In karate we "meditate" for about a minute before and after class; I love the ceremony of it, even if I can only tolerate so much spirituality in my continuing ass-kicking education. I don't know why, but my mind blanks immediately, no matter how stressed or tired I am. I concentrate on my breathing, drawing the air in through my nose and letting it form a Broadway-belting column on its way out - the eyerollingly-named but deeply important Dragon's Breath. It is something I can do quietly at work, when I am frustrated beyond belief by another paperwork snag. It is something I can do quietly on the train, letting the day's stupidity slip away, knowing I will soon be home in the arms of my love. I am coming to new realizations every day, new little discoveries. I am "growing as a person", or regenerating, as the case may be. This time last year I was lost without my cane.

I'm reading astronaut tweets from orbit and dreaming with an urgency I thought I'd lost forever. The compass just below my sternum was knocked spinning when I got sick, and swung wildly through swaths of possible futures for over two years; but it has once again settled true, and it points into the deepest, darkest part of the forest, full of brambles and bandits and pitfalls, and I can do nothing but ready my senses and my fists and wade in swinging.

For this day, this moment, this cusp of bated breath, I am at peace with life.

When I go to sleep, my senses shut down before my consciousness finishes turning off, and as far as I can tell my brain panics and starts manufacturing its own entertainment. This is occasionally in the form of wild images of the most random sort (and once or twice in the form of putrid odors), but usually it's a montage of insane noises. Crashes, bangs, screams, voices of people I know urgently calling my name, tortured electronic feedback screeches that jerk me awake and make my actual ears twinge in sympathy. I know they're auditory hallucinations, but they sound real, and only the really loud or frightening ones wake me back up long enough to write to memory.

This has been going on for years, but it only occurred to me last night to actually try to remember what I hear and write about it on the internet, because apparently when my brain is in the equivalent of the "Windows is Shutting Down" screen, I am an idiot. Dur.

So I'm curious - do other people get this? Do you see strange pictures as you're drifting off? Do you hear sounds, smell or taste strange things, feel odd skin sensations? Is there a name for this when specifically related to sleep, or is it just lumped in with dreaming and/or hallucination?

(Now that I think about it, this could be related to the fact that I wake up with a different song stuck in my head every day. Maybe my ears are quick to shut off and slow to boot?)

Yay! Philcon in a few hours. I'm more excited than usual this time around, because I'm actually going to meet people that I haven't seen in a while (or ever) as well as the usual swim through fandom and geekery. There are also some panels I think I need to attend in various semi-official capacities, from stuff on writing SF to stuff on Philadelphia fandom. It's conning with a purpose.

( Obligatory rant on how writing is awesome. Warning: May make very little sense. )

Yurgh. Writing hangover. I feel like someone picked me up and wrung me out over a bucket to extract precious Writer Juice. When Alex came home last night, instead of a kiss, all he got was a "WRITINGGOAWAYARGH." I think nautiluspq might have come in and talked at me for a bit. Maybe there was someone else. Fuck, the first thing to go when I push the world aside is my memory. Though, as you know, Bob, that's never been much of a priority. When I finished around 1:30, Alex showed up again and I think I went to sleep.

Oh, the story? It's short. Three pages, probably, two thousand words or less. I remember vaguely what it's about, but I'm not going to look at it until I get home tonight. Maybe not until tomorrow. Some of my best and worst stuff has been written this way. It may be my ticket to Florida, or it may never amount to anything. It's sort of a toss-up. Retroactively applying experience, I know that it has to be short, that it has to be to the point, and that I'm probably going to have to rewrite and/or cut half of it before I show it to anyone. That's the craft.

But it's mine. That's life. That's my joy, my passion, my saving grace, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

[[7/1/09 - Yeah, this worked real great until the breaking point stopped moving back and I faceplanted. But great embarrassing long speech about how awesome you are, Past Me.]]

Sometimes I wonder how I managed to make it to approximate adulthood without figuring out how to talk to people. I'm perfectly fine on paper, but when put on the spot, I'm either painfully oblique or gut-wrenchingly direct. Most of the time, I like it that way - you can learn a lot about people by answering their questions in the most honest, blunt manner possible. The same goes for poking them with sticks. Pick up a stick and try it on your friend. Do they get mad? Do they produce their own stick and begin an impromptu lightsaber battle? You'll feel guilty for experimenting on human subjects, of course, but this, too, shall pass.

( But seriously, folks... )


Missed twenty minutes of karate this evening due to a long and elaborate chain of wardrobe malfunctions, beginning with the Case of the Missing Gi Belt and ending with the Incident of Why Can't I Get This Goddamn Cockroach Out of My Shoe. That'll teach ME to keep things in the closet.

[[4/19/09 - I'm still kind of bad with social niceties. A couple weeks ago I told a former cubicle neighbor he's the reason I moved to the other side of the building, because it's true. Then he wouldn't go away so I listed all the reasons I couldn't work next to him which were obviously his fault, except for the flatulence (nobody should be blamed for their medical problems).]]

Saw the esteemed Mr. Doctorow's post on boingboing and decided to pretend I have money and order Kate Wilhelm's Storyteller off Amazon. I'm going to add frostokovich's Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories, since I've wanted to read it for a while. Anyone want to pimp THE must-read book of the year which I absolutely have to add to this order or the world will end? (I already have Accelerando, and The World Before isn't out for another month.) ;P

Finished the lab report only twenty minutes after midnight and emailed it in. Not bad, considering that most of it was written starting at 4:30 this afternoon. Now I get to start a physics problem set due tomorrow (which is technically today, so I guess it's due in 11 hours or so.) If I manage to finish it before seminar, I'll be right on schedule for the warm-up problems for the other seminar on Thursday. And the reading for Short Story in the US. And the other problem set. On the plus side, we're reading Faulkner. I love Faulkner. Also, there is suddenly an exam next weekend. Cue panic.

Altogether a weekend of ups and downs, although mostly ups. I have noticed a very peculiar thing this year, which is that every time my stress level gets to a certain point, my adrenalin-majig shuts down and I enter a state of calm and clarity lasting hours on end. I'm not sure whether this is an indication that my stress-o-meter needle has rammed its way through the side of the device, so far past the red that it's now registering in colors that don't even exist, or that I am finally adapting to a high-stress lifestyle, matching the massive amounts of stress hormones with massive amounts of stress-hormone-inhibitors. I'm wondering how this exam will go - will I collapse into a puddle of goo, continuing my so-far-stellar attempt to fail every single physics test since freshman year and still graduate with a physics degree? Or will this new state allow me to function normally in the one situation which I have grown to fear above all others?

[[4/19/09 - Unsurprisingly, the answer was "puddle of goo".]]

Went to "You Can't Take It With You" on Thursday, enjoyed it muchly. The Great Lakes Shakespeare/Theatre Festival is t3h shiny.

Spent a couple of hours yesterday watching cartoons, mostly The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. I enjoy the quirky sense of humor given by many of Cartoon Network's shows, but could feel my willpower collapsing after just a few episodes. How kids can rot their brains all day with that stuff is beyond me. The duck who made fart noises was cute, and I kind of want one. Also, I have the intense urge to walk up to people I know and ask them to destroy for me in the most sickeningly cute voice. Ah, evil teddy bears.

Went to Blossom Music Center last night with the family and the Goddards, and lay on my back on the green as dusk fell, munching fried chicken and canteloupe and watching nighthawks and bats dive in and out of the spotlights. The moon was full; I went for a brief walk, but stuck close because I was supposed to be watching my little brother in the absence of the parental units, who had obtained better tickets and gone down into the pavilion to take their real seats. The night was cool, but not cold; the sky was filled with fluffy clouds which often obscured the moon, but not overcast; Beethoven was pervasive, but not too loud to drown out individual thoughts.

( So I thought. )

Also, they've figured out how to "print" carbon nanotubes. As someone who has been following the nanotube phenomenon practically since they were discovered, and joyfully greeted each new and ingenious application, I would like to say once again that I very much enjoy living in The Future.

[[4/17/09 - Heh, I may steal that things you can do/should do/matter line from myself and use it elsewhere. It's a lesson I still haven't really learned.]]

Struggling to lay out my research summary to explain to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute where their money went this summer, I began to think seriously about what sort of language goes into a scientific paper. Perhaps all the ling!nerd people are rubbing off on me...

( A lot of obscure babbling about how to write scientific papers, most of which you can skip if you insist on reading further. )

[[4/17/09 - And then Eliza graduated and never used this information because she CAN'T GET A SCIENCE JOB ARRRRRGH.]]

I'm thinking about finally caving and getting an mp3 player. Unfortunately, I know next to nothing about them.

Suggestions? Comments? I don't spend this amount of money lightly, so I want something with good capacity and good battery life which will last forever, much like the laptop I purchased two years ago. Some of the iPods sure look tempting, in spite of the price tag, but I was wondering whether anyone out there has a different brand they think I should consider. I know there was some controversy about iPods and unhappy batteries a while back. Anyone know whether Apple ever got around to addressing this? I guess I'll go do some research.

Work is not happy right now - Carl is still on vacation, and something got screwed up in the optics somewhere - we can't find the signal, no matter how much tinkering and realigning we do. It's something that Carl could probably fix in half a day, but even Richard is floundering. I'm pretty much lost. On the other hand, I'm becoming an aperture-aligning EXPERT and picking up a few principles of nonlinear optics as well. *sigh* Once again, I'm glad I'm not a thesis student - we only have about a week of research left, and hardly anything to show for it. The technical difficulties this summer have been staggering. I still have to write a summary of my work for HHMI to explain to them why it was a good idea to pay me to do this.

I overslept almost an hour this morning - whoops! However, it's lunchtime and nobody else has showed up yet. I guess the depression's gotten to them. We seem to have struck the Summer Doldrums here at Swat - all around me people are growing bored with the carefree life of summer and, get this, starting to miss the school year. Obviously the haze of distance has glossed over the sheer desperation of last spring, and even those who I thought properly jaded are now remembering their classes, friends and workload with fondness. What the hell is wrong with you people?!?

Maybe I'm just lucky. Physics research has its ups and downs, but it really is the sort of thing that I'd like to do with my life, and I'm already looking forward to a world of regular work hours and plenty of spare time on evenings and weekends. I like to work, but Swarthmore has us doing it all the time and it's simply not healthy. The only two things I miss about the schoolyear right now are D&D and SWILmeeting, and that's mostly because during the semester they are beacons of alternative sanity in an otherwise churning sea of fear and frustration. I want to have time to draw and write. I don't want to go back yet! There's still so much to do!

[[4/17/09 - I ended up going with a Creative Zen Micro, which has all of 5 Gb of storage but still works perfectly after all these years. I'm still of the old-fashioned opinion that nobody really NEEDS more than 5 gigs' worth of music at a time, unless they're going on a long trip or something.]]

( The Sense: Backstory, and a glimpse into the secret life of cats taking a dump )

I'm glad we all have our priorities straight.

[[4/17/09 - Cats! Pooping! Awesome! I can't remember why this is marked private so I'm going to make it public.]]

I have been using l33t/h4xx0r and IMspeak off and on for a couple of years now, not because my brain is a cesspool of rejected English, but because I found words like "ZOMGWTFBBQ", "4-EVARZ", and "LOL!!!!11!1!!!1on!!!1" to be absolutely hilarious. (Although the Cesspool of Rejected English can still be found far beyond the Forest of Obscure SF Trivia, which lies over the Moor of Imagination and across the Sea of Dreams.) However, I have noticed a certain tendency of late toward using such drivel in a non-ironic fashion, especially the insidious ZOMG, and whether it's the three+ days of illness, the fact that I have barely eaten anything in the last 68 hours due to a hyperactive gag reflex, or simply my Drive To Be A Better Person talking, I find that overuse has dulled their edge from "witty" to "tiresome" on the Elizameter. Therefore, I am for the moment striking all such words and phrases from my personal lexicon. However, I still believe that a certain level of profanity is required in order to remain a well-rounded person, and so readers of this journal will continue to be treated to words and phrases such as (in probable order of severity): "crap", "damn", "bitch", "screw", "shit", "fuck", "ass", "dumbfuck", "dumbass", "fuckers", "assholes", "asshats", "fuckmonkeys", "fuckmonkeynuggets", "Jesus McFuck", and "Belgium", as well as the usual florid garbage which hems in said profanity on all sides.

I have also noticed a tendency of mine to put the most important and interesting topics of my post in the middle or near the end of the entry, usually in a large block of text which half of my 2.7 readers probably skim right over. I shall endeavor to be kinder to my friends list in the future...

...But not this time. BWA HA HA HA HA! In spite of my carefully neutral post title, I do have an interesting anecdote to relate.

So, here is what happens when I bitch about a certain disturbing case of writer synergy on a Livejournal which is read by certain other writing-type folks ("Anonymous Weasels")(you know who you are): someone ferries it right over to the author in question and I get a friendly email encouraging me to write the novel however I want, and damn the torpedoes. Which is basically what I decided to do when I wrote said post nearly a month ago, but it didn't exactly have that ring of conviction about it. What the inimitable Ms. Bishop has done is take a huge load off my mind, because although some writers are incredibly defensive, she is the COOLEST PERSON EVARZ (*smack*) and will not send a ravenous pack of lawyers to eat my face unless, of course, my novel metamorphoses into a blatant rip-off sometime between now and whenever I actually finish it. Yay! She also likes anime, and illustrated the cover of the first edition of her own first novel, which lets me hope that I might someday do the same. So thank you, you awesome Anonymous Weasels out there, for reminding me that 1) The internet is a public place and I can't rely on security through obscurity forever, and 2) 99% of the authors I've met have been rather easygoing people, and so I should spend less angst on whose lawyers will get me first and more on the fact that in two years of college my vocabulary has actually shrunk. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm actually looking forward to a regular old vanilla English course this fall - if nothing else, it will give me a chance to exercise my writing brain and read fiction for credit again.

( Fast and incoherent, but it's been building for eighteen years. )

[[4/5/09 - Yeah, so I ended up taking matters into my own hands the next summer, which worked out all right, but man, did this piss me off.]]

This has not been a feel-good day, namely because ( I am tired and grumpy. )

Post on Swarthmore LJ community which illustrates everything I hate about choosing colleges, the internet, and teenagers all at once:
"HELP all Vassar and Swarthmore students and people who know anything about either school:
I'm trying to decide between Vassar and Swarthmore. I see myself leaning towards Vassar in the sense that the people there seem a lot more like me aka less nerdy and more fun. This is solely based on my experiences from visits, which I have done many of. My sister goes to swarthmore and is trying to convince me to go there but the amount of work that i hear about scares me! How much more is it at Swarthmore than Vassar? Let me know any of your reactions :)
Also, I know I'm rambling, but I got more aid from Swarthmore and I am interested in science; is it better for me to go to Swarthmore because it is a stronger science school and it is a more prestigious school? AHH I just don't know!"

My snarky but unposted comment:

I see myself leaning towards Vassar in the sense that the people there seem a lot more like me aka less nerdy and more fun.

Now, I know some Swarthmore students who would take issue with that statement.

Of course, the Swarthmore students would also insist that Swarthmore students are as a rule more intelligent and grammatical than Vassar students, and that you, my friend, will undoubtedly get the college you deserve.

and we have just begun watching the river run

P.S.-> Showed the music video of doom as a Super Secret Sneak Preview this weekend - people generally liked it, except for those who I suspect are depressive anyway. I want to tweak colors and add a credits reel before I make it available for download - perhaps next week, when I am not insane with work?

[[10/2/08 - Seriously? Uechi did teach me a few tricks to bring back into Kenpo, and I don't regret it.]]