bubblechop

09:10: Hemingway's trebuchet
So I'm in San Diego for Scripps' recruitment weekend. I'm looking at their biophysics track, and I met with some faculty doing some interesting work in the neurosciences. Next week I'll meet with the head of this quantum computing group at Berkeley. That problem sounds sexier and mathier, whereas I can more easily imagine becoming bored with the daily tedium of lab-bench molecular biology. That said, I hadn't been expecting to like Scripps so much. If it weren't such a car culture -- if I felt confident that I could somehow live in San Diego without a car, which from talking to people here I don't -- then I think I would be pretty much sold on moving out here. And I would become a surfer and say things like 'gnarly' at least biweekly. And I would build a full-scale trebuchet, like this guy.

19:53: I am in San Luis Obispo. Have you ever seen the short called "American Storage" on the first Wholphin DVD? That's all I think off when I hear the name.

"Do you want to go to San Luis Obispo with me?"
"No, definitely not."

I'm having a mostly pleasant trip and kind of passively getting some good thinking done.

11:03: Mindblowed; selection from enjoyable email spam.
"So I attempted to sign in there and when registration has been finished I was MIND-BLOWED. swag!"

Sincerely, Rainer Wolfcastle?

23:52: I went this evening to the reunion and 20th anniversary celebration of the children's theater company I was involved in as a youth. Everyone has grown up. Lars owns a bar in Queens. Many of my old friends now work with children or in theater, or both. In fact, I think that I'm much in the minority to not be involved still in the arts. To be honest, I feel a bit left out, and like maybe I've gone regrettably astray.

I was 11, I think, when I first attended the summer session of All Children's Theater. Then in the autumn I was in a production of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Not having enjoyed elementary school at all, this theater ensemble was a huge thing for me. I found a sense of community and peers; I had never had that before. Sadly, I have never felt the same way since, that I can remember. I was in this theater for eight years or so. But I had forgotten, until tonight, how very much more fulfilled I had been there.

I want to say I cannot imagine who I would be if I hadn't been involved in A.C.T., but maybe I can. Maybe I have left that part of me that was awakened there aside, and picked up where I'd left off, pacing down the well-trodden path of whatever.

This evening, this reunion, caught me at an odd moment. I don't know if I'm going to apply to graduate schools or apply to the Peace Corps or apply to medical school or what, and I don't feel very passionate about any of these options. They're floating abstractions. And then all these people who I associate with this blissful stage of my life are working with kids, doing theater, working in the arts, many in NYC. I'm jealous.

But I'm also drunk. So before discarding my application forms and getting headshots, I sleep now.

22:39: Hi, everybody!

Has anyone here ever applied for an NSF grant? I'm looking for, well, really anyone's input on essays I'm writing for my application. If anyone cares to read my personal essay, it's at the following URL: http://adkein.wordpress.com/

I will much appreciate any suggestions. I hear that these things should be a touch informal to give some personality, but I really just heard that from one guy, so I really don't know.

Peace love.

16:36: Hey guys.

23:45: Can you guess what I'm reading by the words I'm looking up?
naphtha, mullioned, scumbled, impasto, musaceous (perhaps a giveaway), blancmange, kreplach, narodnik, dacoits, glyptic, &c.

23:34: Recommended.

01:59: "...the memories and past events which make up a man's historical identity are no more than a selection. From the actual infinitude of events and experiences some have been picked out -- abstracted -- as significant, and this significance has of course been determined by conventional standards." -- Alan Watts

Maybe 'disinterest' is just a negative way of saying 'content'. Nope.
But there's some overlap.

I used to have this dream: it's dark out in the woods by my house. I'm walking to the timberline and up to a slab of rock that I used to find snakes under when I was young. Suddenly I look up and the moon gets bigger and bigger like I'm shooting towards it. Suddenly all I see is a scene in red on some scorched terrain; there's lava and/or blood and some huge regal crustacean monster screaming a war-scream. Typically, I would next dream about Mr. Smithers from The Simpsons being someone called "Dr. Freeze" who was running about making mischief with a freeze-ray gun. While the first dream in the sequence was more shocking than terrifying, the Smithers dream I found depressing. Depressing like waiting at a brightly lit gas station alone at night. Waiting because you have a flat tire and your ex-girlfriend's new lover is coming to give you a ride to your parents' house. Not that this has ever happened to me. I have to imagine that this would depress me.

I'm not usually awake at this hour.

21:34: "... When a resolve or a fine glow of feeling is allowed to evaporate without bearing practical fruit it is worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. ... Even the habit of excessive indulgence in music, for those who are neither performers themselves nor musically gifted enough to take it in a purely intellectual way, has probably a relaxing effect upon the character. One becomes filled with emotions which habitually pass without prompting to any deed, and so the inertly sentimental condition is kept up. ..." – William James on "Habit" from Psychology: a Briefer Course

17:35: If you're on my friends list, sign in to read my lj.
If you're not on my friends list, either make your case or bake me a cake or something.