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My mother has a fever and is sick.
The sound of a fire truck going past Johnson Building (not anywhere near a road) made all of my Anthropology class pause to wonder.
I have a thought in my head: "You must burn to know how to be a dragon."
I get outside to find that, just a few feet away, Red Square has been cordoned off by firefighters. Woman with blonde hair pulled back yells at us, "Red Square is closed. You cannot go through Red Square. Don't you people get it?" We're sent away, she glowers at me and those other students who want to see what's going on. They haven't had time to put up the police tape to keep people out, so even as I and others turn away, waves of more students all getting out of their latest classes keep coming. She yells the same thing again and again, trying to prevent them into Red Square, meanwhile there's a stream of bodies coming from behind her through the Square. She yells, "none of you can step on a single one of these bricks. Got it?"
I'm already going around the back of Suzzallo to the Allen entrance. I talk to my mother about her fever and illness. I talk to my mother about her dreams. I tell my mother about![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gira's offer for Samhain/Dia de los Muertos. Burning.
I get ahold ofdamashita and she informs me of what's going on on campus. A 61 year old man, a former employee of the UW, covered himself in gasoline and set himself on fire. Right in the middle. I tell her that I wonder if it was caught on UWTV, and then I wonder if it's show in the media, kept silent by the police, or if it will surface on YouTube next to a Darwin Award. I can't imagine the title "former employee" bodes well since I know about the lay offs that have already taken place at the college, the lay offs that are threatening Craig's department. Who would want to lose their job at 61 in the middle of this economic crisis?
When I come home, I've already cried in the car, but I'm not sure why. You have to burn to understand how to be a dragon. I haven't told Ana in the car, yet she reads a passage to me about dragons in the book she's reading, how they used to be called the "seeing ones," and although they were vastly huge beings, were depicted as tiny as butterflies. Ana tells Craig she wants to burn her homework so she doesn't have to do it.
We come home and the kitchen and living room have candles burning. Everywhere burning. I have a snack and then check my hair to make sure I haven't set myself on fire. I didn't drive well. I kept wondering why he did it. I imagined, before I knew his age, a young man. I made a snide comment earlier, "well, it is midterms." I had this fleeting thought that maybe he was just curious ... curious about what it was like for the witches burned at the stake. Later I wondered if he was making a political statement. The middle of red square at a big campus where the middle of Red Square means being on streaming video and TV, it's quite a statement. More noticeable than the increased suicides in Wall Street. ("Watch out, it's raining bankers.")
Why? Maybe it really is all wrapped up in the phrase "former employee." What a terrible way to go. It was appalling when done to thousands or millions of Europeans in the Inquisition, and I can't imagine ever thinking that that's the best method of suicide. Maybe it was just a way to get back at the college, but his survival instincts kicked in in the middle because he was said to have flailed, screamed, and tried rolling around to put out the fire. But he'd doused himself in gasoline, and no amount of water or smothering was working. I can't imagine what he was thinking during all of that. Maybe he wasn't thinking at all.
If you look at the link, you'll see a picture of the woman who shouted at us carrying fire extinguishers. You'll see items being gathered into bags and carried away. I stood and talked with the photographer who took them as I tried to get a few shots of it myself. To show that I was there. This is nothing like the time when the two naked lesbians walked hand-in-hand through UC Berkeley. No one died that day.
( Letter from UW )
The sound of a fire truck going past Johnson Building (not anywhere near a road) made all of my Anthropology class pause to wonder.
I have a thought in my head: "You must burn to know how to be a dragon."
I get outside to find that, just a few feet away, Red Square has been cordoned off by firefighters. Woman with blonde hair pulled back yells at us, "Red Square is closed. You cannot go through Red Square. Don't you people get it?" We're sent away, she glowers at me and those other students who want to see what's going on. They haven't had time to put up the police tape to keep people out, so even as I and others turn away, waves of more students all getting out of their latest classes keep coming. She yells the same thing again and again, trying to prevent them into Red Square, meanwhile there's a stream of bodies coming from behind her through the Square. She yells, "none of you can step on a single one of these bricks. Got it?"
I'm already going around the back of Suzzallo to the Allen entrance. I talk to my mother about her fever and illness. I talk to my mother about her dreams. I tell my mother about
gira's offer for Samhain/Dia de los Muertos. Burning.I get ahold of
damashita and she informs me of what's going on on campus. A 61 year old man, a former employee of the UW, covered himself in gasoline and set himself on fire. Right in the middle. I tell her that I wonder if it was caught on UWTV, and then I wonder if it's show in the media, kept silent by the police, or if it will surface on YouTube next to a Darwin Award. I can't imagine the title "former employee" bodes well since I know about the lay offs that have already taken place at the college, the lay offs that are threatening Craig's department. Who would want to lose their job at 61 in the middle of this economic crisis?When I come home, I've already cried in the car, but I'm not sure why. You have to burn to understand how to be a dragon. I haven't told Ana in the car, yet she reads a passage to me about dragons in the book she's reading, how they used to be called the "seeing ones," and although they were vastly huge beings, were depicted as tiny as butterflies. Ana tells Craig she wants to burn her homework so she doesn't have to do it.
We come home and the kitchen and living room have candles burning. Everywhere burning. I have a snack and then check my hair to make sure I haven't set myself on fire. I didn't drive well. I kept wondering why he did it. I imagined, before I knew his age, a young man. I made a snide comment earlier, "well, it is midterms." I had this fleeting thought that maybe he was just curious ... curious about what it was like for the witches burned at the stake. Later I wondered if he was making a political statement. The middle of red square at a big campus where the middle of Red Square means being on streaming video and TV, it's quite a statement. More noticeable than the increased suicides in Wall Street. ("Watch out, it's raining bankers.")
Why? Maybe it really is all wrapped up in the phrase "former employee." What a terrible way to go. It was appalling when done to thousands or millions of Europeans in the Inquisition, and I can't imagine ever thinking that that's the best method of suicide. Maybe it was just a way to get back at the college, but his survival instincts kicked in in the middle because he was said to have flailed, screamed, and tried rolling around to put out the fire. But he'd doused himself in gasoline, and no amount of water or smothering was working. I can't imagine what he was thinking during all of that. Maybe he wasn't thinking at all.
If you look at the link, you'll see a picture of the woman who shouted at us carrying fire extinguishers. You'll see items being gathered into bags and carried away. I stood and talked with the photographer who took them as I tried to get a few shots of it myself. To show that I was there. This is nothing like the time when the two naked lesbians walked hand-in-hand through UC Berkeley. No one died that day.
( Letter from UW )
