What I Did on Actual Valentine's Day
On Saturday we took the bus to figure out the Catonsville route, and discovered how to get to the Walmart, the Asian Market, various shopping centers, the theater, and residential areas. Catonsville, which I hadn't had a good look at in the daytime, is a fairly nice place with individualistically painted houses being a novelty compared to the mass-produced housing developments I'm used to seeing, though of course some neighborhoods are better than others. It actually is a decent sized city, and on Sunday we walked to Giant to get pie ingredients.
In the meantime, on Saturday night I decided to drag Jeremy to watch Phoenix dance company, which is basically a bunch of our dance majors getting together to perform. It was extremely artsy; the first act, a rather ineffectual piece which thematically was supposed to juxtapose the movement of dancers with the movement of amusement park rides, was ruined by "music" that sounded like those deep industrial farting sounds the plumbing makes on occassion. And it wouldn't stop.... as a matter of fact most of the music was dissonant and discordant. They even managed to distort one of Stravinsky's string pieces through the sound system, though Jeremy said he thought their tenor speakers were just malfunctioning. The Stravinsky piece was an act titled '1914' and had the dance teacher performing solo in Russian peasant garb. She then proceded to rip it off and expose a plain white suit under it, and then pulled a red handkerchief out of her bosom. I think this is supposed to represent World War I or something or the Russian Revolution.. I was never any good with Dance, or Deep, Profound, Symbolic, Handkerchief Bosom Pulling. The dancing itself anyway was rather nice. There was a video with a girl in black crepe who was shown dancing in a forest and in a stream, so that the swirls of fallen leaves that lifted into the air and the trails of rippling water would follow and accentuate her movements, and music would correspond to her motions, like bells that would ring when she dripped water off her fingers. Also, there was a (live) show where the choreographed motions of several girls was themed after the movements of mobiles, and they had two-toned suits, with the front one color and the back another, so that the colors would blend when they spun. In the same act, there was a backlit screen so that girls dancing behind it would cast their shadows upon it, which would distort in size and shape depending on how wrinkled the screen was, and for their masterwork in set design, there were transparent, multi-colored plastic sheets suspended from the ceiling and slowly rotating, so that in the dark, ghostly images would be cast upon them by a projector. There was a token fat girl also... perhaps every dance company has one. I didn't know whether to be awed by how good she was (some of that shit looks painful... like rolling around on the ground..), feel guilty about immediately picking up the fact that she was kinda hefty, or find it rather amusing.
I feel really really sorry for Jeremy though. That was seven dollars.
Friday, February 20, 2004
Thursday, February 19, 2004
What I Did On The Day Before Valentine's Day
On Friday, we were in Renaissance Art class when the prof, for not the first time, mentioned as an aside that the Basilica of the Anunciation in Baltimore was modeled after Brunelleschi's church of Santo Spirito in Florence.
"Let's go look at it. Right now," I told Jeremy randomly.
"Sure," he said, and bought me a chocolate rose.
After lunch we went back to the room to figure out the bus schedules, wherein I found a pair of heart shaped balloons and a bag of cookies delivered and waiting for me. There was also a tin of chocolate pretzels (which I'd already known he'd bought for me because I saw him buy them) and a little cup of chocolates which I hadn't known about. I was happy but not really surprised; everything was for sale on campus.
We went to the Inner Harbor in the late afternoon, taking the shuttle bus from UMBC. We bickered about where to get off, except that a woman close to us who heard us said that we had better get off because the bus only stopped at the next place (a block down) by request. So we got off by a John Hopkins health services building, a giant cylinder of a place in pinkish granite, and walked by Camden Yards and the Baltimore convention center over a network of pedestrian skybridges, guided by signs for tourists and the unmistakable skyline of downtown Baltimore, noting the Bromo-Seltzer tower, an embrasured clock tower which we pedantically recalled was modeled off of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.
Most public things were closed by four in the afternoon, like the USS Constellation, the grounds of Fort McHenry visible as a green mound across the harbor with a big honkin' flag stuck in it like a sandwich toothpick, and the Maryland Science Center which was in the process of getting there. The National Aquarium was open, but $17.50 for admission, so it might as well have been closed for all the good it'd do us college students.
We went to the Baltimore World Trade Center observation tower (apparently the world's tallest five sided building, which is for some reason significant). It looks very small on the outside, an unassuming building on the harbor, but is actually about forty storeys high, which... is actually still rather unassuming, compared to skyscrapers anywhere else. Still, it provided a good view of the city, under a hazy blanket of smog made pale gold by the westering sun. From one of the west windows we saw the arterial expressway through which we had arrived and followed its snaking line further west, and the line of rivers, further out, closer to the horizon. Supposedly we could see the campus from there, but the sun was blinding. Still, we looked at the keyed panoramic photo on a podium under the window, and on that, far in the distance, we could see a recognizable concrete rectangle surmounted by a green drum and a flank of red brick box buildings. Those panoramic photos, one set under each window (there were five of them, one for each side) helped us search for random things in the great girth of land splayed out under us, in a Where's Waldo fashion: In the direction of the city the Ukranian Orthodox church dotted the landscape with golden minarets (which I always thought looked like onions) and sea-ward below us the USS Constellation turned into a toy boat with its clear deck comically interrupted by three stick-like masts, and Fort McHenry was a small flattened mound with stubby cannons (and the flag was still there), and the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse which wasn't much of a lighthouse but more like a round hut on stilts with a conical roof. There was a map of the city on a wall, which was more than either me or Jeremy had, so Jeremy memorized it, and was aided by his watch set with a compass. ("Or, you could figure out the cardinal directions using the setting sun.." "Hush, that would make sense.") I went to the bathroom at the top of the world, and was amused by the thought of my crap shooting down 400 some feet of plumbing.
Seaward, closer than we'd ever seen it before, was a graceful arch of metal titled in the key to the photo, "The Francis Scott Key Bridge." Twenty miles west there is a windy hill on which an ugly post-modern state college is built, in which I live. It is ugly most of the time, except that on the crown of the hill when me and Jeremy look eastward there is this piece of architecture that we see, a great span of a bridge which before to us had no name, and we always wondered what it was and where it went. My dad said, "Probably Glen Burnie" but now I know better. Other couples have "their song." We seem to have "our bridge." Whenever I see the bridge from campus I feel happier, and I always go, "Look! The Bridge!" when I see it even though I know it's always there. It seems somehow significant that I should know its name.
------
After we left, stumbled around east until we found Charles Street and went north up it, looking around at everything like dazed tourists. We found the Basilica of the Anunciation a few blocks up as the sky turned purple and pink, but the church was closed so we walked around staring at its columns and dome silhouetted through the wrought iron fence. Then, having kind of done what we had come for, we went back to the harbor, by which time the sun had set in full, and the Bromo-Seltzer tower was lit up in the night by spotlights of purple. We went to the Gallery, glowing yellow through panes of glass and gawked at things we couldn't afford, then went to the shops on the harbor.
We went to Philip's Seafood Restaurant and got us some nice fish and crabcakes, and also pie and cheesecake. This took like two hours. We ended up having to run to catch the bus to campus, except that we near missed it because when I was on an intersection and looked to the right and saw the JHU pink cylinder bus stop, we saw the bus speeding away from the block towards us. Jeremy sprinted to the left, towards the stop one block ahead and flagged it down like a taxi.
When we got home Jeremy discovered, beside my bag of cookies and two balloons, another bag of cookies and two more balloons, for him. ("They multiplied!")
On Friday, we were in Renaissance Art class when the prof, for not the first time, mentioned as an aside that the Basilica of the Anunciation in Baltimore was modeled after Brunelleschi's church of Santo Spirito in Florence.
"Let's go look at it. Right now," I told Jeremy randomly.
"Sure," he said, and bought me a chocolate rose.
After lunch we went back to the room to figure out the bus schedules, wherein I found a pair of heart shaped balloons and a bag of cookies delivered and waiting for me. There was also a tin of chocolate pretzels (which I'd already known he'd bought for me because I saw him buy them) and a little cup of chocolates which I hadn't known about. I was happy but not really surprised; everything was for sale on campus.
We went to the Inner Harbor in the late afternoon, taking the shuttle bus from UMBC. We bickered about where to get off, except that a woman close to us who heard us said that we had better get off because the bus only stopped at the next place (a block down) by request. So we got off by a John Hopkins health services building, a giant cylinder of a place in pinkish granite, and walked by Camden Yards and the Baltimore convention center over a network of pedestrian skybridges, guided by signs for tourists and the unmistakable skyline of downtown Baltimore, noting the Bromo-Seltzer tower, an embrasured clock tower which we pedantically recalled was modeled off of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.
Most public things were closed by four in the afternoon, like the USS Constellation, the grounds of Fort McHenry visible as a green mound across the harbor with a big honkin' flag stuck in it like a sandwich toothpick, and the Maryland Science Center which was in the process of getting there. The National Aquarium was open, but $17.50 for admission, so it might as well have been closed for all the good it'd do us college students.
We went to the Baltimore World Trade Center observation tower (apparently the world's tallest five sided building, which is for some reason significant). It looks very small on the outside, an unassuming building on the harbor, but is actually about forty storeys high, which... is actually still rather unassuming, compared to skyscrapers anywhere else. Still, it provided a good view of the city, under a hazy blanket of smog made pale gold by the westering sun. From one of the west windows we saw the arterial expressway through which we had arrived and followed its snaking line further west, and the line of rivers, further out, closer to the horizon. Supposedly we could see the campus from there, but the sun was blinding. Still, we looked at the keyed panoramic photo on a podium under the window, and on that, far in the distance, we could see a recognizable concrete rectangle surmounted by a green drum and a flank of red brick box buildings. Those panoramic photos, one set under each window (there were five of them, one for each side) helped us search for random things in the great girth of land splayed out under us, in a Where's Waldo fashion: In the direction of the city the Ukranian Orthodox church dotted the landscape with golden minarets (which I always thought looked like onions) and sea-ward below us the USS Constellation turned into a toy boat with its clear deck comically interrupted by three stick-like masts, and Fort McHenry was a small flattened mound with stubby cannons (and the flag was still there), and the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse which wasn't much of a lighthouse but more like a round hut on stilts with a conical roof. There was a map of the city on a wall, which was more than either me or Jeremy had, so Jeremy memorized it, and was aided by his watch set with a compass. ("Or, you could figure out the cardinal directions using the setting sun.." "Hush, that would make sense.") I went to the bathroom at the top of the world, and was amused by the thought of my crap shooting down 400 some feet of plumbing.
Seaward, closer than we'd ever seen it before, was a graceful arch of metal titled in the key to the photo, "The Francis Scott Key Bridge." Twenty miles west there is a windy hill on which an ugly post-modern state college is built, in which I live. It is ugly most of the time, except that on the crown of the hill when me and Jeremy look eastward there is this piece of architecture that we see, a great span of a bridge which before to us had no name, and we always wondered what it was and where it went. My dad said, "Probably Glen Burnie" but now I know better. Other couples have "their song." We seem to have "our bridge." Whenever I see the bridge from campus I feel happier, and I always go, "Look! The Bridge!" when I see it even though I know it's always there. It seems somehow significant that I should know its name.
------
After we left, stumbled around east until we found Charles Street and went north up it, looking around at everything like dazed tourists. We found the Basilica of the Anunciation a few blocks up as the sky turned purple and pink, but the church was closed so we walked around staring at its columns and dome silhouetted through the wrought iron fence. Then, having kind of done what we had come for, we went back to the harbor, by which time the sun had set in full, and the Bromo-Seltzer tower was lit up in the night by spotlights of purple. We went to the Gallery, glowing yellow through panes of glass and gawked at things we couldn't afford, then went to the shops on the harbor.
We went to Philip's Seafood Restaurant and got us some nice fish and crabcakes, and also pie and cheesecake. This took like two hours. We ended up having to run to catch the bus to campus, except that we near missed it because when I was on an intersection and looked to the right and saw the JHU pink cylinder bus stop, we saw the bus speeding away from the block towards us. Jeremy sprinted to the left, towards the stop one block ahead and flagged it down like a taxi.
When we got home Jeremy discovered, beside my bag of cookies and two balloons, another bag of cookies and two more balloons, for him. ("They multiplied!")
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