The year is 1972, and as you’re driving along the highway in Rifle, Colorado, a giant orange curtain appears, looming vibrantly over a distant valley. Or, maybe it’s 1997 and you’re in Switzerland. You’ve decided it’s a nice day for a walk in Berrower Park when you notice there’s something different about the trees—namely that they’re covered in gargantuan sheets of polyester fabric.
We drove straight from work and hit the trailhead at 6:15. The sun was already low, and the shadows of Douglas Fir fell long over six feet of snow. For the first hour, we had the false sense of warmth as dusk lit the air with alpenglow. Almost without notice, it became harder and harder to see; then it was dark. We turned on our headlamps, and the blue reflective diamonds marking the trail shone like gas flames among the trees. It was slow going. A foot of fresh powder had fallen the night before, and even with snowshoes, we waded ankle deep beneath our full packs, sweating under our fleece while the freezing air burned our faces.
In Germany, to be drunk is “to be full of stars and hail.”
French teachers urge their students to “seize the moon by the teeth.”
In Russia, the concept “never” calls crustaceans to mind: “when the crayfish sings on the mountain.”
Driving for many kilometers and miles
through open desert area
endless plains
in shimmering heat
a man appears roadside
you ask where
on earth did you come from,
what are you doing here,
the translator sets forth
in a series of melodic greetings
and interrogations, he – the man,
asks the same of you.
__
By MAX KAISLER
College students are a lot like hermit crabs. For four years they divide the warm and cold seasons between home and school, shuttling back and forth with a few overstuffed bags in tow.
Today we are proud to launch Dispatches, a weekly column that will feature news, notes, and impressions from around the world. Some of our dispatches will be posted with great speed, to reflect recent experience. Others, like today’s installment from Jock Doubleday, might be a postcard of a season gone by.
November 15, 1998
Dear Helen,
Coming down to Italy on the train from Belgium, some inspectors entered my cabin and started going through my things. They found a little packet of nutritious grasses, meant to be stirred into a glass of spring water and downed before a marathon. They said, “What is this?” I said, “Grass.” They looked at me strangely, but no Midnight Express ensued. In Florence (little like a flower, much like a hammer), I asked the shapely cappuccino-maker “Che ora tu liberatore?” which means, I found out later, not “What time are you free?” but either 1) nothing, or 2) “What time are you open?” Got a phrase book after two days of smiling and pointing. Now I speak long sentences which mean things that no one understands. Slept in a decaying vineyard first night out of Florence. Put on four pairs of pants, eight shirts, underwear over my ears. Should have brought a sleeping bag but figured I’d have a girlfriend. When I arrived in Siena, I found a field behind a condominium and slept there that night and for the next four nights. Got a bed in the Ostello della gioventu when the rain got serious. The beauty of this place would knock the stuffing out of an olive. A presto.
Love, Jock
In 2010, The Common was born. It’s been a year full of adventure, enthusiasm, creativity, and big steps forward. Steps advancing our mission to publish the best sense-of-place literature, work that says: This Can Only Happen Here.
By EMILY GRECKI
Reading is a solitary experience. The reader can cozy up with a book (or e-reader device of choice) and be silently transported. But what happens when the reading experience is brought into a public, competitive forum? Such is the case with the Literary Death Match.
In what we hope was the first of many on-campus literary evenings, The Common joined Circus, Amherst’s student-run literary magazine, for special Family Weekend readings in the Mead Art Museum. Visiting Writer Amity Gaige, acclaimed author of The Folded World and O My Darling, read from a recently published short story. Amherst creative writing students then stepped up to the podium to share original poetry and fiction before an enthusiastic crowd of family, faculty, and friends. Afterwards, we convened over snacks and drinks in the museum’s history-rich Rotherwas Room, a wood-paneled space built in the seventeenth century for an English knight and previously host to literary lights such as Robert Frost. View pictures of this inaugural event below and on our Facebook page. More joint ventures that engage student literary life are in the works.
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Celebrating 15 Years