sans café

Today is the fourth day. It began, by coincidence, on Holy Wednesday. I unceremoniously stopped and I already feel different. I have been tapering off as I age. Because although it was my lifesblood—and an integral part of my New Yorkey/overworked-ish identity—it is never good to overindulge. It dehydrates, it creates a buzz that ultimately gives way to a slump and to be addicted is to be weak.

I imagine that this is what it feels like to be on anti-anxiety medication. The mornings feel tranquil and promising. I am sure spring-time has something to do with it. I am sleeping better. I am drinking more water. I don’t know where this is going because I am not entirely clear why it began.

My body is rejecting coffee and I don’t even know who I am anymore. My brain no longer craves it. I am scared of what will happen to me. Will I be healthy and self-actualized and calm soon? Will I start putting up posters of kittens all over my bedroom? Will I start juicing kale? My life is virtually unrecognizable without some form of anxiety and darkness. Could it really be the coffee?

Maybe this is how most habits naturally conclude. Not with a hard lined vow, instead, they just fall away. I can already literally feel strange “happenings” slashing across my brain, maybe its portions of my brain recovering or maybe they are atrophying. I am craving sugar more, so I may have to put a stop to this, for the good of my dentition.

Although, on this lovely Saturday morning, I awoke before 7:00 and I drank a cup of earl grey instead. and I liked it.

To give you an idea of how addicted I was: read this and this #11.

a handful of words

{For surely it is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure a place, a person, a situation, in all its specificity and dimensions. To affect us and alter us, as profoundly as real people and things do.}—Jhumpa Lahiri, New York Times, “My Life’s Sentences”.

This little opinion piece in the Sunday Times by Jhumpa Lahiri, resonated with me, and reminded me of these two old posts:

1) The Sentence in the Soil

Editing your own writing is hard. When I am writing I often become attached to sentences, even if there are too many commas or too few periods.

And I have learned that good writing comes from wanting to say something, not just from wanting to write anything.

But I find that one often knows when things are not quite right yet in writing, that more adjustments have to be made, even if it is a difficult truth to face.

It is easy to think that the soil of words is tilled perfectly and you are ready to plant your seed which will grow roots in this very spot. But sometimes you have to go and get a sturdy shovel and be honest with yourself and plunge it into the ground and turn the soil over a few more times until you see the nutrient rich sentences rise to the top.

And sometimes it will turn up. The sentence to end all sentences. The one that can only exist after several failed attempts have gone, the one that splits your heart into two with its razorlike clarity and then melts the two halves with the warm hearth of humility.

The kind of sentence that when someone else reads it they will think to themselves, “Wow, that is really great I wish I had written that.” And you will know that they could not have and not only because they didnt, but because you did.

2) Slow Wri-ter.

I wrote something truly terrible today. So astoundingly bad, that I had to write about it. Because I have a thing, with words. I have a little superficial stylistic, aesthetic respect for them and their placement and sound and interaction and oh yes, meaning. I want each sentence to be a tiny whirring machine that stirs. However, this is not always possible, or necessary.

I have a student who always stays after class to catch up. She has talked to me at length about how her lecture professor goes too fast with the powerpoint slides, and she is unable to keep up. I let her see my slides and we talk about the material. The other day, I noticed that her handwriting was insanely neat. She is probably 40 and looks like she may have another job, and a child, or two, or something. I watched her painstakingly copy the information from my slides into her notebook. Each letter was perfectly spaced from the next and unbelievably rounded. Her penmanship showed the kind of meticulous detail that is abandoned shortly after you learn to write in script, on thinly lined paper, with a pen. Its the kind of conscientiousness that is just not conducive to well, writing. I wondered if this was actually her problem. But then I wondered about the connection between speed of comprehension and speed of handwriting. Is there one? I dont know, but I wondered.

Which brings me to today. I was writing an exam myself. Because I am still at the hypocrisy inducing stage of graduate school where I teach, enforce rules on others, tell them how to improve, wonder what is holding them back, think like a professor, play dress up and then turn around and screw up royally in my own classes wearing sneakers with holes in them. Its almost ridiculous and certainly humbling. I began writing my exam very neatly today, although I was very nervous, so little, uncharacteristic flourishes emerged from my freshly shaky hand. I was not writing particularly physically slow. but. I. kept. stopping. to go back and read what I had written. I did not only want to convey uninspired lists of information about these astounding creatures. I wanted to convey how much I respect and understand the concepts and words that encircle them. This, incidentally, was not possible. I left out one whole question because I ran out of time. Twenty points, gone. And I had planned on using the word gestalt in my essay somewhere, but that never happened either.

And I must admit on this blog I go back incessantly and edit and re-edit and re-re-edit. It would be too embarrassing for you to know how often I actually do that. Because its also narcissism in this case, but thats kind of a good word too.

P.S. This was also an interesting piece in today’s Times on what parts of your brain light up from reading particular words, or handfuls of words: Your Brain on Fiction.

bioluminescence: to behold and not held

{His scientific compositions had, indeed, much in common with artistic creations which do not imitate actuality but transcend it and illuminate reality} excerpt from The Great Influenza by J.M. Barry about Oswald Avery of the Rockefeller Institute.

I named this blog bioluminescence not because I know anything about the biological mechanisms of luminescence. To me, bioluminescence implied shedding light on matters biological. The truth is, I hardly ever write about biology here, so the name conjures up fireflies instead. Recently, I posted a picture of synchronous fireflies lighting miraculously in unison. My blog has gotten more hits via that picture than any word I have ever written.

I want to tell you two stories now. One about fireflies and the other about seeing the light. First the fireflies. Like millions of little girls, I collected fireflies in jars at dusk. My best friend had a sprawling back lawn that led into an enchanted deciduous woods. I still remember those dreamy blue dusks and seeing the first fly introduce the evening with its fleeting signal. “Oh, did you see that?” We were freshly excited each time. Its a cliche to call it magical, but it was. They were the only bugs we weren’t disgusted by. One night as we inspected our jar of riches, we held a few individuals on our fingertips. Then my friend realized that they pooped on her fingers. We promptly let them all go, shaking the open jar in a grossed out fury. We never collected fireflies again much after that. But I went on worshipping them for their transcendental gift. My childhood best friend, who I met when I was 3 or 4 years old, is still my dear friend. The other day she sent me a link to the image above, which was taken by Japanese photographer Tsuneaki Hiramatsu using time-lapse photography to show fields full of firefly light on hazy summer nights in Okayama Prefecture, Japan.

The other story is less lovely. I am having some problems lately with my science. Its dying. I can feel it slipping away. Its too painful to explain in more detail. You see, I will always write about the light and not about the luciferase. I don’t think I care how a firefly lights. I just want to enjoy its tiny beam for a moment. In this particular case, ignorance is truly harmless. This is not to say that I don’t love biology and understand that knowledge can enhance appreciation. It’s that I respect the practice of science enough not to litter it with my unscientific mind. My mind is somewhere else, its in the woods sitting on fallen leaves, waiting desperately for the night.

Ceci n’est pas blog post

I love that you hated it, that means it was good.

There are too many people in the world, some have to be losers.

almost glory

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the sun is in my eyes

my down coat is silly

and fabric vestibules unnecessary

the park is a mellow brown-grey

the pond is almost frozen

mallards swim at its still liquid edges

i am not suffocated by the night

or by my three scarf sandwich

the end of my nose is almost warm

and i am enjoying this month

in all of its almost glory.

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encircle

This is my painting

or maybe it’s a collage.

It was painted in September.

I think of it as a floating world.

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36" x 48"

acrylic and pages from an old botany book, on wood

click here for additional details.

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2012 you’re alright

So many good things happened today: new beginnings, opportunities out of the blue, in the rare zone of peaceful focus during my work, finally hearing back after months of waiting, laughing at a joke I made in the wee hours of the morning which I forgot and then remembered later in the day to intense merriment and...most of all, he was here when I came home and he was cooking a creative and delicious meal. He also did the dishes. The only consistent reminder that I was not in a dream was the fact that I had slight gas all day.