After the mania of
the weeks at Berkeley, the rushes across campus, and crushes on Sproul,
it’s so easy to cut the weekends loose and let them drift. Last term I spent
great swathes of time in my bedroom; feebly telling myself that I had far too
much homework to go out, while still achieving very little. Some days I’d never
see the outside of my halls, just sit and struggle through a dense essay or a
dusty book, listening to the industrial carpet dryers wafting stale air down
the hallways. Enough to do a person’s nut in.
Having made it
home and back again in one piece, and passing all of my classes with good
grades, one of my top resolutions on my return was to take one day a week when
academic work could stuff it. I would have Me Time: the only condition being
that I used it to do new things, going across the bay and actually seeing
something of San Francisco, or exploring parts of Berkeley outside of the four
roads penning the campus.
My first
twenty-four hours of Me Time began at about 9pm Friday night, after singing
with Perfect Fifth in the Welcome Back Acapella concert. There was an aftershow
party, and the twenty-first birthday of a fellow choirgirl to attend. With the
Irish Aristocrat, the World’s Greatest Lover and the Laconic Australian in tow
I went steaming away, determined to show these Yanks how the British drink.
Reckless bravado.
Acapella parties
are like stepping onto the set of Glee. Every time I went to the fridge to pull
out a beer, I had to manoeuvre round spontaneous scatting sessions, and people
were able to segue into a five-part harmony rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ with
no apparent effort. I had a conversation with a theatre major in possession of
a highly convincing British accent, ‘helped’ the birthday girl with tequila
shots, and learnt that one of my friends had been raised in a religious cult.
An enormous bowl of vodka gummy bears had been provided for general
consumption, which were easy enough to pick at once every half hour or so- but
after midnight the hostess decided they weren’t disappearing fast enough, split
us into teams and threw us into an eating contest. I swallowed a large
tablespoon of them, and remember nothing more of the night.
The second phase
of Me Time began with slumping on the bathroom tiles the following morning,
shaking like a leaf and heaving radioactive-looking bile into the toilet. Not
the most fortuitous of starts. But, by the early afternoon, when I could stand
upright without feeling an invisible pickaxe in my skull, I took the BART (Bay
Area Rapid Transit) across the bay to visit the San Francisco Museum of ModernArt.
 |
| 'Guardians of the Secret' by Jackson Pollock |
Architecture in central San Fran is fascinating- the buildings cobbled
together like a five-year old’s collage, with old free-standing apartment
blocks set against a chrome backdrop of skyscrapers. The MoMA is a two-block
walk from Montgomery Street station, and costs eleven dollars for entry if you
have a valid student ID. Eleven dollars well worth spending: the Irish
Aristocrat and I spent a good two hours wandering through the exhibitions
before the museum closed, and we barely scratched the surface. They seemed to
have a little bit of everything- Picasso, Frida Khalo, Andy Warhol, even Damien
Hirst’s petrified cow head, which in retrospect was not the best thing to
examine with a hangover. And while I have no idea of the meaning behind a
sculpture of brains, it was a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon, and a
success in my first attempt at taking a little time.
 |
| peculiar brain sculpture |
Next weekend I’m
flying down to LA, where I plan to stick my hands into whatever stretch of
drying cement I can find. Good times ahead!
