saturday, august 4
[birthday traditions, part 2.]the world is blurry through the yellow haze shaped by the fluttering of a translucent yellow ribbon in front of my face. a few hours ago it was snug around a shiny blue present, jewel-case-shaped of course, and now it is wrapped under my ponytail and tied in a big floppy bow on top of my head. I have purple and silver polysatin bows perched on my hair and all colors of ribbed curling ribbon sliding down my head and dangling from my ears.
my family always laughs at me, but I have been doing this for years. I remember all of my birthdays except the first two. I don't think I was awake for much of my first day, because in all of my newborn pictures my eyes are squeezed tight-shut. my first birthday party was in central park, like all my manhattan birthdays, and I know I wore a dress and the trees wore pink and blue crepe paper, because we have pictures to prove it, but I don't actually remember what it looked like or felt like or anything. after that, though, I remember all of them. 1983 was one of the years I had two birthday parties, because we were in denver for august so I had my central park party in july before we left. I'm not sure why I got an extra party; would I have cared at not-quite-two whether I got to celebrate with my equally young friends? would I have noticed? I have no idea. [update from my mother: apparently I had been counting the days until my party for months and it would have been quite the travesty if one hadn't happened.] so there was a party and the trees wore their customary streamers and I wore my puffy-sleeved garage sale dress, and it was cloudyblue above the skyscrapers. my carrot cake had two pink candles and raisins that spelled out "happy birthday audie" on top of cream cheese frosting. I got a beautiful hardcover copy of the velveteen rabbit, which I unwrapped without any help from the adult horde. for my real second birthday we had a party at my grandparents' house. it was actually the night of august third, which bothered me a little bit, more because I didn't understand why we were having a party on not-my-birthday than because I really cared about things like timing. in the end it didn't matter at all which day it was, because my grandmother brought me a frog cake. I had never seen anything like it. I still have a picture-perfect memory of the way it looked on that table, bright and curving and green, with goopy chocolate eyelashes and a big 2-shaped candle poking up out of its head, somehow so luminous that it consumed my entire field of vision and left everything surrounding me dark and flat, the way the full moon does against a midnight sky. I'm sure the patio light was on, and the brick garage wall was orange-brown, and the plastic tablecloth was there illuminated just as fully as the cake itself, but to me that cake was positively glowing with its big red smile and its sloping sides covered in shiny-soft green frosting, and it was the only real thing in the universe. a frog cake. it was unbelievable. the note on the back of this photo says, in my mother's all-caps blue ballpoint handwriting, "audrey tastes kermit." so I have this thing about how it's not really my birthday until 6:17 am, but I think it's highly unlikely that I'll be awake then, so I'm declaring it my birthday now. and it is, as far as the calendar is concerned. I am one of those funny people who wishes the christmas season were about ninety percent shorter, but I love to let my birthday stretch out and spill into the nearby days, because it makes everything feel more special. on wednesday roban was at cfa so he came to say hi to me; yesterday I got chocolate in the mail; today my boss went away for a week to give a talk (complete with the pretty new pictures I made) so I got to play in the office with the big window and the cd player; I figured out how to fix an iraf problem on my very first try; there were new cds in the listening stations at hmv; the air smells good and clean; my newly short(ened) hair is swishy and cute -- everything is special because I am here to see it, and I am allowed to indulge in egotism because it is the season of my birthday. I was born! I am alive! the only things I truly want are intangibles. I am selfish; I wish for happiness. this year I am happier than I remember being last year, and the year before, and before, and before, maybe all way back to the day I turned eight because that was a magical day for no particular reason. it is strange to say it so definitely, but I have swarthmore and friends and food and the world and I am happy. hello hello I am not a teenager anymore. also, I did it, and now my hair stops just at my waist. I think I like it. I love this crazy telescope. a hundred thousand images!
23:53
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[birthday traditions, part 1.]
18:43
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birthday birthday birthday! :)
02:38
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friday, august 3
it amazes me how something as simple and primitive as rain can turn my omnipresent creakiness, which by this point is so normal that I probably wouldn't know who I was without it, into an armada of whitehot worms that burrow their way between my skin and my bones and set up camp behind my kneecaps, under the soft part of my ankles, in the crooks of my elbows, in the narrowness of my wrists... and how quickly I forget as the air clears that it is bound to happen again.
22:29
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it seems there is more water than air outside, and maybe more electricity than water. the sky is falling!
20:18
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eso 510-g13: warp factor big.
14:01
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thursday, august 2
I am cohabitating with a damaged daddy-longlegs. I've noticed him every night for the past week; he comes out near corner where my clarinet lives and wanders back and forth in front of the door without ever moving into the kitchen, even though I'm sure he could fit through the crack between the door and the floor if he really wanted to. he moves awkwardly, almost with a limp, jerking back and forth instead of glide-walking the way most arthropods do; once he tried to climb up the white bookshelf, but he had gotten only a few centimeters above the floor before he fell into a tangled, undignified heap.
tonight I got down on my stomach next to him, so I could watch. with my cheek pressed to the floor (cooler than the air but only slightly; smelling of dust and, for some reason, peppermint) I watched his legs move up and down in sequence, one after another like the keys on a playerpiano, seemingly with a will of their own but clearly following some pre-ordained pattern. there was something missing, though, a missed note replaced by only empty space, the kind of silence that lets an entire concerto plummet at the speed of gravity until the next key finds its plink. I watched and watched and counted: the daddy-longlegs has only seven legs, and you would think that seven legs each twenty times the length of its body could make up for a single lost one, but it is not so and he limps and limps, unwillingly floorbound.
when I spend too much facedown on the floor I begin to feel as if the pressure from my heartbeat will throw me back into the air, that it wants to push away the flatness and the closeness that makes me that much more susceptible to physics, and I imagine it must be very difficult to be trapped there when instinct tells you that walls and sides of bookshelves and ceiling corners are all your terrain. I am still somewhat hobbled myself; my nearly-unsprained ankle lets me walk without protest, but I am still stair-shy and have yet to run more than ten meters (to cross a street before the onrush of greenlighted traffic). if I feel trapped inside my damaged body, what must it feel like for a creature with no rational mind to explain away the dissonance between instinct and reality?
there is other wildlife in my room, of course: megatron is growing proliferately, or would be if that were a word. except now he's not my dentist anymore. I had my very last visit to that office today, and after my consultation with the hmo-covered oral surgeon a few weeks ago, I realized that I am actually going to miss my private pediatric dentist where I don't have to check in anymore because the receptionists know me, the walls are pink and decorated with ansel adams prints next to photographs of my dentist's children, the hygienists gossip with each other over my head and their voices blend into radio softrock, and I get to wear sunglasses so the light doesn't hurt my eyes (and so no one can tell where I'm looking, or not looking). without that minor revelation, I might have been a little annoyed with the dentist today. it was just a basic sealant, but somehow these things are never as simple as they should be with me and I ended up bleeding all over the place. if there's any single moment from today I wish I could have kept as a snapshot, it's the instant when the drill hit my tooth and the raincoat stretched and snapped, and the air between me and the light overhead was filled with a spray of water and blood and tooth pieces, looking like pixiedust instead of a biohazard. it's amazing, I think, that someone could spend all day looking inside mouths and at people's faces hidden under sunglasses and sheets of pastel latex without losing a sense of people as people, but my dentist is always cheerful and friendly. when I got up to leave, he shook my hand and wished me a happy birthday and a happy astrophysics career, and he seemed genuinely sorry to see me leave forever. I suppose I am something of the perfect dentistry patient: my teeth are well-cared for, so routine cleanings are a breeze, but I have enough normal orthodontic problems to warrant occasional expensive treatments. a happy little cash cow. so maybe that's why my dentist was reluctant to see me leave, but I don't think so. but first, there were cool toys. I couldn't tell what my thoroughly numb lips and tongue were doing, so I held them open and still with my fingers while my dentist waved a little pen-sized black stick in front of my teeth. of course I had to know what it was; he handed it to me and told me to see for myself. as soon as I took it, my face appeared on the computer screen next to my head, where before I had been able to see only a set of glistening teeth in the periphery. and now of course I want my own tiny wireless digital camera, because watching the room spin on the screen while I twirled the camera was one of the coolest things I've seen this week, and I should not like gadgets so much because someday it will be the undoing of my frugal conservationist self, but I do in spite of myself. it was very spiffy. the wisdom teeth have five days left until they meet their demise; I hope they are busy living it up. this morning, though, I must have been having good dreams, because though I don't recall what they were about, I woke up feeling warm and whole and inexplicably content, a full hour before my alarm clock was set to go off. everything was quiet and soft and pastel-hazy, the way I think we imagine the world looks to babies when we wrap them in blankets and hold them in our laps, as if we could filter out cruelty with nothing but love and cotton. maybe the trick is to expect less from the world so that I can be surprised when it gives me something beautiful, but I don't want to be that kind of person. remember I said the link list was getting out of control? it was. so now it is smaller, and I have this big list, which is actually not very big yet but will get that way soon I have no idea why I'm still awake. for now, though, the computer behind me is humming away interpolating something or other, so here are the beancounts from the 24 hours: posts: 52 the entire 24 hours of the blogathon is archived here with the sidebar intact; eventually I'll clean things up here and optimize those gigantic jpegs for the web, and I'll get the cut&paste page updated (it needs it for other reasons anyway), but until then this will have to count as a return to normalcy. I very much feel that it should not be monday yet. maybe because I slept only twice between friday morning and now? one more? I think so. actually, this is sort of embarrassing, but i've been thinking about my hair lately. i never wear it down. know why? it is too damn long. i don't have nice thick long hair like some people. my hair never really outgrew the eight-year-old stage, and it is very fine, very soft, and very easily tangled. if i leave it down, it turns into a mess quickly. plus it gets in my face. so, it is always in a braid or in a bun or in something where it really makes no difference whether it's ten feet or ten inches long. yeah, i really like my long braid, but what exactly is it there for? would it make any difference if it were a foot shorter? would anyone even notice? it would still be long to them, even if it weren't stunningly long. would I be happier with hair that could be worn loose, or in a ponytail, or in a braid that would wrap around my head and not have six inches left over, than i am with a braid that is just really long? if you had threatened me with shorter hair two years ago i would have been so indignant at the very suggestion that i might have put you on my mental beware-of list. now even i am thinking about doing it to myself. i dunno. should i cut my hair? i am certainly not going to make it short any time in the near future, because i enjoy my hair, but i no longer feel like the point is to let it be as long as possible with total disregard for how healthy and pretty and useful it actually is. i want it to be unusual, but i don't want it to be a personality crutch or anything. on the other hand, it is really cool to stand in the shower and lean back and feel my hair brushing against the backs of my knees. let's see. most athelete have rituals, or superstitions, or whatever. I've heard a zillion things about baseball players that hide chicken bones inside their uniforms to give them good luck or something equally unsavory. (um. good luck is not unsavory, but chicken bones are.) teams usually have rituals that they take part in all together; my team huddles on the field and yells the lyrics to a guns 'n' roses song before every game. those sorts of rituals are the ones you just fall into without really thinking about it, because it's what everyone does and when you're on a team you're a part of the everyone. I wonder if I have rituals of my own, not inherited from anyone else? right now it is the weekend, so brenda is on a field trip. or something like that. she is white water rafting, and oops she has no paddles, but that's okay because she's headed over a waterfall and the paddles wouldn't do her much good anyway. it doesn't matter, though, because she knows how torque and stuff works... oh no wait, that's physics camp. but don't worry, she's going to be fine. except... look out brenda, you have a make-believe photosynthesizing fish in the raft behind you!! they have those at mathcamp, you know. there are also numbers at math camp, because you need numbers to do math I think, even if a lot of the time they only get to be exponents and stuff. those numbers are integers. integers are good, but we never get to use them in physics and astronomy, I guess because the mathies are more perfect than we are and they don't have to worry about the wrongness in their instruments, because they don't have instruments, because they don't bother calculating anything about the real world. that's why there are photosynthesizing fish, because they don't exist in the real world, so they have to go live at math camp. the mountains at math camp are conic sections, I think. something like that, anyway. they are definitely pink and purple. that is called proof by obviousness. underneath you can see a reflection in the water, and in linear algebra you call that kind of transformation a reflection. makes sense, right? it's one of the nice math words that means the same thing in english as it does in math, so learn it well! but there is a problem, because the reflection is there but the thing it's reflecting is nowhere to be seen! that means the reflection is imaginary. that is called proof by imagination, or maybe it is called proof by complete nonsense. oh, martha says it's called proof by postmodernism; that's much better I think. brenda is good at proving stuff so she does that a lot at math camp. math camp is in new england this year. therefore all the ducks at math camp are from new england. all new england ducks are cute. therefore all the ducks at mathcamp are cute. that is called proof by definition. and see how cute that duck is? so cute! so all the other ducks are necessarily cute too. that is called proof by generalization. we would do that a lot in physics, except that we never prove things in physics; we just sort of wave our hands at them. isn't it a good thing brenda is at mathcamp and not physics camp? she would probably go crazy! aside from ducks, brenda also lives with lots of other wildlife at mathcamp, including moose, bears, high school students, and pizza delivery people. and aside from going on field trips, brenda also does a lot of math at mathcamp. that's why they call it mathcamp, of course! sounds like fun, doesn't it? mathcamp is fun. collage #8: brenda at mathcamp. free willy shuns freedom! eat the whales! I guess if I had known captivity for as long as I could remember, I would be a little intimidated by the wild too. and even if I could bring myself to eat something like whale meat while remaining completely vegetarian in all other respects, I wouldn't do it. I hate peta. did you hear that peta? you suck! when we lived in manhattan, the turntable was a big part of my life. we had no television, so records and tapes were about it for my exposure to pop culture. we lived near columbus circle, and my mom used to take me on walks to the music library at lincoln center. I'm sure I remember music from before then, but when I think of childhood music I think of lincoln center, with its seventies-colored interior decorations and the course blue fabric on the chairs and the big plastic headphones that sat heavy across the crown of my head and brought sesame street and oliver! and annie and more sesame street into the world just for me. I always wanted to bring sesame street home. we had other records that I liked -- woodie guthrie's songs to grow on in the orange slipcover, harry belafonte singing dayo! to the banana-tally-man -- but sesame street was the best, because it had "c is for cookie" and "I love trash" and "somebody come and play," and the best part ever which was when big bird and snuffleupagus sang about how snuffleupagus was a nobody but really he wasn't, because he was big bird's best imaginary friend. later my grandmother found that record at a garage sale and bought it for me, but somehow in a little part of my mind it still belongs in lincoln center, and I still feel like I have itchy-hot (but happy in a familiar way) plastic cupping the music against my ears. one day cyberman was sitting at home wishing he had something fun to do. outside it was raining, pouring really, and with all the thunder and lightning it just wasn't safe to leave the house. he was feeling bored, as he often did due to his puny brain that couldn't even fill half his cybernetic skull, so he decided to take a cue from the latest aphex twin album and go for some drug use of his own. a little psilocybin would be just the thing to spice the world up a little. plus he had those nice radioactive green-glowing shrooms and he couldn't let them go to waste! soon he was having the greatest trip ever, and he came up with a plan to dismember all the annoying people who worked in the fashion industry, because they were annoying as hell. but not the girl who juggled oranges, because she belonged in the circus, and not the chick with the red socks because she was really hot. (responsibility for this post belongs to dane, who while not quite as insane as dave, definitely knows how to make a unique request. bonus points to anyone who can figure out what that particular request was...) I did just take a shower, because I went outside and it felt all new and clean and I felt out of time, so now I am here wrapped in a towel and cool fresh air, trying very hard not to drip on any of my collage cuttings. now I have been doing this since yesterday, since a long time ago really, and I think I need to go put some clothes on. but hello and welcome to tomorrow, which is now today, and aren't the flowers and leaves and birds pretty in the morning sun? if you're a longtime or even a short-time reader, you've noticed I have a bit of a thing for words. in some ways I have more of a thing for words than I do for stories, which is not to say I don't love them both, but there's something artistic and real about words on a pure visceral level that sentences bogged down by meaning and context will never really have. when I was little, or so I'm told since I was still in the ages counted by months instead of years and I don't really remember myself, I wanted to know the words for everything. our apartment was covered with red-lettered signs labeling everything with the proper word: door; stove; crib; pantry; bathroom; shelf; sink; desk; closet; window; so on and so on. I didn't learn the alphabet so much as I learned the words they fell into, the shapes of the ascenders and descenders mirroring each other diagonally in "dog", the way "eye" was symmetrical and still a little unbalanced, the way "rolling" looked sharp even though it meant and sounded like something very round. I still like the way words look as much as I like the way they sound or feel. one of my favorite words ever is anemone. not a single wasted letter! and it is little, all the same height, and everywhere round and soft, just like real anemones. it's nearly symmetrical, sonically, but not quite, so that it's still a small surprise every time that last syllable turns wide and smiling, eee. in some ways I am always sad when I think how infrequently there is occasion to use it, but when I think about it I realize that might make it less special and perfect-feeling when it does find its way into the air. I don't know where you guys get the idea that I'm coherent. I've glued about ten different things to the floor. on the other hand, still caffeine free! yay! anyway, the title/subject is flight, but I'm sure you've noticed some creatures there that are not-so-much known for flying. the frog and lizard are from borneo, where there are lots of big trees, so they jump around and glide. that counts as flying in my book. also, there are fish. if you don't think fish can fly, you haven't watched enough fishtanks. plus there's that raffi song: the fish are swimming in the air, and the birds are flying in the sea. or is it that the birds are swimming in the air and the fish are flying in the sea? either way, there's something involving fish and airyness. and really, it's very important that the fish can fly, because I want to fly too. I've always wanted to fly; if I had a selfish genie wish that would be the first thing I would spend it on, no question. I have a hard time sitting near the top of a tree or standing on the edge of a cliff without giving in to the urge to hurl myself into space and be surrounded by nothing solid. and if fish can fly, why not me? maybe it won't be with a davincian wing-machine, but I will fly someday. collage #6: flight. I have comfort smells from every stage of my life, including this one. my sensory perception is incredibly good, so I form associations with such things quickly, and they really never wear off. during freshman year I could tell who was home on the hall with their doors open as soon as I came in from the stairwell, because I was that good at discerning people-smells. the ways my best friends smell have always made me feel very safe, and the way I can still smell them in my clothes after they hug me makes me feel loved. most of the smells I remember from childhood are food-related, like most people's are, I imagine. pretty much all our food was homegrown or homemade, though, so the smell of food was always in the air. when we baked bread, there was first the clean, cool smell of loose flour, then the yeasty, almost musty smell while it sat rising, then the warm, sweet scent of the dough baking in the oven. oh, it was so good. I do think half of what makes fresh bread so good is the smell. maybe more. during the summers we would pick wildberries for jamming and canning. my mother cut off the tops of old milk jugs for collecting them. I wore little pint-sized (literally) pitchers attached to my belt by the plastic handles, and I wandered along the edges of the blackberry bushes, depositing about one berry in my pitcher for every ten or so I put in my mouth. later the berries would be boiled into mush, a transformation I always found rather tragic, and spooned into glass canning jars to be saved for winter. that smell was so very much summer, hot and sweet and stickyfull, tinged with the cool metallic smell of the canning rings and covers, and just thinking about it brings me straight back to that kitchen where I sat at the dark wooden table under a dirty yellow strip of flypaper, watching my mother stir the big silver pot full of dark purple-black berry mush. I also like the smell of subways, but I think I am maybe alone on that one. in other news, I am not tired at all. that's kinda fun. I'm not sure what more can be said about this topic (except that I tend to not put anything on my baked potatoes, and I also tend not to eat baked potatoes in general because I'd rather eat broccoli, but sometimes if I am feeling not like myself I will eat a baked potato with lots of margarine and salt), so I'll give you a quick tour of the collage itself. that is, surprisingly enough, not me in the picture. my hair is much longer than that. the baked potato, my face, the sombrero, and the word-blocks are all from an article about ancient egypt. the potato is really sand. the rest of it is various parts of the sky and the sun. of course, that is not the real sombrero galaxy, but it's much more fun this way, isn't it? I'm not so sure about the background to this thing, but I think it has something to do with the apocalypse. I certainly can't think of anything good that would come of eating a galaxy, anyway. it had a strapping young hero who talked.... like! this! and turned his head from side to side dashingly. it had a blonde buxom heroine who got sucked in by a man-eating plant and screamed and screamed about how ohhhh, it was horrible, just horrible! and it had a dinosaur that walked upright on two legs, CLOMP CLOMP CLOMP like king kong. or rather, like a man in a rubber suit. I cracked up. looking at dinosaurs (or rather, their fossils) is a pretty big reminder of how much the world has changed, and how short human tenure has been on this planet. it's stunning just how much homo has changed, and when you stop to think about what came before us... it's like those astronomy numbers I was talking about before, almost impossible to comprehend. the dinosaurs lived how long ago? a long long time. but looking at a movie that was made only a few decades ago and seeing how thoroughly our science has been revised is even more startling. the stomping, tail-dragging dinosaurs might as well be a completely different species from the birdlike dinos from the jurassic park movies. I was at the harvard museums a few weeks ago, where there are some old fossils that are for some reason half-embedded in the walls (I asked the curator about it and she said it was the style in the seventies), and they're standing in completely the wrong positions. hence, here is a clueless human in a snazzy exploration suit examining a dino fossil, oblivious to the way things actually happened. it makes you think about how future species will see us, or even how we will see ourselves in a little while, and the knowledge we thought we had. collage #4: change. also dinosaurs. since I have done only four collages (out of eleven promised and planned), I need to get faster, yeah? yeah. that means I'm going to stop with the frivolous posts. I've never been one to write when I didn't have something to say, anyway. it's a custom-built hp. I've never had an hp before, but I figured I really like my scanner and my printer so why not go the whole way and be a one-brand computer chick? it has a 1.5 ghz p4 processor, 40 gig hard drive, 256 ram megs, a 24x (? something way faster than my old 2x cd drive, at least) dvd drive, a cd-r drive that I totally forget the speeds of, about a zillion (okay, 6) usb ports that I'm enjoying quite a bit, one of those wonky internet keyboards with a whole lot of useless stuff on it (why can't they make normal sized keyboards anymore? macs have those itty bitty things and now all the pcs come with gigantoboards with all those hotbuttons that no one uses! or at least I don't), an optical scrolling mouse that I love (my old mouse had only two buttons! and a sticky trackball), middle-of-the-line polk speakers with a subwoofer that puts my cd player to shame, and my old ffiteen inch sony trinitron monitor that has been great for the last four years and is still going strong. I would love to have a seventeen inch flatscreen monitor, but for now I'm very, very, very happy with just a new computer. oh, and a new scanner (hp 2200c to replace my 500c), which you've all met already, because I've been scanning the collages on it all night. woo! there are three things in that collage: the milky way galaxy, a dew-coated spiderweb, and jellyfish. yup, jellyfish. even the stuff on the bottom (which is actually the left-hand side, the way I see it). have you ever watched a jellyfish? at the new england aquarium there's a jelly tank right inside the front doors, so it's the first thing you see when you enter. the water is completely black, and the jellyfish themselves are all glowy-translucent, daring you to believe in their existence. and when they move it's the most amazingly graceful thing, because they just sort of ripple and undulate and somehow they're swimming. they're so delicate-looking and so ephemeral that it's hard to imagine them streaking through the ocean or devouring fish, and yet they do both of those things. spider webs sort of remind me of jellyfish. aside from the obvious aesthetic similarities, they're things that look like they should be easily broken when that's completely not true. have you ever tried to knock down a spider web? there was one night last fall when I was walking home from campus much much later than I should have been, and it was really dark out, and I passed a fresh spiderweb where a trapped lightning bug was being devoured by the spider. it was one of the most intensely disturbing and breathtaking things I've ever seen: the strands of the spidersilk glowed from the flourescence emanating from the lightning bug; the whole web trembled a little with the trapped insect's efforts to free itself; and the spider sat calmly in the middle, just being a spider. galaxies are not so much like jellyfish, but it is amazing to me that something that's mostly empty space can have so much structure and light and gravity. besides, it's astronomy! anyway. in one of her recent emails to me, mollie told me I make beautiful things. I'm not so sure; I only make things, and it takes beautiful people to make them anything more than that. plus, they sponsored me. so I have to say nice things about them. :) I thought it was just twisted, which is why I've been walking around on it and not icing it particularly diligently. but now it's turning decidedly purple and becoming more and more painful to put any weight on, so it's definitely sprained. blah. it's been a while since I had a real sprained ankle. my tendons are so messed up that I can do just about anything to them and roll right off them. they often hurt after I play rugby, but they're usually fine, structurally. the last time I had a real, limp-inducing sprained ankle was my junior year in high school. I got that one playing soccer. I got this one falling off the sidewalk this morning.
22:59
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my dentist has cool toys!
11:30
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wednesday, august 1
something like ninety-five percent of my dreams are still somehow unpleasant, which makes waking up simultaneously painful and a relief, as I find myself halfway between worlds, with safety fully in view but without a guarantee that I'll ever find my way there.
09:40
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okay, so, some stuff.
01:31
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tuesday, july 31
it would seem that the world is conspiring to contradict everything I think about it today.
20:24
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why is it that on the days I have a million things to write about I also have a million things to do? today my internal clock seems to be moving faster than the earth is willing to rotate, because I keep looking and thinking how can it be only eleven? maybe that's good because it means the dominoes in my mental to-do list are falling neatly in order, pushing each other down with cumulative momentum, but still it is only eleven and I've already eaten a fistful of licorice, which is disgusting, and I worry that my thoughts will be smeared and changed by this flurry of numbers and programs and parameters. when will I learn not to compose things that have so little chance of ever being granted the dignity of preservation?
11:12
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monday, july 30
I've gotten over my missing-day feeling, although I still have this semiconscious need to eat a good solid meal, since the last time I had one of those was saturday evening and even that was just potatoes and salad.
comments: 440 (!)
hits not including me: 1188
collages: 8
posts about or mentioning collages: 25
popsicles consumed: 9
tofutti cuties consumed: 4
sponsors: 33 :)
raised: $806 !!! and a used saxophone. wow, you guys!
14:24
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good morning.
06:59
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sunday, july 29
now it's three in the afternoon, and it's almost as if no time at all has passed even though I feel like I've been sitting here forever, because outside everything looks exactly the same as it did when I made that first post. I am, perhaps, a little softer, a little more sensitive to gravity's pull than I was twenty-four hours ago. perhaps. I feel it, and it doesn't feel so bad, now.
14:59
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I want to avoid saying "the end," but that's where we are, yes? and so: thanks to cat for the organization, to every single one of my sponsors, to my parents and next door neighbors for putting up with my ceaseless activity tonight, to my entire family for being so cute and excited about this thing, to everyone who uploaded music, especially peter and gina for the pretty guitars and julie for the hilarious reminder of what roller rink parties used to sound like, to everyone who came back and commented, especially stenny who went above and beyond the call of duty, and finally to martha for being an absolute trip all night long.
14:54
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martha, i said, tell me what to write about! and she said, write about your hair. so i am writing about my hair.
14:35
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oh, I thought of one. I wear my star earrings between thanksgiving and christmas. and that's pretty much the only time of the year that I wear any jewelry at all.
14:09
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I have rituals too, but none of them involve my shoes.
14:03
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brenda is too busy at mathcamp to actually talk about mathcamp, so I am here to tell you all about brenda at mathcamp!
13:40
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this is the last one, kids, because I sure don't want to end on number nine (too close to ten not to be ten, plus I want to actually be present for the end of the blogathon!).
13:00
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right, does anyone know how many times I've posted? cause I sure don't. I stopped making check marks next to my little schedule about thirteen hours ago, and now I can't tell if I'm behind or ahead, but it can't be on time because this is not a multiple of thirty.
12:40
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two things about whales:
12:08
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i went outside! and it was bright, so bright and ahh! right in my eyes! but if felt good, and the geraniums were red not just red and the sunflowers heralded my return to sunlight, and i ran limp-hopped around the backyard because i thought, if i can just make my feet touch the grass enough i will become part of this world again. but then it was time to post, and i came back in, and only as i turned to leave did i see that the laundry on the neighbor's second-stpru clothesline that connects to my climbing tree had changed; no more blue cotton panties or pink tank tops, but now a long worn-out yellow sleepshirt and two frayed grey towels that were probably a color once, but have forgotten what it was. now i am in, and inbetween, because my energy belongs outside but i too have forgotten, and i am incapable of physically existing in a world where things grow instead of sit and get soft and softer.
11:35
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this one's for susie:
11:03
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this is the story of cyberman.
10:28
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collage #7: all tied together.
10:05
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we are into full-fledged daytime, now; outside the grass is drenched in sunlight and the squirrels are out for a day of scrounging and romping and taunting the neighborhood cats. I feel very strange, since breakfast is absolutely the most important meal of the day to me, but I am still far too full of all the candy and fruit I was eating all night long to even think about putting more food in my stomach, as much as I would love to have it in my mouth. humans are silly like that, I guess. the sky is beautiful, beautiful and I will have to go outside at least once more before this is all over so as not to let it slip into evening without me lifting my face to drink it in properly and fully.
09:37
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in my world, it's not the next day until you take a shower. you can stay awake for as many hours as you like, and the dates and times can change, but it is still the same day until you take a shower. this is very helpful for things like final papers, when you say to yourself I am going to finish this paper today and then you work on it for thirty hours straight and by the time you're finished the sun has risen and fallen a few times at least, but you did finish it today because you never took a shower to turn it into tomorrow.
08:43
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this picture of the ring nebula looks just like all these pictures of hot springs I've been flipping through all night in old issues of natgeo. it is very disconcerting. where is the desert? where is the sky?
08:20
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several people have asked about this tonight, notably meep and lynne. and so, words.
07:47
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okay, so, I have two more collages that I am definitely going to do, but first I'm going to read and write for a little while. I want to get to some of the good topics I've been sent even though I am too uninspired to figure out how to illustrate them in pasted-together pictures. of course I'll make and send something to everyone who deserves it, but now I want to bask in the early-morning blogathon before it's over. my ankle needs to sit still and be iced for a while, too.
07:10
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martha gets the prize for being the latest person to turn in a topic and still get a collage, but she deserves it because she's been talking to me all night. ;)
07:05
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why no, daybreak didn't affect this collage at all!
06:33
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yes, the sun is up and I just polished off a bag of hapi snack mix crazy crackers, which came in an orange plastic bag with an evil-looking drawing of a cross-eyed japanese kabuki man on the front. surreality has nothing on me.
06:03
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this is tom's topic, and I haven't figured out how to make a collage for it, but I want to write about it anyway because it's a really good one. (and I'll make you something else, tom. I owe you mail for the great big sea album too.)
05:41
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I'm thinking my family didn't mean to give me a set of almanacs and a world atlas to cut up... but my charity's website is working again! yay! if you're a new sponsor and you never got to see it, or if you're curious, or whatever, go check it out!
05:01
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right. so dave is nuts, and he also has a thing for potatos. that title is the topic he sent me, verbatim.
04:26
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collage #5: "how the sombrero galaxy determines what I put on a baked potato" by rabi whitaker.
04:19
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when sheana sent me her topic, which consisted of one word, I thought: change? what would a collage about that look like? I had all these ideas about what change meant to me, in my life, especially in relation to college (which has definitely changed me) and stuff. but then, as I was downstairs finding clean clothes to wear this morning, I flipped on the tv and there was an old black and white movie on the sci fi channel.
03:35
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okay, this one's less about aesthetics and more about me being amused.
03:17
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jesus. halfway.
03:03
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the thing that's really making me crazy here is that I actually have things to say, but I can't because then I will be late and also I won't be gluing things onto paper. hey, want to meet my computer? it doesn't have a name yet, but we're quickly becoming accustomed to one another.
02:33
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best. cover. ever.
02:04
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mollie didn't get to pick her own topic, so I'm picking one for her.
01:34
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collage #3: strength and beauty in unexpected places.
01:01
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I am a big sucker for piano rock. tom is clearly inhuman. collage number three is halfway done. (look at that, I just wasted three potential filler posts right there.) my family is going to bed, which I think will drastically change the way this whole thing feels. they've been surprisingly enthusiastic about it. they went out and bought me food this afternoon, they brought me a gigantic stack of new (well, old, but you know) magazines when I started running out of interesting and relevant pictures, and they actually seem genuinely interested in this whole thing, which is unusual for them when it comes to my internet stuff. it's weird, but nice.
00:29
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so, as if there weren't enough things to keep me occupied already, I have a sprained ankle.