The road had been washed away in a recent rain, but the landscape in every direction was parched as if any rain that had fallen here had been drawn out quickly through a straw. There were several sad, weary cones that warned cars away from the unstable left side of the road, and a large, bent road sign reading "FLOODED" that lay in the gully where the water had elected to leave it for the sake of irony.

Comment! (3) | Recommend!

"Is he a good cyclist?

Well, do you mean statistically, or metamorphically?"



I'm not going to pretend that makes any sense at all. Just shows how twisted my brain is.

Comment! (2) | Recommend!

If you remember, last time we met I was very ill. I may have looked paler, and lacked my usual luster and sparkle. You could say, perhaps, that I was not as lustrous as usual. If I were a mineral, you might say that I was not adamantine. Diamonds are adamantine, to give you a reference point. I was not diamond-like. I may have been a little graphite-like, to tell you the truth. Greyish in hue and greasy to the touch. So maybe you could say I was how a diamond used to look before it was under so much pressure. Or you could say that I looked like a diamond will look in a billion years when it disintegrates. Because despite what the commercial says, diamonds don't actually last forever.

That's why you have to take things like global warming or not getting an A on your test or not getting to go out with someone or the other with a grain of salt. Because frankly, in the course of geological time, none of that stuff matters. Well, maybe global warming matters, but the fact that it's going to make sea level rise and all that nonsense, well, that's just what global warming always does, and it's done it many many times over the lifespan of the earth. So yes, it may kill us all, sure, whatever, but it's also done that to all kinds of other species that lived on the Earth, so that's not really something to get excited about. Besides, global warming is a lot more benign than global ice age, if we want to get picky about things. I, for one, am really quite relieved that it's a tropical stage we're entering and not a polar one.
But anyway, in the span of astronomical time, global warming is nothing. Right now I'm studying sources of light in the Universe that are 10 billion years old. When we talk about global warming and cooling we're talking about thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years. A blip in time. We suppose that the Universe is 15 billion years old, but we don't really know that... everything we know is from the light that comes to us. We can hypothesize as to how quickly the cosmic background radiation is cooling or how fast all the galaxies are moving from each other and work backwards, it's all fine and dandy... but... it's possible that, from the farthest reaches of the Universe, there is light that is still traveling towards us. That would mean that 15 billion years ago, all of matter wasn't contained in a single point. But we would never know that because whatever wasn't in the point is more than 15 billion light years away and maybe moving away from us and thus we don't even know it exists yet! We might not even know it exists up to the point that the human race ceases to exist and we no longer have gigantic space telescopes and there is nothing on this blue marble who thinks about anything long enough to look up, see it, and realize what it is.

Comment! (99) | Recommend!

I have finished reading such a charming book. Not that its plot was particularly charming (though intensely interesting), or that the events were so very splendid (hardship is seldom splendid, though it makes a splendid read), but the fashion in which it was narrated was elegant and striking. It makes me wish to modify the inescapable narration I internally lend to the events in my own life so that I can make the inner words, flowing by like a rushing river after the spring melting of mountain snow, linger slightly longer upon my mind in the same way that a woman whose lost love has just been mentioned in passing conversation and snatches at any pretense keep his name from slipping away.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

Things I would like to be doing besides writing my thesis:

mowing the lawn
walking slowly down a leaf-strewn lane
skipping rocks
riding in a car down Old Georgetown Road
braiding my hair
taking a shower
sleeping
oh my goodness. sleeping.
taking a bath
painting my nails
reading about Gamma Ray Bursts
going out to eat at Red Robin's
remembering what last summer was like
"hanging out" with boys Carol-Hutton-style
painting a fence
fixing my skateboard
vacuuming my carpet
drawing sun roses
watching the spiders crawl about on the porch
sitting in a patch of sunlight like a cat
watching the hummingbirds in the beautiful tree in the courtyard
listening to a lecture on spiral galaxies
lying face down on the carpet in exhaustion
squinting into the late afternoon sunlight
playing badminton
putting on lotion
filling out friendship surveys
learning to play the guitar off the internet
playing my harmonica to the rolling sea
whistling
leaning off the front of fifth deck and letting my hair get sticky with sea salt
dancing the waltz



On the other hand, I would rather write my thesis than do these things:

negotiate a taxi price in India
eat a pine cone
sit on a cactus for an hour
move to Salt Lake City
not write my thesis and fail

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

Oh, I am so sick. Such a sicky.

The stupid doctor's office won't take me til tomorrow morning. I don't know if I can wait that long. I'll probably have Scarlet Fever by then. Stupid doctor. Nobody wants to be around me because nobody can afford to be sick. I bet I caught it from that dumb girl in dance class that I had to dance with. Who comes to dance class when you are sick, right? That's just not considerate. Well, I probably had whatever I had before that.

I'm supposed to write the beginning of my thesis and observe all night tonight. I don't think that's going to happen. My prof was like, "don't observe" and that's great, sure, happy, but that means I have to observe all night on Saturday. :(

On the plus side, we're writing a paper about Gamma Ray Bursts and we're going to try and publish it and MY name is going to be on it!

When I come to speak at some lecture hall someday they're going to be like, "Dr. Zanzibar, PhD Geology, Astronomy and Engineering, published in 7 seven fields of scholarly inquiry." Co-authored a seminal work in the field of gamma ray burst detection and analysis during the gamma ray burst heyday of aught'5. haha, not really. Hopefully I can get a copy of the paper and then I can give it to people to read and they'll be like, "what??" because reading this paper will be like trying to read a paper written in !Xhosa for most people. My prof said I should go get some sleep. Then he said I should probably read the first version of this other paper we are writing and that should help me fall right asleep. haha.

I feel bad because I'm missing his class to fly out on Wednesday and I totally forgot so Seth was like, "you're leaving at lunch, so you're going to miss class, huhn?" and I said, "Oh, no, I'm not going to miss class, I'm flying out right after structure" and then they both reminded me that Astro is after lunch... so I'm going to be missing the class of the professor I was sitting there and talking to... he was like, "Yeah, MY class, don't you remember it?"

oh well. He's a swell guy. He won't hate me too much.

Man, I really wish this thesis section were written. The only way that's going to happen is... you guessed it! I have to write it!

Comment! (3) | Recommend!

Oh, to sleep with dreams so sweet
Muse of Night, wing my feet
Too long in shadow, a dreaming dearth
Firmly planted upon the Earth
From this reality I beg me untie
To ferocious freedom by lullaby

Comment! (3) | Recommend!

Minutes turn into hours and hours into days and days... they become weeks, until you're more than 9 weeks into the semester and you look back on what has come before and you ask yourself, "where has all the time gone?" "What have I been doing for the past 9 weeks?"

Nine weeks is a long time. Nine weeks makes my soul weak. It makes my need-a-nap meter spring into dangerous overload zone. I need more time. I just used up an entire semester's print quota in 10 minutes. Nine weeks sends my lungs, heart, and various other innards into panic mode. Thanksgiving isn't that far away. But to think of all the things I must complete by that date... a little bit of me dies every time I stop to think on it.

Soon there won't be any of me left to die anymore.

Comment! (1) | Recommend!