I sit with my back against masonry painted dark brown. Sopped up heat radiates through my shoulders, cold seeps through my pants from a chilly walkway, and the low trajectory of a winter sun interrogates ignorant eyelids closed in blissful basking. The quiet and methodical beat of Royksopp trickles out of buds and down to a finger tapping against raspy and granular cement. A car alarm the next block down interrupts my quiet dialogue with the sunlight. My other hand withdraws from its repose in the cotton pouch of my hoody, removes the bud, and allows an unobstructed otic investigation. A writhing siren graduates to a grinding, incredibly loud “busy” tone emitted by telephones before the advent of voicemail. Whew, it hangs up.

A nearly imperceptible waft sneaks down the alley whisper to my cheek. I hear a candy wrapper roll over once protesting the disturbance with a minute crinkle. The remnants of coffee, a vague astringency devoid of previous richness, lingers to mock my taste. Mumbles of a conversation quietly punctuated by chuckles wafts around the corner, transported by a vibrant vapor of smoke; the prickly, spicy, sticky essence of clove swirls with acrid, sweet, Turkish tobacco. Nostalgia from pool halls, philosophical conversations, and solitary park benches effervesce as I lean my head against the warm brick behind me.

I haven't had too much time to write blogs.  But here is a short piece I just turned in... it's a bit long for a blog but I really wanted to get something up!  I had to relate two artifacts to myself and spin it to my college experience.  Enjoy!

“You must gaze at your history to understand yourself in the present, and with that understanding, ponder the future.” - My father

While I drove to the museum, a place I had visited dozens of times in my youth, I found myself slightly bored by the prospect of viewing unchanged exhibits that I had already meandered through as a home-schooled youngster. Still, I mustered a hope that fresh artifacts would spark my interest. When I spun my car around to park, warm nostalgia flooded through me as I revisited a location once filled with zest for learning; an idyllic world filled with artifacts of the frontier west, Native Americans, and extinct dinosaurs. I recalled the thrill of learning and the excitement stirred by an atmosphere rich with material to fuel imagination and creativity. The enormous, bovine triceratops and the classic, ferocious tyrannosaur were boyhood fascinations reinforced by Crichton's Jurassic Park, vivified by my imagination. Cowboys and Indians, along with dinosaurs, were progressively pushed into the category of mildly-ridiculous abstractions. Along with Legos and fantasy novels, they were displaced by a colder, adult reality. Unfortunately, a portion of my zeal, creativity, and fascination accompanied my dinosaur's extinction.

I pondered my resurrected enthusiasms as I walked uphill to the doors of the museum. There I encountered a towering bronze skeleton, a tyrannosaurus-rex guarding the main door like the Cerberus of Hades. It was postured in a territorial, dominant, and aggressive slant—paused in an eternity of assertion—the stout tail counterbalanced the proud and defiant pose. Its ponderous and vacant head stared toward the door. Once-powerful jaws echo a silent roar at the entrance that tingles the nape when one passes through. I stopped, my imagination sparked more vividly than in my childhood. The skeleton nearly heaved to life; flesh and leathery skin seemed to wrap around the massive bronze framework. I was awed by the realization that this gigantic lizard actually roamed in erstwhile Montana.

The vivid image of a tyrannosaur crashed into my mind; dinosaurs are not just a silly, childish motif. Archaeologists are scientists: not overgrown, overeducated, enthusiastic boys grubbing in the dirt, searching trite prizes to place on a mantle shelf. A scientist painstakingly exhumed, restored, cast, and erected the skeleton as a statement. It stands as a monument to knowledge, education, exploration, curiosity, and romance. The public might ridicule a skeleton of a cow, dog, or bear bronzed for exhibition. The prehistoric skeleton symbolizes the fascination and intrigue we have with the past: a combination of art, academia, science, and sheer amazement!

The t-rex stirred recollections of my past zeal for learning. A favored possession similarly carries the meaning of my recent journey toward college. As self-proclaimed pragmatist seldom prone to sentiment, a quilt gifted to me for high school graduation holds a very special value. Handmade by a surrogate grandmother, it was sized to fit my long frame with a beautiful slate-blue flannel backing. The comforting and homey flannel patchwork on the front is a checkerboard of dark blue and green plaid accented by gold and burgundy. Shortly after graduating as a 17-year-old, I moved to Chicago, unable to reunite with my family for a calendar year because of my school schedule. The quilt accompanied me through the culture shock of the city, challenges of leaving home, and some of the hardest emotional experiences of my life. Every night, I crawled under the fabric solace that exuded home, and whose fibers absorbed exhilarating, challenging, or mundane experiences of the day.

I have relocated several times since Chicago, and the quilt, with years of sponged-up memories, represents much more to me than Bozeman. Now, when I lay under it, memories weave together and tell of change. Stories of deep friendship and searching in other places; the ebb and flow of depression, pain, or enthusiasm that stem from changes of self and locale. Solitude, loneliness, riotous laughter, and philosophical conversations that were held within the context of a close-knit community of friendship.

The quilt symbolizes the patchwork of the experiences that returned me to Bozeman for my scholarly endeavor. Similarly, the bones of a t-rex excavated from the past are my monument to dormant ambitions of childhood; it waits to be fleshed out by a renewal of creativity, passion, and academic pursuit. For a long time dinosaurs seemed slightly cliché--and so did college--but a skeleton erected at MSU suddenly came to life in front of me. I ponder the changes that the quilt will absorb during these transitional years returning to school, the decision to pursue a future. Accompanying the desire and excitement to learn, I look forward to the myriad of stories the quilt will whisper back to me later in life.