing together. I find these things fascinating, forgive me for being all philosophical and shit...

Destination: Reno, Nevada, I decided. It was from there that I would get off, walk across the street to Harrah's Casino, catch a free shuttle to the Reno Airport, and buy a shuttle ticket from there to South Lake Tahoe, where Lindsay would meet me and take me back to her place. But I still had a train to catch! Boarding an Amtrak train is an interesting experience. From the inside of Union Station, everything looks like an airport terminal, where your trip is displayed on digital screens, trip delays and cancellations are announced over loud speakers that echo throughout the building, and people roll their massive luggage in wheeled cases from one place to another with business to accomplish and urgent places to be.

One such woman approaced me the moment I entered the station, frantic and hurried, and she asked me with a desperate frustration in her eyes "Excuse me, I've been traveling for days and I've already missed two trains, I need to buy another ticket and all I need is about $6.00 more than what I have. Can you help me?" So I analyzed this situation in a matter of about 1 second...and in that second I noticed the dirty, faint hints of scratching on her face, almost as if she were a meth user, and I noticed her tiny red bag and wondered how she could be traveling for days with such small luggage, and wondered why she was heading down a hall where clearly tickets were not being sold, and then I remembered a time that this had happened to me before at a Greyhound Station when I was 17 and more naive to believe such stories, and I simply told her "I'm sorry, I don't have any cash on me," when I actually had about $25, and she hurried away...defeated.

After finally making it through the line to board the train, I walked out onto the platform, taking a deep, intrigued look at the massive infrastructure that is the undergound rail system of Chicago (which reminded me slightly of pillared dwarf caves in Lord of the Rings), swiflty walked past all of the sleeper cars until I got to my designated entrance in coach, noticing one very obese and distressed mother of two energetic children who was holding a plastic bag of drinks that broke through onto the ground, and then I got on. I was amused at the train staff and how they actually say things like "all aboard!"

I made my way to the 2nd floor of the train car, found a suitable spot by a wide window, made use of the ample leg room and reclined my legs on the back of the other chair, started reading more of my book Beirut Fragments and waited patiently until someone took the seat next to me, as was expected considering the train was full. It was tall, lanky, 45 year-old, Missouri-born Jewish man named James, with short white shorts and a green polo who sat down, and immediately began reading from his small book about 4 philosophies of substance abuse rehabilitation. I was to find out later on that he was a counselor, but I'll detail my interactions with him in the next installment.

I have about 5 minutes until my shift ends so I'll have to stop the story here for now, but for your interest I had about 48 hours before the train finally started moving and I arrived in Reno, followed by quite a few days of California. Much more was to happen, and I will keep you posted. Until then, here is the link to all of the wonderful pictures I ended up taking that week...374 in total, but I edited them and cut them down for uploading purposes. Enjoy!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cory_schultz/sets

Damn they knew their stuff! (EXPLICIT CONTENT)

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 20:40:53 GMT

I've always tried to convince people that the death of good gay cinema came with the ending of the Hays Code in 1967. Don't get me wrong...the Hays Code was a terrible thing, and the quality of movie-making in general improved vastly after that. But ever since then gay movies have used the rating system to allow themselves to become more open, more honest, and ultimately more appeasing to a wider crowd of people, resulting in decreased quality and just plain cheeziness. I mentioned this briefly in my note about fabulous Disney villains and homoerotic Hitchcock psychopaths. But back then movie-makers used the creativity that people lack these days merely to survive, and to reach out to the audience that clearly understood what it was they were trying to say...the gays. Marlon Brando's half-torn short on his wet angry body in A Streetcar Named Desire moving around to the tune of soft, sexxxy jazz music wasn't exactly meant for just the ladies in the audience!

Much to my surprise, I happened to run into a short film today that I've always wanted to see for years. It's a 25-minute black & white film from 1950, directed by one of my favorite authors, Jean Genet, who wrote intensely violent and homoerotic novels such as Querelle, Our Lady of the Flowers, A Thief's Journal, Miracle of the Rose and Funeral Rites. It was made in France, so it's more explicit than anything that would have been made in the U.S. at the time, but it was still limited by whatever French societal norms were in place and therefore it poses a number of avenues for erotic metaphor that puts much of today's most hardcore pornography to shame! This man knew what he was doing!

I give you Un Chant d'Amour, watch at your own risk!



"Un chant d'amour" on Google Video

Just like that chick on Deep Impact

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 17:29:39 GMT

I'm sitting in the teleconference room at the Pyle Center. I just finished training for our troubleshooting program Footprints and now I'm back operating Wisline audioconferencing and freezing my ass off because apparently full blast air conditioning in fully insulated, windowless rooms is needed even on cold rainy days. But aside from that, I've realized recently that not long from today I will be facing a tsunami wave of responsibilities and decisions of more than biblical proportions. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but to put things simply, I will have to somehow find a way to start going to classes Monday through Friday from 8:50 to variably 12 noon, do the homework for those classes, fit in early morning exercising/running at the SERF, schedule and attend regular office hours for the LGBT Campus Center that (along with extra event hours) equal roughly 12 hrs/week, leave enough space open from week to week for my ICS boss to schedule me on afternoon or night shifts doing teleconferencing, leave my weekends open to a shift here or there at the Overture Center (and hopefully get trained into bartending), somehow find a way to get my new ad campaign idea for the CC in motion by the time campus papers, Our Lives, and the Onion start printing welcome week editions for new students, Go on my one-week trip to California that conflicts with a lot of these responsibilities including staff training for the CC, SOMEHOW (Jesus help me) find a way to make time during the second week of classes to make it to RUSH events for DLP, see about getting accepted into AIESEC and at least attend the weekly meeting so that I might be able to do an internship in the Middle East two summers from now, and oh, one more thing, possibly consider once again applying to the School of Business for Operation and Technology Management because I'm realizing it's something I could be good at but would significantly alter my current academic track........................................................................

Someone kill me now.

I got punched in the face. What's your excuse?

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 19:33:09 GMT

For the last week or so I've been indulging myself with my newest teladdiction, the late '90s HBO series Oz about the lives of prisoners in the fictional Oswald State Penitentiary. It's really quite an insightful show when you look past all of the jail house brawls and drug cartels and shower rapings and petty murders...it's even narrarated by one of the side-character prisoners that always has a clever allegory to attach to the theme of every episode.

But I realized something about myself while watching this show that I never really grasped before and recognized. It's not the insightfulness or cleverness or the relevance of this show to society that draws me to it...it's simply the violence! Maybe it's because I've become desensitized to violent media images having been exposed to horror movies since I was born, or maybe it's because attraction to violence (in media or otherwise) is inherent in human evolutionary nature and there's ultimately nothing special about me.

But for some reason I was really turned on, for instance, by the fact that Tobias Beecher, whose legs and arms were broken by two fellow inmates and a correctional officer, spent a couple months in the hospital growing out his nails while he was healing just so that he could file them into sharp point when he got out and slice the throat of the correctional officer who broke his legs, and then stick a knife in the back of one of the inmates who broke his arms, but under the cover of darkness so no one saw him (giving everyone the impression someone else had done it, but you'd have to watch to understand that part), then telling the inmate it was in fact he who stabbed him, but in a joking manner to give the inmate the impression that he could never actually do something like that........truly brilliant!

But of course Alvarez poking an officer's eyes out, the Russian guy killing Rich in the shower by pretending to start having sex while hiding a razor blade in his mouth, or even O'Reily feeding Nino Shebeta ground glass in his food for months before he had a fatal hemorrhage are all aso great reasons to watch this wholesome slice of good quality television. And seriously, who can resist an hour of sexual tension like this? I mean come on!

"Die, Commie! Die!"

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 05:31:53 GMT

That's what you would have heard if you had, by chance, been walking down Gilman St. about half an hour ago, coming from a strange, eccentric college student on the fire escape of his third story apartment spraying a bottle of Clorox bleach at the air. That wierdo was me, of course.

For the last two days, I've been killing spiders. Everytime I walk into my room, there's a spider. Sometimes three. They make me squirm a little, everyonce in a while they make me jump, but due to the rapid nature with which they happened to enter my room (from some mysterious place) I tallied by tonight that I had killed roughly 20 spiders in a two-day period. Needless to say, by that point I was less creeped out and more annoyed!

But John and I decided to investigate further. We deduced that the spiders had to be coming from a ceiling area because that was the only place they were ever seen...by the ceiling, often on the ceiling, and there are plenty of cracks and holes in ceiling areas, such as through doors, closets, and lighting fixtures. After we decided that using the three-week copy of The Economist, which happened to be about the current tensions between Israel and Palestine at the moment, to kill the Spiders was getting old, we thought we'd give a stab at chemical warfare.

So we grabbed a bottle of Clorox bleach and tried to spray into the top cracks of a vent that goes into our ceiling, under the idea that they may have been coming from there. It's positioned right next to our large window, which was another possibility. I was standing on top of a swivel chair with the bottle about to spray when suddenly John yelled, "Oh God, Cory, Spider!" Sure enough there was a spider hanging right behind me again next to one of the cracks of the window. After looking at the window closer, we realized it was in fact once a door, due to the painted over indentations of a previous set of hinges, and that's why there was so much open space for potential creepy crawlies to get through.

So we thought we'd take a peek outside and see if there were any out there, maybe a nest, and then we would be able to get at the bottom of it. John went first, opened the door, took one look, and closed it immediately! Apparently the spiders huddled in a corner by the window, some hanging from from the roof, and some even on the otherside of the door we had opened!!! Our room was being invaded by spiders like zombies on the outside of a boarded house! So we grabbed the bleach, opened the door once more, I jumped and squirmed at the sight of the spiders on the door that I used the magazine on, and then I pointed the bleach at the hanging spiders fired away like Rambo yelling "Die!!! Commies!!! Die!!!" to the entire neighborhood...

The good news: It's been close to an hour now and we haven't seen one spider in a room again, which means we've at least bought some time until tomorrow when we can go out again do some further damage, and of course we did identify the source.

The bad news: The bleach we used to kill them was sprayed in the direction of the window they were hanging by, which was open at the time, and so our room immediately reeked of bleach, but now the two fans we have going and the lysol I sprayed are taking care of it. But the funniest part of the evening had to be when John kindly pointed out to me that, while I was unleashing the fury of hell and anti-communism on the spiders with our door open, a couple innocent bystanders happened to be strolling by...and probably thought I was tripping on some high class LSD.

File under "Please let us never forget this :-)"

"You thought you could defeat me, the mistress of all Evil!"

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 18:35:54 GMT

What is it with the gays and their orgasmic infatuation with pop culture villains?! I was watching Sleeping Beauty the other night with John Alaniz (watching older Disney movies seems to be something we do on a re-curring basis, which is faggy enough already) and I realized that not only were both us, John especially because it was Maleficent, were much more intrigued and entertained by the evil sorceress. Maybe we're a little different and my generalization is false, or maybe I'm actually speaking for most people in general and not just gays, but it seems on average that 'mo's are just drawn to villainy.

The reasons for this are complex, but one basic way of explaining it is to recognize it in the context of film history. Homosexuality has existed in films since the very beginning, in the early 1900s with peek shows featuring two men dancing, etc. In the 1920s, arguably the most famous actor of the time was the Italian Rudolph Valentino, a noted bisexual who played Arab Sheiks on screen wooing women of the desert, but tending to play with cute boys off screen, saying once of a Hollywood follower that "we made love like tigers till dawn." With the film industry's institution of the Haye's Code in 1929, Homosexuality was forbidden from being portrayed in any context...so film-makers got creative! From 1929-1967 American culture became entrenched with movies of gay subtext and ambiguity, which is why gays love old movies so much! Watching Ben Hur and his rival Quintus entwine their arms to drink wine and stare at eachother is almost hotter than any episode of Queer as Folk, just because of all the possibilities that are implied in the scene.

But to conform with American attitudes regarding the sexual perversion at that time, film-makers often used those creative ways of expressing homosexuality through the use of villains, or other detestable characters like weak sissies or people that ultimately meet painful, dishonorable ends. Alfred Hitchcock expiremented with this the most, albeit excusably having worked with the writer Arthur Laurents all his career who was in fact homosexual, and some of the many examples include Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca or the two killers in Rope that were clearly based off of Leopold and Lobe (the 1920s male lovers/killers of a Chicago boy), Anthony Perkins' twisted character Norman Bates in Psycho who dressed up as and impersonated his own mother, and my very favorite Bruno from Strangers on a Train who tries to get Farley Granger's (who was actually homosexual in real life) character to kill his mother in exchange for the murder of Granger's estranged wife, but Bruno's attempt to seduce the man is apparent throughout the movie.

Now what does Disney have to do with this? My theory is that after so many generations of homosexuality in film being directly linked with villainy and evil, and hinted at through numerous forms of subtext, it is now so much easier for gays to identify in some way to the sassy, fashionable, intense and dark-witted villains that exist within the Disney canon. One gay person cannot watch Maleficent say things like "Now you shall deal with me, O Prince, and all the powers of Hell!" the way she does and not get a little excited, or watch our favorite drag queen Ursula yell "Now I am the ruler of the all the ocean, the waves obey my every whim!" without being a little envious. And let's not forget miss Cruella De Vil ordering her henchmen to "poison them, drown them, bash them on the head, I don't care how you kill the little beasts, just DO IT NOW!" while wearing fabulous fur coats and smoking cigarettes on an extended pipe like a queen. Gays can't get enough of it!

But there's only one thing that's better than a villain queen or empress or rich classy woman...and that's a Villain Homo! And there's no better villian 'mo in Disney than Scar from The Lion King! If you think Simba's bride-less, child-less uncle surrounded by hyenas, walking daintily on the rocks and speaking in the voice of Jeremy Irons as if in some faggy Shakespeare play is hetero, think again!

Simba: Uncle Scar, you're weird!
Scar: You have no idea...

When life gives you AIDS, make LemonAIDS!

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 18:59:34 GMT

Fear not. This entry has nothing to do with AIDS! Actually I'm just moderately upset right now because earlier today, while I was walking toward Associated Bank to withdrawal a roll of quarters from my account for laundry, after setting up a huge wedding that I will be catering later tonight, I was called by my mother.

"Whatcha doin'?" she asked. "I'm walking down State St.?" I replied. "Why are you on State St.?" she followed. "Because I just got off work at the Overture Center, which is on State St." I continued. "Well, anyway," she finally began, "I was just callin' to make sure you'd scheduled off through the 31st like I said..." (And I think "Mom I told you, I send in my schedule request NEXT week, so not yet") and then she finished with "and it turns out that we're not gonna be able to go to Oklahoma. Instead we're just gonna go to St. Louis, pick up Riley, spend the day there and come back and you can spend a few days with us."

God Dammit! This is my mother in a nutshell. My original plan was that, family or no family, I was GOING to Oklahoma. It's been two years, and I would have taken my own bus or train or whatever to do it. But that takes money and time to prepare, at least time to get tickets in enough advance for a discount. But my mom tells me a couple weeks ago, "well Rick and I found out we're not going to be able to go to South Dakota like we'd planned, so we thought we'd try to just go to Oklahoma instead and pick Riley up ourselves (Riley is my cousin Heather's son) so if you want you can come with us and you want have to take the bus." So I stopped budgeting for a ticket, and I stopped planning my time and figuring a work schedule to conform with my two jobs and the weekend I'm taking off for DLP already. Then she drops this on me and acts like it's no big deal, "we'll go to a Brewer Game!" she says. Basically, I'm just not goin' to Oklahoma, with a flower in my hair anymore :**(

*Sigh* Whatevs. At least I'll have my new camera then hopefully. I'll take pictures of the Arch or more baseball players massaging eachother's thighs, or some drag queen named Mississippi Queen...point is, I'll make it fun. I decided. Hell, if I'm lucky I may even get to see some memorial statue thing somewhere that sings songs from Meet me in St. Louis with a special dedication to this legend...

مختارات من شعر أبي نواس

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 18:54:51 GMT

   | selections from the Persian poet and Islamic homoeroticist Abu Nawas |

                                    *this won't be the first time I do this

                                      الفخر

ومستــعبـدٍ إخوانـَه بثـرائــه

لبـستُ له كبـراً لأبرَّ على الكبـرِ

إذا ضمَّـني يومـاً و إياه محفِــلٌ

رأى جانبـي وعراً يزيـد على الوعر ِ

أخالـفـه في شكـلـه، و أجـِرُّه

على المنـطق المنـزور و النظر الشزر ِ

و قد زادني تيهاً على الناس أنني

أرانيَ أغنـاهم و إن كنتُ ذا فـقـر ِ

فوالله لا يـُبـدي لســانيَ حاجــةً

إلى أحـدٍ حتـى أٌغَيـّبَ في قبـري

فلا تطمعــنْ في ذاك مـنيَ سُوقـةٌ

ولا ملكُ الدنيـا المحجبُ في القصـر ِ

فلو لم أرث فخراً لكانت صيـانتي

فمي عن سؤال الناس حسبي من الفخر

I've always been a fan of Abu Nawas. Here is a poem he once wrote as an attempt to anger the Caliph, and today would be interpreted as an ode to rape, but whatever...

O, starry night of good omen,
When drunkard mounted drunkard,
We whiled away the time in worship to the Devil,
With fervent faith,
Until the monks rang death’s bell and dawn,
And the young lad took off, dragging his delightful robe
Touched by my impure desire.
“Woe is me,” he said through his tears,
“You have torn away the dignity I had long treasured.”
“A lion saw a gazelle and lunged at it,” said I,
“Such are the vagaries of fate.”

"Corporate accounts payable, Nina speaking...JUST a moment!"

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 19:03:05 GMT

Today I began my adventure as a Teleconference Operator for UW-Extension at the Pyle Center. And that adventure basically consisted of me filling out some paperwork, meeting an older guy named Bob with slacks and glasses, walking down some halls and looking at some rooms, meeting an older guy named Greg with slacks and glasses, pressing a few buttons here and there on the computer system I'll be working with, meeting an older guy named Tim with slacks and glasses, talking about the schedule and Wisline Web, meeting an older guy named Rick with slacks and glasses...let me just sum it up by saying it was quite the thrill ride! And I'm not even being sarcastic.

Actually the whole thing seemed earily similar to Office Space. I was half expecting an overweight lady with a high voice, flowery dress, '90s politician hair and too much makeup to tell me "someone's got a case of the mondays!" But despite all of that I am quite thankful for getting a new job, and I'm looking forward to the new school year the 3 jobs that I'll have lined up for me. Maybe now I'll finally be able to afford something as simple as a new bag or pair of jeans!

"And now for something completely different!"

Last night I watched Paradise Now and I was quite impressed by a movie that took 5 years of on-site filming in the West Bank to produce. It was a very thought-provoking movie, and, forgive the spoiler, but brilliant enough to inspire sympathy for someone who eventually assists in a suicide bombing at the end. And although I'm a little biased due to my studies and interests, it also does a great job of shedding light on the injustice of Israel's current treatment of Palestinian refugees. And on top of that, I was really surprised by how much Arabic I was able to pick up! Made me feel fairly confident after only completing one year so far.

The other movie that I rented, however, A Man in Our House, was from the '50s and was filmed in Egypt as sort of a precursor to the rise of President جمال عبد الناصر (Jamal abd Al-Nasir) and so after 30 minutes of it I couldn't really continue with the mediocre film quality. The only thing keeping me going at that point was a very young Omar Sharif who I would have jumped in less time than it takes to say Allahu Akbar! Yeah so I'm pretty much going to hell...

Perhaps all pleasure is only relief

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 18:08:12 GMT

...Said possibly my favorite author, at least of the beat generation movement. Knowing what I know about William S. Burroughs, he was most likely speaking about addiction. In 1959 he published my favorite book, a stream-of-consciousness goldmine of acid-trip imagery called "Naked Lunch," about the prison of heroin withdrawal. I never fully understood the book, but that's more than half the reason I enjoyed it so much.

Why am I going on so much about addiction? About 9 hours ago I finally finished watching "Through the Looking Glass," the title of the last episode of the 3rd season of Lost. The episode was amazing and dazzling, mysterious and frightening and frustrating to say the least, but when I had finished the episode, I spent approximately one full minute looking around my room. The lights were left on, it was 3 am, I hadn't changed out of my clothes or taken or shower, my computer felt hot to the touch from playing videos for about 4 hours straight, and the whole scene was just mildly pathetic. It reminded me slightly of my roommate during the lighter phases of World of Warcraft crisis, except I wasn't skipping classes (or work in my case) and hiding behind a black curtain.

Lucky for me, there is no longer any Lost to continue until the show continues on its regular course in January, when I will be forced to watch only one episode a week in aggravating anticipation. I'll say right now with a fair amount of confidence that it has become one of my all-time favorite works of television ever, mostly because, just like the literary enigmas of William S. Burroughs, so much is left unanswered and I have so much yet to understand. The show teases up into the 3rd season with the continuous idea that you've learned so much more, and then it lets you know that over and over again that you never really learned that much at all. It pays so much respect to the phrase "the more you know, the more you know you don't know anything at all."

But this obviously creates a problem for me! When each and every episode is available online through various video link sites, I can't find the strength to quit at 3 or so in the morning, after watching several hours of it, because I simply have to know more and more. I believe I have an addictive personality, assuming such a thing exists. I don't become addicted to substances, never have been. I haven't had a real drinking night in weeks because I don't really care, and I haven't smoked in probably 2 months, partially with the intention that I won't ever again because of the slight dreamy possibility that I may in fact apply for the clandestine service. What I become addicted to, rather, is knowledge. When I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy in 8th grade I couldn't rest until I'd read the Silmarillion and various other Tolkien works as well because I simply had to know more about the things that were never answered, like the story of Elrond and his wife (the mother of Arwen) or of Saruman's past. Wow now I really feel like a dork.

Anyway, the point is, I need to work on my susceptibility to being drawn into these mysteries and develop some patience. I'm told these things come with age. In the mean time, here are some random updates:

Today I missed the first half-hour of the Gender & Sexuality Book Club that I was supposed to attend,
Tomorrow I start training for my new second job as Teleconference Operator at the Pyle Center,
My roommate Brent returns from Texas any day now, but I think I said that a week ago too,
Brian comes back to Madison on Tuesday for dinner and Harry Potter @ Midnight, I'm excited,
In about 3 weeks I will probably be back in Oklahoma for the first time in 2 years,
In about a couple hours I will finally be watching Paradise Now, but I'll watch again with Todd shortly,
Carly has returned to Madison and all is truly right with the world,
...and right now I'm listening the theme from Braveheart because I was craving James Horner.

BTDubs, If impeccable writing and thrilling cliff hangers and dark mysteries aren't enough to get you interested in Lost, this gorgeous hunk of a man might just do it. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Naveen Andrews...

"I slept here?!"

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 16:58:23 GMT

I'm dirty and hungover, and I woke up unexpectedly at Evan's place next to Appesh. I had a really awful dream about bees. Then Appesh and I walked home down State Street, my hair was ratted out and my clothes wrinkly and I had a giant scrape on my arm I didn't remember getting. Appesh had a massive hookah sticking out of his backpack, it was truly a walk of shame. Now I'm sitting in my apartment, Jase is cooking me Hip Hop breakfast, and I have to work in 2 hours! Who is David Sundrum? I'm gonna facebook him...

"Every shadow, no matter how deep, is threatened by morning light."

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:04:38 GMT

I woke up at 8:00 am today, which for me and my night shifts is kindof unusual. For some reason I tend to find that it's most often during mornings like this that fall back into weird routines from my earlier days, like listening to the scores of film composers while I shop for wished-upon merchandise I'll never afford. What's my drug of choice this morning? Lux Aeterna or Death is the Road to Awe by Clint Mansell, accompanied by an internal debate of whether or not to buy the Nikon S50c or the Canon SD750. Sometimes I scare even myself.

I will never be able to explain it one million years, and after that no one would be willing to listen, but I've always been the most comfortable and the most drawn to solitude. Most of my friends might say I'm pretty flighty and fairly social but I grew up spending a lot of time alone, or with my brother who, after a certain point, wasn't much company. Maybe it's because I suffered from significant insomnia as a child and spent hours of the night in my bed awake and just thinking. Sometimes I would just get right up and sit in the living chair at 4 or 5 am and just stare into dark space; one of my parents would wake up and ask what the hell I was doing.

Not much has changed. Last night I was visiting Jake Aebly and his boyfriend Zack, and while they were eating some Italian left-overs from a meal that took 6 hours to prepare the night before, I went up to the loft living room area and looked out the window for a while. Zack came up a few moments later, turned on the TV, started some homework, and looked confused as to why I was content with that stillness. Who knows...

In any case, Mansell's piece is hitting a climax and I'm currently leaning more toward the Canon but I'm going to ask a representative either way. Some other minor goals to look forward to:

This weekend, June 30th, is Rhythm & Booms at Warner Park which should prove to be fun, as long as I find some way to relieve my allergy to children and families. But I am supposedly going with Patrick so we'll see what happens.

The passing of every summer day is bringing me a little bit closer to returning to Oklahoma for a week after being gone for two years. I want to see Heather and Grandma Nelson, as well as my friends Jennifer DuBois and Mark Klotz.

OH, and I've just recently thought of an idea, forgive me if I've already spouted it to some of you, for the annual African Languages and Literature culture night at the Red Gym. Next spring, when I'm in 4th Semester Arabic, I'm going to convince my class to do a 15 minute musical using famous Disney songs in Arabic! And they're all on youtube so all we've got to do is learn them! This one is going to be in it for sure:

And now, an imitation of Holden Caulfield

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 05:47:36 GMT

I'm sitting in my living room once again, where I seem to make the most of my pensiveness on general occasion. What makes tonight different from other nights? Appesh is sitting here with me, across the room actually, working on a presentation he has to give to the lab he works at tomorrow, which is weird because Brent and Jase are both asleep, John is not surprisingly absent and yet here Appesh still sits, so I'm just going to assume he's either going to sleep here or leave when he's finished, or when he just plain feels like it. It's okay, though, he's rather cute and if he wasn't straight I'd probably jump his bones, so I'll let it go for now.

Last night I stayed over at Patrick's for the second time. In the guestroom, of course. He was working on the finishing touches of his magazine the entire night, consuming maybe 5 diet pepsi's against my recommendations. But I entertained myself anyway with a copy of Studio 54, with Ryan Phillipe in his prime and the old woman from Adam Sandler's The Wedding Singer playing the disco grandma on coke. But when Patrick finally went to bed, I went to bed, and I had to be woken up early because of a job interview the next day. All of my interactions with Patrick thus far have been interesting experiments of platonic socializing that are constantly being stretched with an intimate tension (at least as far as I'm concerned) like a rubber band that's continually building potential energy before it flies...or snaps. For instance, this morning (after sleeping in separate rooms all night) he woke me up by dripping ice old water drops on my back because I had my shirt off. Wouldn't you be a little turned on by that?

But I digress...significantly! At 10 am this morning I arrived at Memorial Union after skipping my morning shower to sit down for an interview with Student Print. I was expecting a summer job on top of the Overture Center, but instead they were apparently hiring for the fall. I continued with the interview anyway. Because I was in the union I went straight upstairs afterward, to the Campus Center, and began working on the Resource Display for LGBT SOARlings. Aside from the rather fun and fulfilling excursion to Himal Chuli for lunch that I took with Eli at about 1:30, I spent the entire day, from 10:30 to 6:00 pm, working on that thing. And yet, nothing is on the board so far!! Instead what I have are 40 wonderfully cut up and packaged photographs that I spent hours 1) collecting, 2) editing and transferring, 3) identifying and emailing the ppl in them, 4) printing, and 5) cutting the 8 pages worth of them. It was a LOT of work and I'm waiting for that satisfying congratulations when the finished project is done, hopefully tomorrow. I still need to find a way to get some velcro and post them to the board, then I need to print out some labels, attach them to posterboard and plan the layout of the 3 folds of tri-fold display. Not to mention get all the actual resource materials together and organized. I should be getting paid dammit!

But once again...I digress. What I've really been trying to say this whole time is that when I was looking at all of those hundreds of pictures today, selecting only 40, I almost started to get emotional, and by emotional I'm referring to a wide spectrum of emotions. I'd already posted vaguely in my first entry that last year was an amazing trip, but looking back I truly realized, with hard visual evidence, how much I had been through and accomplished. Trans Day of Rememberance, National Coming Out Week with the masquerade ball and the sexual health fest with the religious nut who talked about homosexuals using electrical outlets, or Halloween (twice), or Students for a Fair Wisconsin and glorious election day, or the first DLP campfire and that time we actually drug ourselves out to a fucking cornmaze shaped like a dinosaur, or World Aids Day and the concert and I went to with Carla where the fire alarm went off during a performance by the Madhatters and then they just moved the show out into the freezing cold and sang for all of us anyway, or the first drag show and the time I put a dollar down Chris Bjorkman's pants and grabbed her fake crotch on stage.....God I could go on forever. The only question on mind, aside from how I'm going to top such a great year, is how am I going to sustain it?

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."

That's what I feel like right now.

Goddammit Deep Fried Jesus Christ on Popsicle Stick Son of a Bitch Peter Paul and Mary Jesus Christ!

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 03:51:46 GMT

I wrote a really wonderful entry tonight, I think all of you would have enjoyed it. But then my computer was stupid, everything disappeared, and I'm entirely too hot and lazy tonight to write it again. sorry :(

Slicking my hair back...

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 02:53:20 GMT

Someone named Charles Kettering once said "If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong." My first year in college just ended recently, and although I've been blessed with great memories and myriad new friends and experiences, I'm beginning to feel stagnant, or as I expressed in my facebook status once, "Cory Schultz is in need of a change." Last weekend I visited Ben's beautiful home (and pool) in Edgar, WI, which aside from the sunburn was a wonderful couple of days. But when Todd's car began pulling into Madison on East Washington I noticed something that made me nervous. Everything around me, every building and light and tree and velocity seemed familiar, familiar like the layout of a house you've lived in for many years that you can navigate through blindfolded. Madison was officially my home that night, and home for me has never been a concept of stability.

In the past year I've moved out of the house, earned 39 credits at UW-Madison, seen the Dalai Lama, been to 3 broadway musicals and 3 professional baseball games, one of which was in Detroit, made potentially life-long friends out of too many people to name, participated in a life-changing election campaign, learned elementary Arabic, watched my brother graduate high school, joined a gay fraternity, and many other amazing things. But I also got romantically involved with someone that hurt me, raised my alcohol tolerance significantly, lost $130 from having my debit card stolen at a trashy club, lost touch with with the greatest and closest friend I've ever known: my sister, had sexual encounters with people that I regret, and I'm still sick of my hair to this day!

Some things need to change. But despite all of the changes I've been through this year, none of them resulted from anything that I did differently. I entered yet another relationship under the notion that nothing in my life lasts for very long, and it in effect did not last very long. I'm hesitant and afraid to begin a new relationship with someone that is focused on long-term relationships only because I seem to forget about the very fact that I began this entry with: that Madison is now in fact my home. I wasn't raised to settle in one place; I often feel more comfortable in a car that's moving across some random highway, where the scenery is constantly changing, and everything that I absorb is new and thought-less and easy to discard, where nothing save the traffic requires a reaction. Aside from possible summers spent abroad in the future, I am going to be living in Madison for 3 to 7 to 10 more years from now, and I need to get used to that fact. What needs to change in my life is the idea that things aren't going to change so much any more.

Only then will I be able to start taking my jobs and my life outside of the university more seriously, or stop going to parties with the intention of getting wasted because "I'm not going to be around much longer to experience this," or become involved with someone on a level that transcends 2 or 3 months of convenient intimacy (I'll talk more about this guy later), or even just develop that roots I currently lack in any one place that are so necessary for growth.

First things first: I'm gonna start hanging around campus less. And god dammit, I'm gonna start doing something different with my hair! I'm going to grow it out and start pulling it back, like my dad does only thats the only way I can grow it out since its so damn thick. And I'm going to wait until mystery man gets done with his next busy week with his new project before I start attempting to become closer with him, and keep people updated. Finally, I'm going to start writing things down, because quite truthfully I'm a very different person in text than the flamboyant character I portray to all of my...fans! j/k

Until next time, be like Alfred Kinsey and remember that nothing in this world is truly good unless it feels good afterwards.