saturday, april 7

•••    trying to live on a strict budget when you have a very small amount of money is like trying to recreate michaelangelo's david with rocks and sticks. - a
3:38 PM +

friday, april 6

•••    "what is art, anyway?" my father (the chemist) asked. he watched as my mother and i assembled necklaces with beads from her (debatably lame) collection. "if it's just creating something, then that means everything is art, which in turn means that nothing is art. so that can't be it. what is it, then?"

my mother and i momentarily abandoned our threading and knotting to address this. the two of us determined that art can be defined as the creation of something that is meaningful either to the creator or to the viewer. my father the scientist accepted this definition quite easily, which i attribute more to his having grown tired of the bits of plastic and wood and string all over the living room floor than to his acceptance of our idea as correct.

because when i mentioned this to phil (the philosopher) over a few (four) glasses of wine at maxwell's, he promptly disagreed with our definition, saying that it was too narrow. "what if you stacked up a bunch of plates in your sink, and i, as the only person who viewed it, decided that it was art? would that make it art?" i agreed that it would not, and suggested that perhaps art must be meaningful to both the creator and the viewer. phil decided that that definition was too narrow, with which assessment i also agreed. after all, in the simpsons episode when homer inadvertently becomes an artist by way of bungling the installation of a barbecue pit, he doesn't think his accidental creation has meaning, although everyone else certainly does.

what i wish i'd said to my father today was that art is sort of like the supreme court definition of pornography in that "we know it when we see it." how else could i have defined art? - a
5:55 PM +

thursday, april 5

•••    well. i don't know what rabi's poetry class is like, but mine is really depressing. every day someone turns in something about desperation, heartache, loss, or loneliness in some form or another. is this what life is actually like for us, or is it just what we write about? if it's the former, why do we print our lives on bits of white and submit them for the approval of eleven other lonely, desperate people? if it's the latter, why don't we write about something else? - a
10:20 PM +

•••    ...though i'm not sure how entertaining i'm really going to be.

but i have a question, which starts out with a statement. i have funny-colored hair most of the time, and when i see other people (on campus, at the grocery store, at bars) with funny-colored hair as well, we'll generally nod or smile at one another, acknowledging the fact that, hey, we both have funny-colored hair. there's not some sort of secret funny-hair society or anything, it's just that it's someting one doesn't see terribly often, and i think it might be a human instinct to connect in some way with those with whom one has relatively obscure things in common. people who inadvertently wear the same shirt always say to one another, "hey, nice shirt!" with traces of sarcasm. it's the same thing.

so, do you think that pregnant women do this, too? do you think they walk by each other and say, "hello, i notice that you are also pregnant!" as they follow their own taut, round bellies down the street? pregnancy is certainly different from shirts and hair, but i bet they do it, too.

the only thing i can say about astronomy or any sort of science whatsoever is that the astronomy picture today reminded me of the cover art on coldplay's parachutes album. how's that for an observation? - a
2:06 PM +

wednesday, april 4

•••    it was such a perfect day. blue sky the color of lashless baby eyes, cloudless, and religion class outside on the grass, where I sat in the back and lost at four-dimensional tic-tac-toe to one of my friends. then peanut noodles for lunch, poetry class and adrenaline, now all packed and shower-fresh.

and with that, here I go. I'll be back next tuesday, and in the meantime alison will be here to keep you entertained. yay!
5:11 PM +

•••    so yes, in case I haven't made this clear, I'm going to chile today. tonight, actually. it is not a vacation, as some people (such as my roommate and my rugby team, who told me that chilean guys are pretty hot) seem to have decided it should be. I'm going to do astronomy research. one of the world's big ground-based telescopes is in chile, in the andes mountains where the atmosphere is not as thick as it is down here near sea level. we need big telescopes to gather enough light to get all the information we need to study stars, to get a clear picture of their chemical composition (and thus, their age, temperature, size, lifestyle, and so on). this is actually a lot less romantic than going out with a little telescope and looking through it to see nearby planets; everything is computer controlled and digitally recorded. still, it's how we actually learn, which makes it romantic in a different way. nerdy romantic.

I've been making intermittent attempts to practice speaking spanish over the past few days. it's been interesting. in spite of my dislike for spanish class, which I quit taking a year earlier than most people in high school, I always had a talent for fudging my way through conversations. however, now I find that while I still have a pretty decent grip on grammar, my vocabulary has some extremely inconvenient holes in it. in the shower I was able to name every single visible body part, but later I couldn't remember how to say "I want," which is fairly vital. (I figured it out, about half an hour after I gave up on communicating in anything but english.) anyway. we'll see what happens. no matter what I say, it will be painfully obvious that I'm a clueless american, so I suppose I shouldn't worry.

my spider plant is blossoming today. it has little white buds at the tips of its baby-shoots, and two of them are open for the first time this morning. it's funny to see something so tiny and delicate on something as robust as my spider. outside the trees are beginning to sprout green coats along the lengths of their limbs, and some of them have the beginnings of flower buds. when I come back this whole campus will be drenched in flowers.
8:14 AM +

•••    

blue angel alien mouse!
2:34 AM +

•••    I wish I knew why I have been so emotional lately, but now I'm happy and hyper, so I don't care anymore. I think everything must be flying right straight through me, because I can't think of any other way to explain how I could feel so overwhelmed and simultaneously lightweight at the same time. I think I am made of sugarspun light and electricity, so that I can be empty but also luminescent at the same time. before I was just hollow, but now I am helium-light and I think my heart is beating too fast. it's been quite a day. I still have twenty three things left on the list of things I need to do before tomorrow morning, which is scary but also pretty impressive considering there were over seventy things on the list three days ago. I am trying to decide what music to bring with me and one of my friends is helping me brainstorming space-related things, and so far we have eight, more than I expected, and it is so happy! isn't it weird how being happy makes you cry sometimes? I am never going to get packed.

also, I have green grapefruit and purple shooting stars, and that is maybe that happiest thing of all.
12:38 AM +

tuesday, april 3

•••    know what? I am posting this from my own computer!

no, I need more of those.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! !!! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !!!!!!

my own computer! it works again! for the first time in a month, or whenever-long ago the beginning of spring break was. so now the web looks funny and small, since my monitor is about half the size of my roommate's, and I feel almost as if I am on the wrong side of the room. also I am a little wary of being too happy about this, because I still don't know exactly what made it stop working in the first place, and I think it is entirely possible that it will happen again. (all I really did was reinstall the network card. again. only more thoroughly this time.) but eh. I don't care. I am slightly more completefeeling than I was half an hour ago.

(which is not at all complete, of course, but slightly more is better than slightly less, yes it is. I am incoherent. I need to pack.)
11:25 PM +

•••    it's amazing how easy it is to forget the physicality of emotions, until one has you in its deathgrip. am I still breathing?
9:48 PM +

•••    (this is going to get a little soapboxy, so if you don't like that, go somewhere else.)

so everyone is all upset about bush and his cute little "kyoto is dead" administration, yes? or at least everyone who thinks the environment is more important than the oil industry? well. according to an article in time magazine this week, only forty-eight percent of americans would be willing to pay an extra quarter for a gallon of gas. that's twenty-five cents, people. you pay twice that much to get some crap out of a vending machine. I don't understand how anyone can be unwilling to shell out a little more for gas (or maybe drive less -- imagine that!) and still say global warming is a serious problem (which seventy-five percent of americans did, according to this same poll). do people really believe in having your planet and destroying it too? or do they honestly believe that the american economy (which will undoubtedly be helped by un-regulating carbon dioxide emissions) is more important than the health of the world? will they still believe that when miami and new orleans fall into the ocean? will you? (I will readily admit that time is not the most politically unbiased newsmag in the world, but it is a lot more conservative than I am, so I feel justified. find me an unbiased media source and I'll use that instead.)

I am, of course, part of the problem. I use computers (oil! electricity! blah!), I take showers (sometimes two in a day), and I've even been known to ride in cars. so yeah, I do contribute to the twenty-five percent of the world's greenhouse gases that the united states produces, and I'm not trying to say otherwise. but I do try, and it makes me pretty angry that so many people are willing to jeopardize my efforts, not to mention the planet's future, to save a freaking quarter at the gas pump. walk if you're such a cheapskate. or if you don't have money, take it out of something else. here's an interesting thing: if you use less energy, your utility bills will go down. down!

also, since I'm already so far up on this high horse of mine, I need to point out that the eco-consciousness quiz is missing a few important points. one of the questions asks, "cows produce a tremendous amount of methane. what is a way to reduce this?" and then it lists a bunch of "feed the cows such-and-such" answers. the correct one is to "feed the cows a specially engineered feed," which has problems of its own, but I know a better answer: stop eating beef. if there are fewer cows to feed fewer people, they will produce less methane, yes? yes. I am not telling everyone to go vegan, but I am saying that every little bit of animal you cut out of your life (that means not buying it at all, not just throwing it out when it's left on your plate at the end of a meal) helps the environment.

I won't prioritize anyone's life for them, but I reserve the right to be mad when an entire government's priority puts my home, and the home of all intelligent life as we know it, at risk. and I reserve the right to tell everyone who says they care about the environment but refuses to make a few sacrifices in the name of its protection that they are being hypocritical. the planet gave us our lives. don't you think it deserves better than what we've given it in return?
9:07 AM +

monday, april 2

•••    apparently I was a little melodramatic yesterday. don't worry, there is really nothing wrong with me. I'm just spinning a little bit. anyway, I am still strung out, but in a happier way. spending the afternoon in the physics department playing with superballs and snitching seaweed salad from the seniors' japanese food seminar break has a way of making the world more manageable. of course I was also trying to do physics homework at the same time, but I had the painful side of being an astrophysics major (which, by the way, is official now) nicely balanced with the fun side, so it worked out okay. in my sock feet I spun around, trying to find the exact right rotational velocity that would make my braid fly at a ninety degree angle to my head, but my z-component went all off when I got dizzy and fell onto the couch.

still, you can see that I have too much unchecked energy to write manageable sentences, even if I have come to terms with the world a little bit. there is just one thing I want now, really. maybe I will go looking for it later.
7:27 PM +

•••    researchers pioneer techniques to lubricate microdevices. heh.
9:22 AM +

sunday, april 1

•••    so, maybe you discerned (or maybe you didn't) that I have been a little on edge lately. maybe more than a little. there's a lot going on, you know? and today I was especially feeling as if my smiles were only halfway there, because it was a struggle to remember the way my eyes are supposed to crinkle at the corners. also the building and grounds people are starting to tie up the trees around the science building, in preparation for the construction project that is starting this summer; the branches are bound together in clumps and the roots are encased in burlap, trussed up like turkeys as roald dahl would say, sitting in holes and surrounded by piles of the dirt that used to hold them steady inside the planet. I suppose I should appreciate the care that the college is taking to protect its trees, but it still hurts a little bit to watch them getting uprooted. maybe that's because I know my own uprooting will follow theirs, if in a more subtle manner.

but. there is a song that never fails to make me feel lighthearted, in spite of being uprooted and stressed and narcissistic. it's called tilliboyo. I listened to it, and for four minutes and twenty seconds, I was undeniably happy.

this song is on an oldish kronos quartet cd, and one that I acquired somewhat by accident, I think. when I was in eighth grade, all the girls gave christmas presents to their friends. I didn't really understand that, because it seemed unfair to give people a way to be cruel simply through negligence, but I also didn't want to be cruel myself, so I gave presents too. (in seventh grade I gave presents to everyone, all forty-something twelve-year-olds that shared my daily existence. even the ones who beat me up at recess.)

one of the girls I gave a christmas gift to that year clearly wasn't expecting it, because her face flashed a combination of horror and surprise and delight before she regained her composure and thanked me. but then she pulled a flat little package out of her backpack and handed it to me. it was wrapped but completely unlabeled, and thought she had probably given it to me out of guilt rather than premeditation. I saved it and opened it later, in the solitude of my room at home, where neither of us would have to be embarassed by each other's presence. it was this kronos quartet album. I wasn't sure what to make of it, because it had no shrinkwrap packaging, and the front of the case was cracked diagonally across the corner. not to mention all the foreign language stuff on the back cover, and the strange pictures of people wearing puffy pants and suspenders in the liner notes. I stuck it on my shelf and went to go listen to oliver! because I was deep in my broadway musical phase and I could still bend my voice to match the high notes sung by precious boy sopranos.

I think it was curiousity that led me to finally listen to pieces of africa some months later. the whole affair was steeped in kismet and undeserved patience, and I felt as if I were receiving something that didn't belong to me, because I wasn't yet myself enough to appreciate it. but I set the song on repeat, and I stayed lying in front of the cd player with my eyes closed while I listened and moved my mouth around the foreign-ness of the word, tilliboyo tilliboyo tilliboyo, trying to understand.

it's a pretty song, you know. the title means "sunset." those make me happy, too. I missed the sunset today, because I was facing the other direction. but there is always music.
11:53 PM +

•••    I think the real x-file is how scully has managed to become eleven months pregnant without gaining any weight anywhere except in her uterus.

also, I put peanut butter in my non-dairy chocolate pudding, and it is just like what a reese's cup sundae from friendly's tastes like, but without the ice cream.
10:15 PM +

•••    it's been a low-key but entertaining april fool's day: nine pranks that I've seen (or heard; the belltower was suspiciously off-kilter this morning), but nothing venturing beyond cute or clever. there are giant blue ants made out of balloons and duct tape climbing up the outside of the science library, and one of them has lost its head for some reason. I feel like my head is made of a balloon too, and if I'm not careful something unpleasant will happen to it. it's not going to pop, though. I think it might just deflate quietly until it has those funny puckers in the side where it was stretched too far, too long, and it has forgotten how to hold its original shape.

all solutions are temporary.
6:25 PM +

•••    happy:
1. daylight savings time
2. april fool's day
3. birthday, mom.
10:35 AM +