Ringo, Ulysses, and Harry

I realized that I have spent an entire semester being very dedicated to the cause of the Writing Fellows without once blogging about them. I love being a Writing Fellow - it's fun, informative, and worthwhile. In Writing Fellows, we are assigned to a cohort, and then our cohort is assigned to a specific class to help those students with two writing assignments. My cohort worked with Matt Ancell's Humanities 202 class. What a blast. Each cohort is led by a fearless Senior Fellow. Mine was the ever-glorious Sarah Waggoner, fellow fellow and BYU economics student. Every email she sent renamed the members of our cohort to match some historical of fictional group. Once she was Harry, and we were Ron and Hermione. Once she was Ulysses, and we were Abraham and Robert. Once she was John, and we were Paul and Ringo. We all pulled all-nighters every time we handed back papers in order to get our response letters written, Senior Fellow included. What companionship! What camaraderie! She really watched out for us. And now the end of the semester has come, and with it the end of our cohort. Sarah, being the Senior Fellow that she is, wrote each of us a note and put it in our box to bid us each a fond farewell. As part of her note to me, Sarah included some musings she had, in part inspired by a conversation we once had in a Y lot after a cohort meeting. As a shout-out for Sarah, I wanted to share this with all of my own devoted blog-reading fans. Here are the wonderful words of wisdom:

The Church should teach airplane-sharing-the-gospel. It should be a chapter in Preach My Gospel.
Seriously. 51.2% of all member-missionary gospel sharing takes place on airplanes. (I just made that up.) Think about all the famous airplane gospel lessons of our dispensation. Gene Cook and Mick Jagger. Or, that story you tell every other week in Sunday School. Or just today, I had a conversation with a fellow student, Rebecca, who shared the gospel with a young man from Nigeria who in turn told her that he wanted to start a home with her, all on an airplane.
The chapter could include tips on how to make Word of Wisdom conversation from the drink service. How to casually bring up the gospel using the church literature one is reading. How to mention eternal families if one's seating companion does so much as touch their wedding ring.
Actually, we should make pass-along cards especially for airplanes. Something like: "people die on airplanes. Sometimes airplanes crash into buildings and into oceans. But, don't worry: no matter the outcome of this flight, you can be with your loved ones again. For more information about eternal families, please visit mormon.org." Businessmen could carry them in bulk in their briefcases.
Church membership would explode.

Turkey or Ham? Mulan or Pocahontas? Bathroom Stall Doors that Swing in or out?

Many years ago at Girls Camp my friends and I brainstormed endless list of these two-option, quick-fire questions. Through all these years, I have firmly maintained that I prefer bathroom stall doors that swing out. But now, I'm not so sure.
There is a certain logic behind bathroom stall doors that swing in. 1) Many public restrooms can become quite crowded. Should the stall doors swing out, there would be a much greater liability of someone inside a stall injuring someone outside one. 2) With a stall door that swings in, the occupant of the stall has greater control over their privacy. Sometimes, as we all lamentably know, locks can come loose or not work in the first place. And sometimes people push the stall doors open when there is someone inside, unaware of this fact. If the stall door swings out, there is absolutely nothing the person inside the stall can do: the door is far out of their reach. If the door swings in, however, they could kick it with their foot or block it with their hand while shouting "hey!" and thus regain their privacy much more quickly.
On the other hand, we all know how difficult it can be to get in and out of a stall with a door that swings in while wearing an overly-filled backpack. No one really wants to have to stand on the toilet to accomplish this often very difficult task, especially to the balance-impaired.
What a quandary.

Counting Down

Now it is 4:30 am. 7 down, 4 to go, 5.5 hours left. More than halfway!

To Sleep, Or Not To Sleep...

Right now it is 1:11 am, and I am listening to the song from which the title of my last post was drawn. You might now be asking yourself why. So am I. Why, I ask myself, am I pulling my second all-nighter in all of college for schoolwork? Ironically, the first was also this semester, and was for the same task. There are thirteen lucky students in a certain Humanities 202 class that get to turn their papers in to me before their professor. As a Writing Fellow, it is my job to read their papers, comment on them, and then write each one of them a response letter giving them suggestions for improvement. I have precisely one week from the time I get the papers to finish all of them. My week is up at 10:00 am tomorrow morning (or would you call it this morning?), and so here I sit, struggling to finish response letters. The tally thus far is depressing: 2 down, 9 more to go!
I love my job, truly, I do. But these all-nighters are killers. I managed to make it through my first three years of college without ever staying up all night for school (moving out of my apartment, however, is a different matter altogether, and another story for another time, unless by unanimous vote it is decided that I adopt the Ovidian narrative habits of embedding stories within stories up to many layers - and hopefully I won't be pulling an all-nighter to finish up that lovely paper I get to write this semester). Considering my normal amount of procrastination all through high school, and even in college, that is a truly remarkable feat. But alas, no more. No more. Now I stay up all night to finish things due the next morning. Now I will buy a large bag of chocolate candies (probably Reeses peanut-butter cups) in the morning to help me stay awake during my classes. Now I am only making the situation worse by writing this post instead of finishing up my third response letter.
Alas, alack, and other pithy phrases! Maybe I should bring the wonderful Waldo out to keep me company. After all, we have only a limited amount of time left to us before an 18-month separation. Tragedy.

Nothing but dark blue....

My breath moves in slow, measured increments. I hear every aspect of it. Sound moves 4 times faster through water than air, I've learned. The bubbles from my exhale mask my vision every few seconds; this takes some getting used to, like adjusting to the blur of windshield wipers when learning to drive. I check my air gauge - only 500 psi. So I swim over to my buddy, and motion in scuba sign language: I point at myself, tap my fist over my heart, and move my fingers back and forth between my regulator and theirs. She knows that I've just said, "I am low on air. I need to share air with you." In slow, underwater motion now we arrange to share air, and slowly flap our fins until we break the surface.
Every Tuesday night I spend my time floating, swimming, and breathing underwater for hours on end. That's right, I'm in a scuba diving class. When I'm down there, I feel suspended in the middle of nothingness, and like all the rest of life is suspended with it, in nothingness. All that matters is my breathing, and the small air pocket around my eyes.
Finally, tomorrow, after many hours of practicing drills like the air-share ascent, I will complete my basic course in scuba diving. I will be 22 and scuba certified, looking at nothing but dark blue.

How is a successful rescue defined, anyway?

Last Monday was Labor Day. I labored towards saving a bird that day, a little bird with a broken leg I fondly named Petey. I kept Petey in a box, despite the fact that the campus policeman said we should throw him in the garbage. You just can't throw a living creature in the garbage! I thought. You just can't throw a living creature in the garbage! I said to my roommate. So she let me take Petey home. That night I fed him a variety of foods, since I didn't yet know what he liked to eat best. I gave him some bread crumbs, some rice krispies, and some cantelope. And a little tub of water. That night he didn't seem to eat any of the food, which made me sad. Then the next day Petey died. It was distressing. We put the box on the balcony, so that we didn't have a dead bird in the apartment, and because we weren't quite ready for the funeral yet. A week later, my roommates were not happy that Petey was still in the box, dead, on the balcony; and so to please the crowd I dispensed with the funeral, and placed him gently in the dumpster. That is very different from throwing a living creature in the garbage, I told myself over and over. I told my roommate too, and my friend that carried Petey to the dumpster with me. And yet, somehow, it still felt wrong...

The woman needs to be dusted!

There is, in my museum, a certain mannequin. Pictures of her have been posted by a friend, Beth, on facebook, if anyone cares to look her up. She is a hunched-over old woman, with a small scrunched up face, and hands warped from too much hard labor. She carries with her some sort of farming tool over her shoulder with one hand, and a giant basket that she could probably fit in herself in the other. She is the image of a slave on a rice plantation in the low country (which is in the Carolinas), in an exhibit on the matter. She is shamefully dusty. Across the room from her are two little slave girl mannequins in a fake farmhouse place. They carry on the same recorded dialogue all day long, wherein they discuss their lives as slaves to give our visitors a deeper understanding of it. At the end of their dialogue they sing a song. It is not possible to put into words the feelings this song brings out in me. My headquarters in the museum are inside this exhibit, so every morning on my way in to work I walk past the two girls and the woman. Right outside the door to my headquarters is another door, an emergency door. Now, we all, as sensible people, know what happens when we open emergency doors. An alarm goes off, right? Unfortunately for us in my department, the delivery people don't seem to realize this and nearly every morning they choose to make deliveries through this door, setting off the alarm. So, as a result, every morning on my way in to work, as I draw nearer to my area, I begin to hear the strains of a familiar - and somewhat despicable - medley, wherein the whiney voices of the mannequins singing, "no more auction block for me, no more, no more....many thousands gone" combines with a shrill beeping followed by the automated words, "exit now", and I find that that is all I want to do. Hearing that combination of sounds triggers inside me a strong impulse to exit now and run from the building, or at least set up shop in some other part of it. Why can't the delivery people be taught a different route? Why, I ask? Why? Why? Sometimes we flip a switch and silence the little girls. Their song is just so ingraining and misery-filled. It's just plain depressing to have to hear it so often. Every morning on my way out to straighten the stansions and fill the brochures, I stop by the mannequin of the old woman, whom alone among the things on that morning walk I dearly love, and I vow to her that someday I will make them dust her. "They vacuum the bison," I say, "They swiffer Dumbo. You too have rights and should be dusted!" I feel a connection with that mannequin, and can only hope that one of my other fellow workers, who have often heard my complaints about the dusty woman, will carry on my work now that I have departed.
Yes, indeed, yesterday was my last day of work at the museum. I fly home the day after tomorrow. I have enjoyed working here and I love the people I work with, but I am very excited to go home before heading back off to school for the fall. And to the old dusty woman, who will never read this, I say that she should always remember her rights to be dusted, even if I am not there to daily remind her. One day, I am sure, she will sit at the welcome table. One day, I am sure, she too will be dusted and vacuumed, and given the respect she deserves as an item in the museum equal to the bison, though perhaps still less than Dumbo. One day, I am sure, justice will be achieved, and the old woman shall, at last, be clean.

"What if life were only moments..."

Moment #1: I was in a room with a beautiful hard-wood floor, wooden tables, bookshelves, and piano, lit by a dim but sufficient yellow-light lamp. The gleam of the homey light on the wood, combined with the smell of another delicious home-made dinner, gave the feel of being in a moment trapped in time, transcendent, ever-lasting, yet instantaneous, all at once. It's one of those moments where all you really remember is the feel and the mood of the place, not the events or the words. I was sitting at the piano, accompanying my cousin Evan as he practiced his violin (yet another piece of beautiful wood in the room). It was a simple song, played well, and played better each time. His diligence in practicing, my chance to help out, made it all feel like a home away from home. It was a moment filled with family, and beauty.

Moment #2: An old man, dignified by a masterful white beard, wheels an old woman, still lovely with her well-used smile, to my printing press in a wheel chair, accompanied by two faceless younger people. The woman wears large, dark glasses, but it takes me a minute to realize that she is blind. The man takes a card, I tell him to push down on the lever until it clicks, he pushes, and pulls out a freshly printed card with red ink that says, "I printed this at the Smithsonian!", accompanied by an ink picture of the Smithsonian castle. He smiles, looking at it, and gently leans down to the woman in the wheel chair, and reads the whole thing to her. She looks so at home with just the sound of his voice, so familiar, though she cannot see a thing. He looks back at me and says, "I've been her boyfriend for 63 years!" A prouder man I cannot imagine - she looks up at me and tells me that they have been married for that amount of time. As they wheel away, she reaches her hand out to me and clasps mine; I feel like all the love in her heart and the warmth in her smile travels through her farewell into my heart, my smile, my life. This is one of those encounters that, however brief, sticks with you and changes you. That old woman in the wheelchair with the beautiful smile will always be with me.

Bonus points to anyone who can tell me the source of this post's title.

"The First __________"

At long last, the entire purpose of my summer in D.C. has come to pass. My internship at one of the museums on the National Mall here has begun! I work with the Office of Public Programming (OPP), and have great supervisors and great co-interns. It is a blast so far. One of the best things about my specific duties is how much time I spend on the floor interacting with visitors. Just the other day, in fact, I witnessed an event that brought to my attention an unfortunate misunderstanding of what sorts of things museums hold, which I would like to here correct.
I was in the Star-Spangled Banner exhibition, where the very flag that Francis Scott Key himself saw that inspired the writing of our national anthem is kept. In the exhibit there is a display case of some of the sewing tools from the time that the flag-maker, Mary Pickersgill, would have made the flag. As I was standing by said display case, a little boy came rushing up to it, his eyes alight with excitement and wonder. He stared at the case, gasped, and pointing at the scissors inside turned to his mother and said, "Look, Mom! The first scissors!"
And although it was one of my favorite things anyone has said yet, and although many museums do have original artifacts, and although I too would prefer to believe that those were the very first scissors ever, I must here repudiate the unfortunate misconception that if an item is in a museum, it must be the first of its kind. I would like to think that I could tell my child that when they get excited about seeing the first scissors, or key, or feather-duster, or what-have-you, but when it comes right down to it I will probably respond just as that boy's mother did, with a voice filled with as much awe as theirs, and say, "wow, that really is amazing, isn't it son?" After all, why ruin their childhood sense of wonder? So, I think I for one will adopt a policy of treating the first scissors rather like Santa Clause, and until children are a little older, all they will ever know is that those scissors are indeed the very first. Ever.

Red and Black, Friend of Jack

One of the first things I ever remembering learning in a school-type, formal lesson was snake safety. Ironically, this lesson was not taught at school, but at a class for us kids before kindergarten organized by our parents when I lived in Arizona. The especially ironic thing about it is that this is after I had already started kindergarten and proceeded to get kicked out. And do I remember any lessons from my first time in kindergarten? No. I only remember how excited I was about the time I took broccoli for lunch, and how distressed I was the time my best friend threw up on the bus but everyone thought it was me. But, back to this earliest class-type memory of mine: after talking about how snakes sense movement, the parent teaching us that day told us that as a result, the thing to do when confronted with a rattle snake is to stand perfectly still. She had placed outside in her yard a paper snake somewhere, so we were all supposed to run around until we found it, and then freeze. This we did. As I recall, I was either the first or second to find it (it was on the slide), but that could just be my memory trying to glorify myself. I'm sure I stood very still. I'm usually good at that. =) The next part of my memories relating to snake safety is one that I don't recall the origin of, but I know I know it. The following poem is meant to help me distinguish between two types of snakes (whose names I don't know) that look similar, but one is poisonous and one is not:
Red and Black, Friend of Jack,
Red and Yellow, Kill a Fellow.
Thus, if the red and black stripes are next to each other, the snake is not poisonous, etc. There is one of these types of snakes painted in a giant winding shape on the sidewalk at the San Antonio Zoo, and I always loved to walk on it and decide if it was poisonous or not. Unfortunately, I can't remember if it is or isn't. And although I cannot remember for certain, I doubt that the red and yellow snake is a copper head snake. Which means that despite my extensive training in snake safety, not a whit of it would have helped my roommate (who is really cool, named Sisi, and from China), who recently got bit by a copperhead snake.
That's right. On the foot. What are the odds, anyway? She was hiking on a ranch in Virginia with some of the other interns. I was not there. They convinced her to go to the hospital, so she did, and ended up having to stay two nights there while they gave her some anti-venom stuff. Then she had to be on crutches and not go to work for a whole week! Crazy, eh? And the funny part was, she did not seem to realize what an unusual event this was; I distinctly recall at one point the following conversation as we all huddled around in the emergency room waiting for her to be seen:
Us: "We can't believe you got bit by a poisonous snake. That's so random."
Sisi: "You mean you don't get bit by snakes in America all the time?"
Us: "No, of course not. Is it a common occurrence in China?"
Sisi: "No, not at all. I just thought it was part of the American experience and all."

Unfortunately for her, it has become a part of her American experience. I'm just glad she survived, and that the post-bite infection seems to be going away.
Ironically, her snakebite incident occurred only three days after the removal of my wisdom teeth. The whole general anesthesia thing was really quite an experience; I don't recall every being quite so loopy in my whole life. (Yes, that includes after I wake up from naps.) My Aunt Danita, who lives out here, and four-year-old cousin Lindsey were kind enough to pick me up. I'm not sure Lindsey really remembered me, but I bet I was a lot of fun being all crazy after waking up. That first day sitting at there house was incredibly relaxing - I am so grateful that my aunt was willing to pick me up and take care of me! And now, in case you are wondering, I have pretty much completely healed and can eat anything I want once again. So, despite a few days where my roommate and I both were pretty much out of commission, now I can eat again and she can walk again, and all is right in the world.

Dentistry, and Me

Ned Lunt, DDS. Hardly a second father, but a good man nonetheless. The place he works, however, is one that will forever remain to me a sort of second home at home.
Weird, right? What sort of kid thinks of a dental office as a second home? Especially one who isn't even related to a dentist! Well, that would be me. Not the only thing a little bit odd about me, but people love me for all my little oddities, thankfully. When I was just a wee little thing my dear mother went to work as a receptionist at the dental office. I remember sitting for hours in the back room with my sister, watching movies and playing with our G.I. Joe's (and yes, I do still have them). We would roll our marbles down the back ramp, all three sections, and run around loudly on the weekends when we were there with Mom (for which, I might add, we were definitely reprimanded). Even though I remember getting tired of being there for so long, I also remember always getting excited to go there. All those mysterious posters of teeth on the walls, the noises of dental tools always grinding away, the colorful gloves the hygienists wore; everything about it made it seem just a little larger than life to us little kids.

So, as a tribute to the art of dentistry, my sister says in her simple manner, "Dentristy: bittersweet. I hate the dentistry, but I love the dentist." And I say, "Dentistry, I really like the part where I get control of the water and sucking tools." Together we add, "Thanks to you, dentistry, we loved the dental aspects of Finding Nemo more than most. You give us an appropriate appreciation of modern culture." Thank you dentistry, for all you have done for us.

The World is My City

Last night I saw a man get shot. Right in my own neighborhood.* So today, to protect myself from being hunted down by the shooter himself to keep me from talking, I took off and traveled the world, along with a couple of other interns who saw the shooting with me. We went first to Japan, then passed Saudi Arabia and Thailand on our way to our next stop, Ethiopa.


From there we continued on to Bangladesh, where we got ourselves some henna tattoos, and briefly looked a bit at Pakistan.


Next we arrived in Nigeria. Here we found ourselves immersed in loud, indigenous music. We were surrounded by wonderfully happy people dancing in native costume, and could smell tantalizingly good food where ever we went. The whole time I thought to myself, "Self, remember that Nigerian man who once proposed to you? If only you had said yes, this could be your life."



But alas, it was not to be, and so we continued on for a final stop in Malaysia. We figured that at this point it was probably safe to return back to D.C., so we trekked through the jungles of Bangladesh, encountering a lost dog tag...

...on our way through a bamboo field.

We did, however, get slightly sidetracked when we accidentally stumbled upon a Buddhist sanctuary. The receptionist insisted on giving us a tour, and took us through enchanting hallways, passing rooms within which we heard mysterious chanting and saw beautiful shrines and candles. After finally arriving back at Dupont Circle in D.C., we decided our adventure merited a good, hearty meal, so we treated ourselves to the Cheesecake Factory out near where we go to church.

It was a delightful meal indeed.
Now we rest safely back in our home here in Washington, D.C. I believe our extensive travels today were enough to throw the man off our tracks, so I no longer feel concerned for our safety. Tomorrow I shall go to church in peace.


*Although occasionally (perhaps even rarely) I believe in leaving things unexplained, in this case I thought it best not to worry people. Last night I watched the movie State of Play. In the opening scene two people are shot, one killed. The bridge under which they were shot was literally right outside the doors of the movie theater I was in, just minutes from where I live. So, do not fear, my neighborhood is quite safe, although seeing someone get shot in it in a movie even was slightly unsettling.

Fingerprints and Memories are Two Things Uniquely My Own

Those of you who have known me for a while may remember the time I was tricked into believing I was stealing a car. Or the time I stole a riverboat. Now, I have taken it all one step further. I stole a car. As a result, I had to go to the police station here in Washington, D.C. and be fingerprinted. My hands got all inky, but it was otherwise quite an adventure and very enjoyable!
In order to impress the policemen (who turned out to be friendly women), I had dressed up with a suit jacket and everything. When I got home, I didn't bother changing, so when a group of us went out that night I was still dressed up, while everyone else had changed into more casual clothes. We went down to the National Mall to look at a bunch of monuments. Fortunately for all of them, I recently purchased a guide book for D.C., recommended by my good friend Sydney, which I read before we arrived. I kept spouting off facts about all the monuments that no one else knew (such as that the Vietnam War Memorial was designed by 21-year-old Yale student Maya Lin as a class project, or that in the 1830s the Know-Nothing party stormed the partially-built Washington Monument in outrage at the Pope having donated a block of marble and took it over, leaving it unfinished for some thirty or forty years). Everyone seemed to like it, so I kept going. Eventually we ended up over near the Washington Monument, with the entire group huddled around me as I expounded the story of the Know-Nothing takeover. We realized suddenly that because of my much more formal dress, most passers-by probably thought I was an official tour guide. And thus the idea of having me pose as a tour guide was born! I will certainly let you know when we do it, but we are currently planning on me taking us on a tour of the monuments at the Mall to see how many random people we can collect thinking I am a real tour guide. This will be exciting.
In the afternoon on Friday I went with some others to the Library of Congress. There, I found myself severely missing my wonderful friend and museum buddy, Davielle Durfy, as I indeed went so much more slowly than everyone else that they ended up leaving me there and proceeding on to other activities without me. 'Twas a shame, indeed, that I have not found anyone here who puts up with (and in fact matches) my slow museum pace as well as she.
Furthermore, in closing, I have a bone to pick with swine flu, as it has canceled my mom's study abroad in Mexico this summer. I am currently offering a prize to one who can bring me swine flu's head on a platter; we are hereby mortal enemies, and anyone who can shoot swine flu down will become my eternal friend.

Today is NOT a Good Day to Die...

...or to get tetanus. And now, on to the story of the day...
Today I felt like a real city-dweller, so very clever and knowledgeable. I headed an expedition to a very small local art gallery, called Zone Zero, consisting of myself, my roommate Sisi, and another girl whose internship has not yet started, Audrey. The place is in Georgetown, which happens to be right next to the Barlow Center, where I live. So we wandered our way around Georgetown (in a sort of purposeful way, which I suppose definitely rules out the verb 'meandered' and such things), and didn't even have to look at a map once, I was that prepared. Once we finally found it, we discovered that it was in a large red brick building near the water, not on the main street, very tucked away, and that it was one suite and the door was locked. After much confusion at the little intercom thingy-ma-bob (as my mother might call it), we successfully got the owner and creater, a man named Jean-Louis, to let us in. We were not prepared for the wonders we saw next. The outside of the building was completely deceptive. I was expecting something dilapidated and shifty, but instead we found a space where nearly every surface was covered in the most beautiful, shiny hard-wood surfaces. We climbed a few very well-built staircases and met the owner up on the third floor. He showed us inside, to the one-room gallery, again with incredible hard-wood floors, with the pictures we came to see hanging throughout the room, suspended from the ceiling. He turned on some music that made me feel like I was either under water or in outer space, making the entire experience seem just a little surreal. The photographs were pretty awesome, and taken by a local artist. We talked with Jean-Louis for a moment, who seemed very surprised that anyone found his little gallery at all, and discovered that the artists sometimes come and present slideshows of their work. He gave us each his card so that we can come back and watch the artists. It was pretty neat, and we felt really cool for finding it.
From there we proceeded to Alexandria, Virginia, where we rode the free King's St Trolley down to another mysteriously minor art gallery. This one, however, was an entire building filled with independent artists' galleries, each in their own room actively working at their craft. There were Japanese art rooms, tapestry weavings, paintings, and prints. We were trying to catch an exhibit that is closing tomorrow, and met this wonderful woman with flowing grey hair that could easily have flown off her head at any moment. If her hair could talk it would speak Swahili. She even took down Sisi's address and is sending us an invitation to her next exhibit opening! On our way out we stopped in at the tapestry weaver's, only to discover that every one of her works is inspired by places she has visited in our very own Utah! It was a lovely day filled with random artistic adventures. The people we met were real artists creating real art with real purpose, and it was real neat to talk to them. We felt like we were starting to know the city in a less touristy way, finding such small, out-of-the-way galleries.
The metro broke down in Arlington Cemetery on our way back and they kicked us all off. That was quite an adventure too, as was the shifty TexMex food we found to eat at a diner that was definitely not designed to serve TexMex...

Time is a Trickster: An Explanation of a Fascination

The eyes of the moon gaze down, surveying all around. Can the moon hear the tree falling in the forest? "I see the moon. The moon sees me." Maybe the man in the moon is up there just laughing at us all - our antics to him, our lives to us. Then again, perhaps it is with the eyes of compassion that he watches us down here, silently wishing he could reach down and give someone a little nudge here, an urgent warning there. Why should we see the stars as still and silent? Why shouldn't they be our team, our backup? The stars, the heavens, are on our side. Just like the angels we could imagine flittering back and forth between them. Our existance intertwined with things beyond this sphere, larger than the realm of our consciousness - our meaning, our purpose, our being will go on long after all the ticks of mortal clocks - our feeble attempts to capture the trick of time - are heard no more.

Time, gripped by mortal hands and made to be linear. Divisions of an unknown substance run our lives. The tick and tock of the clock never stop, never vary, and yet despite our insistence on its linearity time still wriggles free of our increasingly tight grasp, to run away from us in leaps and bounds beyond those the imagination can conjure up, or to stop and stand in front of us, grim and immovable, like a solid wall we are forced to pick our way through bit by painful bit. No matter how hard we try to chain it up or tie it down, time always has another trick up its sleeve, another Hudini escape planned. Time needs only an instant to work its magic and pull the wool over our eyes long enough to take us on a careening roller coaster ride, drop us over the edge of a cliff, or force us to sit chained still, watching in agony every second we ascribe to it. Time is the ultimate trickster.

Big City #2...or is it 3 or 4?

When I went on study abroad in London this past fall, one of the things I was most excited for was finding out what it was like to live in a big city. I had a feeling I was going to love it, and love it I did. Every minute of it. Now I sit at a computer screen in Washington, D.C., yet another big city, thinking about how much I do love living in places like this, and feeling glad that I am lucky enough to do this again, for a second time. Then I realized that technically speaking, I was born in a pretty big city, and the city I have spent more than half my life in isn't one I would exactly call small, either. D.C. may not be my second big city after all. So perhaps my vague pre-London feeling that I was going to like big cities came more from experience than intuition than I thought.