Bergamot Blues

My plans for Norway fell through. I won't qualify for the position until this time next year.

shit.

I cleaned the living/dining room this evening. I can see the floor, and I have space to appreciate now.

I was saving a bottle of Bergamot Blue in case I ever fell in love again. I gave up and am about half way through it. I am drinking my hope, it would seem that is all there is left to do with it.

happy thoughts next time.

Norway?

I started filling out paperwork for emigrating. My sights are on Norway.

I don't think I'm running from anything. I think I'm after something. I've always been after something, but I don't know what it is, or if it exists.

I don't know 1 godsdamn word of Norwegian.
I think I'm bored.

February 24, 2011

I'm finally meeting people in major, and in the biomedical sciences. I met someone who, like me, lights up when someone mentions "astrophysics." That's a nice change. It's Getting down to the end of the quarter, to which I am looking forward to. 2 exams monday, and then 2 more 2 weeks from then, a paper on global post industrial revolution environmental history, and then I'm done for 11 days. only to keep pushing on in Organic Chemistry and Latin for the rest of the year.


good quote from today: "Don't take advice from people who hate themselves. Take a note of what they say, and then write 'OPPOSITE' ."

You have to lose your fear of the big words

I think I may be wanting to use blogger, or a blog in general to cope with not allowing myself access to facebook. Maybe if I talk about it more I can get past it. I feel as though I have a clear conscience without it. While I've abandoned many of the superficial morals I was instilled with as a youth, I think as an adult I still appreciate not being a victim or progenitor of gossip. I have from the start always seen Facebook as a means of promoting the drive for and the satisfactions accrued from gossiping. Although not all people use it that way, it is only human to pervert a means of staying connected, into a way to check on those we use to know, and feel superior or inferior, disgusted or elated with, depending on your mood. or maybe it's only me.

Sometimes, more times now than ever, I begin to wonder if I should study astronomy with a focus on astro-chemistry and planetary observation. You have to lose your fear of the big words, to be Oh K with not understanding immediately the complicated words and ideas that fall out of someone's head. The field of astrophysics is quite fascinating, humbling in its scope, and terrifyingly technical at times. But it deals with things that are far from the ability of humans to fuck up, far from being exploited for perverse means. Studying the universe, like mathematics, is one of pure observational joy. Knowing that it goes on without us, has been going on without us, and depending who's school of thought you subscribe to, will continue on for all time ( whatever time may actually be) without us humans.

Realistically, astronomy for me will remain recreational. Molecular biological systems are tangible, equally as complex as astrophysics, and full of questions and hypothesis and wonderful theories that are constantly rebuilding the way we understand the organic world we live in, our history as living beings and the potential of our future. And it pays, handsomely. One of the more important finds in Cell Biology to show up recently

Sometimes I wonder if I've replaced one religion for another. Replaced fundamentalist-bat-shit-crazy-Christianity with science and the scientific method. I'm sure many people I knew wonder that about me, or they're more concerned that I just wrote the word "bat-shit". Observing my habits, with the studying and the reading and the programs I watch, ya, that might be a safe bet. I'm more devoted to the sciences than I ever was to God (who ever he/she/it/they may be). But that's oh k with me. I don't feel guilt in what I do. I don't fear mindless retribution and blessing for things I may or may not have done, have or will not do.

I see the same beautiful world as the most devout religious person, I see the same world as when I was a mindless follower, but I see it with a fuller understanding now. I see the principles of physics and mathematics behind it. I stopped attributing my lack of understanding of the physical universe to the "awesome hand of God" and learned about what was going on when I saw a sunset, in the growth of flower, in breath drawn from a breeze, the spin of an electron around an atom and it's probability of location versus momentum in space. I stopped blaming God for my ignorance. I didn't find God when I studied the natural world, I found beauty, complexity, extreme order on the macroscale and a very surreal and unlikely subatomic world.

I'll probably devote too much time and space in the coming months trying to relate my experiences as a devoutly religious youth who turned agnostic, but that is my journey thus far in a nutshell. Maybe I should find new ways to identify myself.

maybe that's why I want to be an astronomer. I think you'll find more deists in that field than in the world of medicine and biology.

I've got the shakes!!!

It's been 24 hours since deactivating my facebook account. That's 24 hours of not knowing what the latest gossip is on people I haven't spoken to in over 5 years. It's 24 hours of not having a platform to burn bridges with. 24 hours of constant reminder that real friendships, both physically and metaphysically have to be engaged in by both parties. It's pretty sad that we consider it acceptable to let a digital poster represent ourselves and our relationship to others. it was nice at first to have a way to "reconnect" with people we used to know, but beyond those first few moments, of "hey, we used to know each other." it becomes unbearably superficial.

At least that was my experience for the most part.

Today's weather, cold with a side a wind driven cold. The kind of cold where your engine has a difficult time turning over. Cold to where you can't remember if the sun was out or not, because it didn't make a difference either way. The cold that reminds me just how warm the sands of Venice Beach were under California skies. The warm rush of air whipping through a ford mustang as it whipped around the turns of sunset blvd.

I'm dropping my third calculus class this week. I really enjoy mathematics, really, but I can't juggle it and 3 other courses that are required for my major this quarter. Combine that with a lecturer that has a terrible chinese accent smothering an inability to teach, it can get pretty miserable pretty quick. With Calculus out of the way, I can focus on O chem, latin and global environmental history, and hopefully come out with a 3.5 at the end of the quarter.

I found out that the astrophysics department meets every morning to discuss current research and debate the conclusions. I went this morning. For the first time I felt like I was sitting in a room where it was really oh k to be excited by all the little beautiful things about science and our universe. to be excited without someone calling "nerd" "geek" "dork" "nerd-alert".

sometimes I wish I was studying astrophysics, but I don't know what I'd do with it or where I'd go. It seems such a shame that we'll learn so much about the universe, but never be allowed by the public to devote the resources to exploring it.

Fire up the engine.

I quit facebook. yet posting a blog about it seems counterproductive. But i've wanted to do this for a while. I've wanted to quit facebook and maintain a short blog about my day to day as a secret artist struggling through my course work in Molecular Genetics.

maybe like a satellite beacon, someone will pick up a signal.

Any justifiable end(s)

it's been almost a month, and if I could print a receipt of my life I might be better suited to tell you all that has happened, but truth be told i haven't written much this year. And having not written has provided too many gaps where my faulty memories is true to fail. This year is the unlikely step child that no one anticipates any great success from. I feed on the negative, but after watching so many plans fall to the floor, i'd have to say I'm a little justified. Certainly there is anticipation on the onset of any new direction in life, any new adventure, but I have yet to categorize my current course in life as something lofty or adventurous.

I inadvertently researched "male depression" a few nights ago, and found it all to easy to believe everything I read. I wanted to call up a doctor to give me a few pills and make all my insufficiences disappear. But really it's a mindset, and something i have to work through. the following paragraph is what I wrote before I finished this current one, and a good example of why I seem to frustrate the hell out of myself...

I find myself performing a daily ritual where I combat the negative thoughts, where I shun the part of me that longs to be where the rock stars are, that curses myself for the practice habits that ruined my tendons, that wants to curse the world for cutting me short on something so fantastic. I think I knew from the start this would be my outcome, that I would get close enough to smell success like a perfume from a stranger on the street, but never really possess it. and now I'm dealing with the reality while I walk from my car to where I work at a fast food restaurant in the mid west.
.....................

I mean seriously? It's no wonder I hate what I haven't become, and in the process I just want to give up. But I know this isn't the end of the world, or the end of the line.

I guess I'm long overdue for high and lofty goals, impossible dreams, because those are what motivate me the most, not something I know I can accomplish. I know I can go to OSU, get a science degree, get a masters, go plunge an oil well in kansas the rest of my life and make enough money in investments to retire in 25 years, but where's the risk? where's the recklessness in that? what are the chances that it won't work out?

I can't work with that kind of stability.

Perhaps I'm at the crossroads where early adulthood collides with responsible adulthood. like saying goodbye to your toys when your 12 because your imagination suddenly changes gears.

A year ago I could not have imagined the circumstances that have brought me to where I am today. Where instability had no solution, I am forced into the solutions, but wondering if the means bring about any justifyable end. perhaps I am looking for only 1 end, and not seeing that "many possibilities" is, after all, a spectacular gift.

I still want to rock out, I play for 2 hours almost every day now and I know I'm so much more than what I'm doing right now, it's not just some lazy day dream. So i keep plugging away at it, hoping to maybe return to the music world, and that having a degree or the pursuit of it, won't sedate my passions.

It's about mindset, I can spot it a mile away with others, but to personally change my own is nearly impossible, just like trying to change someone else. perspective giving new shape and all true colors to any situation, i wish i had a dash more of the "positive" side of things.


An old friend once told me the best seasons in life are the least likely ones.