Play in the City 2013

The city is a limited area where people can live, trade, inherit and create culture. In the original, hominids gathered together to hunt, collect and make original deal because of the environment forced them to do so. At that time, because of the limitation of technology, they didn’t have enough power to resist wild animals which may threaten their lives. More people represented higher survival rate, because they had more power to keep safety and hunt. With the development of science and technology, the threat of environment became smaller, and they still gathered for different reasons, one of which was economy. They looked for more resources from other people to satisfy their living needs and tackled emergency. Basic financial trades appeared and developed, more and more people took part in and finally formed a steady area to trade and live in-a city.

    My mother introduced me to art after she and my father got divorced thinking it would be a therapeutic and meaningful way for me to release my feelings.  As a toddler, she ensured we visited MOMA, The MET, El Museo del Barrio, The Guggenheim, and The Museum of Natural History often.  My favorite by far, however, was The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and home to one of the largest medieval art collections in the world.  I spent the majority of my childhood living in Washington Heights where The Cloisters was located.  Manhattan, to me, is synonymous with medieval art and more specifically with the works exhibited at The Cloisters. 

   Although I was born in Midtown Manhattan, I soon after moved to Texas with my mother and father.  After they divorced, however, my mother and I moved uptown to Washington Heights where I made some of my earliest memories and experiences with New York City.  My favorite event by far was “The Medieval Festival”, hosted by The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park, where I saw jousting, puppet shows, jesters, and live music.  It was certainly the flame that ignited my love of medieval festivities and art. 

I had a very vague impression about my city when I was younger. I spent most of my time in the neighborhood area with my peers, and my whole world was around those little corners: the grassland in front of our apartment, a little candy shop across the street, grandpa’s bike, and little toys got from KFC. When the holiday came up, my parents would take me downtown, for a good restaurant, a reward from the mall’s showcase, or a crowded festival that could fill a child’s eyes with happiness.

Then I turned five, my family decided to send me to an elementary school downtown, where I got closer to “the city”.

That time the city is a small city, a place known for spicy food, beautiful weather, old museums and tea houses. Cars are not widely affordable; people wander from streets to streets, if getting tired, they would stop by a tea house and have a rest.  Sometimes I would peep from my classroom on 3rd floor, where I see a glance of “city”. The center of the city locates two blocks away from my school, which is a square surrounded by a sports center and a few shopping centers, crowded with people from inside and outside. Everyone looks forth to their destination, with a either desperate or hopeful anticipation, and therefore moves along. The old buildings, the tea houses, and the sparkling traffic lights filled my 6 years.

And it changes rapidly as the time passes.

Geneva

If I’m going to tell you what my definition of what a city is, my personal style dictates that I use an original and slightly unconventional metaphor for it. This one was thought up today whilst I was burning calories in the pool. 

Imagine a bowl half-filled with water. 

Now imagine this bowl with blue food coloring diffused coloring in it. It’s a pretty shade of lavender. There is no obvious nucleus where the color leaks from because you’ve stirred the bowl to avoid this. 

Next, you carefully place the vial of food coloring into the bowl of water. Being only half-full, it bobs happily on the surface. Since you spilled a little on the vial itself before putting it in, the immediate water enveloping it is a darker shade of lavender. 

The bowl is the border of a country, the vial with the food coloring is the only city, and the water is everything in it. Granted, I can’t think of any country that only has one city in it, save for the Vatican but they don’t count for the purposes of this essay. 

My avatar is a picture of two umbrellas. A traditional Chinese umbrella is made of paper, making it delicate, romantic, and leading to dramatic possibilities. A man and a woman sharing an umbrella during a sudden rain and falling in love at the first sight, that is the start of a famous Chinese legend, Lady White Snake. The story is set in my homecity, Hangzhou, the production site of the best traditional umbrella, the inspiration of artists and poets, a unique city where a beautiful lake is located in the city center and exists in harmony with skyscrapers. The city kind of shaped my qualities: able to see beauty in every corner in daily life and keep a peaceful mind in the fast-paced city.

I'm an absurdist. I'm also a musician and my stage/performance name is The Fenceless. The photo I've chosen illustrates a phrase that inspired me to choose this stage name, which goes along with my personalised definition of absurdism, in which I believe anything is meaningless, so therefore anybody has every right to assign anything any function or meaning they choose. I took this photo while on a trip to Northern Kenya two years ago, and it is of a chicken perched comfortably on a fence made of sticks. It just happens to illustrate a phrase that I heard for the first time this past year during a debate in my literature class. One of the students couldn't pick a side in the debate, and he said he was “sitting right on the fence” about it. That stuck in my mind, and irked me because of its discomforting connotations about limitation in expression and choice-making. It didn't bother me in the context of the present discussion, but in issues in life in general, when people take opinions on “current issues” or make statements about “right” or “wrong.” I haven't fully thought out my philosophy about this to a point where I can eloquently present it, but it goes something along the lines of working towards the removal of the ability to separate opinions or stances, therefore eliminating the issue to which it pertains. I think that separation of parties is what contains and fosters the glaring dynamic for having a conflict in the first place. I don't like homogeneity. I like contrast, mix, and confusion. I don't like fences. I like open spaces which allow liberty and motion.

Well hello everyone,

I am one of the many Mawrtyrs named Abby in the class of 2017, and one of at least three in my dorm. That's where my username comes from. It's kind of self-depricating, in a way; like, I'm just another Abby, with nothing special about her, which isn't the case at all. But I personally think it's funny in a dry sort of way, and distinguishes me from other Abbys moreso than calling me "Abby 3" or something along those lines.

The picture of me was taken around Junior year of high school, by my best friend, while we bought supplies for our first big physics project of the year. I typically make faces in photos, since I'm not one of those people with the perfect photogenic smile, and I think it makes me seem more approachable, anyway. Besides, in every horror film it's the woman down the street who never stops smiling who turns out to be the murderer, not the girl who sticks her tongue out as you as you walk by in the beginning of the movie. She's got nothing to hide.

I also don't mind putting my face out on the internet, attached to my work. I feel like even if I wake up twenty years from now and think everything I've written here is juvenile and stupid, I won't regret it and want to deny that I'm the one who wrote those things. Everything I write is going to be a reflection of how I think right now, and that will make my work something of a time capsule for future-me to laugh at, maybe feel a little embarrassed about, and then think of fondly.

I used to have a tee-shirt with the slogan “Night Owl Mystery Book Shop” on it. When the tee shirt got to small for me, I decorated my binder with it. I am now using that binder for this class, so the words “night owl” have been in the back of my mind lately. I chose my name to be “nightowl” because it reminds me of the school mascot and idealizes the time I will spend here in the libraries late at night. It is also nostalgic for my love of Harry Potter, which then reminds me of how much Bryn Mawr looks like Hogwarts. 

My profile picture is of Cat Stevens with cats. The picture satisfies some sort of primal desire in me that wishes to see things organized by categories. I am going to listen to his music whenever I am feeling a bit down this semester.