Matthew Pouw

On the walk home

2010-02-09T18:49:00.000-08:00

As a whole, we humans are fascinated with shells. We carve out hollow shells to hide from the wind and the rain. We ride along in shells with wheels on freeways of blacktop. We dress ourselves in shells of cloth: cotton, polyester, or wool. We pull the hood over our heads in the cold to put on a shell. We are a civilization of Russian dolls, layer on top of layer until who we truly are is hidden, protected, lost.

What do we have going for us? Arms. We reach to one another from behind, underneath, and around our shells. Sometimes we are bold and layers are cast off. Secrets and truths are exchanged. Other times the sting of pain pushes more barriers, more layers, more shells on us.

To connect, the layers must be cast off or commonality in shells must be recognized. Mental shells. Emotional shells.

We were raised in our shells, much like we grow inside our bodies. Sometimes our parents cast more shells on us. To shield us. To protect us.

Underneath our shells, it can be hard to recognize each other. Hard to recognize that we are all alike - the common ground of existing as we are. We pass by one another every day - no smile, no nod, no acknowledgment that your problems are just like mine.

2009-10-11T22:32:00.000-07:00

I miss the refreshingly cool and sweet, sappy taste of fruit tarts from the Chinese bakeries of Seattle's Chinatown, walking outside on the sidewalk with my parents and my brother as an 8 year old.

I thought about that today.

Back again.

2009-10-04T22:00:00.000-07:00

Note: Things have been busy and I haven't been able to write on this nearly as much I wanted to. But I'll try my best.

"Make sure to take your thumb and really grip the disc hard. No, not like that. Stick out your hand."

I stuck out my hand with the frisbee between my fingers and thumb parallel to the ground. Sean swiped his hand down in an arc through the air and smacked the disc with a THWAP! but it stayed in my hand.

Shocked, I listened with closer attention as he told me, "Good, you have to have a solid grip on it or else you will never actually be able to control where it flies. It might feel awkward at first since you didn't learn to hold it like that, but you'll get used to it. Just stick to it."

He walked away to help some other rookie player. Tall athletes surrounded me on all sides tossing their frisbees to one another with smooth gliding throws, their arms long and their legs stable. The discs around me cut through the air with grace. Mine curved everywhere, the wind catching its rim and throwing it off course every which way. Dalton and I grew frustrated as all the veteran Frisbee club players around us showed off their stuff. In the meantime, we couldn't even get our basic throws down, not used to the wind and the weights on the foreign frisbees - not the ones we always played pick-up games with.

The role of the frisbee went through stages in my life. When I was little, our frisbee was mainly used as a dish under a planter full of flowers outside. Then Andrew and I started to throw them around. We usually stopped when we hit the window with one and Mom came out and admonished us or when one of us was hit by a fit of allergies and had to retire for fear of expiring to the elements. In high school, I used to gaze out the huge windowpanes of my English class, wanting desperately to run away with some buddies and toss around a disc and be carefree. Away from pressure writes and IB tests and impromptu book questions.

But now the frisbee had morphed into a symbol of hierarchy, experience, and intimidation. I was intimidated as the 6 foot whatever veteran players dashed around and reached in front of me to deflect my catches and throws during scrimmage. The frisbee had turned into the opposite of what I had held it to be in my dreams. It had been a sign of freedom and carefree fun.

I held the disc nervously - hoping my throw would hold true to its course and not make me look like a rookie fool.

Assignment #6

2009-09-16T19:47:00.000-07:00

We came late and missed out on the opportunity for front row luxury. The stage was a mess, in transition between bands. Wedged in somewhere near the front of the audience, we waited patiently. Behind me people had flocked around the stage, like an amoeba under a microscope wrapping around its meal. A skunky aroma rose in billows to my nostrils and, in disgust, I looked down to find seated teenagers pass around a smoking pipe. The strong bowel gripping smell of marijuana weaved its way through the audience. I looked for an escape route, but the audience made a strong wall encasing me in.

The first time I encountered that strong scent was in middle school. A kid had lit up in the bathroom and I was confused as to how strange it smelled. There were quite a few stoners back home. In high school, I used to look outside the large window panes of the classrooms and glimpse students run up hills into the trails to smoke, their heads whipping back every few seconds to make sure no one was watching them. They were cautious.

These concert-goers were unapologetically not cautious. They puffed on their pipes as everyone watched their pupils dilate into jet black pools. Then the recklessness began as they stood up and the next band took the stage. Pushing and pulling, they managed to transform the crowd into a roiling sea. They picked up one another and, supporting each other with their hands, threw each other above the crowd on high crowd surfing adventures.

Backs and butts grazed my body. An unknown elbow rested on my neck. Someone’s head bumped into mine. I was not happy. These raucous drug users weren’t like their mellow counterparts back home. They were a mob. They raised their fists to every beat, sang each word to each song, and screamed at the musician for the chance that he might look at them – maybe wink at them or smile or give some sign of approval.

I was frightened at how easily their individuality disintegrated into a collectively passionate, violent, and chaotic force. When the rapper on stage said a meaningful line, someone yelled, “Ohh, yeah!!” and others, cued to scream their throats out, joined in immediately as if pressured into making noise. As if they would fall out of the performer’s favor by not shouting.

They did all this while smoking; their thumbs and index fingers brought together, holding joints to their lips.

(written on 9/07/09)

Assignment #5

2009-09-14T13:53:00.001-07:00

I’m not an impulsive person. As my hall mates last night donned their sequin covered playboy bunny suits and sleazy dress shirts with collars popped high to experience a scandalously themed frat party, I stayed in my room. I bid them farewell and told them to be careful. I sat there alone in my room, my fear confirmed – everyone else was out having fun, while I was not willing to even try.

But one of those rare impulses gripped me.

I looked up the bus schedules today, peering out my dorm window to see the setting sun urging me to rush and spurring the adrenaline in my blood. Urgency gripped my stomach and, with my packed bags, I hopped onto a metro bus to the Greyhound depot downtown. My bus driver was a portly balding man with a sagging gut and long straw yellow hair in a crown around his scalp just like Mr. Joling’s. I slumped in my bus seat and I was back in Joling’s German class at 8:00 AM. My eyelids drooped, my back slouched, and my limbs hung off my torso like rags. Herr Joling had his hands on his belly with his head cocked out like a turtle, squinting under his glasses and singing to popular German folk songs. He looked at me and hollered, “Hey! This is your stop, man!”

I came to my senses and jumped off the bus to find myself on a deserted street corner, the rain drizzling and underlining the gloominess of the grey cityscape. The Greyhound depot sat on the opposite corner, its paint grimy and its bricks sagging. Stumbling in, I was shocked by the change. The still gloom of the street was replaced by the sheer amount of people packed in the building. I sidestepped an anxious mother with her wild children, a dancing couple, and a tattooed and pierced muscle man sprawled on the grimy tiles with his luggage. The depot was uncomfortable, dirty, and chaotic. I hadn’t felt this way since I had gone to China a few years ago. Sheer masses of people pushed past me to get what they wanted; the smell of cigarette smoke stung my nostrils and my lungs; conversations passed from one to another with volume, mouths and eyes open alarmingly wide.

But in China I was always with my family. I wasn’t alone for even a second. My father would lead me out into the muggy streets of Beijing, under the curtain of sweltering heat. We would pass by one of the many construction crews that were transforming the city for the 2008 Olympics. Dad would tell me with nostalgia, “This building wasn’t here when I was young, Matthew. This used to be where your uncle and I would climb to do all sorts of mischief. Everything is different now.”

“Everything is different now,” I thought to myself. I’m alone! The depot emptied itself of people to the buses. I boarded with the shaky fear that my bus was heading north instead of south. But I asked the girl sitting across from me where she was headed and she replied, “Olympia!” with an uplifting smile. She kept glancing over at me and I uncomfortably shifted to avoid her gaze. I looked out the window and her reflection grinned back at me. Creepy. I pulled up my hood.

How many thoughts pass by as one gazes out the window? My eyes searched the navy blue landscape outside, rushing by under darkness. Once, during a snow storm that froze over western Washington, my parents and I headed the opposite direction out on the ice-encased highway in the family SUV to pick up my brother from the airport. The only four tires for miles slowly crushed the ice under us with perseverance. Back then, the world outside was clean.

Today, it looked muddy.

The bus rolled into the Olympia Greyhound station. I stepped off the bus, taking care to avoid the creepy smiling girl, and ran off to find my parents amidst the scattered black puddles on the street. Their empty nest had a baby bird again.

(written on 9/5/09)

Assignment #4

2009-09-13T21:45:00.000-07:00

I walk out into the air and sun, busy with the commotion of bus lines and cars, pedestrians and street signs. A low and constant roar exudes from the asphalt as tires roll on by – turning at the corner, screeching to a halt at a red light, racing down Campus Pkwy in a fluster of sheer noise and impatience. The sounds of the road are intrusive. They find a way to seep through your windows at night and crawl into bed with you to scream in your pillow and annoy you to no end.

The people are always on the move. Students, teachers, townies and drifters walk up and down the sidewalk. They each have their personal gait, their signature stride. Many roam in clumps, meandering around the right angles of street corners, feeling safe together, and shirking the responsibility of finding their own ways. The buildings rise from the ground, each block like a raised bed of crops, growing and reaching towards the sun. They are brick, stucco, wood, and glass. Some are newfangled, others worn in a way that exudes history and demands preservation.

This is Seattle.

I had heard so much about it. Yet now that I’m here, I can’t pin down the culture of this place. Surely the Starbucks coffee and the tote bags are only skin deep. City pigeons fly from corners of buildings, over the suspended spider webs of trolleybus cables that lead to so many undiscovered places. The urban sprawl goes on and on; Seattle reaches out and spreads his arms and legs to grow and expand like a yawning couch potato on his La-Z-Boy recliner. The horizon is interrupted by clumps of trees on street corners and sidewalk edges.

Those trees make me think of home. I was born in Olympia, WA. There, I flew my first kite, made my first friend, went to school, dealt with my first pimple, and slowly morphed into who I am now. Those chrysalis-like stages were harbored by Olympia’s unique culture and its lush surroundings. My house was surrounded by forest. The landscape was delightfully encroaching and painted with a full spectrum of greens. It was my home of pine needles, cedar scents, and blades of grass. The mats of Olympian moss, whether dry or wet, were supple, soft, and enveloping. They grabbed your toes like the pure hands of a baby and you couldn’t bring yourself to leave their grip. The trees towered overhead and, as your gaze followed their trunks up to the sky, your legs grew wobbly under the blanket of emerald grandeur. Standing in the forest alone and taking in the clean air and soft damp undergrowth rivaled nothing.

There was an eco-friendly, bohemian, hipster culture that existed (and still exists) in Olympia. Exuding from the depths of the Evergreen State College, it engulfed downtown and left its traces among the city. Young men sat along the bases of buildings, their dreadlocks matted and long and their chest hair bursting from their skin, as virile as the forest. Children ran through the sprinkler fountains downtown and brought their chalk to scribble along the roadside. Kites soared along the banks of Capitol Lake, tugged and manipulated like upside-down marionettes.

Small curb-hugging houses must be ubiquitous. I saw them at home and I see them here. I don’t know the people in these Seattle houses, but perhaps they are mirror images and reflections of the people in those houses back home, making the same movements and thinking the same thoughts. They might lounge on their sofas watching TV with their huge windows open for everyone to watch along with them. They could be outside in their gardens, hosing down their raised beds of vegetables. They may be in their short driveways, waxing their cars or squeegeeing their windows in the sun without their shirts on.

Caught between these two places in a forced transition from one to the other, I can only wait for my psyche to accept Seattle and take it for what it is; the hustle and bustle of the streets; the dense concrete, brick and asphalt; the variety of people. The unknown majority of the city reminds me of the lessons of life yet to be learned.

(written on 9/4/09)

Assignment #2

2009-09-12T22:37:00.001-07:00

I didn’t expect it. I guess experiences are never really what you expect anyway, they just happen to be what they are and you can glean what you may from them.

The partitions in the shower room are made of marble. Yet upon stepping into the different shower stalls for the first, second and third times, I had believed them to be plywood, susceptible in my mind to rot and molds. By the fourth time my arm accidentally grazed the partition and, feeling a surface much different than I had expected, I inspected it. I peered at the unapologetically speckled surface and instantly realized, “marble!” – the stuff of statues and luxury, antiquity and class.

Michelangelo carved David from marble. Naked in the shower, I felt not too different from David.

Fumbling with the awkwardness of shower curtains and communal bathrooms, I grabbed my clothes and towel from behind the shower curtain. Hearing no showers running and no toilets flushing, my mind was at ease. At the right time the bathroom could be bustling with people. Unaccustomed to being with so many people in what I had always treated as a very private affair, I felt lucky that this wasn’t that right time.

I headed back to my dorm room from the men’s bathroom. My arms supported the shower basket and the yellow bag filled with saline solution, contacts, regular flavored toothpaste and my toothbrush that my mom had nervously and repeatedly reminded me not to forget during my last days at home. In respect to the bathroom, my room is perched on the opposite corner of the floor, the inconveniently farthest room from the bathroom’s porcelain, mirrors and now, marble. I was tired, yet I still managed to utter a hello and a hi to a couple hall mates, knowing inside that I had greeted total strangers.

My legs were sore from sprinting and pivoting the day before with Dalton, chasing after a scratched and worn Frisbee I had brought from home. A toy and memento of my childhood and adolescence, we chased it down for hours, running and panting as hard as we could.

I reached my stretch of the hall, peered down and realized every door was closed except for mine. A sudden fear that perhaps everyone was out making friends and having a good time without me sprung up. But when I reached my door, I found my roommate sitting in his chair talking on his phone. Not everyone was gone and I was relieved to have some company. I opened my closet and stowed away my shower basket and yellow bag, then changed into fresh clothes. My mind wandered to memories of my mother reminding to “always wear your slippers in the shower, because college kids are dirty!”

Each student comes to UW with his or her culture and experience. It is tied to each and every back like the shell of a hermit crab; invisible, important, and made up of personal beliefs, fancies, and preconceived notions. We each have expectations. I expected loud dorms, large classes, and the most basic of bathroom accoutrements – things I would have to learn to like and live with.

And now I am sitting here, miles from home. I find a quiet dorm, a small class, and marble in my shower.

(written on August 28th)

2009-09-12T22:34:00.000-07:00

I am busy writing a personal statement for my writing class. Soooo, I will entertain you with some of the assignments that I've produced for the class. They will be added in order of my writing them. Enjoy!

Now, please note that some of the things in my exercises aren't really true. This is because my writing class is entitled Fictionalizing Autobiography. So. There is some fiction mixed in there. Some of it is downright made up.

Ichthy

2009-09-12T22:26:00.000-07:00

Today I met a new friend. He is a little heavyset, though short. His mouth is constantly open and his jaw is a little slanted. Honestly, he's not the most attractive fellow, but I like him already. He's the silent type and mostly likes to hang around in my room. He watches me on my computer, but I don't mind. Its kind of comforting. Even though he is kind of rotund, he could probably get away with eating some more - you can see his ribs.

Wanna meet him? Scroll down.

Okay, you asked for it:

Hehehehe. Thank you Mary, for this wonderful Ichthyosaurus model. I enjoy his company. :)

Transitions.

2009-09-09T21:40:00.001-07:00

I walked down to watch a movie with friends on the third floor today after hermiting in my room for the afternoon. Being all the way in the corner makes it a little tough to meet people, but its happening slowly. Though, I've realized I like being alone as well.

The homesickness is starting to dissipate. I still miss everything, but I'm starting to get used to the things that I initially hated so much: crowded bathrooms, noise from the street and from the dorms, being essentially alone among strangers. I can only think of my friends from home and how they are transitioning - whether struggling under new conditions with little privacy and personal space or thriving under the social party that one's room can become every night. Some are swamped in homework. Others are still at home, relaxing for another two weeks.

I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. Taking a light load of classes with enough time to goof off and explore. But also enough time to dwell on the thoughts that can get me down. Its hard. During the last few weeks, emotions have been wilder than in any other period in my life.

Sigh. It will pass.

2009-09-03T16:33:00.000-07:00

I walked back from eating at McMahon's 8, a dining hall, with Nick and Combees (I sure hope, but doubt that's how you spell your name...sorry).

We had stayed after class together to pick up some free passes to the Seattle Art Museum that Professor Wong had for the class. He led us to his office in Padelford Hall and distributed them, saying "I'm proud of you guys for going to the museum! Have a good weekend." We said our farewells and made our way to food, our stomachs grumbling like disgruntled old men and our strides long in anticipation. After piling food onto my tray - honestly too much food, but at least well-varied in selection - we sat at a booth table and chatted a bit. I felt satisfied. Not only because I was grazing off the grasses of college, but because I had ventured out with some classmates. Since my room is in the corner of the building, not many people will come to see us. It works like this: kids walk down the hall, sometimes with a purpose, sometimes more or less aimlessly. When they happen across a room that is open and has a few kids in it that seem friendly, they might pop in to say hi or stay and hang out if they feel comfortable. Well, the first step to that process requires that they pass by the open room. Our room is open, but we don't get much traffic by it, being in the corner.

But that was okay, because I had found some people. Some people who I could politely chat with; about what our schools were like, or what we liked about class, or how the food tasted. Strictly superficial. You know, you can't delve that deep into conversation right away. It just doesn't work that way, I suppose.

After lunch we walked back to Lander and I brought Combees up to the room to check it out. He's not staying in Lander and I wanted to show him what it was like up here. He's commuting. We walked into the elevator - plated in metal like a over-sized retro lunch pail with elevator buttons - when I felt my phone give a vibrate. "Must be Mary," I thought. She moved into her dorm at PLU this morning and I couldn't help her move in, even though its all I wanted to do. My hand, conditioned to responding to text messages, whipped out my phone and put it in both hands. In a "ready-to-text" position. Thumbs on the little QWERTY keyboard and all. But it wasn't Mary, it was Micaela, and she was calling.

She, Katie, and Spencer had come up to buy football game tickets and wanted to drop in to see me! So I quickly showed Combees the room and then led him back down where I met my three friends. Combees left to meet his own friend elsewhere, but I said bye. Just what I needed. Honestly! I had given these three hugs all the time back in high school, but when I hugged them this time it meant something.

Backtracking to the night before: I was lonely. I was homesick. I wanted to goof around with Mary and fly kites and watch Disney movies. I wanted to wake up to say hi to my mom with her huge lunch meals and find my dad when I came out of the shower, home from playing 9 holes of golf. I wanted my own bed. Instead I was in a foreign bed, in a foreign room, in a foreign city, reading Istanbul feverishly to make sure I could follow along in discussion the next day. What was I doing here? It's not what I wanted. But summer doesn't last forever and business and life must continue.

The feelings of last night's homesickness and loneliness washed away and I felt as refreshed as a clear afternoon after a hard rainfall. I was happy. As much as my orientation leaders had advised to go experience new things and meet new people, it made me ecstatic to find this safety net of friends again. I've had splendid friends. I don't want to let them slip away, like a transitory breath, in my years of education.

I want to be that friend for life: the one who you tell your kids about in stories sometimes, even if I live very far away; the one who comes over and invites you over for dinner once in a while; or surprises you on your birthday.

A Grand Adventure

2009-09-01T17:16:00.000-07:00

Your eccentricity appealed to me at first, but after about 20 minutes, I got pretty sick of it - just have to tell you. Thanks for being so easy to talk to though. Well, at least thanks for doing all the talking. Alisa and I didn't actually talk at all - we could only laugh (sometimes faking it, sometimes legitimately), smile, nod and make a quick comment. You just couldn't really give us an opening to talk, could you?

Or maybe we just didn't want to tell you anything about ourselves like you. Sorry for that. Its just that it was our first time on the bus, we were wary of strangers and we were lost, worried, and confronted with the overall confusion and complexity of the bus system. Metro buses, Xpress (or Express?) buses, Soundtransit, T-Line. My head still reels with the choices.

I enjoyed listening to your stories though. I blame the noise of the rumbling bus, muffling your voice and negating my hearing, for my eventual loss of interest. But they were different. You were a nurse you said? Or had been? That probably accounts for your fear of necrotizing faciitis. I liked hearing about your twenty-five siblings and all of the times you pulled pranks on them. What was it you said?

"My brothers would whup me hard, but I'd get 'em back, you know. I put honey in their shampoo bottles and shaved their heads bald at night. Got those fuckers bad!" Then you cackled a bit.

I'm sorry I didn't catch your name. I have a feeling you told us it, but I couldn't hear over the rumbling bus. It didn't help that you were whispering as if your anecdotes were carefully guarded secrets. Secrets which you told us strangers on the bus. I didn't like the part about the gangs in your story though. I'm sorry, it must have been a dangerous way to grow up, to have to always try and avoid those gangs on your street. I frowned and showed my concern as you told that part of the story. When you told us about the many times you ran away and climbed up on your roof though, that made me laugh! Until you told us that you got whipped for your mischief by your papa. That made me sad too.

Most importantly though, thank you for informing us about the dirt and filth and layer of scum and disease on the bus. It really scared us first-timers. When that man sat in front of us and a wave of the filthiest scent I've ever smelled wafted to our seat, I saw your face wince too. And when said man left, only to leave behind his cloud of scent, you were the one who invited us into your conversation, exclaiming, "That man is covahed in shit!!" I think it was also awfully noble of you to redirect every single soul who wanted to sit in that seat from there on. (Personally though, I think it was just incredibly bad body odor. My eyes did not spot any poop on that man. Or any poop on that seat. I found some bark though...)

After we left you on the bus to explore downtown we found ourselves in a secret underground nightclub for buses. Actually, it was just a dark tunnel where the the metro station is I guess. I hadn't known that Seattle had such an extensive mass transit system. That must account for the rumbling buses that run around the clock outside of my dorm. Even at night, when their low humming engines seem to penetrate right into the bed frame, creeping into my pillow to be absorbed into my ears. From this central bus tunnel, we climbed out from the underground to find ourselves in the Westlake Center. I remembered this place from Capital's band trips up to the Macy's parade in November. It was still filled with people and seemed as lively as ever. Running from the slow and steady drizzle outside, we ran to the GAP. After some retail escapades, it was time to try and find our way back to the dorms. Boy, we really had no idea where to go or how. And you weren't too much help either when we ran into you again and asked you and you told us to try and hop onto a Harborview medical van to get a free ride.

Anyway, we made it without your help and with some more knowledge to boot. We've only scratched the surface though, this being our first trip on Seattle's buses ever (and truly my first experience with bus systems anyway, being Steamboat Island loving, forest-dwelling country folk).