I really like the guy who works the snack bar at night. I'm not sure what his deal is; he seems too old to be working because he needs to so maybe he just likes it. his hair isn't quite white yet, more of a very pale orange, but there isn't much of it and he's certainly old enough to be a grandparent. he walks crooked and his arms are so skinny next to his long spotted hands. you can see the spots even through the silly plastic gloves they all wear for making sandwiches. and this guy, he seems to almost love making sandwiches. tonight I asked him for lettuce and tomato on a kaiser roll, which confused him a little because who eats just bread and vegetables? but he rummaged through the lettuce bin, tossing aside the leaves that apparently weren't good enough (though I would have used them), and he rearranged the tomatoes twice before he was happy with the way they looked. he bends over when he works, like he's admiring the unexpected coadunation of processed grain and raw vegetable flesh, like it's modern art or something. and he's always smiling with at least half of his mouth, and then with all of his face when he finishes and hands you your food. (the spiky-haired chick who works with him almost never smiles, though she's not unpleasant.) it's all a little weird but I hope I like my job that much when I have spotted hands. or even next year, if I could be so lucky.
[ 30.1.03]  ·  [ ]



I dreamed gardens full of babies, acres of dark wet soil sprouting babies so fast there was a new one every time I turned around, little spots of pink wrinkled flesh suddenly bursting out of the ground with round sharp pop! sounds like in a cartoon. but the babies weren't sprouting headfirst like cabbage patch kids, they were emerging toes up, all ten toes wriggling on the ends of their tiny fat feet. I had to grab them as soon I could see their ankles and yank them out of the ground before they choked on the dirt of the garden bed. sometimes their fingers held them in like tough roots and I had to dig around their legs with my own bare hands, scrabbling away until I could grab them full around the waist and pull until they emerged screaming and flailing, hair matted full of earth and eyes shut defiantly against the beating sunlight. sometimes I wasn't fast enough and their mouths and nostrils would be clogged, so I had to suck the dirt out of them -- they were so small and I could fit my mouth over a whole face, almost a whole head sometimes -- and I would breathe in a lungful of dirt, sharp like little knives in my chest, until we were both coughing and gasping at the air. there were so many babies and they kept coming and coming, growing out of the world like it was a womb turned inside out, their legs kicking at the sky, pop! pop! pop! so loud and everywhere. I was running, pulling them from the ground, knocking the mud off their wriggling bodies, piling them in baskets and wheelbarrows and then in small heaps on the grass. the air was full of noise, newborn babies bleating and my hard ragged breathing and that wretched neverending popping noise. god, so many babies. I had never seen so many human creatures in one place before and still they kept coming, growing like magic, like a curse. my feet and hands were filthy, my mouth was dry and my teeth were full of dirt, my arms were aching, all over I was trembling with exhaustion but the babies kept coming so I kept running, pulling, running, pulling, and it was never going to end
[ 28.1.03]  ·  [ ]



well. I did my best to wait out yesterday's worm infestation without opening a browser window, but there's only so much internet deprivation that I can take. so I've been tweaking a few things around here; most of them are too small to bother pointing out, and some still aren't finished. but here, for your... approval? is a new about page that, in keeping with tradition, doesn't match anything. it's short, so you can expect it to change at my whim. or not. hey. it's almost four o'clock on (superbowl) sunday afternoon and I've barely done any homework yet! right on schedule, baby. oy.
[ 26.1.03]  ·  [ ]



when I cry in my sleep -- which happens sometimes, though I wouldn't have thought it possible without firsthand experience -- I wake up looking like a different person. my eyelids are swollen, purple, too fat to be opened fully. my eyelashes stick together at the corners. my lips are swollen too, fuller and redder than they should be, scarlet. I suspect that objectively I look hideous, but through my bleary eyes and the five feet between my bed and the mirror on my closet I seem inexplicably exotic. my reflection is a quiet seductress, all tousled hair and blushing cheeks and kissable vulnerability. I'm tangled in my pale blue sheets with my plaid flannel pajamas bunched around my knees, and all I can do is sit there swathed in damp and twisted fabric, staring at her.
[ 23.1.03]  ·  [ ]



first wind ensemble rehearsal of the semester tonight, and for me it was the first time I'd played or even held my clarinet in several months. I am duly ashamed to admit such a thing, but it's true; my right thumb had gone soft even on the knuckle, and I had to start with a worn old reed because the new ones were too stiff for my lips. when I did finally switch to the new one it made the corners of my mouth ache -- but it was a good pain, just like when you lift a hundred pounds for the first time -- and I had to keep trilling my tongue to keep it from going numb. and it was just a rehearsal! I always wish, a little bit, that we could record snippets of our first rehearsal so that the concert audience would judge not just our final performance, but all our progress from that first sight reading. because wow, do we suck at sight reading. there are people who can't hold a pitch, people who can't stay on key, and people who can't count. (that's me, by the way. you could put me in a room full of metronomes and I still couldn't read a printed rhythm properly. I have to hear it first.) we sound like we're in high school, or maybe in the jungle. and you know? I had a really great time. I was so antsy I thought I would fall out of my chair, and nearly did a few times, but that's just my status quo. just like with my dancing discovery a year ago, I had no idea how much I missed playing until I picked up my instrument again. and it's not that I'd ever planned to give up the clarinet for good, but the allure of all that extra time spent not-rehearsing was strong. but, as it turns out, not strong enough. sometimes trying old things again is better than trying something new. don't you think?
[ 22.1.03]  ·  [ ]



we were talking about football over coffee on friday, stuffed into the back corner of a crowded café around the corner from bleecker street, and my father asked if I cared about the nfc championship game. "not really," I said, without bothering to mention that I had forgotten who the eagles were playing and that I hadn't known about donovan mcnabb's triumphant return to the field until the new york post told me. and it's true that I don't care very much -- I watch sports way too much for someone who rarely has any interest in the final scores -- but, as I told dad, "it would be nice if the eagles won." which, of course, is a semi-ridiculous thing to say. it would not be nice; it is mandatory. I was unsubtly reminded of this upon returning to philadelphia last night, first by the gigantic, bigger-than-a-house green balloon hovering outside the philadelphia zoo -- the zoo! -- decorated with a giraffe's head and the words GO EAGLES. of course. giraffes and eagles spend lots of time together, don't they? inside the train station all the trackstairs were hung with white and green balloons, and the bottom section of the board was taken up with an unmoving listing: "go eagles go. next stop san diego." on the radio, the dj told the fans to please leave the vet in one piece, because the phillies still need it. then there was the peco building, whose scrolling marquee told the eagles to "fly, all the way to the superbowl" and the rest of us to "cheer on our eagles." they aren't my eagles, because philadelphia isn't truly my city, something I'm sure I'll be thinking about plenty between now and june. but I am watching, or at least listening. (the eagles are losing at the moment.) still don't care who goes to the superbowl. what's wrong with me? it would be nice if the eagles won, wouldn't it?
[ 19.1.03]  ·  [ ]



it is cold here and I love it. maybe I've lived in pennsylvania for too long, but I can't remember the last time the waterfront temperature stayed so well below freezing for a full week straight. I had come to think of winter as a string of thirty-six degree days, soggy brown ground, and naked grey treebranches that clacked together like the bones on a skeleton puppet. but this is much better: sunlight blinding me from both above and below, reflecting off the glazed snowpiles; the river slick and shining, webbed by veiny cracks in the ice and patches where the flowing water shows through black; air so perfectly frigid that stepping outside at night makes me feel like my cheeks are being nipped by a million minuscule teeth. I walk everywhere and the cord to my headphones freezes stiff while I rub my gloved hands together to keep my fingers just barely on the tingling side of numb. on the bridges and the paths beside the river, the wind tears right through all my layers of cotton, seems like it must be blowing even through my skin to chill my muscles and turn my bones to ice.

monday was the warmest day since I've been home, twenty-eight degrees at noon but thirteen with the windchill, and I went running in the morning, in sweatpants and three layers of shirts, with my hat tied under my chin. after two miles the hat was flapping behind me, hung cape-style around my neck, and my gloves were in my pockets. half a mile later my sweatshirt was tied around my waist. and when I ran over the pedbridge I stopped at the top of its arch to strip down to my tank top, stood there next to the icicles and salt stains with my bare skin steaming, glistening a little -- there are occasional moments when I am so sure of my heart, how full it is of blood and heat, that I feel like I could reach down and rip the whole river out of the ground, or pick up a tree in each hand, like I could hold these pieces of the earth over my head like trophies because that's how alive I am -- and just watched the world sparkling under the radiant pinkness from its twin suns, me and the one in the sky.
[ 16.1.03]  ·  [ ]



I can't tell you how many times I had this conversation at the conference, because I completely lost count. but it was a lot. [spiel and ensuing questions about my research project; discussion lasts anywhere from five minutes to almost an hour.] adult astronomer person: so this is your senior thesis? me: yes. I've been working with [my professor] since I was a sophomore. aap: what are your plans after graduation? me: (cheerfully) no plans! no plans at all! aap: really, so you're not applying to graduate school? me: no, not this year. I want to go to grad school and I'm planning on doing that within a few years, but first I want to take some time off and I haven't decided what to do yet. I want to get a job but that's all I know. aap: well, I think that's great. [etc] and the stunning thing is that I've gotten this reaction from just about every adult I've talked to, even the ones who had been entertaining the delusion that I'm some sort of child-genius tearing through the astronomy world like a meteor through the atmosphere, trailing fire and dazzle for miles behind me. (reality is nothing like this, of course, but you know how people get sometimes?) the even more stunning thing is that I found myself agreeing with them, nodding and thinking to myself, yes, it is great, and everything will be okay and happy and fine. I will graduate and get a job and everything will just work out. but the real world doesn't happen that way, does it? of course I have my insecureties; I am terrified that the real reason I'm taking a year off is to put off the moment when I finally have to admit that no, I can't do this, I'm not smart or talented or driven enough to be a professional and successful scientist. I'm worried that I'll get too comfortable in the world of nine-to-five and actual weekends, and I'll end up spending the rest of my life as some sort of workforce underling, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not really part of my long-term plan, you know? so I am not one hundred percent happy-go-lucky. what I haven't done yet, at all, is start to worry that I might not be able to get a job. I'm just as employable as any kid with a liberal arts college degree in something other than economics or engineering, I know, but for some reason all the jokes about how useless we are as a population haven't found their way inside my head yet. I laugh at them, but I think but I'm not an english major and get along with my problem sets, or whatever it is that I'm doing at the time to prove how much I'm the opposite of an english major, even though that's not really the case at all. and seriously, I'll never get a job if I don't make some attempt at applying for one. right? but the next problem is that I really have no idea what I want to do next year. actually, the bigger problem is that I have a million ideas about what I want to do next year, but they all live in the same universe as pies that grow wings and oysters that wear baby bonnets. I told one of my friends, in all seriousness, that I wanted to be a street urchin in seventeenth century italy, collecting rags to be turned into paper in the underground mills. another day I wanted to paint the stripes that delineate roadside diagonal parking spaces. this morning I was thinking I would be good at naming the colors of new turtlenecks in those ridiculous catalogs that seem to asexually reproduce in the mail pile. maybe I should get an agent. a few people have suggested that I should just move somewhere and worry about getting a job later. and I could do that, right? lots of people do that! maybe they have to sleep on the floor of the port authority bus terminal for a few weeks, but sometimes that's just what it takes. I was, admittedly, scoping seattle out as a potential home, while my classmates were scoping out graduate school admissions people, and it was nice enough in spite of the bizarre jaywalking taboo. and there's always new york; new york is easy and familiar. maybe I could sell roasted peanuts on the corner of 72nd street and central park west, writing a novel in my spare time. not that I have anything to write a novel about. is this really so complicated, though?: I want to live in a city and have some sort of full-time job. I need health insurance. I refuse to own a car. and that, basically, is it. I'm completely fucking clueless, though. for all the grant-writing and w2-forming and time-sheeting I've done, I have no idea what to do about this. last semester I kept telling myself that it was okay, and I'd worry about getting a job in the spring. but now I'm a week away from the first week of my last semester as a college kid, and I still haven't figured out how to stop daydreaming and start thinking like an adult.
[ 12.1.03]  ·  [ ]



so many things to say about seattle and astronomy that of course I can't remember any of them quite right. but I will tell you that on thursday, our last evening there, we sat at the edge of the bay with steaming-hot food on our laps, and I watched as mount rainier slowly faded into the sky, white to purple to redblack, while the sun fell behind the totem poles and tugboats and finally under the horizon. it was all kind of perfect and I am still not sure how to pay the universe back for making me so lucky. did you miss me?
[ 10.1.03]  ·  [ ]



I'm going to be in seattle until friday, pretending to be because I am an astronomer. I'll bring some stories home with me.
[ 4.1.03]  ·  [ ]



2003. 2003! at swarthmore I have an '03 attached to the end of my name. my campus mail is delivered to rabi whitaker '03. it says rabi whitaker '03 on my paychecks. it's so normal-sounding now that I had almost forgotten it meant anything at all. but suddenly the '03 at the end of my name matches the '03 at the end of the year, and I'm not so thrilled about it. how can I possibly be graduating in june? this june! I whine a little bit about this sometimes. no one is entirely without sympathy, but people tell me that they're ready to be done with all this college, that I will be happy next year, and everything will be okay even after graduation. it makes me sad to hear them say so -- but won't you miss me? I always think before I can stop myself, all ego and preëmptively wistful -- but I admit, grudgingly, that they're right. still, I've been having a harder than usual time with this new year. I was walking through cambridge this afternoon, singing along with the song on the radio. an old woman emerging from the tinybubbles laundromat saw me, smiled, and said "happy near year!" I was startled, but happily so, and I incoherently wished her the same before I walked off, grinning and, for some reason, blushing. I still don't know what possessed me, but I decided I would spread the sentiment around. and what good is a pyramid scheme without a true pyramid? so the deal, I decided, was that I would wish a happy new year to the next three people I could get to make eye contact with me. first was a homeless man who hangs out near the library. "happy new year to you, too, young lady!" he said back, tipping his baseball hat. "you have beautiful dimples! mm!" I blushed more and scurried away. next there was a woman out walking her irish setter. she was probably in her early thirties, dressed like a professional, stylish haircut, had a cellphone in her pocket. I was intimidated and I sort of hoped she would ignore me. but she must have caught me admiring her dog, because she met my gaze when I looked up. "um -- happy near year," I said, marble-mouthed, and she looked momentarily puzzled, but smiled and nodded. yes. the third was too easy, really, a spiky-haired woman who otherwise seemed uncannily like my mother, wearing jeans and a large sweatshirt and earrings with strange dangling metal appendages, plus some anti-war stickers plastered down her arm. and my mother would love it if a cheerful stranger gave her happy greetings of any sort, wouldn't she? my hedgehog-headed acquaintance did too, and she giggled at me, wide-eyed and delighted. and, in spite of feeling slightly embarassed at having turned myself into the moral of some saccharine children's story, I was happy. the moral here, then, is that I am still a dork no matter how much the future keeps turning into the present.
[ 1.1.03]  ·  [ ]





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