UC Davis Disorientation Guide 2012 - 2013

Broken GATE. Open door?

A good hit.

Migration time.

Disorientation Guide.

Summer is gone. Days are shorter. Migration season has flown bye. Fall semester is here and your schedule is full. You are now attending a UC land grant university, the only college town in the UC system, with an ever growing campus.

An unfamiliar town, cautiously placed between the Sierras and the sea, bounded by wetlands and farms, most arrive for University, but many stay for the community. An elite campus that is mostly absent of pillars and includes a gentle sprinkling of domes.

Who are you and how will you evolve? Perhaps the choices you make these next few years will put you on a path of an ever greater awareness of your surroundings and your impact within and around them. Perhaps your creativity and genius will replace entrenched dysfunction with institutional infrastructure that thrives based on flexible sustainable models- which give and rejuvenate the surrounding environment.

Not accustomed to change, though perhaps you will learn to flow with it, and in doing so change us all. Already accomplished, though perhaps the wheel will yield a new glimmer and shape if you lend us your edge. You may want to shed, if so, welcome to our garden, we grew here, danced, swam and sang. Don't leave without knowing.

If you hide, show us where. If you're shy, so are we. Fear we are not. Weavers, potters, collectors in the dark, we watch the stars from the flat of the land. Yes, something just moved. Curled like cats we sleep with a universal dream. Funny hats strewn over yesterday's hair, caught reading Rumi in very bad posture. Programming the next happening, planting seeds that yield onion breath and eagle vision, because it's hawks and doves that we are. Dragon claws mark us, tigers fierce one and all. We balance ledgers, pipes, pulleys, and throw fire. Don't go without us.

Music and hoops, spinning and smoke, organic and listening. It's harvest time where are you, we can't wait forever, but if that's what it takes. Curious dogs that we are, we growl, smile, laugh, teach, forgive, cheat, blend, mix, lie, shuffle and stray, and we keep coming back for more. Tall bamboo, black roosters and red chiles cover us, 'cuz were in the dirt again.

Turn the soil grow a beard, cheer the badly played ball, the sky is not for sale, the moon a courted quest. We are looking for you, come find us. We wear dresses and boots, take classes with no shoes or shirts, only trees required, picnic tables and crates, half barrels, long gaits.

We occupy, decolonize, relocate, transfer, matriculate, graduate, pass through, go around and move on. Don't walk alone, we group good. We cook and sew, science and sound, bless and forget. We show stories, parade the absurd, protest the protest, call out, show up and work hard. Give us a chance, you're worth it. We can and jam, trade and swing, color and howl.

We are stardust and bold, shiver and stair, question and pick things up.