0 V SS a a 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.