Meeting Lesley Reece

[akirlu]

There is a metaphor for my relationship with fanzine fandom in this, really. Something about occupying parallel universes that only touch at certain points.

I keep running into Lesley Reece around campus. It's semi-inevitable: she works here, I work here. What makes it weird is that I know who she is, but not vice versa. I'd read her writing in Apparatchik of course, and seen her at a distance at one or two of the Seattle conventions of yore. So I knew her by sight. But she seems to have fallen away from the local fandom since before I moved up; maybe she was never that into fandom in the first place, really. So there's not that much reason she would know me. And she doesn't. So when we pass on the street I keep wanting to smile and say, "hi" as if we know each other. Up 'til now I've restrained myself, because of something akin to the instinct that prevents me from calling attention to myself in the serendipitous presence of celebrities trying to go about their daily lives.

But today we wound up being the only two people waiting for the same crosswalk light, and it seemed like it would be at least as weird to stand around not saying anything as it would to introduce myself. So I turned to her and said, "We've got to stop meeting like this. I keep meaning to write a fanzine article about it." I got a gratifying double-take over the mention of fanzines, and we ended up chatting away all the way up the hill to Savery. No idea if anything much will come of meeting properly, but at least now she shouldn't think I'm stalking her if I say hello on the street.

Comments

[daystreet.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, speaking of the past, which you weren't really, but now I am... "Savery Hall". How I remember my friends and I referring to it as Unsavery Hall... Well, we were undergradutes. How could you expect anything else but undergradutate humor?

I keep meaning to ask you... what neighborhood do you guys live in up there? I'm guessing Wallingford, but really have no clue.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think to anyone with a mind inclined to wordplay, the Savery/unsavory joke is almost inevitable. What was the term someone coined for the rassef type? Comedy intellectuals? Anyway, it's a joke that rings in my head at odd moments, sophomoric or not. There's also a certain amount of fun to be had with such entities as Sound Transit...

As for where we live, we're out in the wilds of Redmond because when we first moved up we needed someplace that would take our dog and wanted lots of space for comparatively little money. Eventually we'll move into town for the urban amenities, and Wallingford is certainly on my Highly Desireable list (along with Fremont and Capitol Hill) but in the meantime we have enough of an Angeleno sensibility that the twelve or so miles distance don't matter much.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Wow, that set off a chain of memory. I spent most of my undergraduate days in the Music Building, or the cafe in the basement of the Art Building, but I don't think I ever had a class in any of the other buildings on the quad. What courses are taught at Savery? Or is it no longer devoted to a particular discipline?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Keen icon.

Yeah, I often get my morning cuppa down at Parnassus (the Art Building Cafe -dunno if it was called that when you were an undergrad).

As to what they teach in Savery, it seems to be a mix. Maybe mostly Econ, Philosophy, and Sociology (the three departments that live here) but I think Classroom Support Services tends to put whatever they can in whichever room fits the need, so it could be anything, really.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I got the icon from the book_icons community.

The cafe was called Parnassus in my day (the mid-seventies). The music students didn't mix much with the art students; we colonized a section of the room and sat there between classes smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee thinking we were crazy bohemian types. Or at least wishing we were!

Parnassus

[ladyjestocost.livejournal.com]

Well, it was Parnassus 25 years ago when I'd get the strongest, blackest tea I could in order to stay awake through art history.

Don't know if it was Parnassus when my mother took art history classes there, but I can ask.

My favorite UW campus story was when my grandfather visited me, looked at McMahon Hall (the really big NE dorm) and said, "Good heavens, it looks just like her!" it seems she'd had a rather forbidding countenance.

Re: Parnassus

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

"Good heavens, it looks just like her!"

I love it!

[damienw]

In various similar circumstances I have felt profoundly uncomfortable. I think this is (or perhaps was) "having the advantage" of someone: for one to know the other and this not be reciprocated.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think you're quite right that this was a case of my "having the advantage" of Lesley. Fortunately, she didn't seem excessively discomfitted by the incident; one of the things she made comment on in our chat was the fact that she's an extrovert, which must help.