Everything Old is New Again

My thoughts have recently spun around the theme: returning, and the associated task of perceiving old things anew. Two things came to mind.

(1) Re-reading books. I've found that my perception of a novel changes -- a shift in focus, a shift in meaning, new weight-- as I get older and read it again. I first read To Kill a Mockingbird with a 13 year old's eyes. Accordingly, I think I paid the most attention to the motives and actions of Scout and Jem -- these were spelled out most clearly, and at that age they seemed like the obvious bits with which to concern myself. I read the book again recently. Suddenly rich narrative fabrics were apparent; new threads emerged soaked with new empathy, new understanding. I was shocked at the narrowness of my prior reading; shocked, but then reassured. I had grown since then. One ought to grow, to see things with new eyes. I mistrust the eighth grader who slides straight to Understanding, without trudging through Experience first.

This reminded me of returning to classics, of looking for new wisdom in old places.

(2) The second return is physically manifest: I am living in Cambridge, again. The first time was different. It occurred to me that as an undergraduate, I did not do terribly well with the college campus metaphysical mindset, this strange awareness of being not-at-home. However, I did not understand this at the time -- it was only this evening, as I waited for sushi at the Porter Exchange, that I put my finger on what bothered me. Campus life is partially institutionalized homesickness: we form South Asian associations, world music groups; we inform and enrich one another but do so largely to surround ourselves with comfort, for we are far from home. This vague persistent undercurrent of out-of-placeness confused me, frankly. I did not dare call Cambridge home; that would be treason to my hometown of Buffalo. Campus housing was clearly temporary: we were transient kings of milk crate-castles. Every year we sacked the fortress and cleared the venerable halls for summer. This was hardly motivation to call a place home. I was deeply unsettled with being...unsettled. I felt placeless.

The intervening year in Chicago was an opportunity to see what things could be like. I chose to live there, I was part of the workforce, I commuted daily. When there was traffic in downtown, I knew about it. I returned to Cambridge with hope.

And it's different this time. I have to remind myself to look at familiar places -- Cambridge Common, Harvard Square proper -- with new eyes, but much of the rest is coming naturally. I know the neighborhoods, I ride my bike, I go to the yard sales, I yell at the kids. It is distinct from returning home, but I have returned, and this is home. Good.

Hope things are well,
R.

Update: Jellybean Menace, Really Big Antlers

K reported a second linear candy trail sighting, also on Garden Street: skittles this time.

I was away in Houston for LPSC, and it seems to have rained the whole week in Boston. I returned last night. This afternoon on the walk home, I saw the now-familiar jellybeans still on the sidewalk, swept to the side and bleached white by rain, like ET. Little ET jellybeans. I wondered if they were still delicious.

Also, Tycho Brahe lost part of his nose in a duel. He lived the rest of his life with a prosthetic nose made of precious metals. He also had a dwarf and a domesticated elk in his court, but the elk drank too much beer one day, fell down some stairs and died. It is sad, but this is what makes the history of science worth reading about.

The moral of the story is, keep your domesticated elk out of the cask ale.

This image is on my blog...

...for March Madness bracket purposes. They needed an active link.

Look up "Engelbert Humperdinck"

As I was walking home last night, I noticed a yellow jellybean on the sidewalk. An orange one. Some reds. A trail of jellybeans, strewn along, some stuck in the gaps between brick cobbles. All on my path to home.

I grew suspicious. What if I were walking into a trap!? I felt helpless. Sensible alternate routes were not available: I was nearly home. The rest of the walk was jarring, especially since I knew not to follow candy trails anywhere. This brought up some thoughts:

1) Why a trail, and not, say, an explosion of jellybeans? Assuming a stationary point source, one would expect roughly radial candy-spatter. Perhaps not stationary. Perhaps a jogger, eating jellybeans. This would be most unwise. Subsequent loss of jellybeans would illustrate that one ought not eat while jogging: caution, choking hazard; tragic loss of jellybeans may also occur.

2) It is also possible that the beans were dropped from a stationary source and were subsequently dispersed along the sidewalk by oblivious pedestrians. I would not kick those jellybeans, myself. I would not touch them with a 10 foot pole. *

I am not writing from the basement terrarium of a somerville madman / cat lady, so rest assured that I did not fall into a trap.

* * *

The anecdote brings me to my larger point. I am certain that whoever dropped the jellybeans did not intend to alarm anyone (and, I'll admit, was probably not setting a trap). The circumstance of the jellybeans being on the ground was not significant. The hard cold fact of my fairytale-related paranoia was likewise generally insignificant. But in each other's presence they had life; resonance pushed the system into something altogether unintended. This got me thinking about things that were unintended, but happened anyway.

I did not intend to drive myself crazy with work this semester, but this somehow happened anyway. Again, I propose that this has to do with a superposition of signals: academic circumstance, overly ambitious advisors and my own intrinsic idiocy. What was I thinking? I had a moment last Thursday where I was struck with the silliness of it all: were we really discussing what shape magma lenses might take under mid-ocean ridges? Wouldn't we all be better off learning a trade? The world might thank us to stop being so useless. But then someone said something crazy about helium isotopes, and I was brought back to my old self again. I've decided this episode was a symptom of topical boredom rather than actual crisis of purpose. But still, I need a break.

I did not intend to neglect friends, but this happened anyway. This has to do with the paragraph above. I do not know where January went, or February for that matter. Is it March? Good lord. I'll see you in May, I hope.

This is taking the tone of an apology. I feel guilty. This might have to do with a dream I had last night, in which I did several naughty things for which I should feel guilty, all of which were strange and involved people I know. This must be it. Dear great void: the dream was unintended, and happened anyway. Truly sorry. Moving on.

I'm sure that this is probably not it, but that will have to do for tonight on the vague-persistent-unease front. I'll think about it and get back to the void.

Hope you are all well,
R


* May seem extreme, but I associate stray sweets with the candied house with sugar windows where Hansel und Gretel were trapped, and Hansel nearly eaten, be he fat or lean. Menacing. I paid attention as a child.

Valentine's Day Cookie and Albuterol Cocktail

A return to curiosities:

1. Cake + cookie = ? Around Valentine's Day at Shaw's I found a heart-shaped chocolate cake covered with white frosting, a blue-frosting cookie monster AND A COOKIE ON TOP. This was ground-breaking, to me. I've had cake with cookies, cookie cake, severely frosted cookie cake, and even cookie cupcake (aka Lump of cookie). It had never occurred to me to put cookies on top of cake. This marvelous invention was my Valentine's Day present to 81 Huron, and it equaled delicious.

2. Living out nerd paradigm This week the stars conspired against (?) me: I had two diff eq math projects due in a span of two days, and then my docs put me on an inhaler because I couldn't breathe. Given my post-flu mental and physical haze, it was all I could do to keep track of the derivatives of Bessel functions and the number of species in a given fauna at time T, and -- brace for the nerd statement of the year -- I lost my inhaler. On some level, I felt that this established additional nerd cred that in regular circumstances would have been beyond my reach, because really, I am a field hockey-playing science nerd, and there is just something extra special about asthmatic mathematicians. +5 points

We end with an Amy Adams quote from Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

You need to go out there, and you need to rev your engine, you need to fire it up. You need to grab a hold of that line between speed and chaos, and you need to wrestle it to the ground like a demon cobra, and then, when the fear rises up in your belly, you use it. And you know that fear is powerful, because it has been there for billions of years, and it is good. And you use it. And you ride it; you ride it like a skeleton horse through the gates of hell, and then you win, Ricky. You win! And you don't win for anybody else. You win for you, you know why? Because a man takes what he wants. He takes it all. And you're a man, aren't you? Aren't you?

This ranks up there with Theoden's inspirational speech to the Riders of Rohan, in my reckoning.

Posts will be sparse this semester, a warning.

Ghosts, Thieves, Ninjas: A Compelling and Well-Reasoned Argument in Favor of Sleep Medication

The ghosts are returning.

More specifically, the imaginary intruders are returning. Did you ever do this? In my night-time childhood paranoia, I would lie awake constructing elaborate scenarios to match the odd creaks and pops that propagate through a middle-aged house as it adjusts to sinking ground (ah, western New York) and heavy wind. Thieves, but not just lumbering men in masks with crowbars and burlap sacks. Thieves in my mind always turned out to be Shadow Ninjas: smart, stealthy, agile. When I was terrified enough for forced bravery, I would check the closet ceilings to make sure no ninja-thieves were there suspended. In, out, undetected.

Anyway, I am at home for winter break, and it is windy in Buffalo. 75-mph-gusts-windy. Our houses were not built for this kind of stress, and the duration and intensity of floorboard-creaking gives the impression that other people are walking around in our house while we sit together, with shared expressions of alarm, in the kitchen. A thorough room-by-room check reveals no intruders, or at least no physical manifestations of intrusion. Ghosts I still worry about.

* * *

Lastly, my brother bought a cake today that was, believe it or not, too chocolatey. My brother and I both agreed on this. I couldn't decide if the baker deserved congratulations or censure for the achievement. Censure, I think, for intemperate use of chocolate. Wait, does that even make sense? No. How could I write such a thing. More chocolate is always better. Odds are he or she just used massive amounts of chocolate poorly. Improper use of chocolate. Personal foul. Half the distance to the goal line.

And with that, I remember that I have not yet eaten lunch, and should probably do that before I eat dinner.

I Left My Bart in San Francisco

I am on the road, at AGU. Some quick notes:

(1) Whose idea was this:



Baffling urban hikes. The good bars, restaurants, ceaseless Christmas tunes and highly musical homeless people make up for these.

(2) Yerba Buena Gardens, Geary Street: recommended.

(3) Tide stain remover: "Does not work well on Grease, Blood, Ink"
(In that order.) Staying classy in my stain-removed shirts, schmoozing, acting presentable.

There may be a saga ahead, with respect to travel. Blizzard coming into Boston, and I would be flying through it twice (SF to Phoenix to Boston; Boston to Buffalo). This probably isn't going to go smoothly. Will write if something great happens.