Dinner with an art school colleague.

The other week I had dinner with an art school colleague who I sometimes get together with, this (older) (white) woman with a round face and big light blue eyes and big frizzy white hair pulled back and a tendency to wear flow-ey stuff, and who can seem scattered and flighty and talks with a tentative tone of voice, but is super-ass perceptive and knows her sh*t with a ton of interesting stuff.

Over my coffee and a pastry (I had had a late lunch and had been snacking all day) and her dinner (quiche and salad, glass of wine), we caught up, and somehow we got on the subject of trans* students.

She said that she didn't do the "name and pronouns" thing on the first day and was going by names on the class photo roster she had gotten offline, and a trans*man (i.e., FTM) didn't change his name on the roster but identified with a male name in mumbly speech, and so she tried to use male pronouns, apologizing once when she slipped up in class.

"Because she really looks like more of a butch dyke," my art school colleague was like, in her normal tone of voice like she'd be talking about anything else.

Then, one day, she must have slipped around pronouns again, b/c the next time she got an assignment back, there was a standard form saying something like, "You have misgendered the lovely gentleman turning in this assignment" etc. etc. etc.

So, at the very next opportunity, my colleague apologized very lovely as she can be, and was like, "I agree that you are a lovely gentleman, and what else can I do better?" etc. etc. etc.

And, everything was good, though the student tended to be a little doctrinaire in reading gender in past novels, and my colleague was a bit afraid to push back too hard with those readings, though she did.

"But I really resent being called 'cis'," she was like, and then she started telling me the standard radical feminist line about how men have always defined women for thousands of years.

I then said something about radical feminism, and she was like, "It's not radical feminism, a lot of women think it, but everyone's afraid to say it."

Then, she was like, very seriously, "I don't want to be called 'cis-' -" - and then she paused quickly and broke out into a smile and was like, "Though maybe 'cis-tuh'!", and at that she leaned back in her chair and laughed heartily.

Later, when I invited her along on the tour of the city's sadomasochism museum with my class since we get a special tour of the back archives that no-one ever sees, she was like, "You know, thank you, but I think I'd prefer to imagine it, rather," and she laughed slyly.

Students nowadays (2 of 2): Pop culture references.

The other day when the professor made a reference to the mannerisms of Peter Falk's character Columbo, none of the students knew who he was.

Don't they have that shit on daytime TV any more when they were home sick from school!?

Students nowadays (1 of 2): Immigrant-heritage kid in Midwest.

So, for my one freshman writing class continuing over from this fall, one of the kids is this (dark-skinned) (East African)-looking guy with chubby cheeks and a stereotypical (Muslim) name, and a very pleasant easygoing demeanor.

He's from a Midwestern state and is a native English speaker, so my hunch is that his parents are immigrants or that he came over at a very extremely young age.

Anyhow, 19 year olds can be so funny and cute!

As one of my supervisors said, every year the students look more and more like chipmunks.

When we had a meeting over a paper draft of his, he was like, very pleasantly, "You know, I find this tough, since we didn't do anything like this back in high school."

"Where'd you go to high school?", I was like.

"Ohio," he was like.

"So what'd they make you do?", I was like.  "Make you memorize the names of all eight presidents from Ohio?".

"Yeah, pretty much," he said, affably, not picking up on my dry humor.

Also, after holiday break, the professor asked everyone for stories about their break, and he said that he almost missed the bus back from Ohio since he slept through his alarm.

Also also, with his first paper, he turned it in unstapled with the corner folded over, and his name scrawled unevenly across the top corner of the second page, in case the pages got separated.

Ah, to be nineteen again.  Kids!

Musical Legends.

For a number of years now, my philosophy has been to see musical legends while you can, since even if you don't like their genre of music, it's a sign of respect, and people are called great for a reason, so you never know.

I've seen Brian Wilson now twice, Bob Dylan once (never again), Mavis Staples a few times (and I'd see her again), and most recently a famous blues guitarist who does a winter residency.

I'm not that much into the blues, but me and my one (white) friend from Mississippi headed up to see this guitarist, and I was blown away.

For one, he's both an immensely talented vocalist and an immensely talented guitarist combined, and either one of those talents would be enough for any other artist to be well-known.

Both in one person, makes someone world-class, and you can understand his reputation and all the honors he's received.

For another, he had a great sense of humor, and after busting out into "Inna Gadda da Vida", he then swapped the guitar back around onto his butt, and kept playing the riff with his butt.

It was an awesome feat, and this joke-y way to point out that he was so legendary and talented, he could play someone else's legendary guitar line with his butt.

In my bedroom at 9am on a sunny winter morning...

The other morning on a bright winter morning I had the door to my bedroom open around 9am, and the room was flooded with a bright yellow light for a brief period while the sun came in between the rooftops and then through my window just right.

I then realized that I'd never really seen that before, because I'm either sleeping in past then, or are already up and gone by then.

It's funny how you can never know all aspects of a place, even one so small as an apartment.

All server meeting at the bar...

So, the other Monday, there was an all-server meeting at the bar, and I jotted a few notes, but I can't find them now.

The highlight was the (shrimpy) (Hispanic) manager with an edge, this guy who used to work at a rock club and who has one fingernail painted black, who told everyone that they had to stop stuff like eating mistakes in the kitchen and coming out of the service doors munching since all the customers could see it.

"That's just ghetto," he was like, very seriously.  "Lose the ghetto."

Also, before the meeting, the Moroccan and the Mexican Machiavelli kept saying that people "don't tip" and "those people" don't tip, and I'm pretty sure that they meant (African-American) customers.

Odd conversation at a bar: Meditator.

So, the other long weekend when my one (straight) (BDSM) friend was in town, I got together with him in groups of people a couple of times, the 2nd time the night before he left at this old timey bar hanging on in a hipster neighborhood by appealing to the new clientele with bottled craft beer and its dingy atmosphere and shit.

He was meeting with a mutual documentary maker friend who I know through him, so I hung out with them, then another friend of his showed up with his visiting girlfriend in tow, this smiley vaguely ethnic (brown skinned) girl who when she introduced herself said what seemed to be her (hispanic) name with an accent, though her English was perfect.

As we talked, it turns out that she had grown up in small town southern Michigan and now lived in California, and was going to the Southwest to deepen her meditation practice.

So, I started asking around about that, and we talked for over an hour very intensely, while the other people in the group socialized apart.

When I mentioned something I had read about impermanence and a book about a Buddhist nun where this one English woman at a very young age realized that everyone would die, the girl said that one time when she was like 6, she was in the basement in her home walking on the treadmill, and all of a sudden she realized that both of her parents would die and she just began crying loudly and no-one could understand, and that she had to tell herself that when that happened, her grandparents and other people would step in to take care of her.

Later, I asked her if she ever encountered evil forces when she went deep.

She said that sometimes she feels something, and she just remains present and with time the forces "go through masks".

Sometimes, too, one remains wrong, but it's not so much evil, but it's rather something that needs to learn to heal, and so she wishes that outcome for the being.

When I told her about the weird oppressive experience that both me and my one (Dutch) friend had had years ago at the headquarters of this well known meditation group that's a bit cult-y, she said that her teacher had mentioned them the other day, and that their desire for levitation is wrongly directed since they're too concerned with marvels, and that they'll likely come back as birds in the next life.

And, b/c I described the weird oppressive experience in depth, she was like, "Now you made me want to go there even less."

And she laughed.