Beliefs and wishes

It occurs to me that I mentioned Mark a while back, and then never closed out or continued that story. I think he's awesome. I think that he thinks that I am awesome. I kind of wish that we were soulmates, but instead we seem to be two quite similar people who are not attracted to one another. Shit happens, I guess. Though it can be difficult to find a different rhythm with the same person, I hope that we'll end up as friends.

The weather is seesawing between seasons, but I know it'll truly get to fall eventually. Sometimes the lines of brake lights look to me like angry red sores on the skin of the world. Leaving aside thoughts of practicality for the moment, a part of me just wishes we walked everywhere.


I've been reading another Charles DeLint book, which is full of magic. And I'm not sure how I feel about this, but regardless of how I feel about it, part of be believes these things. Fiction. People think I read fantasy because I like fantasy, but really, that's what science fiction is for. That's all entirely made up. It's about technology that doesn't and probably can't exist. Obviously fantasy is arguably also entirely made up, but a lot of it (and the sort I'm most drawn to lately) is based on cross-cultural myth, and it pulls me in. Often I read fantasy because on some level, I believe in magic. Not Criss Angel, not rabbits-from-hats magic, but the kind of magic that lets us sometimes dream the future. The kind of magic that put a stone in my hand while I was sleeping as a child. The kind of magic that can allow us to affect one another across vast distances, or encourage plants to grow taller with our thoughts or voices. I have stumbled into it before, but not for fifteen years or more. I hope to stumble into it again. And maybe "magic" is a misnomer. Who was it that said that magic is just science we haven't discovered yet? But whatever it is, even if it isn't unquantifiable, it is unquantified. So I call it what I will.

I have too many tabs open.

Weird, I know.


This is a slideshow that looks really excellent, but which I haven't even come close to watching all the way through. Done by the BBC, so it's probably quality.


This is a really great mug that I want to buy. Made in the USA. Please check it out. You will probably laugh, and/or feel smug.


An article from The Onion on the disappearing grown-up.


I want this. Read the description. There's a pretty funny video about it that someone posted on facebook, but I've already closed my facebook tab, so you're sol unless you Youtube it.


Don't believe in evolution? Don't be ridiculous. Open your eyes. (And before you get out your pitchfork, please remember that this sentence is being typed by a Christian type person.) Here are seven animals that are evolving right before our very eyes.


What Spiderman should have been inspired by. I never realized how awesome tarantulas were until just now.



And lastly, the world's smallest stop-motion animation. Now with 3D printing! And quite cute.

It makes no sense.

Why do I have such an aversion to bedtime?

You know, if we hadn't effectively ruined natural selection, I'd be an evolutionary dead end. THANKS, SCIENCE.

Hey, maybe there's something to all that fuzziness.

Apparently there is a "new wave" of research saying that, oh my gosh, it helps if we are nice to ourselves. Read on:

"Go Easy On Yourself."

Jumble sale reprise

I just saw someone's blog entry entitled "Falling In Love?" and when I saw it I had the feeling of reading a piece of a fairy tale. I wondered, "do people do that in real life?" Then realized what I was thinking. Interesting..

Forgive the following change in font. I copy/pasted from another post-in-progress. Here were my notes, and I'll be explaining each as a bullet point in lieu of actual paragraphs, because it's late and I'm tired and lazy and need to be taking a shower instead of mucking about online.

tuneless whistling/humming/singing/marching


I never understood how a person could do this until I found myself whistling tunelessly while walking the other day. And the whistling and the walking fell into time with one another, and I ended up marching to my endless unrepeating made-up song. It was like marching to pi...

cairn o'mohr


The wine made by these people is so good. I mean, it is unbelievably good. I don't even like wine very much. I will admit to my sweet tooth, so you'll have to take what I say with a grain of salt (yes, ha-ha), but seriously. So good. Unfortunately they only ship on the UK mainland. CRUELTY TO HUMANS.

3d printing > food synthesizer


There's a link about this, but apparently I didn't copy it. There's a link about 3d printing. You can probably google that yourself, though. They get an inkjet-type machine to print successive layers of something, only with plastic or metal or whatever instead of ink. Someone made a working clock this way. Someone made a serviceable violin. Anyway the food synthesizer bit is a reference to Larry Niven, but I couldn't find a L.N. food synth link that I like. My point here is that they want to make the 3D printers into food synthesizers. I heard this on NPR, so it must be true. (Yes, ha-ha.) This is obviously a PopSci-type idea, and we're obviously nowhere near that level of sophistication, but still--intriguing. 

wind = dance with trees


I was thinking about this the other day during the wind storm that blew through. I was driving to work and saw the leaves whirling across the road, and suddenly I felt like the wind and the trees were dance partners. Or best friends. Or lovers. Or all. The trees are so still so much of the time, and when the wind passes through them it's like a smile. (Yes. I know. Don't judge me. I do what I want.) But it feels that way. And when the wind whips them up into a frenzy they sway and snap and bend and rustle, and all the old dead parts drop off and blow away. There's so much energy in a wind storm. I love to watch it.

River? <3


 I've known her forever. Almost since she was born. She lives behind me (or vice versa). We hung out the other day. She is awesome. The end.

http://bookshelfporn.com/tagged/favorites


Bookshelf porn. Editor favorites. If you love books, and you are not looking at this website, you are missing out.

http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer/index.html


In the genre of "stories told by the losers." There's probably another name for this. The Wide Sargasso Sea and Wicked are others I've read. Apparently this one is downloadable for free! FREE BOOKS FTW.




Lastly, there was a note on the first "jumble sale" entry the other day, and I addressed it in a return note, and I'll copy the text of that here in case anyone else had the same "you need help" thoughts:

No, I'm not in therapy, though I have been before. I've never really found a therapist with whom I have/had good chemistry, though I've found some friends who are sometimes as effective as therapists.

Upon reflection I guess I did sound really sad, and I guess I was a little sad, but it was more a writing of reflection (there I go again with the late-night redundancy, but I choose to ignore this) than of raw emotion. I have often felt, this past year, that I am emotionally healthier than I have ever been, or than I have been since I was very small. It can be hard to tell, though, as (as I said) my depression has a history of hiding itself from me. Sometimes other people notice before I do. Even so, I have made enormous progress--and without therapists. I guess that's a point of maybe-slightly-masochistic pride, but also I'm cheap/relatively poor, and don't want to spend what money I have on arguably-ineffective therapy. (That isn't to say that there aren't effective therapists--only that those are few and far between, and hard to find, and often expensive.)

Lastly, about the loneliness: generally, I think I'm not. I'm just alone a lot of the time, and sometimes I think that maybe this is a symptom of an issue I haven't noticed or fully worked out, or sometimes I just feel guilty for not seeing or speaking to people often or whatever. But dammit, I am an introvert. I came this way, and I am this way, and I like it. SO THERE, WORLD.
























PostScripts:


1. Anna posted a facebook status: "I want you to tell me how we met. And I want you to lie." I posted it too, with some modifications. Just thought I'd post it here in case anyone felt like telling stories about strangers.


2. I got the Blue Screen Of Death midway through this post, and I have two things to say about this.
      a) Thank God for blogger's autosave feature.
      b) EFF.

Flights of fancy

I have been reading, as I mentioned earlier, Charles deLint, and he and those like him always affect my brain. Everything does, of course, but deLint and his ilk encourage that part of me that wants to believe in simply everything. I string it all together like, like string theory actually, a theory of everything, and make it all somehow possible in my mind. The pervasiveness of faerie tales means something, perhaps, as does the pervasiveness of religion, and of so many common (commonly shared) human things. All our connections and disparities.

I think of the magic I saw and felt when I was younger, from serial dreams to inexplicable deja-vu, from a dream that left a tangible object in my hand upon waking to a hypnotism game that went around the fourth-grade schoolyard--one that worked so well I felt a painful grip around wrists that no one was touching.

It's all about lenses. It is, has to be, must be. The lens of the physical, clearly visible, immediately tangible world: if I do not eat or do not drink, I will wither and die; if I slip a hand against a blade or stub a toe on a stone, I will bleed or bruise, then heal. These things are true and visible and calculable. But so many other truths seem undeniable, even if they can be faked or mimicked in some ways, at some times: the truth of connection; the truth of mystery. The truth that beneath and above all, we and everything are all the same, made of the same things, together making up the same universe, all connected.

And the interface! The center of the science vs. mumbo-jumbo Venn diagram: that factual mystery of our ability to affect one another over distance. Explanations and counter-arguments have been offered, and the phenomenon has been repeatedly documented, scientifically and anecdotally. The energy of which I am formed can affect that which forms you. Can you believe it?

And that mysteries lie alongside and within and between, above and below everything: I love this. I love that no matter how long scientists delve and dissect and discover, they will never reach the end of knowledge. Who could ever explain the dream I had at nine years old which came true, moment for moment and word for word for three days straight, a year later? Who could ever explain the dream from which I awoke holding a tiger's eye stone that my parents didn't recognize and that I had never seen before I dreamed of it? The voice I heard calling my name one afternoon when no one was around?

But these lenses: I still stare awestruck at the extravagant, expansive beauty of the world, and I marvel at raindrops and rivers and spider's webs, but although I try (when I remember) to keep my eyes open, I stopped living magic, that storybook kind of magic, a long time ago. Today I wonder if I lost it when I began to focus more on fitting in. Is that silly? I walked around for fourteen years, give or take, feeling like an outsider, feeling like the person outside the window watching the party go by. When I got sick enough of the whole scene I started trying to learn how to build bridges to other people's hearts and minds, which was and is of course a gradual process. And gradually, I seem to have lost the magic in my dreams.

Matters

I want to love the world. I want to smile with everything. With everything I have. I want to travel. I want to love. I want to dance and be at peace.



Written in the aftermath of an afternoon with Maggie and a viewing of the movie "Eat, Pray, Love." I feel that saying so cheapens it all, but let's not let it. I highly recommend the movie. I more highly recommend the book. I most highly recommend, I don't know, loving the whole world. Love. Connect.



I am not a scientist--I am just a person who is enthralled and fascinated by science. But what I know of science is that underlying everything, it appears that there is nothing but energy. Is this new to you? This is brilliance to me, in the "great brightness and magnificence" sense of the word. It is possible that my samsonic* denial mechanism plays a small part here, but when I let myself, I can see and feel that everything is is unendingly scintillating brilliance--love--and that I am a part of it, and so are you.



(If you don't like neuroscience or whatever, skip to minute 9 or so.)


And one last thing.






















*Which is not even remotely a word, but should be. What better symbol of strength than Samson? Probably there is a perfect, dictionary-recognized synonym that I am overlooking here. Feel free to help me out.

Tidbits

Today work was fine--boring until Brian went out, and then ridiculously busy, as usual. Junior stopped by, and that was nice. Really my only plans today were to take a nap. I considered going to the park because the weather was so nice, but I thought, "no, I haven't slept well for two nights. I need to catch up on some sleep today."

Any guesses as to whether I took a nap?

Any guesses as to whether I went to the park?

Answers: no; no. wtf, fml.

I did get to talk to Daniel though, which was nice. It has been a very long time. Incidentally, I also discovered that one can make biodegradable plastic (at home, no less!*) out of potatoes. I have also decided to try making frozen yogurt, hopefully with my theoretical mentee. We'll see whether that actually happens. I mean, I hope we'll be able to get together and I especially hope that the yogurt turns out, but our track record thus far hasn't been so great.

In other news, I was reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything today during lulls at work--I use this as a sort of palate-cleanser between other books, and I've been "reading it" for years--and I learned some interesting stuff. For instance, evidently we have near misses with asteroids/planetoids with some regularity, and there is essentially nothing to be done about it. Not that it matters, because no one ever notices them until they're past us, if they notice at all. The good news is that an asteroid (even one the size of a house would be catastrophic) striking the surface of the earth would do so much damage so quickly that many or most of us, depending on the size, would be dead before we knew what was happening. It would enter the atmosphere at such high speed that the air beneath it would be unable to move out of the way, and would be supercompressed and superheated enough to vaporize anything beneath it. It would strike with the force of millions of nuclear bombs, and the shockwave would move outward far faster than the speed of sound, silently and instantly killing anyone lucky enough to be within the 'blast radius.' For those unlucky enough to be  outside the radius, life would quite quickly become rather unpleasant. The air worldwide would be filled within hours with ash, and the earth would be covered with it, polluting water and air, blocking sun, and killing plant life.

On that note, I hope you all have a very restful night.





*That is, there was a "DIY potato plasic" link on one of the pages I read, but I didn't click on it as I was not feeling like making plastic out of potatoes at the time.

Best news ever: I don't have to work tomorrow! God, I love Fridays.

Today at work I began Under the Tuscan Sun again, and realized again how wonderful it is. There is something luscious and alive about Frances Mayes' writing, subject matter, voice. It made me feel more alive after reading it. It made me remember how much I love fruit. I know it's probably difficult to see a connection there, but evidently there is one.

Today also the ice that has been building between myself and Brian (ice of which he was probably completely unaware) was broken. The cracking began, actually, when I accidentally dropped a bucket on his head. Sometimes I get defensive, and then I get obsessive, and then I become ice woman. I'm glad it's melted a bit.

Today I went to an art opening with my mom, and some of the paintings were just stunning. I hope I can paint like that, someday. I guess I'll have to get over my fear of oil paints first, though, as most of the paintings I loved were oil paintings.

On the way home tonight I watched the moon, imagining different shapes around it. Usually the crescent moon looks like a swing to me, attached by an invisible string to the star that's always near it. Tonight though it looked like a thumbnail, like a luminescent cat's nose, like a sleepy eye, like an aircraft, like a wide grin. The last made me grin back.

I realized, too, that it's the same moon that's always been there. I mean, the same one that has always, always been there. Einstein watched that same moon. Galileo, Chief Powhatan, Copernicus, and Isaac Newton watched it. Caesar, Pilate, and Jesus watched it. Mohammad watched it. Rameses. Homer. Eve. It's kind of difficult for me to grasp.


In other news, my friend Aby posted a link to this super awesome (but unfortunately, still just conceptual as far as I can tell) stove of the future.

What can I even say to improve this?

(thanks to xkcd.com)

hovertext:

"I am so excited about the Kepler mission. It is the second most important thing our species has ever done, right behind inventing the concept of delivery pizza."

I call this the "if it ain't broke, fix it bitter" tour.

1(a

le
af
fa
ll

s as)
one
(girl sits
sits
sits
and reads
reads
sleeps
sits as friends
travel
write
leave her a
l
one)
l

iness


thanks to E. E. Cummings.




In other news: job offer from Banker's Life and Casualty Company. This was sort of exciting until I realized that hiring me would constitute absolutely no risk for the company whatsoever, as my pay would be based entirely on commission. I'd be surprised if they didn't hire almost everyone who applied. Also, to get licensed to sell insurance, I'd have the honor of paying out about $300 to various people for classes and tests and permission from the state and whatnot--non-reimbursable. Sounds great, don't it?
Also on the job front, I interviewed today with Mad Science, a company whose goal is to get kids excited about science, and a company which seems much more up-front, open, and honest, and awesome, in just about every way. I mean, obviously I wouldn't have anything close to the earning potential I would at Banker's Life, but I probably wouldn't hate my job, either. As an added bonus, they'll hire me for free! (If they hire me. Let's not get nit-picky.)