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I don't know how common this is but sometimes I find myself doing an emotional turtle/snail/hermit crab and take perverse satisfaction out of the fact that I'm sealing myself hermetically into this little shell. It's really comfortable, and I like it in here thank you very much. Keep Out. Since this can't only be a melodramatic post about metaphorical shells I will include a picture of Costa Rica at sunset.

Which has the added benefit of kicking mopiness in the ass and reminding me that there are inherently beautiful things in the world that can't be exhausted. Someday soon I will make a post about Costa Rica but today I'm just gonna clean some more, read some more, make a to do list, and go to bed.

Totally Normal

I've been stopping to smell almost every single lilac tree I can physically approach. White ones, purple ones, pink ones, almost-blue ones. Sometimes I smell some that aren't actually lilacs, which are then either equally good smelling or really, really stinky--life's a crapshoot! Smelling all these makes me feel strangely wealthy, like I'm rich in scents. Also, how lucky we are that pollinators like smells that humans appreciate too; otherwise, maybe every flower, not just some, would smell like corpses.

These were pictures that I took when I volunteered at the Arb yesterday (was it really yesterday? seems oddly long ago). I love volunteering there, though it has been almost too beautiful to be true the past two times. I love being out under the blue sky, hot sun, and occasional red-tailed hawk. Red-tailed hawks are huge!! They are actually like the size of a small sedan. For mice. There's a pair of red-tailed hawks who have a nest in a grove of pine trees near the Native Plant Garden, which is where I work. When I was little, that pine tree grove always reminded me of Bridge to Terabitha, that part where Leslie (is that her name? Or was that his name?) pretends she is a queen of a kingdom and the pine grove is the sacred place. 

It really is kind of awe-inspiring under there. And the pine forests up north even more so.

Anyway, the first day I volunteered I scared a nest of baby rabbits whereupon one ran away and got snatched up by the hawk. WHOOSH. I almost peed myself in excitement. Actually, I was dehydrated, but I would've if I could've. It felt perfectly right for the hawk to catch that rabbit, despite my admittedly non-natural interference (I wasn't actively trying to feed the hawk, I was pulling weeds and scared them out from ten feet away). The hawk took the rabbit up to a tree, plucked out its fur and probably some skin, then took it back to its nest to feed baby hawks. Hawklings. Stephen Hawkling har har. It was so right and oddly beautiful. Then I picked up a queen bumblebee. The takeaway message was: we miss so much of what we're looking at. I hope to look up and around and down a bit more, engaging all my senses, so I don't pick up the weird buzzing clump of grass or put my hand literally two inches from a baby rabbit and startle both of us nearly equally. So I see the muskrat in the water (I did! On my walk, which I will talk about in a moment), the oriole in the tree, the bug on my bed, the person in front of me. The beauty all around.

I went on a run this afternoon but it was so lovely later in the evening that I had to get out of the apartment. I went down for a walk along the lake, which was perfectly calm and perfectly stinky at times. Walking helped and on the way back a breeze dissipated the smell somewhat. The sky looked like:
<------THAT. That that that. Birds were doing their evening chorus (I heard a robin that sounded unbelievably pretty, I always thought robins would speak in fat, British voices). Voices from people in the park having fun floated over and several fishermen were out standing enjoying the evening. I saw one catch a bluegill! Almost went over to ask him if that's what it was but then I figured he probably wanted the peace and quiet of the evening so I would respect that. It's nice to enjoy someone else's enjoyment. I saw Grandmother Muskrat, or at least one of her many iterations, which stupidly made me overjoyed and almost feel like it was a good luck omen for the rest of my life.



Which, admittedly, has some rough bits in it. It's so hard to look forward without looking back and regretting the past. I know it's not proactive and it's too late to change anything now, but applying for medical schools makes me realize how much I didn't do right through college; that's just the plain fact of it. It's hard to face the fact that you may believe yourself to have qualities you want to show to the world and bring to the world, that make the meeting better for both, but it's nearly impossible to even get introduced. So that's one thing I've been struggling with. It's so important to keep going forward. There's also the whole what's going to happen to me and Scott when the summer's over thing, a big Thing which despite my best efforts continues to sit in my mind like an obnoxious elephant taking a dump. I think is coming out to color all of our interactions, the way I see us, and everything important. Sometimes I honestly don't know anything at all. 

But the only thing to do is keep on keeping on. Which I only just recently learned were lyrics from a Bob Dylan song. Actually, that's not right. I don't intend to keep on keeping on, because applying the same exact actions to life wouldn't change anything. I intend to keep on changing...on. Changing on? Remembering things that were once important to me (my god I was the most monumental nerd on the face of this earth providing, of course, those other earths that were terraformed by SPACE WARRIORS didn't have humans, duhhhhhhh), like reading lots of books including story books. Or hardcore doodling. Or...whatever. Remembering those as well as finding new things and refining, focusing in, on other old things like why exactly I want to go into medicine and working my ass off for it. To end with neither a bang, nor a whimper, but a cliche (so maybe a whimper)--life is just too fucking short. 

Amen. 

saturday

there's this certain point of time right between being tipsy and full on drunk where i will stand in a bar and look at the people around me and see a different species, almost, engaged in their daily or nightly behavior of talking, leaning wobbly into each other, laughing into each others' faces while their eyes don't really see anything. i feel like an alien come to earth: hell-o we are he-re to -ob-serve earth-ling. don't worry, it's not a lonesome or scary or discomforting feeling at all. if anything, it's fascinating and detached. plus i'm self aware enough to realize that i've done the same exact things. there are plenty of times where i talk to people the whole night and by the end of the night remember exactly nothing of what was said, though i do remember the tunnel of focusing on their faces, their smiling words, their flirtatious movements. sometimes i want to shout "IT'S JUST A DANCE" and then we'll wake up, join hands, make a ring and clap for the performances. othertimes i'm happy enough to just keep dancing my part too.

this is another point of time, when i am between being sober and full on tipsy. when i think these strange existential thoughts that make me wonder if anyone else thinks them to or if i am, irrevocably, different from the rest in some fundamental way and will i ever find my people? there is someone who i talk to like this, but to whom i can't be like this in real life: we're both constrained by some aspect of the real world when we interact there but over the internet, we can be as revealing or as free as we choose. and i wish that we could be like that in real life but i accept that we never really will be--and maybe what would be, in reality, would be tainted in a way by the constraints of person to person interaction, all those million variables we read, adjust to, have no control over. sometimes i wonder though.

there's the memory of a green glow stick around my head, crazy epileptic white lights, a pitcher on a table, my friend's lovely glasses, a wooden table, smoke in the air, a bathroom, balloons. sometimes there's a monologue in my head that names all these discrete things while i try to take their meaningful, realistic, sum in the real world.

it is past my bedtime as can be clearly seen through these incoherent existential ramblings, which are best served cold without an internet to hear

scribble scribble

i'd like to go to a place exposed in low tide, some huge expanse of beach that disappears at high tide. that way you can see a landscape change dramatically in a natural way in a human's time.

i'd like to see the white cliffs of dover because the color white is few and far between in geologic things. geologic things bigger than a pebble or a white sand beach where the beach is flat and the grains are tiny.

bits & pieces -

cathedral pine forest

plant a tree that you'll never see? thinking down to posterity

write more

why why why why why

running in the rain with your mouth wide open

getting so tired that you'll fall asleep immediately

it's you and me madly

so many things.

reading:  http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130422-feeling-ill-swallow-a-parasite/ which is fascinating as all get go and i think i just made that phrase up. my favorite noteworthy thought in that article came from this quote "While on the plane, I decided to play a game and pretend that it’s caused by the loss of something rather than the addition of something.” i like this because it makes you realize that pretty much everything can be reframed, and once it's reframed it's no longer quite the same thing--the thought cascades it leads to are very different. 

second favorite quote being "Pig whipworm is very kosher."

today was day numero uno of trying out this washing hair with apple cider vinegar business. in the shower the smell made me confused as to whether i was showering or eating and reflexively i began to think about salad. short-term conclusion -- my hair feels softer but smells weirder. 

things i didn't do today: finish that application. BUT i made significant progress & will finish tomorrow. finish stats homework. BUT i did part of it yesterday. make bread. no BUTs for that one. not enough time. 

things i did do: get sources for my epic 12-page paper-to-be. whenever i think of not yet produced works of creativity i think of this one quotation i read somewhere once upon a time, about how some carver was so good that when he looked at a piece of wood or stone he saw the statue inside waiting to come out; yet another example of reframing, because in that case he was looking at what he needed to chip away to reveal something instead of carving something out of something else. 

biked to picnic point and walked to the very tip which they have denuded so there are only a few trees left and instead implanted a fancy amphitheater named after the illustrious ebling family. felt grateful that at least i could walk & see things & listen to music & move my fingers. 

foooood. all i want to think about is food. 

l;kjpoi

you know what a really tasty combination is? muenster cheese and figs, in the same bite. flavor overlap yummmumuumum muu muu.

i'm thinking about why my apartment's most appealing place to be isn't the spacious living room but instead the little table right in the entrance where you can hear the constant white noise whirring of the refrigerator (it drives me crazy, subtly); maybe it's because this table is right underneath a light and essentially the center of the apartment, so people naturally gravitate towards it because of physical pleasingness. that makes me wonder whether there's truth to feng shui and consequently, if there's truth to any of the other semi-mystic semi-scientific schools of thought out there.

what would i research if i could research anything?

• cancer. 'nuff said
• our guts (i kind of want to be a GI doctor...our guts are like entirely different organisms living within us!! they're (a) actually epithelial cells and therefore exterior space in a way (b) innervated by a DISTINCT NERVOUS SYSTEM, the enteric, which communicates with the CNS/PNS but is its own system (c) producers of a lot of hormones with systemic effects (d) actually quite closely tied to mental health and emotional health (d) full of microbes who live commensally with us and whose therapies we're just beginning to consider -- like a biome inside us! (e) involved in a lot of disease processes. the downsides being they're smelly and gross.
• behavioral economics
• positive psychology
• the effects of physical space on mental qualities...like why do people tend to sit next to those pillars near the terrace? what makes people group in certain ways?
• food science & food security
• when people are in a room experiencing the same phenomenon, like a movie, i want to scan everyone's brains all at once and see what's happening and if there are any emergent similarities
• how scientifically effective traditional medicine therapies are
• music and the brain
• NOT history 

i think my next food project to make is kimchi.

random thought from the film festival yesterday: sensory deprivation is a really powerful tool, bc ppl get desperate for some sensory stimulus & will eagerly latch onto and have positive emotions for any stimulus that comes along. absence is a thing too, just like how in music rests are just as important as notes--it can be an emphasis for what fills it or follows it.

the best metro ever

it's funny how one little thing can change your whole mood. but whatever, not going to dwell on that and i'm in a whole different city to be thinking about and doing other things.

i used to write in my old livejournal when i went to china on trips so here's my short spring break trip recounting. i'm in DC with my family and have been since Tuesday, with a long pleasant stop in the lovely city of Milwaukee Airport for about six hours since they cancelled our first flight in. it wasn't too bad, i read a book and looked at interesting clouds over the airport, though it did mean we had to pay an extortionist dressed up as a taxi driver to go six minutes to our hotel since we missed the complimentary shuttle ("and three extra dollars for the airport pickup, and three extra dollars for the luggage, and three extra dollars for the small person who you are travelling with!!" like an anti-oprah). the first recognizable thing i saw here in dc was the pentagon which i thought had a very militaristic and secretive air--though that may just be thinking. it's really odd to see a pentagonal building, architecture wise. it just looks like the building never ends, as you go around its faces.

anyway, we had no time to see anything that first night since we didn't get in until 11. but the second day we set out bright and early to go to (and this is where i can't remember where we went um...) the ART MUSEUM! okay i have to say how great it is that the smithsonians are all free. we were worried that the sequester might've closed them but they stayed open and they stayed free. how wonderful is that? and how appropriate? given the fact that the federal spending budget was $4 trillion last year, fuck yeah we should keep open these repositories of knowledge and history for everyone to come and freely learn from. i'll come down from the soapbox now. the art museum was beautiful in itself, architecture-wise (corinthian columns, thank you third grade greek history unit) and had so much art. i loved especially the pre-raphaelites exhibit, the sculptures, and the romantic landscape paintings. after that, we went to THE ZOO. i keep getting excited, that's why i keep capitalizing.

i love elephants. the one i saw was eating bamboo and breaking off the delicate leaves with its trunk by applying pressure with its foot on the stalk. saw clouded leopards, wolves, a bald eagle, a seal that looked  sick :(, a lion trying to fish a piece of cardboard out of its pool, a spectacled bear, and other things which i can't remember. the pandas we went to see this morning, since they were gone by the time we got there yesterday. sadly, the panda was far away so i could barely (bearly, heh) see it but it obligingly walked tantalizingly closer then far away again and i got a few pictures. i tried not to see too many things through the camera lens and not through my eyes, but i still took a lot of pictures. 

today we went to the natural history museum. my favorite part was probably, lamely, the gallery featuring the best nature photography of last year. also the geology exhibit. as the weekend draws near people have begun to flood into these touristy places and by the third hour of going through the museum i decided i never wanted to be in a room with more than fifteen people at a time ever again. time to escape. we had seafood at legal seafood restaurant, which was amazing (fried oyster! half a lobster! and my chicken wtf, fish sandwich which was the tastiest i've ever had), then returned to walk around national mall, having vowed off all museums for at least 20 hours. we walked to the jefferson memorial along the tidal basin, looked at the one cherry tree brave enough to blossom, and came back. 

this is getting long, so i'll be done soon. it is unfortunately cold in dc, probably like 40 with the windchill so it's made walking around kind of unpleasant. it's also made the cherry trees kind of not-blooming, which was one of the whole reasons why we came to dc this break. alas. other than that, it's been really tiring, full days which go by too quickly and there's still more of dc to see. for example, the white house--i was astonished that the white house sat right in the middle of the city, since for some reason i remembered it being off in a more secluded area, and my mom decided that is just uneducated of me so we are going to walk by there. will wave to obama. oh, and the title for this post was obvious because really, dc does have the best metro train system i've ever experienced (out of beijing, shanghai, chicago, nyc, san francisco bart--no germany, which i've heard is excellent). the tunnels are high, the trains are wide, it's smooth and just so wonderful. it's crazy to imagine how they made the subway systems. what a feat! 

excited for tomorrow.