* written based on a short line by a friend long ago: “I closed my eyes and drank death” *
thirst
symphonic wind
i closed my
ey es)
and drank death,
lips
pressed against the enchanted rim
of obsidian luxury!
fingers thrashed:
swallow * violently, passionately
a moment’s infernal rage
ey es( open
– everything ! –
fleeting twinkle,
and then the ground,
hardened,
tongue —- …
collapsing
aftertaste
So, chamber music concert was last night. I had a splendid time, and I shall write more later (in a post that will summarize my music experience this semester, which has been astounding – I’m not regretting at all my decision to take a music double-major).
In any case, I need to organize the rest of the day, so here’s how it’s looking:
5:30am-7:30: wake up, morning routine, study 7.06 (for fun – it’s relaxing to study :-P)
7:30-11: practice violin for orchestra jury
11-11:10: aforementioned orchestra jury * return to room. exchange violin for viola.
11:30-12:30pm: practice viola for 21M.500
12:30-2: elections & lunch for ATS
2-3: lab party for 20.309
3:30-4: rehearse with Serenus
4:30-5:30: 21M.500 performances
And then I’m free! Holy cow.
“Exam 3 has been graded. Solution are posted online via OWW. The class grade distribution was ~95±5. Most folks got stuck on a few small points (please see the two notes in the solutions).
You are now able to retrieve your exams from Sonia or Lawrence at the cubicle farm in Parsons Lab. As added incentive for retrieving your exams, and as a frosty way to take a reading break, each graded exam comes back with a $10 gift card to Toscanini’s. Let me recommend the ginger snap molasses if it’s available.”
Ha, I bet you’re all envious now :-P
Take a look at this graph.
What does it mean to you?
If you’re in 7.06 (cell biology) right now, perhaps you will recognize this as the pattern of population growth of mammalian cells in culture: they expand and grow, but after awhile, they reach senescence. And then crisis occurs, and a lot of cell death occurs since the cells have sustained accumulated damage. A few rare cells, however, will not die and instead gain the ability to divide indefinitely due to activation of telomerase and perhaps other factors.
But long before humankind knew anything of cells, it already painted a portrait of this graph. It all begins with Ymir, the ice giant carved by fire, and the gigantic cow that fed him. And from Ymir arose the rest of the giants (this will be discussed more later); from the cow’s licking came forth the Aesir. And the story continues on, the populations of the Aesir and Vanir (gods) and giants and humans fluorishing. At some point towards the present, of course, the fluorishing slows down (inferred from the fact that gods were not born in present day, and observing the saturation of populations.
All along, the gods know about something dreadful: that one day, an inevitable war will break out after three winters arrive in a row with no summers in between. This event, called “Ragnarok,” is an amoral battle between the gods and giants, in which the worlds (there are nine) burn and all but a handful of gods survive. And only two humans emerge, Lif and Lifthrasir. In a world without suffering and peaceful coexistence, the gods and humans fluorish once again forever.
Isn’t the graph of the populations of Asgard and Midgard and all the other worlds taken together just like that? When I saw the graph on the board yesterday, I could only feel this divine welling in my heart. I knew about it already, and yet I couldn’t help but be moved by the painful beauty of what I saw.
As a side note, there are some interesting implications of the parallel. Lif and Lifthransir survive Ragnarok by drinking dew – this is not a normal human capability; they probably possess some sort of anomalous power. And thus the offspring that become the whole of the human race would share these anomalies. This predicts a common problem with immortalized cell lines: their homogeneous phenotypic quirks that result from the massive population bottleneck. It’s not just telomerase that sets cell lines apart from their original cultures.
But now let’s return to Ymir, the bizarre giant. Although there is discrepancy as to exactly what he does and how he does it, there is agreement that generally he just sits there, drinking milk from the very large cow (possibly with four mouths) and procreates. But this procreation is bizarre. His armpit sweat produces a man and woman (presumably Frost giants) .. and then his feet mate with each other to create a six-headed Rime Giant. (I’m not pulling this out of my ass – somebody else centuries ago beat me to it http://odin.dep.no/odin/engelsk/norway/history/032005-990465/). Other accounts have Ymir continually procreating as a hermaphrodite, in order to produce the various races of giants.
Genetic common sense says that children will look kind of like you. And so one laughs at the ridiculousness of having a six-headed offspring arise from a one-headed parent.
But it is generally accepted today that stem cells behave in this manner: they produce daughter cells that differentiate down various paths: neurons, the smooth muscle, the bone – all these completely different types of cells can arise from mesenchymal stem cells. And the division is asymmetric: the original parent cell is left unchanged, just like Ymir.
It takes a good deal of imagination to escape common sense and enter the world of cell biology.
For those unfamiliar with Norse mythology, which is sadly not taught alongside Greek and Roman mythology for whatever reason, Wikipedia isn’t a bad starting place (I used it as a refresher for this entry), but it’s generally quite lacking in details. This site provides one-line descriptions of everything: http://www.akasha.demon.co.uk/norse.htm. Unfortunately, the site I read long ago no longer has working links. It’s worth reading, if only because Norse mythology seems to be defining proof that humans have been getting high since the early days – it’s just that messed up, especially the creation story. My feeling is that Christians such as J.R.R. Tolkien were able to incorporate Norse mythology into their stories without feeling much internal conflict just because it’s just so ridiculous that no one could ever possibly believe it. But that’s a discussion for another day.
I had a beautifully-rendered dream when I napped, probably because I was hovering between being awake and being asleep, to the degree that I couldn’t control the dream but I could still store it as though I were actually experiencing it.
The simplest form of the story is that my family decided to go on vacation. The opening scenes are unfortunately a bit hazy for me, but we were just deciding where to go. Oh, one thing to note is that this was not my normal family – by “my family” I just meant that all the surrounding characters were blood-related to me. I think I had two elder sisters who were very tall and beautiful. I don’t think I was fully cognizant of who I was, but I think I was the youngest (and shortest, and least beautiful) daughter. I think that mom and dad seemed to be of European origin, perhaps with some gypsy or Spanish blood or something in there. But all three of us daughters had dark blonde/light brown hair.
Anyway, so the dream started out slow, in some pretty drab places (our house in the dream, not my real house .. ugh, the rug was kind of nasty-looking. Well, who knows what house I’m thinking of right now). But it really became amazing when we got onto the submarine. I think the original plan was to travel from point A to point B via submarine. So we started descending – it was kind of like an underwater subway, actually, and I definitely felt odd sensations of simulated pressure and dropping height (like on a rollercoaster) that honestly I probably wouldn’t have felt on a real submarine. But this was no ordinary submarine.
It went down and down (not vertically – like I said, it was like a subway). There were signs marking the depth. But all of a sudden we were outside the submarine. I have no idea why. I think I probably peered too far out the window (there were wide window panes on all sides – the submarine was transparent everywhere except the ceiling and floor) .. peering too far out causes anomalies in object boundaries in the brain, since the “camera” can exceed physical limitations.
So anyway, I ended up outside, except I realized that I could take out my mouth-plug thing because we were in fact in a large region of air under the sea. The ceiling-water was very beautifully rendered – I have never seen such crystal-clear, shimmering water ripples so breathtaking in my life. It was as though the floor itself were shining and illuminating the watery sky. The ground level itself consisted of large park-like units, and lots of people walking around. Because of the arcade-like linear orientation of the world (along the axis of the submarine’s descent path), we simply walked straight forward. My brain seemed to have rendered far ahead and behind, but the sides were faded out at a distance of about 1/4 mile (instead, I could probably see 1/2 mile ahead of me). The region was indeed very large, but easy to track because of the high level of regularity in the system. I did not notice any corruption of the data (eg, object replacement).
We eventually reached a slope on the far end and started ascending again. I had to put back in my mouth-blocker. The rise through the water regions took about 2 seconds because I decided it was boring (and arduous) and not worth experiencing. So I just warped to a timepoint later on when I was on the ground again. We walked along a beach and entered an empty house. This happens a lot in my dreams.
I was kind of sad because I was tracking wet sand all over the place. This was another amazing moment – seeing the distribution of sand-prints with wet (dark) and powdery (light) regions on the floor tiles in the kitchen of this empty house, looking down at my legs that were clearly not mine (they were very smooth-skinned. My feet were decidedly smaller, although still wide). The architectural style of the first floor of the house was similar to my grandparents’ beach house, but definitely not exactly the same. For one, there was a cool roof pattern involving lots of branches.
Anyway, yeah, I wanted to continue the dream but I decided that ~1:30 was a good waking-up time since I had a lab report to finish. Hrm, lots of bikinis (which is unusual .. because I find them kind of boring, actually) … perhaps inspired by the random pair of panties that appeared on the bathroom counter for a day and then vanished? Who knows. Sometimes, real life is more bizarre than dreams.
I have known for some time that certain melodies can be played forward and backward with each being a viable melody. But only the genius of Pixel Comic revealed to me that in fact, certain dialogues may be read forward and backward with equal validity, but such different effect.
I refer you to this:
http://www.pixelcomic.net/257.shtml
And this opens a whole set of interesting prospects ..
http://www.pixelcomic.net/232.shtml
I really miss cooking, and I think that IAP, what with its 9-5 schedule and distinct lack of homework, might be the ideal opportunity to make up for lost time with my dear kitchen. Here’s a tentative and short list of a few of the things I want to try:
1. There was this great cauliflower-tomato-potato dish I had at an Indian restaurant, and I want to try making something similar. The sauce was somewhat soupy and may have contained stuff like red curry (not Thai red curry .. Indian red curry) and yogurt, although I’m not 100% sure.
2. I want to make lasagna from scratch! I want to go for the more white-sauce type rather than the red-sauce type. I might try adding things such as Chinese celery, spinach, carrots, shreds of baby corn – along with the requisite ground beef and ricotta cheese, of course. I think Alfredo sauce with some wine mixed in (but cooked of course) would be a nice thing to drape on top. Yes, I know this sounds very odd. ^^
3. Cucumber soup: my parents make this great soup with large rings of cucumber (full diameter, about 1 1/2″ tall) stuffed with ground pork + veggies made into a sort of meatball.
4. On a similar note, luobuo + sparerib soup. I’ve always had a close affinity for luobuo, maybe because of our shared names (sort of). But then again, why don’t I have as close an affinity for pineapple (buoluo)? Probably because pineapple is so incisive to the palate.
5. And on another similar note, boiled chicken soup with those dried orange-red things (not sure what they are .. some sort of fruit?). Maybe with flat noodles in there .. we’ll see. Depends on how I feel ^^. This is the superior form of chicken noodle soup. So many good Chinese soups to make!
6. I’m gonna buy myself a big knife and a big meat tenderizing mallet! I want to make tonkatsu (Japanese fried pork patties) …….. at least the layer of oil doesn’t have to be quite as deep as, say, for tempura.
7. I’m sure I’ll be making this with ATS, but … tsongyoubing are like my favoritest unhealthy snack ever! But no one here makes them quite right! They should be really really really thin and light and flaky .. how come they’re all so thick here? It puzzles me.
8. I have GOT to make some salmon fried rice redux .. maybe pineapple salmon fried rice redux! Pineapple salmon is soooo good. Or I could make salmon fillets with pico de gallo-based sauce .. and pineapple. Pineapple is key. So maybe I do have an affinity for pineapple after all!
Of course anyone who wants to join me in cooking and/or as a taste tester is more than welcome to do so! Yes, no penalty for eating only :-P. It’s my pleasure to cook. But of course, this is all experimental, so no guarantees on leaving with a happy stomach, haha.
I usually very meticulously plan my schedule so that it’s packed but flexible. Now I’m left sitting here, trying to figure out what went wrong. One little mistake led to a cascade of disasters .. well, you can be the judge on what constitutes a disaster .. I wasn’t prepared for my lesson (the teacher said I “sounded pretty good for no practice”) .. I got sleepy during my MITSO concert .. I had to ask for an extension on my paper (which I’ve NEVER had to do before, except for UROP papers) .. I had to postpone my meeting with my lab partner and might have to again .. and then I had to leave after cleaning up for only 45 minutes after TAI.101 – which by the way was so awesome that I think it deserves an entry of its own. One thing just crashes into the next, and I’m really deeply disappointed in myself for letting this happen.
All because I couldn’t finish my term paper on time. Which is STILL not done. Five lousy pages. I’ve spent like 6 or 7 hours on it. A few years ago, I could write 8 pages an hour. Even last year, I remember writing all my 8 to 15 page papers in one sitting. What the FUCK is wrong with me? Am I so incompetent now that I can’t keep an organized schedule anymore? Do I have to let everyone down? I really hate bailing out on people, leaving before the job is done. And that’s what I just did. I know that some of them are going to be there cleaning and making trips to Walker til midnight or later. They have every right to be really pissed off at me. The only thing to my credit is that I was there promptly at 1 to move stuff into Lobdell and carry the stands from Walker. But even then, cleaning up is 10x harder than setting up. Whatever, I need to get back to work. Ugh, I digust myself.
… and yet all I can remember is how warm and gentle you were.
I believe in you! So please do your best ^^. And you know, even if you sleep all the way through .. I’d be honored to be the accompaniment to your dreams. (Not sure the Shostakovich will be very heartwarming, though ;) ).
I’m really at my limit. There are just too many things to worry about. I feel like I’m about to collapse completely and have a breakdown. Well, I don’t have much to say. Part of me is already shutting down.
I have to stay rational. Keep things in order. Checklist. Deep breath. Btw, note to everyone: never tell me to chill (I guarantee it’ll make me yell).
okay. in order now. 1) Term Paper. 2) Practice for orchestra. 3) Practice for lesson. 4) Orchestra. 5) Cook/bake for study break. 6) Study break. 7) Finish term paper. 8) Produce slides for UROP presentation. 9) Sketch out animation plan for base repair. – rest – FRI: 10) Buy food for lab meeting. 11) Present UROP project. 12) Go to recitation. 13) Go to Peter So’s lab to do multiphoton microscopy. 14) Practice for lesson. 15) Change into tux. 16) Violin Lesson. 17) Dress rehearsal for concert. 18) Concert. 19) Start analyzing data for lab report. -rest- SAT: 20) Meet for lab report. 21) Set up for TAI.101 (3-5). 22) TAI.101 (5-8). 23) Drop by Chorollaries concert if possible. 24) Study and be on call for Red Cross. – rest – SUN: 25) Rehearse for chamber music concert. 26) Finish lab report – due Monday. 27) Study.