saturday, february 10

•••    the world is looking quite spectacular this morning. the sun is brighter than it should be, and everything is shining with leftover rain, right down to the blades of half-dead winter grass on the ground. the wind is ripping through branches and bushes and telephone wires, and it looks like everything is covered in shimmery, trembly tinsel. maybe I can write that love poem after all.
8:59 AM +

friday, february 9

•••    right now it is sixty degrees outside, and we have the window open. the air is fresh with the smell of melting snow and encroaching rain. penguin in my lap, nylon-stringed guitars, palebright moon, panacea.
11:46 PM +

•••    so yeah, it's been a day. a rollercoaster day to follow a giddy day, and the combination has made me tired and mellow with just a bit of smoldering around the edges. remnants of a petrol bomb. I laughed until I nearly cried, and later I just cried, but in the end I was laughing again. and in between, life was full of, well, life: I had a freewheeling conversation with my religion professor about language and rebirth and redeath and music and psychology and the meaning of something; I ducked out of idl lab for a mad dash to the mailroom; I got creative with my hair; I entertained the card swipers in the dining hall with the crack in my student id; I tried to seem convinced when my astronomy professor pulled me aside to tell me I'm not stupid. major application time is stressful.

and, of course, there was physics. today we saw a talk by some guy from nist, about various aspects of quantum computing. he was one of the funniest speakers I've ever seen, and he was apparently friends with my quantum professor, because they were throwing jibes during the introduction. so I giggled at most of it and understood almost none of it, and it was fun. apparently the problem with quantum computers is that it would take longer than the age of the universe for one to complete an operation, or something like that. minor details.

I am more than just a science geek, though, and yesterday I went to see a poetry reading by adrian rice. he's an irish poet, very very irish with the ruddy complexion and curly hair and sparkling eyes and belfast accent. he joked about catholics and protestants and the absurdity of election season, and he laughed while he did it, but you could see through to the weariness in his eyes. and his voice went liting sing-songing up and down all the words, as if he had to embrace them with his tongue to make them sound. I love accents.

poetry. it is almost valentine's day, and I am supposed to write a love poem this week, about the joy of love. we'll see; I'm not feeling it so far. sometimes you can just start writing. not this time. now I am sitting here headphoned in the dark, while my roommate and her friend and both their significant others watch movies. johnny depp is fucking some demon woman (or perhaps it is the other way around) while the world burns down, and the air is thick with howling music and fake-buttered popcorn smell and computerglow.
10:28 PM +

•••    the theory of everything might be wrong. oops.
8:34 AM +

thursday, february 8

•••    I think my eyes did get bigger, because when I walked home in the moonlight I saw all sorts of things everywhere. patterns in the sky, reflections on treebranches, wiggles along the edges of shadows, the very first crystalline bits in a puddle on the verge of freezing. I took some pictures but I know they won't see the same things I did.
11:41 PM +

•••    as a follow up to all the gender test nonsense, another sex-characteristic test has entered the meme realm: the bem sex role inventory. it's not hard to figure out how it works if you fiddle with it a bit, but I'll leave it for you to discover, if you're so inclined. in any case it's dependent on your honesty and the accuracy of your self-perception. I don't consider myself especially feminine, at least not in terms of behavior and chosen appearance (I can't do anything about my baby-face features, but I can leave them completely un-made-up). but a lot of the personality traits I do think are significant aspects of my character seem to be stereotypically female -- sensitivity, compassion, emotional-ness, what have you. I don't think I've become significantly less masculine, although I did abandon the tomboy aspect of my persona once the gender dichotomy of my peer group moved away from the absurdity that characterizes most of early adolescence. I'm just as athletic and ambitious and reckless as ever. maybe I'm just growing into my nurturing tendencies.

I'm used to being a girl in an environment dominated by guys -- role play games and wallball in elementary school, science and computer programming in high school, contact sports and physics now -- but since I came to college it has completely ceased to be an important part of my life. yeah, there are three times as many men majoring in physics here than there are women, but it wasn't until I started reading internship applications that I remembered some people think that makes me somehow special. I don't know if this is simply because of the nature of the physics department here, or if it's because we've gotten old enough to stop getting bent out of shape about traditional gender roles, but I am simply an astrophysics major. I like it that way.

and, in case you were curious... my score on the bem test: femininity 5, masculinity 4.1, sex-typed as near feminine.
1:14 PM +

•••    somehow all the astronomy press releases I've been reading lately seem to be about collisions. in some ways it's pretty amazing to me that stuff is always going around slamming into other stuff out there, even though though space is so big and sparsely populated. on the other hand, we seem to be beating the odds on the fatal collision / mass extinction / general apocalypse front, so maybe that's even more amazing.

the clouds seem to have taken back a little of the sky, but it can't keep the sun from dripping through the cracks. speaking of changing climates (well I was, sort of), there seems to have been an uncharacteristically steady stream of migrating birds heading north lately. global warming, anyone?

at least it looks beautiful.
8:37 AM +

•••    morning.

the sun is rising behind a bank of dark clouds arranged in columns that seem to stretch towards me like fingers reaching across the sky. it looks like there's this evil hand trying to grab the earth and spirit it away to someplace cold and gloomy, but the sun has it by the wrist and is dragging it away. we're safe.

meanwhile, all the fonts on the web seem to have decreased in size by one pixel, and I have no idea why. maybe my eyes got bigger. is it doing that to you?
7:56 AM +

wednesday, february 7

•••    in class this morning I gave myself a paper cut on a rg veda hymn about the divine drop of life. it bled. I'm not sure whether that's symbolic or just weird. it's definitely making me aware of my fingertip.
8:25 PM +

•••    ouch.

today my carpals and metacarpals and phalanges have all been replaced by some sort of thin conductive wire, and a low-level electric current is running through it. at least I think that's what happened. that's certainly what it feels like; every time my heart beats I get this sort of zappythud sensation. I'm electric! ha.
9:23 AM +

tuesday, february 6

•••    I'm so tired I almost can't bear the thought of finding the right pronouns. there is too much to do, and I am too irresponsible to handle all of it. but I will, one way or another, even if it means I end up taking the wimpy way out. I owe a lot of people email, I know. I'm trying.

it was a good day, though. today was our first with the fourth graders this semester. we brought styrofoam balls and flashlights and little frog stickers, and we simulated day and night, sunrise and sunset, spinning spinning spinning. the kids were so cute and enthusiastic. their teacher always apologizes for their behavior, as if clambering for attention and asking curious questions were abnormal behavior for nine-year-olds. I wish we could tell her that they aren't misbehaving just because they're excited to have an hour of classtime that involves something other than textbooks and worksheets and recitation. sigh. I was very happy to see them, in any case.

on to poetry. words and strength, keep me awake.
9:09 PM +

•••    yay, more snow! you see how pretty?

and now, on a completely other note... the cover story of this week's time magazine is a photoessay. it has a bunch of black and white pictures of dying people, and on the cover it says, "this is a story about aids in africa. look at the pictures. read the words. and then try not to care."

so. am I the only person who wants to rip the magazine up and send it back in little shredded pieces to the person who came up with that self-satisfied first-world tripe? first of all, any pictures that need to be captioned with "this is supposed to make you care, you dope" are missing the point of photojournalism. second, I resent the "try not to care" sentiment. isn't that exactly what gets into trouble? we see things that hurt other people and us and the planet and whatever, we say it's too much I can't deal with it; ignore it; try not to care and then we forget about it. and that, I believe, accomplishes exactly nothing except to make us feel momentarily guilty for being better off, and perhaps momentarily guilty for being so willing to dismiss our flashes of compassion.

I submit the following replacement: "this is a story about aids in africa. look at the pictures. read the words. and then see what you can do to help." I would never say that you should find the energy to care about every single problem facing every single human being on the planet, because that would be impossible and exhausting, but when you do care, why deny it? honestly, and I know a lot of activists think this is blasphemy, I think just plain caring counts as doing something; it's certainly better than brushing your feelings aside. no one has enough money and time to give help to all the worthy causes out there, so picking a couple for actual action and then simply being aware of the rest seems okay to me. if everyone did that we'd be a lot better off, wouldn't we?

don't take the easy way out and try not to care. don't let some dumb magazine that, when it comes right down to it, is in it for the profit, tell you how to prioritize your caring. but do look at the pictures and read the words, because it's a worthwhile story.
8:04 AM +

•••    saw this guy give a talk tonight, about the expansion of the universe. he was awesome. I couldn't help but imagine myself up there, because the future looms closer every day, and let me tell you I was nowhere near as witty as he was. I have a long way to go, but if I grow up to be half that cool, I'll be happy.
12:49 AM +

monday, february 5

•••    how much snow? oh, a very lot of snow! the rain started getting thick and soppy during physics, and by the time my religion class was almost over there was bona fide slush on the ground. the flakes were huge and wet and icy, falling faster than looked possible given the relationship between gravity and air resistance and velocity, and they went whack whack whack on my hood as I skidded down the hill to lunch.

so yes, there is snow, and the world looks like it's had a bucket of marshmallow fluff dumped over its head. it is perfect snowball snow, sticky and thick, waiting for a snowman shape to come and possess it. "it's a winter wonderland!" said my lab partner, partly in jest and mocking me as I jumped around and tried to catch the still-falling bits of it on my tongue, but she was right. it's incredible. snow! sometimes I don't understand how there can be snow and war all in the same universe, because watching snow fall makes your heart go fwing! in a combination of joyous and peaceful feelings that not even christmas can concoct.

lab was fun too; we played with superhot mercury vapor and a magically moving electromagnetic pen, figured the whole problem out by ourselves, and finished fifteen entire minutes early. so my heart is just fwinging all over the place this afternoon.
4:22 PM +

•••    dance, planets, dance.

it's raining a whole lot. I would say it's raining cats and dogs, but that expression never made any sense to me, and I would say it's raining buckets but it's really doing something more like raining watering cans. not torrential, just persistent. the only thing I truly dislike about rain is that when it comes this time of year, I can't help but think how much snow it might have been.

today is the one that goes nonstop from nine-thirty in the morning until ten at night. I am wearing a pink shirt because I want to forget who I am for a little while, but I have stars on my socks because it will give my self something to come home to.
8:33 AM +

sunday, february 4

•••    six nonstop hours of differential equations have rendered my right hand thoroughly inoperable, so it is ace-wrapped and lying quietly in my lap while my left does double-duty on the keyboard. at some point before tomorrow morning I have three pages of web-planning notes to transcribe, so we'll see how that goes. I may end up writing it with my feet. people do that, right?
10:50 PM +

•••    you know it's bad when you're up before seven on a sunday morning working on quantum physics.

it's worse when you realize it's two hours later and you haven't really accomplished anything, because quantum physics is on some level fundamentally incomprehensible.

time for a break, inasmuchas working on something else can count as a break. all the white horses are still asleep. catch you on the flip.
9:08 AM +