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.

Anatomy of a Dinner Party/Autumn Days

Have been flipping through photographs in my effort NOT to work on my thesis this weekend (goodness knows I have PLENTY of time………..right?). Came across a particularly delightful series taken by a friend…having put them together, no wonder it takes us three hours to cook a dinner and at least six to eat it. Consequently, no wonder we go through at least 10 bottles of wine. And on top of that…we hardly even all fit into the kitchen!

Makes me rather homesick, in a weird way. It’s very cold in my apartment; I would love to have lots of people and hot food on the table and wine being spilled. What I have at the moment is a pile of blankets on the floor and the hum of the refrigerator which will, I suspect, drive me BATTY by the end of this term.

Today was one of those AUTUMN DAYS: clear as anything, cold, crisp, leaves falling from trees. It was hard not to smile (stupidly, really) the entire day. I went for a long walk, ostensibly doing errands but really just finding excuses to a) not work on my thesis and b) stay outside. Couldn’t even bring myself to run because it would seem a shame to go quickly past such a day: I wanted to linger on streetcorners and squint up at the skyline. On such days, it is easy to be captivated by Boston’s charm. It’s a city that looks bleak and rundown through a rainy lens, but positively sparkles on a clear day.

Went to the vintage shop down the road (and found myself wondering, as I always do, how they can pay rent if they’re only open two days a week) where I toyed with the idea of buying myself a pair of 1950s vintage black pumps. They were ten dollars and fit like a GLOVE, but ultimately I told the woman I couldn’t justify such a purchase. But now I find myself wondering if they shall still be there next weekend, and if so, perhaps I can summon up some sort of justification.

Yes, it was THAT kind of day. Also grocery shopping day, which is always, in my view, a good day.

Satellites & Surface Area

Between the two of us, we don’t have enough money for the bus. I find it funny that this could be: two people, smart, funny, good looking young people, each with a university degree (well, almost), neither of whom can manage to cough up one-pound-thirty. The relative poverty of youth, I think, for the millionth time this week. We are living partly on the high of our own happiness, partly on the kindnesses of those older than ourselves, and partly on the empathy of our friends, who suffer similarly at other times. They will always find a way to buy us a drink; and we, when we can, will always find a way to reciprocate. Of course, we are all also doing this partly on sheer luck.

A thrown-together dinner party: it was meant to be risotto, but we had so many potatoes that at the last minute, we figured it would be better to make gnocchi from scratch. We buy half a shoulder of lamb from the butcher, and some quail’s eggs on sale, and are delighted when our entire bag of vegetables costs under five pounds!

The guest list fluctuates—it is only finally settled an hour and a half before we are due to start cooking, and even then it is only because we wrangle a deal with A, who says he will only come to dinner if we have a drink with him first (a stressful day at work, he says). So we carry our groceries to the pub, and A buys us cider, first one pint, then another, but because I drink slower than the boys X worries he should head home and start cooking. He takes the food and goes off to catch a bus while A and I discuss the woes of writing our respective dissertations. And we are growing progressively more and more animated, exchanging ideas like tennis players volleying, and I have scarcely sipped my drink, when X comes toddling back. His tail is between his legs and his cheeks rosy from cold.
“No money for the bus," he remembers.

A hands him a few pounds for another pint: a wordless exchange. Are we drinking to forget? I forget to worry about this. X comes back outside with a cider and a folding map of Oxford pubs.
“Did you know,” he says, “that this style of folding was derived from origami? Now it’s how they fold satellites.”
He takes the two corners and pulls; the map unfolds, and the table is covered by a paper representation of a dozen wizened old drinking establishments. I point at the ones I’ve been to while X says,
“It’s about surface area. And it’s also far simpler for a robot to simply pull two corners, than to futz with folds.”
“All except three,” I say. “I’ve been to all the places here except three!”
X squeezes the accordion-like map shut again; then pulls, and unravels it again.
“How do they get satellites to twist and fold like that?” A wants to know.
“They’ve just got the right materials,” X says. Flexible, foldable, satellite materials.

We are now running very late. We send A to get wine and throw the lamb in the oven, and dance round the yellow-walled kitchen washing dishes and cracking quail’s eggs and dropping vegetable stalks on the floor and sniping at each other until I spill egg all over myself and run upstairs in a huff, and X follows me and folds me in his arms and whispers “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I love you,” but it is not till twenty minutes and seven outfits later that I am able to come back downstairs and feel at all composed.

We drink the fancy bottle of wine at dinner. For as long as I have known X, it has been there, on the counter, a yellowed French label.
“I’m saving it for a special occasion,” he always told me. “It’s really nice stuff.”
But tonight he leans over to me and says,
“I don’t know why I made it out to be as big as I did. It’s not that nice. It’s not so special. I was thinking, on the way over here, that we should drink it.”
I protest. I do not know what significance—if any—it may hold, but I feel this is a rash decision.

I protest, and he protests to my protests, until we’re tongue-tied and twisted. “Honestly,” he insists. We’ve moved through seven bottles already, so we throw caution to the wind, and open the fancy wine, the wine for a special occasion. I think: well, it is a special occasion, isn’t it? Of sorts?

In the morning every space in the kitchen is covered with the detritus of a lovely meal. There was scarcely room for six of us at the table; I find myself thinking, “we need more surface area”. I picture our lives being unfolded by robots, grasping at the corners, pulling gently, and what they would see this morning, I suppose, would be colored by nice wine and quail’s eggs, and a whole lot of a happiness that has nothing whatsoever to do with money in a bank.