As April and Bets have already chronicled, we indeed all got our new piercings. Because I’m a nerd and a weanie, I just got another hole in my ear…

…and consequently my tale of The Moment of Piercing itself is rather unremarkable. What no one else has commented on, however, is the general atmosphere of the piercing-and-tattooing establishment we patronized. We went to Iron Age on the Loop, which came highly recommended. We also went on a Monday afternoon. And…the place was packed. On a Monday afternoon.

I arrived first. A man with a frizzy beard divided into two ponytails and assorted metal accessories protruding from his face was ushering a client into the back, curtained-off chairs. The woman at the counter — dressed in skinny black with various facial piercings and a purple bow in her ponytail — was surrounded by several concentric rings of clients. Because it was so busy, I quietly took a seat in the waiting area, decided that trying to read “Skater Times” wasn’t going to help anyone and pulled out a journal article instead. Nothing like reading a little Asian American visual culture theory in a tattoo parlor. April called shortly and I announced, “I’m here. Feeling awkward.”

Given the state of anxiety I’ve just described, you may be wondering: “Well, what did the clientele look like, Elissa?”

And I would tell you — and you may be disbelieving — that they were largely middle aged women.

We were walking hand in hand through our neighborhood tonight.

The man in the white t-shirt and jeans stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, twiddling his cigarette between his fingers and eying us intently.

“You’re bubbly.”

He said, pointing to Noel.

“You’re lovely.”

He said, pointing to me.

And then, with the man clearly pleased with this couplet, we parted.

It’s been a long time coming, but this month Noel and I have finally been offered wine for communion at our own church. It is amazing — even unsettling — how quickly our bodies and minds rewire expectations. After two years of tipping back little cups of Welch’s finest every Sunday, I had grown to associate the solemn words, “Christ’s blood, for you,” with an easy shot of sugary, watery juice-from-concentrate.

When I took wine, I shivered a little. Rather than being a sweet, comforting splash, the wine stung. The initial sharpness and developing complexity jolted me. I can forget the grape juice almost immediately after I drink it. I cannot do that with the wine. The wine lingers. It traces a line of acid down my throat; its tannins linger in the back of my mouth. My body cannot forget it quickly, and so my mind and my spirit are prompted to consider longer and more carefully the gravity of what I have just done.

Isn’t this what Christ sacrifice is? Mingling a sting with layered richness, the wine speaks to the bitterness and the glory, the already and the not yet, that I claim when I take this sacrament.

When we begin to separate the physical reprecussions of the symbol from its spiritual meaning, we begin to veer towards an unhelpful — an incorrect — dualism of spirit and fbody. But God became flesh to save us. He gives us sacraments to call to our flesh, to offer us truth incarnate in touchable, tastable, visible forms. When I take the wine, I relish the symbolism that serves my soul through my body.

I got my diploma from WashU in the mail a few days ago. I had sort of forgotten that I had actually finished a degree program and now possessed some useless letters that could but probably never will follow my name. It’s a fancier diploma than I expected, all engraving-on-silk-inset-in-leather-folio.

This is all well and good, but the entire diploma is also written in Latin. Every. Last. Bit. Because we are just that special. I am pretty sure that I am a Master of Arts in Art History and Archaeology, but I really can’t be positive, having been marginalized by my own diploma.

I’ve sent it to my youngest brothers — whose classical education Latin may now, at last, prove useful — for translation. But should you, similarly educated reader, choose to translate it for the masses of the internet, that would be cool, too.

Also, I’d prefer not too think too long and hard about the unnerving parellels between my exceptionally non-profit-producing degree and the oft-proclaimed dead language of Latin. Thanks.

Today, whilst running, I spent about three tenths of a mile running towards a man shaped like an inverted triangle. He was middle aged, tanned orange, and wearing bright blue running shorts. The important fact, though, is that his biceps took up roughly the entire width of the sidewalk. Like this:

This made me acutely aware of my lack of both bicep girth and summer tan. Despite a recent, brief trip to Florida, I indeed remain a pale-to-medium shade of yellow. In shape language, I felt a lot like this:

Like a geometry proof in motion, we pounded towards each other. I chickened out and darted for the shoulder of the road, momentarily abandoning the sidewalk so he could pass. I was worried a bicep might accidentally knock me in the eye.

Things I am not doing this summer include: taking a language class, writing a chapter, and spending inordinate amounts of time in the library.

Things I am doing this summer include: helping plan two weddings and execute four, watering my garden, remembering why I love contemporary art, traveling, assembling friends’ Ikea dresser, getting a piercing, eating as many meals as possible in my backyard, learning about hospitality, learning about twitter, trimming a chapter into an article, researching evidence of ethnic profiling in World War II visual culture, and running 6 miles.

Yay.

A few trees later, my thesis has bee submitted to my committee. I am defending this week Wednesday at 12:30.

Shortly, I will be nervous about my defense, anxious about talking to three really excellent professors about this half book that I just wrote. But right now, I am triumphant.

I have a deeply conflicted relationship with seasons. As a little girl, I loved a particular children’s book that existed for the sole purpose of teaching kids seasons. Living in a seasonless climate myself, it seemed like the book was describing a fantastic, made-up world. I memorized a seasonal calendar from that book. December through February was winter, and everything was blanketed in snow and fringed with icicles. March through May was spring, with blossom-covered trees and flowers that didn’t grow in Hawaii. June through August was summer, full of green grass, sunshine, and ice cream cones. And September through November was fall, with brightly colored leaves, apples, pumpkins, and, uh, plaid skirts. I was utterly taken. When we had to draw pictures of heaven for Sunday School, I drew a sprawling landscape where each quadrant of heaven boasted a different season: snow by the pearly gates, summer by the Tree of Life, autumn by the streets of gold, and spring with a lion and lamb. Yes, I was a dedicated seasonophile.

Then, I moved to the mainland and was forced to face the sad reality that seasons are not idyllic end-to-end. On some level, that children’s book month-by-month breakdown of seasons has remained with me, and I tend towards bitterness when the weather doesn’t follow the prescribed pattern.

Take today, for instance. It is March. My childhood education taught me that March is spring. There should be chicks and daffodils and baby rabbits. And yet, in reality, today looks like this:

On a rational level, I can accept that months are mere guides to the fluctuating whims of seasonal weather. And yet… it’s March, and that deeply ingrained belief in seasonal order rebels. Be spring, weather, be spring! How can I “spring forward” this Sunday if there is still snow on the ground, signifying winter? How can Banana Republic cruelly show me pictures of women traipsing about in cotton skirts when I cannot step foot outdoors without a coat?

Thankfully, this is one complaint that can be easily toppled through the aesthetic delight that made me a seasonophile in the first place. It’s cold, but at least it’s pretty:

Update:

Update:

On Friday night I saw the writing on the wall… and it was mine.

It is a strange sensation to walk into a museum — a real museum, not Covenant’s Art Barn — and see one’s own words plastered on the wall. It is even stranger to see well-appointed museum donors, art history department professors, and unsuspecting members of the public intently reading those words so seriously.

Should I caution them? Should I warn them that those imperious museum object labels that appear so definitive and confident were written by… a grad student? Should I sidle up and ask if it makes sense?

Last semester, I interned for the dean of the Sam Fox School of Art and Design as he curated his exhibition On the Margins, a show of (very!) contemporary art which explores themes of war, disaster and displacement. I functioned largely as a research assistant, compiling files on each of the artists and artworks, assembling an annotated bibliography for sources dealing with visual depictions of war and disaster, composing artist biographies for the exhibition catalogue and writing wall text.

While the act of writing artist biographies and wall text is not in and of itself exhilarating, the payoff is — as this weekend proved — rather extraordinary. First off, it makes for a nice line on the good ol’ professional curriculum vitae. Second, wealthy museum donors invite you to quite lovely private receptions where you will be fed bacon-wrapped scallops, mini crab cakes, and excellent wine. Third, you get invited to tag along with the artists who come into town for the exhibition opening. This means that you get to go on a private tour of the Putlizer Foundation’s Dan Flavin exhibition with Mrs. Pulitzer, assorted area curators, and artists Willie Doherty, Willie Cole, Jane Hammond, and Thaddeus Stroud. It’s all very surreal.

Also, you feel slightly obligated to wear more black than usual so you can fit in with the curators.

The moral of the story, dear reader and visitor-of-museums, is that you should never fully entrust yourself to the wall text. It may have been written by a grad student who just needed to get a good meal.

I’ve stopped apologizing for long gaps in my blogging attempts. When writing fancy academic things is your daily grind, it can be hard to code switch to witty, more public-friendly banter. So, good visual culture historian that I am, here are roughly the equivalent of seven thousand words, summarizing my winter break and subsequent return to the hallowed pink granite halls of learning:

Week 1:

Not yet free, I grade final exams where students tell me ridiculous things about Manet.

Week 2:

St. Louis has its biggest snow since ancient times. I am addicted to making snow angels and singing along to Over the Rhine’s Christmas album.

Week 3:

In the culinary paradise of my in-laws’ home in Houston, my sisters and I create a veritable masterpiece: a gingerbread savannah. In 3-d.

Week 4:

I grow deeply attached to my Christmas gift: riding boots.

Week 5:

Home.

Week 6:

We get our very own Roomba. Suddenly, we come home to a clean rug every day. Lives change. The faint sound of rejoicing angels is heard.

Week 7:

I get my thesis chapter back from my adviser, begin TAing for Intro to Modern, clean out the basement, return to choir, and finally get a Missouri driver’s license. But perhaps most importantly, I realize that my Mac’s Photobooth application got an upgrade with Leopard.