Coming Up for Air

The internet's been out at the apartment for almost a month now. We also no longer have a working phone line. Now, this was supposed to change as of yesterday (for the DSL) and Wednesday. (for the phone) SBC says there's a problem with the line, and if it's on my end and they discover it, I owe them seventy dollars in addition to my startup costs. Which means I get to call my landlord and ask him where the network box is, in addition to reminding him that my roommate and I are, in fact, illegally squatting (/cooking/watching TV/having fondue parties) in an apartment without a lease, so could he please send the paperwork like I asked him to three weeks ago when we were not illegally living here?

I am currently at work. Specifically, I am currently in the back room, which is about the size of a Case dorm room, but longer and thinner, sitting in the dark with four plates of cells and a microscope. The computer, as I type this, is taking pictures of the cells through the microscope. It is an easy job if you aren't a space cadet like me and manage to understand the postdoc's instructions as twenty microliters of virus per plate instead of twenty microliters of virus total. This mistake means that the cells do not glow quite as prettily as they usually do and it is harder for the computer to take pictures of them. However, it was a mistake made two days ago and, in the grand scheme of things, not actually that bad. I will have pictures of cells. Graphs of the light they produce. It's what is needed.

Life these days goes. I have yet another idea for a story. This one might actually make it past the idea phase. I have such a short attention span when it comes to writing; I get tired of things very easily and then rationalize that because I like to read things and I don't like writing this, no one else will want to read it and it's okay to give it up.

Reading back over what I've written, I realize that I write (today) two types of sentences: Extremely short. For added drama to content which is not actually dramatic. At all. And long, more flowy sentences that don't so much flow as ramble, in a random-walk sort of way, towards first one conclusion and then another, unrelated end. These are the kind of sentences that, should you run across them in another's work, might strike you as being quietly lovely, or incredibly pretentious, based on your mood and the skill of the author in carrying such a sentence off.

The damn cell keeps wriggling out of focus.

Today in my group meeting I had graphs to show. I could even (kind of) explain what they meant, and nod knowingly as my supervisor suggested where to go from here and why the results (the graphs) were not as he had expected. Next week I am supposed to start my project instead of running everyone else's. It will be a relief; if I mess up my own cells, I have nothing to do but start over. I haven't slowed anyone else down.

On a completely unrelated note, for the first time ever I am getting fuzzy on the details of my past relationships. I have usually felt like the snail from one of the Dr. Doolittle books, carrying people in my shell wherever I go. Not anymore. I don't clutch the memories. I don't hide away the feelings and pore over them at night. I'm free.

It has occurred to me multiple times over the course of my employment here that in the past I may not have been able to do this job, as regards The Killing of Things and Then Butchering Their Still-Warm Bodies. Something has changed over the past year, and I am having a hard time putting my finger on it. I have hardened. I have the capacity to be unmoved by things which are moving, and that was something I lacked before. I have the ability to push my thoughts and feelings aside to do what is in front of me.

I mean, I don't hate guinea pigs that much. I'll never own one, but I would never kill them on the street, or in a first-grade classroom. But for a good cause? Absolutely.

It is a very strange feeling to look at yourself a year ago and see very little in common with who you are now.