I Deactivated Facebook Again

I'm leaving for Reed tomorrow, if all goes according to plan. My room is getting gradually packed. I whatever drawers and wardrobe end up housing my garments are up to the challenge. The ones at home certainly aren't. 

Facebook is gone again, because it is a dirty, dirty place. A place where my curiosity is always almost being fulfilled. A place where people go to be misinterpreted. A place to take me out of real life by fragmentary documentation. I'm glad it's gone, as much as I will miss advising the freshmen and absorbing their excitement. I was never happier for it, just barely entertained.

I don't really have anything to say, I'm just procrastinating with all of this nervous energy.

I'm a Five Year Old Girl. In that the coolest things to do are braid hair and paint faces.

God I love it.

If I Was Really Dedicated, I'd Have a Style Blog

Not because I have a lot to say about it. I just think that it's weird and spastic enough that even I can't keep track of it without some kind of record. Facebook is nice that way. But here are some especially fantastic documented stylings.

No, they aren't full body shots. But they capture the essence. Pictures by my brofolife Anna.

Really, I'm just sad that I didn't document all of the random facepaint that I did last year. Maybe I'll do better this time around.

Portland, Oregon. The secret to a healthy economy.

Just read an article about why Portland's economy works. This was not the crux of the argument, but it was deemed helpful that some of Portland's hip basics have become staples for the rest of the country as well. Companies that micro-brew, for instance, have seen a rise in profits. Another industry which experienced a growth in popularity was "artisanal whatnot."
And I think they hit the nail on the head.

Old Haunts One Point Two Porter Park

Here there is a tree. A tree with a full canopy and thick, radial branches. YOO7 is carved into its trunk, just below eye level to my usual perch. I have yet to decode it, and in my years of failure the bark made the Y, the 7, and the second O scar over with crinkled new skin. The leaves that grow on this tree are fat, healthy ovals with a subtle point and veins that stand out as the sun passes through them. In the summer, the tree looks huge and imposing. In the winter, it’s bare and inviting. We are close enough now that it doesn’t get to me anymore. When I leave, I kiss this tree goodbye.

My third year of high school was terribly intermediate. Between stress and learning, between bud and blossom, between fear and adventure. One priority that became clear was a need for hours of meditation. This mind was not simply going to sort itself out. I chose the principal stage for this internal performance to be three of the tree’s largest branches. One for my back, one for my bum, and one for my toes so they need not dangle. And I sat.

And I slept, and I lounged, and sometimes I climbed higher, and sometimes I just lay on the grass above its roots. I would bring some canned music, or a book, even notes from school. My lunch was a frequent meditation buddy. But the vast majority of the time was spent with no stimulation except what my free flying brain threw to the surface.

Ironically, much of this solitude was spent imagining conversations; building a character to talk back to me, to make me cover all of my bases as I described something, or argued something. More often than not the were based on someone I knew, even a close friend. I acknowledged the fallacy of the character I invented, but I did imagine myself talking to someone I knew. I don’t use this technique very much anymore, but it did allow me to play with the idea of talking to someone who knew me well, or someone who didn’t have any background. It also let me speak to people I admired without any embarrassment. This part of the exercise had the most value in real life, I believe.

The strongest epiphany I had in the embrace of the tree is not easily described. It had a visual component, much like a drug might induce. I still believe that there are no effects given by drugs that cannot be found through meditation, albeit with a different feel. I saw infinite dots, representing people. Between them were real and imaginary connections, seen as lines, which affected their movement. Sometimes the movement was direct and purposeful, other times lilting or gradual, like gravitational pull. Chaos, in short. The movement of the dots was their progression through life. There was no forward or backward, but there was a general flow that everyone followed with their own set of small deviations.

My own dot was conveniently a different color, but would have been remarkable regardless. It created new connections constantly and followed the flow faster than others. Then, without warning it would turn back, or travel perpendicular to flow, or at an angle. It would find another path, retaining the lines created in the other but moving regardless to their influence. The path it took was entirely self-determined, but it held its old connections as strongly as the dots that would be pulled by its neighbors for the rest of the journey.

So I cried against the tree, and thanked it for showing me what I wanted from my life.

Old Haunts Part One Point One Franklin Park.

The symmetry of visiting all of my old haunts in one trip was broken by pragmatism. This break was sanded and reinforced by an easy differentiation. Some were chosen based on convenience, while the others had to be sought and earned as if stripes on the shoulder of an adventurer’s jacket. But those easy access joints that were simply presented, offered, and by a cosmic pattern thrust into my life hold me just as firmly as the places I have all to myself. If they have come to mean anything to me, it’s through a process, not an event.

Franklin Park, just a stroll south of my red brick high school, is a place I came to by convenience. It was far enough away from school to no longer feel oppressed by the institution of learning, but close enough to fully appreciate in the span of a forty minute lunch break.  The park had a reputation, however, that kept most of the school from treading on its field or experiencing the thrills of pendular motion on its swingset. A specific corner of the park was where the senior potheads made their dark and slouching home. This spawned the nickname “Stoner Park,” closing the refuge to use by the squares. This kept my friends from accompanying me, and earned a few confused glances from my cannabinoid-puffing peers.

I came for the swingset. I have never felt strong, from my head to my toes. Sometimes between my ankles and hips merits the adjective, but never my whole body. If I played on the swings for an hour and a half, my arms and abs would both be sore. I loved the feeling. This simple exhilaration brought me back regularly.

The swingset gave me more than a mild workout. It gave me some of the crystal clearest visual memories of that time of my life. I remember one day, in a moderate downpour, when I found that with a certain amount of vigor I could end up falling at the exact rate of the rain. A rainstorm makes every field of vision full of motion, but I could freeze that and see the world slower than a camera lens. No blur, only ever drop falling in front of drenched trees and sodden houses. Falling with me.

Another night, I fell from an imperial dark blue sky, glinting its power from a thousand points. My long hair barely glowed with its fresh coat of purple in the glow of sporadic streetlights. A feather dangling from my ear sneakily absorbed pigment from the unprofessional rinsing job my purple hands had performed an hour before. I felt small, but very much myself.  I felt alone, but with the potential for company. I decided to find someone I could feel alone with, as a long term life goal. I thought it would make me happy.

Then I left to play Trine with Graham and Ryan and learn of my virtual inadequacies as both an archer and a wizard. Though I did not identify with the character of Fat Armored Thug, I appreciated that he allowed me not to ruin everything all the time. And all of this belongs to Franklin Park.

Beautiful Things, Overheard.

I lay in the collegiate grass, under some collegiate trees (we all know that plants on college campuses have a very different feel from suburban and city fauna) watching a documentary about drugs. A hoard of young summer campers ambled by and settled down for their lunch break. A child with a particularly piercing voice was inspired by the canopy to ask if "trees are just mutated pieces of sticks?" I think karma was telling me to take out my headphones. Who knows what other gems I missed.

My 16 year old brother's presence was announced by a light breaking through the shadows of the hallway. Then, what began as a mumble turned into a soulful "cuz my body so bootylicious" as his silhouette grooved into view. I thought to embarrass him: "I heard that, Jordan" to which he replied "Well yeah, I'm singing." I'm inspired to accept the silly things I do in private with such public moxie.

My friend and I tread uneasily through the isles of a corporate art store. None of the plastic garlands or premature Halloween decor appeals to us. As we pass another tower of marked-up petroleum derivatives, two women appear. One crouches near the ground with one hand touching something with the generic plastic sheen which reflects light but not creativity. Her other hand rests on a substantial baby-bump. The woman behind her is older, but speaks with authority. "Why don't you name your baby Darth. Like Darth Vader."


I thought I could use a writing exercise.

Summer Internships: The Application Process Presents a New and Frightening Perspective on Your Accomplishments

Last year, I began the search for summer internships in late fall. The earliest deadline that I gave myself was to have an application drafted by Thanksgiving. The holiday came and went without any progress. My other deadlines followed in the same vein. Eventually, my father contacted various universities in Europe to see if anyone had a program with the potential to accommodate a a summer intern. I began the conversation with a professor at the Universidad Complutense in January. On May 2nd, I committed myself. At the last minute, I jetted off to Madrid with no formal program, just myself and a large dose of trepidation.

Searching for potential internships is exhilarating. It uncovers the breadth of your field as well as revealing the many roles you can play within it. You, or someone else. You, or someone with more experience. Maybe they're a junior in college, maybe their hobby is reading textbooks, maybe they speak C++... But you should probably apply anyways. Suddenly there's a new context around your field of study. Evaluation in academia doesn't correspond to effectiveness in the real world. Maybe you passed the class, but do you really understand Maxwell's equations? What business do you have looking to get work experience if you can't use a del operator? 

Back to first person; enough of this nonsense. I still haven't overcome the fear of inadequacy. I'm afraid of being behind, being less than they expected, being unable to focus, or being uninterested. I should know by now that I'm entirely reliable, I work hard, and I do what needs to be done. The research group in Spain invited me to come back, and wrote me a lovely letter of recommendation. Still, I look at the opportunities in front of me and assume that I will be disappointing.

The excuses that I used last summer are now invalid. I'll be at or beyond the experience level most applicants will have. By May 2013, I'll have taken 4 semester of math, and 4 semesters of physics. I'll be halfway through my degree. I hope that imagining how qualified I'll be will get me through applications due early on. While I still worry that I should be exploring interests beyond physics, those opportunities are less time sensitive. I can write at any point in my life. Research Opportunities for Undergraduates are really only available for the next two summers. 

Maybe I'll explore my philosophy of the summer internship more objectively some day. For now, I'm too focused on how it makes me reevaluate my status as a future scientist. A potential future scientist. I may apply for some newspaper opportunities too, because I cannot reject the part of me that isn't sure why I'm studying physics in the first place. 

To the tune of Burial's Untrue

I just found out that Burial's music is basically the same as my brainwaves. It gave me shivers at first. But now it's just companionship. I've always said that I was looking for someone I could be alone with. Maybe that someone could just be music, because people like that are few and far between.

I've come to some conclusions about the Summer at Home problem. The most freestanding one is this: I haven't found activities that satisfy me beyond the time spent actually doing them. Riding my bicycle, doing photoshoots with my friends, building sandcastles, reading books, making food... after it's over I forget why it was good. Then, to feel motivated again, I have to really force myself to imagine how I will feel while doing it. I can't look to how I will feel in anticipation or after it.

This is the opposite of how I functioned in Madrid. Small activities were enormous victories. Little efforts changed my life so much. It was like pulling a kite through air versus pulling it through water. Maybe it's because I focused much more on myself. Here, in organizing an activity, my energy is focused on making it enjoyable for other people. That gives me short term gratification. But once I can't see smiling faces I forget them and realize that I didn't really get much out of it. Then I look at the effort I put it and feel wasted.

Some of the activities listed above are just for me though. Even those have lost some luster and become evidence of my failure to engage productively with other people. It's not as bad as all this. I still feel content and tired after a long day's dress-up. But after feeling so proud of myself for having an active life in Madrid, it's hard to go back to a life that's so easy that it's not gratifying.

The simple solution is to go back to school, obviously.

Light Dawns on Marble Head

I was looking at the view stats for this blog, and I wondered why so many views came from a health website. Then I realized that the whole resting heart rate and 92 beats per minute may have confused the search engine machine. I giggled.
For context, my heart beats really fast. And a helluva lot faster when I do a line of caffeine, molly, or methylone, or when I exercise. Sometimes it's scary to feel my neck when it's going over 130. Usually it's in the high 80s or low 90s, and I've asked doctors and they say it's nothing to worry about. So, I hope the people curious about their health find answers somewhere...

The Owl Fight

It's been a long time since my tongue made contact with the Doyle Owl's golden exterior. I don't think about it very often, except for when I look down at the scar on my knee. It's a strange memory, because for all of the screaming and laughs and tears and wins and almost-wins of the night, none of my memories are of feelings. They are all visual. I don't really see myself as any specific type of visual or kinesthetic learner, but my memories tend to center on how I felt. Images happen too, but usually in conjunction with a strong feeling.

This is what I saw that night, in approximately chronological order:
-Liana's hair poofing out from beneath her skaterboy helmet as we biked to the front lawn in the early darkness.
-Running out in front of Eliot after fireworks erupted in that general direction.
-G's face as he gave us lipstick war paint, and told us a fake Doyle owl was in front of Bragdon.
-Rosie's face after she had been half-trampled in the fight, us (don't even remember who the person beside me was) asking if she was alright. I didn't even know her name back then.
-The one drug dealer's face (I don't know his name, all I know is that when I asked him if he was tasty he said no. A different story) as he straddled the owl, full of achievement.
-Michael running into the fray, naked except for his shoes.
-Hugh's face as he contemplated the Tir Na Nog charge.
-Our perfectly spear shaped formation as we attacked.
-Torben's stomach, caving in around a rope that he had tied to the owl, and around his waist. Someone cut it. It's good that his internal organs avoided more bruising, but I kind of hate the person who brought a knife into the owl fight. I guess that's a feeling.
- Ari's face, as he struggled to sit on the owl for as long as possible.
-Lisa's face, when she warned me that if the owl did actually make it into my car, people might slash my tires. The glory would have been well worth it.
-Mark on his bike with a shopping cart attached to the back, ready to ride off with the owl. That would never have worked.
-Flying over the owl, propelled by some upward force unknown to physics, and landing on the asphalt of the parking lot.
-Seeing blood drip from my knee. This has some feeling, because I didn't feel accomplished after touching, then kissing, and finally licking the owl. Once I bled for the owl, I felt like I had done my part.
-Matchu screaming at the crowd to get out of the way as the ambulance approached.
-Max's face right after I kissed him.
-Failing at Jiu Jitsu in the mudpit where the owl used to be.
-Other times not rated PG-13. Probably not even rated R. I don't know how rating systems work these days.

I picked at the scab as my knee tried to heal. My efforts were rewarded with a dark brown scar on my knee, in the shape of an apostrophe. We can pretend that it looks like an owl though.