Conversations with the small one pt 3 (+mother)

regarding pretzel-training--

Connie: It’s like babysitting a baby.

Kelly: Except you can’t spray babies with water

Mama: They had advertisements saying, asian carp, so delicious!

Kelly: Asian people, so delicious!

Kelly: and then instead of giving him the normal badge, he gave him the Elly badge, which was the grape soda one!

Kelly, in a wobbly voice: it was so touching. 

on the road back from minnesota----

Kelly, singing: Gander Mountain, Gander Mountain, Gander Mountain, Gander Mountain etc

Connie: You sound like a monk intoning something.

Kelly: haha! What’s Mama?

Mama (trying to sleep in the car, mumbles sleepily): I’m an alligator. Don’t bother me.

Kelly: haha! What’s Connie?

Connie: I’m a majestic lion. Roar.

Kelly: My favorite smurf was the narrator one. 

Kelly: I EAT MY WORDS!! They taste like beef jerky. 

Connie: So I can’t schedule an eye appointment until after February this year.

Mama: Okay. Do you need more insulation?

Connie: Insulation?

Mama: Yes.

Connie: You mean contacts?

(the building people were at my house)

Kelly: …and then Connie used it

(prancing in the hallway)

Kelly: And then the mice used it.

Connie in room, to self: what the fuck? 

Kelly: But maybe it will be all high tech by then.

Kelly: Because I plan to live a millennia.

Kelly: Are newspapers recyclable?

Connie: Yes

Kelly: GOOD JOB

Kelly: Are newspapers made from recyclable paper?

Connie: Yes

Kelly: GOOD JOB

Kellyisms: 

"his name is mr texas instrument"

"I just looked it up on google maps. I’m a miracle."

"I want to eat a large smelly boot"

"Tall people are awkward. It's because they have to go, where should i put my head?"

"he was so fat he had a beard!"

Experiences in the Transparent Eyeball

I succumbed to that most pleasant of poor decisions (see: drinking three cups of black tea post-dinner. in my defense...I don't have one! I gave in to the lure of new tea! guilty. guiltea...harhar) and so it's 1:15 in the morning but i'm wired. And yarned, I guess, since I've been knitting. It's oddly meditative and feels like a monkish activity that serves the same purpose as prayer beads. Once upon a time I read an article or heard something about how someone (or some sect of someones) found divinity by pouring grains of rice from their hand, scooping them up, and repeating, over and over. Something about repetition provokes the divine or at least the transcendent, perhaps. But checkers or factory workers probably beg to differ--one man's divinity is another's dull purgatory.

Sometime tonight, maybe around now, the snowstorm is supposed to hit and we'll wake up to a world completely changed. Maybe living in the north induces some quality in the people, some belief in the impermanence of things, with each transformation of our surroundings. But since it was such a beautiful day, I went on an amble through Owen Woods. Here is some of the wealth I took away, through sight or touch:

1. A stump, hollow underneath, open on the sides, and arched from the ground like a woody cathedral (It's no Cheeseburger in Paradise but) Something small could worship there.

2. Another stump, rooted solidly and traditionally in the ground but with the inside rotten away into crumbly bark, one step from humus, so there was a hole in the stump that extended down past where it grew into the ground on the outside. Imagine a pot buried up past its base in the dirt, hollow to its base. There was ice inside.

3. I gathered some of the tall golden prairie grass that had been cut down in the fall sometime and peeled away the outer thin layer. The golden grass stalks were thin like straws, but hard and very smooth. They have joints, like bamboo, and I like breaking them into their natural segments. I collected these when I was little, from when I made nests in the prairie grass where I'd play recorder like some out of tune loon. Loony tune. 

5. A piece of tree bark, rough wood on the outside but cut sheer on the inside as if done so by a very small chainsaw. 

6. A black feather. Have you ever stroked a feather and noticed how your fingers preen the individual fibers (?) together by spreading oil from the feather or your hand? You can make different groups but the feather remains smooth and sleek. This feather had fuzzies at the bottom which I think is the down underneath. How cool would it be to molt, instead of shedding hairs. 

7. An aspen sapling, with very smooth white bark. Surrounded by brown trees, straight and alone. 

*Apparently I like smoothness.

8. The whirling chirp of a red-headed woodpecker and his frantic tree hops.

Moving away from the list...there were so many people in the park today. Many of them were older folks. I said hi to an elderly couple--the man hobbling down the slope with a cane--and another old woman who emerged from the prairie with a camera in hand. I feel like older people tend to appreciate/go out into nature more than their younger counterparts. Except for the very young (fig. Overgeneralization Chart ---->) 
Children love nature innocently and selfishly, for what it provides them in the immediate sense: immediate tools (ex: bark to make fairy houses), or fodder for grander imaginations (meltwater rivers and leaf boats). As you get older, you connect with nature in a different way; you love it for what it means, the things it stands for, the emotions it brings. I can imagine being an old man in a park walking through not just grass but memories. 

In fact, there were so many people in the park that I felt like I couldn't escape them to be in the nature. You could hear strident voices carrying: women talking about their exercise habits, a child shrieking, men saying something I didn't catch. This brings me to another thing I was thinking about, and often think about: do you experience nature best in solitude? For me, its kind of a catch-22. In nature, I feel the most of everything when I'm alone (freedom! wide open skies! human silence! beauty!) but like Pandora's Box with one thing that doesn't belong, I also feel like I want to share this cacophony of feelings with people I love, the person I love. Or people I care deeply about and whom I know would find something of worth in the experience too. But if they were there, I couldn't feel the very emotions I'd want to share. Thus, nature is lonely and reaches its full splendor alone. I think I understand Thoreau and his Walden. Or Walden and its Thoreau, if you think we belong to places as much as they belong to us. Did John Muir and Emerson wander alone too? Not that I'm comparing myself to them, merely wondering if this is a universal experience. 

The closest thing to religion for me is being outside. In fact, something interesting happened recently. I was running and my heart was beating too strongly but I was looking up at the dark purple sky and the bright round moon and I quite literally thought "I could die right now and it would be okay, if this were my last sight." Disclaimer: NOT DEPRESSED. It's morbid, I know; but it's also freeing to know there's something not attached to humans or the vagaries of human actions that can be so powerful. 
Anyway, I walked up and down the paths in Owen Woods, breathing in the damp earthy smell you often get in the spring, with all that light pouring from all that sky. Then I thought about the storm forecast for the next day and thought, oh fuck, winter and got sad momentarily. But the thing is, it will be like that again. It will be spring and there will be days when new things are growing, when the air smells damp, when the sky is clear (for some reason, I'm picturing John Nolan Dr. in my mind, along the lakeshore path there and looking out over the lake water towards Monona Terrace). That's a constant, like nothing else in life is constant. There will be beautiful days. Given. Fact. Truth. There will be beautiful days until the end of days, and that may be the most certain guarantor of happiness I know. 

I sat on a bench overlooking the upper grounds of the park for awhile and semi took a nap. It was warm. After a bit, I opened my eyes and waited for something to happen. It really felt like something would--a deer would step out of somewhere, or a turkey, or a dinosaur. But I was still shocked when it did: there was a huge flash of wings in the distance, white wings, and something that looked like an enormous owl burst up into a tree. Not an owl, since it was daytime, but maybe a particularly large cooper's hawk. Then I got up and walked away with a stupid grin on my face. 

old post: i wanna plant some nicotiana

This is an something I wrote in June but never posted.
_____________


I want to plant a garden. Or rather, I want to just get a few seeds and see if I can grow them into plants, especially flowers. I spent a fair amount of time looking through lists of common perennials and annuals, then googling images of those flowers to determine which ones were the gaudy little annoying ones sold at Shopko and Menards. I don’t like those. It turns out, however, that impatients, begonias, marigolds, petunias, and the like have their uses because few other flowers can carpet a space fully enough to give a bed-like feel. They’re rather like fat crayons used to color in blocky, large areas and capture the eye through sheer riotous number rather than delicacy or unique elegance. Elegant flowers are those like tweedia caerulea, whose name really doesn't live up to its beauty, lobelia, gentian, balloon flower. Southern star. Jasmine. Nicotiana is beautiful. There are so many and the only way I can explain how I feel when I think of them is almost like a dragon thinking about its hoard.


I also want to grow a flowering houseplant in my apartment, for when the dreary greyness of winter sets in. I’m thinking of a peace lily or another type of lily but one that preferentially has color. Edgar, my unknown plant at the apartment, is apparently a jade plant or a heartleaf rhodendendron, a plant prized for hardiness and ability to filter air. Not just for carbon dioxide but also things like benzene derivatives. So Edgar’s a pretty good plant. In sum there are three plants at my apartment: Edgar the rhodendendron, my sensitive plant, and the small basil-ing. There’s also the begonia? geranium? that I grudgingly water.


While I do greatly enjoy reaping the benefits of vegetables (i.e. picking the ripe vegetable), I think I like gardening flowers more. Because to grow a vegetable is to eventually sacrifice it to your consumption, whereas flowers can be eternally consumed with sight and yet preserved--or preserved as long as they are naturally intended to be preserved.


Which branches off into another thought-topic, naturalness, but that’s for another think.


Anyway, if you’re growing basil or lettuce or bok choy or kale or any leafy plant whose entire body (?) gets consumed, then you have to destroy something you’ve become attached to. I guess you could think of it as not destruction but rather returning energy to your body or some zen like that but in the immediate level of analysis you are tearing up what you put energy and care in to. I find that hard. Even when we grew basil last year in the garden, lots and lots of basil, I still didn’t really like breaking off the tenderest shoots and tops for cooking. And I really love basil in food. Like, really really love it.


But tomatos, cucumbers, beans, etc are a little different. At least then what you pick is separate from the entire plant. Granted, what you’re picking is the fruit of the plant and what it devoted all of its energy toward developing, as well as its hope for future reproduction. Wow, consumption of any living thing now sounds harsh to me. Too bad one can’t subsist off of non-living things. Kelly said something funny about that. Biology is the study of organic living things? That may have been it.


The thought of growing a garden is tied into growing a garden of my own though, starting from scratch and planning it out in my house. I’m very good at mentally starting projects because I love the blank slate (and blank notebooks, blank sheets of paper, etc. I guess I love possibility and newness most) but carrying through becomes difficult.


For now, I just want to get some seeds and grow something. I want to see the process unfold, of nothing but blank dirt at first, then the shoot, the cotyledons, the graceful tiny plantling, growing, youthful, mature, flowers brilliant. I want to see how easy it is to produce life and beauty.


_____


The only thing that's changed is that the basil-ing has passed on, as well as the begonia. Instead I now have a fuzzy African Violet and a battle-scarred aloe vera, poor thing. It battled gravity and lost. Also there's no winter flower yet. I have seeds!

akiojafkjawerism

this is what I am thinking about: as we build up our world views, do we fit into some philosophical box of which we aren't aware? by that i mean, if we were to step back and write down a list of examples of how we act or what we believe, could we then draw a conclusion like "oh i subscribe to the constructivist theory of learning." my instinctive response would be to say, to hell with categorizing but this begs some interesting questions.

first, on the level of the personal, it can potentially make you feel more connected to others if you realize that the ideals and principles which you have constructed from your experiences are similarly held by others. more than that, they are held by enough others that someone named an entire school of thought/theory after them. cool. you've participated in some shared aspect of the human experience. from the very personal (after all, no one experiences what you do) you have arrived at something macro-humanular.

second, it poses questions about the validity of having schools of thought or theories. is it valid to make an all-encompassing statement like "I am an Objectivist" without considering that perhaps in some aspects your approach to life could be more of a different school of thought? Here are the Top 10 Schools of Philosophy, as according to listverse, btw:

1. Solipsism - subjective reality; everyone's perception of the world is unique to them, nothing outside of your mind exists with certainty

2. Determinism - humans have free will, but you start a chain of actions and there's only one possible result from all the choices you make along the way 

3. Utilitarianism - morality of a choice is determined by how much good it can do "greatest good to the greatest number" 

4. Epicureanism - pursue pleasure = purpose of existence 

5. Positivism - you have to have evidence through the scientific method to believe things

6. Absurdism - there's no point trying to find meaning, although it may exist

7. Objectivism - abi. rage. 

8. Secular humanism - there is no god, everything is understood in human terms

9. Nihilism - life is meaningless

10. Existentialism - everyone finds their own meaning. the catch-all of philosophy. also, it's ironic because apparently existentialism is "the refusal to belong to any school of thought, the repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs...dissatisfaction with traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life" and yet it is a school of philosophy with its own body of beliefs. hypocrite, existentialism! you're the hipster kid buying $90 jeans with authentic rat holes in them! but i like you. 

anyway, now that i've probably lost the attention of all four people who maybe reading this, i can go on my rant more. does subscribing to one school of thought necessarily exclude you from being in another? it does sounds like philosophers would say that's true: certainly you can't be epicureanistic and nihilistic - because the definition of one is "the meaning of life is to pursue pleasure" and the definition of the other is "there is no meaning of life." but it's a little vague how existentialism differs from secular humanism differs from solipsism; there could be overlap among them. therefore, i feel like they aren't mutually exclusive. but that in itself could be a school of thought:


Articulated Confusion - the school of thought wherein you can belong to more than one school of thought; schools of thought are meaningless.


thus we run into the same problem as existentialism, which is a designation that rejects itself. it must be nice to be able to firmly say, I Am An Absurdist. it must be somewhat akin to saying I Am A Catholic. categorization feels so much cleaner. it is nice to say what things definitively are but at the same time my brain knows there's value in not labeling something. i'm running out of steam now, so i'll stop. it's also a beautiful cold day and if you read this, may you enjoy it.


http://listverse.com/2007/11/24/top-10-schools-of-philosophy/

Late night fuzzy thoughts that cover a wide spectrum and have little coherency

Questions: Do you write in order to figure out your thoughts and maybe find new ones that branch off the old ones? Do you write in order to find out more about yourself, subconsciously? Is it possible to subconsciously analyze yourself? Does the fact that people read your writing make you alter it, whether you realize it or not, like the quantum physics property 'observation changes things?' 

Well. Most of the time I write to figure out my thoughts, in a kind of stream of consciousness manner. The opposite of that would be writing with the purpose of conveying something to someone else. As for writing to find out about yourself, Oscar Wilde once said that art reflects the artist more than the subject matter and I agree with him. Subconsciously, which is even more telling than what is consciously revealed. That's why I think formal writing, as in writing a novel or short story, is so intensely personal that I feel uncomfortable sharing any of the stories I've ever written. And even here, knowing that people can read what I've consciously chosen to share (since this is a blog after all and everyone involved has agreed to participate in a collective consciousness around someone's experiences) changes what I say. 

It's an issue of awareness. I wrote about awareness before, in my post about virtual realities. Specifically about how even if you were immersed in one so realistic you'd have no idea it was artificial unless someone told you, once you did know it was artificial it would lose...something. I'm perhaps a little obsessed with what actually is the difference between being in the box, oblivious, existing, and knowing that you're in the box--by knowing, have you stepped outside of it? No, I don't think so. Because to step outside of the box you have to experience what is outside of it. Simply knowing you are in it does not mean you experience what is not in it. It's like having a negative and a positive control in biological experiments. Awareness is the catalyst step but you've still gotta get outside the box. Or the labyrinth, as Simon Bolivar put it (cool quote btw). Actually, a lot of my posts are grounded in the issue of awareness. Does being aware of something make it less pure? If you're aware of the effect you have on someone, does that make you manipulative, for example?

I'm aware of a lot of things that I don't mention. That often makes me feel dishonest. But maybe that's an idealistic view of relationships among people, and honesty/sharing. I've realized that most people are aware of things that they don't mention, which sometimes overlap with what you're aware of, and so both of you are aware of the same thing but neither of you mention it. So the awareness is there but the mentioning of it is not; it appears that this happens a lot. I sound like an alien observing the humans. But seriously, this baffles me in an odd way. I want to mention this shared awareness--I guess because active acknowledgement rewards my closeness receptors. Very neuroscientific. So since my perception or awareness is fallible, I wonder if I should just take other people at their word since they choose what they share. Or should I keep in mind that sometimes people don't say what they're thinking because of more complex reasons, like politeness or shyness, and ultimately would be happy to be coaxed into sharing (I remember Walter once told me he didn't feel he needed to get to know his girlfriends actively, because they'd share what they wanted to and that struck me as douchey...gut instinct although I think I have a more balanced opinion on that philosophy now). 

I think that people become closer by talking about what they believe in, regarding social things involving people and not necessarily Great Ideals like environmental socialism. I guess that could be considered a "girl thing" but I'm in the girl box! I can't get out! I've noticed how people who share things about themselves that are personal seem to connect better with others--like if you're having a conversation with someone you just met, and they mention how when they were in high school they used to idk skip seventh hour and go home, you bond better if you say something about your experience rather than ask them more about theirs. It's like trading personal "I's." That's something I don't do very well, unless the other person talks less than me. Then I sometimes have to search for things to say and fall back on I's. Although I do seem to be drawing a maybe false dichotomy between personal I statements ("I have become more optimistic since high school") and statements that reflect your philosophy ("I think people become closer by talking...").  

Ahhhhh. I've confused myself. It's very rare that I can think my way to the bottom of a belief. Right now my brain feels like spaghetti, or headphone cords, because those always get tangled up. That reminds me of this theory a good friend of mine came up with (hope he doesn't mind that I share it/perhaps butcher it), where people are like tangles of string and when you have a relationship of any sort with someone, you mix your tangle with their tangle. The significance is the tangle, wherein each person is a cacophony of thoughts, emotions, rules, beliefs. i liked that theory, it was sufficiently messy. another simile that i like, which i recently decided upon after a conversation with crystal regarding her and austin, is how a relationship (this time specifically a romantic one) is kind of like a plant you need to nurture, separate from the plant of your friendship. every couple should have these two plants and can't be missing one. that's why doing couple-y things like going to dinners/trips together/being romantic are actually really crucial too and not just contrived romance--it feeds the second plant, while you should always be feeding the friendship one in your interactions so it need not be so pointed. contact! copenhagen. copernicus. okay i'm like not actually awake right now which is probably a sign that i should do the real sleep thing. 

edjoocation

When I was younger, I loved the Little House on a Prairie series of books. I still do, actually. Kelly does as well, so our shared copies (whattup scholastic book orders from Glenn Stephens, 1998) are turning that weird yellow color of old books and sometimes come in three separate chunks because the bindings have given out. Sorry Laura. Anyway, I loved them with an unironic, utterly geeky, earnest love that somehow did not socially isolate me as an elementary schooler and let's be honest, middle schooler. Rereading them makes me happy in a way now that isn't solely a product of the books themselves, but also comes from that feeling you get from re-experiencing something you loved from your childhood. Of course, you can never recapture the exact experience from then which is a little sad, but it's also kind of cool how the feeling itself grew as you did, into whatever nuanced thing you feel now. Maybe things aren't ever really lost, they just undergo metamorphosis. 

So I was thinking about education while reading it, and what an education really means. The social construction of what an education means has definitely changed over time. Back in the 19th century, on the frontier, families sought to educate their children by sending them to tiny schoolhouses taught most likely by young, teenage girls where they learned the very basics of what we now consider an education. I think it's very interesting to think through why an education was important for these families--after all, most of the children in these schools would grow up to be homesteaders, or storekeepers, or housewives. Arguably, what they learned in school didn't necessarily give them an edge in finding a job. Yet schools were still a necessity in the towns that were just being assembled. 

Disclaimer: I'm not saying that an education isn't important or a right for people whose lives don't get fed into the specialized economy. I can see how someone could say, well that situation you've just described is just as true of the 21st century, in less developed places, and thus you're discriminating and evil and should go eat some desert mud. But in fact, I think this just proves that collectively, humans in general have an innate desire to take in knowledge beyond what is immediately practical. 

 And what is "an education" exactly anyway? It sounds like some sort of pleasant thing you get, like a very well groomed pony. In its earliest evolution, I guess that would be proper grammar (hah, that one still evades me), spelling, reading, basic math. And somehow, in the learning of these specific things, you get lifted from lower to upper class. I can see this as a remnant of the days when only people wealthy enough to afford time off subsistence living/working for someone could get schooling, and that fact in itself made education a sign of social status. It's the same principle as scarcity driving value, in an economic sort of way. But an education differs from a diamond in that it can transform itself and the receiver by adding value; it's much more than just an economic commodity, especially given how it has no physical value. Also it's kind of chilling to just think of education as a commodity.

So maybe it's more a question of what you derive from having an education. Education has emergent properties, like neurons firing to thinking and quantum physics to macro physics. From the motions of going to school, sitting through class, doing homework, something more is formed. What is that "more?' Nowadays, we identify one goal of education to be a way of thinking, see "History teaches you crucial means to analyze problems, draw connections, etc." And obviously, it brings about good things (I sometimes talk about how ignorance is bliss, but I mean it very specifically, such as withholding information from someone can keep them emotionally happy, or not knowing an iphone 914G's internet speed won't make you compare your slowass iphone25G's speed with that. Ignorance--broad lack of knowledge/curiosity about the world around you, unwillingness to open your mind or entertain you could be wrong--that's heinous).  Education today brings about job opportunities, which are in themselves opportunities to live a life of comfort in relative material prosperity, as well as (hopefully) opportunities to spend your life involved with something you find intellectually stimulating and rewarding. So it seems to me as if education has two ultimate goals: one being the translation of education into bankable /material value and one is the more amorphous personal fulfillment/way of thinking value. But I guess you can't forget a third aspect, which is the social value attached to "being educated." 

However, as the world gets increasingly educated, the first two of those ultimate goals gets diluted. It's not a bad thing, that's just how it is. More people are going to college now and as a result, the norm gets lifted and everyone becomes more qualified for the same jobs. That's why you get teachers driving taxis or PhD baristas. An education becomes less of a guarantee for bankable value. What does it mean to live in an post-education boom world? I don't know. I don't know anything really, I'm just trying to find meaning by stringing together ideas born from some momentary thought sparked by an old book.  I do believe this: as people are exposed to more and more things to learn, and expected to know more and more, we start to take all this knowing and learning for granted. I sure as hell do.

So this is what i have determined. a) I have no idea what an education actually means. b) i have no idea what it means to be an educated person. c) i take all this for granted. 

and that's somethin at least. 

not phoenix listomania

i'm gonna take a leaf out of becca's blog and make me some lists. i'd make me some liszts too but a) i'd rather bring back a different classical composer, like chopin or mendelssohn and b) i can't. 

also: people have so many experiences within them, that make them who they are in ways they don't even realize. 

things i remember about this year that were good (not really in any order)

1. kentucky; by far one of the coolest things i've ever done in my life. more than cool--i loved it almost unreasonably, and loved how real it felt. within that, driving to tennessee and listening to fleet foxes as the sun rose over the mist shrouded mountains. eating fresh food all the time. eating that pint of ice cream in the walmart parking lot with scott. that reminds me, mail christmas card to janice. 

2. spending hours at the terrace in the summertime and feeling completely content

3. corollary to 2-sunsets on lake mendota

4. extendocorollary-being on lakeshore/picnic point whenever i wanted

5. seeing all the animals on my runs esp the loons, cranes, and swans

6. going to devil's lake multiple time--howling build me up buttercup with the motley group, walking down the road. famping and crystal was there! the snarky little bitch ohhh middle school kids, me dislike. fires, food, brian scaring the shit out of everyone on the night walk

7. that one time in the summer, when jack and i got randomly invited onto the sailboat with a bunch of drunk grad students and hoofers people. drinking beer in the lake, swimming fully clothed and floating, looking up to see the stars. 

8. busking (that word got so much more use this summer)...and earning like five dollars, popcorn, and water. FUTURE JOB!!

9. going to the farmers market with scott and getting fresh veggies/fruit/baked goods

10. shadowing doctors at st. mary's and especially watching the surgery in the o.r.

classes thus far in college that have made me think 

1. am env history

2. geo 139

3. psych 

4. neurobio

5. enviro 360

6. african history

songs that stuck out in the year

1. fleet foxes: all of fleet foxes (the album) and some of helplessness blues, including helplessness blues and bitter dancer

2.  love and doubt - slow runner

3. freelance whales: all of the album weathervanes

4. everlasting light - the black keys

5.  what the water gave me - florence + the machine

6. ghosts that broke my heart - laura marling

7. the bleeding heart show - the new pornographers

8. ambling alp - yeasayer

9. sun hands- local natives

10. cough syrup - young the giant

top non-school related things that email me

1. nytimes (and then taunt me with articles)

2. recall walker 

3. the happiness project

4. positivity blog

5. kaplan (take the MCAT prep course for only $1900.78!!)

6. stonesoup

7. myhabit

8. amazon

some notebook margin dumps from this semester

1. mirek as a fish professor 

2. can't pay attention :(

3. "don't talk to each other, see if i care"

5. "if you're a tasty morsel, and i'm sure every one of you is..."

6. view of world is restricted at scale you see it

7. rarely thought of superpower: ability to make someone blocking your view transparent

8. "you know what a ferret is, right? those one foot long evil creatures."

9. "as you can tell I don't like this guy. he is full of shit"

10. "voltage gated eel"

the quotations come from tony, my british-bordering-on-lost-it neuro professor

to accomplish

1. draw more

2. make this and also these, all of them, all at once

3. go to nyc (january!!??) 

4. go wwoof again

5. get a better job 

6. live more spontaneously 

7. explore madison 

8. restaurant crawl (this has been talked about for AGES)

9. finish that damn scarf 

10. read about biochem/immunology/use PubMed more and read more papers

make more lists? meta. metabolize. i shall metabolize more. there's so much to learn and do and see! what a great place, this world