embalming the photographs

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:47:40 GMT

You can read about the Bay Area exploits on my WordPress journal. I use it because it is prettier and has fewer adds for Twilight.

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 05:52:52 GMT

In what looked like a last-minute effort, UCSD also asked me to fly out on their dollar. I’ll be at 67 degrees by Tuesday. I’ll be hiking on the beach and thinking about the desert. With the ocean to my face, Joshua Tree will be only a handful of hours behind me.

An old climbing partner is at UCSD. I have a soft spot for his face because he was an escape portal during a bad summer. I was in Princeton because of my dad’s health — we knew it was the end but no one called it that. I sat waiting, read newspapers, and climbed. We met at the gym, climbed outdoors, and took winding roads in a slow lean on his motorcycle. Until I met him I never had the chance to walk into a dim bar wearing a leather jacket and carrying a motorcycle helmet. That crush still feels like the most generous and necessary life preserver. Like a life-preserver-hot-air-balloon. He asked me out the day my dad died.

I’ll only get a chance to see him briefly. During my visit he will be driving up and down the coast for job interviews and girlfriend commitments. Best this way, I think: I don’t want all the air released out of his body. It’s dangerous to remember when the past can puncture on the present. How do I keep him after I re-meet him?

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 05:52:31 GMT

The post-doc’s wife gave birth on Sunday. The baby, aimed for Valentine’s day, was early but perfectly formed and a healthy weight. He came in late yesterday, as I was finishing up, and we talked about her pink, scrunched-up face. He looked older, calmer, and like the distance his eyes focused on had increased by a number of feet. What struck him was the utter helplessness of little Tara. She has to be taught to eat. Her tiny puffy fists had to be put in a baby straight jacket so she doesn’t hurt herself. How does such a useless, fleshy, floppy existence survive? This is the product of evolution? This was born to our cold, hungry grandparents without penicillin? This lived in the woods, the Savannah, the winter, the stiff breeze? It’s enough to make me believe in god: a large, extremely benign hand shielding the soft head for 1-2 years at least.

We also talked about the wish to be remembered. I see it as a mis-placed impulse wrongly housing two desires: live forever; have high status. Being remembered is not going to help you with either. While a body in the ground, your distorted image in another mortal, infinitely selfish mind is not going to keep you warm. And while being known is going to help your status, being remembered is a symptom of being known but is too little too late. Therefore, there is no reason you want to be remembered. I’m afraid of being remembered because it is a symptom of being dead.

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 05:50:53 GMT

I can call it self-medicating. After my 14hour work day yesterday, I drank wine out of a mug and read. Why is there this reach for alcohol? The volume of cultural lore on the topic (a pint after work, etc etc) makes me think that this is a shared human phenomenon. We need an aid to make our heads lighter after all the heavy pulling and pushing of a job done. I don’t want it unless the lab bench really wore on my hands and my head.

The other voices of common opinion make me want to defend myself. Social drinking allowed; the wine with only me for company is somehow wrong. I think mind-altering is a broader category than talked about. And as the category stretches from horizon to horizon, it loses all meaning. Let me down what I want.

I took a walk between analyzing data sets. On a 45-degree day after January, with the promise of California, I fell I can finally eat up New England and enjoy. The snow is clear, reflective, and swims down the pavement. The campus is covered in tourist-ants. Working at Princeton is like being an extra in a main attraction.

Working at Princeton is proving lonely outside the lab’s windows. I can’t find other people between the students and being with the students makes me feel like a visitor.

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 01:34:17 GMT

I don’t often write about my biologist self — the one who is currently sitting in a white lab coat, waiting for some nematode worms with Alzheimer’s to sink to the bottom of the tube. To tell you the truth, almost everything I do outside of the lab bench, including bouts of writing, is to escape her fate. Right now, the long tendons stringing my knuckles between the wrist and the fingers are burning. I have spent all day moving my poor, dumb worms to measure chemotaxis. I gulped down portabella soup between experiment 4 and experiment 5. This is going to be a long day. Somehow, it works out though. By the time you are done collecting data you are too tired to analyze the results. So when you finally find out that this or that didn’t work and nothing is significant, you are too far gone to care or it’s days later and you already forgot the pain.

Today I lit my sweater on fire. Most often, when you are flaming things to sterilize, burning ethanol is involved. A drop on fire must have somehow landed on me. The sweater started to smoke and melt. I have never done something like this before. Hence, I am now wearing a lab coat. I normally don’t like to wear them. They are come in pasty white and hang way past my knees. I feel like a ghost. Especially since the lab empties out on the weekend. Some of the rooms are darkened. I spend my day not talking to anyone. It’s enough to scare a girl when she walks past a dark window.

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 01:33:39 GMT

On January 29, 1979, an Elementary School was under shotgun fire. During this first school shooting, a reporter started calling the houses in the area to find an eyewitness. At the house nearest to the building, a girl’s voice picked up. “Can you see what is going on at the school?” “Yes.” “Can you see where the shooting is coming from?” “Yes.” She gave the reporter the address of the house he was calling. “Who do you think is doing the shooting?” she asked.

During that phone call, Brenda Spencer gave the only interview at the time of her arrest. The reporter asked why she was doing this, she said “I hate Mondays. This livens up the day.” When asked who she wanted to shoot, she said “I like the red and the blue jackets best.”

I think everything she said after that has been a lie. At various parole hearings she blamed depression, her father, PCP. Unlike the rest of it, her first detachment, the unmistakable sound of a complete lack of remorse, was not taught. Something fundamental escaped to the surface: the lack of sacred meaning, inherent value that human life has. We are special only if we perceive it. We need to guard this illusion to guard ourselves. We like to think it’s physically impossible to gun down children.

If she is crazy, what does the word mean? Can we talk ourselves into crazy? What is she missing? Can she get well?

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 01:33:09 GMT

a friend’s post jogged a memory…

in elementary school, my first year in the “american” system, the upper grades made a musical instrument out of the multi-story playground complex. we spent weeks designing it and a month converting the slides and staircases and bridges. i wish i could remember what we named it. the structure was the size of a small apartment and ran on buckets and buckets of water. drops echoed on metal, spinning wheels rang half-full jars, plastic bottoms boomed under a torrent. it was a constant… musical waterfall… which is what we called it!
the saddest day was to take it down. the second saddest was the day i realized such a game would not be repeated every year in america.

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 03:35:31 GMT

i may be migrating over to greybird.wordpress.com. there is a simple way to transfer all the livejournal mess to their site. plus, their user interface is cleaner and everything is pretty much add-free. want to join me?
i've had this journal since sophomore year in high school. as i was uploading my entries, i watched the terribly embarrassing and the lyrical wash past. it was what i needed to clear away today.

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 03:31:41 GMT

a dynamic time. my muscles changing a bit each day. the news about my future filtering down from the mountains that make decisions about the future. i'm glad i have direction, priorities. i want to become stronger. i want to lose weight. i want to read more books. i felt betrayed when i noticed i was changing without permission. at 23 it was a second puberty-fast betrayal. the rules of causation shifted again. i have to push more for the same effect. i have an older face in the morning.
i always thought my mind should lead.
i hear people get stuck in time. you hit a prime, a good year, and your mind returns to it, again and again. no matter how many years you look, you're thinking like you never left your favorite number.
i remember aging in bursts and starts. there was a day when i first noticed that things were my size. that chairs and tables were just right -- not a reach or a stretch. the world was suddenly made for me and i felt less of a visitor. or, more exactly, i felt someone was taking away my visitor status. evidence was disappearing that i was a stranger, not made for the world but watching.
then i remember first feeling adult-height. i realized no one towered over me... could lift me with ease and throw me into the air.
now i'm stuck pre-twenty. somewhere vague and irresponsible. somewhere at the very green beginning of things. it's hard to imagine all the school, all the training and preparation almost out of the way.

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:43:22 GMT

i heard back about interviews! stanford and berkeley want me. they will wine me and dine me for nine days total during the process. i have the grand teetering scheme of a california adventure hatching. i want to travel from san diego to san francisco. (how far can that be? its one state!) the mode of transport is to be determined. and i'll climb yosemite and joshua tree.
i also connected to my best friend from third grade. she left round, pale new jersey to become thin, tall, blond california. with a little facebook she found me, brought up the overly-involved games of pretend we used to play. i have to admire that kind of courage! next she was chirping about her family's house in san diego and a condo in san francisco and how she'll take care of me. the world feels wonderfully generous. if all goes well, i will be moving to a state where the weather is made for humans (today SF was sunny 72F). i will have a playground like yosemite just a few blocks away. i will get a lot of restlessness and a whole pint of leaving out of my system.

my real secret wish is to go to school in california and drive cross country with my tent to get there. (shhh.)

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:54:39 GMT

read "Edwin Mullhouse" by Steven Millhauser.
This book remembers what it's like to be a kid.

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 08:40:27 GMT

silly insomnia. the nights have a train of thought stretching in a single thread and packed inside my head. i wake up with my senses dulled, my brain tangled, the eye sockets full and opening the lids. and the anxiety is a broken way to breathe: stuck on repeat.

will sheff / charles bissell

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 02:36:09 GMT

another NY. williamsburg was swank. all american apparel and boutique bistro. but I really liked the venue! concert hall of is recommended.
it's strange when the same thing creeps into our consciousness at the same time. next to my extra-strong chai, the table conversation was everything "recession" and the german waitress, here for obvious american-dream reasons, was disenchanted. the same conversation continued onto the standing room. kids shouted thanks for playing in tough times, because it's been tough.

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:46:22 GMT

I'm writing a personal statement for graduate school. This is taking a long time because, compacted into simple sentences and a handful of explanatory paragraphs, my life sounds crazy. I have to explain why I only took three class each semester Junior year. This paragraph needs to include key facts, like:
My father was diagnosed with colon cancer my first semester at Brown.
For the two years of his treatment, he asked me to attend doctor's visits to act as translator.
After his surgery, I went into NYC every day during the week he was in the hospital.
He die in August; I went back to Brown a week later and started Junior year.
October of that year, because I didn't fear death, I slipped off a climb in Main, flipped upside down, and broke my head open. I got a severe concussion and dropped Immunology.
I spent two weeks mostly sitting on the couch in the co-op kitchen, dreamily wandering from conversation to conversation.

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:59:28 GMT

i went to NY yesterday for the GRE and for James and NY to entertain me. I have to admit my expectations were fulfilled. Not only did I wander the many people-channels, I also got beer and public private conversations and quiet moments of music-strum at 3:30am.

I waited for James to punch out of his lawyer-job in the NY public library on 42nd and in a Starbucks. The first part provided me with more marble and painted ceiling than a girl can stuff into her pockets. you spend too long in the skin-white halls and you forget how and why building ever became not monuments. casually dressed humans look like trained animals when straining to open a door built for Athena. I kept expecting to see her immutable drapery around the corner. i wandered outside expecting the whole city to be transformed.

I ended up at the Starbucks only after the wind got past my scarf defenses. I still regret passing up on the "Free" ice skating at Bryant park. From when I could walk I have been trained by my father, a once speed-skating champion of Leningrad. I don't think I'll ever forget how to skate. Every time there is the same rush: look at the stride come back, look at my sailing past the staccato steps of the novices. The children look like rag dolls; the girls hold hands and fall in one domino line; I am two lines of speed.

Instead, inside starbucks, I paid extra for more hot water and drank my large (not "large") tea. I gorged myself on people watching. First, my eyes flick to Keith. Well, his ornate leather belt said "Keith"; I just jumped to conclusions. Keith is wearing a faded jean button-down with a large yellow superman S on the front. I can't tell if he knows the woman to his left.

The table next to me is getting heated over a discussion on the difference between "pagan" and heathen."

The large purse just woke up in the lap of the woman across. It turns out that a white, silky lap-dog is wearing a leopard-print fur coat with black trim. The purse-dog is awake and gives a small yelp at Keith every time he stands up or sits down. Keith is up and down a lot; he just returned with a napkin to read.

The table next to me is on the intersection between religion and philosophy.

Without a word exchanged, Keith and the woman to his left both take out grey-old laptops.

Now on the existence of good and evil.

The black pebble eyes of the lap dog are deeply opaque and endlessly mournful. This is suggested by a fall of hair that looks like thinking eyebrows on its soft face.

James and I met up, ate enormous (2X) and tasty slices of pizza, and were joined by Jana, one more "Brown alum." We headed to pub quiz (lost badly except in the literature section) and then to Fat Cat. I enjoyed this last spot: a warm, open space with booths and rows of pool tables, fooze ball, ping pong. Live jazz. There is scrabble and chess boards on tables in the booths. We drank and played scrabble to late.

Then to Brooklyn and James' strange, square, yellow house. It's nestled like a missing tooth between two proper, biting buildings. The whole house shakes whenever a subway train passes underneath. I fell asleep to the vibrating leaves of the house plants and the small sensation of a couch intent on sailing subterranean currents.

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 05:01:42 GMT

i went camping with my lab this weekend. It was good in the beer, the campfire smell, the conversation. We spent a good chunk good-naturedly laughing at CoCo, the purse-dog of one undergrad's girlfriend. This girl uses the many fussy needs of her toy puppy to boss this poor kid. She revolves around the pet, which came in four doggy booties, a tiny hoody, a raincoat, and track pants with a slit for the tail. Humans are such bizarre animals.
We hiked today's unseasonable warmth. I was sunny and in a tank top! Then the rain poured down on us for a good five minutes of bucket-worthy volume. Then sun again.
Again and again, small moments can stand alone to make everything else perfect.

I'm also somewhat studying for the GREs. I just wish I won't look back on this and bang my head on a nearby wall. How bad can the future pan out? I have quite a lot riding on these next moments.

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:50:53 GMT

in the news, an 8-year-old boy shot his father and a renter with a faint popping noise. The gun, a 22-caliber rifle, had to be carefully reloaded between each shot. the bodies had 4 bullets each.
the father was an avid hunter and taught the boy to shoot prairie dogs. the boy never caused trouble in school and there is no suspicion of abuse at home.
how do you find a motive? how do you decide on guilt? can we treat an 8-year-old like an unconscious animal? i remember a rich fountain of internal life at that age. i had motives and could tick through the consequences of my actions.
when he grows up, is he going to want to run away from himself in horror? is he going to remember with a cold clarity the though process that moved the gun and the trigger?

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 04:12:04 GMT

My mom pickles cabbage and ferments dairy over our central heating air vents. I am still leaning the tricks of this trade. Her spirit of preparing food for the long-term comes from summers on a grandmother's farm and a Russian self-reliance from necessity. Without much trying I had her talking about the chickens and the flavors while we were both leaning over a large enamel pot. Milk still warm from the body of the cow, a spherical yellow yolk, a permanent perch in a cherry tree; I can thrive on these simple ingredients. I'm drawn to the rhythm and the purpose of the farm life as my mother's nostalgia describes it. Every calorie fed back into the cycle: the milk curd and the potato peelings for the pigs, the pigs for Christmas.
I can't imagine living without trash. (I can't imagine shaping a pig into sausage.)

My mom can turn a jug of milk into six different texture.

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 05:18:24 GMT

i didn't think i would be writing about politics. but i want to take this novel feeling down before i take it for granted. today, i watched obama give a press conference on the economy from the office of the president elect (such silly signs, such pomp.. is that an official logo?) but what startled me was a sense of hearing a fellow soul talk. i recognized person-hood. bush always gave me a strong whiff of void. he failed my turing test. but i feel empathy towards this one! i predict we have a shared set of emotions, i can imagine a conversation...
am i simply recognizing northern liberal elite? possible. but that would be a very stringent criterion for human. if this election has taught me anything, it is that all opinions are actually prejudice and bigotry. if you feel strongly, it's because you have a narrow mind and are also squinting. if only we could all learn enough to dissolve our brains into a wash of relativism. then sarah palin would appreciate my fruit flies, even if the research is done in paris. then i could really put my marksmanship to the test by shooting pristine white alaskan animals from the air.

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 04:49:37 GMT

things i should not have done tonight: watched requiem for a dream. i'm dazzled by a sick loneliness. i swallowed that grisly show, string orchestra and all.

the end result? my head is full and flashing. i'm sitting at my desk, grateful for the house plants.
my stomach is doing belly flips. what a wimp! i get one week of cramps and cotton padding every 4 months. combine that with jennifer connelly injecting and i think i'm dying.

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 03:00:09 GMT

today i went to the firing range. they were having an open house (family fun fest) and my friend invited me.
he plans to join the navy, which explains his interest.

i fired a 9mm, a 45 caliber, a shotgun, and a compound bow. The 9mm jumps lightly -- an almost organic hop. The 45 caliber gives more of a swing, spitting yellow casing. The shotgun threw me back blinking. It leaves a strong cloud of gravity and gunpowder smell. My bow was a sweet shade of magenta; I had to downgrade to a "hers" model after I couldn't pull back the man-sized 45lb of force. There is intimacy in firing a bow. You perch the arrow with the lightest touch, lean the body of the instrument into your body, and draw the string back with three fingers. The feather of the arrow rests on your cheek. You pull and aim one eyeball down the shaft. The string is by your ear so you can best hear all the "h's" in the whhoooshh. Then thuuunk.

I did well on the silhouettes: most of my bullets nicked of knocked down targets.

I won the deadman shotgun contest. All the gentlemen within earshot dissolved into comments of " 'showed the men, m'am" and "glad you brought her along, aren't you guy" and "your first time shooting, young lady."

I carried home my bulls eye (lucky 13 in the center) and my prize: a giant frozen turkey.
I surprised my mom with the meat -- told her I "shot it."

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:54:18 GMT

I'm home sick, steaming my eyeballs on a plate of boiling oatmeal. So, appropriately, it is raining outside with a force full and somber. Or, it was. The thermometer is right at freezing. In mid-flight, the drops rounded into contact lenses, then watch faces. The noise rose is volume. The drops hit each other. Then shifted direction again, began flying sideways, flattened and filled with white.

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:11:14 GMT

when brooding, i will mechanically continue a task until completion. Like picking the raisins out of my cereal box. By the end, I don't even want raisins. But I'm unhappy and brooding and punishing myself with raisins while giving my hands something to do. I have a streak of.. madly wanting the dire consequences.

Today is my dad's birthday. The sad part is, I was in lab for most of the day today.

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 04:25:32 GMT

i need to reach a critical mass of panic in order to do things. i'm hopeless until my head hits that rock-bottom pavement. i will regret today tomorrow...

so i submitted a grant application.
i have to do a lot more very quickly.
the problem being... i don't know what i want. to float belly-up in a light blue ambition-less kiddie pool?

it comes back to the same ideas: i'm not the life but living it. i'm not the observations but someone watching what surfaces on a screen.
if i can stop thinking that i have a set of tools: a watch to count the time, a lens to bend light, then i can stop being the disembodied detective who wants to stop collecting clues.

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 01:07:27 GMT

i fell down the stairs twice on friday. i should stop looking so far forward, getting ahead of myself.
the first time i ended up on my back. the second time my heels just rattled down, dragging like fingers along a fine-tooth comb. if you don't live in the moment you can't work the stairs. you also can't spend a weekend with your long-distance boyfriend.

why did i make every word into a rough shape and grind it into my stomach? though i have a rational explanation -- featuring bells, whistles, and causation -- i think the truth is beyond that. i'm simply no longer grateful or generous. i've left his teams and don't have the same biases.
i meet him with high expectations. i line them up fragile on a windowsill.
the things that ruin my day do not matter. i let them bite down and stick. what a mean-spirited old hag.