ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Fun category.

Up In The Arch, Again

Today, after about a year of absence and distant hand wavings from across the road across the river, I visited the Gateway Arch again. It’s been a while. The Arch – a monument to dreams, as it was tagged when it was opened in 1968 – lay as enticing as it has always been from a distance, shining in the sun. The trip to the top took four minutes in a little tram that seats only five people. The trip downwards took three minutes. The monument 630ft tall retained its grandeur and charm as a symbol of possibilities, and a landmark to living history.

The Museum of Westward Expansion at the basement of the Arch itself didn’t disappoint, along with a 35 minutes movie presentation about how the structure was inspired, conceptualized, designed and constructed. Since 1968 when it was opened, it has remained a beacon – the tallest monument in the country. Still standing, still charming, still inspiring. If you ever find yourself in St. Louis, do check it out. A new regulation however is that, before entering the structure, you had to go through a series of checks, body scans and searches. And for good reason too.

I won’t trust the safety of such an important monument to just the pureness of heart of the rest of humanity either.

My Dashiki Halloween

Last year Halloween, I missed my chance to dress up as a Pirate of the Caribbean. This year, to redeem myself, I came up with a variety of costume ideas. At first I thought that I could be Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean dictator. I gave that up when I realized that I’d need to wear a three piece suit to be close. Then I wanted to be the stupid Nigerian Underwear bomber from last year. To do that, I might need to wear a t-shirt (and maybe a fiery underwear) and look silly. No way. Then I thought I could be Kunta Kinte. Who cares, I thought. Halloween is such a day for the ridiculous anyway. However, Kunta was a short man, and I’d have to look and behave really angrily. I gave that up as well. Then I said I’d be Fela the musician. Then I realized that no one around here really knows who he was to be able to correctly identify me. Then I said maybe I should be Eddie Long. Oh no, I said again. I’m not that desperate to be ridiculous, so I jettisoned that too. I decided to go as myself, in a classy Yoruba dashiki vest.

Nothing more needs to be said except that it was thick enough to keep the cold out when I’m outside, and colourful enough to be a Halloween costume in America. When I was asked who I was supposed to be, I said I was an African president from the Congo – not minding that the clothing material is not even worn in the Congo. When I went to the parade at downtown Edwardsville yesterday, I wore it again, and I got a few interesting glances. It’s Halloween, geddit? Let’s see what happens when I wear it to the department sometime. A student from Ghana saw me and said it is called fugu in Ghana, and is worn mostly by the Hausas in the Northern part of the country. All I know is that Wole Soyinka wore it on top of an “English” dress to accept his Nobel Prize in 1986 in Stockholm. Now it all makes sense. The cold in that part of the world is beyond belief.

And so it ends, another season of fun and festivities.

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Random: I think it’s unfair that most of America’s fun places are in Missouri rather than in Illinois. Sometimes last week, I went to Grant’s Farm – a spacious fenced plantation ground belonging to the former general and president Ulysses Grant, also in Missouri. The grounds of the farm – now populated with animals of different kinds – was where the president spent much of his time during the civil war and the Mexican war. The state has so much more than has been presently discovered, and I’d be glad to check out as many more as I can discover.

Otutu and other Stories

And so it is, just like it said it would be: the winter season is beginning little by little. The leaves are all almost dead, and the cold has returned, as benign as it always does at the beginning, keeping its biting fangs safe behind the months waiting for the most appropriate moment to strike. This is the time where I begin to wear three shirts at once, covering them with a large jacket. Gloves, not yet, but we’ll get there. On the one hand is a desire to rid of the heat of previous months. On the other is the dread of what comes ahead: short sunlight days and a long season of heatless sunrays. I’m gonna miss you, Nigeria.

A friend in the UK has asked me for a guide to surviving the winter season. I don’t know much about Britain, but if he was in America, here would have been my response:

1. Get a drinking habit. Be it hot water, tea, coffee, ogogoro, gin, vodka or akpeteshie, nothing kills the cold faster than a hot one in your belly. If you live in America, remember to hold your passport handy when going to the store to buy alcohol. If you are like me with very little tufts of hair sparsely across your face, you will definitely be mistaken for a 17 year old and may not even be believed after showing them the right document. Borrow a fake beard and speak in a deep guttural voice. Tell them that the alcohol has been prescribed for you as the best remedy against the onslaught of the season. If she still refuses to sell it to you, call 911, or scream like a baby.

2. Get married, fall in love, or move into your old girlfriend’s apartment. Body heat is a terrible thing to waste. When in doubt, ask married people. According to the KTravula poll of 2010 conducted over the phone to the many married women and men across America, divorce rates slow down to the barest minimum in the winter. Why? Who wan die?. You got it right. Nobody wants to sleep alone in a cold bed on a winter night. Even for the most dysfunctional family, somebody has got to shovel that snow that piles up on cars and at the door of houses. People have learnt to deal with their marriages and stay in them until the weather is conducive enough to be singularly enjoyed. I have warned you. If you want to survive this season, move in with someone. If you’re thinking of splitting with that old one, wait it out. You will always have spring for that.

3. Eat, eat, eat. Last year, it was pizza – a lot of it. This time, for me, it shall be pizza again, and any other fattening food substance I can find. Goat cheese, cheddar, Swiss cheese, American cheese… any kind of cheese you can find, store them up. And whether you make egusi, efo riro, jollof rice, fried rice, pasta or even okra soup, keep putting cheese in them. It’s the American way. And even if you, like me, don’t like cheese that much, you will find that it is a little sacrifice to make for one’s survival. You will thank me later for it. Scientific fact: fat builds a layer of insulation for your body against the onslaught of the weather. I should know. I’ve been a lanky fellow for as long as I can remember. And this reminds me: I should stay more in one place now. Too much body fluid (and fat) is lost by constant cross-country gallivanting.

4. Whatever you do, do not shave your head. I don’t care if you play for the Lakers, or the Chicago Bulls, or if Michael Jordan is your biggest idol. A skin-shaven head in the winter is suicide. Much of the body heat lost in the cold goes out through the head. Get a cap and wear it all day long. And never shave. I said that already, right? Yes, I’m saying it again to myself. I tried it last year and suffered dearly for it with moments of free-flowing tears occasioned by an outing with a bald head and no cap. The last time I cut my hair this year was sometime in August. The mistake I made was not cutting it again in September. Now I will leave it on until March. I don’t care if I come out looking like a darker version of Wole Soyinka or a lean skinny version of Don King. And who knows, maybe someone would mistake me for them and offer me a movie role.

5. It gets dark. The first time this happened to me, I thought that the world had ended. At three thirty in the afternoon, everything was already sufficiently dark. What happened? Winter. The sun, for some reason, decides to go to bed much earlier this time than at any other time in the year, and everyone outside is left wondering what on earth happened. If you need to go grocery shopping, go with your car. Hey Mohamed and Ameena if you’re reading this, if you ever find yourself stranded in darkness at three-thirty sometime soon, don’t panic. It’s not the end of the world. It happened to the best of us. And don’t call 911 either. The school shuttle will eventually show up, as long as you’re able to locate its shape in the total darkness.

There are a few more tips but they won’t all fit in one post. Stay away from the American East Coast (except your girlfriend lives there). The winters there are the worst. It shuts down a whole city. Develop endurance or a hobby, or anything to keep you busy when everything shuts down and you’re left alone in a apartment for days. One perk of the winter season, in spite of the many worries that compelled this post, is that school gets to close on random days. That’s quite promising. I can already imagine the menu of the many new dishes to try out in such moments of leisure. And yes, you guessed it right: it’s gonna have cheese in it.

Art At the Pulitzer

The experience at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Art Centre in St. Louis was interactive, a first for me. The building stands in the sun an artwork in itself, a charming thrill for the eyes and a good haven for some afternoon luxuriating in the sun. I heard it was opened in 2001. The building stands in the centre of a cultural neighbourhood called Washington Boulevard only a few blocks from the famous Fabulous Fox theatre. In this same building, actually separated by nothing but a thin wall of concrete and a self-help desk that offers free soda and snacks, is the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, another great place. This building, an architectural masterpiece was designed by the renowned Tadao Ando, and I was visiting it for the very first time.

There is an ongoing exhibition at the premises titled Stylus by Ann Hamilton. We were advised at the entrance to interact with the art as much as we could: touch, speak to, smell, and do whatever else we could within the bounds of reason. Deep in a corner was a piano playing all by itself which reacted to every sound made in the building. On a series of shelves nearby are hand gloves of different sizes and colour made out of paper. On the first floor is someone on a balcony reading from a play to herself and to all. At the basement is a board metal contraption where the visitor is advised to sit and play, rolling iron pebbles in order to align them in a cosmic circle. The process is also monitored by a microphone that transmits the sounds generated to the piano. On several makeshift ladders in the corridors are small projectors beaming onto the white walls series of random images all overlaid with a pen, a pencil or a stylus in motion. Upstairs, there is a table filled with brown seeds a kind of which I haven’t seen before. They rattled and sizzled on the membrane of the table as if insects moved in them. There were two microphones there too, picking up the sounds into a central broadcasting system. Under that table were birds of different kinds, all dead, all stuffed, all smelling of dust, and the jungle. On the balcony was a set table, and a view of the road outside. Downstairs between two walls and a third made of glass, there stands a shallow pool. The forth wall opens up to the sky and a very relaxing view of the horizon. I sit there for a while, taking pictures and smelling the air.

“At the threshold of the exhibition is a concordance.” There is a publication of a news stories from newspapers around the world arranged in a certain way that puts specific selected words into a spine and every other word as many as the line would take as its wings. The words were “Act, Address, Being, Black, Blue, Body, Call…” among others. By the east exit of the centre is a Mac on which one could make one’s own concordance. I selected my books: Ulyses by James Joyce, A Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and To Kill a Mockinbird by Harper Lee. I put in the words: “voice, black, red, hat, heaven” and watch the computer generate a concordance of those words from those books. It was seven pages long. I printed it out, as instructed, and put them in my bag.

In the courtyard of the premises far away from the exhibition is a large rusty brown spiral metal sculpture. Originally titled “Unknown”, it is now called the “Joe” by the Centre, after Joseph Pulitzer himself. The work, made in 2000 and installed in 2001, weighs 25 tonnes and is about ten feet tall standing on its own weight in the centre of the courtyard. From the first floor of the Centre, it looks like a blooming rose (however brown). While walking through its brown corridors, it looks like the passageway to a spooky cave but for the presence of the sun above. At its centre is nothing but space, and rust. According to the curator, it was created in Germany and shipped to the US in parts through New Orleans and then assembled here after the trouble it took to transport it by land (which included temporarily dismantling some traffic lights along the way.)

The final interactive challenge with the exhibition was a phone call. “Call this number when you get out, or whenever you can,” the curator told me, “and you’ll be directed to a voice message system. When you’re prompted, read a poem, a song, or any short creative response to your experience of the work. By the top of the hour, the messages left would be randomly played out into the city from the top of our building. You may say whatever you will, as long as it is appropriate. We thank you for coming here today…” I walked out to the car with my head bubbling up with many ideas and scenarios of poetry recitals not involving a language known to the curators of this project or the residents of the neighbourhood. This, I thought, is the part where Ann Hamilton meets Africa, a Yoruba song or poem into the wind of her consciousness, and to posterity. But when it came a few seconds later, the voice prompt on the phone and the tone that connected the visitor with the artist, leave your poem, song or recital now, all that came out was were the words of Eidelweiss, as mellifluously as one could summon it.

It at least captured the mood of the afternoon as I drove off out of their into the sun with a certain happiness I couldn’t describe.

The exhibition continues until January 22, 2011, and more details can be found here.

Weekend Plans and Tunes

I was singing Fela’s Lady as loudly as possible in the shower today for no reason. It’s a phase that comes and goes. A particular song finds its way back into my consciousness and remains there for days until something else knocks it off. Without doubt one of the musician’s most danceable and happiness inducing tunes, Lady has taken over my consciousness; not just the singing part of the track but the nice arrangement of horns, guitars and drums that introduce it. I now have reason to believe that Fela included so much instrumentation time on his tracks and little singing time so that when the listener feels like listening only to the sounds, they can be catered for without having to endure his voice, or politics.

My weekend has begun. It mostly begins on Thursday evenings when all classes are done. What I’ve been doing since then out of class work is scouring the internet for new places to visit. My search has led me to the Scott Joplin’s House in St. Louis and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts Centre also in the city. I have tonight to get much of my course work out of the way then take to the road. I can’t think of something more fun to do this weekend.

Now, those interested in Fela’s ballads should do well to check this out. One of his most famous slow jamz is titled Trouble Sleep Yanga Wake Am as well as Dog Eat Dog and Observation is No Crime. Needless to say, I’m so extremely jealous of those discovering Fela’s music for the very first time. Even for me listening to them again in intervals of weeks, I still get the same thrills of the very first time. Enjoy the weekend, good people.

Note on photo: Seen at the International Institute last week. I never knew that Joseph Pulitzer was an immigrant. He came into the country from Hungary.

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