Today, I am:
-tired, woke up in the middle of another dream.
-pouty that my legs have not instantly jumped into shape like my abs tend to do (I guess seven years of flute will do that for your abs and not your legs)
-pensive.
-missing Cleveland.
31 May 2007
25 May 2007
Beer Out Of Mason Jars
I'm home. I've moved out of Cleveland and am now living in the country for six weeks before I go live in the mountains (!) in the South. Contrary to what every country singer, ever, would have you believe, we do not drink our beer out of mason jars in the country. That's why it comes in cans.
I should probably have some more feelings about the fact that life is whipping me along with it at warp speed, but I'm too busy enjoying my life to engage in any Garden State-style navel-gazing about how I feel and why I feel that way. Today, I feel tired, since I woke up in the middle of a dream that had some old friends and I in downtown-Cleveland-by-way-of-Put-in-Bay and it was raining. I feel pleased that my quads seem to want to work again, and not sulk painfully on my thighs like they did all day yesterday. And I'm dreading doing the workout again, the workout that I chose because I have finally gotten fed up with my genetically enhanced thighs and decided to do something about it, the workout that left me unwilling to walk down any stairs yesterday. That's about as deep as I'm willing to go.
Graduation was beautiful and wonderful and about ten times as interesting and fun as I thought it would be. I love doctoral robes. So colorful!
I am going back to bed for a bit before I have to get up and do more squats. I keep reassuring myself it will be worth it to have nicely toned legs. I'm not sure if I'm shallow enough to put up with all this pain.
I should probably have some more feelings about the fact that life is whipping me along with it at warp speed, but I'm too busy enjoying my life to engage in any Garden State-style navel-gazing about how I feel and why I feel that way. Today, I feel tired, since I woke up in the middle of a dream that had some old friends and I in downtown-Cleveland-by-way-of-Put-in-Bay and it was raining. I feel pleased that my quads seem to want to work again, and not sulk painfully on my thighs like they did all day yesterday. And I'm dreading doing the workout again, the workout that I chose because I have finally gotten fed up with my genetically enhanced thighs and decided to do something about it, the workout that left me unwilling to walk down any stairs yesterday. That's about as deep as I'm willing to go.
Graduation was beautiful and wonderful and about ten times as interesting and fun as I thought it would be. I love doctoral robes. So colorful!
I am going back to bed for a bit before I have to get up and do more squats. I keep reassuring myself it will be worth it to have nicely toned legs. I'm not sure if I'm shallow enough to put up with all this pain.
14 May 2007
Bare Feet
So this week is Mom's week on Postsecret, and one of the postcards shows holes that a mother punched in a door, trying to get at her child so she could continue hitting him/her. Four or five more people wrote in, with pictures of their door-holes, and the final email on the subject was one single line:
my mom knocked down my door to save my life when i tried to commit suicide.
And for some reason this hits me like no other. That someone put a positive spin on the breaking down of the door, to save a life rather than to ruin it. The things mothers do for their children. The things my mother has done for me, and the things she hasn't. I may complain about my mother a lot, but the fact remains that she is, largely, how I define myself. How I am like her, and how I am not. That although she irks me, she is one of my best friends, and the person I confide in nine times out of ten.
my mom knocked down my door to save my life when i tried to commit suicide.
And for some reason this hits me like no other. That someone put a positive spin on the breaking down of the door, to save a life rather than to ruin it. The things mothers do for their children. The things my mother has done for me, and the things she hasn't. I may complain about my mother a lot, but the fact remains that she is, largely, how I define myself. How I am like her, and how I am not. That although she irks me, she is one of my best friends, and the person I confide in nine times out of ten.
08 May 2007
Finally Final Final
I've been working for approximately four days on the practice final for my last class. Some students would rant about this, saying that if we are expected to complete the final within three hours that the practice final should also only take three hours. However, given that the class in question is particle physics, here is a reasonable example of a final that I could finish in three hours:
1) Name all the particles you know.
2) Draw a Feynman diagram for an interaction between particles. Bonus points for being able to recount a non-science-related story about Richard Feynman.
3) Draw a particle accelerator.
4) Explain why you cannot just buy a bottle of muons to put in your particle accelerator.
5) Did you think of any more particles? Write them down.
6) Name the carriers of the four fundamental forces.
7) Give a totally off-the-wall explanation for some physical phenomena that involves the pseudoscientific use of particle physics.
8) What is the difference between a muon, a pion, and a proton?
9) Who discovered the electron? in what year? to what use has his research been put?
10) Give three examples of bad particle physics seen in comic books during the Golden and Silver ages.
I am attempting to finish this practice final while there is still light out so I can go out and enjoy those solar photons and neutrinos. However, my subconscious is complicating matters. When it's not clamoring for onion rings/french fries/alcohol/fast food, it's busy telling me as soon as I've stood up to "go look at that magazine on your bed!" when what I really need is my textbook. My subconscious is trying to tell me that I hate particle physics, which, thanks, subconscious, but I already knew that.
1) Name all the particles you know.
2) Draw a Feynman diagram for an interaction between particles. Bonus points for being able to recount a non-science-related story about Richard Feynman.
3) Draw a particle accelerator.
4) Explain why you cannot just buy a bottle of muons to put in your particle accelerator.
5) Did you think of any more particles? Write them down.
6) Name the carriers of the four fundamental forces.
7) Give a totally off-the-wall explanation for some physical phenomena that involves the pseudoscientific use of particle physics.
8) What is the difference between a muon, a pion, and a proton?
9) Who discovered the electron? in what year? to what use has his research been put?
10) Give three examples of bad particle physics seen in comic books during the Golden and Silver ages.
I am attempting to finish this practice final while there is still light out so I can go out and enjoy those solar photons and neutrinos. However, my subconscious is complicating matters. When it's not clamoring for onion rings/french fries/alcohol/fast food, it's busy telling me as soon as I've stood up to "go look at that magazine on your bed!" when what I really need is my textbook. My subconscious is trying to tell me that I hate particle physics, which, thanks, subconscious, but I already knew that.
03 May 2007
Symbols of a Decadent Past
I have been sick for the past few days, sick in a way that I truly associate with "sickness"--that is, lolling about on my bed moaning, attempting to get up and do things only to be overtaken by fatigue and driven back to bed where I pout until I fall asleep. This is interspersed with valiant quests for the couch in the living room, where I watch the Style Network until I want to throw things, then pout because I no longer have the energy to locate things to throw, much less throw them. I was told I have a virus, one that has given my joints and sinuses a very thorough spring cleaning, and now appears to be loath to leave.
I delivered my final project presentation to a board of physics professors in a hoarse whisper. It was, unexpectedly, a hit.
All drama aside, it really is one of the more decadent things ever, to spend five days in bed during finals time. I'm aided, of course, by my schedule, which was hellish up until the point where I woke up the morning after R's formal with aching joints. R was an angel, wrapped me in blankets and spoonfed me miso soup, and thoughtfully did not kill me when I complained.
I read Vogue when I couldn't sleep, and it led to some fantastically bizarre dreams--dreams of finding incredible designer skirts for $50, thinking quite lucidly to myself that no one in my hometown was going to know who this designer was, having said skirt yanked away from me by Anna Wintour herself, saying it made me look "stumpy," and substituted with a hideous origami-style $850 white blouse. I think I ended up wearing the skirt and told Ms. Wintour that I had a presentation the next day and I needed to look professional.
I delivered my final project presentation to a board of physics professors in a hoarse whisper. It was, unexpectedly, a hit.
All drama aside, it really is one of the more decadent things ever, to spend five days in bed during finals time. I'm aided, of course, by my schedule, which was hellish up until the point where I woke up the morning after R's formal with aching joints. R was an angel, wrapped me in blankets and spoonfed me miso soup, and thoughtfully did not kill me when I complained.
I read Vogue when I couldn't sleep, and it led to some fantastically bizarre dreams--dreams of finding incredible designer skirts for $50, thinking quite lucidly to myself that no one in my hometown was going to know who this designer was, having said skirt yanked away from me by Anna Wintour herself, saying it made me look "stumpy," and substituted with a hideous origami-style $850 white blouse. I think I ended up wearing the skirt and told Ms. Wintour that I had a presentation the next day and I needed to look professional.
01 May 2007
Scarring
When I was in eighth grade, I had a friend group pretty stereotypical of eighth grade girls. Catty, backstabbing, dramatic--all the usual things girls do when they're trying to assert their identities, or just being pre-teens. Since my high school was still struggling with the women's movement, in junior high both boys and girls were required to take home economics, but no one was required to take a shop class. I liked to sit on top of the tables and do my hand sewing with my friends, and one day a struggle erupted over a pair of scissors that two of us needed at once.
She grabbed the handles, and I grabbed the blades. Playfully, she started opening and closing the scissors, trying to get me to let go. The base of my index finger got caught in the blades, and I lost a sizeable chunk of skin. I went to the office and got taped up, and wasn't worried about it until I got home later that day and noticed that it was still bleeding profusely.
I'd lost too much skin over too shallow an area for stitches; stitches also would have severely compromised my dexterity, and at the time I considered myself a serious musician. They slapped some awesome insta-clotting stuff on it (I wish I'd asked the name) and the bleeding stopped nearly instantly. In a few weeks, the artifical scab dropped off, but for about a month after that, I'd get pain when I'd flex my hand--it felt like I'd ripped it open all over again, on the inside.
***
Not last week but the week before, I was out with a group of friends to celebrate a birthday. We'd all gone to Lolita's, and I was having such a good time that when I checked my phone and saw I'd missed two calls from R's younger brother (in town for the party that R was attending) I assumed he was drunk and left it at that. While I was holding the phone, it began to ring again, this time with the number of R's little. I picked up.
"Don't worry," he says. "Everything's fine," he says. "He's in the ER, he'll just need a stitch or two and he'll be out soon." Further inquiry yielded the information that R, too drunk to stand, had hit his head on either a doorframe or the floor hard enough to need stitches. But I didn't need to leave, everything was under control. For once--I didn't leave. I left my boyfriend in other people's hands.
Of course, that didn't stop me from heading straight to the ER when I got home at 2 in the morning to find a still drunk R, covered in blood, holding gauze to his head, grinning ear-to-ear to see me all dressed up. He pulled the gauze away to let me see--he'd cut himself down to his skull, not a hard thing to do on your forehead, but still. I came back to sit with him while they cleaned his gash and gave him stitches. I asked to watch while they sewed him up, thinking this is a good thing to see, possibly future doctor. The nice ER guy numbed him up using lydocaine, telling me where it could and could not go: fingers, nose, toes, and hose. Stitches one, two, and three all went in smoothly, me fascinated with the manipulation of needle and suture stuff with the forceps. Stitch four, my stomach started to feel queasy. Stitch five, my ears started roaring. Stitch six, my vision went spotty and I sat down, betrayed by my body. I cut open the chest cavities of small mammals, I thought. I work with disembodied hearts on a daily basis. You are stupid, body. I sat there and fumed, angry with myself and at him, until four thirty when we finally left.
***
When I was seventeen something happened to me that should never happen to anyone. I kept it a secret for two years and then told my boyfriend at the time, who responded by telling me that I must have wanted it on some level, especially if I hadn't pursued any sort of legal action against the guy. Two years later I told my parents when they found out all the particulars of my sex life; they like to pretend it never happened and that I never told them. In between I told a few people, whose responses ranged from "I'll fucking kill him" (I have never told anyone his full name to prevent things like this from actually taking place) to an embarassed shrug to an "Oh god, I'm so sorry." Five, almost six years of repression and one VERY unsuccessful attempt at therapy later, I have scabbed over. I am using the money from the PTSD study to get drunk at senior week. At times I feel like I've pulled open on the inside, I'll probably always have a few issues about sex (but who doesn't?) --but I have scarred, and I am whole again.
I don't have to have these dreams no more
'cause I found someone just to hold me tight
hold the insomniac all night
She grabbed the handles, and I grabbed the blades. Playfully, she started opening and closing the scissors, trying to get me to let go. The base of my index finger got caught in the blades, and I lost a sizeable chunk of skin. I went to the office and got taped up, and wasn't worried about it until I got home later that day and noticed that it was still bleeding profusely.
I'd lost too much skin over too shallow an area for stitches; stitches also would have severely compromised my dexterity, and at the time I considered myself a serious musician. They slapped some awesome insta-clotting stuff on it (I wish I'd asked the name) and the bleeding stopped nearly instantly. In a few weeks, the artifical scab dropped off, but for about a month after that, I'd get pain when I'd flex my hand--it felt like I'd ripped it open all over again, on the inside.
***
Not last week but the week before, I was out with a group of friends to celebrate a birthday. We'd all gone to Lolita's, and I was having such a good time that when I checked my phone and saw I'd missed two calls from R's younger brother (in town for the party that R was attending) I assumed he was drunk and left it at that. While I was holding the phone, it began to ring again, this time with the number of R's little. I picked up.
"Don't worry," he says. "Everything's fine," he says. "He's in the ER, he'll just need a stitch or two and he'll be out soon." Further inquiry yielded the information that R, too drunk to stand, had hit his head on either a doorframe or the floor hard enough to need stitches. But I didn't need to leave, everything was under control. For once--I didn't leave. I left my boyfriend in other people's hands.
Of course, that didn't stop me from heading straight to the ER when I got home at 2 in the morning to find a still drunk R, covered in blood, holding gauze to his head, grinning ear-to-ear to see me all dressed up. He pulled the gauze away to let me see--he'd cut himself down to his skull, not a hard thing to do on your forehead, but still. I came back to sit with him while they cleaned his gash and gave him stitches. I asked to watch while they sewed him up, thinking this is a good thing to see, possibly future doctor. The nice ER guy numbed him up using lydocaine, telling me where it could and could not go: fingers, nose, toes, and hose. Stitches one, two, and three all went in smoothly, me fascinated with the manipulation of needle and suture stuff with the forceps. Stitch four, my stomach started to feel queasy. Stitch five, my ears started roaring. Stitch six, my vision went spotty and I sat down, betrayed by my body. I cut open the chest cavities of small mammals, I thought. I work with disembodied hearts on a daily basis. You are stupid, body. I sat there and fumed, angry with myself and at him, until four thirty when we finally left.
***
When I was seventeen something happened to me that should never happen to anyone. I kept it a secret for two years and then told my boyfriend at the time, who responded by telling me that I must have wanted it on some level, especially if I hadn't pursued any sort of legal action against the guy. Two years later I told my parents when they found out all the particulars of my sex life; they like to pretend it never happened and that I never told them. In between I told a few people, whose responses ranged from "I'll fucking kill him" (I have never told anyone his full name to prevent things like this from actually taking place) to an embarassed shrug to an "Oh god, I'm so sorry." Five, almost six years of repression and one VERY unsuccessful attempt at therapy later, I have scabbed over. I am using the money from the PTSD study to get drunk at senior week. At times I feel like I've pulled open on the inside, I'll probably always have a few issues about sex (but who doesn't?) --but I have scarred, and I am whole again.
I don't have to have these dreams no more
'cause I found someone just to hold me tight
hold the insomniac all night
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)