When You're Here, You're Family

Initially, this was going to be about Glenwood. But this is a simpler concept and, I think, more suited to a drabble.

The sign promised friendly service. It was, certainly, prompt.

“I’ll have the Fried Chicken, please.”

“Are you sure?”

“What?”

“You don’t want a salad?”

Sarah tried to laugh. “No.”

“It’s just… No offense, dear, but you could lose a few pounds.”

Sarah’s eyes bugged out. “Can I speak to your manager?”

“I suppose you’ll have mashed potatoes and a milkshake too?”

“You know what, I’m leaving.” Sarah picked up her bag and stood. The gall!

“Ungrateful,” she heard the waitress say. “I was only trying to be helpful.”

Nobody spoke to her like that.

Nobody except, Sarah realized, her mother.

One of the divers has taken to informing me of how young I look on a semi-regular basis. Today he told me that my brother looks much, much older than I do. Which, of course, I know (it's the beard. If I had a beard, I would look older), and which, of course, has become if anything a joke between Kevin and me. But when it comes to the kid who told me his mom mistook me for an adolescent boy (dang it, not again!) I still end up feeling sort of odd. Thanks, John.

I think he does it because he's tiny -- much smaller than the other boys in his age group -- and he's trying to emphasize a similarity between himself and me (we are both small and look younger than we are). But that might be the Polyanna in me speaking. Maybe he just likes annoying me.

Trapped in a Time Loop

In Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next novels, one of the punishment for villians who are so dangerous conventional prisons could not hold them is a "Time Loop" -- the character would be incarcerated not in a jail cell but in a period of time a certain length long. One of the most severe examples is one character who is trapped in an eight second loop: forever repeating the same eight seconds.

This summer has felt like I'm trapped in a time loop; reliving the same day (or, if I'm lucky, week) from some summer during high school. Sleeping, diving, arguing with my mother, napping, diving, arguing with my mother some more, eating, maybe seeing a friend if I'm lucky (and these are exclusively high school friends, only serving to accentuate the feeling of a dream) and then going to sleep again. It feels like months, years, eons have passed and no progress has been made - that the years I have lived have sort of folded in on themselves and I'm back at the start again, no different except perhaps a little bit worse for wear. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that it isn't my time in Chicago that feels ethereal and dream-like. It's this summer, now. I keep thinking I'll wake up in the apartment on 54th, or in the dorm, and I'll be back to my old life (my real life), the life that was mine and not my mother's or my parents'. (The life that I almost screwed up completely, several times, but somehow managed not to). The life with the people that my parents don't know, and the places that they barely know, and the wonderful wonderful city that they only think they know.

And, fittingly enough for a dream, everything seems to revolve around Chicago. Like a beacon, drawing me back (or an anchor keeping me from drifting away). From things like a report about a beetle that kills ash trees (from China by way of the Midwest) invading a DC suburb to things like my ex moving out to Chicago to things like movies being filmed there (I cannot wait for Dark Knight, but did you know Wanted was filmed and set in Chicago?) or television shows mentioning it (apparently Wicker Park/Bucktown is now the "center of cool") or the baseball teams doing well or that one commercial for Aquafina water that seems to always be playing where Lou Pinella pretends to yell at that umpire. I realize it's just my memory, my own predisposition to now notice things Chicago-centric causes me to see what I ignored before, it's just my brain playing tricks on me. But my brain is doing a very, very good job at it; at accentuating the recursion, and the surreality, of my current existence.

I've started telling people I'm from California just to make the time I'm going to spend at Stanford more real. Maybe if I started seeing San Francisco in everything, rather than Chicago, it would make this transition easier. The problem, of course, is that then they ask questions that I cannot answer. If I said I was from Chicago, I could answer more of their questions. Perhaps because I almost am from Chicago. Not quite, but almost. I tried wandering around the District when I was in a mood, and it feels like it ever felt -- a memorial, a monument to our greatness, a palace to the federal government, in the style of the Greeks and the Romans. Not a real city. Not a real city where you are dwarfed by the buildings and feel the press of the masses around you. It felt more like Hyde Park than downtown Chicago. My sense of direction was nonexistent (or rather, perhaps, it was just that I didn't know where things were; I didn't have the lake to pinpoint east). I did better than some of my friends who went to rural or suburban campuses. But mostly I just felt vaguely lost, like it was a miracle I made my way to my destination at all.

When Kevin came to visit for Graduation, I gave him directions on how to get from O'Hare to Hyde Park -- take the train downtown and a cab from there. He says that when he stepped out of the subway station into downtown (Blue line to Clark, I believe) he just sort of stared for a second, thinking "Oh, I really am in a city." When I set foot in San Francisco I had an almost-similar reaction. I stepped out of the subway and stared at the buildings for a second thinking either "Where did this hill come from?" or "I'm home" -- I can't really identify which one, or what combination thereof, it was. But the funniest thing for me, the most drop-dead hilarious part of that, was the fact that I was traveling with two people from the area, from Berkeley I believe, and I was the one who found our hotel. Admittedly, the hotel was two blocks away and I only really needed to be looking for the signs. Admittedly, I didn't know what neighborhood it was in or where that fit into other neighborhoods, which were good or bad or ugly or otherwise whatever. But the point remains that it felt comfortable, good, solid; it reminded me of home.

That, of course, could not have been the suburban DC home in which I was raised, or even Rogers Park or Hyde Park. It was downtown Chicago, which has for some strange reason been connected with "home" in my mind even though I have never lived there. (Maybe it's subconscious, a lost memory from my third-or-some-such day of existence; I was born there). I already know, going in to Stanford, that visiting the city once a month will not be sufficient for me. That I will want to be a part of the city as much as I was a part of the city living in Hyde Park (perhaps more, since it is one of my regrets that I didn't get to know Chicago better than I do). That I will want to (need to?) feel the press and the peace of urban anonymity - surrounded by strangers and yet completely and totally alone. I find it funny that I think of a crowded coffee shop in the middle of a city as being just as peaceful and centering an experience as standing alone on top of a mountain. And perhaps that's because your chances of meeting someone and starting a conversation are about equal in either place; because the chances that you will be noticed in either place are about equal. There's something nice about watching the world churn, watching society shuffle and sprint about and feeling a part of it all and separate from it all simultaneously.

All of which is perhaps a long, rambling way to say "I'm bored, I'm vaguely lonely, I want to make a home for myself, I want it to be in a city like Chicago." It will be nice to visit next weekend, and wonderful to see people and absolutely amazing to celebrate Mia and Ryan and their wedding, but I think it will be strange to stay in a hotel. Sort of detached, or detaching.

Kate

Inspired by the word "Tutelage", from several days back.

“I am not your Latin tutor. I am here to speak… profess?… my sincere, ardent, and overwhelming adoration for your sister. I cast myself upon your mercy; with a… demand? Surely you mean plea… that you shall engineer a meeting for us.” She looked up and cherished the pale, stricken look in his face. “I do not believe that Virgil ever wrote that, Mister Clarke.”

He blushed. “No, it is my own creation.”

“Your own creation?” she laughed. “Well, your grammar could use some revision. As could your knowledge of your audience. I have never been known for my mercy.”

Spacewalk

Inspired by the line "You were a Cosmonaut in the space between our chairs" from "Armchairs"

All of her time spent underwater in high-pressure suits could not prepare her for the vertigo of stepping out of the shuttle for the first time, knowing there was absolutely nothing (not even ground after a fall) beneath her. She assumed that all the preparation in the world would be insufficient for that. But as she gazed down at the foreign planet, and repaired her radio antenna, she was filled with a renewed determination. She was almost there – her own home was light-years behind her.

When the aliens had kidnapped her brother, they chose the wrong girl to mess with.

I'm going to say that I took this past weekend off of writing because of my birthday, and yesterday off because of the delayed dive meet. And we'll pretend that it's true and I'm not just lazy.

Also, I'm not going to feel guilty about not being "more dedicated" to a hobby. Because that is silly. If anything, I should feel guilty that I am not doing any science this summer.

Although that is sort of the point.

ETA: So, apparently, I wrote to the wrong quote. Oops! Ayn's story can be found here.

Jekyll and Hyde

Last night, at the fireworks concert (plans changed at the last minute because one friend desperately wanted to see the mediocre concert that they put on to go with the fireworks) Brian Stokes Mitchell (of Broadway fame) sang an incredibly sappy song called "This is the Moment" to Olympic Athletes, supposedly about how amazing it is to have your moment in the Olympic sun.

I was surprised that I knew all the words, and concluded that it had to be from some Broadway show or another, but could not for the life of me determine which one. That's because I did not expect it to be from "Jekyll and Hyde", a show I have neither seen nor heard the entire soundtrack to, but apparently heard excerpts from at some point or another, and they stuck in my memory.

The point is, I suppose, that creating a potion that unlocks the purest aggression and anger in the human spirit and turns you into a violent, brutal monster is really analogous to going to the Olympics. In every way imaginable.

How I Came to be Standing Here, Half Naked, and More Than a Bit Tipsy, at a Bus Stop, at Two in the Morning (revised)

With a redone ending, thanks to Ayn's comments.

All I’m saying, all I’m say… saying, is… you should listen to what I’m saying. It’s… you would think that maybe you would think about con-conse-consek effects before you’re a real prick to your brother. I mean, it’s basic kindness, famil-famil-family-family-al bonds and whatnot. Bros before… not bros. Blood is thicker than wine?

‘Scuse me. I’m not… I’m not like this. I didn’t drink tonight, I just… well... I had a little bit, just a little bit, you know, to calm me down. You know how it is. It’s just… I just… he’s my brother. I can’t just hate him.

I think this is better, but I'm still not certain about it. One idea I had was to add footnotes; the sober person the next morning explaining what actually happened -- they would be didactic and verbose in tone -- but I don't know exactly how that would work, or if it would work well, either. And besides, I'm not sure they're necessary and I'm also not sure what the story would be that they told.

One Day, She Just Left

For Pat, who inspired this with his crazy stories of moving in.

“Your asking price…”

“It’s too high?”

“No…”

“We could work something out,”

“No, that’s not it, it’s half of anything else I’ve found.”

“Oh.”

“Why?”

“Well… it’s rather… bright.”

“Bright?”

“Pink.”

“What?”

“The walls, they’re bright pink.”

“Can’t you paint them?”

“Um… well… no. The lease said no painting.”

“Well, it can’t be that bad, can it?”

“That’s what we say; it’s rather… cheerful, sort of.”

“Can I talk to the girl who’s moving out?”

“Oh… um… she’s not here.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Um… I don’t think she can get calls.”

“What?”

“We don’t… talk about her.”

How I Came to be Standing Here, Half Naked, and More Than a Bit Tipsy, at a Bus Stop, at Two in the Morning

Inspired by "Whiskey plied voices cried fratricide" from the song "Fake Palindromes" by Andrew Bird.

All I’m saying, all I’m say… saying, is… you should really listen to what I’m saying. It’s… you would think that maybe you would think about con-conse-consek effects before you act like a real prick to your brother. I mean, it’s basic kindness, famil-famil-family-family-al bonds and whatnot. Bros before… not bros. Blood is thicker than wine? But all I’m saying is, is, well, you shouldn’t screw your brother over.

I know that I’m not always the nicest brother, and the cow was mean, but out here, alone, I could’ve died, I could still die, and when there would he be?

I don't know how I feel about this one. I tend to stay away from drunk people so I'm not sure how to write them (other than chatty, which I get, and more likely to talk about more things, which I get). At first I was using lots of spoonerisms (because that's how I talk when I'm really tired), but it just came off as stupid, so I cut that. Any suggestions, especially about tone and voice, would be excellent.

Ayn's story

Interpolate

Molly was home with the babysitter. Her parents wouldn’t be home for hours. The sitter was chatting on the phone and ignoring her charge. Molly, momentarily, had free reign, and she had been planning for this moment for weeks. A sly grin grew across her face as she snuck into the kitchen.

Molly awoke the next morning to her father’s stern face. “Molly, what you did last night was very bad,” he said angrily.

She blinked up at him with large blue eyes.

“You could have hurt yourself!” He sighed, and then smiled. “We’ve signed you up for cooking lessons.”

In other news, Glenwood won its third (out of four!) dive meet this season! This one was incredibly close; we were missing a lot of divers and going up against a very good team; we only won by one point (could not have been closer!)! I have very few complaints about the diving in general; the kids were troopers (one nine year old dove as an 11-12 because we needed her to, the other nine year olds were jealous they weren't "chosen"), they were well-behaved (no pushing or peeing on the deck), for the most part they paid attention, and the older kids especially really pulled out some amazing dives (Bea and Nate in particular). At halftime, Austin was calculating scores and thought we were five points behind. As they announced the older kids' places, I was tallying in my head; seven points up with 13-14s (to a net two ahead) and one point down with 15-18s (to a net one ahead), but I didn't trust the math, and I was just sort of sitting there edgy until the meet result was announced, when we were jumping for joy (it was almost as exhilarating as a scav victory, and featured a group hug with my fellow coaches and Bea). I mean, one point. One point! And we were missing our best diver, too, although I don't think that would have changed the ending very much (the way I figure it, he would have taken second place -- which Nate took anyway, so he would only have gained third place for us, which is one point; it would have been a three point victory instead of a one point victory).

One more meet, next week. I want a win for my birthday! *fingers crossed* Then we'd be undefeated this season, which would be awesome.

I'm not competitive at all, of course.

In other news, my mother mistook me for a fifteen year old boy today. No, I am not joking. She actually walked right past me, thinking "Who is that talking to Glenwood divers? He sounds and looks really familiar. Which fifteen year old boy am I forgetting about? And where's Elizabeth?" She admitted it on the phone to my brother, when I was in the room. I am never letting her live it down.

And people wonder why I have this complex where I think I look like an adolescent boy.

Milk

Inspired by the line "If you're made of calcium, I'll have to take a taste" from MX Missiles by Andrew Bird. (I just realized that I had been negligent in linking that.)

Beatrice hated milk. Since the earliest age, she had simply hated the taste. She was weaned in record time. Later, her mother tried adding sugar, vanilla, strawberry, even chocolate, futilely. Beatrice hated it steamed and she hated it chilled. She hated it in yogurt, in cheese, even in ice cream.

So Beatrice had to find her calcium somewhere else.

Looking at the spread before her, of calcium-enriched and fortified foods, Beatrice winced. Her mother had given her a simple task: taste everything, and determine what she liked.

Sighing, she threw away the milk. One down. A hundred thousand to go.

Ayn's story can be found here.

Nautilus

Steve grimaced and slouched down in his chair. The graduate student in front of the projector screen was trembling, biting his lip and staring at Steve with a glimmer of desperate hope in his eyes. Steve sighed.

“It seems like an ideal two-photon microscope experiment. Why are you wasting your time with a confocal?”

As they filed out of the conference room, Steve allowed himself a smile. The look of shock on the student’s face had brightened his day; no one expected good advice about cutting edge technology from an eighty-five year old.

But Steve wasn’t quite a fossil yet.

This is in honor of the Nautilus, which is a particularly ancient-looking cephalopod described as a "living fossil". And the Andrew Bird line, "I had not become a cephalopod" from "Opposite Day".

A link to Ayn's story, inspired by the same line, here.

Word of the day

Because I need to force myself to write or I will go crazy. And I'll post the drabble first, therefore, because for all of you who don't want to hear my vaguely-emo rambles, well, you don't have to. Just stop after the drabble; to yesterday's word of the day on Dictionary.com: renascent.

Renascent

It was hard to tell when it stopped being a horrible disaster and turned into a rebirth. No one stopped missing the lost possessions, the lost homes, the lost souls. But still, the city rose like a phoenix from its own ashes; stronger, more thoughtful, and more beautiful. They built sensibly. They laid out a grid. They added a lower level to keep garbage off the streets. And the buildings rose from the charred ground, reaching proudly toward the sky.

They used more metal this time, and less wood. They were wiser, but they still kept building wooden fire escapes.

Yesterday was hard; there were too many eleven year olds and not enough listening. I love coaching, and I love diving, I really do, but it is already pretty apparent to me that I could never make a career out of it the way I can make a career out of research. I need something where I have some facsimile of control, where I can at least reasonably delude myself into thinking that I know the variables. This week has been utterly and completely exhausting, and I feel like I've quite possibly done more harm than good. I miss Chicago, and my friends there, and my life there. I want to sit by the lake and watch the water after a hard day, look at the city from the Point.

There are a few things that I will remember and will summarize Chicago for me. One is coming back my second year, becoming completely (and very briefly) lost, running into Ryan and Alex and Duff, and finally stowing my bags in Ryan's car and getting lunch at Sammy's. Another is picnicking at Navy Pier with Chrissy and Asa. Another is driving back from Lao Szechuan in the blizzard that made planes slide off the runways in Midway. Another is catching a ride to the U-haul place at 75th street with Ayn, and moving in to my first apartment. And another three or four are swimming in the lake, barbecuing at the point, and being unimpressed by the far-away fireworks in Grant Park. The lake is so uniquely Chicago, and even if it leaves a scar on my toe from the last time I went in, I'll always miss it. It's nice to dive at Glenwood, and lately the water has been warm and refreshing rather than the bitter cold of Lake Michigan I'm sure, but it doesn't come close to the iconic crumbling rocks of the point.

Mia, in a card to me, mentioned that it might feel like the past four years were just a dream, and I've woken up in Maryland and none of it has ever happened, and to a certain extent it does feel like that -- I've woken up again, in my parents' house -- and at the same time that it's hard to imagine that college was real, it's equally hard to imagine that what I'm living now is real. I feel like I'm trying to cram myself into the life of someone who just graduated high school, and (unsurprisingly) it isn't working. If anything, the real me is still in Chicago, doing something or another. It's hard to describe, hard to explain.

I imagine that it will get better once I find some places that are truly my own, maybe make a few new friends, maybe remake a few old ones. The reunion today was good for that, perhaps not as good as it might be (Nick is moving to Chicago and I was suffused with a feeling of sheer, heart-wrenching jealousy for more than a moment at the idea of living in Chicago for the indefinite future), but I now know two more people who will be at Stanford with me next year (and have e-mail addresses for four more friends-of-friends), which brings my total up to nine people I know well and fourteen people I have some connection with next year in the bay area. Which is pretty amazing, and it's nice in part because I can get excited about going to Stanford with Becca and Noel (both of whom I was okay friends with in high school but always wanted to be better friends with, which is actually a pretty darn cool thing that I'll be going to school with them) this summer, which will be very nice. There were no fights, and particularly none that I was involved in (hooray for that!) although at times it did sort of feel like I was ignoring the pink elephant in the room, but in the situation I think that that was the best thing I could do. Who knows. And when it seemed like things promised to get awkward due to the ignoring of said pink elephant, well, they miraculously didn't, or everyone ignored them getting awkward, or something like that. But part of it still felt empty, and forced, and put-on. I wanted a reunion with other people, I guess.

I guess, in conclusion, to all of my Chicago friends who are or are not reading this, who are or are not in Chicago at the moment, well, I miss you terribly. You all gave me a home, and a family, and all those things that people say they lose when they leave their parents' house. And I can't thank you enough for that. And in the interest of not letting it get too too sappy, I'm going to end there.

In the interest of posting almost daily

A weekly drabble challenge with Ayn, using Andrew Bird lyrics.

Our rules:
100 words
Inspired by the lyrics

As of yet, that's about it. Rules on including (or, interestingly, not including) the lyrics might be appended.

This week's lyrics: "The sky is full of zeros and ones"

My drabble, titled "The Butterfly Effect" because I am bad with titles:

He was the only person he knew who never saw animals in clouds. Others looked up and found dogs, or birds, or monkeys; but even when he knew what to look for he could never animate the fluffy balls of white.

Instead he saw fluid dynamics; cold fronts and warm fronts and relative humidity. He saw numbers racing through a computer; calculations; cause and effect. He saw the butterfly in China and eddies and currents bringing the hurricane to Florida. He saw chaos from order from chaos. So when he told people he was born a meteorologist, he wasn’t lying.

From pool to pool

Glenwood tigers are so cool?

It's an excerpt from one of the cheers that we used to do (the line followed "From city to city, Glenwood girls are oh so pretty" or perhaps "From spot to spot, Glenwood guys are oh so hot"). Of course, it's a swim team cheer, since swimmers have more time when everyone is huddling (and therefore more time to cheer) during their meets. I think it's pretty much a universal, though, and it makes sense: in a sport based on racing (i.e. swimming), when the louder that you are during the event, the better it is, well, you do lots of organized cheers, but in a sport where you really have to be quiet so that people can concentrate before competing (i.e. diving), organized cheers are less common. I'm imagining cheers during golf now, and it's funny. The one diving cheer that we have is Oo sa sa sa:

Oo sa sa sa Oo sa sa sa
Hit 'em in the head with a big keelbasa
Put 'em in a barrel
Roll 'em down the street
Tiger Divers can't be beat!

(repeat many many times, getting louder and faster). Since it was a diving cheer, it was of course my favorite. And the wackiness helps too.

I need to get pictures of the kids or the team or me coaching and put them up here. Or at least the pool. I hesitate to post pictures of other people's small children on the internet, though, just because I'm not an idiot. But here are some funny stories anyway. Most involve small boys, well, because we have a team of 45 or so kids of which 35 or so are small boys. It's pretty absurd. I'm actually not exaggerating there.

Ethan is one of the kids who I worked with years ago before I stayed in Chicago over summers. He and I had a bond way back when; I taught him his back dive and in my last season, neither of us went to all-stars even though both of us would have liked to. When I came to the first meet and started coaching (straight from the airport, I might add), he looked up at me and said "I remember you!" and then paused for a moment before adding "But I don't know your name." It made me smile really really wide. He's now taken to shouting "Hi Liz!" whenever he sees me.

(Yes, people call me Liz here. They always have in Maryland. No, this is not reason for Chicago types to start calling me Liz.)

Gabe (another kid from way back) is trying to learn a front flip with a full twist. Which is some combination of awesome and hilarious. He's a little bit sloppier on the board than a couple other boys in his age group, so he has to do harder dives to keep up with their scores. Of course, he could work on the fundamentals but those are boring. So in an age group where most people do flips or inwards, and the really good kids do one and a halfs or backflips, Gabe is trying a twister. Which gives him a 1.9 DD instead of a 1.6 DD (for the one and a half) or a 1.4 DD (for the flip or the inward). DD is degree of difficulty, a multiplier, which means that Gabe can get scored down by about 20% and still have the same end result. Since the scores hover around five, that's a good point per judge. Of course, he's going up against kids who get sixes and sevens, so he still has to shoot for a five or a five and a half. Of course, in many ways it's easier to get the one and a half up to a six than it is to learn the twister to a five. And he failed it at the meet on Sunday, but he's been doing it pretty well this week, so we'll see what happens. And in the end, if Gabe wants to learn a twister, I'm more than happy to teach him.

The referee for that meet was super super harsh (I could usually understand her calls, but I would have been easier on kids, probably, by virtue of the "they're five years old" factor. I don't have a problem with eight-and-under kids getting cute points). I think she also scored a little bit too much based on splash; there are, of course, some kids (like me, okay) who can't make a big splash no matter what they do. I can go in the water with an almost picture perfect cannon ball and still have not much more than a handful of splash (something I hated as a child). But there are also kids who cannot go in the water without a splash, no matter what they do. Since one of the hallmarks of a good diver is going in perfectly straight; which means without a splash, you can judge a dive to a certain extent based on how much splash it has. Of course, you shouldn't. Because if you do that, then a small person who goes straight in gets a higher score than a big person who goes straight in. And that's not right; no matter how much it may or may not have helped me while I was diving.

Uh. In any case; this harsh referee was obviously tired and cranky for the entire meet (which isn't necessarily her fault) but at the beginning of the meet was chastising our parent rep for some reason. And the parent rep (who does, actually, know me, and has for years), looks over and sees me coaching the kids and doesn't recognize me, and thinks "What on earth is the other team's coach doing with our kids?" Eventually, her daughter (who, by the way, is one of the cutest five year old girls I have ever met) jumps off the board, and I give her some advice, and the mother gets livid. She doesn't realize it's me until someone tells her "That's not the other team's coach; that's Elizabeth," at which point she (apparently) felt rather bad about it. At the end of the meet she commented on my haircut, and she and her daughter said goodbye to me. Which was the only part of the story that I personally experienced, and also made me smile.

I've had some comments from parents who knew me when I was diving telling me that it just feels natural to have me back, and those are probably the best. Sandra, the head coach, has repeatedly said how good it is to have me back (in no small part, I believe, due to the fact that I'm the only member of the assistant coaching staff that does things like show up on time or stay until the end of practice). Which is really, really wonderful.

The hardest part, so far, has been learning all the names. I've never been good with names, and forty-five kids is a lot of names to remember and a lot of people who don't really understand "I have been paying attention, I just don't remember your name." Every day I get a little bit better, and to be honest I've only been coaching for four days, so it's understandable I think. But with 11 eleven-twelve boys, of whom I knew three or four when I was coaching before, it's a lot easier to remember Gabe and Ethan and Tommy and Max from before and a lot harder to learn John and Joey and Billy and Mike and Bobby and... (or whatever their names are). The older kids are easier because I remember more of them and there are fewer of them (although I have a tendency to confuse kids with their older siblings at times). I'll fill out sheets for a couple weeks; that should help. (Who am I kidding; I'll be filling out sheets for the rest of the season in all likelihood).

Today was a good day

I've always loved gargoyles, they were one of the reasons I came to Chicago. So I couldn't take pictures without taking pictures of gargoyles. There's something creepy about these guys, I think. Like the ivy growing over them reflects how the real world, and time, imprisons us all and drives us mad. Or something like that.
I like how this one is staring straight at me.

This is sort of my image of the dorm and the university; I remember when I visited Hyde Park with my parents when I was a small child, and falling in love with the University because of a tricycle race and these archways. And here you can see the dorm through one of them!

From there I headed out to bigger and better things, of course, downtown for Silks. From that excursion I got more pictures of Chicago at large rather than just the University.

The desired photograph of "Grand" -- This is Grand. Doors open on the left at Grand. It's too bad that this is the randomly blurry picture that I took. So I don't know if I'll use it for anything; it was a nice idea perhaps though.

And me, upside down! At the moment this was taken, I was worried that my top foot was going to come untwisted, which would have been awkward. But I finally have photographic proof of Silks! It was definitely bittersweet, and the woman who taught the lesson was full of well-wishes and congratulations, told me to stop by when I visit Chicago (which I very well might do). Other exciting things that happened at silks today were 1) I climbed to the top of their 30 foot ceilings on my first go (usually I get scared that I'm going to fall so I start heading back to the safety of the ground) and 2) I successfully did straddle climbs for the like second time! There was another picture that was sort of from the side, and you could see the silver-dollar sized blister I have on the bottom of my foot (ow!) from walking yesterday. Ouchies!

I like this picture of the El. I like that the sign saying it's a green line train to Harlem and Lake is blurred out, and I love that you can see the city crystal-clear in the background (which only means that the city was not moving).

I also got a couple of the city from the bridge at the Ashland green line stop. I now have pictures of the city from South, North, and West. East would be harder without a sailboat.

I have other pictures that I am not posting out of kindness to your internet connection; sort of. I think these are the best.

I can has souvenirs?

I wandered around downtown today taking pictures that screamed "CHICAGO". I felt like such a tourist. The idea is to get a few that I wouldn't mind printing out and putting on a wall somewhere. I'll get a few that say "GRAND" tomorrow when I go to silks, and some of Hyde Park as well, because those should be less generic touristy and more personal. I might even get pictures of me hanging from fabric from the ceiling too. It would be a picture-full day. Hopefully. That's the idea, at least.

Taken from the point with Emblies, this is one of the few that I am happy about how it turned out. The city looks almost like a backdrop rather than a real city. Which is kinda nifty. It was raining down there and sunny at the point when I took the picture.

The Wrigley Building and Trib Tower and Michigan with the river. I want a picture with the river so I can point it out and say "See, it really is bright green all the time!"

Wrigley + Trib tower without the river. I really didn't want a picture of Trump Tower.


They were raising the bridges to let a boat through when I was downtown. This is State Street, I think.

The Hancock building from behind a tree? I couldn't get a shot sans tree without standing in the middle of the street, which I was loath to do. I don't know how I feel about this one.
The El, because why not?
From Fullerton Avenue, the north tip of the Lincoln Park Zoo. This needs cropping to remove the fingers. Which goes to show I am not a photographer.
From North Avenue, on the way to the North Avenue Beach.
A panorama at the north end of the North Avenue Beach (so around Fullerton).

And, because this picture needs to exist somewhere other than my camera, three Rosses!

A Start?

This isn't the whole story (that should be obvious). It isn't even a whole chapter. But I want some advice on whether or not to continue this, or if it would be better to drop it altogether. So; would you want to read the rest of a story that started this way? Does this work, at all, as a beginning? For highlights of what I'm planning: the rest of this chapter would include a visit to a meeting of the Society, and in the story as a whole there would eventually be (sabotaged) peace talks between (very conceited) earthquake-causing fairies and belligerent humans; I haven't worked out much more than that (read: How James & co avoid war).

The Society for the Unification of Humanoid Races

The poster had first appeared on the wall just beside James’ door two weeks ago, and he had torn it down in disgust. Now it was back, and James was seeking official help. He stood, staring at it as the elderly dean of students slowly walked towards him. “End Slavery – Humanize the Fairies” proclaimed the poster in big, bright red letters. Just beneath the words was a poorly executed caricature of someone James could only assume to be a Fairy – fashionable top hat and frock coat flaring out, dragonfly wings sticking out of his back, and spindly fingers reaching out to grab at an adorable human baby. James could tell it was a human because it had no wings. Beneath this were details: “The Society for Unification of Humanoid Races meets Wednesdays at six-thirty in Whitehall Library”

Had the artist ever even seen a fairy? Of course not; if he had, he would have known that they didn’t have wings. How could the shadowy villain even pull on a frock coat with those things sticking out of his back? “Professor,” James heard the aging professor’s labored breathing and turned to him. “See? This is offensive, racist propaganda. It has no place being posted in the University.”

The professor squinted at the poster through inch-thick glasses. James wondered if he could even see it. “You’re not a fairy, are you young man?” he asked in a creaky sort of voice.

James looked down at his threadbare clothes, his six-year-old shoes, and the slight bulge of fat at his belly. “Do I look like a fairy?” he asked, and then shook his head in anger. “And besides, that’s not the point!” He insisted. “I’m human, and I’m still insulted by this drivel!”

The professor frowned. “Don’t support slavery and kidnapping, do you?” he asked.

“Are you insane?” James replied, outraged. “This isn’t about me. It’s about the offensive poster I have to walk past every day on my way to classes.”

The professor sniffed, unimpressed. “I don’t see anything particularly offensive about it,” he croaked. “Everyone knows now, the Fairies steal human children to be slaves – it was all over the papers with that Douglass fellow last year.”

James almost screamed with rage. This was the enlightened faculty at the premier institute in the country? This was the person responsible for the public image and marketing not only of the university but also of the adjoining school of magic, which was populated almost exclusively by half-Fairies? “You obviously don’t know what you’re talking about, bringing that up,” James said, and he knew he should probably have more respect for his elders but enough was enough. “Douglass went to jail for threatening, kidnapping, and attempting to enslave another fairy, not a human. He was caught by a fairy, and he would have been tried under fairy law and executed, as he probably deserved, except we demanded due process and tried him in a human court, and some jury decided that life in prison was a better punishment. Carey Douglass was a pariah of fairy society just as he would be in human society, and is no more representative of them than he was well-liked.” James was shaking with anger, but his diatribe was taking the edge off of it and he slowly realized that he should potentially not be shouting at the dean of student life in the middle of a dormitory hallway.

The professor’s eyes were flint. “Mind who you’re talking to, boy,” he said sternly. “I’m not some two-bit bigoted student, or an assistant professor who wants to josh around with the kids. I have half a mind to report you for insubordination and insolence. Who made you the expert on last year’s court cases, anyway?”

“I was there,” James responded quickly.

The professor scoffed. “You won’t get out of this by telling tall tales, young man.” James almost opened his mouth to insist that he wasn’t lying, and if there was any doubt he would go and get Sergeant Tate to vouch for his involvement, but then he decided against it. It wasn’t universally known that Sergeant Hammond Tate of the Tinia Police used a crack squad of University Students (self-labeled the “magops”, with a soft g, for Mysterious, Abnormal, and Generally Odd Protection Services or Magical Operatives, depending on who you asked) to help with his stranger cases. In any case, the professor only paused for a moment before continuing. “Now, unless you can find me five students other than yourself who are honestly offended by this poster, I’m not going to do anything about it. The Society for Unification of Humanoid Races is a legitimate group and deserves their freedom of speech just like anyone else.”

The professor then turned and hobbled away. James stood, stunned, watching him leave. He knew that calling out and bringing the bigoted old professor back to talk to him further would do no good whatsoever, and might even get him in a fair amount of hot water, so he eventually just sighed, sent one last glare at the poster, and walked away.

So much for that idea.

At dinner that night, sitting in the kitchen of Brenda Christiansen’s new apartment, drinking a beer, he told the rest of the magops – Brenda, Kip Duncan, and Malcolm Jackson – the story.

“Jamesie, you’ve gone fey,” Kip said with a laugh.

“I have not!” James insisted. “This is about an objectively offensive piece of disgusting political propaganda, not my own friendship with certain Fairies! And would you please stop calling me Jamesie?”

Malcolm cast a glance towards Brenda at the word ‘friendship’, and Kip chortled with laughter. “Femininity goes with fey, you know that,” he said, taking another gulp of beer and leaning back to balance on the back two legs of his chair.

“It’s not that offensive, James,” Brenda said. “You’re taking this too personally. You should be glad that people paid enough attention to the whole Douglass-Nerissa-Whatever we’re calling it affair that they’re doing something to prevent it happening again.”

James set his beer down with a bit more force than was necessary. “But the things that they’re doing wouldn’t have stopped him. They wouldn’t have had any effect whatsoever on Douglass – they’re just perpetuating a vicious stereotype!”

“Just let it drop,” Malcolm warned.

James sighed. “It’s not as if there’s anything I can do anyway,” he said bitterly, and took another gulp of beer.

Kip shook his head. “James,” he said with a warning voice. “You are not letting this get you down.” James shrugged.

“Look, if it really is that big of a deal,” Brenda said with a pacifying tone, “Write a petition. Find five students. They must exist.”

Drabble part, I don't know how many: The Drabbling

Water

She might have been crying before she jumped in, but when she surfaced, the tear-stains on her cheeks disappeared. She sighed. Her expression softened. She took a deep breath and swam, relishing the cool of the water on her face, the tactile explosion of exhaling. One two three exhale inhale one two three exhale inhale. Out with her anger, her fear; in with soft happiness. Like supports like: if she wasn’t calm, liquid, flexible, she would sink. Her troubles slowly dissolved away. She flipped over to her back and stared at the ceiling, perfectly relaxed. The water held her up.

I'm not super proud of this one; it was an image that was in my head and wouldn't go away, and I needed something to write anyway, so I wrote it, but I don't think it has anywhere to go and I don't think it's particularly good. Something better tomorrow, I promise! Well, maybe not promise. But hope!

Drabble

Robot!

The kids from Boston and the kids from Texas and the kids from Pasadena didn’t know what they were doing. They were just kids after all. They thought it was a game. To be strictly honest, it was just a game, like hundreds of games before – see who could build the best.

But army officials don’t understand games, and the aging general public doesn’t understand computer games, and English-major journalists don’t understand robot games, and it started and it all went downhill from there.

If there’s one upside to the robot wars, it’s that now they won’t expect the Zombies.

One foot in front of the other

My jaw clenched. One foot in front of the other. As if it was easy. I teetered, slid my foot forward, waving my arms to balance. One foot in front of the other. That was all she said, and now she was gone. I shouted her name; silence. I took a wobbling step.

One foot in front of the other. Oh, and don’t look down.

The wire swayed beneath me. I breathed deeply. I couldn’t see the end, but I couldn’t see the beginning and I had just begun.

I took another step. One foot in front of the other.

Ever since Ayn told me about naso-labial lines, I've been looking for them, of course, because you can't stop, and I've especially been looking for them in my face? It bothered me a little bit that I could see them in the mirror, not enough to go out and buy anti-wrinkle face cream or anything, but sort of "Am I getting old?" in the same way that my impending twenty-second birthday worries me. Should it worry me that when I read a book I usually identify with the sixteen year old rather than the twenty three year old? Is that even true? It's hard to tell; I don't know; I haven't paid attention. Should it worry me that I still identify with Peter Pan even if I'm approaching adulthood? Or is that the appeal of Peter Pan, that everyone feels a little bit like a boy who didn't grow up?

I think, in part, some of the reason I like circus people is that they're misfits; they don't fit the stereotypes for their ages -- they haven't settled down and grown up, or if they have they've done it without really doing it. So maybe the answer to my worry is just as straightforward as, well, walking a tightwire (or a slackwire I guess); which remains something that I want to learn how to do. Hah. The edge between childish irresponsibility and dowdy adulthood is narrow, and possibly razor-thin. But I can has metaphor. Maybe that will be my next drabble.

Inspired, oddly enough, by Troll 2

Energy was first to go. She slowed down. She stopped caring about little things, like who was running for president or if we were at war. She had never enjoyed sunbathing, but now there was nothing she would rather do. Getting up was harder every time.

“Mom,” her son called, “It’s almost midnight. You should come inside.”

She didn’t move.

“Mom, I’ve made breakfast.”

“Mom, there’s no food and I can’t drive to the store.”

“Mom, I’m hungry.”

“Mom, I’m going to Billy’s. He says his folks’ll take care of me.”

She heard the door shut. She shed a leaf.

I know there are like four hundred and fifty three stories with the same plot (person turns into plant!). They are almost all cooler than mine. I am okay with this.

Also, I found the autosummary feature, but it turns out it was not nearly as dadaist as I remembered (at least with the two tries I gave it). Also, it works by scoring each word by the number of times used, and then each sentence by the sum of the common-ness of its words (probably with some control for length). So I pretty much just got a bunch of sentences of the sort "(Main Character) (common verb)."

Too bad!

Old Microsoft Word (I'm talking at least eight years ago or something, so Word2000 or... whatever) had this hilarious feature called "AutoSummary" as best I can remember. I don't know how well it worked with a standard, by-the-book 5 paragraph essay of the type I would have been writing in middle school, when I discovered it, but I do know that it would give me what I can only describe as a dadaist summary of a lengthy work of fiction (I tried it out on my first novel, to quite amusing results. Yes, this is how I discovered the feature; no it doesn't just take the first sentence of every paragraph -- I would have noticed that). I think it had something to do with finding the non-article or preposition words you used the most frequently, and I only figured that out because my two main characters' names popped up repeatedly.

Now I return eight or nine years later only to find that the deconstructionist summary feature is absent! Or at least, hiding, in Word2007 (curse you, Vista!). Of course, I shouldn't really be complaining about the loss of an amusing but pointless feature. However, it did spoil what would have been my five minutes or so of fun, threading my verbose stories through the digital shredder and seeing which 100 words popped out in which order. I think the moral of this story is that playing Microsoft Word (TM) was way more fun when I was a teenager. Sort of like how playing Windows (TM) was way more fun when I was a little kid.

Another 100 words!

iFace: The Future of Beauty

Sally hated iFaces, even if they were “the future of beauty”. Hers, a gift from a fashionable aunt, was only good as a paperweight. No, she couldn’t turn her face blue to broadcast her misery, but she would rather focus on her drink.

“You know, if you hold that any tighter, you’ll break it.”

She slammed down the glass. “What d’you care? Go hit on someone else.”

“Most women today aren’t worth the effort. They’re either depressed or shallow.”

“What?”

“You’re the only one who isn’t hiding her face.” Sally laughed, surprised. He smiled. “Can I buy you another round?”

The idea was for a monolayer-thin, flexible organic led screen in the shape of a mask with a wireless connection to a server in the sky for storing preset "makeover" files, which could do things like make it look like you had perfect eyeshadow/blush/lipstick or completely remove dark circles under your eyes, without the health risks of putting lots of nasty chemicals all over your face every day. I know, the details don't come through. Oh well. Hopefully the generalities (it's a mask, it's computerized, it has something to do with cosmetics) do. But might I actually have a little bit of plot, possibly even a character, in 100 words? Go me!

Another Drabble

It would appear that I feel like I'm floating away into nothingness. Given that I am waiting, bored for the summer to start and then graduate school to start and therefore my life to hit the reboot button, I think this is vaguely understandable. I'll try for a more cheerful 100 words tomorrow.

Peter was floating, his feet kicking freely six inches above the ground. He had always wanted to fly; and yet it felt so wrong now that it was real. It should have been invigorating to rid himself of the chains of gravity. But his stomach sank with worry. What if he could never land? What if he fell? What if… He rose another foot, and reached down, frantically grabbing Wendy’s hand. “Don’t let me float away,” he pleaded.

She smiled. “I won’t hold you down,” she said. He thought she might let go, but she didn’t. “I’m coming with you.”

Oh my; Elizabeth writing something short, again?!

Ayn suggests drabbles to help with short-form writing. I trust her since she is an expert in brevity and in wit. Here is one; for some reason I really want to title it with a reference to the Neverland. It doesn't make much sense.

If You Close Your Eyes And Are A Lucky One

The city floats on clouds, the grime of its streets seeping into the white cumulus mass, turning the sky ominous and dark. But the storm doesn’t break yet; it only drizzles. You can see the towers clearly, jet black standing out against dark gray. They seem too massive, too tangible to be floating midair, and you expect them to fade away into a mirage or fall, heavily, back to earth, shaking the ground and sending tremors out for miles. But the city stays afloat, and instead the mist seeps through your jacket and your skin and down to your bones.

I'll post with more pictures later. But an afternoon of waiting for PCR to be done has left me with several interesting oddities:

1) http://circusfolkunite.googlepages.com/crisscrosscircus

This is awesome. I wish I was one of those kids. Oh, how I wish I was one of those kids. Oh well.

2) The quote: "Monotremes are like the fantasy geezer aunt you never knew you had, breezing in from the other side of the world, with wild tales of the past and no plans for slowing down." (from here)

I never knew I had a fantasy geezer aunt I never knew I had; it's even better that she's a platypus.

3) I might be done with Scav for the foreseeable future, but the San Francisco Bay Area has something perhaps even better: Maker Faire. So I will not be starved for annual festivals of creativity and wackiness.

4) I agree with this article on just about every count. The revolution is coming, and it will be a revolution on the level of Galileo and Darwin. The argument of whether or not "God" exists fails intrinsically since "God" as a concept is so poorly defined (or impossible to define, take your pick). The real argument and the real paradigm shift we need to be considering is the shift away from any particular "God", the shift away from the revealed faiths, the faiths-of-the-book, and the shift towards and more accepting and more understanding and more universal faith that does not and will not contradict reason. (I'm sorry; any time you write down what "God" says is right or true in any but the vaguest and most general terms, you open yourself up to being contradicted by the wisdom of later days.) The interesting thing, to me, is that such a more universal faith seems to necessitate the abandonment of any corporeal/describable "God" de facto: In order to incorporate all ideas of "God", you cannot cleave to any one idea.

There was also a lot about Global Warming and Polar Bears going extinct that made me sad. But I don't want to post about that.

Pictures of Scav and a follow-up on the half-pony half-monkey monster later!

Scav: A Summary?

It's over. My last Scav at the U of C is over, and I don't know if it's really hit me yet. Knowing myself, I probably won't come back next year, and even if I did it would be different and probably not as much fun.

Hah. I am done being a Scavenger, and all I have to show for it is this awesome half-pony half-monkey monster. So that's the first story, which is that I got to do the Jonathan Coulton Item, number 164: I made this ____ to please you. But I get the feeling that you don't like it; what's with all the screaming? ... Maybe I used too many monkeys. Isn't it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?


Yes, he is holding a Jonathan Coulton ticket stub, and yes he is wearing an NIH tee-shirt. I'm going to ask JoCo to sign the ticket stub the next time I see him in concert. Any suggestions on names would be appreciated, though, since I am not good at naming things that aren't Armadillos.

More pictures to come later, as I upload them from my camera and/or am sent them by friends. I had a hell of a time tracking down the page captain for this item, because after I heard it my eyes pretty much bugged out of their sockets and I thought "Oh man, I MUST do this item". But once I found him, told him that I really really really wanted to do the item, and also told him I would dress as a mad scientist and sing the song (if he wanted me to) at Judgement, well, he seemed pretty pumped. And when he saw the finished product, his eyes bugged out of their sockets in much the same way mine had when I heard the item read.

It is a very cute, and very cuddly, abomination, and I will display it with pride in my apartment at Stanford. I can't wait for someone to notice it and ask "What's that?" to which the only possible response is "It's a half-pony half-monkey monster."

I would wait for them to ask "Why, exactly, do you have a half-pony half-monkey monster?" before I explained that it was a Scav item, and what Scav is, and how awesome this year was.

Because this year was, in my opinion, the awesomest of my four years doing Scav. The half-pony half-monkey monster was probably my favorite item, and I absolutely loved how it turned out. The Monowheel was so very much fun. (And all of our showcase items worked -- Gir (cartoon dog balloon, item 18) was stupendous, the Zeusaphone could play recognizable tunes, and the potato gun that shot fire as well was, an exercise in hilarity). The dance at Daly Plaza (Blues Brothers item, number 136) was incredible fun, although I must admit (sadly) that as an item I liked Stick to the Status Quo a bit better from last year. I actually enjoyed the party more since (most) people weren't getting raucously drunk, and ours was, I must admit, absolutely amazing (in fact, everything that Anna McGeachy did in Scav this year was amazing, from what I heard). The Doll House was gorgeous, and I am so proud that I was able to do a tiny bit to be a part of that mammoth effort. Of course, there were parts I definitely didn't like (the Thursday Quads item comes to mind), but there weren't many (read: that was basically it). Even judgment was better this year than in years past, probably because I didn't have to stress and fret until the very end at which point a judge would ask me to do something totally ridiculous and absolutely absurd, and I would feel obliged to do it and possibly get hurt. Possibly because I had gotten at least a little bit more food and sleep than I had in years past. Possibly all of these things.

In the end, I hung out in Ross' room and pretended to be Ross with Emblies and Alex (yes, we were all pretending to be Ross; it was classy) between the judging of items and the final judgment. It was nostalgic in the extreme, and goofy and wonderful. THAT is my college experience (or at least the good parts): Hanging out in a dorm room, absolutely exhausted, chatting with good friends about life and the crazy stuff we just did, and getting ready for more wackiness. I worry a bit that I won't find that again, or that I won't find friends good enough, or something. It's hard to put a finger on it. But sitting in that room with those people I couldn't help forgetting that they had graduated and I had moved out and soon I would be in California, and just remember my second year -- only better, in a way, because this year has been so much better than my second year.

At final judgment, I was tackled and held in place while William Dix drew a mustache on me in sharpie, which was a combination of shame that I am small enough to be tackled so easily and pride that they thought I was enough a part of the team to force me into a victory mustache. Alex got away without one, and I don't know if that's because he's a black belt or he didn't really Scav this year or both. The chanting was hilarious (at the beginning, at least, although it did get old by the end), GASH rick-rolled everyone universally and went on to beat the FIST, Burton Judson came out incredibly strongly for third place (hooray!), and we won by a whopping seven hundred points!

The party afterwards made up in raucousness and insanity for the lack of booze at the Friday night party. We took over the third floor of section five, the RAs didn't care (neither did anyone else I don't think), there was dancing and cavorting, shouting and whooping and reveling that you could hear from the street, bad champagne and bad beer and bad mixed drinks (I had maybe two sips of champagne). And Dominos Pizza never tasted so good. The Burton Judson captains came over and William Dix gave them victory mustaches. It was, in short, everything that Scav was supposed to be, everything that Scav is, and everything that I wanted from Scav.

Next weekend, though, I am turning my sonic screwdriver into a screwdriver. Why? Because even if it isn't Scav, I still can.

Cuba is changing... a little.

My memory of Cuba will always be of a messed up, beautiful place with messed up, beautiful people. I don't know if that makes much sense. And I think the most significant part of this isn't that Cubans can buy certain consumer goods, but that they're noticing the "messed up" parts of the country. Because by far the strangest part of talking to Cuban high school students, for me at least and for a lot of the other students on the trip I think, was that Cuban high school students honestly thought that we were the ones with the repressive government and they were the ones with freedom of speech and expression. And as much as I hate the Department of Homeland Security and think that George W. Bush and his administration have hijacked the country and stolen many of our liberties, well, we're still pretty far from Cuba. To put it bluntly, our acceptable political expression is more than a tongue-in-cheek comment and a knowing smile, which was basically the most that any Cuban would do even in private.

So if young Cubans are noticing how messed up the country is, well, that's at least a step in the right direction. I know it's not much, especially not in such a brutal dictatorship. But it's a step. It means it's not hopeless.

The other thing of note is that, well, Raul Castro isn't much younger than Fidel, and Fidel's son ("Fidelito") has no interest in running the state. So in the foreseeable future, there will be a Cuba run not by a Castro but by... someone else? And who knows what that mystery person will do, or who that person will be, or how much unrest there will be in the country due to that exchange of power. Fidel to Raul was remarkably easy; I remember people worrying (hoping?) that when the elder Castro resigned or died, Cuba would explode or implode or whatever it is that such countries do without a leader.

But another interesting thing, for me, is that I don't really think China's model will work so much in Cuba. This is for purely personal reasons. The culture and the persona of Cuba was shockingly similar to our own. I got a strong sense of individualism and enterprise. (As perhaps best indicated by the pimp/economist who would not leave Noah alone. To this day I swear they were talking about Bush's economic policies.) This is in the middle of one of the most oppressive communist regimes, and people were still thumbing their noses and winking their eyes as if to say "Yes, it's wonderful isn't it, we all know that, but..." The 'black market' was blocks and blocks and blocks of stalls. It's obvious even from the article: the cab driver who wants to make himself an expert in cellular phones the minute he can buy one. In customs, everyone pushes and jostles to get to the front of the line. People weren't shy, they weren't formal or deferential or whatever. They were rowdy and noisy and alive.

And I haven't done the research to know if this is really different or not, but Raul Castro opened up the internet and immediately, there were people publishing blogs that were unfriendly to the state. They hide their faces and their names but they post candid truths anyway. When he said obliquely that people should make their concerns public, women came out in the streets to protest unjust imprisonment of their husbands. It doesn't work; the government tries to stamp it down, but if after such a veiled offer of an ear people are willing to take the chance and speak their minds, well, that's got to be a good thing.

On the other hand, this isn't the sense I got while in China; in a purely cultural respect. So much more of China's culture seems to be based around respect for your elders and knowing your place, it's hard to fit a raucous and brazen personality into that. That might be part of why communism (or authoritarianism, really) on such a massive scale has worked in China. If there were 1.3 billion Cubans instead of 11.39 million (that's a 100-fold, yikes!), Cuba's policies of repression might not work as well as they do. Of course, I'm not an anthropologist and I might be completely wrong, and in any case it's impossible to know for sure.

Part of me hopes that a little bit of economic freedom in Cuba will force the political freedom that I would like to see. It's interesting to me because of how I reacted to visiting both Cuba and China. I felt like China had the bad parts of Americana without the good parts -- McDonalds and Microsoft without pick-up games of softball in the park and laughter in the street. Cuba seemed, at least a little bit, closer to the good parts of my culture, the parts I'm proud of. The personality and the vitality was there, half hidden under the dust of the crumbling buildings. So every time the reporter compared Cuba to China, I winced a little bit. I hope that, with these small economic reforms, parallel social reforms are made -- I wouldn't want Cuba to turn into China.


Edit to add: On a more hopeful note, who wants to go back to Cuba with me when they open the borders again? Mango? Easha?

Well, when you put it that way...

Cory Doctorow posted about how awesome young adult sci-fi/fantasy is lately.

I no longer feel guilty at aspiring to be an author of awesome young adult sci-fi/fantasy rather than something "real" or "more serious".

Now I just have to work on the awesome part.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/05/01/young-adult-sections.html

Err...

How pathetic is it, that while sitting in lab and doing experiments, I am reading this and thinking "Aw man, that sounds awesome!" Of course, I also really like the "DNA Explorer" kit from Discovery Channel store. I can no longer find it, but it was awesome (and had the centrifuge that the author says is sadly absent from most chemistry kits) and... man. If I had a relatively young cousin, I would want to get them nerdy toys. And I mean really nerdy toys.

Also, if I ever have a basement or a garage, I need to have a mini-lab there. Perhaps for recreational chemistry as I become more of a biologist. (The term "recreational chemistry" makes me smile).

Space Bus!

I have an honors thesis due tomorrow, so obviously I am writing fiction. Hah. As promised, the space bus story. This is a draft, and I have a second part semi-envisioned, but I like vague endings at the moment, so I'm thinking of leaving it roughly as is. I thought of trying to make this reminiscent of Ayn's drabbles; but there's a bit too much here to be a true drabble (100 words) and I am rather... prolix (?) in my writing. Or at least verbose.

So, exactly 300 words, because I wanted it to be very short, and I am arbitrary:

SPACE BUS

Honk! Jeremy’s eyes snapped open. What was a car doing out here? He was the only one who ever came here; that was its only temptation. He turned and saw, even more surprisingly, a bus, shimmering with fine dust. How had he not heard the approach of a bus?

Honk! The driver was waving at him. Jeremy stood up and approached. The door was already open; the bus inside comfortable and almost full. “Where are you going?” Jeremy asked.

“Wonderful places,” the driver said.

Jeremy looked behind him at the cesspool of a lake and the poor excuse for a boathouse. His Toyota sat in the driveway, kneeling with a flat tire. He shrugged, stepped aboard. Almost anything would be better than here.

The doors snapped shut behind him. “How much?” he asked the driver.

“I don’t want your money,” the driver answered, and the bus lurched forward, catapulting Jeremy down the aisle. He quickly made his way to an open seat next to a young woman. He smiled at her, but she didn’t look up.

The bus creaked forward, over dirt roads, making its way through the forest and finally out into a pristine clearing. A lake sparkled, clear blue in the setting sun. There was a little cottage right on the water with floor-to-ceiling windows, and a dock with a canoe and a row-boat and fishing poles already set out next to a pair of blue Adirondack chairs. Jeremy was in awe – wonderful, indeed, he thought. He stood to get out, but the woman beside him grabbed his arm with a surprisingly firm grip. The driver hacked a bit and climbed out of the bus. Before Jeremy could follow him, someone else was in the driver’s seat, the door was closed, and the bus drove away.

I'm going to Galapagos!

In September. Just before moving to Palo Alto! I am super excited. It will be an adventure in biodiversity and evolution!

And perhaps sea kayaking, too.

I will try my best to take lots of pictures of funny animals, none of which include me!

Or maybe I'll be all old-school field biologist and write detailed descriptions and include sketches. I would do that if I could sketch.

Also, I am about 25% done writing the "Imagination Train to the Space Bus" story. (That thing really needs a better title, especially since it does not feature a train.) My problem: It's turning out almost... serious, and not very funny! (Gasp, Elizabeth writing something that is neither academic nor meaningless fluff? What is the world coming to?) My goal: It will be the next post, sometime this week.

I can has Gymnastics?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

But last night I was doing front handsprings and (almost) front + back walkovers, and front flips on the trampoline. And one-armed handstands. And probably a few to many pull-ups because I have silks today. But I almost have my left split back, which is absolutely mind-boggling.
I have found that my diving hurdle is still way, way more comfortable on trampoline than the gymnastics hurdle or the multiple-bouncing approach. And so after three front-flips in a row that were very diver-esque, one of the new kids (Joe, I think his name is, first year + very good gymnast, on the diving team coincidentally) says, "You should really dive."

I tell him that I would if it didn't give me migraines and possibly fainting spells.

He says "You should really dive anyway."

I laugh and say that he might think differently after a month straight of migraine headaches.

Then we trade diving injury stories. He doesn't have many, but there are a few stories the team has accrued; one girl repeatedly smacking her chest so hard she coughs blood, another guy putting his knee through his face on a reverse 1 1/2, etcetera. He says that he's smacked so many times on one-meter he's sure he can't get hurt on that board anymore, I tell him the whole concussion story: namely, thinking that about three-meter, and diving until I couldn't walk in a straight line because of it, and his eyes sort of bug out.

They talk about the circus club, and ask why they never have any tumblers or acrobats. I say it's because the circus club is full of jugglers who aren't interested, and if any of them want to start tumbling with circus, well, they should. They say "But there was that girl who did aerial stuff!" I say she graduated, and I'm doing aerial stuff now for the fun of it, but not performing with the circus.

It was a night of interpretation -- hearing stories that I had lived recounted to me in a very different way.

Things like that yield... perspective. When Joe told me I should really dive, I laughed; it reminded me at once of the joy that sport gave me and the fact that it's not a part of my life anymore, that events conspired and I chose to go in a different direction. And when we bonded over diving stories, it reminded me that I can still have that part of my life, but in a different way than I used to.

My important experiments are stubbornly working and my unimportant ones stubbornly not working, so I find myself with nothing to do in the middle of the afternoon. Hence, reading random news articles. I found this one, which struck a chord:

In Politics, the Gaffe Goes Viral

I did note, first of all, that the idea of a journalist writing a rather incendiary article about how journalists now are out of touch with important issues and seem to be fishing for controversy is, well, rather postmodern to be honest. In a wonderful sort of way, if you ask me.

But what I found more important about the article, and more striking, is the difference in the level of constant surveillance candidates have to put up with today versus even eight years ago. (The difference, this reporter claims, is the blogging revolution: I know I had a blog eight years ago, but that was when I was a whiny teenager and blogs were for whiny teenagers).

He brings up something that I had not heard of, and was frankly appalled to read. It's an interview with George W. Bush in 1999, and here's what he says about it:

"Recall Tucker Carlson’s profile of another candidate, George W. Bush, in Talk magazine in 1999. In it, Mr. Bush gave a profane, intemperate interview in which he said, “I’m not interested in process,” and mocked Karla Faye Tucker, a convicted murderer who sought mercy from him as governor of Texas before she was executed in 1998. “Please don’t kill me,” he whimpered in mimicking her."

Okay. Now, I'm trying, honestly I am, to put all my preconceived notions about our President aside. I'm honestly trying. But it's really, really, really hard for me to think of this act as anything other than sadistic. He's governor, she's a convicted murderer, strapped to the chair; she has no power and he has every power over her fate. I'm not saying he should have pardoned her; I don't know the specifics of the case. But his democratic rival for governor of Texas brought up an interesting point:

"George W. Bush knew that he was not going to reprieve Karla Faye Tucker. He could have told her that the day before," Mauro explained. "He could have told her a week before. But he waited until the six o'clock prime time news, knowing she was strapped to a gurney still having hope about her life, and he grandstanded on her."

And, notwithstanding that, he actually mocked her plea for life in front of a reporter. I don't care if someone is a murderer, I don't care if you have to kill them for the good of humanity or to serve as a lesson for those who are thinking of committing certain crimes, I don't care if they honestly deserve death. Fine, we can have a discussion about the death penalty, and I might disagree with your specific beliefs, and I might not vote for you if you run for office, but believing any of those things or letting someone be executed because of any of those things is a morally gray decision, one that neither makes you good nor bad. However, mocking anyone's plea for life, whether that person is an innocent child or a serial killer, shows a lack of human sympathy that I simply cannot fathom. When someone says "Please don't kill me," and you let them be killed, even if you've done the right thing, it shouldn't be something to laugh about, to joke about, or to mock. Because if you laugh at that, and mock it, you're mocking and laughing at the idea of mercy, and repentance, and compassion for your fellow man, and, well, in my heretic's eyes there isn't much more holy than compassion and repentance and mercy.

Er. Well. Back to the point. George W. Bush mocked a woman on death row's plea for mercy in an official interview, and it wasn't picked up by the national media. There was no backlash. It wasn't the sort of thing that everyone knew. It didn't stop him from being elected, or, well, appointed, President in 2000. I cannot believe that the majority of people, no matter how conservative they were, would look at such a display of sadistic humor in an elected official with tolerance. I certainly hope they wouldn't.

Take, on the other hand, Obama. He calls a certain group of people bitter in a small fund raising dinner that most people thought was off-the-record. While I admit it was a stupid political move, and that I would not like to be called bitter by a candidate for president, and while he certainly alienated that group of people, well, two things strike me as odd. First off is the thought that, well, Obama is right. Those people are bitter. But they have every reason to be bitter. Every year, their paychecks gets smaller and their mortgages get larger, their kids are being shot in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the elected leaders who say that they are looking out for them seem, at best, so out of touch that they fail to offer any help whatsoever to the worsening situation. That's a good reason (several good reasons, in fact) to be bitter. More importantly, however, is that this, off-the-record comment to explain that a certain group of people has been shafted by the current administration and is understandably bitter, and so finds Obama's message of hope and unity hard to swallow, has been picked up by the national media and turned into a controversy. Obama is now an elitist pig, completely out of touch with poor rural voters, and disdainful of them. Versus Bush's comment, in an official interview, which is laughingly, disgustingly, sadistic, had no such ripples.

On the one hand, I want a press that will pick up a comment like Bush's and hound him about it until everyone knows that the speaker has, apparently, psychopathic tendencies. On the other hand, I don't want a comment like Obama's to be turned into a needless controversy. Is my own bias showing here, in that I think Obama will be a great president and Bush was a horrible one? Yes. But I hope there's more than that to my gut reaction. After all, there's a significant difference between accurately labeling one group of people as bitter and mocking a dead woman's plea for mercy.

Wasting Time

Back on to one of my obsessions, which is J. Craig Venter causing the Apocalypse: (metaphorically speaking, of course).

A clever idea for a story.

There's a bit of mumbo-jumbo that I don't like (for example, needing to tack on a few arbitrary base pairs from "something that had lived" to give it the "spark" necessary makes me bristle just a bit), but the concept is wonderful in its morbid hilarity. Well, the concept of "Saint" Venter, that is.

There's a little voice in the back of my head that's been screaming for the past week or so, that none of this can possibly be real -- that I'll wake up soon enough and be in high school for another year or so. I was going through my e-mail messages and deleting a bunch (and sorting out the rest) and I have to e-mail some of the people I had interviews with to tell them about my decision, and I need to find someone to do a rotation with, but none of that really needs to be done very soon (except for the first part about e-mailing people) and it all just feels like a dream. Like none of this could possibly be real; because part of me still feels like the uncertain sixteen year old asking Bill if I could work in his lab over the summer. Let me rephrase that. A lot of me (most of me?) still feels like the insecure sixteen year old asking Bill if I could work in his lab over the summer. And this whole polite assertiveness thing is incredibly difficult to pull off, and just about necessary.

And then there's the half of me that's saying "This isn't growing up; you're going to school for another five or six years and after that you're going to mess around in lab for a career? You want to be a scientist? What are you, five? Grow up and find a cubicle!" and the half of me that's saying "Holy shit this is for real and grown up and what the hell am I doing?"

And I know that the reality will be halfway in between (at least I think the reality will be halfway in between) and when I start feeling like there is no solidity left in my world, I remind myself of the present, and my current work, and the cloning that might be done, and the experiments to do, and that gives me some sense of perspective. Yeah, it's scary to think of things a career at a time, but thinking of things an experiment at a time is doable. It's comforting. I can handle an experiment.

And I might be done with cloning, which would be, maybe, the most miraculous thing of all.

I was going to write today. Or find a cool Shakespeare quote.

Instead, I filed taxes and other forms for a good 2.5 hours.

Not a good trade-off!

Sad but true; I didn't get NSF. We all know why that is, it's because I have a lame adviser who cannot get things in a little bit late, he must wait until they are very very late and/or not turn them in at all. Julie told me to find someone better for my PhD.

In other news, I finally went back to silks practice last Thursday, and it was absolutely wonderful. My arms are finally done being sore, I was laughing the whole time, and it generally made me super happy and pumped to be back. It felt so good to do something physical again, for a change. And although I was absolutely horrible at it, they were really supportive and friendly about it too. So those are all great things.

I was going to post and try to fool all of you into thinking that I was going to drop out of graduate school and join the circus. And then be all "April fools!" or something. But I decided that was lame and so I'm not going to.

Instead, I'll say that I'm going to Stanford! It's exciting to have made that decision. I'm really pumped about it. I need to figure out where I'm going to live, and where I want to do my first rotation, but... I feel on top of things. Which is awesome.

Hooray!

Done!

I am done! Done done dah-done done done! With my major and core and every single required class here. I can finally slack off! Whoop!

Well, I can finally slack off until September. Then the real work begins.

In the mean time, I can do something crazy. Like join the circus. Or write a(nother) novel. Or read some Shakespeare, so I'm not horribly terribly bad at playing tag with Alex. If that ever happens. Or all of the above!

Or, you know, I could work hard in lab. Actually get something done. I guess that's a possibility too.