Thursday, January 29, 2009

Dear Cornell

I’m leaving you.
I’ve promised so many panicked faces that I will be back, that it’s just until the Fall.
I do hate promises.
Perhaps they would not have panicked so breathlessly, scurried so readily, frantically preparing their worry wardens, had I broken the news some other way.
As it were, I never broke the news; I let it do its thing, the media machine will run Its course.
The news has been a tangled mess for a long long time; Anna Nicole’s death got more American news coverage than the cyclone in Burma.
But that’s neither here nor there, that’s in Burma, wherever that is.
I decided to follow Roni to New Zealand while in Transit to Kenya on the thirty-first of December, 2008, Happy New Years!
Having made my decision I told nobody except Angela, who was going with me to study the elephants, ants, and many varieties of small, stabbing, trees, she’s lovely.
I signed up for a Boingo!© wireless account in the Heathrow International Airport, London, in order to apply for a work holiday visa in New Zealand, the application for which was submitted five minutes prior to boarding the Kenya Airways jet to Nairobi.
On the Mpala ranch I spent two equatorial weeks with field researchers, pastorialists, and other students, experiencing the savanna.
When I shared my plans with others there, my professor Irby helped me to get a satellite internet connection.
Using my limited email window I alerted my parents to my changed plans, requested a leave of absence, asked Roni to help me find a flight to --------, and received confirmation that my work visa was approved.
Upon my second email check a few days later, Roni told me that all flights are cheaper through America, I would be coming back through the states and leaving from California, not London.
I told my parents not to cancel my flight from London to Washington, I would find a way west.
What are the odds? Maddie, another girl surveying ticks and dung piles with me in the tall, hot, grass, was moving from upstate New York to California a week after returning from Kenya, I was welcomed to join, she’s lovely.
I returned to America, moved my stuff out of Ithaca, dealt with a speeding ticket in the Penfield town court, bought backpacking gear in Rochester, said goodbyes to family and friends in Williamson, and drove to Albany.
Priscilla Corwin is my mom’s friend of over 40 years.
Her curio crusted apartment serves as a busily fluid display of the many places and people that have resonated with her.
This gallery of Ms. Corwin in Malta, New York, outside of Albany, is where Roni picked me up and brought me to ---------.
I accepted her family’s casual hospitality and stayed the weekend of the 24th in Vermont.
This marked the first month Roni and I had been together, half of which I was unplugged in Kenya.
This marked a year since her father had died.
It was my last weekend before setting out.
On Sunday we went to her house in -------- Connecticut; where we were, we were there together.
On Tuesday I took a greayhound bus from Stamford to Ithaca, I raced a snowstorm into town.
I imprinted fresh powder paths in the snowstorm with my friend Davis, Tuesday night at Cornell.
Here in Becker House I wait to meet with Maddie, Wednesday afternoon, bidding Farewell.
Soon she will be here, I will load my things into her car and leave.
I have backpacking gear, a laptop, a nice outfit, paints, pastels, charcoal, pencil, pen, paper, and an easel.
Before we leave, my friend Sidney will use her surplus of Big Red Bucks to buy us travel food, peanut butter and power bars.
Sidney grew up with Roni, she introduced us, she’s lovely.
So now I’m crossing the country, with eighty-five dollars in cash and four hundred in the bank.
I’ll be looking for a job on the west coast that can pay for a ticket to New Zealand.
In New Zealand I will work, write, and be with my love.
An Ideal world is, Necessarily, comprised of Idealists

With much love to your luxurious Ivy, and all those who gaze on it,
Clayton DeFisher
P.S.
Big Red Pain does not equate to Big Red Pride
Work together, not against one another, your minds have been assembled for good, RIGHT NOW.


If I proffered an artistic vision, Promised to be the true state of the world, Would the clarity move you?
How can I possibly change your minds?
I cannot.
I must change mine, As you must change yours, let us understand our understanding.

Love
Exists
Provides

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