saturday, june 9
hello. I had an absolutely fantastic evening and I'm going to tell you about it. yay. I love being in cambridge. I absolutely love it. it's funny because while I occasionally start to feel angsty about being trapped in the suburbs at school, it never really occurs to me to miss cambridge itself. I adore cities in general, real cities full of people and skylines and noise, but lately this one has been making me even happier than it usually does. and today....
after work I went to record hog, where there are cats that lie on top of the cd bins and stacks of old rolling stone magazines leaning up against everything and cacti on the windowsills and boxes and boxes of old vinyl and plaster heads of communist leaders holding up the jazz section and definitely no commas because there just isn't room. while I was browsing in the m m m m rock! section and stroking the stripey cat between its ears, the store owner got a phone call from someone she hadn't talked to since 1989. just the fact that things like that can happen makes me feel good about life.
there's a homeless man I see every single day who sits in the alcove outside bruegger's, always furiously writing on a little pile of napkins. he must be replenishing his napkin supply every day, because I never see him with more than five or six at a time, and always always he is writing on them. and always I want to go sit next to him, to see what is on his napkins, if it's nonsense or a masterpiece or maybe not even words at all. I also want to give him a notebook, because I have way too many of them and I think with actual bound paper pages there is just the slightest chance that someday everything will come together. but I do neither, because just thinking them makes me nervous, and because I worry about offending him. and maybe he really likes napkins.
when I was in high school I perfected the art of riding my bike without hands down the last five blocks of my route home. I can still do it, and when I round the corner at the bottom of the hill with my arms outstretched and my hair flying, my heart still skips a beat.
friday, june 8
zeta leporis might have planets forming around it. that is, it has a big ring of dust and asteroids around it, and they could end up as planets. how cool would it be to watch a solar system form? I guess you'd have to live a long time to be able to actually watch it... that might be an okay tradeoff for immortality, if I got to watch evolution (of stars or animals or anything, really). otherwise I think it would be a bit much for me to deal with. anyway, I really like this star's name. zeta lep! whee. 09:08
++
thursday, june 7
harvard commencement was today, and the square was crazy. in the morning all the gates to harvard yard were manned by harvard and cambridge police, and there were signs all over the place directing clueless nametagged relatives to the proper section, as if the yard were a ballpark. all the shops were decorated in crimson and white balloons, and there were street vendors everywhere with overpriced flowers and teddy bears. traffic was at a standstill; I could barely get my bicycle through the jam of cars and professors wearing their best dress clothes under those ridiculous puffy-armed pink gowns. in the evening the sidewalks were packed with graduates, some still in their caps and gowns, trailing packs of gushing family members and other adoring fans, on top of the world. I couldn't help but envy them a little; no matter what the reality, people still see harvard as the best school in the country, and it's a hell of a diploma to have. how must that feel, to be finished with college and have a degree from harvard? wow. someone just won a contest for correctly completing this statistic: nine percent of women will experience _______ today. the clue was "clothing." and the correct answer? apparently, nine percent of women will find a run in their nylons today (whether this actually constitutes an "experience" I will leave for you to decide). I find that a little surprising, unless I'm misunderstanding the statistic -- it seems to be saying nine percent of women (and I assume that means in the united states or at least in first-world countries), not nine percent of nylons, and therefore it must include even those who don't wear nylons. (I know I'd have a hard time experiencing a run in my stockings today.) so that must mean a much larger percentage of women who actually do wear the things will end up with a run by the end of the day. I've destroyed plenty of tights and pantyhose and nylons in my life, so I know how fragile they can be (although the ones I have now are actually doing quite well, having survived being worn twice each). but if they're so easily destroyed, why are people still wearing them on a regular basis? of course, radio contests are not the best source of accurate statistics on anything. still it seems that some more rigorous definitions are in order, because either the statement was wrongly worded or women are masochists, at least with regards to their clothing. (actually, probably those are both true. whatever.) this station runs daily contests of this nature, though I'm not usually listening at the right time to hear them. I do remember one from last summer. I was in the hospital, having an mri done on my hands and wrists. for those of you who've never had the pleasure of experiencing magnetic resonance imaging first hand, there are really only two things you need to know: 1) you have to hold perfectly still for a really long time and 2) it is very very very very loud when the magnets do their thing. I was in children's hospital at the time, where they do their best to make such things as painless as possible; my hands were strapped around a brace in front of me so that most of the stress of keeping them motionless was taken off my joints (but my fingers still made me want to scream -- did you know prolonged stillness is more painful for people with rheumatoid arthritis than continuous motion is? even I think it's counterintuitive, but it's true), and I was allowed to wear headphones and listen to the radio throughout the whole thing. so I was lying facedown inside a noisy, tiny, dark tube for over an hour trying not to move or think about the weird stuff they had injected me with. you better believe I was paying very close attention to that radio. anyway, the question of the day was "what is the second most common problem encountered by married couples?" (I assume that means problem relating to marriage, and who knows what sort of sample they used to determine this, but oh well...) and I heard lots and lots of wrong answers from people calling in, including parenting disagreements, money, family conflict, bad (or no) sex. when the dj was about to reveal the right answer, though, the machine was in the middle of one of its BANG BANG BANG moments, so I didn't get to hear it. (you can't hear anything when that happens.) I still don't know what the number two problem with marriage is, which is oddly bothersome at times. do you know? but in between there were the smaller songs, the ones that will flash in and out of top 40, lightweight and sweet and transient. suddenly today, I found myself completely stunned by what it feels like for a girl every single time it played. not because it sneaks up me in a way that no song of madonna's ever has before (which it does), or because it manages to keep being pretty through all the repetition (which it also does), but because it's madonna getting this plaintive, vaguely helpless girl-feeling so completely right. when I was eight and like a prayer was tearing up the charts, madonna was about the most un girl-like thing I could imagine, all self-confidence and in-your-face sexuality. she confused me; I thought I wasn't supposed to like her, because she turned my classmates into madonna wannabes with training bras underneath the shirts they cut off at the midriff and scary fake fingernails that made awful clicky noises on the tabletop during reading group. but at the same time, I felt that she was real and strong and sexy in spite of all her deliberate controversy, so I didn't know what to do. the only thing I thought I really knew was that we were not like each other. now, she sings this fluffy little song whose perfection comes entirely from its simplicity, and I am confused again. I suppose that goes to show how useless rational sympathy is when it comes to understanding humanity's self-imposed categorical divisions: if I think the most perfect expression of what it feels like to be a girl (and I am not an especially normal girl, or if I am I keep it well hidden from everyone except myself) is a simple question that leaves its answer buried in the asking, how will I ever know what it feels like to be something else? I'll willingly admit that I feel slightly baffled by student groups that focus on identity. I don't even know why I'm baffled, although I must have some subconscious objection to such things because I always refuse to apply for grants or scholarships that are just for girls (or women as they like to call us now), and somehow I can never bring myself to submit poetry to the girls-only literary mag at swat, even though I like reading the stuff everyone else submits. is it that other people are allowed to define themselves like that, but I'm not? maybe I'm afraid that if I acknowledge that it does feel like something to be a girl, I'll have to recognize that I don't deserve my appearance-based lot in life. western-european-white enough that no one really thinks about my race; american enough that no one thinks about my ethnicity; educated enough that people think I'm smart; middle class enough not to be a snob; cute enough that people like me by default, but still take me mostly seriously: I earned none of this, wouldn't have even asked for it if I had been offered the chance, but here I am. so how can I accept special treatment for being a girl? and how can I accept that sometimes I do feel the world is showing me less respect than it should, when I know I have so much more working for me than against me? people congratulate me for being a girl who likes astrophysics, and they seem to want to watch out for me and protect me from the perils of male-dominated academia, but you know what? I don't think I've ever met a single black astronomer. (that's not to say sexual politics in the sciences and the rest of the world aren't interesting -- and often extremely screwed up -- but it makes me uncomfortable to think that some people want to give me more credit than I deserve just to counteract the people who give me less credit than I deserve.) this is all getting too compliated for me, and if I don't stop now I might still be writing tomorrow. posts like this demonstrate exactly why I need to construct outlines before I write papers for school -- I certainly did not think I was going to end up here when I started going on about the radio. anyway, I like the song. I imagine there's some part of being anything that hurts. existing is very tricky. all computers hate me, again. except this time instead of simply being uncooperative, they're mocking me outright. (oh, you think you've figured out how to initialize iraf in your own directory? well good for you, except haha you're not allowed to! and even after you get someone to help you with it, I'm not going to let you run ximtool even though it tells you to do that in all the documentation! and then at home, isn't that a nice shiny new cable modem, with all its nice little green power buttons? wouldn't it be nice if the ethernet card would work, or at least if you knew that the problem actually is the network card and not just some product of your own stupidity? well I won't tell you! and on and on.) at least the dialup connection isn't too painful tonight. and no, none of this is why I'm sad, but when I get inside one of my immature mindsets the little things bother me much more than they should. hello and welcome to the human race, rabi, again: I can't even cut an avocado open without going off in the wrong direction; I eat sour cream straight off my fingers; I drip melted margarine all over my leg; I am appalled by my eating habits. television rots my brain. I feel all the layers of myself that I wish would fall away, but we are stuck together and I can't find the places where I could put my fingers to peel something off and still be a whole person. but still I love love love the rest of it, the world (universe fourth dimension I don't know). I love how the restaurant chefs sit on dirty stairs in dirty alleyways, still wearing their white coats and hairnets and crimson lipstick, blowing whorls of smoke into the twilight sky. and how the man who sells my cd asks me without the slightest bit of mockery so you like cantonese pop, and how my cantonese pop has thirteen tracks and only five words I understand. I love the bendy parts of drinking straws and the taste of toothpaste and tinfoil raindrops and flowers and pianos. when I was walking through harvard square today, post-amnesiac, a man in dirty clothes and full circus clown greasepaint stopped me and handed me his top hat. I stood there holding it and feeling awkward while he blew up a long orange balloon and twisted it around itself. (there is something the sound of squeaking latex-on-latex that makes it seem louder in direct sunlight, even though I know that doesn't make sense.) and then the balloon was an orange swan, and he traded me for his hat. as our arms crossed he looked me straight in the eye and asked, "will you marry me when I grow up?" I said no, but the balloon survived the entire bike ride home inside my backpack with five cds and my sweatshirt and wfpc manuals, so I gave it to my little brother. fingers crossed for tomorrow. there is much, much more, but I don't think anyone would pay me to sit here and come up with a thousand words to describe it. so back to this wacko data set. whoever thought it would be a good idea to have four images in one file, anyway? (I did get new batteries, at lunch, and it turns out that every single commercial radio station in boston is giving away u2 tickets today. the airwaves are filled with screaming contest winners.) I got some new clothes yesterday, except of course they are not really new because I have this thing about saving the planet so I buy recycled clothes from non-profit organizations, and this morning I found an old silver hoop earring in one of the pockets. sort of disgusting, but also sort of cool. little left-behind-pieces of people's lives are like the first four words in a story, begging for completion. I sometimes wonder if the pieces are betraying the real person by inspiring these imagined fabrications, because it seems unfair that we so often consider invented and orchestrated lives more interesting than real ones. still, I can't help myself. also, you would think that after six unix accounts I would be at least somewhat competent, but solaris is driving me crazy. I need new batteries. you could take that metaphorically, but I mean it literally; I cannot stay in a quiet office with just the humming of unix boxes to distract me for seven more hours, and the duracells in my walkman seem to be on strike. but that will have to wait. on to productivity. you're my bitch now, hubble data. (okay, I am not really a minion. but hey, your tax dollars are paying my summer salary! and so are mine, I suppose. mindboggling, that.) tomorrow is my first real day of work at harvard, so I am going to try to go to bed at a reasonable hour. as in now. this is a complete joke, but the least I can do is try. also, you might notice that the archives page looks a little different now. wockerjabby's readership has gotten mysteriously and steadily larger over the course of the spring, so I thought I would provide some background for anyone who cares. suggestions and ideas are welcome as always. all this synthesized music -- or noise, for those of you who are less forgiving -- is reminding me of high school, when I used to spend hours playing with midi files, sometimes with the intention of actually writing something decent, but usually just to see what kind of interesting permutations I could come up with, because by that time I had decided I was better at messing with computers than I was at composing anything. in elementary school (junior high to most of you -- we don't have that in cambridge, and schools go all the way from kindergarten to eighth grade) I had this idea that it would be a good exercise to compose strictly in my head. so I wouldn't allow myself to noodle or try and figure things out, and I spent many social studies classes glaring in frustration at my staff paper notebooks, getting annoyed at myself for not being able to write down everything I heard in my head. this resulted in things like what may well be the world's shortest clarinet duet, which I sketched out while we discussed elie weisel's night and later convinced a classmate to play with me, as part of my final book project. it was very very embarrassing. so this is how I am spending my last day of real vacation -- reminding myself what a long time six years really is, or maybe just how ridiculous my early attempts at composition were. all my high school music is doubly packed away on thirty-something floppy disks in a cardboard box in pennsylvania, so I can believe that I got a lot better at it without actually having to find out if that's true. convenient.
19:52
++
more radio-inspired musings (hey, it's either that or data calibration musings, because my life consists of little else at the moment)...
16:20
++
wednesday, june 6
I thought the boston radio frequencies were sufficiently saturated with u2 songs yesterday, but apparently the music directors disagreed with me, because today I couldn't go five minutes without hearing a cut from achtung baby or the joshua tree. (they will never escape those albums, you know, and neither will the rest of us.)
22:51
++
I am sadder than I should be, I know. this is silly and self-indulgent, but what am I supposed to feel instead? until I come up with an answer we will all just have to cope.
00:47
++
tuesday, june 5
the computer sitting on the floor next to my desk has a little plaqueish thing attached to the top of it that says "property of u.s. government" next to the nasa symbol. it also has a barcode and a serial code, but it would probably be a felony or something for me to reproduce them.
15:58
++
I do not like this feeling that my words aren't worth the effort it takes to formulate them.
09:40
++
monday, june 4
good evening from your friendly neighborhood federal employee. how weird is that? I know that the smithsonian is partially funded by the united states government, but it didn't really occur to me that I would be one of their minions until I had to fill out a bunch of federal employment forms. those people don't let you keep secrets.
20:08
++
my seniors are graduating today. I will be in the middle of my completely unnecessary hazardous chemical training. it hurts already.
07:54
++
in the train station today there was a man sitting alone, talking to someone who may or may not have been himself. that in itself was not so strange; there are always people of questionable sanity hanging around harvard square, and you learn pretty quickly not to stare at them. but this guy was dispensing what would have otherwise seemed like sage advice, if it had been given the luxury of a proper audience: "it doesn't matter how smart you are, just how prepared you are. if you just keep at it, you don't have to be intelligent. everything will work out." I wonder if he was trying to convince himself or the rest of us?
00:01
++
sunday, june 3
the music of the internet is different every time you listen to it, even using the same ip address over and over. however, I've discovered that wockerjabby has a somewhat baroque-sounding baseline. hm.
14:42
++
(I keep thinking I'm tired enough to go to sleep, but then I'm not, or else the things I'm reading are keeping me awake. whatever. anyway I am working on things again; little things but nonetheless I am determined to get them done. and yes I am living inside parentheses right now.)
01:58
++