The sun also rises

I want to recount for posterity the small and simple ways that today has been the best day:

1. Waking up early to a good shower, because showers are always nice.


2. The blooming of my irises.


3. A brisk walk to the doctor's office in which my umbrella was not upsought despite the wind.


4. Meeting my new doctor, who is awesome and I may have a friend crush on. My new highly pleasant and cute doctor who wore slim fitting black corduroy pants not unlike a pair I own myself with the most darling of shiny red flats, which I would be willing to add to my red shoe collection. She demonstrated her extreme competence by actually listening to what I had to say, offering home remedy alternatives to prescriptions, showing an interest in my well being, and potentially identifying the cause of my impossible plugged ears. I love her. I just love her.


5. Walking right in to take care of my follow up lab tests, with which my doctor was not stingy about ordering. I was back on the street within five minutes of discovering the location of the laboratory.


6. The blending of a successful banana-lime-orange-soymilk smoothie, which was delicious, and the whipping up of a lovely egg-leek-spinach-garlic-tomato-sundried tomato-mushroom-manchego-milk fritata, which I ate with toast, which I did not burn, while reading The Stranger.


7. The finishing of my breakfast feast in precisely the right amount of time to gather my things and read up about the Suding Lab before heading out to meet them.


8. The arrival of my cast iron cookware, to be followed later by the arrival of a lovely handmade card, not to mention emails from some of my favorite people.


9. The perfectly timed departure from my apartment, which coincided precisely with the arrival of the 1R bus I rode to the Berkeley campus.


10. The extreme friendliness of everyone in the Suding lab, not least Katharine Suding herself, who is certain that I can volunteer in her lab and that things can be arranged such that I even get something out of it.


11. The acquisition of my favorite kind of notebooks from my favorite corner office supply shop in plenty of time for the new semester.


12. The sunniness of the sky for my walk from Ridge Road, through campus, and down Telegraph.


13. The fantastical and thunderous rain and hail storm I enjoyed from the used fiction aisle at Moe's books, where I found stacks and stacks of books to read.


14. The pause of the rain timed perfectly with my walk to the bus, and the simultaneous arrival of myself and the 1R bus at the bus stop.


15. The good news that I don't need to buy a Statistics textbook after all.


16. The successful making of paneer, my first foray into cheese making, followed by the making of a delightful saag paneer, followed by the consumption of a most delicious milk chocolate truffle with marzipan from France.


17. The incredibly quick return of initial blood test results which show in no uncertain terms that my hemoglobin levels are fantastic and even my iron levels have skyrocketed sixfold from 4 to 24, suggesting that I can continue to eat wheat gluten to my heart's content, though the official celiac test has yet to come back.

In short, everything has gone just right today. I am brimming with gratitude.

Now I believe I will finish my fourth book of the year.

Adoration, inspiration

I mentioned Alphonse Mucha the other day, and was reminded that the world might be a more beautiful place if more of us were familiar with his art. The man was a god of geometry, botany, dark lines, and voluptuousness, of the magic of nature and how we are part of it.

Dams, rivers, bridges

I grant that there is a version of the truth in which the end of December saw me quite crushed, and that there was a reprise of said devastation to ring in the new year.

Similarly, I could state honestly that the heft of those circumstances tugs at various points of my physiology throughout the day.

But what I'd rather talk about is the lightness that seeps from my bones, that gives a spring to my step even now, the sense of good things to come.

It doesn't so much matter what I have lost or why. If I am to be the storyteller, I want to give my words to remember those solid things that remain. And there are so many of them.

To that end, I should like to dedicate this year to restoration and construction. To love, thankfulness, and the pursuit of happiness.

Iskandar

What good friends must I have to remember my tea from Paris and carry it back for me the long way to California in a thin glass jar. I really am touched. I should like to have a party to celebrate and share it. Tea is one of my favorite ways to surround myself with my favorite people.

I think you were right, by the way, about things turning out for the best. I am glad we can be friends now, and I don't suppose we would be close just so had you not been as determined as you are. I won't argue when you claim it as your worst trait, but I am certain it's also your best.

Thank you.

Fitting.

Belonging is an odd thing.

After so many weeks in a series of bags, it was so easy to unload my backpacking pack, my book bag, my shoulder bag and banjo case. To hang my clothes on hangers. To set the new tea kettle on the stove. To line my boots up. To return the skull to the banjulele case. To squeeze my multiplied books into the bookcase. To tuck my toothbrush into the medicine cabinet. To stack the bars and boxes of chocolate in their spot on the corner of the table. And to slip between my sheets, to melt into my own mattress under my own quilts.

After all the peculiar spaces I've fit into these weeks, it feels delicious to find places for things.

Russian on Russian

Lucky is the author who, bypassing dull and repulsive characters, sadly real though they may be, is drawn to those who personify the highest human values--the author who, out of the vast stagnant pool of humanity, selects only a few exceptional types, who has never felt the need to bring the high pitch of his lyre to a lower key, who has never condescended to gaze upon his more unfortunate brethren, and who never comes down to earth himself, being completely absorbed in lofty characters who have no contact with it. His lot is doubly enviable: among them, he feels as if he were in his own element, while his glory spreads far and wide. He has clouded people's eyes with illusion, he has flattered them by concealing all that is sordid in life, he has shown them man in all his splendor; and the crowd runs behind his triumphal chariot, acclaiming him. He is hailed as a great poet, soaring high above other geniuses of this world as an eagle soars above other high-flying birds. His name alone causes the ardent hearts of the young to quiver and fills eyes with responsive tears. ... He has no equal, he is God!

Nikolai Gogol
Dead Souls

En bref

I have returned, less ten inches of hair, to my newly recarpeted Oakland forteresse.

There is much to tell.

The Fountainhead

As often as I cursed audibly while reading it, I didn't hate all of the Fountainhead.

Ayn Rand and I can agree on the nobility of the human spirit. I do believe there is strength in our frail human hands. I know the fierce flame of invincibility Howard Roark likes to call pain that goes down only to a certain point.

I have not yet decided which of us has the greater hope for humanity - my puppeteer fingers or her steel heart - but I don't believe the lot of us are better off working against each other. I maintain a faith in engagement.

To make a man so unlike other men and to raise him up seems a cheat. To tell her believers that to be human is to deny your humanity feels a contradiction.

I may have a certain fondness for our weakness, for our softer spots. To feel your person shrunk to the size of a floating pea and to know your strength even then, that is the powerful, the fantastical shapeshifting, the pure magic of being human.

There remains the matter of compromise, of collaboration. For someone who exalts her fellow individual (those few among us), Ayn Rand has such hateful things to say about the masses between. I can understand how a brush with communism might color her political leanings, but to prescribe one truth for all of us, albeit an opposite truth, strikes me as small.

And so you have it. I may well be a Roark myself, as unwilling to budge as I am; I recognize the similarity of our methods.

And now it is 2010.

I am hoping this year might surprise me. I get the feeling it will be filled mostly with business. With tying up loose ends. And I intend to get them good and tied up: the retaking of the GRE, the securing of a minimum of three solid letters of recommendation, the finishing of all the books I've started &c. Nothing too exciting on the radar.

Secretly, though, I want this year to be great.

Were you aware of it? vol. 25: What English sounds like to foreigners

According to Adriano Celentano, an Italian singer wrote this song with gibberish to sound like English. If you've ever wondered what other people think Americans sound like, this is it.



There is talk of breaking into the night club scene with some synchronized Prisencolinensinainciusol action. I'm feeling a little jazzercise coming on.