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December 04, 2013 - Image 10

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The Michigan Daily, 2013-12-04

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Wedesay Deemer4, 01 / -h Saemn

Pocahontas and me
by Sophia Usow

ann arbor affairs: keep your love by haleygoldberg

Mud, as far as the eye
see. And not the kind of mu
sticks a bit to your shoes, b
kind that demands you
your shoe - evident by ac
tion of sneakers abandon
their owners and held cap
the 10 inches of muck nearb
That June weekend on
dall's Island, off the co
Manhattan, torrential rai
turned a polished park into
obstacle course just in
time for The Governors
Ball Music Festival. I
looked down at my own
feet, where the bright
blue Kmart sneakers
I bought for the occa-
sion were completely
hidden in almost a foot
of muck, accompanied
by empty beer cans,
smoked joints and
umbrellas. My phone
was dead, I'd lost the
friends I came with,
and I had to go to the
bathroom. That meant
balancing on a tiny,
floating wooden plank
to get to a group of
port-a-potties covered
completely in what I hope
brown mud, but couldn't b
Yet, I couldn't stop smiling
I-wanted to stand on
one of the many sinking p
potties and yell to the thou
of people around me,
lucky are we to be here? I
place, with so many dif
people, and all of us lovi
thing: music." But no one
have heard me, because B
trumpets were starting to
from the aptly named "
Doing Great Stage." I sw
as I skated my way throu
mud to the fourth row fro
front. I was still alone,

could didn't matter. was by
d that I'd always been hesitant to sands-
ut the attend music festivals; not sure back t
give it I could manage the masses of campus
collec- people crowding in front of one me "Sar
ed by small stage. But just like Jay-Z's my "Sn
tive in song says, the big lights of NYC Spotify
y. inspired me to try something new. me thr
Ran- So I found myself walking across and roc
ast of a bridge over the East River from - the b
n had Manhattan to Randall's Island for a long'
a mud the last day of the festival, tag- School
Y
o0
y\t
d was ging along with a friend from my as a
e sure. intern program. The rain from Togeth
the past two days had subsided, young;
top of but as we entered the festival, closest
port-a- the mud welcomed me with open "So kee
asands arms. My group and I quickly sep- love." I
"How arated, my phone promptly died, Irishn
[n this and I found myself stranded in with t
ferent the middle of a mud field, trapped behind
ng one not only in muck but all my fears out in f
would about music festivals. But in the For tha
eirut's past-tense words of Icona Pop: I the son
sound loved it. told, It,
You're Beirut swept me away in their I wa
ooned trumpet-heavy Indie rock. I stood never f
gh the alone, singing out to the songs I only co
m the knew and dancing to the ones I love in
but it didn't. And it didn't matter that I

myself in a crowd of thou-
- I had Beirut. I flashed
o my sophomore year on
s when a friend first played
nta Fe." Added instantly to
piles on smiles on smiles"
playlist - designed to get
rough the worst of finals
ky romantic relationships
and kept me company for
week studying in the Law
Library last semester. I
was suddenly no longer
surrounded by strang-
ers as the crowd swayed
with me to a song I held
so closely. It was a col-
lective moment of "I love
this song too!," a phrase
that bonded us together
and kept us catching
each other when we lost
our footing while danc-
ing in the mud.
After Beirut, I raced
over to The Lumineers
concert. As the sun set
over the trees and the
New York City skyline,
the band played "Stub-
born Love" with a local
children's choir.. I had
what I can only describe
come-to-Jesus moment.
er, thousands of us -
and old, alone and with our
friends - sang the lyrics,
p your head up, keep your
swayed with the pack of
sen to my right, danced
the fellow college kids
me singing their hearts
frat tanks covered in mud.
t moment, we all believed
ag's words of "We can't be
can't be done."
as engulfed in a love I'd
elt before, the kind I think
imes when everything you
life works in sync: The
CONTINUED ON PAGE3B

K'

h A

:01
. - "

A4
ILLUSTRATION BY MEGAN MULHOLLAND

When I was little I thought I was
the reincarnation of Pocahon-
tas. There were many explana-
tions for this delusion. First of all, I am an
only child (onlychildhood leads to fanatic
self-delusion born from a lethal combina-
tion of too much attention and too much
alone time). Second of all, the maple tree
in my backyard had a face. The face was
really just a mask that the previous resi-
dent of our house had nailed through the
bark. Why would you nail a mask on a tree,
you ask? Well, to give a sort of roundabout
answer to that question, I will describe to
you the aforementioned resident's idea of a
"funky yet functional" bathroom.
Prior to my parent's restoration, the
bathroom was the biggest room in our
entire house. It was furnished with all the
fixtures that a single woman in the 80s who
did a massive amount of cocaine would, nat-
urally, need. This included (but was in no
way limited to) a Jacuzzi hot tub, a sauna, a
bidet and a full-length wraparound mirror
that ran the entire periphery of the gigan-
tic lavatory. I remember being four years
old and getting the chicken pox. Thanks

to all the mirrors in the bathroom, I could
see every red blister on my body from all
possible angles. It was only my conviction
that I was Pocahontas which kept me from
going insane with misery when I was sick.
At any rate, there was a decades-old
weather-beaten face stuck on my backyards
tree, and I was fully convinced that it was
my own personal Mother Willow. I would
spend hours in the backyard talking to her
and trying to lure squirrels and birds onto
my shoulder with pieces of bread and war-
bled tribal melodies I made up. My mother
would watch me tenderly from the kitchen
window and try to convince herself that I
was going to grow up to be a totally well-
adjusted adult and not even a little bit serial
killer-y.
As I got older and started to talk to other
human beings more than flora and fauna, I
secretly saved my hope that I would even-
tually amount to something that was pretty
much equivalent to the reincarnation of
Pocahontas. I was realistic. I accepted that
Pocahontas was a historical figure, not just
a crownless Disney princess. I accepted
that she was specific to a certain time and

place that had come and gone. I accepted
that I was of Eastern European descent
and that I couldn't run barefoot through
the woods without making a sound or even
hear the colors of the wind (do they whis-
per navy or granny apple green?). Still, I
felt I would do something that would cause
people to look at me and say, "You know
who that girl reminds me of? Pocahontas.
Totally 100 percent Pocahontas."
Reality has been a tough pill to swallow.
Benadryl (what I was given when I had the
chicken pox) gives temporary relief and
makes pain and itchiness more bearable.
Reality, however, makes most discomfort
more acute and harder to deny. It seeps
into our bloodstream and slowly spreads so
that even if we wish our hardest to be chil-
dren forever, every artery pounds with the
knowledge that we have to grow up.
A couple summers ago, a series of power-
ful storms hit the Midwest. My parents and
I returned from vacation one day to find
that the tree I once knew as Mother Willow
had been hit by lightning. It now stood dan-
gerously close to falling through our roof.
When workmen came to fix the downed

electrical wires, they informed my parents
that the tree needed to become a stump. It
was time to say goodbye.
That night, I went out to the backyard
and sat in the dirt in front of my old friend.
I felt silly and incredibly sad. The 21-year-
old part of me said: what are you doing on
the ground? The kid in the back of my head
said: this tree had a face. It was special.
Are my dreams supposed to change now
that I set my own bedtime and fumble my
way toward a job? I don't want to be defeat-
ed by the civilizing forces in my life, but
stasis in the face of inevitable transforma-
tion has been proven untenable. So I try to
find small moments of strange, innocent
magic whenever I can: the way the fluo-
rescent "open" sign mirrors a sherbet dusk
or the satisfied wink my boyfriend's puppy
gives me when I scratch the soft spot under
its left ear. I run in a long and hurried flii ,
towards a place where I can be an adult, yet
still be myself.
Sophia Usow isan LSA senior.

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