Walking and Riding - from June 9, 2007

This last week I had a very enjoyable time walking and riding. Not really - because motion still makes me very ill - but I did enjoy what I saw. We went on an Art Walk through the UCSD campus, and I truly enjoyed it. UCSD is where Eric goes to school, but I haven't spent hardly any time walking around there. It is a newer school and so there hardly isn't anything "classical" about the whole campus. Everything is very modern looking and feeling and sounding - their music program is all a-tonal stuff. I thought it would be a bunch of abstract obnoxious pieces - but it wasn't. I haven't had the greatest experiences with abstract art - yes I know - I just don't understand it; perhaps it has something to do with the whole wall with a single red dot on it in the Smithsonian that is called "Ode to the Drag Queen" or the French Fries placed at USU which means nothing to me that has tunred me against a lot of modern art. I was pleasantly surprised to find thier Stuart Collection scattered through campus to be truly entertaining and thought provoking. What I loved was that most of the pieces, you can walk right by and not suspect anything of it - but on second look you find these amazing things - and the bigger pieces that stand out - are pretty great too. A few of my favorites were the 3 Trees - real trees encased in some kind of metal, I forget which kind - but one is the Silent Tree, one is the Talking Tree and one is the Singing Tree - and yes they really talk and sing. While the actual talking is rather annoying, it was still enjoyable. This tree talks spouts a poem about scabs - the kind you get from cuts - for 5 minutes, amongst other things. But it was neat walking through the groves of Eucalyptes Trees and stumbling upon 3 very normal looking trees, with hidden secrets. Another favorite was a marble water fountain. I guess its pretty common to have a flag pole in the middle, a war memorial on one end, and a huge water fountain on the other. Well instead of a huge water fountain, you find a marble office drinking fountain (it really works). It speaks about water conservation in CA, etc. I just got a kick out of it. I could go on and on - because I really enjoyed it - The Tree of Life (the Geisel Library named after Dr. Seuss) with a snake path leading up to it and a Garden of Eden, and the red shoe - but I won't keep babbling. It was nice to be outside and see something different. If anyone is interested you can check out this link to the Stuart Collection http://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/StuartCollection/index.htmI also watched a fantastic movie called Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles. I think my in-laws recommended it to me - or someone did , because I never put foreign films in our Movie Queue. I was glad we watched it though. It just had amazing acting in it. One of the actors said so little, but said so much. It was just gripping. There was very little plot to catch your attention, there was only one really lingering question you didn't know, but it didn't much matter. It held your attention with what the humans said by what they didn't say. Even the Cadet was fascinated by the movie. He still runs around asking to talk about "Takata and Yang Yang, Yang Yang and Takata" (two of the charachters.) It was just refreshing to watch a clean movie that deals with real human interaction and emotion and loses all the special effects and fast paced scene changes. I felt like I was at a high quality theatre production - with the bonus of the splendid images of the Yunnan Province in China. Anyhow - I've enjoyed my week walking through art and riding through a movie - but now its back to the reality of my messy closets and housework that I've neglected for the past three months. Sigh.