saturday, february 17

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(if you're not geeklingual, you can have it translated.)
6:40 PM +

•••    massachusetts! alison takes pretty pictures. if you look closely you can find me in some of them, because I live there sometimes, you know.
9:40 AM +

•••    today my roommate and my best friend are both turning twenty years old, and I am looking at the six remaining months of my teenagerhood stretching like the yellow brick road away into a place I know nothing about, except that I will for certain end up there, eventually.

the weather says it is forty nine degrees outside, but there is definitely snow falling past my window. the clouds are confused.

last year when I was a freshman and highly resistant to the idea of growing up and sharing my life with brand new other people, I was mildly offended that my new roommate had not only a similar name but also the exact same birthday as my closest friend from high school. now I think it's rather poetic. happy birthday, e&e.
9:14 AM +

friday, february 16

the first of three candidates for next year's visiting astro professor position was here today. he talked about interferometry and what seemed to me to be some very sketchy stellar models of m-class giants. it was a pretty funny talk, though, because I was sitting next to my comrade in astrophysics mischief, and we were terribly full of whispered in-jokes and mockery. (I didn't feel so bad making fun of the guy after he told us at lunch that grad school was hell and we weren't going to be prepared for it no matter how smart we were. or something like that. anyway, he reminded me of beaker, so that was funny too.) we were sitting behind the two astro professors and in front of the department chair, so we tried to keep our antics at least a little subdued. it was fun. and there was good free food, so overall it was a very worthwhile evening.

I can't help but wonder if I am predisposed to hate all the candidates because I love my own professor so much. I suppose one of the reasons swarthmore has good teachers is that the school gives them paid leave every four years, but I'm not happy when the good teachers actually go on leave. why can't the world just revolve around me, anyway?

there are many websites and emails that need my attention, and I can't find it in myself to give it to them just yet.

it's been raining coldness all day long.
10:41 PM +

•••    there's a lot to be said for a decent night's sleep, even if it happens by accident. after I gave up on physics last night, I fell asleep on top of my poetry book. I woke up again around midnight, looked at the pile of unfinished business on my desk, and made it as turning my lamp off before I fell asleep again. (I turned the lamp off so I woudn't be wasting energy while I was across the room, not because I meant to go to sleep.) seven hours of sleep is sort of the equivalent of truffles and escargot around here, so I am feeling deliciously spoiled this morning.

anyway. now it is off to school, where I get to observe still more astro 1. on wednesday they talked about kepler's laws; now it's on to newton and gravity. yay for simple concepts.
8:31 AM +

thursday, february 15

today was good. I'm proud of myself; I was feeling sad and distressed about something and instead of ignoring it the way I usually do, I confronted it head-on. and guess what? people listened to me, they said "oh I didn't know you felt that way," and now everything is going to be better. yay me! I also spent a few hours discussing over-my-head astronomy with both the astro professors, became gloriously confused, tackled a laplace transform problem, became frustratingly confused, and finally gave up and just sat around smiling at the physics office baby of the day. (academic people seem to have children later than normal people, and the physics department faculty is pretty young, so there are lots of little toddlers and babies that we see from time to time.) there is so much more to be found in the eyes of a six-month-old than in a page full of equations.
9:55 PM +

•••    it's a perfect puff the magic dragon morning. everyone thinks it's a sad song, but I don't. puff doesn't die when jackie grows up. he gets sad for a while, but in the end he's still there, frolicking in the autumn mist and (I think) waiting for a new playmate. life is about cycles, is it not? and I bet you anything jackie paper goes back to visit every once in a while.
8:53 AM +

wednesday, february 14

origami

beginning: a pink palm-sized square
stretched blank with obscured possibilities

stagelight softens gentle across its face
scattered by tiny imperfections

transformation: a paper heart present
folded and corner-tucked together

distance collapses into coursing synchrony
in the instant of an offering accepted

later: in smokywarm electric jazz dark
surrounded by a pantheon of strangers

my firecracker fingertips reach to explore
the slight scrap of love cupped in my hand.
11:48 PM +

•••    today, I don't give a damn about commercialization or cliches. I am having fun.

I got love letters in the mail, family greetings on the phone, and songs in my inbox. at dinner I was two years old, with a helium heart balloon tied around my wrist. there were carnations and candles and acapella serenades, and the fireplace was alive with flame. of course there were candy hearts everywhere all day long, spelling out coincidental poetry in sugar and pastels. I like the smell of sweetness.
8:23 PM +

•••    the network is happy again, yay. it's gloomy outside but I am determined to have a good day anyway. holidays are fun. I'm just not cynical enough to hate valentine's day -- actually maybe it has nothing to do with cynicism, because even at the height of my misanthropic stage in high school I still liked it -- and I don't know about the rest of you, but I am going to celebrate. who cares if you're single? eat some candy, give someone a hug, smile! it's a feel-good holiday.

I will willingly admit that I've always gotten some sort of present on valentine's day, so maybe I'm not as jaded as I could be. flowers and chocolate may be cliches, but they're still good for warm fuzzies. there was one year I walked around school all valentine's day with a balloon tied to my hair. (there was also a year when one of the things I got was a poem that ended with "I want your body," so sometimes it's hit and miss. wackos.)

I'm also unreasonably excited this morning because I'm going to go watch an astro 1 class. I've never taken astro 1 (it's a survey course not intended for natural science majors), so I think it will be fun. the temporary professor candidates that we're hiring are going to be guest-teaching that class, so I want to see what a "normal" (my professor laughed when I said that to him) class looks like. whee, astronomy!

have a lovely day, everyone. and yes, I did finish my love poem, though it ended up ... well, I suppose it's only fair that I share it, after all that complaining I did. it will be posted by the end of the day. cross my heart.
8:12 AM +

tuesday, february 13

this morning the geniuses who run our network took it offline to do some routine maintenance, and in the process they somehow broke it. (okay, that's not exactly what happened, but it's easier than trying to explain what actually did happen, and it gets the point across.) anyway, public areas and most of upper campus are finally better now, but my part of the world, also known as the far away from everything except the blandbland suburbs part, has not yet been reconnected. so I am in the library trying to get everything done that was supposed to get done today. I haven't gone home yet, so I am still in my muddy rugby clothes. I have mud in my hair -- the side of my head is not just dirty, it's literally caked in mud. I have mud on my face -- it goes right up next to my eye, so I'm afraid to wash it in anything but a shower, for fear that I'll get something in my eye. I have mud on my back and my arms and my legs. I am a regular freakshow.

in science today we taught the fourth graders about seasons. it was weird backwards day; the boy who usually knows everything kept insisting that the sun is the biggest star in the universe, and the girl who usually never talks answered even my toughest questions without hesitation. even the girl on drugsdrugsdrugs, who in my opinion should really be in a special ed classroom full time, made a half-convincing effort at participation. it's amazing to me how adults can continually over- and underestimate kids at the same time. they don't think they're smart enough to do work that comes in a form other than worksheets, but they don't the kids need any special attention as long as they're not causing trouble. and when they do give them special attention, it comes in such ludicrous forms: today as we were setting up, a security guy brought a misbehaving kid into the classroom to give him a behavioral pep talk. "your attitude determines your altitude," he told the kid, "so you have no one to blame except yourself if you get in trouble." what the hell is that? first of all, what nine year old is going to properly interpret attitude determining altitude? if someone had said that to me when I was nine, I probably would have thought it meant I could fly if I thought about it hard enough. and second, way to alienate someone! don't bother asking for help, it's all your fault anyway.

but they like science, and that makes me feel better about the whole thing.

all my documents seem to have finished printing, so I am off to trek back to suburbia and wash my hair. see you when they fix this mess, or when I catch a break on campus tomorrow, whichever comes first. and happy valentine's day.
10:52 PM +

monday, february 12

but it will also make me happy, because it is rugby, and it is like nothing else on earth, and I love it.

I have a new cookie fortune. I don't generally collect fortunes, but every so often there is something that makes a little scrap of paper worth keeping. this morning when I passed my astronomy professor (no I am not taking an astro class this semester, but whatever. he's still my professor) in the hall, he stopped me and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. this is, as you might imagine, not especially normal professor behavior, so I was a little mystified. he pulled out a fortune of the sort that comes in cellophane-wrapped cookies, with the little smily faces flanking the fortune and lotto numbers printed on the back. "I thought of you this weekend," he said, and handed it to me. you will pass a difficult test that will make you happier. I smiled; maybe it was the stilted, imperfect english, maybe it was the comic timing, and maybe it was just the moment, but in any case, it was perfect. it lives in my backpack now.
11:42 PM +

•••    I've never watched letterman on acid, but I have watched the inside of an operating room. it's sort of the same thing.

today while I'm busy in physics lab counting radioactive particles, the near spacecraft is going to make a kamikaze landing on the asteroid eros.

still stuck on that love poem.

the world turns. whee.
8:54 AM +

sunday, february 11

college is fun, isn't it? time for homework!
9:12 AM +