Invincible Summer

I found this quote and loved it:

{In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.}
-Albert Camus

Fast Creative Logic

Tonight I watched a documentary about human intelligence on the BBC. They were trying to figure out what makes up intelligence. They began with 8 people who excelled greatly at vastly different things: a physicist, an artist, a musician, a pilot etc. They were given the traditional paper IQ test and then they were given a host of other tasks that evaluated different aspects of their intelligence. One involved a wine cork all the way inside of an empty wine bottle: how do you get it out? That type of thing.

It was interesting and I think I finally have distilled down what I think intelligence is. I think it is brain plasticity. I think it is the ability that some people have, not to get stuck in intellectual dead ends, but to try other options exhaustively. I also think that speed of plasticity is involved. How fast can you think of options? You will be closer to the solution if you are faster than someone else.

All different types of tasks can be excelled at with this trait I think. It is about fast creative logic. With this you can solve crossword puzzles and find the secrets of the universe.

Wanderlust

What is it with those people who insist on moving between cars while the subway is moving? Its like they have this itch, this urge to travel even when they are already traveling. It like the earth when it travels around the sun, it cant just travel around the sun, it has to also spin on its axis. There are a high percentage of homeless people who do this subway car roving, looking for a fresh audience for their story, or itinerant musicians. So I think there is something to this traveling bug. This unrest.

Joe and I are traveling tomorrow and I am so happy to leave the city and all that goes with it, but I always get a little sad and scared when I leave-even if its just out the door to work in the morning in fact. Like I have lost a little something or that I will miss all the dear creaks, stomps and shifts the apartment makes when I am gone. So I just dont identify with people who have wanderlust, I am the opposite, philopatric, or {home-loving} in Greek.

When I think about other parts of the world, I find it intellectually interesting but I dont have the same desire to actually go there as other people seem to. I know I will be jet lagged and the bed wont be as comfortable as my own and I wont know how to get around and I wont know how to say it the way the locals do. So I will just stay here and think about all the wonderful places out there and nod my head and say {Oh yes, I’ve heard its supposed to be beautiful there.} But we leave tomorrow.

The Daffodils are Yellow

The hiatus is over. I am back to blogging. My mind feels pensive and wondering again. I spent the last month in a daze, in a haze, I could not concentrate and was just not up to anything. But now that the time has changed and there is sun streaming in my apartment, I am back and my brain is too. Depression is an amazing transformation, and only in its absence do you realize its dreadful power to make all things turn to a grey tasteless liquid. The color has returned to everything and I know that there are interesting things out there to study, investigate and experience.

Yesterday I had a day full of classes and after class was over I went to have a drink with my colleagues. The neighborhood of my school is very close to my old office. The one I worked in for 6 years as a graphic designer. So I walked down the avenue that I had walked on almost every day for 6 years, but I was walking by the office with a group of people who could not have been more oblivious to what was around them. I pointed out the building to a friend and she noted that it looked charming, which it was-on its good days. I felt sad for a moment. I always get nostalgic for things that weren't that great, thats just how I do it.

But then I felt a wave of hopefulness and progress, one could not get more literal than actually walking by your old office and not stopping in, but just continuing on and even though I looked back, I really haven't.