saturday, december 23

•••    hehe. after I posted that, I went to brush my teeth, just because I will use any occasion as an excuse to brush my teeth. I was spitting into the sink when I realized why the name richard ashcroft sounded so familiar... so I looked up into the mirror to inform myself that I was a moron, and wound up with toothpaste dribbling down my chin, rather messily (but neatly, in the non-literal sense) underscoring the point. I hoped no one had caught me before I fixed it, but apparently not. ;) such are the perils of having a website that people actually read, I suppose. I'm not so sure richard ashcroft would make a great attorney general though. he seems sort of perpetually stoned and depressed, or at least he did three years ago.

so anyway tonight my family played games, and I would tell you how hysterically funny and out of control it was except that everything would get lost in translation. (if my psych professor read that, he would write a note in the margin: show don't tell! but I am not in school anymore so who cares, right? right.) my sister started eating the purple sculpting clay at one point.

speaking of eating. one of the problems with coming home is that I have no way to deal with the massive quantities of food. I feel somehow obligated to eat it all, as if the sudden appearance of food aplenty were foreshadowing times of famine to come. I think I've eaten more in the past two days than I do in a normal week at school, and I am not one of those people who picks at dining hall food only to send it back on the little conveyor belt for the dishwashers to deal with. no, I'm just trying to make sure the grocery store turns a nice profit this week. 11:04 PM

•••    profuse apologies in advance, but I have to make an administrative note: if you wrote to me in the past week and I didn't write back to you, it's not because I haven't read you email. I have. however, since I am now in massachusetts and my computer is still in pennsylvania, I can no longer see any of those emails. and while I may remember what you said, I probably can't remember what your email address is. :( I'm a terrible terrible person I know (at least temporarily, pertaining to emails), but if you want a response you'll have to write again. (don't worry, I can read new email.) bad rabi.

although, as boring as I've been today, I don't know why you'd want to talk to me. ;) 7:11 PM

•••    reading the paper this morning was a surprisingly unpleasant experience, in between the unfamiliar new layout and fonts and the news that john ashcroft is going to be our attorney general. correct me if I'm wrong, but the president is supposed to carry out the will of the people, right? at least that's what I learned from schoolhouse rock. john ashcroft just lost an election to a dead guy -- I think it's a pretty safe bet that the people do not want to see him in office. I know I don't. 3:27 PM

friday, december 22

•••    for a large part of the train ride today I sat next to a woman from california. her name was linda and she had strong perfume and thin lips that seemed to change shape a lot even though her enunciation left a lot to be desired. she asked me a bajillion questions about the east coast, the amtrak line, the stations, the ocean, and of course myself and my school. and the snow. it was falling all the way from philadelphia to rhode island, and while the speeding train kicked up enough snow from the tracks to make it look like a veritable blizzard outside, our station stops revealed that it was actually greeting-card-picture-perfect snow with little round flakes spread apart just right so as not to obscure the scenery. linda was quite impressed with it, because she hadn't seen any in years thanks to her california lifestyle, and I was taken with it simply because I am somehow taken with all precipitation.

one of the things I absolutely love about train travel is that you see the backside of everything; the tracks usually border apartment lots in rundown neighborhoods or the fenced-off edges of junkyards or just fields and woods belonging to nothing. in connecticut it seemed as though the weather had gotten stuck, as there was twice as much snow on the ground there than anywhere else we passed, and everything was coated in sticky white that seemed just on the verge of sliding down in a melty miniature avalanche. the empty shells of broken cars and the rusted frames of cheap backyard swingsets and the flowering tops of wild grass long abandoned by civilization all had snow covering them like confused shadows that couldn't bear to let go. I wanted to keep it. if I could have anything in a snow globe, it would be the unconnected bits of the world you see during holiday travel. 11:30 PM

•••    being in boston again is comforting and familiar, but for some reason being at my house in cambridge is still strange and mildly unsettling. paradoxically, it's also very nice; my pets and books and walls are all here, and soon my family will all be here too and we can find out how much we've changed and how much we've stayed the same in each other's absence. I think at this point in my life I have become permanently displaced in one way or another... but that thought can wait; for now I am eating freshly baked vegan blueberry muffins and making the spacebar purple. 2:18 PM

•••    so, it is the first day of chanukah. happy chanukah, however you spell or celebrate it. it is also the day of three train rides, leaving one home and returning to another, big cities through windows, strangers in transit, family and pets and christmastime for real. and it will start much too soon, well before the sun comes up. I am happy to be going back to boston, though; I think the prospect has made me miss it more than usual. twelve hours.

it's snowing now, the very light delicate sort of snow that you can only see in the glow of streetlights. I have a lot of pretty thoughts, I think, but they're too delicate to be translated into words. and I'm tired. 1:37 AM

thursday, december 21

•••    the difference between astronomy and physics:

after I spend hours agonizing over an astronomy problem, I really understand the solution I came up with and how I got there from the concepts in the question.

after I spend hours agonizing over a physics problem, I think I know what percentage of my assumptions are at least vaguely right and what percentage are just fuzzy math.

what's up with that, anyway? ah well.

rabi is finished with:
• everything!

...except packing. 5:02 PM

•••    so, my last day here. this, ladies and gentlemen (and children and monsters and voyeurs and rascals), is what we call crunch time.

happy winter, by the way. 8:22 AM

wednesday, december 20

•••    right now my hair is absolutely, ridiculously, gorgeous. after I washed it this morning, instead of braiding it like usual I just twisted it around a few times and pinned it up against my head. just now I was pulling my sweatshirt off and it knocked the pins out, and my hair all fell down about my waist. it's in these perfect big curls, shiny and bouncy and really cascading, which I think is a word that should be applied to hair only in special circumstances. it looks like it belongs in one of those paintings of unsmiling little girls in stiff dresses.

in a way it's sort of depressing, because the rest of me is rather a mess. I don't remember when I last washed my sweatpants and I have rice cake crumbs dusting the front of my shirt. the contrast is sobering to say the least. I think I'm going to pin my hair back up so I don't have to look at it anymore, and so I don't have to watch it fall out of its perfect curls into haphazard limpness. 11:49 PM

•••    my roommate is gone. at the end of every semester her parents come with a big plastic bin and they just start throwing everything into it. laundry, bedding, books, shoes, all jumbled together and sealed up in tupperware. it's a little frightening. her parents also hug me at the end of every semester, which I think is very strange considering the total amount of time we've spent in the same room is probably less than four hours.

I'm enjoying being alone now, but you know what? I'm going to miss having a roommate next year. who would have thought. we had christmas early for a few minutes while we exchanged presents and raced to see who could rip through the wrapping first. (I had an unfair advantage; my present was a book neatly covered in wrapping paper, and hers was a lumpy octopus inside the sunday colors and lots of tape.) the cactus was blooming on the windowsill.

sometime in the next 24 hours or so I really need to figure out dielectrics and acl circuits. if anyone has insight into molecular polarizability please tell me. I've gotten to the point where looking at my physics book makes me want to go into hibernation. but I can't, because then I would miss my train on friday. 7:35 PM

•••    so I decided after I got to campus that I deserved more of a break after my two days of nothing but work. I had a nice breakfast (cornflakes and ricemilk on blueberries) and I collected my last paycheck of the semester, but that only took me until 9:00 and then I was faced with physics. my brain just wasn't ready, so I decided to go shopping... wait, it gets better!... for something to read on the train to boston. that's right, I voluntarily went to the mall and spent money on something that has no purpose other than to entertain me! that's something that doesn't happen too much while I'm in school. I was very amused by the whole thing.

it was a spontaneous decision though, and for some reason this morning I was feeling reckless when I got dressed. I left my room without my hat or my scarf, and wearing my beat up old oxfords (good for sliding around in the snow, bad for warmth). it's not all that cold out, but walking through snowdrifts sent my feet and face into a temporary deepfreeze anyway. I went back to the same bookstore I visited on saturday, but this time all the snow made it look very christmasy indeed. instead of a disgruntled woman there was a smiling gurgly baby in front of me in line, and the people on the radio were uncharacteristically entertaining, so it was a happy outing.

now I have pleasure reading and a nice bubbly tingling feeling around my noes and toes. the world is disarmingly quiet, my hair is all twisted up and sophisticated-looking, and in two days I will be in boston. I fear this is the calm before the storm of physics panic, but I'll keep it for now. 11:07 AM

•••    in which I have chutzpah (or something like that; I just wanted to say chutzpah):

I went outside in my pajamas to take a picture of the snow. and I smiled and waved at the disapproving suburbanites in their climate-controlled suv. ha.

I wrapped my roommate's christmas present in newspaper I rescued (temporarily) from the recycling bin while she was less than five feet away from me, and she didn't notice.

I made a snow angel. but I'm not telling you where. :) 7:34 AM

•••    the snow has ceased to drift and has started to fall in earnest. the air is stickywet and windy so the snow is running sideways into everything and coating it all in a furry soft whiteness. there are no footprints or tireprints outside yet and the wind is making it cloudy and dusted up outside my window, so the house across the street is visible only as an indeterminate hazy light, no more civilized than the setting sun or the afterglow of a dying forest fire. the sky is that winter-orange color, all clouds reflecting distant city light from below and keeping dark tucked within. and it's snowing, and I will never never never get tired of snow.

I wish cold could freeze time instead of water molecules, if only just until the morning thaw. 12:54 AM

tuesday, december 19

•••    I spent ten solid hours in the science library today, and for nine of them I was working on my astronomy final. nine hours is a long long time to be doing anything that involves math and calculations, and it is an especially long time to be doing something that will determine a significant portion of your overall grade. there was one point near the end where I looked at an answer, and I knew it was wrong, but I almost didn't care enough to go suss out the problem. I was ohsoclose to just giving up. but I bit my lip, grabbed my calculator, and plunged back into the math. (it turned out there were five problems, not one, so it's a good thing I did. and I think I may have conquered my difficulty with magnitudes once and for all.) when I finished, finally finally satisfied that I had figured out every last thing that was going to be figured out, I packed up all twenty pages and taped my exam envelope shut and stepped outside for the first time since early afternoon.

it was snowing. they were big fat flakes, falling so slowly it almost looked like they weren't moving at all, as if maybe the pathlights had them caught in some sort of invisible forcefield. they twirled and hung in the air and positively glowed with radiant purity. I caught one on my tongue. and then I burst into tears, because it was all so beautiful. 11:39 PM

•••    

rabi is finished with:

• evopsycho paper
• wormhole presentation
• astro lab
• math final
• rugby webpage update
• psychology final

...all 3998 words of it, spellchecked, proofread, printed and stapled. whee! 10:51 AM

•••    I'm that useless kind of tired where your eyeballs hurt and your head is only pretending to be attached to your shoulders. and I'm finding it very hard to believe I've been up for over two hours already. I do know I've brushed my teeth at least three times though.

as soon as I finish this psychology thing, I am going to do astronomy. all day long. I think I might enjoy it, in that perverse way you can enjoy the least of all evils. 8:47 AM

•••    well. when my astro professor said he wanted to cook us dinner, I had no idea he was going to take it so seriously! he cooked for six hours! it was all authentic mexican food, and I would tell you what it was except I don't remember any of the spanish names except jicama which is a root veggie, not a dish, and I could eat very nearly all of it. and oh, oh oh oh it was good. some of it was also weird -- why would it ever occur to anyone to put salt and chili pepper on oranges? -- but gosh, I haven't had a meal like that in what seems like forever. and there were cats and music and a two-year-old who laughed and laughed and learned to say my name, and it was all so delightfully far away from bitterbittersweet school. by the time we got to dessert and there was mango I was so full of giggly euphoria I could barely keep it on my spoon. (the mango, not the euphoria, although if you come up with a way to eat euphoria with a spoon I will gladly trade you a thousand for smiles for just a taste.)

by ten thirty the two-year-old had been read to and put to sleep, and we were all sitting around the table growing increasingly sleepy ourselves from warmth and food. it felt like nighttime. then I went back to campus and there were all the college students, running about in their state of perpetual finals-time panic as if it were one in the afternoon and not just a few minutes shy of eleven o'clock. people were working, people were packing, people were leaving, and it was all very jarring. I said goodbye to some people, which made everything more bittersweet. I am antisocial but I get extremely attached to particular people in funny ways. and I will miss them. so sigh.

still, I am jammied up and warm and full of good food, and there are only three days of work left whether I can fit all my work into three days or not. my penguin is nestled against my shoulder, and for the moment I am strong enough to bury all the bitter parts under my sweet sleepy contentment. 12:34 AM

monday, december 18

•••    it's amazing how my tolerance for stupid music goes way up when I'm writing in a schoolwork marathon. however I can take only so much eighties new wave, and I can take only so much fluffy psychology, so now I am going for a good hard run to escape both of them. hopefully I can leave some of my excess energy behind in my muddy footprints; I am very much not one of those people who can sit at a desk in front of a computer all day, despite appearances. besides, I need to gather my thoughts and composure: when I begin again, I will directly attack my professor's favorite pet theory (robin dunbar on language evolution, if you care. thank goodness, no more mating behavior. it was making me crazy). and we all know how tricky that can be. if you have ever encountered a psychologist who doesn't take such things personally, please let me know.

(word count: 3132) 4:21 PM

•••    well, screw it. maybe I won't get this done before dinner. I glanced at the calendar as I was typing and realized that christmas is in a week. a week! how did that happen? and how are my christmas cards ever going to get to the west coast in time unless I make them and address them and mail them right away? and how am I going to say goodbye to all the people who work faster and harder than me and are leaving tomorrow unless I go find them on campus? priorities, priorities!

let it never be said that I would willingly pass up an opportunity to procrastinate. :P

(word count: 1599, temporarily on hold.) 12:59 PM

•••    the movement of the morning sun makes the shadows cast by my windowpanes drift across the room every day. for some reason I am fascinated by the way they section off little bits of my world inside squares outlined by darkened light. (that whole sentence looks like one big oxymoron, doesn't it? ha.) today I have been watching the way the supports between the glass panes make shadows like crosshairs on a rifle, slowly roaming northward, searching for the perfect target. right now one is catching the ufo on my roswell postcard in its sights. just below it, another cross is centered on my erogenous zone ear. I have always been a little leery of the common practice of saving absolut print ads for dorm room decorations, because it seems weird to decorate anything with advertisements... but for some reason I couldn't resist saving the jvc ear ad. it's just so good on so many levels. in the time I have taken to write this, the crosshairs have moved off the ear and onto the binding of my physics textbook. sigh. everything is temporary, I suppose.

(word count: 719. I'm not impressed either.) 10:11 AM

•••    it is not yet eight o'clock. I have four days of finals left. I am going to finish this four thousand word final before I have to leave for my seven o'clock dinner date tonight. mark my words. yeah.

meanwhile, I'm thinking I like sage.

(word count: 444) 7:50 AM

sunday, december 17

•••    my psychology final is giving me way more trouble than it's worth. (although, technically it's worth forty percent of my grade. so maybe I would rather endure this unrelenting writer's block for just a little longer than fail the course entirely.)

the moon is entering its last quarter tonight. waning is definitely something I can identify with at the moment. I feel as inarticulate as an aldebran shellmouth. 10:11 PM

•••    ahhh! guess what's on tv... not it's a wonderful life, not the best christmas moments ever, not a special about the history of holiday commercials... no, it's a muppet christmas carol! you know, who cares if kermit doesn't sound quite like jim henson anymore. it's the penguins' skating party! it's jacob and robert marley, dead and decaying in their graves. (whispered for dramatic emphasis.) hoity-toity mr. godlike smarty-pants! my homework is so doomed. gotta love the muppets.

the commercials in between, however, are frightening. my size butterfly barbie? if I had one of those in my closet I guarantee I would have nightmares about it. shiver. 6:29 PM

•••    the weather this morning was grey and dark and wet, and even at high noon when I walked to campus it was so gloomily cloudy and lonely that the sun might as well have been on the other side of the earth. even the yellow and blue of my raingear couldn't brighten the world, and the duck on the end of my umbrella handle just looked tired. and it was all making me depressed so I said fuck work and I went to visit a friend, one of the friends I miss more than anything when school and distance and shyness keep me from seeing her, and she gave me candy and conversation and reasons to laugh. as I sat watching the birds outside her window and the plants inside it, the clouds began to dissipate to let the sun stream through to hit my face and turn my averted vision all glowy blue with chemical overcompensation. we talked about things of consequence and no consequence, all of which were immeasurably more important than the work I left hidden in the corner under my raincoat. and when I said goodbye and went outside to walk back to the library, it was bright and warm and cheery.

as coincidences go I think my favorites are the days when the weather follows my emotions. let's keep it sunny, shall we? 3:40 PM

•••    this is just beautiful. I've been visiting noah grey for years now and I don't remember his site ever looking so light and forthright and clean. it's nice, isn't it?

I know I don't usually blog-blog, but this deserved an exception. and now I am working. 10:45 AM

•••    it was raining so hard when I woke up that I could barely see out my window.

I am beginning to feel panic settling around my shoulders like the smell of surrounding cigarette smoke. it comes in such little pieces that you don't notice it at first, and it builds up so slowly that you don't realize how strong it's getting. then you step outside into fresh air and the contrast is enough to make you choke. it clings to you and you can't brush it away no matter how hard you try. you have to wash everything.

it will be five days before I can wash the panic smell out of my laundry. wish me some composure. 10:26 AM