Reaching People/Distributing Daylight

“What is your objective?”

The G Center sparkles. It is not so much like walking into an office building as like walking through the center of an enormous, high-caret diamond: from the ceiling, shining beams of sunlight,refracted off spinning chandeliers, glittering in ponds of water, rainbows on the wall. I’ve never walked through a diamond but if you could do something like that—make yourself lighter-than-air, dissolve into a million particles and flow through a precious stone, emerge unscathed on the other side—surely this is what it would look like.

It is tucked away in Cambridge, the part of Cambridge that looks perpetually under construction. It is a city at its roughest, rawest—the guts of buildings gaping, exposed; spindly beams reaching up, naked and rusted; cranes sweeping across the skyline, bulldozers parked in muddy lots, men in yellow helmets. Industrial looking office boxes—grey 1970s designs, murky, heavy, and dark—line wide boulevards. People know Cambridge as the home of Harvard and MIT, overlooking the dark blue Charles, charming old brownstones on narrow tree-lined streets, intellect fairly seeping into cobblestones, but here, on the fringes of a college town, architecture has come wearily, setting out to look dry and anonymous. It is a tired piece of town, this. On a sparkling winter morning, crisp, sunny—things feel wrong. This Cambridge belongs to the gloomy day.

I’d never even seen the G building before. It’s not on the two-minute walk from my office building to the train station. I’m a wanderer, typically, but become shockingly businesslike when I’m in heels and a suit (because, I suppose, I’m so fundamentally uncomfortable like that). So when we went in today, the whole thing was a revelation: “oh, this is where it is?” and then a series of “oohs” and “aaahs” while I walked through a series of warm spots of sun; I got dizzy if I looked up, because of all the spinning chandeliers; dizzy if I looked down, for all those spots.

The building is among the most environmentally responsible office buildings in the United States. What this means is that all of the ultra-modern, super-shiny features have a purpose beyond to dazzle: the chandeliers actually help reflect light throughout the building; the glass exterior and huge central atrium reduce the need for artificial lighting; and so on. A pamphlet on the building explains that “daylight is distributed within G Center through a natural-light-enhancement system”.

We go up to the cafeteria, on the top floor, looking out at the urban sprawl as it crawls its way towards the woodlands and hills beyond. I eat a baked potato and we talk about communication: “Who is your audience?” asks a G employee, who we’ve come to for advice on a project. “What are your objectives?” Between sips of green tea or chocolate milk, we try to explain, but what we keep coming up short on, we realize, is story.

“How do we show this?” we wonder. “Whose face can we put on this idea, or that one?” It’s such a crucial way of reaching people—and in this case, it is merely an issue of framing. We can tell our story in dry terms, or in narrative ones, and it will mean the same thing—except no one will listen to the dry terms, and everyone will listen to the narrative ones.

“Distributing daylight”: each prismatic tile refracts, has a job, a purpose, a hand in the distribution of something so ceaseless, so regular, that we cease often to think of it as a resource. And yet there it is, and this building—a building! a building can be just as full of story as a human being—carefully distributes it. Doesn’t use it; distributes it. The cynic in me wants to say it is merely an issue of semantics: some clever wordsmith decided to say that it would be better if the natural light-enhancement system was thought of as allocating or sharing something rather than of vacuuming it up.

But there is something else.  The G Center houses daylight: its energy costs are lower (significantly lower) than those of a comparable, conventional, office building; similarly, waterless and efficient plumbing reduces water usage; 90% of construction waste was recycled.

And I know there are always many sides to one story: but the fact that it is a story at all is remarkable. Here we are sitting in this cafeteria talking about stories, and where we can find them.  We’re making one all the while.

Image of Natural History Museum, Oxford

paradoxes (& things)

Earlier today, in class, I had a minor philosophical crisis relating to paradoxes.  I had written, you see, a line which ended with the two words: "more whole."  Something like, "having homes in many places makes me more whole," although it was more nicely put than that (I believe I may even have been rather proud of the line).  I was sort of basking in the afterglow of having written it, and he, a colleague, said, "you can't really be more whole."  I said, "it's a paradox, it doesn't have to make sense--" and he said, "that's a really bad response."  (Something also to do with the fact that it took be about an hour to think it up).  

Which of course it is, except that I know paradoxes are composed of ideas that are seemingly contradictory.  Mathematically, yes, you can't be more whole.  I know this--I hadn't considered it when I wrote the line in question, but I do know it, it's instinctive, it's basic.  Yet isn't there a sense in which you can have a feeling of wholeness, a sense of it, and then discover that in fact what you thought to be wholeness was merely an illusion, that you have more depth yet to fill, and whatever made you discover this has, in some strange way, therefore made you more whole?  

And perhaps you aren't even completely whole then, but you are more whole, because you are closer to whole.  Whole, perhaps, is an unattainable, in its truest sense.  What I meant, when I wrote that I felt "more whole", was not that I felt I had reached that unattainable.  What I think I meant was that I felt fuller, richer inside.  It was a simple idea, and I had to go and complicate it with tricky words and paradoxes.

More paradoxes?  The stretching of time: you wait, for what seems an unbearable interlude; it has been a long journey, the longest journey--and then one day you wake up and it is almost over--oh happy thought!  And in tandem with that happy thought you wonder: how did it go so fast?  When all the while, during the waiting, you had been thinking my god, this time crawls by so slowly!

Alas there will be no great celebration in two weeks, though perhaps there should be--no celebration except great relief.  I will graduate quietly: without gown, or cap, or kilt, or party dress.  No ceremony, no eggs, flour, champagne (ah how I'd love to be doused with champagne in cold Boston winter--what a sight on the streets!  but very probably I'd be shortly thereafter arrested, and that would not make a very fine start to my post-university life).  I realize this is the nature of the system: save $12,000, miss the damn party.  Worth it, hands down.  But there is a small part of me that is afraid to be let out into the world without a $12,000 party: otherwise, on what event can I look back upon to say: this was the culmination of my undergraduate studies?

I am mostly un-sentimental about leaving here.  I did have a moment, over the weekend, walking home from the Back Bay (I spent the night on a very gracious friend's couch, after we'd had too much wine and pizza and I'd missed the T) on a Sunday morning.  It was gloriously sunny out, not too cold (I might have thought that because of my enormous coat, however) but crisp; and I reached the edge of the public garden and began to walk through it, and all the leaves were still on the ground in great yellow-and-red heaps, fluttering with a wind coming off of the river.  And I stood in a patch of sun-and-shade, and thought: oh!  I've lived here for four years, and been in this park more times than I can remember, and it's beautiful, and perhaps I ought not be so stiff about leaving it.  

Then I thought: no, I'm not stiff about leaving it.  Just excited about everything stretching ahead.

Anyway, if education really is what they say it is (accruing knowledge, not pieces of paper), then I have my fair share of it ahead of me.  One piece of paper down (well, very nearly, anyway); perhaps more to go (reminds me: must submit my applications to masters programs by January!); but plenty of learning still to do.  $12,000 parties have nothing to do with this.

Unrelated note: MUST finish my thesis (if I don't, this entire post is more or less invalid, given that I don't think I get my degree without a finished thesis).  The more I work on it the more it strays from the realm of the political, into the realm of the almost-philosophical.  In short (and in reference to an earlier post): I find I want to write less about sustainable energy than about sustainable living.

Slogging...

Have been trawling the web all day for health/politics reporters at work, so I am absolutely swimming in the shit of US politics (well, slogging through, more like--wading with rubber boots and a grimace painted on my lips). It's a country-wide, all-bets-are-off, money-fueled circus, and the elephants and the donkeys of 2008 sure do produce (and inspire) a lot of shit.

As my father very wisely said: "You could not make this stuff up -- it would seem too absurd." It falls more in the realm of science fiction than public affairs and political analysis. Who stole the politicians' brains?

“Chuck Norris doesn’t endorse. He tells America how it’s going to be--" so says Mike Huckabee, who seems to be under the impression that Mr. Norris's presence at the US border will solve all our immigration woes. (yikes) Norris has officially endorsed Huckabee; it's hard to say which of them is crazier, at this point.

And in this corner, we have headlines like: "Paul '08 Bid Endorsed by Brothel Owner: Presidential candidate Ron Paul receives endorsement from Nevada brothel owner." Apparently the kids who run around stumping for Paul have a name: Paultards. The New Yorker had a little blurb about a group of them at Columbia University. I'm paraphrasing, but one of them said something that basically amounted to: "I just can't understand why you wouldn't vote for someone who actually wants to lower your taxes!"

In other American news, a four-year-old-boy has been suspended from class for sexually assaulting his teacher. Apparently he buried his head in her chest whilst giving her a hug.

???!?!?!

*sigh*

Photographic Interlude

I continue to be absolutely fascinated by this photograph. Took it last year up in Santa Cruz. There's something delightful about the image...though I find myself wondering if they're ducks or penguins? Or something else?

Thanks

I was on the phone with my mother this morning (well, I say morning. it was actually afternoon), and there was no water at the ranch. Nothing, she said, coming from the taps. This creates all sorts of problems. No showers. No flushing. No hand-washing. Those things you take utterly for granted. "I'm making tea," she said, sounding wistful. "How?" I wondered. "Oh--we have some bottled water." I started to fret that they'd use it all up at once.

So we were chatting about the woes of water shortage ("we walked from one end of the parcel to the other looking for the problem!"), when all quite suddenly, I heard a cry go up: "oooh! water's coming! water's coming!" If hundred dollar bills started falling from trees, and rivers started running diamonds, I don't think you'd hear half the excitement that was put into those words.

"Restoring a lost breathing for the love of the job"

When I first came to Oxford, it was the clearest, bluest, most beautiful early-summer day you can imagine. I walked from Jericho to the center of town, meandered my way up and down the High, turned at St. Aldates, and found myself, quite by accident, at Christ Church meadow, where everyone had come out to read under cover of glorious sunlight.

Not because it was beautiful (though it was), or because I had some idea, before I'd even come, that I should like it here (for I did), but because despite all the worries I had, and have, and always will have (they are many), I took a big sigh in that moment, let my shoulders relax (they had been stiff with adventurer’s apprehensions), and said "I like it here, and I am utterly, and completely, content"; because of all this did I decide that this would be A Major Place in My Life.

A few days prior I had sat cross-legged on my bed, clawing at my own skin, singing a terrified refrain: what am I doing? what am I doing? To escape the throes of banality, I was heading off literally into the unknown: not the carefree Eurotrip of student lore, but a three-month vacation with a vague starting point, an even vaguer ending point, and a whole lot of soul searching to be done in between. Because as a child I had been convinced that I would live, someday, in England—indeed, the logistics of this never once crossed my mind; nor did any flicker of doubt that it would actually happen—I chose Oxford as my jumping-off point. I thought: if I study abroad (even for just six weeks), it shall give me an excuse to be there; which is something, if you’re me, that’s always necessary.

So I came into London on a dreary morning; too proud to take a taxi, I dragged myself half across town searching for my hotel. I was following a printed-out map with no street names (this is not an attempt to be overly symbolic--I really was; but since it's the truth, I'll also accept it as a very nice metaphor). It started to rain, but I went on, without an umbrella, in ballet flats and soggy jeans, because I had something to prove. I did find the hotel, a good hour later. I think it was about fifteen feet away from where I'd started out. I was wet and weary. "Can I check in?" I said. "Normally, yes," the concierge assured me. "But today, we're having problems with some of our rooms. We will have to put you in a hotel across the street. Come back in the evening."

It wasn't even noon yet, so I left my bags and plunged into London. I needed food. I needed a beer, to quiet my nerves, which were starting to cause my whole body to shake. I had been to London only once before, with my parents, eight years previous. I had loved England--really, truly loved it. I felt almost relieved to be back, except that what I wanted more than anything was a shower and a nap, two things I couldn't, at the moment, have. So I decided to walk to the British Museum—I think I wanted to ground myself in things that had been on this earth for infinitely longer than I myself had been.

I found my way to Marble Arch, then went down Oxford Street, where I discovered the horror that is Primark (and an H & M on every corner, I kid you not). All the way down Oxford St. to Bloomsbury. There's a Starbucks across the street from the British Museum, did you know? I went inside the museum, and fought through hordes to see the Rosetta Stone; I went downstairs to the Muslim Art section, which was deserted and full of beautiful blue-green bowls. I started to become dizzy with the force of everything, so I came out, and walked all the way back to my hotel. I bought myself dinner at a little convenience shop down the street: cheese, crackers, chocolate, juice, and a small bottle of wine that I chose for its name alone: Oxford Landing.

They gave me a beautiful suite around the corner from Paddington Station, with the most comfortable hotel bed I can ever remember having. But they could have given me a pillow made of rocks and a cot made of nettles, and I would have slept. I didn't even eat all my crackers before I was asleep.

And the next day I went to Paddington Station and I asked the ticket agent for a ticket on the next train to Oxford, and my whole body quivered with the thrill of saying those words. “I need a ticket for the next train to Oxford,” I said. And the ticket agent said, “Alright,” and gave me my ticket, for a small fee, and then there I was, on a train, going very fast, it seemed, through city and country.

At Oxford, I came tumbling off the train, followed by a veritable menagerie of luggage (can you have such a thing?--my bags were so unruly, I think that you can) and stood blinking in the sunshine, without any idea where to go. I asked a cab driver to take me to my destination. “Weee-eell," he mused. "I could do that. But it isn’t very far, you know.”

He gave me directions; I said to myself, “hell, you’re young, you’re sprightly, you can handle a walk,” so I walked.

The further I walked, the more I started to think: “I’m going to like it here.” I went across the little bridge; I found George Street and went up it to Cornmarket; realized I’d gone too far and turned back around. London had been all grandeur; tall buildings, imposing structures, clusters of the ultra-hip or ultra-modern slouching down broad avenues. But this, I thought—this was someplace I could breathe.

Within a few weeks of my arrival, the weather turned from fair to foul, as if it wanted to test my allegiance. I donned scarves and leggings and opened up my big red umbrella and let the heavens, which had been so kind to me before, pour rain on me all the way from Jericho to the King’s Arms, where I would sit in the smoky haze and warm myself with cider. But the ground itself could have frozen mid-June, and I wouldn’t have cared. Whatever it was I went looking for that May (I still don't know) I found, I think, on my first day there.

NOTE: The title of this post comes, appropriately enough, from Dorothy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night.

"Everything falls away from us--the light, the dark, the warm afternoons--and all we can do is cry out in affirmation of our joy." *

I straddle longitudes and latitudes—

What is the point, I wonder, at which you can say you truly know a place?

I was born in turn-of-the-20th-century-California, where kids rode horses and climbed trees, where roosters woke families in darkest dawn, where rains washed the road away each winter and we set up school in a Victorian mansion. Then I crossed the country in one sweeping motion; 21st-century-Boston, all WiFi cafés and gleaming ultramodern skyscrapers. If you looked at the ground, you’d realize that people had been walking on the same bricks for four hundred years; or close to. But I didn’t know what old meant until I crossed the ocean, another sweeping motion, and walked down the High Street in Medieval Oxford.

“If you keep moving east,” my mother jokes, “eventually, you’ll end up right back where you started.” Isn’t that what Eliot says? "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

I start to feel a bit like that about university. Did I not know precisely what I wanted, from the moment I set foot in these hallowed halls (metaphorical hallowed halls, in my case, for the Emerson campus is as un-ceremonial as can be, as unlike a campus as the food court in a shopping mall)? I was going to be a writer, and spend my four years here filling my head with books--until a few weeks in, when I decided to explore, and my exploration led me somewhere entirely new, and exciting, and now here I am, and all I want is what I wanted in the first place, except that, as Eliot says, I have an utterly new sense of it.

There were points in my youth when I hated the ranch--and if you'd seen it, and hadn't lived there, you'd have to wonder why. But I had a thousand reasons: I hated its distance, its ruggedness, the way everything was full of hills; I hated how dark it got at night, how early the morning light came shooting into my bedroom, how coyotes and cows kept me up at night with their incessant howling and mewling, how I had to harbor a vague worry, everywhere I went, of mountain lions; I hated how dry the hills got each summer, how muddy and wet everything was by the light of winter; I hated going out in the dank darkness of a cloudy evening to turn the generator on; crawling up the driveway laden with grocery bags and heavy bookbags; and more, and more. I was a petulant teenager, yes; but when you know someplace, really truly well, do you not also gain a right to rail at it sometimes?

I certainly don't hate it now (though neither to I flatter myself that I could live there again, not yet)--going there is a respite, a holiday from the ugliness of a city, a feast for the senses. Never before did I appreciate a simple walk through the hills so much; never before did I delight so well in donning muddy wellies and tromping through the mud; never before did I lie awake by moonlight and marvel at how rare the sound of a coyote seems, or awake bathed in hot sunlight to think how special it is for one's rhythms of sleep to be marked not by the sounds of college kids yelping their way through a party, but by the rise and fall of the moon.

I find myself spread across many places: and I wonder, am I divided and split, or am I, in fact, more whole because of it? --and I think, because I am in essence the optimist (though some of you may not always believe it) that it is most assuredly the latter.

I have dreams now of Oxford; which seems, in my memory, to be the place I have been happiest, though surely there have been, and will be, minor unhappinesses there. It is not easy to feel this way: am I, I wonder, abandoning my family, my childhood home, the country that birthed me? But I am not doing these things, for to do so would be to renounce where I come from, and though it may be harder to visit the ranch, to spend time with my parents, I embrace wholeheartedly my origins, and know them as such, and know also that distance alone cannot keep me from them.

I straddle longitudes and latitudes—and know that I am more whole for it.

* Pico Iyer, from Sun After Dark (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004). Iyer, a travel writer (I might like to argue he is much more), was born in Oxford, raised in Santa Barbara, CA; then educated at Eton, Oxford, and Harvard. At the time of writing Sun After Dark he was living in suburban Japan. Straddling...

Things That I Do

Why is it that when I try to do something “good for myself” (AKA slightly selfish) I end up spending so much time feeling guilty about it that the benefits seem to shrivel up and disappear?

Am continuing to slog through coursework. This is a process that involves buying hot apple cider from the café down the street; doing the crossword; re-reading bits of books I haven’t looked at it in years; considering the contents of my cabinets, over and over again, and occasionally eating some of said contents; purging my closet of those items I do not wear on a fairly regular basis; “visiting” my friend while she does her laundry at the local Laundromat (since she obviously cannot be trusted alone in such a setting?—though to be fair, this is a ritual that has previously involved sitting on the stoop with warm mulled wine); trawling my iPhoto library for “artsy” pictures to put on display; reading other people’s blogs; occasionally glancing at my calendar and getting depressed about all the stuff I ought to be doing; thinking about going for a run but deciding it’s much to cold, and that I’ll do yoga later instead; watching the last few leaves fall from the tree outside my window; making lots of lists; drinking tea when there's a lull, or a pang of worry, or a chill; sitting in front of my heater; and general daydreaming.

Obviously.

Photo Series II

more from the archive...

photo series I

...some rather delightful photos dredged up from the depths of the (e-fucking-normous) library...


(yes, this really is what I do when times suggest that I strap up (or strap down?) and get some serious work done...)

Sustain Yourself/Maintain Yourself/Don't Restrain Yourself

Recently added to the ever-growing "books-I-am-currently-reading" list:

Zulieka Dobson. Max Beerbohm
In the Skin of a Lion. Michael Ondaatje

In other news/on other notes...

I'm starting to see the word "sustainability" everywhere. I see it, of course, in the work I'm doing for my thesis (it being the theme that's rather tenuously, and all by itself, holding my essays together)--but not necessarily in the ways I always expect. Initially this was going to be a project, you see, on "sustainable energy"--which meant, I thought, things like solar power, wind power, turning unused lights off, using public transportation to get places.

And in fact it does mean all this. But the thing is--the thing I didn't realize, initially--is that it means quite a whole lot more. I pictured the word a little like an umbrella (a rainbow-colored one, for some reason), and at the center, huddled round the handle, are industries like "energy", "power", "transportation", and moving out toward the edges of the umbrella are all the other realms that "sustainability” touches. But that may not be the most apt image, because actually, while sustainability means more than I thought, it is also something that can be on a much smaller scale than I thought possible.

Here's how: I noticed it when I started writing a piece about making lunch for some friends. Not the stuff of a John Grisham thriller (thank Christ). But frankly, I'm more likely to salivate over good food writing than good crime writing any day. And about halfway through the piece, I started to see that I wasn't writing about sustainability in any grand sense at all: I was writing about something very simple, very real, and very bloody basic.

I was writing about sustaining myself.

I was writing about sustaining myself with food (which is a fundamental human need); but in a way such that my footprint on the environment was as small as possible. What I found out is that eating in a conscious way (making a meal for friends with as many locally-produced goods as possible, as just one example) is more filling than eating any other way: it sustains not just the body, but the soul, the spirit, the bit-of-you-that-wants-to-be-good, the bit of you that craves company and friendship and story (anonymous strawberries from the bowels of Tesco versus the British-grown ones that the cheery grocer hands you, etc.). E.B. White has a wonderful description of this--"peas without pageantry", he calls those anonymous things.

So "sustainability", in the sense that I'm writing on it, is about energy sustainability, body sustainability, spirit sustainability. I was in a meeting at work today, however, and someone said the word in a totally different context. My ears perked up like a horse who hears his hay: there is, you see, the issue is of sustainability in the healthcare industry; i.e., on its current track, America cannot sustain her healthcare system. I was listening to a debate on the issue recently, and I'll tell you what: every single major candidate for president agrees. We’re on an unsustainable track.

I don't know what the answer here is, but I do know that sustainability is something that extends far beyond the realm of energy. Fundamentally, we humans need to sustain ourselves, and we're going to have to stop stretching so far, spreading ourselves so thin, and fold inward, relax heavy shoulders, breathe, think. And look for inspiration in everything. All of this is interrelated: sustainable energy (reduce fossil fuel use by buying locally grown produce); sustainable eating (enjoy meals made with foods that are fundamentally fresher, because they've had so few miles to travel); sustainable living (perhaps--enter into a generally healthier lifestyle by consuming fresher goods that have been grown without harmful chemicals; reduce pollution in the air by reducing harmful emissions; reduce the need for quite so much healthcare).

This doesn't solve everything--and it's hopelessly idealistic, can you tell I'm young?--but at least, for the sake of my thesis, it's pretty nicely packaged...

A Short History of Thongs & Shy Girls

I got my first thong in 9th grade. It was lime-green with tangerine piping, and a little pocket in front for, one can only presume, a condom. I did not, to be fair, actually BUY this obscene item—it was handed to me across a tableful of beaming high school girls at a nice little Italian restaurant.

Shall we backtrack? What happened was this: I joined the lacrosse team my freshman year of high school. It was what the cutest, smartest, COOLEST girls did during spring, and I had vague, half-formed designs of being like these girls. We wore little red plaid skirts and white polo shirts with the name of our school embroidered on back. It was a very STYLISH game.

As it turned out, I was actually rubbish at playing it. I could run for longer than most anyone on the team, with a few notable exceptions (I remember getting looks that seemed to be a mix of admiration and disgust after a particularly grueling workout: “you don’t even look like you’ve been running!”—it was only because I’d been running track before), but I had no skill with the stick, or the hard, tiny yellow ball. The whole thing, frankly, baffled me a little. I understood soccer quite well: and very much enjoyed, I confess, running around a field kicking a ball I could actually SEE. But what was the point of lobbing something so small it might not even be there at all across a space, hoping against hope it would fall into the netted pocket of a team mate’s stick? I spent a lot of time (well, pretty much all my time) on the bench.

Another thing I should mention is how SHY I was. It causes me pain to remember how afraid I was of the other girls, of the coaches, of anybody with a mouth. They would say things to me and my whole body would go cold, my jaw would clamp shut, and all I could usually manage was a tightlipped smile, a nod, and a quick retreat. I was so desirous of acceptance that I couldn’t bear the risk of SAYING anything: what if I did, and they laughed? Generally nothing occurred to me to say back anyway: I would think so long and hard about the appropriate response that it wouldn’t be until I’d left the pitch, been driven home (45 minutes away), showered, and done half my homework before it occurred to me. “Oh!” I’d say into my soup listlessly, at dinner, far too late. “I’m doing well—how are YOU? Tough game today, huh?”

(It was that “how are you” part that always got me. I don’t think it was until about the time I turned 16 that I finally mastered the art of conversational reciprocation. A very small part of me is still a shy girl, but my God, not like THAT.)

I was harmless. I don’t think anybody DISLIKED me; what, anyway, could they object to? I’d given them no ammunition at all. I remember scrimmaging once; the coaches put me on the team with the most seniors, ostensibly so I could learn from them, but I remember saying to one of them, “well, it’s not as if I really count, anyway”, in that self-deprecating way I had whenever I DID open my mouth for a split-second. The girl, whose name and shape I can no longer recall, stands out in my mind for the sole reason that her response was so utterly kind (and so utterly reasonable): “How silly!” she said. “Of course you do!” And then she laughed WITH me, and smiled.

So at the team dinner, spring turning into a pleasant California summer, the hills already starting to dry out, the seniors, who were responsible for distributing gifts to the rest of the team, gave me the flashiest thong they could find: for being, they said, choking on their own cleverness, the most FLAMBOYANT player.

I thought it was a good joke; I laughed along with everyone else, and feigned revulsion at the sickening shades of neon, and acted utterly horrified to be handling such an indiscreet undergarment at a dinner table. I tucked it away in my bag; I had never owned a thong before, let alone something so LOUD. But I had toyed with the idea: I admired girls who could wear tight jeans without panty lines. Anyway, I bet everyone else at the table probably had a thong on.

So being shy got me my first thong free of charge—and what threatens to be a lifetime allegiance to a certain kind of undergarment. Not a bad deal, really.

(Apologies to those, by the way, for whom this may seem to be far more information than necessary. It’s just that I was doing my laundry this morning...)

Integrity?

Office jobs make me feel fat.

I am very much NOT fat, and I do know this. But there’s some piece of my psyche that says: sitting on your bum for 8 hours straight (ok, getting up to pee once or twice) simply cannot be healthy. Of course, the only real alternative to this (at least, that I’ve found) is hospitality work, and the constant movement and tray-carrying tends to exhaust me.

What, oh what, is the solution here??

In other news, I’ve been feeling especially anxious lately. Why? Lord knows.

The only reason I can tell that I’m anxious at all is the mild, constant nausea-feeling, occasional head-spinning, the exhaustion. Physical symptoms of something that’s so psychologically hidden, I don’t know where to find it! I’m quite excited about everything, and not especially worried, as far as I know, so wherefore this feeling comes from puzzles me. I suspect it’s to do with impending CHANGE, coupled with that last big academic push.

I gave some sort of presentation of my thesis (as it stands now, it’s hardly a complete project, of course) the other morning (rather classically, I was late to my own presentation). It seemed to go well, indicating that at the end of this all, they will not decide to withhold my diploma based at least on the outcome of my project.

Am struggling with the idea of credibility, however. Howard Gardner & George Lakoff BOTH say, essentially, that the integrity between your worldview and your actions is THE THING; that is, it’s paramount if you want to effect change, change minds, gain a following, gain an audience. I think I’m honest enough. That’s not so much the issue. The issue is that Lakoff, anyway, only thinks that the connection must SEEM to have integrity. (Which is obviously how politicians—Lakoff cites Reagan as a sparkling example of this kind of earnest connection—can manage to seem both two-faced and authentic over the course of a term)

Isn’t SEEMING TO HAVE INTEGRITY sort of silly, if you think hard enough about it?

A Pair of Atlases

(for someone I know…)

Trying to bear the weight of the universe—even your own private universe--on your shoulders is hard. Then again, if everyone in the world was responsible solely and entirely for themselves, well, things would be a lot less messy but—it’d be a very, very lonely place. Somewhere, but I don’t yet know where, there’s a secret, magic balance. It’s the perfect amount of involved; the perfect amount of responsible; the perfect amount of adult. It’s not-too-much-guilt. Every once in awhile, we get it wrong. We, the pair of atlases, generally tend to err on the overly-involved, overly-responsible, overly—well, if not adult (no one would call us that, I don’t think), then overly conscientious, side.

It’s very heavy—the guilt, I mean. Helping people is light and airy. That’s not what’s heavy. That’s not even what it’s all about (though it probably should be). There are lots of strings attached—helping oneself, for instance. Feeling justified, needed, or loved. Oh, it gets very complicated indeed. But being driven by our guilt will only make our shoulders sag, and our faces pale, and our muscles, inside and out, ache.

I haven’t yet figured out how to transform guilt into something good; but when I do (and I will, I will, I will!) I’ll tell you about it. And maybe it has something to do with the light-and-airy-helping-feeling, and maybe soon I’ll discover where that magic balance is hidden.

But until then, I say…well, at least we’re a pair, and so, not alone; and I don’t think there’s any rule anywhere that says one Atlas can’t share another’s burden.

Ruminations

Have a slight aching. Today is a day full of rain and wild wind; the weekend seems to be going too fast, yet the time, the time is going too slow; how can this be? I like to think of this time as my penance for being happy; yet I know I only think of it this way because I want things to have balance and for there to be some kind of perverse, but forgiving, justice in the world. Still it is comfort enough, on a cold day, to look outside at the brown leaves crumbling from the tree, to shiver and sink deeper into the duvet, to ponder not getting up at all, this day—and then to bring one’s mind back to the great happiness harbored in one’s heart. It thaws the body out, a bit.

It is always on days like this that you run out of milk. The day when the only thing you can do, if you’ve got any sense, is stay inside close to the heater and listen to jazz (cheery jazz—of the 1930s big band variety, primarily, though Brett Dennen does me well too, if I feel like having a voice in the house.) with cup after cup of tea.

Thesis presentation next week. I’ve completely neglected my thesis, to be honest. Now I feel the weight of it bearing down on my shoulders—I spent all summer using it as an excuse to do nothing else, but read and write and be merry in the evenings, but my accomplishments to date seem meager compared with what I still have left to do. I MUST get something done today. On that note, (a spark of inspiration??) I shall away to try to remember what it was I meant to explore in the first place, and then, with any luck, get things done.

Words, Words, Words

The usual Wednesday night push. I hear snippets of lecture, but not the lecture itself.

We need to reframe all of this.
He was an ostrich.
I stamped it too. Consultants can be wrong sometimes.
Turf battles. Office politics. State politics. National politics.
And a man known as “Shrumy”.

I said the city was dizzy yesterday; well, now I’m dizzy.