Travel Diary: On a Recent Trip to Rouses Point, New York

Getting Off at Rouses Point, New York

     Taking the Adirondack train line from Montréal on Amtrak, the first stop in the United States is a town called Rouses Point in New York state. Since it is a border crossing, Amtrak has scheduled the train to stop for at least an hour, so agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) can board the train to check every individual on board. For this journey, I happened to be seated in the front of the car. I looked out the window, and I could see two white vans pull up to the train station. Five or six uniformed agents dressed got out and boarded the train. I was the first person to be checked. I gave the agent, a middle-aged man with a scruffy beard, my passport. "Where are you going?" he asked. I told him I was getting off at Rouses Point, and this was my stop. "Why are you going to Rouses Point?" he asked incredulously. "For pleasure, mostly." "What kind of pleasure?" he asked, still incredulous. 

      I had expected a quick interview, the kind received at the airport customs desk when the agent asks if you are entering the country for work or pleasure. My answer did not mollify this agent, however. He asked me to point to my luggage, how long I was staying in Rouses Point, where I was staying, what I planned to do in the town, what I did for a job — and through it all, I was a bit nervous because I had never been asked so many questions at a border crossing. The questions were easy to answer. I gave him the address of my motel and told him I was taking a short vacation before school was to open up again in September. 

       I was anxious about finding my motel and getting settled in for the afternoon. I looked at the agent and told him if I could get off after he inspected me. He looked at me for a moment and then explained that agents had to check the entire train for any suspicious activity. "What if someone on board were carrying contraband," he told me. "Then everyone on the train would have to be checked to make sure there was no cross-involvement." It made me think that the necessary act of boarding the train made me somehow connected to all the passengers on board this train — just an hour or so ago, I had been in Montréal boarding this train, and it felt effortless. The train leaves the city, crosses the St. Lawrence River, and then it's farm and rural countryside. At Rouses Point, the landscape opens into the United States in a quite unceremonial way. 

        At that moment, I felt self-conscious because I thought everyone on the train was listening in on my conversation with the I.C.E. agent. He told me to go to the café car and ask his boss for clearance. If the head agent OK'd it, I could get off the train. I hurried through the Amtrak cars to the café car, which is usually occupied by travelers who want to eat a snack, look out at the scenery, or talk to the train crew who tend to sit in the cafe car to take notes and to prepare for the next stops on the route. Four agents were seated at the tables, looking serious, and doing their job. "Excuse me, sir. I have just been checked by an agent, and I would like to disembark here, at Rouses Point. 
       The conversation was simple — "Sure. The agent said. You can get off the train." I was so ecstatic. I rushed back to the agent who had interviewed me and said, "I can get off the train!" He looked at me like I had missed a step or did something wrong in the Byzantine procedure of being checked in at the border. "Are you sure you spoke to my supervisor?" Yes. I told the agent his supervisor's name and gathered my things. I was nervous, so in a moment of excitement, I exclaimed, "Have a nice day. Thank you for protecting our country!" I think I said it in such a heightened tone that it made everyone on the car chuckle. I got off that train in a hurry.

A View of Lake Champlain Through an Open Door

Visiting Rouses Point

       The town of Rouse Point is a nondescript postage-stamp kind of a place, replete with a singular lake-style beauty. Lake Champlain is its main attraction — and while I was there in Summer, it was August, so few people were milling about. The town is very close to the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec — so I imagined I was in a unique mashup of anglo-francophone heaven. Sitting in a café on the first day I arrived, I noticed a francophone couple seated next to me — and I marveled at how I often do not think of the United States as sharing a border with French-speaking folks. The Family Dollar, where I picked up some supplies, had a sign on the door that warned folks "No Canadian Dollars Accepted Here. Card Only. Or American Cash." I started to fantasize about teaching in a rural country schoolhouse in French-speaking Canada, close to the border, and I would spend my weekend hiking through the woods, going back and forth across the border. How my students would love me, and I would become immersed in French and truly make it my second language. Would I live on Lake Champlain? I felt like I was in a different yet familiar America.

A Ratty Motel On Lake Champlain 

    So. I was staying at this ratty dump of a motel on Lake Champlain. I woke up in the middle of the night. A red light was emanating from the window — thus, I took my phone and captured a grainy photograph of the dot.

     I stayed in Rouses Point for the weekend, then I planned to hop back on the train back to New York City. I thought, will I see the I.C.E. agent again? I walked to the station from the motel earlier than I needed to —  the Amtrak station is handsome. There is a museum inside dedicated to the area's train history — Rouses Point at one time in history was a bustling spot for train travel — especially freight — than it is now. It just so happened that as I was waiting for my train, a man arrived, spraying the station grounds with what looked like weed killer. He saw me waiting — I was the only person at the station. I asked him if the train museum was open. He said, "No. But if you give me a couple of minutes, I will open it for you." And sure enough, he did. He showed me the museum, and I learned that the station had been in somewhat disrepair for years. Still, when President Obama had opened up Federal dollars to bolster the country's transit infrastructure, the Rouses Point station was given money to renovate their station. The town had been in an economic slump ever since the Pfizer pharmaceutical plant had closed down, and 1,200 people lost their jobs. Also — the guy with the weed killer turned out to be not only a local but was at one time the mayor of Rouses Point. He told me about his several train trips to New York City — on routes that I had never heard of — and he ended the conversation with an announcement that he had to get back home and cook for his wife. "It's my turn today — I am making gyros."

Going Home — Waiting Again at the Train Station 

     

The train station at Rouses Point

     Finally — the train arrived — and the I.C.E. agents boarded the train. I had been joined at the platform by this very loquacious guy who was waiting for a friend whom he hadn't seen in a decade or more. No one could board or get off until they did their job. The I.C.E. agent did notice me, however, and he said to me, "You know why I asked you so many questions a couple of days ago?" No. I said. I did not know. "Well. I saw that you were staying at that ratty motel on Lake Champlain, and I wanted to tell you how much of a dump that place is." I laughed to be polite, but I resented his friendliness that seemed after-the-fact. He told me he lived in Rouses Point and apparently, his house was very close to the motel where I was staying.

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Short Film Review: Broke (2017)

The Short Film "Broke" - 2017 (35 minutes, in Norwegian with English subtitles)
Norwegian Filmmakers Make Another Short Film About Something Not Quite Right in Norway’s Affluent Suburbs

Filmmaker Bjørn Erik Pihlmann Sørensen and screenwriter Einar Sverdrup have teamed up and made a new short that serves as another installment in what looks to be a series of movies about the hidden underbelly of Norwegian suburban society. I reviewed the duo’s short film Reckless in June. It’s a troubling film about responsibility, desire, and sexual exploration gone awry. You can read my review here. I don’t want to play a game of compare and contrast. I will write about Broke using a more or less reader-response approach to interpreting a work of art. What I will do is look at the film as it stands, first, and what I think it is trying to say. Then — if I am so inclined I can make stray observations that lend itself more to how it opens a dialogue with its predecessor Reckless.
Here is my review of Broke:
Broke is a story of how a rather well-to-do upper-middle-class family deals with the prospect of going bankrupt. That is how the movie has been packaged — and it is the expectation I had going into watching it. Full disclosure: I was able to view the film by way of the filmmakers (since the movie has not yet been made available for full release). Mr. Philman sent me a screener (for which I am very grateful). Broke is still making its presence known at festivals and in special screenings around the world; It will debut in New York at Cinema Village and run from August 16-22. As many independently funded projects go — the movie is hoping to get picked up for a wider release.

The Anticipation that Something Bad is Going to Happen
Sometimes a movie wants desperately for you to think something awful is about to happen. And Broke is a movie just like that. Someone puts a weapon in a backpack. But it is not revealed who. A married couple fight in their bedroom thinly keeping their row secret from the kids who are supposedly sleeping down the hall. I expected violence to ensue in just the first few minutes of watching this movie. It begins taut and on edge. And I must say the movie freaked me out because for the majority of its storytelling it hugs close to a school shooting narrative (a horrifying series of hells Americans have been facing since Columbine).I had this sense of foreboding since a large chunk of the story follows young adolescent Pia (Sofie Albertine Foss) as she goes about her school day — a little uneasily. In fact, everyone in this movie seems very much ill at ease. No one is enjoying their current dispensation. Pia is enormously bright but chooses to hide her gifts and gives off the appearance of a wallflower. She is an observer, watching Daniel (Marcus Rix), a hunky boy, a bully who taunts a smaller boy, Jonas (Arthur Hakalahti). Daniel belittles Jonas with impunity, and in one unsettling moment physically harasses him in the school swimming pool. The film presents us with long shots of Pia, Daniel, and Jonas — and other kids and adults who inhabit this school. I did not pick up much joy; the blasé nature of adolescent Je ne sais quoi seemed grossly disproportionate here. The kids in this film are candidates for something very bad about to happen. But we don’t know what. Or how. The film teases us a bit; the Checkhov gun is literally a gun but we don’t know how it will turn up and what character will possess it or use it or whether someone will cause harm with it.

    We do eventually get the answers to these question (sort of) — what work the film does before it reveals its hands is to get us to know these three disparate teenagers a little better. Pia shows a need to withdraw (as, for example, when she tells her teacher she does not have her swimming suit with her). She sits in the bleachers instead and watches events transpire. Jonah is the picked-on kid. The pariah. Pia shows concern for Jonas; Daniel is all masculine bravado and “I don’t give a f***.” However, Pia is drawn to Daniel like a moth to a flame. And here is where the film pivots.

An Aggressive Sexual Encounter Holds the Middle of the Film
Pia joins Daniel after school; first, berating him for being a bully, and actively standing up for Jonas. But Pia takes the bait and follows Daniel to his house, and we and the camera are made witness to an awkward sexual detente between the two characters. But is it really? When Pia tries to put a stop to Daniel’s advances, he turns on her. And Pia leaves, angry and frustrated. Daniel cannot stand to be rebuffed; his retaliation is to call Pia “a slut.” Watching this interaction between the two characters I was taken aback. Where is the story taking me (us)? Daniel is aggressive and he outrightly makes a move on Pia; he is physical and rough and he exposes his body to Pia and to the camera, wanting her to perform oral sex on him. The camera does not turn away. I was relieved when Pia, deciding not to have sex, leaves Daniel’s bedroom. She makes a choice — and then the movie changes directions again. Hints are dropped throughout the movie that it is Pia’s family who has been hit with a financial blow. Her father has lost a significant amount of money (presumably through bad investments) and is forced to have to shed his assets and move his family to a different city to survive. Pia is shattered by this revelation and she is processing what this means for her. I do not want to reveal the ending because I think this is a film that deserves to be watched from beginning to end. I will tell you that I found the climax to be teeth-grinding; I had to turn my head away from the camera. Something awful does happen in this movie, but something is also restored. But it takes a lot of pain and pent-up frustration to get there. Checkhov’s gun is revealed in the end — but the gun does not end up being quite what one thought it would be. The movie ends with deep sadness.

What is Broke Trying to Say?
A key to the movie’s inner logic, I will say this as a closing, comes earlier in the film — when the kids are in class and the teacher is proceeding to dole out an ostensibly boring lesson on the fall of the Roman Empire. The teacher asks his class, “What would you do if you had no money?”. His question falls on deaf ears because the kids in his class do not know what it means to be truly broke. They are blithe in their privilege and I get the sense, watching the film, there is a lost ability to deeply care. I am a teacher so I get bored high school students. And suffice it to say — the teacher doe not try hard to entertain his classroom. But that is the point. He plays the part of the Cassandra of the film; he lays bare what happens when a society has a fiscal collapse. It turns in on itself. And it is then, watching the movie a second time, I realized what the final scene is meant to explore. What happens when society itself “runs out”?

Stray Observations

• Pia’s relationship with her little sister is similar to Mads’s relationship with his sister in Reckless.
• I leave out considerable plot points in my review because I feel like it is best to let the reader make the narrative connections. The movie has a twist and I do not want to reveal it. 
• Both Broke and Reckless are beautifully shot works of art. I liked the aesthetics of Reckless better - because I noticed the use of bright color was effective against the backdrop of the dram. The color scheme in Broke is much more muted and somber. 
• Both short films serve as a kind of “Public Service Announcement”; and that is not necessarily a bad thing. 
• The classroom scene was notable for me. As I mentioned in the review the students are incredibly bored. However, I don’t think the lack of affect in the teenagers is a direct criticism of Norway’s educational system; I think it is a conceit drawn up by the filmmakers to heighten the sense of dread the film is meant to evoke. 
• One of Pia’s classmates, Mikkel, reads like the most emotionally distant character in the film; his performance in Pia’s history class is very characteristic of teenager crying out for help.
• Guns are a controversial topic; unchecked violence in society has attempted to unmoor the stability of our cities and people are on edge. This movie plays on that uncertainty and looks at it from a unique perspective.

“Broke” is screening at Cinema Village from Friday, August 16 to Thursday, August 22.

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Coming Out Stories: Inspired By a Quotation From the Documentary Paris is Burning, I Write about Growing Up Gay in Louisiana

Paris is Burning © 1990 - a documentary about the gay ballroom scene in New York City.

N.B. This post is about growing up gay; and as such, it deals with content that some may find offensive. I know there is a lot of heat about the Tayler Swift Song "You Need to Calm Down" - but I will say to my possible haters: "You are somebody that I don't know / But you're taking shots at me like its Patron." And I don't even drink Patron!

     I am a slow learner. Growing up gay in South Louisiana in the early 1990s I had no idea there was a subculture just for me. I could have had a family. I could have been like the fem boys and the drag sisters and mothers of the street. I could have jumped on the Greyhound bus in Mandeville, Louisiana and landed as a street kid in New York City. However, as a twelve-year-old kid who had a semblance of his own gayness, I did not come out to my friends as gay until I was seventeen years old (which is an entirely different story) - and I was not out to any of my family members until way later in life (when I was in my 20s and 30s). I remember my mom asked me when I was about sixteen if I were gay and I flat-out said: "No, Mom." I did not have to think about it. I was not ready to go down that road. I think I had a deep sense of secrecy because I had internalized that my gayness was not something to share. It was a part of me but it was not something I wanted other people to know. And as the kids in Jennie Livingston's documentary Paris is Burning attest to - coming out as gay was not a safe option - even for the ballroom kids. In fact, it was the rejection of their gayness that led the ballroom kids to ascend on New York City's underground club scene in the first place where they ineluctably formed their own version of families (called "houses").

     I recently watched the documentary (which I am ashamed to say was my first viewing). I had only seen clips on Youtube and had listened to Ru Paul Charles preach about the film on her cable TV reality show Ru Paul's Drag Race  - which has gathered a lot of its aesthetic and jolt from the ballroom culture. Ru Paul rightfully references the show on her show - and I think she sees it as "a peering into" the world of drag culture that perhaps not many people are privy to. I could have used the truth of Paris is Burning growing up. I am sure my story is not unique. Growing up in the suburbs - which the filmmaker Xavier Dolan once said was "the place where dreams and ambitions go to die" - I wanted something more than "this provincial life." Thank you, Belle. Little did you know that as a gay kid Disney's animated bibliophilic French country girl was my hero. When you are gay - and you do not have a lot of representation in movies and on television - you go and find it; you make it; you see it in the subtext - which is probably why gay folk are really good at reading between the lines (and why some of us have made a name for ourselves in literary theory). Looking back on it I was crafty as a kid. I consumed gay identity - but I did it covertly and I was careful about learning how to be gay. I think I failed because when I went to my twenty-year high school reunion no one was surprised; I realize now that the superlative I received in the yearbook for "most friendly" was actually a substitute for "most gay." In the 90s there were emerging examples of gay representation but you had to look for it. I did buy a copy of XY magazine at the newsstand (I had to go in the back and look behind the Playgirls; but I found it - and I was internally satisfied by the magazine's outright celebration of gay male beauty. As a way of marking my gay desire, I did cut out my favorite pin-ups and pasted them in my notebook (that is a true story). I also hunted the shelves of the local public library for gay-themed books. I stumbled upon a copy of Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar and read its frank discussion of surreptitious male desire and came to understand that homosexual desire was not only universal (not just tacked on to my identity) but something that existed and has existed for a long time and in different civilizations and dispensations.

    I say I am a slow learner because I have accumulated gay culture in drips and drabs. In 1996 I discovered the musical Rent - and I listened to it with my friend Jonathan like a billion times - along with tracks from Tori Amos's album Under the Pink and Crash Test Dummies. As a teenager, I was a theater kid. Being involved in community and school theater helped me to form my first sense of belonging. It was the closest I got to the ballroom scene as a kid. Not to say I was out in the small theater world I participated in (nor were any of my friends). We were the kids who did not do sports, were not especially interested in academic accolades, and we just wanted a space to hang out, to be on stage, to work together and to put on plays. My closest friends were straight boys and girls; and very rarely did sexuality ever come up in conversation; I never had a gay friend or lover in high school, and, as an adult, I was surprised when someone I knew in high school had come out as gay as an adult. Austin, for example, was a shy kid in my Seventh Grade American history class; his father was the vice principal of the school; he made excellent grades and he was intelligent and well-spoken; however, I don't think we ever socialized. Ever. Why didn't we connect as kids? Being gay is not an immediate reason to become besties, apparently. I had heard on Facebook that he had come out in college and he was, according to a mutual friend, very gay.

Video Installation: Striking a Pose at the Great Falls in Paterson, New Jersey

Adam Driver plays a bus driver-cum-poet in the movie Paterson 

In this post, I document a recent visit to Paterson, New Jersey to see the Great Falls. 

On the way to our mutual friend's wedding, my friend and I stopped at the Great Falls in Paterson, New Jersey. It is an exciting site because in Paterson (back in the day) engineers (with the support of Alexander Hamilton) discovered a way to harness the sheer power and velocity of the falls by converting moving water into energy using a series of waterways and hydropower. The falls are the second-largest waterfall east of the Mississippi - by volume ( but for me: it is just really relaxing and beautiful). The town of Patterson has a lot of history and impressive architecture - and there is a third reason - Adam Driver - he plays a New Jersey Transit bus driver-turned-poet in the movie Paterson - where in one scene he makes a pit stop at the Falls to conjure up some inspiration. I don't claim to be an Adam Driver; however, I am certainly one to espouse the practice of making art from the everyday details of life.

Where do you go to sit and relax (and perhaps get inspired)? Do you have such a place? Or, do you have to find it?

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Dinner at Amherst College's Valentine Dining Hall Yields Dogtime - Plus Some Thoughts on the Fourth of July

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A Great Dane lies her weary, hungry head on the dining room table. #dogs #dinnertime #greatdane #dogface #dogportait #amherst

A post shared by Greig Roselli (@greigroselli) on Jul 4, 2019 at 8:17pm PDT

    For July, I will be a student at Amherst College, studying punishment with Professor Austin Sarat. I am here with fifteen or so educators. We live on campus during our time here as National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholars. I am living in a dorm on campus — called the Charles Drew House. The house was once the home of a guy named Seelye who was an Amherst Alum. Now it is a themed-house named in honor of the African American surgeon Charles Drew. Today is a National Holiday — the Fourth of July — so there are no classes, and the college is closed; however, the dining hall is open during the holiday, so those of us who have nowhere else to go can eat here! One of the teachers has a service dog — a Great Dane named Daisy. Tonight for dinner, before watching the Fourth of July fireworks at the University of Massachusetts campus, I chomp on edamame and chicken breast. Daisy joins us. So does Mike - a Catholic High School Theology teacher and Aklima - an English teacher in Flushing — and Matt — a Middle School teacher from Philadelphia. Anne - a social studies teacher from Florida — joins us too.
    I am excited to be in a new place. A new environment — even if it is just for a month. After dinner on campus — we pile into a public bus headed for the fireworks display. It is a slab gray bus and the bus driver, sporting a blue tee, flashes a smile, and welcomes us aboard. American fireworks are a display of patriotism - that is for sure — but it is also a day when people do not mind staking out a patch of green, laying out a blanket, and lounging in the dark with a bottle of beer and snacks. I lay on the grass, feeling tired from all of the excitement and take in the show. For such a small town - it feels like everyone is out tonight. The fireworks are colorful and loud — emanating sound and light from the center of the UMASS football field. It transpires in a flash. Lights. Shouts. Ohhhhhs. Ahhhhhs. And darn. The buses are not running to take us home to the Charles Drew dorm. We walk back, up to the hill, past picturesque houses and driveways, to the dorm. I say goodnight to Emily Dickinson. "I dwell in possibility," I say to my pillow. Goodnight.

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Travels in Summer: A Cadillac Parked in the River Terrace Neighborhood of Washington Reminded Me of My Childhood

The U.S. Capitol in Washington is so often photographed, reproduced, and televised - it doesn’t feel real. Why is that? Why does the reproducibility of an object produce its unattainable-ness? #questions #self #nation #washingtondc #uscapitoldome

                          ***

A green Cadillac is parked on a residential street
in the River Terrace neighborhood of D.C.

I collected Matchbox cars when I was a youngster, and this classic car parked on a leafy side street in Northeast Washington reminded me of one of my old diecast cars. I went to Washington to see a few pals (and made some new friends). I stayed at an Airbnb hosted by this actor-cum-airport-employee named Shaun (who was super nice). Walking from the AirBnB, I spotted this car. Now mind you - it has been super-hot these past few days - and D.C. was no different. However, I really enjoyed being outside, and I spent a lot of my time in the Capitol, exploring nature and the outdoors. Shaun's house is located in the River Terrace neighborhood of the District adjacent to the Anacostia River. One can access a bunch of trails from this spot - I walked from R.F.K. Stadium across Benning Road Bridge a few times. It is a gorgeous walk! And if you are a train, subway, or general rail enthusiast, it opens you to a magnificent view of the city's Metro trains that course along on an open, elevated trestle across the river. I was struck by how much I had been missing being outdoors ever since I moved to New York City. New York has great parks - don't get me wrong - but it never feels like the outdoors. D.C. has some spectacular trails and nature views for the adventurous. Give it a try.  #washington #oldcars #neighborhoodstreets

Flowers on Kingman Island (District of Columbia)

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