To That Last Reader, Hopefully Hanging On (Or Hanging On, Hopefully)

I mentioned once, long ago, I promised to tell a story. A beautiful story, about a girl who rediscovers her very first piece of writing, composed lovingly, innocently, once upon a time in a kitten-covered diary. A story about how her emotions were wrung as she tenderly turned each pink page, knowing that here, in her hands, she held the beginning, the birth of a love, the dawning of something bigger and brighter than the girl herself.

That story's boring. If I wrote a book on my writer's genesis it would say, in its entirety, "Couldn't spell. Poorly crafted sentences. Author has demonstrated markedly little progress in recent years." Whatever story I thought I was writing contained nothing but errors and a rushed anecdote about a fish flipping its way out of the water and landing on my sister's feet. Frankly, finding that singular crumpled entry so many years ago did nothing but earn it a prized position in the throw-away box.  

Yes, I threw it away: finito, gone, good-bye. I disposed of the nostalgia. It may sound harsh, but trust me, no one is going to regret this, just like no one is going to regret that last month I threw away my old journals from high school. Why? Because no one wants or needs to read the profound thoughts of angsty fifteen-year-old. Least of all, me. 

I am a firm believer in closure. For instance, when my first boyfriend and I were separated for three months - such a long time! - we engaged in unbelievably long, unbelievably vapid daily correspondences that resulted in quite the pile of paper to pack in one person's suitcase. Granted, I was fortunate with my timing, because all this drivel came to an abrupt end when he informed me that he, having detected that I may not be spending each waking moment peering forlornly into the mailbox, had taken his teenage aggression out on his only momento of my love: a sweater that I had so lovingly given him to await my return. My only response was an enraged  "THAT WAS MY FAVORITE SWEATER!" (interruption: note that I'm fixated on the consequence of his actions on my belongings - that he destroyed my sweater - rather than on the implications of his actions - namely, that he's the kind of person who would destroy my sweater). So then I was free to dispose of all that paper. And that was that.

That was that. So. 

This is the part where I tell you that I'm ending my blog. 

It's over.

That Girl? That's Not Me.

Who is this impostor? And why is she wearing my clothes?

Alright, fine, that is me: the absent-minded I'm-staring-at-trees expression is a dead giveaway. Or maybe I'm contemplating murder. Who knows. But I didn't quite recognize myself the first time I saw this photograph, even though it was taken less than a year ago, even though one would think, given the frequency with which I gaze lovingly at my reflection, that I would immediately identify with anything approximating my own likeness. 

But that girl, she isn't me. She aspires to become me, perhaps, or more correctly we share a desire to become the same person, someone better. She'll have to go through me to get there, just as I'll have to go through someone else, the next in the line of continuous drafts. That girl and I happen to share a collection of memories, memories  that diverge the moment this photo was taken. Our futures look radically different. Our expectations, even more so. 

I mentioned I recently went through my writings and my notebooks, looking for a common thread to the years, stable curiosities that might prove I'm not at as willy-nilly about my interests as I've come to believe. Those common threads are there, the same questions popping up throughout the pages, my attempts at answers in various stages of development. It's reassuring and disheartening at the same time: reassuring in that I will probably spend my entire life in the same pursuits, disheartening that I will surely never have a satisfying answer.

Perhaps resolving the questions isn't the goal, just as my own personal evolution will never produce the perfect, final draft. Whatever perfection may look like, I can never hope to reach it. I can only hope to improve.

Will I recognize myself one year from now? In many ways, I hope so. I hope I can see my current blessings and my shortcomings with the objectivity that is never presently available. I hope I will cherish the memories of these days, and smirk at my impatience for their ending. Mostly, I hope that I'll appreciate how much I've grown in only one year, and be able, by looking back, to see how each of these errors, these brief moments of discovery, and all of these tiny, seemingly inconsequential seeds of ideas have, together, formulated precisely the draft that I'm living then.

The Bad Boyfriend

Some of you may be familiar with the frequency with which I use this analogy. Anything unpleasant, irritating, or pain-inducing can be likened to the bad boyfriend. Car not starting on that frigid winter morning? Bad boyfriend. Disgruntled professor gives you a B? Very bad boyfriend.* Is your writing not pouring onto the page as quickly as you would like? Awful, terrible, horrible boyfriend. How dare he.

But to qualify for the upper tiers of bad boyfriendhood, the act or thing in question must be something you would otherwise adore or is somehow instrumental to your plans. Being at once utterly desirable and infuriating, it must leave you in an agonized limbo of indecision in which you wax nostalgic for the good times but yearn to break free of its tyrannical dominion over your life. Most especially it must disappoint you the moment you decide to "work things out", but, then, strengthened with your new-found resolve to end it, the bad boyfriend will regain its charm and worm its way back into your cold, dark little heart.

See? I have it all worked out.

The original inspiration for the bad boyfriend analogy was, of course, my puppy Sirus (pictured above). He was the worst but cutest of boyfriends, and had the unfortunate habit of not only driving me insane, but of trying to bite people. Of scaling fences, just so he could BITE PEOPLE. It was a problem, naturally one with a very expensive fix. Or, I should say, a very expensive possibility of a fix. For only a hundred and fifty dollars an hour, I could have a trainer look at my dog and tell me whether we would be giving her a lot more money, or, you know, putting him to sleep.  

Bad boyfriend indeed. I didn't want to know whether we should put him to sleep, so I would constantly reschedule the appointment and cry, clutching Sirus's confused and soggy head in my lap. I hated that dog for being such an asshole. But I certainly didn't want him to die.

I'll just ruin the ending and tell you straight out that Sirus met his soulmate, aka my father, and they are now living their happily-ever-after complete with overflowing food bowls, squirrels, and the white picket fence. This was a miraculous last-minute save, and all of us (not least the various victims of his chompings) were very happy.

Even though Sirus is no longer with us, the bad boyfriend analogy still lingers, manifesting itself in unwritten papers, petulant children, and the cat that occasionally relieves itself in your shoes. Naturally, there are actual bad boyfriends, of which I have little experience but am nevertheless quite convinced of their existence. These are the people who prompt their lovers to write in to advice columnists every day with opening sentences such as, "I am in love with the most wonderful, amazing, great, super, fantastic guy, but he cheats on me, like, all the time." Obviously, using the bad boyfriend analogy with these folks isn't very funny. Why? Because it isn't an analogy anymore. Keep up.

Anyway. I only brought this up because my laptop, my soul, my lifeline, has broken all previous records of bad boyfriendness to become the Greatest Bad Boyfriend that Ever Was. And I hate it. But I love it so.

*I am not in any way, shape, or form implying that any professor, living or dead, is, was, or ever has been,  disgruntled. 

Swing Swang Schmleh?

 And Chris said that was unpronouncable.

Sometimes I think I should change the title of this blog to "The Stupid Shit I Write", because if it isn't that already, it's about to turn into it. I made a pact with myself to write regardless of whether or not I have anything useful to say. It's part of my newfound stability.

Apparently, yes, I am like a child. My routine is my safety, so to speak. Fortunately, my routine includes singing many a rendition of "My Favorite Things" and of course the beloved "Taxi". This is nice for me. 

Lyra asked me tonight if I am good to her. She seemed genuinely curious, so I'm guessing she didn't think of this question on her own. I told her I hoped so, that I very much want to be. Does she think I'm nice? She kissed me on the cheek and replied that she loves me very much. 

I feel achy all of the time. Ache from not knowing where I stand with myself. Ache from missing Lyra. Ache from not knowing what the future holds. I know my life has gone through some bad feng shui recently, with the complete rearrangement of everything I know and letting go and settling into a new apartment, a new life, a new skin. I long for the days when "problem" was singular, not a tangled knot of many. And yet I don't regret a thing.

My sister gave a speech about regret once, at her high school graduation. I only know this because my mother paraphrases it often, meaning she says, "You know that thing your sister said about regret at her high school graduation? I think you should think about that." Except that I have no idea what she said. But I get the impression it was good. And, apparently, applicable.

So... that. Whatever she said.

Precipice

There comes a time when the only thing left to do is leap off the edge.

I gathered together everything I had written yesterday, everything I could find. I was seeking validation, I suppose, but also some hidden pattern, hoping to discern an interest of mine farther-reaching than what was immediately available to me through reflection. I didn't find anything new. I found ten papers about zombies that had little or nothing to do with zombies. I edged the zombies out early in the first paragraph so I could go on to write strange things about God. The correlations were tenuous at best but that didn't seem to matter; it was a writing class and the only thing the teacher cared about was whether or not we had words on a page. I had a lot of words.

I used to have a lot of words. I had words for everything, any time, any place, I had words. I wrote often, blogging even, allowing other eyes to see these words. The blogging was nonsense and I didn't really care; I've made a career out of getting praise for nonsense. For so little work.

It's a risky business, putting your heart on a page, even if you merely skirt around a deeper issue, cloak your life with cute phrases and fancy wordwork. It doesn't really matter, I suppose. People will read into you as they please, and there's little you can do about that, other than hide behind the thickness of the internet or say nothing at all. When I want to hide, I prefer to say nothing. When I don't want to fail, I prefer to not even try. At least then I can I claim to have chosen my failure.

But then there are times when failure isn't really an option, when you have to make that leap and hope that you'll fly even though the odds are good that you'll fall straight to the ground. It isn't the falling that makes one a failure, it's backing away slowly, it's refusing to participate. I can't refuse, I've barricaded myself with a collection of bullies and academic pushers who are staring at me, expectantly, wondering only why I'm not moving faster than I am. Why I haven't leapt yet. I tell them I'm frightened I'm not good enough, or that I'm not sure I'll enjoy the work, or that I like to take too many naps. None of these are true, but I try to convince myself of their truth in order to have an excuse to back away. In reality, I'm worried I'll be boxed in. I'm worried that once I take that leap, I'll never be able to get back again. I fear that my hesitancy is a sign of something deeper, that perhaps I should be looking elsewhere to get what I need. And to give back the best that I can.

Ultimately, I just want to be useful.

Writing about Writing

This blog was born to give myself a quasi-creative outlet minus the serious analysis and editing required of most things I write. A second, more minor reason for this blog was to allow myself to somehow feel connected, to let other people into the normally intensely private world in which I live and let them see a side of myself unguarded. This has been impossible to maintain.

I said once that blogging requires the presence of three factors: a passion/annoyance/sense-of-the-interesting for a particular subject matter; a desire to express one's thoughts on said subject; and, lastly, a desire to share those thoughts with others. Lately, I've been prone only to the first two out of three, and this does not a blogger make. My need for privacy, while held for a moment at bay (though not really; most of my posts skirted, whether cleverly or clumsily, around the heart of my reality), has returned full-force and I no longer have any desire to extract the senseless and superficial and coat them in some sort of attractive gloss. Why I couldn't make a career out of writing about plaid pants and bus stops, I will never know.

Until I realized this about myself, I was struggling with what I thought was a form of writer's block, and, my God - that is now officially on my list of top five most unpleasant sensations ever encountered in this lifetime. This means that lately I've been thinking about writing more than actually writing, the realization of which gave me an attainable and happy purpose for this blog: an exploration into the whys and hows of the writing process. How did we become writers? How does writing shape the way we process and remember events? What's up with that dreadful writer's block, anyway? With respect to blogging, what is it like to have your social status in flux with every post, and to have complete strangers segue into conversation with a casual, "Heeey... I've been reading your blog."?

So: writing about writing. In my next post, I'll tell you about my first thrill with writing, and the horror I felt when I rediscovered that little piece - resplendent with bad grammar and spelling errors - a year or two later. Stories like these give insight to the buddings and struggles of writerhood that aren't directly evident from the-thing-that-is-written. I hope, if you identify as a writer, that you'll feel free to share stories of your own.

Lastly, I'm still very much an ego-centric human being: I retain full rights to pop in and recount various goings-on in my life, particularly if I'm passionate/annoyed/find-it-ridiculously-interesting. And, of course, if I want to share all that with you.

Tea.

I drink this tea sometimes, Yogi Tea. If you live in Portland, chances are you've had this tea yourself, or at least seen it staring back at you as you hemmed and hawed in the coffee aisle. Each tea bag carries a little message. I like to try to see how that message speaks just to me, how it fits in with my day, my life, my thoughts or problems. Sometimes it's obvious, or too generically insightful to be interesting: "Have faith." "All is light." Sometimes it takes me a minute.

I'm drinking this tea now, but only because I've run out of jasmine. It's fine. The water's already a little cool, but it's fine. My entire apartment smells a bit like fabric softener, and the smell itself is soft, too, like it belongs in liquid. Vaguely floral. Pale blue. Soft, like no one lives here.

Maybe humans are just too talented at seeing the signs. Lately, the past two weeks or so, I've felt gently pushed in a new direction. It's subtle at first, a new book here, a conversation there, and it's all coincidence. But it adds up. Then it's the unmistakable boredom, the comfort of an ego assuaged, and I wonder what I really want. What would make the best use of me. Moments later, a new perspective - wherever the attention is, I'm there. I'm there doubting the clarity of it all.

My daughter: she snores. Not now, just breathing gently through her nose, breaths in and out and in again. It's reassuring. Grounding. She keeps me tied to this path, wherever it is that it goes.

To the Person Who Stole My Garbage Can

I love Lyra. God, I love her. I love the way she wakes up in the middle of the night wanting to go to Starbucks, and the way she doesn't believe me when I tell her they're closed. The way she wants to put on her "daytime clothes" and go see. I love how she's the only person who can talk me into anything, and the stabbing pain I feel when I've upset her and her bottom lip trembles just so. I love the way she's so free, so passionate, so unrestrained. How she knows exactly what she wants. (I loved that about childhood: always knowing what you want, and not caring if it's good for you.) I love her blonde hair, her blue eyes, and how she demands to know why she does not have two mommies like her friend. I love everything about her.

I love my Love, the one who's mine. I love how he, inexplicably, charmingly, is convinced I'm an interesting person. I love how he loves, so wholeheartedly, honestly, fiercely. I love the way he can pierce through the heart of an issue in a second flat. How he radiates intelligence. I love the way he gestures with his hands. I love his conviction and his calm self-assurance. I love his faith. I even love the way he bullies me into attending class, late and wet-haired and grumbling. I love the way he genuinely expects the best from everyone else.

I love my friends, every single one of them. I love Sara, for being simultaneously so self-righteous and yet so endlessly forgiving. I love Chris, for every ounce of patience he has had with me, and his eternal optimism. I love him for the way he adores Lyra as much as I do. I love Mem, for being Mem, and my God, that hair. I love how he can be so intellectually ferocious despite looking for all the world like he just rolled out of bed. I love Tim, for being so reticent, so independent, and how he understands what I mean when I say, "It just so interesting." I love Austin and Noelle, not even for all their charm and wisdom and talent, but for the depth with which they love each other. I love my sister for bringing me to tears with laughter, but also for her endless ability to bring me back down to earth. And I love Kaeti, for her indominable passion, for always opening the doors of the world to me, for letting me be so honest.

I love my mother, too. My mother is the strongest, and most beautiful, person I've ever met. For all of our bitching and affected bitterness, we will always love each other. We both know it. My mother is the only person on the planet allowed to be mean to me, and she would KICK YOUR ASS.

But you know what, person who stole my garbage can? Despite the fact that I cannot begin to comprehend your motives, I probably love even you, just because you too have friends, and a mom, and maybe even kids who move you to tears with that grip they have on your heart. 

Just keep the damn thing.

Dramatic, Sure. But Boring? Yes!

This blog, my alluring mistress of Procrastination, seems incapable these days of drawing me into her bed. How long have we been together? Six months now, and this last month it was clear that we were drifting apart. I thought we had only hit a rough patch, that I was simply busy, that we would reunite in our time and on our own schedule. 

Now, I'm not so sure.

I'm only good at those things I find appealing; I tend to steer clear of all things that look like Work. I do not like Work. Ask my friends. I have, however, become gradually more and more talented at fooling myself over the years, to the point where I can squint really tight and pretend that a great deal of boring activities that I should do are really fun-bells-and-whistles. Then there are a myriad of minor details I must attend to that promise to reward eventually; these I can usually suffer with only a modicum of grumbling. And a few well-timed sighs. 

This blog looks more and more like Work everyday. I think it was a nice creative exercise, once, in the beginning, but now I really have to squeeeeeze that sponge to get any words on the page. At all. I don't know if you've noticed (you may have noticed) that I've been fudging a bit lately, posting some pictures and then something I wrote ages and ages ago and then some more pictures... that wasn't me being cute, that was me being pretty damn lame.

I think we're going to work on it; maybe we'll go to bloggers' counseling and see if we can patch things up. We won't put any pressure on it. We'll take it slow. I'll learn to be more patient and she can buy a new dress, or get out more with her blog friends, or go to the gym or something. Stop being so damn needy.

This is why you never marry the mistress.

Peekture

Wherein I post a photo of some totally random child. 

Photo taken one year ago today.

Aren't I Poetic: Reflections on the Growth of a Writer

I wrote this little synopsis as the frosting for my zombie class cake two years ago; I just stumbled over it in my momentary struggle to locate those Hume essays from spring term. The professor had asked us to reflect on how our writing had grown since taking the class (and reading ever so many papers about poor Zombie Mary, my responses to which I would deign to include if I had had more experience with the topic and had been just that much nicer to their authors).

I am just. so. dramatic.

Reflections on the Growth of a Writer

We all grow in different ways, and I cannot claim to grow symmetrically or at the same rates at all times. Nevertheless, it is difficult at first to perceive how what appears to be stagnation, or even a period of moving backwards, can actually be a moment of profound growth not yet realized on the scape of the conscious.

It was during this class that I realized that I had failed myself as a writer; I had grown so comfortable in the little place that I occupied on the writing spectrum that I had refused to see how I could improve, evolve, or just be a little different. The infatigable attention-seeker that I am, I leaned too readily on the new teacher ready to praise my performances, and ignored the fact that I was a one-trick-pony, pulling out the same old routine for a new set of eyes.

So what inspired me to see myself in an honest new light? It’s hard to say. A part of it is that I grew tired of writing; grew weary of putting down the same words on the same page in the same order. I wasn’t proud of what I was writing anymore. I had lost my edge. In my melodramatic despair, my writing fulfilled its own prophecy in becoming worse, and I felt incapable of salvaging it. Even more painful, though, was watching my peers succeed me: what I had once done so easily and felt so proud of, my talent, was now being performed by others while I watched from the sidelines. Such humbling moments should never be ignored.

What have I learned from this experience? Only that transformation will come as surely as a butterfly emerges from a chrysalis. The samples that I have included in this portfolio are not the product of this transformation; they are not my best work. But these samples bear witness to a process that has only just begun, an awkward growth-spurt of creativity that expresses itself first timidly, tentatively, before it can remerge with confidence.

Such is what I have learned in these few short weeks. While I have not been able to completely shed my competitive edge, I have realized that it is no longer with the other members of the class that I am competing: I am competing against myself, a battle that will leave part of me vanquished, part of me the conqueror. Who I will emerge as, I have no idea.

Princess Ponies Must Be Watched in Style

For Christmas Lyra received a series of squishy tents and tubes that seem to be little more than giant nylon Slinkies. When strung together, these Slinkies take up more square footage than any house I've had the pleasure of living in.

Thursday night Lyra brought one section - a single tube - with her from her father's house. The first two nights she didn't get much more creative than mashing it down, stepping inside and then letting it sproing upright: Lyra in a tube. 

She found this hilarious.

Today, though, it occurred to her that she could stuff the tube with pillows. She tried to cram every pillow from the bed and every pillow from the couch into the thing - twelve pillows in all - which resulted in quite the overflowing pillow situation. But! It also meant that the tube now functions as a chair, from which My Little Ponies cartoons can be comfortably watched, and also as a pirate ship, which as we speak is sailing far, far away to Disneyland.

I miss my imagination being so sustaining. 

The Christians Got 'er! Arrr...

A friend of mine is now a Christian. She wouldn't call it that, but I would, and I don't appreciate that her new-found Christianity entails calling me "juvenile". Luckily such a remark was only inaccurate in context, and provides me with the freedom to rebel vindictively against my categorization with a pre-script jab. 

Wasn't it just yesterday I was having a conversation with myself about the different varieties of Christians? I believe it was yesterday, if yesterday was the day with the very loud, very bad band playing on campus and all the student groups with their tables, trying to peddle their memberships and ideas. One of those moments where you deliberately stare at your feet because if you look up you are guaranteed to make eye contact with someone, and the odds are they're trying to give you something.

I still have one brochure from an extreme, but rather clever, Christian group on campus. Someone had drawn a cartoon about "Pavlov's frog" wherein the possibility of meaning (as in the kind that actually exists) is entertained. Very quickly the frog takes a yewey off the deep end and finds God.

I don't like the idea that God only exists at the end of a U-turn. I understand this concept in the "seeing the error of my ways" sense, and that's fine, but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the lack of logical connection between idea A and idea B: present something befuddling and hope the reader accepts "God" as the only possible solution. This despicable literary device is found only in the shallow waters of religious propaganda, where I hope it one day dies. A few things:

1. It's insulting to the reader's intelligence. This is enough in itself, but there's still some more ground to cover. Moving on...

2. Any spiritual view that is the product of fear, coercion, or confusion, has missed the point completely. Religious brochures may draw us in with cute frogs or peaceful pictures of sunsets on the cover, but a steaming pile of rage lies in wait for us on the second page. This hurts my feelings. Also, it makes me want to smack people, which is not a very Christian thing to do (although arguably that's exactly why I need the brochure in the first place).

3. Even if fear, coercion, or confusion is left out of the picture, I'm still a bit unnerved by the idea of convincing others to hold specific spiritual beliefs. This isn't even because I find it annoying - which I do - but because any so-called belief that would result from persuasion is, again, ingenuine. Let's just suspend our own thoughts on the matter for a second and imagine that God is very much a real person, and all that He wants is for you (yes, you!) to love Him dearly. Can you imagine how God would feel if He had to talk you into falling in love with Him? Can you imagine how you would feel if you had to talk someone else into falling in love with you? Intuitively, would any of us say that such a love would be genuine, or worthwhile, or satisfying to the one who is allegedly loved?

Maybe none of that matters; besides the fact that God isn't necessarily walking around in the flesh (at the moment or not; there are far too many bases to cover here), maybe the type of love or how it's acquired is beside the point. Maybe spirituality isn't immune to the "see what happens" methodology: try it out, see if you're better adusted. See if all this works for you. I certainly wouldn't call this a belief, though; it's adopting a series of agreeable principles. 

This brings me back to a conversation I had with my friend D several months ago. I had been trying to find a way to characterize spirituality without calling into play all of those deep-seated emotions that one generally associates with the term. If spirituality really is a series of values, arbitrarily chosen or not, which produce behavior that orients oneself effectively and happily within the world... I can make sense of that. I'll tell you what I cannot do: give you a reason to hold those values that doesn't call upon their effects. I cannot do that. It's circular. Why is this is a problem? It's a problem the moment you step back and ask yourself why you want those events to occur.

I could easily appeal to the many probable reasons we have for why we behave the way we do, all of which, again, speak only to effects. Evolutionary psychology is full of explanations for cooperation. Unfortunately, it's also full of (sometimes contradictory) explanations for why we might refuse to cooperate. Why we might behave, say, murderously. It's a problem, but it isn't a problem, because that's just shuffling off our value judgments onto a convenient if untidy body of evidence. On some level it may not be inaccurate to say, "Awww, honey, I love you because I've been arrested by the same biological processes that spurred my ancestors to reproduce!" Yeah, not the sweetest thing anyone's ever heard but no one can say it's completely off the mark. It just doesn't explain everything.

Same with value judgments: you can cite potential reasons for tendencies, but what about how I feel? The sheer fact that I am aware of a social and biological impact on my behavior renders those same impacts useless as a basis for values (unless you think I'm just impossible to please. Stack that on top of my arbitrary attributes pile). 

One of the problems with values, though, is that you still have to interact with other people while you're making up your mind. There are, fortunately, two solid reasons for a well-thought-out action, and those are:

1. It's good for you, and

2. It's good for other people.

Yes, I have just completely backtracked, because I haven't resolved this internally but I still need to be a halfway decent human being. Neither of these avoids the word "good" or disinvites the question "why?" but they're deliciously hard to disagree with (and that's the other thing: the end tends to be the same, no? At least usually? It's the means that are so damn confounding). 

I suppose then, taking a murky trek back to religious propaganda, that the creators of such have, or should, ask themselves a few questions: Is it better to terrorize and confuse if I get people to turn to God? What are the odds that the few people I do recruit, in their terror and confusion, will spread more terror, and more confusion? Does the image of God that I want to portray condone peace and clarity? If so, why am I not sharing that image? Do I want to convince others of God, or that I'm right? 

Every day I have this dialogue with myself, and every day it resolves: I will never know why I am here. I only know that I am here. What do I want that to look like?

It should look the same, either way. 

Intro to Formal Logic

If Mem does not believe in cell phones, Jen has a hard time finding Mem.

If Jen has a hard time finding one of her favorite people, she is unhappy.

Mem is one of Jen's favorite people.

Mem does not believe in cell phones.

__________________________

:(

Go Create Some Reality

My well-oiled plan did not produce the best results.

There's something to be said for exploration, but then there's also something to be said for having a plan of attack. I enjoyed the luxury of dabbling in many subject areas my first two years of college, a luxury that I am paying dearly for now as I sit through the pre-requisites I put off and put off while I took the more interesting courses. To be honest, I probably could have used these classes a couple of years ago, rather than labor through everything the hard way.

I arrived on time but not early enough to secure a good seat (although, given the usual first-day attendance, I should be grateful for any seat at all). My horror of standing in line compells me every term to buy my books a week early; the girl next to me, the one emitting equally spaced non-commital hrmmphs every few moments, came prepared with a notebook containing a single piece of paper which she proceeded to cover, top to bottom, with equally non-commital doodles. The professor handed out a packet, labeled "Arguments". 

Socrates is a man? Socrates IS a man! I wonder, in all seriousness, how much of this could be taught to second-graders:

"What is this?"

(pregnant, or not so pregnant, pause)

"This is the subject. And this? This is the predicate. So what is this whole thing, together?"

"An argument?"

"No, this is a premise. But what is THIS whole thing, together?"

"An argument?"

"Yes."

"Yay!" 

And the peasants rejoice. Maybe some grammar schools already have this covered, but in case they don't - as mine surely didn't - I think we could safely take the next step and teach some basic logic to the kiddies. Douglas Hofstadter apparently had the chance, in his teenage years, to teach an elementary class some of this in an effort to see whether their nubile young minds could easily assimilate the information (and did this happen? I'm interested to know). Whether the results of that particular investigation were positive or negative, I think we ought to try again, give the kids a head-start on their syllogisms. It would really save so much time in the long run.

In keeping with my self-imposed stylistic constraints, I suppose there's also something to be said for repetition. I have a hard time drawing the line between useful repetition and the annoying: in first grade, copying the spelling list over and over and over again was annoying, but perhaps also useful (or at least, that was the general idea). Now, learning the difference between induction and deduction yet again is annoying, and I'm pretty sure it's no longer useful. This also applies to the number of times I'm assigned "The Republic", although an argument could be made that this is somehow good for me, or some under-accessed part of me that is not only busy at work internalizing this story but is also deeply, deeply concerned. 

This is fine. In many ways, it's also easier.

In an hour I'll be off to Sci-Fi Fantasy Land, where we will hopefully watch movies and be assigned hours of page-turning fun. I can't believe that I actually complained about taking this class - I should be grateful, if anything, for the delicious distraction.

Nine Minutes

That's how much time I have, and I'm not using those minutes very efficiently. Managed to power through two articles on the bus, and am very much looking forward to reading sci-fi on the couch in my pjs tonight (for a class, no less!). 

Bit of a boring update, really. Blog notwithstanding, I'm remembering my roots as an intensely private person, one who recently may have spent too many days with too little adult interaction. Ah, well. That will be over now, both the lack of engagement and the nine minutes.

Great. More Pictures.

I tried to circumnavigate jetlag post flight by submitting myself to twenty-four hours of pre-flight wakefulness. Not one of my best ideas. By the time I climbed aboard a bus in Newark at 7:15 in the morning, about to embark on my six-hour tour of New York, I was irritable and nodding off upright. Looking back over my photos from that brief but inspired blink of my life, I realize that I perfectly captured, not the subject of each photo, but my mood: exhausted but insatiable, a hundred photos taken of a wall but all from the same straight-up vantage point. My physical expenditure was kept to a necessary minimum, so in response I seemed to have snapped photos of everything from the mandatory Statue of Liberty to scenes from the subway to a potted plant in a restroom. 

Most of the photos aren't that great, especially, interestingly, the ones I was most invested in at the time. I'm lucky to salvage a few of the above-mentioned wall that inspired such immediate obsession; many of the objects and novelties that captures one's eye when sleep-deprived are less than extraordinary under normal circumstances. So while I find this particular selection fascinating, I imagine that you, dear viewer, may not find yourself transported to my momentary frame of mind.

A Random Smattering

What follows is pretty much the entirety of my non-Vasa Sweden photos... yes, I know, a bit pathetic, especially considering that these were all taken within 48 hours of my arrival. Whatever. This is what you get.

The first thing one notices when stepping off the plane is that everything in Sweden (well, more specifically, everything in the Arlanda airport) is beautiful. I hadn't yet quite recovered from snapping a million-and-one impromptu pics of Manhattan, so I felt compelled to take more, even here in airport hotel. Pretty, no? This country was made just for me.

But it gets better! Here's another hotel lobby. I failed (failed!) to take any photos of the staircase in this hotel: a shame. 

A boat. Probably my favorite photograph.

Another boat, streetsign adjacent.

Look at the pretty flower... believe it or not, I took about thirty photos of this damn flower in my attempt to capture the detail of the petals. If you can't appreciate the photo, at least appreciate my time (and slavish dedication). 

This is a structure, and it's made of bricks. I do not know what possessed anyone to create it, although I'm rather glad they did.

A window. I know.

Sweden's motto: Cover your bases! I assume these are photos of famous Swedes, maybe even famous Stockholmians (Stockholmites?). Whether you're coming or going, they're here for you.

Can't Type: Fingers Broken

Where did September go? 

I just looked at my blog list: 15 posts for August, 18 for July, 16 for June, 32 for May... and 1 single, stunted, under-watered post for September. Which, I might add, is almost over.

Somehow I'm going to have to make up for this - not for you, dear reader! - but to raise myself again in my own esteem, recapture my blogger identity. How shall I do this? I think I'll post some pictures (they're worth so many words, they say). 

Recently I took a merry trip to Sweden (that's where September went!). Didn't actually... see much of Sweden, but I did occasionally venture out for bagels and other Swedish delicacies, and one day I went to a museum! Beautiful country. Here are some pictures; try not to be overwhelmed:

Vasa Museum: The Vasa is a ridiculously ornate Swedish warship that sank half an hour after setting sail on her maiden voyage in 1628. Not well-designed, one might say, but beautiful. The low salinity of Stockholm's harbor preserved the ship until she was discovered

 and, eventually, resurrected - 333 years later. The brightly colored carvings above and below are reproductions; the originals, having lost their hue after years underwater, are located on the Vasa herself.

The darkness of these photographs is partially due to the dim lighting necessary to preserve the Vasa, partially due to my resolute refusal to use flash. R eventually pointed out that raising my ISO would help, too.

Beautiful bondaged mermaid.

The Vasa was no tiny ship - this photograph gives a good idea of her depth.

I'll post more photos from Stockholm tomorrow - I'd post them now but they don't quite fit in with the feel of this set. See you soon.

Jigsaw

Once upon a time I thought of writing as the overflow of ideas and emotion, the pressure-release valve that brings relief and keeps my feet planted firmly on the ground. Now I feel as though I've waited too long, intimidated by my own words or, rather, by my inability to capture an essence or a simple wisp of feeling that I no longer know how or what to say.

Unused as I am to this feeling of trepidation, I'm hesitant to post anything at all. In the past I've accepted words for what they are - a swirling, insubstantial, beautiful mask for what lies beneath - but I'm forced to reject that now, wanting as I do for words to mean something, to say something true, that I can't simply use them as a game or a ploy but want them - need them! - to reflect what I mean as if that would somehow prove myself. Somehow make myself real.

In the end, we're only as real as the impact we've made, whether in the minds of others or some arguably more tanglible creation. It's not that I fear mortality; I fear never having been. I fear that everything I've never said will vanish like unseen smoke and I with it, unrealized.

Slugs Do Not Live the Lowliest Life

My apartment complex insists upon watering our small patches of grass twice a day, and subsequently the smaller patch of concrete that is my front doorstep is frequently covered with earthworms, slugs, centipedes, and other invertebrates inspired by the moisture to flee their homes.

I particularly enjoy the slugs. They may not be capable of higher math but I like to believe that they think great thoughts in their own way. They’re steady, determined creatures. They probably think that they move very fast. Maybe they even see my front porch as a new uncharted territory, and that they’re off on a grand adventure. Going where no slug has gone before, and whatnot.

Except, slugs have been here before. A few hours ago I was sitting on this front step of mine, admiring the antennae of a smart green slug. He was left in the dust by the occasional centipede but he didn’t seem to mind, making slow but tireless and happy progress. He seemed quite content, and I enjoyed looking at him. A few hours later he was dead.

I smooshed him. Very much by accident, and I still haven’t recovered. I know he had started on the south-hand side, heading west. I figure after an hour or so he encountered the front door and had to turn north in order to avoid exploring the prickly welcome mat. An hour after that he would have had to turn again, east this time, when he had found his way barred by another door, the door to the storage area, where I keep my cigarettes and lighters.

Cigarettes are the reason I went outside. Cigarettes are the reason I put my feet in front of that door and, in a single, irreversible moment, snuffed out the grand adventure of one slug’s life. In that moment I became an instrument of murder, driven by a petty and irrational love.

Afterwards I sat sadly and watched his poor body, the little antennae no longer probing about curiously but sticking straight up and awkwardly in the air. I did ask myself why I was so upset about one slug’s death. I eat meat. I eat chickens, cows, and pigs. Do I not think that chickens, cows, and pigs also deserve grand adventures? Do I think that perhaps their grand adventures are trumped by my desire to eat them? I lamented that I didn’t have an answer, except that chickens, cows, and pigs do not live on my front doorstep, and that if they did, I would not eat them. Not those particular ones.

There has to be some way to deter the relatives of this slug from venturing out upon my doorstep. Short of putting his dead body on display in an effort to warn the others, I would do pretty much anything. I do not want to smoosh another slug. I do not want to wrap another slug’s body in tissue paper and dispose of him in the garbage. I do want my slugs to continue their grand adventures, and while I admire their willingness to take risks in life I do not feel that they have the perspective necessary for adventuring near sidewalks and doorsteps.

I wish that slugs could recognize that they are vulnerable. They are not protected by external armor or even the stiffness of bones. I wish, at the very least, that they could have their playground, while saving for myself a small, slug-free pathway that I could pass through unencumbered by potential murderous guilt.

Until this dream is realized, I can only watch my feet.

Hundred and Twenty-Five Posts, Wow

Funny how you can go from eating, breathing, sleeping one thing for two weeks before you wake up and wonder what you saw in it in the first place. It’s like flirting with a new boy when you’re married; at first you think this is just a great friendship but then you wonder if it’s something more, something until you realize that it’s just the same lines stuck on repeat. You’re back to your old ways.

I thought maybe, for a day, that I had something here, something bigger than me and possibly even better. But it didn’t make my heart race, the way this does. It brought just bad dreams and nightmares and made me write lots of frightened little lists. Lists of things I could do. Lists of things I could be.

Yeah, so I don’t totally make sense. I’m willing to sacrifice a little bit of sense to make even more, put my faith in something outside of myself to find out who I really am on a good day. I know enough about the other ones.

It's Called 'Frugality,' My Dear, or, Why I Should Neither Buy Books nor Blog After Drinking

Logic puzzles are getting harder and harder to find.

I remember the very moment I laid eyes on my first logic puzzles. Dad had driven Jamie and I to Houston for a school thing, where we'd go to the natural history museum and the renaissance faire and then afterwards, inexplicably, we would all go to the cinema to see The Beverly Hillbillies (which still sticks out sorely in my mind because it was a terrible movie and I could never quite figure out how it fit into the whole trip-thing). After that it was dark and I was probably wound up, having had so much excitement packed into my day followed by two hours sitting still in the dark. I'm sure I was whining.

"Dad. I'm BORED."

Dad's answer to boredom has always been one of two things: airshows or bookstores and, there being neither in the near vicinity, we ended up in the magazine aisle of the local grocery. (What people will do, in a pinch.) And there they were: logic puzzles. A whole magazine full of them. I remember having that tingling sensation as I flipped through the pages, knowing at that moment that my Solitaire-playing days were over. (Yes, I DO care to find out whether John's last name is Jones or Bobton or Trent, and whether he married Sally or Alicia or Jane, and whether they went to the Galapagos or the Bahamas or to boring old Yosemite on their honeymoon. This is IMPORTANT INFORMATION.)

Tough little buggers they were, too. The logic puzzlers are a dying breed, I'm pretty sure, and when you're little and you're puzzling and kind of stuck, there's really no one that can help you. ("Mom? Can you read this?" "...No.") Only once has someone ever approached me while I was puzzling away and said, "YOU LOVE LOGIC PUZZLES?!" and that person was really, really excited, and she told me how she thought she was the only one in the world who did them, but I was like, well, obviously someone is coming up with the things, and she was all, no, no, really, IT'S JUST ME. AND NOW YOU.

Suddenly I know how she feels.

One would think, of all places in Portland, Powell's would have logic puzzles. Would you like to see how many shelves make up their Sudoku section? Or perhaps their crossword section? Would you now? Because I can show you. I can also show you their Mensa section, and their stupid "Fill-It-In" section, and their anything-that-anyone-else-has-come-up-with section. I had to plead with the info guy to search for "logic puzzles" because he kept sending me to the math section and then back to the puzzle section and I had to keep telling him that I wasn't FINDING IT please just search for them and tell me where they are because every time you send me out I keep picking up a new book and I can't afford all of this PLEASE - thank you. Finally he did and the one book we came up with seemed to be an assortment of general brain-benders so I sighed and then bought my books and left.

Which! is actually the point of this post. I need to stop buying books, because A) I do not have time to read them so they just sit and look rather pretty, which sounds pretentious but actually feels really comforting and good and B) I should probably save my money, considering that I haven't gone to work in well over a month now. But last night I was cleaning up after Lyra left and I lined up all of her books on the shelf under the tv and they really didn't take up much space, so at Powell's today I very carefully selected a few new additions to her library.

It's time-consuming, picking out Lyra-books: I know, or think I know, what sort of stories she would like and the kinds of illustrations she's attracted to, but then I have to read the entire story all the way through because I've been tricked by pretty pictures before. Also, and barely relatedly, there's a book called "Henry Works," about a bear who is supposed to be Henry Thoreau, and while the illustrations are fantastic the story is quite boring, although the end is funny in a three-year-olds-will-never-get-this kind of way. I did not buy it. Instead, I ended up choosing a delightful rendition of "The Emperor's New Clothes" and this fabulous book of poems called "Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant." How could she not love these? I like to think that I'm shaping the future memories of her childhood, that she'll look back in twenty years and ask me just which book it was, the one with the flying frog toasters? And I'll say, "Ah, I remember the very day I picked that out of you..." and then I'll spend a whole weekend digging through box after box in search of it just so I can run my fingers over its wrinkled pages and cry. Then, when she wants it, maybe she's thinking about having her own kids or she just wants to revisit those pictures and the way she felt back then, I'll make her promise to take care of it and hopefully she'll roll her eyes and say something like, "MOM. You bought that book for ME, remember?" And I'll probably offer to buy her a new copy, one without wrinkles, and maybe we'll even fight about it a little bit, a good kind of fight, the kind you can only have when you both really love each other as well as something else.

See? Books are special.

Some of you are probably wondering how I can get so off-topic so quickly, and I really have nothing to say to that.

Corporal Punishment? Really?

Robert Rummel-Hudson, author of "Schuyler's Monster Blog", brought something to my attention that I thought was tucked safely into the past of our, erm, enlightened society: schools are still spanking, paddling, whacking, beating our kids.

Excuse me?

He says that the numbers have gone down, and, great, plenty of counties are outlawing corporal punishment. But where have I been? I thought it was ALREADY illegal, hands down, for years and years. To top things off, kids in special education are far more likely to receive bodily harm at the hands of their teachers. Robert, whose daughter has an extremely rare neurological condition called Bilateral Perisylvian Polymicrogyria, had this to say:

Even if you're one of the people who think that hitting a child is a good way to discipline and to educate, or perhaps especially if you believe that, I'd like you to stop for just a moment and think about that. I'd like for you to close your eyes and imagine how that scene might unfold.

Meanwhile, what's the topic of the most vocal outcry from disability advocates of late? The use of the word "retard" in a movie.

And I thought I would just quote that here, because he really hit that nail on the head.

Natural Punishment

I'm not drinking that wine again.

To be sure, I was already in a bit of an odd mood when the wine-drinking commenced, and, to be doubly sure, I nodded off over Aquinas's account of the sins that deserve of eternal punishment. But the dreams that followed were so vile, so repugnant, that I hate to think that they came directly from me, so I'm blaming the wine.

I've never dreamt such dreams. I couldn't label them as nightmares, because there was no element of fear, just a profound sense of sadness and pain as I watched the goings-on and, later, participated. Certainly, there was also a submission to weakness: knowing that I didn't have the strength to call attention to the situations or even verbalize what was going horribly, horribly wrong. It couldn't even be called "wrong," really, not in a definitive sense. Everyone was partaking in these strange crimes and I felt as though my own conviction was being called to me from another lifetime, barely remembered.

I just noticed there are Fruity Pebbles all over the floor. Lyra's alternating between dusting with a basting brush and drinking hot cocoa on my yoga mat (she calls it her "sleeping bag," leading me to think that I haven't subjected her to the camping experience enough). The fact of her woke me from my dreams more than once, when I would mention her name and then realize that I didn't know who I spoke of. Every time I would awaken, then, I would check to make sure she was still alive, because I'm always fearful that my dreams are prophecies but thankfully they never are.

Lyra tells me now, strangely, that she dreamt of the two of us last night; that she was stolen by a bus driver but I attacked him with swords, like a pirate, and I saved her. But she was still hurt, she said, so I took a band-aid from my pocket and put it on her knee, and then I told her that I was holding on tight and she'd never get away again, and we were very happy.

It occurs to me that Lyra's image of me and my image of myself are not one and the same.

Normally I would comment on how I hope that I can maintain this disparity, somehow, or more ideally transform myself into the person she believes that I am. I could say that, but I won't, because right now I'm just grateful that she thinks I'm someone worth knowing, someone capable of protecting her and that I've been granted this power to comfort her by simply being the person who's always been.

All this talk of punishment can pervert a person, at least temporarily, the way social workers tell me that they can't look at happy families in the park without visions of domestic violence and molestation. That isn't the life I want to live; I'd like to look past the maintenance of baseline human interaction and see what else is out there, what happens on the other side of the line. Artists try to reach this place, as do scientists and anyone else concerned with the classic trio of "truth, love, and beauty". Owen Flanagan puts it a bit more elegantly, calling these areas the "spheres of meaning", and that our navigation through these spheres is essential to reaching eudaimonia. (You can read his book for yourself, if you have some preternatural sort of patience: "The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World".) I agree with him about these arbitrary (I mean, fluid) spheres of meaning, at least in respect to individual navigation and individual fulfillment, but as a theory for groups and large communities I failed to see how it could really hold up (except for the obvious "happy people make happy communities" - largely unsatisfying and simplistic). Maybe he covered all that in the chapter I skipped.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that whatever is past the bare minimum of acceptable human behavior towards one another seems, even now, to be the subject of just sheer speculation. We have these notions of an ideal society, or collective nirvana, or what have you, but what we don't have is any evidence that these states are objectively possible and what they would look like, just overly-poetic waxings on the one hand and cult experiments on the other. I think this is a bit of a curiosity.

I'd like to say more now, but it's time to go to the park.

I Hart Rawls

I'm having that sinking feeling that I get before an impending all-nighter, when I know that I will waste at least an hour staring at my computer screen, trying to convince myself to select all of the text I just wrote and start over. It isn't good enough, I'll tell myself, and I will stall, paralyzed. I will not move.

Well that sounds a bit dramatic. It probably looks a bit dramatic, too, me all wide-eyed and afraid of my own writing. But, that is the way it is, and I suppose that that's possibly why I find the act of blogging so attractive: it's unthinking, nonjudgmental. I censor myself, naturally, but stylistically I'm unconcerned.

(But then I say something like the above, and I wonder if I'm just slipping that in as a disclaimer.)

I had another point, too, but if this blog is a whipping-boy then I'm afraid I have to invent my point-making energy in another arena and end this here. Tut mir leid.

Where Blogs Go When They Die

I haven't had much time for superfluous writing as of late, but I didn't want you to think I've been slacking. Heavens, no. But the truth of the matter is that not every blog entry makes the cut, and when I don't have the time or self-esteem for cleanup most of them are left to wither and die like forgotten... things... that wither and die. Like plants! Right.

So anyway, I thought it'd be fun to give you a rundown of all the posts that didn't make it in the last few days... time for the List O' Week!

1) State of Nature - Hobbes meets reality television: think Lord of the Flies, but better. Take your all-rights-waived contestants and throw them on an island with some berries and wild pigs. None of these silly obstacle courses, but then again, no one's going to save you! Make a social contract or die.

2) Nasty, Brutish, and Short - Our existence, that is. Why my inner theologian is very happy.

3) Why Having a Hippopotamus for a Friend is Inconvenient - Alternately titled "Sorry, I don't Speak Duck," or "What is this Booh-Bah You Speak Of?" More commentary on children's television.

4) I Know I Already Said This? But the Food? IT'S SO GOOD. - Why buying a car must take so, so long, and the embarrassing programs one may watch to pass the time.

5) Top Ten Reasons Not to Sleep with Him - Why sex with your boyfriend is a major no-no, including but not limited to "He'll want to have sex with you again" and "He might be married... to someone else." Does not include worthwhile reasons such as "I find him annoying" and "I would, but I already slept with his father."

6) Four Horsemen of the Divorce Apocalypse - No one could have convinced me that anything about divorce is funny until I read this line. (Stolen from forgotten source.)

7) Playdoh's the Gorgeous - How much I adore my professor's accent.

8) I Was Flirting with Your Pizza, Not with You - When stomach rumblings and a longing glance conspire, and the awkwardness that ensues.

9) "In god shape. Does run." - Wherein I discuss why, exactly, I couldn't bring myself to buy a cheap car.

And finally:

10) Paris Hilton's IQ is 117. Can You Beat her Score? - And how! Leftover musings from a Dear Abby column ("Find a nice man with a high school diploma") and whether intelligence can even be measured in unsocialized children (I think not).

Sister.

From what I've been told, she came early and quick, tearing her way painfully into the world. It would be the first, but not the last, time she would enter a room this way, taking over with her eagerness, her steady competence. This day she would become the first of four children, all girls. Later she would become my idol.

My mother and father say that she was an easy child, ever quiet and cooperative. Her steady attention would become her biggest asset: at two she would sit with my father one day and learn every letter of the alphabet; at four she would alter the course of my life forever - me, the yet unborn - by teaching the other children to read. Her teacher would call my father one day: did you know what she's doing? and resulting months of testing and observation would shape our educations, our expectations.

I worshiped every breath she took, tagging along on walks with dogs and expeditions through literature. I would copy every move she made, read every book she read; I would emulate her gestures and retell her jokes in the hopes that I could capture the essence of her easy humor (I never could). I would love her the way a dog loves its master and she in turn would be abominably cruel in her efforts to shake me. These early years of torment would be replaced, later, as I grew into a semblance of a human being - she would teach me then about God, about love, what it meant to be a family when the family is gone, raising me when our mother left for school and our father knew little more about educating children than imparting them with endless facts. She would question first, but more thoughtfully, less loudly, generating a wake for me to ride upon, a preformed reputation at school that I could slide into without trouble. They would think the best of me because they thought the best of her.

Only once would I see her cry. Years later I would hear her cry, again, on the phone, and I would remember the overwhelming helplessness that I felt the first time: that I cannot help her, that she will always be above me, that I am the one who is supposed to fall. My love for her will always be traced with this outline of adoration, even as we grow now into adults with responsibilities and desires and depressions, sharing rather than forcing our stories onto one another, drunkenly dialing, lamenting and laughing and offering the best bits of advice we can muster.

So here's to you, dear friend, the most influential person in my life: I love you more today than yesterday, and more then than before. I still kind of (sort of) worship you.

Happy Birthday.

P.S. - I know this is late, but then I was never the punctual one. That would be you.

What Makes Things Right Again

Not sure if this is the title to a previous post; it popped up in my little title bar and seemed like such a sweet and fitting line.

I'm not really in the mood to write. I have an hour, still, before class begins, and while there's something or another that I would like to be saying to someone I don't seem to have the words for that either. If you live in Portland, you know what the weather is like today: the thunder, the rain, the still, oppressive mugginess. Lyra woke up from the thunder and wouldn't return to bed despite my protests that I would keep her safe. In the end it didn't matter, because it was late. We were late. I can never tell what time it is in my apartment when the blinds are drawn and the sky is blanketed by clouds and rain.

So I'm typing this, not really even thinking, just dancing my fingers around because words will come out of them even when you're thinking about something else. I've written many a poor story that way, little over-trimmed topiaries of stories that are missing all the good parts but somehow still seem to embody a bit of the original intention, whatever that may be, whether it's plant-ness or story-ness or emotionless-ness or, I don't know, pick something. I'm sure you'll be right.

I had never noticed how beautiful it is here in the Memorial on an overcast day; the contrast between the green of the park blocks and the gray of the sky and the sweet tryingly-modern lines of the interior. Such a simple pleasure, really. I was surprised at how comforted I was to walk through the doors after only two weeks of absence, but in many ways I feel like this is my home, the one constant location of my last two years. Over there is where I met Mem for the first time but not the first time, when we both came to hear Fodor speak. If I were to take a right down that hallway, I would come to the place where all the dirty smokers go to talk about everything or nothing, the place where I realized my advisor didn't recall that moment in which I briefly entered the philosophy department and left again, when I asked him how he came to be a philosopher and he said, "Delusions of grandeur." I went back to my science at that moment but returned when everything I read seemed to keep bringing me back here, to these thoughts and these people, and I thought I would at least take a look, investigate, see what there was to find.

Soon, it will be three years, and I will be gone. But I will always miss this place.