I went to the festival both Saturday and Sunday with my fiancé, Kevin, and our dog, Porter. First of all, it felt great to have our dog in tow. Kevin lives in Phoenix and we are rarely able to take him out on our daily excursions, something we miss from the “dog-friendly” shops and towns in Colorado where we both received our undergraduate education. We were lost, of course, mainly because I was navigating, and ended up in an area of South Tucson I don’t think I’ll ever be able to find again. We found it eventually, and were once again lost. This was good. We needed that sense of confusion. In a daily life where so much depends on an organized schedule, and overwhelmed is disarming. And this particular event, the wildly energetic and festive Tucson Meet Yourself required a dissolution of self in order to step into the “borderless” appropriated space of cultures mingling and presenting their particularities.
Being lost, we were able to find something other than our sense of place. We were able to find a kitchen show, a competition between colleges on who could make the best meal (with the secret ingredient of pomegranate as a requirement in each piece-yum). We lost our sense of time, so that we could enjoy spending time with the pups at the adoption center and let our dog Porter explore with his nose, without the worry of dinner plans and the evenings commitments ahead of us. We spent a few hours in that feeling of “lost” and found ourselves back at the convention center to our parked car just in time for dinner. We decided we absolutely needed to come back the next day; somehow, we felt we had missed the “folk” of the festival. I think this initial feeling was off, we just were not yet aware quite what our experience was.
It was a festive evening, as particularly denoted, and so influenced our entire weekend. Kevin and I relaxed under the assumption that we didn’t have to think about “what to do” that day, heading off to downtown Tucson took care of that for us. On Sunday we decided to find the “folk” of the festival we felt we had missed, and we felt we found it watching the Turkish water marbling, the Japanese and Chinese calligraphy stations, the Laos weaving. We had both come to the festival with a certain desire to learn, and those stations afforded that opportunity. However, I do believe we learned more navigating through the thick crowds of Styrofoam-plate and cup bearing folks, it just seemed somehow different to the relative tranquility and importance in the enclosed space of the folk “arts” portion. I truly loved watching the water marbling…especially because the young boy (who also worked his hand at marbling) was playing under the table with our dog. We had to make sure our pup’s tail did not shake the table! We bought one of the water marbling pieces, found something that spoke to us, and was somewhat similar to what we had seen displayed. We learned a lot standing and watching the man “paint” away…I use quotes for I have never seen painting occur before on the water without that seemingly critical paper or surface to pain on! It was incredible! We stood for quite some time, and found our way again into the refreshment section and decided to head to the soul food, replete with soul music in the foreground.
Kevin and I were lost amid the noise, hustle, jumping low-rider cars, break-dancing, chiropractic stands, crepe makers, and soul singers, and yet, we somehow managed to “find” a few new pieces of ourselves. Namely that I really love crepes, and Kevin is anxious to take his Mandarin language studies to a higher level. We found out our dog needs a friend from a rescue, and that we love spending time learning about other cultures, while we simultaneously experience the dissolution of self.
No comments:
Post a Comment