Die Geborgenheit

Art for Waste Reduction

2012-02-08T11:45:00.001+01:00

I often keep my eye out on kickstarter for people doing neat projects and I recently came across a guy who is making musical instruments out of industrial waste. Assuming Perry gets the $15,000 of funding he requested to build the musical machines, in August 2012, musicians will put on a performance with these motors, solenoids, pneumatics, and hydraulics from factories of the past.

Though it's quite obvious after the fact, it never occurred to me before that art can be a form of waste reduction. Before when I thought of the 'reuse' in 'reduce, reuse, recycle,' tupperware or second hand clothing stores usually came to mind. So I wonder now, how much of an impact could art have on society's dire need to shrink its landfills?

tiefster Winter

2012-02-06T14:35:00.001+01:00

(dead of winter)

The Many Mindless Murders Of The Great Auk

2012-01-17T08:17:00.013+01:00

Do you remember the story of the Great Auk, or as Icelanders like to call it, the geirfugl? The history of this extinct bird is staple curriculum in Icelandic schools, probably because three Icelanders killed the very last mating pair about 170 years ago. However, "the history of the Great Auk has faded away" in Iceland, says Kristinn Haukur Skarphéðinsson, wildlife ecologist at the Icelandic Institute of Natural History. Though at first, he says, "nobody knew they were killing the last auk," as soon as the truth of the matter revealed itself, Icelanders had to carry the burden of a "collective guilt that we did the Great Auk in."

But we have been massacring this poor, clumsy bird before humans were technically humans. Yes, believe it, Neanderthals hunted Great Auks over 100.000 years ago. And a whole lot of death occurred between then and that notable day of July 3, 1844 when the book of Great Auk was slammed shut. So who should really be held responsible for the extinction of the Great Auk? How much of the blame should Icelanders carry on their shoulders? Could the bird itself take some of it? Maybe just a little?

POINTING FINGERS, IF ONLY LITTLE ONES

The Great Auk, in some ways, had it coming. Living in the wilds of the North Atlantic and having a picky disposition when selecting breeding grounds is akin to accepting only foie gras for dinner during the Irish potato famine. Great Auks would only breed on rocky, remote islands near easily accessible food sources. They'd settle with no less than islands with sloping shorelines, which gave the birds easy access to the ocean, where they spent the majority of their time.

The birds were excellent swimmers, but their ability to traverse land resembled a drunken Icelander on a weekend night in Reykjavík. Just as easily as you could net a hipster leaving Bakkus at 5am on a Saturday, you could casually stroll up to a geirfugl, put 'em in a bag and eat 'em for dinner with some potatoes (the bird, not the hipster). For some strange reason, these animals didn’t have an innate fear of humans, which many cultures took advantage of for thousands of years, including the Maritime Archaic people of Newfoundland and Saqqaq Inuits of Greenland.

BUT IT'S NOT OKAY

Though the Great Auk made it super easy for us to wipe them out, it doesn't exactly warrant our overexploitation. Yeah, you could probably make a living out of mugging old ladies on the street, but the ease of it doesn't make it morally acceptable (unless they're giving you sass about your haircut, or something). Frankly, when pillows become more valued than the survival of a species, it's hard not to wonder whether humanity had its priorities straight.

Starting in the eighth century, Great Auks were hunted in droves for their feathers. By the mid-sixteenth century, the breeding colonies along the European boundary of the Atlantic were almost completely wiped out by humans smitten with selling the luxury of down pillows. Finally by 1775, the Brits banned the killing of auks for their feathers and eggs, though the birds could still legally be killed for bait and food. This was one of the first environmental laws, which, in many people's eyes, made the Great Auk the "emblem for extinct birds," says Kristinn.

Though the severity of public flogging, the punishment for killing an auk for feathers, was discouraging, anyone with minimal intelligence could deduce an easy way out of publicized embarrassment and torture: say you're hunting the auk for bait (“Yes, officer, it was only a cigarette, I swear.”), and save the feathers as a keepsake of your trials and tribulations at sea.

But anything that's worse than reckless overindulgence in life, is reckless overindulgence in death. In a grave near Port of Choix, Newfoundland that dates back to around 2.000 B.C., archaeologists found a person buried in a suit made of more than 200 Great Auk skins, the heads left on for extra bling.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Nothing really tops the way the last Great Auk of the British Isles was killed. Sorry Icelanders, you didn't win the barbarian award this time around. In July of 1840 on the Saint Kilda archipelago in Scotland, three local men caught and killed the very last Great Auk of the region. They tied the bird up and kept it alive for three days, until a hefty storm loomed over their islet. Instead of assuming that the intermingling of warm and cold air caused the storm (maybe too logical for the times), the men took the shitty weather personally, accused the auk of stirring the skies with witchcraft, and beat it to death with a stick. The impact of the slaughter on the storm's cessation was inconclusive.

By 1835, after centuries of mass annihilation, one colony of about fifty auks remained on Eldey, an island off the coast of Iceland. But when museums and private collectors found out the Great Auk had become so scarce, they commissioned any willing body to hunt down and kill auks for their skins and eggs to put on display in their collections. The irony of this situation couldn't possibly have evaded the people of the time. I'd even bet the sign underneath the specimens on display in museums read something like, "Great Auk skin, RARE bird species of the North Atlantic."

On July 3, 1844, three Icelandic sailors by the names of Sigurður Ísleifsson, Ketill Ketilsson and Jón Brandsson, travelled to Eldey to collect specimens as requested by Danish natural history collector Carl Siemsen. Jón and Sigurður each found and killed the male and female of the last mating auk pair (thought they didn't know it at the time), but Ketill was left empty-handed. Poor Ketill, feeling left out, decided to smash the last auk pair's egg with his boot. And that was that.

OVER BEFORE WE STARTED?

In the world of extinction, great emphasis is always put upon the last of a species. The events that take place in the beginning and middle have less weight because, by default, the animal's numbers are probably doing alright then. But ask any conservationist and they will tell you that when there's only one lonely couple left of a species, the game is already over. So Icelanders, yes, you technically killed the last hope for the Great Auk, but widen the scope of the extinction lens and you certainly weren't alone.

Originally published in The Reykjavík Grapevine

Detailed Description of Home

2012-01-11T20:01:00.009+01:00

Ahhhhhhem,” my father clears his throat while drinking coffee on the toilet. It’s a few minutes before six a.m. I was dreaming of uncooked noodles and star-shaped candies mixed with mint-flavored milk when a pudgy adolescent gray tabby pounces on my stomach for the benefit of his stomach.

I get out of bed topless, shielding my breasts with my arm, and pour a meager bowl of low-fat, high quality cat food. I get back into bed. My mother paces nervously from one end the house to the other. Coffee, prepare breakfast, soup for his lunch, kiss, goodbye. My father comes in and kisses me before he leaves. I drift back asleep to the sound of cat teeth crunching.

I wake again, this time by my own body. I put on a shirt and walk outside. The air tickles my skin. I feel cold in South Florida. My mother talks while my mind gradually moves from sleep to wake, “I am going to clean Garp's cage now,” she says. Garp is a five-foot iguana. I walk back inside and sit on the couch. The TV isn’t on.

She speed walks past the front window. I hear water spitting from the hose. The cat walks to the screen door and watches the outside from inside.

My father calls. I tell her through the screen door that he’s on the phone. She walks over dragging her feet in dark blue polka dot rain boots.

She walks back past the front window, now with a waltz tempo, still rushing. She comes inside, sits on the couch and changes her shoes, “I’ll be sad, but I’ll be happy when we finally decide to let Garp go.”

I realize life looks very different when you’re watching and listening, instead of thinking and analyzing. My eyes are open.

We put on our bathing suits and decide to bike to the beach instead of drive, “It’s good exercise, good for my bones,” she says. Pedaling down the street, we’re silent. On the side of a truck I read, ‘send a smile.’ How does one ‘send a smile’? Is it flowers? There’s no explanation. Another bumper sticker reads, ‘1-20-09 Bush’s last day.’ There’s a rainbow sticker on this car as well.

We pass some panting fat Canadians on the bridge that leads to the beach. They’re carrying oversized beach chairs, and their hair isn’t wet.

We arrive at the beach. I lay down an large, orange beach towel, take off my clothes and walk to the edge of the water. My mother eats a nectarine in the shade. The water covers my feet, then retreats, now my ankles, then back, now my knees. I raise my arms and stand on my toes. My entry into the ocean is shy, then abrupt.

I return to my towel with wet hair. I lie down on my back, untie the neck straps from my bathing suit and tuck them in between my breasts. Eyes closed, warmth. I see my mother lie next to me through cracks in my eyelids. She’s covering her aged skin with organic suntan lotion. I notice the varicose veins spidering up her legs. She’s sixty-seven, had me when she was forty-four. She raises her chin to the sky, closes her eyes and puts lotion on her face and neck. We bask in the sun for while like iguanas. My happiness is simple like an iguana's happiness. I fall asleep.

I wake up and join her in the shade. She holds another half-eaten nectarine against the sky; red and orange against blue, “Look, look at the contrast, it would make a nice painting,” she says. I see a little white sticker on the side of the nectarine, ‘Chile.’ That nectarine has traveled farther than I have, which either means I haven't traveled enough or it has traveled too much. Or both.

I ate the nectarine with her in the shade, one piece for her, one for me, so impartial, even though the fruit is in her hands. I put on my clothes, wipe the sand from my feet and we leave.

We bike home riding on the opposite side of the road. I notice a bustling Italian bakery and begin biking towards it. My mother follows. We paste our faces to the window and peer inside. Fashionable people are eating gelato and paninis. Little cakes are posed on golden platters in a golden display case.

We pass a coffee shop that isn’t Starbucks, and I'm intrigued: ‘Undergrounds Coffeehouse’. A television is creatively or lazily positioned on top of a piano. An old George Harrison movie is playing. They’re selling paperbacks for two dollars. I notice Fahrenheit 451 sandwiched between two grocery store romance novels.

We stop at the bank to take out cash because I owe my mother money. “You birthday is a day before mine,” says the teller, “same year?” I say.“Same year,” he replies. I could have left the conversation there, but I feel compelled to connect with a stranger. “I wish my mother held me in a few days longer, then I could be born on Halloween,” I say. He replies with an awkward smile. I leave with a failed attempt to socialize looming over my shoulder.

I hand my mother the money, she hands me back a ten and smiles. I smile. Maybe that's how a smile is sent.

We bike to the grocery store to get ground turkey. I was full on samples before we left. My mother grew up with very little food to eat. She revisits sample booths three or four times.

We get home, and shortly after, my father gets home. He shows me a trick for blocking a man from touching my breasts, “It’s all in the arm,” he said.

We make turkey burgers: swiss cheese, tomatoes, onion, pickles, mushrooms. We eat our burgers in the screened-in porch. The cat meows to go outside. I drink a glass of Orangina. My shoulders feel less tense, for a second, my mind pauses.

Not Berlin, Florida

2012-01-07T21:46:00.005+01:00

Reality Absorbed in Reverie

2011-10-08T23:02:00.011+02:00

“Just like spinning plates,”
my consciousness spun around my head.
Suddenly my life had a soundtrack
and then detached—
Frazzled hair with a side of insanity.
I was a lunatic.

A lunatic with heavy eyelids and smashed.
Little green bottles climbed on and soaked in.
I peeled the labels, now undetectable
to the creatures that subsist in earthy dirt.
A lunatic for a moment, for a few obscure instances.

The limiting bulk of me asked
for something different than modest heat.
“Please, no electric temperature
emitting from the wall,” it said.
Little bumps of skin grew
caused by scarce woolen things.
My body shivered, and wet its lips.
Had I known, did I know?

My consciousness stumbled
along a slender path:
a crimson brick bridge with no railings,
no one inch margin to prevent the letters of my dream
paper from slipping off the page,
nothing to save me from diminishing
into the black gravitational pull below.

The face of my psyche
sunk to the ground,
my eyelids, like dragging lures.
In slow motion,
with responsive notes loitering around the building
of my body, I crumbled;
mini pieces of me scattered around.
Awake!
Asleep…

In the middle of a white-walled room,
thick red molecules hung in the air.
The room stained me and I was cherry all over;
I could taste the bleeding red orbs of fruit,
those droplets of pungent crimson life,
now in the upturned curves of my mouth.

A window made of crystal
blue, fish-filled, ocean water
painted me indigo. The window
unfastened itself and the yellow light of a close star
coated my face, dried me off. Salt covered
my abstract body, and I could abstractly taste it.

It all felt natural.
The same as real.
Reality
absorbed in reverie.

The End

2011-10-08T20:35:00.004+02:00

Time is a bullet grazing my face with memories.

And Then, the Beginning of the End

2011-10-08T20:31:00.006+02:00

Wunderbar

2011-10-08T20:21:00.002+02:00

Americans in Amsterdam

2011-10-08T20:16:00.003+02:00

København --> Hamburg

2011-10-08T19:36:00.001+02:00

København

2011-10-08T19:33:00.004+02:00

Passers By

2011-10-08T19:20:00.002+02:00

Farewell Safety. Farwell Purity.

2011-10-08T19:18:00.003+02:00

There, then Here.

2011-10-08T18:55:00.006+02:00

Origin

2011-10-07T20:10:00.003+02:00

Hard and Soft

2011-10-07T19:09:00.003+02:00

Ingólfshöfði

2011-06-26T03:22:00.004+02:00

And a little bit of travel writing...

Into The Ocean
A tour of Cape Ingólfshöfði's history and wildlife

My gloveless hands clutched the cold metal railing of the tractor-drawn hay cart as we drove into the sea towards Ingólfshöfði, an isolated cape located south of the Vatnajökull glacier. From a distance, a vast ocean seemed to separate us from our destination. In reality, it was a thin layer of water that the tractor's burly tires easily traversed.

In late April, the six kilometre drive through a wet, black sand desert to Ingólfshöfði, though scenic, was a cold and bumpy one. The bumps, however, produced mostly giggles over grumbles from me and my travel mates. We could see Ingólfshöfði's silhouette in the distance, and its elusiveness kept us inquisitive and happy.

The only way to get to Ingólfshöfði is via amphibious vehicles or tractors (so don't try to drive there in your rental, even if it's a 4x4). For the past decade, Sigurður Bjarnason, a retired farmer of the area, and his family have been driving gaggles of tourists out to the cape daily during the summer using their nifty tractors. Due to Sigurður's increasing age, his son Einar has taken over most of the tours with his wife Matta.

Though I usually prefer traveling on my own to guided tours, I was pleasantly surprised by Einar's tour of Ingólfshöfði: he did not herd the group like cattle, nor did he make cheesy jokes that aimed to please the dull-brained masses. He provided information about the history and ecology of the cape in a relaxed, straightforward manner and came equipped with a monocular through which we could all gaze at seabirds. We spent about an hour and half on the cape and walked about 2-3 kilometres following the cliff ledge.

Before Einar mentioned it, I had no idea Ingólfshöfði was named after the first permanent settler in Iceland, Ingólfur Arnarson, who spent a few winters on the cape in the late 800s before moving to Reykjavík. When Ingólfur and brother-in-law Hjörleifur Hróðmarsson first saw land on their voyage from Norway, Ingólfur threw his high-seat pillars (a pair of wooden poles that symbolized the status of head of the household in Scandinavian houses) overboard and vowed to settle where the gods brought them to shore. It took three years for Ingólfur's slaves to find the pillars in the bay of what is now Reykjavík.

During the summer, thousands of nesting seabirds call Ingólfshöfði home, especially puffins and Great Skuas, which is one reason why many tourists travel to the cape on Einar's tours. Before heading out, Einar warned us that we might not see puffins this early in the season. In late April, only the males have come to shore to clean out their old nests, a burrow usually situated at the edge of a sharp precipice. After cleaning, the males line the newly excavated nests with a fresh layer of plants, feathers and seaweed. The females, who are courted and charmed (and impregnated) on the rough waters of the north Atlantic Ocean, come to land around mid-May, when they have to find their mate amongst a bustling colony of other puffin couples.

Puffins start breeding at around four to five years of age and remain with the same mate for life. These birds are the ideal of monogamy in the flesh; divorce rarely occurs, and when it does, it's usually because the pair failed to produce young after trying for several years. . Some of its neighbours on Ingólfshöfði, like the Great Skua, sabotage the puffin's romantic lifestyle by murdering its children. With a wingspan of up to 140 cm, Great Skuas are much larger than puffins and find their young quite tasty.

Known to fly at the head of humans or other intruders approaching its nest, the Great Skua is a feisty parent. While on Ingólfshöfði I felt as though they were watching me closely as I paraded around their home. (The puffin, however, remained oblivious to our presence until someone got too close.)

After climbing up a steep-ish sand dune, Einar guided the group along the cliffs of Ingólfshöfði that faced the open ocean. In the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a silly little bird flapping its wings vigourously in an attempt to make it to the edge of the rock ledge. With its natural tuxedo and colourful beak, puffins are not that difficult to spot. Before plummeting down to the ocean below, the puffin remained still just long enough for all of us to get a closer look at him through the monocular, which my bird-crazy eyes enjoyed immensely.

On our way back to the tractor, I spotted the skeleton of a bird stripped bare to the bones lying in the grass, its bright orange and black beak giving away its identity. Despite their comical name and appearance, I was reminded while on Ingólfshöfði that puffins are real, live animals, susceptible to the grips of skuas, starvation and disease. Seeing them in their natural habitat, they became much more than the caricature tourism companies portray them to be. For this, I have a newfound respect for puffins; for tour guides, too, and their fancy monoculars.

The Ones in Höfn

2011-06-26T02:59:00.004+02:00

Toliet

2011-06-26T02:55:00.002+02:00

íslensk dýr

2011-06-25T23:20:00.003+02:00

Vestmanaeyar

2011-06-25T22:59:00.003+02:00

What feels like long ago on the islands off the Island.

The Best Photo I've Ever Taken

2011-06-23T15:24:00.002+02:00

Blur is a bug that decided to hang out on my lens for a few minutes. Hand is the mother.

sun, soleil, sól, sonne

2011-05-25T15:51:00.005+02:00

Among the Trees and Bunkers We Lit a Match

2011-05-25T15:43:00.002+02:00

Broccoli

2011-05-23T21:22:00.002+02:00

Faces

2011-05-19T22:44:00.002+02:00

Ísafjörður, the Westfjords

2011-05-19T22:12:00.005+02:00

Little Marimo

2011-05-19T21:52:00.005+02:00

The land of volcanic eruptions, glacial fields, and herds of grazing sheep, Iceland does not welcome plant life with open arms. The ones that do slip through the cracks (quite literally sometimes) are often marvels of evolutionary accomplishment. The marimo, a big fuzzy ball of algae that dwells in the shallow waters of Mývatn, is one such plant. It's one of those weirdo, outcast plants, the kind that other plants gawk at in the photosynthesis line: they do not know the latest fashions of fruit or flowers, the sport of root growing, nor the lingo of leaves. But perhaps the marimo's huggable form or their lush, calming green hue, often adorned by pearls of air bubbles, might win you over. Simply said, they have a lot to offer, as most outcasts do.

Marimos are the creative limits of evolution in the flesh. And for this, us nerdy naturalists are utterly enamoured with them. However, according to Árni Einarsson, director of The Mývatn Research Station, an ecological research institute that monitors Lake Mývatn, the "marimo has no place in Icelandic culture." Only until relatively recently, he says, were they known to people outside of the Mývatn area. But to be fair, scientists only discovered the colony that inhabits the lake in 1977.

When gazing upon a marimo, one might wonder how the elements of nature convinced an algae, an organism that prefers a more planar existence, to take the form of a perfect sphere. Normally plants want to increase their surface area-to-volume ratio (e.g. with big leaves or lots of pine needles) to capture as much light as possible for their size. Spheres are really bad at maximizing this ratio; actually, they're the worst. The marimo, however, has gotten around this staple rule of evolution. They took the hypotenuse line to survival: require less light (thus, energy) to live by staying small. The marimos in Mývatn reach only about 10 to 12 cm in diameter.

Though scientists aren't completely sure how they form, they think it involves the gentle caresses of wind-induced waves over Mývatn, the silky sediments of Icelandic volcanoes, and the light conditions of life at the bottom of a clear lake. When these three factors combine, marimos leave the psychedelic dreams of a young botanist's slumbers and materialize here in Iceland and only a few other locations on earth, including Japan's Lake Akan. Like Mývatn, Akan was formed by volcanic activity, which might explain why large colonies of marimos call both lakes home.

English speakers actually adapted the Japanese word for these algal balls, 'marimo,' as their own. The direct Japanese translation is quite literal: 'mari' meaning 'ball' and 'mo' meaning 'water plant.' The direct translation of the Icelandic word, 'kúluskítur,' is a bit less endearing. 'Kúlu' translates to 'ball' and 'skítur' means 'shit' in Icelandic. "Fishermen often used vulgar names for strange things that come to the surface when fishing," says Árni, and in the marimo's case, they were probably deemed shit because they would get "entangled in the fishing nets but [aren't] fish," he says. So for Icelandic fishermen, not fish = shit. Makes sense.

Maybe what stunts any growth of respect for marimos in Iceland is their elusive behaviour. Yes, let's blame it on them. They just won't let us in, damn it. In order to see one of these guys in the wild, you'd have to be lucky enough to hook one on a fishing line or be part of a registered diving operation. The Natural History Museum in Kópavogur does have some in a tank on display, but that's not really the same as seeing scores of them piled on top of each other in Mývatn.

Though their exterior allows for quick judgement, the marimo's interior deserves the respect of many far and wide. It is evolutionary fitness at it greatest: break one of these guys open and out will come a torrent of chloroplasts that in a matter or hours will awaken from a dark hibernation. After these chloroplasts see the light, they become photosynthetically active and start producing energy that the marimo uses to make one broken ball into two shiny new balls.

The way to kill a marimo may require the slow, insidious approach. And humans are accomplishing this quite successfully, scientists think. Marimo populations are declining worldwide. Though they aren't exactly sure how, biologists have a hunch that the decline involves eutrophication, which is the build up of nutrients caused by either natural sources, like bacteria, or human sources, like fertilizer runoff. Eutrophication can make lakes foggy, which hinders the amount of light that reaches the things living at the bottom of the lake.

The situation in Iceland is bit more complicated, where during the winter months everyone's got to learn to live with little sunlight. If the marimos can survive months without sunlight, then a little extra fogginess can't be the cause of their decline, Icelandic scientists reason. Basically, what we've got here is a case of the elusive outcast, shunned by society, which only leads to more secrecy. The marimo has stumped the scientific community, not only concerning the cause of its decline but also the basics of its life cycle. But there are a few of us that take a fancy to your elusiveness, little Icelandic marimo, and we will continue chip at the wall you have built around yourself until we reach the emerald core of your biology.

South Iceland

2011-05-19T20:35:00.004+02:00

This is south Iceland. Don't worry, they are old photos and the snow is finally gone.

Ponies!

2011-04-28T22:26:00.002+02:00

Óskýr hamingja

2011-04-28T22:18:00.003+02:00

(blurred happiness)

og sumir skýrleika (and some clarity)

missti lit

2011-04-28T21:59:00.002+02:00

(lost color)

rómantík í einsemd

2011-04-11T01:52:00.002+02:00

(the romance of solitude)

syfjuð augu sjá undur

2011-04-05T15:40:00.004+02:00

(sleepy eyes see wonders)

I woke up early last Friday morning, despite my droopy eyes, for a nice drive and a big free bottle of Reyka Vodka.

distiller

lava rocks add extra special flavour

Heima

2011-04-03T22:43:00.002+02:00

(Home)

Coney Island, NY

2011-03-20T17:13:00.011+01:00

February, 2011

These photos got lost in my brain and computer with the move. Now the sand, machines, and seabirds of Coney Island are free of the frigid dormancy of winter. Maybe the Ferris wheel is turning too. Maybe the children are eating freshly pulled cotton candy. Maybe.

vinstri öndun

2011-03-17T20:26:00.004+01:00

(left breathless)

View of Reykjavík

falinn lit

2011-03-17T20:19:00.002+01:00

(hidden color)

spegilmynd

2011-03-13T23:13:00.002+01:00

(reflection)

góður fyrstu sýn

2011-03-08T02:22:00.007+01:00

(good first impression)

beautiful first impression...

Misc New York

2011-02-28T20:53:00.003+01:00

Everglades.

2011-02-04T04:17:00.003+01:00

Zero

2011-01-24T05:42:00.002+01:00

One

2011-01-21T15:10:00.002+01:00

Two

2011-01-20T20:40:00.004+01:00

Fall, in Love.

2010-11-10T16:17:00.007+01:00

I love the fall. The air smells crisp with change. The nascent cold tickles my Floridian skin and awakens my brain. And then winter comes and snow gathers on the narrow branches to escape the depurifying dirt of the city ground. Here is Prospect Park colored red, orange and yellow with change, with time, and still with novelty.

Prospect Park from my fire escape

Who Am I Today?

2010-10-28T17:55:00.005+02:00

Emotions say...

Brain and history says...

Photo Courtesy of Cherice Smithers

Sky Multiplied

2010-10-28T17:33:00.004+02:00

Faces of Philadelphia

2010-10-27T04:41:00.002+02:00

Birth and Beauty

2010-10-22T01:00:00.003+02:00

Cherice Anne Smithers was born on October 25, 1985. And I'm so grateful for it. Happy birthday Cherice. You are beautiful.

Little Bird

2010-10-16T07:19:00.001+02:00

The very first photo I took in Costa Rica.

Remnants: the Beginning.

2010-10-16T07:08:00.001+02:00

The first place Casey took us in Costa Rica was Vocan Poaz. Seems like such a long time ago, that lush land, that green life. At least I live across the street from Prospect Park. At least.

Beautiful Women

2010-08-29T08:08:00.001+02:00

So beautifully easy to photograph.

Lizard Heaven: Cahuita

2010-08-28T00:36:00.001+02:00

As in, I was in heaven because there we so many lizards in Cahuita. Once I dreamt as child I was catching anoles twice the size of the anoles I caught at home in Florida. They were big, masculine, beefy lizards. Anyone who says lizards don't have personality, couldn't be more wrong. Look into their eyes. A little lizard soul lies there. Cahuita was a dream.

The Holy Grail of Lizards

Puerto Viejo

2010-08-27T23:56:00.001+02:00

En Route to Arenal

2010-08-27T23:30:00.001+02:00

Mistaken Fanciness.

2010-08-27T23:27:00.001+02:00

Intermission: Hurricanes and Louisiana

2010-08-26T21:53:00.001+02:00

I found this video while doing some research for an article I'm writing about Louisiana's marshes and Hurricane Katrina. I thought it made destruction almost look graceful.

The Forgotten Feline of Pension Santa Elena.

2010-08-19T00:20:00.001+02:00

The town of Santa Elena is a short bus ride to Monteverde, which isn't as much a town as it is a dirt road. Quakers established Monteverde in the 1950s to escape the United States and its proclivity for violence and war. Now, fifty years later the cloud forest of Monteverde attracts more people a year than any other spot in Costa Rica.

This cat was the guardian of the kitchen at Pension Santa Elena, a busy hostel where English dominates and guided nature tours are the new black. I didn't fall for their trickery, and saw plenty of animals, including the elusive Quetzal.

From the Center of the Earth

2010-08-16T03:38:00.001+02:00

Arenal is the most active volcano in Costa Rica. It can erupt up to 20 times a day but sometimes it won't erupt for days. Arenal is a perfect example of the the luck we had in Costa Rica, almost missing buses, but not, having full days of sun on the beach in the raining season, finding free hot springs and streams when others paid 70 dollars, and hearing and seeing Arenal erupt four times when we were there. Usually an eruption consisted of a poof of smoke and a loud rumbling sound. But once I saw a little flash of red at the top. Molten rock is a magical thing.

Life Squared.

2010-08-06T06:27:00.001+02:00

In Monteverde, the sun shines through the trees with a sense of purpose. Plants grow on plants and a gentle mist hovers in the air. I went to Monteverde alone. I went to see how my conception of tropical rain forest differed from the actual thing. I went to Monteverde because before my feet touched that lush Latin land, Monteverde was what I imagined when Costa Rica came to mind.

Montezuma Side B

2010-08-04T23:16:00.001+02:00

Similar but different.

Costa

2010-08-03T08:03:00.001+02:00

I was in Costa Rica for three weeks and two days. I will be posting pictures of my trip intermittently for the next few weeks. And I think I'll go backwards. The last place we went was Montezuma.

Montezuma is often called Montefuma. The minute we got off the bus, I smelled it. The town, a small collection of shops, sodas, and one bar, is unimposing. The tour guides stay within the confines of their offices and the hippies don't nag you to buy their woven jewelry. For 2000 colones (roughly 3.5 dollars) you can get a Latin American style hamburger, which is "like no other hamburger you've ever tasted" says the cook. Fresh water streams meet the ocean every quarter mile or so and white-throated magpie jays steal your crackers. Every once and a while, if you're looking for them constantly like I am, you'll see a spiny-tailed iguana perched upon a rooftop as if he were a king addressing his plebeian subjects.

SoFla

2010-06-28T22:30:00.001+02:00

Painting with Neuroscience

2010-06-15T01:39:00.002+02:00

I recently wrote an article for The Scientist about an artist and a neuroscientist who are collaborating to better understand how people perceive art. Here is a video of they didn't end up publishing with it.

I also found this great music video about optical illusions by The Whitest Boy Alive. Entertaining and educational.

Bombus and Me

2010-06-10T19:02:00.002+02:00

A friend that lives in my window sill.

The Most of It.

2010-06-06T14:33:00.001+02:00

He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff's talus on the other side,
And then in the far distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush - and that was all.

-Robert Frost

Humans in Peril

2010-06-03T06:25:00.001+02:00

The earth is our psychiatrist. "Earth," we cry in the middle of the night when the loneliness of mortality boils to our chins, "help me help myself." Are we afraid to admit we need to change for ourselves? Is there something inherently easier about saving the planet for the planet's sake and than for our own? The human race is becoming more and more like a politician, afraid to admit we've done wrong, afraid to be weak, afraid to be human. Yes, I think that's it, the human race is afraid to be human.

let us not forget; now isn't this funny.

Oxford American Dictionary
hu•man |ˈ(h)yoōmən|
adjective
of, relating to, or characteristic of people or human beings : the human body | the survival of the human race.
---of or characteristic of people as opposed to God or animals or machines, esp. in being susceptible to weaknesses : they are only human, and therefore mistakes do occur | the risk of human error.
---of or characteristic of people's better qualities, such as kindness or sensitivity : the human side of politics is getting stronger.
---Zoology of or belonging to the genus Homo.

Binocular Rivalry.

2010-05-27T05:53:00.001+02:00

Simulation wilsonring from Yoren Schriever on Vimeo.

Sunshine Sproutin' Through the Trees

2010-05-24T05:09:00.001+02:00

What Secrets Lie in Trees.

2010-04-29T06:31:00.001+02:00

Cherry Blossom.

2010-04-29T06:26:00.001+02:00

DCist

2010-03-08T17:37:00.001+01:00

I just started writing for a news blog in DC called DCist. It's pretty popular here. I like writing for blogs because of the freedom. Informal writing that isn't over-edited. It's great.

Here are some stories I've done so far:

Urban Beekeeping: Nectar Over Politics

Some Day, There Will Be Spring: Rooting DC

Les Animaux

2010-02-12T01:03:00.001+01:00

I realized a few days ago that I have a nice selection of animal photography. Surprise, surprise, I notice animals.

Oh my, Snow.

2010-02-08T20:15:00.001+01:00

Here are some photos of the Blizzard of 2010. It was great, and I'm not being sarcastic at all. Homage to my roots, towards the end.

Snow

2010-02-05T04:55:00.001+01:00

It snowed. Yes it did. More snow and photos to come.

Interview with Ralph Lombrelia

2010-02-01T03:48:00.001+01:00

A few months ago I interviewed Ralph Lombreglia for the Scholar. It was one of the first assignments I was given. He's an under the radar kind of writer that follows the current fashionable style of storytelling: instead of developing a plot or characters, you set up a scene, roll with it for a little while and then end abruptly. At first, I was always severely dissatisfied with these sorts of stories. I wanted something profound. I wanted an epiphany or realization at the end. Lombrelia's story "Unrippable" changed my perspective in a way. I didn't even think it was written with an exceedingly large amount of grace or poise, but rather that it was simple, unimposing, and more closely resembled the majority of life than the old-fashioned, climatic alternative to storytelling. It made me think: what about the stories behind the everyday, the subtle, the somewhat mundane? The story behind a crisis, a love, or a epiphany are so obvious. Aren't the times between love or after crisis important too? Aren't they worth telling? I'm still not completely sure. Read my interview, and read "Unrippable" and let me know.

Here and There.

2010-01-27T05:32:00.001+01:00

First Snow

Where South Meets North

Tampa

Tampa

Home is a Place.

2009-12-02T06:11:00.002+01:00

Florida is my cradle, my birth, my innocence. My memories boil in its heat, my voice reflects its neutrality, its relaxed, retired population. My parents live there, my brother lives there, my grandparents live there, and my cousins, and my aunts, and my sweet sweet cat. And I love all those things, because they are me. And so, I love Florida.

DC 1

2009-12-02T06:07:00.002+01:00

Oh Wyoming.

2009-11-27T16:04:00.003+01:00

Washington State

2009-11-27T15:24:00.002+01:00

Portland Love.

2009-11-11T06:36:00.002+01:00

The Far Coast.

2009-11-11T06:13:00.001+01:00

Driving...

2009-11-11T05:50:00.001+01:00

Yosemite- It was so long ago that I met you.

2009-11-11T05:33:00.000+01:00

The Beginning.

2009-10-22T04:47:00.000+02:00

Cherice and I drove over five thousand miles together and it all began in San Francisco.

Everything.

2009-10-02T05:56:00.000+02:00

Everything is different. It's refreshing and stressful, and at times I feel everything and it fills me with beauty and the roots of my soul penetrate the soil of existence and other times everything overflows and my hands get pruned with pain as they try to grasp the liquid meaning like a solid thing. But there's no way to lose some of it. And overflow only saturates the already beautiful experience with superficiality, and the beauty isn't there anymore, and I'm not there, and I can only see life with blockers on. Panorama is the real thing, panorama on a roof in New York City with the past, present and future upon me; with friends, strangers, and the starless human sky.

On the Road

2009-09-08T18:59:00.000+02:00

I'm done with my job in Northern California with the spotted owl, and now I'm on the road with a good friend for the next month. I don't know how much time I will have to post pictures on the way, but they will all make it up here sooner or later.

Cherice and I started in San Francisco and drove east to Yosemite where the sky was hazed with wildfire, and the people's voices were all heavy with European accents. We glided through the redwoods with our hands out the windows, and up the Oregon coast where the land dramatically met the moody Pacific ocean. The final destination is Washington, DC, where I'm doing an internship with The American Scholar.

We're currently in Portland hanging out with two good friends, drinking spirited but bad beer (Hamm's and Dale's), and eating good food. The currently itinerary is Portland, Olympic NP, Seattle, Glacier NP, Yelllowstone NP, Fort Collins/Rockies, Omaha, Chicago, NYC, DC. We have three weeks ahead of us filled with lots of good laughs and new experiences.

The color of despair. The color of freedom.

2009-08-26T19:37:00.000+02:00

The girl tapped her manicured maraschino cherry fingernails on the shopping cart handle as she scrutinized the bagged lettuces. She had a dainty structure: short legs, railroad track hips, childlike hands, and a lipless mouth. Her hair was tied up in a chaotic ponytail, the sixth in series that failed to suit her definition of the “grocery-store level” of hair disarray.

A tall, sinewy man stood in front of the tomatoes, his eyes concealed in the shadows of a sand-colored fedora. The hat was garnished with a paltry red feather, so as to hint it was not passed down from grandfather to father to son, but bought at a trendy Haight street boutique, and made in China. The grin on his face broadcasted a poised demeanor and his long-sleeve, rolled up, thrift store purchased dress shirt hung off his shoulders in a relaxed fashion. She drove her cart past him like a mosquito hovering over human flesh. Her eyes buzzed over him; her hips swayed coarsely from side to side. First it was a pepper that so fittingly danced away from her memory, then a cucumber, then an artichoke.

Standing on the other side of the produce section she schemed her own reality. She would stroll over to the tomatoes, grab one and feign its accidental plummet to the linoleum grocery store floor. The man would scurry after the tomato to retrieve it. While he held the red fruit in the palm of his masculine hand, their eyes would awkwardly flutter across each other’s, and thus, give birth to a lingering sexual silence. And then he would say, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” And a life full of love and companionship would ensue.

The girl reached out in front of the man, her fingernails ghosts hovering over the tomatoes. She selected a tomato below another in a precarious position, and down it went tumbling like tumble weed across the desert of a floor. It stopped at the feet of a knurled old woman who was in the process of searching for an immaculate head of white cabbage; a head of cabbage she would boil in her lonely 1950’s style kitchen with carrots, celery and onions; cabbage soup she would eat sitting at her boundless mahogany dinning room table, while thinking of youth, love, and exquisite pain (the three often originating from the same events).

The old woman bent over holding her arthritis-ridden back, picked up the tomato resting on the tip of her white orthopedic shoes, and handed it to the girl as she thought to herself, “Oh the joy of still being able to bend over.”

“Oh her yah go sweetie. You betcha those nails can make pickin’ up a tomato a bit of a pickle!” The old woman continued cackling at her vegetable pun through her worn smoker’s throat as the girl turned around and watched her fantasy cross the produce section.

The girl left the store without tomatoes. She didn’t even like tomatoes, with their furry and slimy seeds that resembled a thousand tiny babies growing in unison within her food. But, the girl did like fantasies. They defined her.

The girl was employed as a secretary by a Christian doctor in Berkeley that believed abstinence was obligatory behavior until marriage, and even then, sex was only a manner in which to procreate. He often openly preached his old-fashioned beliefs to the fledgling college students that entered his office for STD testing and free condoms, and to his employees, many of them who were not, in fact, getting laid. Thus, the incessant Godly advice to his staff came only as a reminder that they were not worthy of condoms or sexually transmitted diseases, however much both of those things were not coveted.

The girl wore pencil skirts to work that clung to her waist, and accentuated her shapeless body. Her hair was a dull brown color but she always found some colorful headband or earrings to draw one’s attention away from her underlying drabness.

At work, she fantasized about being discovered. Among the youthful students, there were thirty-something businessmen that occasioned the doctor’s office. In her whimsical mind, a businessman would open the bell-laden office door, walk up to the counter, sign in, and before retiring to the row of linked waiting room chairs to sit tediously for over an hour, he would look up at her, circle her face with his eyes, and tell her she was model material. He would complement her on her high cheekbones, hand her his card, and tell her if she ever wanted to walk the runway instead of the doctor’s office hallways, she should contact him. The card would read something along the lines of “Trent Bobby, professional photographer, Vogue magazine.”

Today was her day. Everyday was her day, but today was her day. She felt it vibrating in the air, glistening on the shiny pastel waiting room wallpaper, and loitering outside on the sidewalk with the cool winter air. But time passed and only furrowed relics of decades past, and markedly rotund pregnant women paraded the office hallways that day.

It was five o’clock and her faith was beginning to drift away with the salmon-colored winter sun. The office closed at six o’clock. Rainer Summers was the last appointment. He was coming in for a check-up on his fractured shoulder blade of six months prior (but really to get a refill for his Oxycodon addiction). And then the door jingled.

A man in a business suit sauntered through the door and to the front desk. Her heart started fluttering as he signed the sheet with a bulbous pen that had etched on the side of it, “Ambien CR-Experience the Difference.” He opened his wallet and pulled out a business card. Her heart began boomeranging off the walls of her chest as if it were a depraved inhabitant of a mental institution bouncing off the padded walls his cell. He looked up at her, paused, tilted his head, smiled disparagingly and asked, “Mosco’s is the sandwich shop next door, right?” Confused, she answered, “Yes,” her scrunched eyes causing hills to form on her brow. The man dropped his business card in the fish bowl next to the office window that read, “Leave Your Card, and Win a Free Lunch for Two at Mosco’s, Home of World’s Biggest and Best Sandwiches!”

The man sat down in the row of connected waiting room chairs and picked up a copy of Sport Fishing magazine. The girl wondered how there could be a magazine entirely devoted to fishing, while the man wondered if he should buy a SeaSucker vacuum-mount rod holder for his new yacht. Shortly after, the nurse opened the waiting room door, “Mr. Summers, Dr. Franklin can see you now.”

The girl waited for the nurse to close the door. She listened, as the small talk grew softer and more distant. When she heard the door of the examination room click-closed, she stuck her hand in the bowl and took out the man’s card, “Rainer Summers, Attorney, Smith and McKinley Associates.” She held the card between her pointer and middle fingers like a cigarette, and smiled as a devious thought inserted itself into her presently bitter mind. She took the card in both hands, ripped it in half, ripped it in half again, and threw it vehemently into the garbage. “Now,” she thought, “he doesn’t have a chance either.”

The next morning was a Saturday. On Saturdays the girl always ran in Golden Gate Park, from the steps of the California Academy of Sciences to the rose garden and back again. Afterwards, she met her friend Katy for lunch in the Haight district. They sat at the window of a fluorescently painted burrito shop, and talked about nothing and everything as she ate a burrito and Katy drank a diet coke. The girl carped of a lack of excitement, how her life had begun to feel like piece of stale gram cracker, bland and without the anticipated crunch. Disregarding her friend’s misery like women disregard the hoots and hisses of construction workers, Katy complained of too much of excitement in her life, “I mean, I can’t continue eating nothing and doing everything. I mean, like I know being a model is super prestigious, and everything, but I can’t like keep taking all this Adderall to suppress my hunger. I mean, like sure, I get to meet all the best people in the world. You know, I met Brad Pitt the other day. He’s not that hot up close.” Katy talked but never listened, as did the girl, so the conversation was as good as two whiny pop songs playing simultaneously.

The girl sat on a bar stool with her back slouching against the burrito shop window. Katy sat erect with her feet coiled around the legs of the stool. Katy was one of the girl’s old college friends. They met at freshman orientation the summer before classes started. Their friendship was convenient, but in no way was it intimate. They were the oil and vinegar of camaraderie; they had similar interests but lacked the ability to thoroughly mix.

The girl had just relocated to San Francisco the previous summer for the job in the doctor’s office. She had attended a small liberal arts college in Ohio and barely obtained a general liberal arts degree. All the girl could really do with her degree was be a secretary, or a schoolteacher in some states. She loathed children, so her only option was to be a secretary. Children were too pure to her, like some vague dream of a real person. They hadn’t materialized yet as individuals, so she didn’t see the point in interacting with them. The funny thing about the girl was that she hadn’t become a real person either. She was still a child, with a basic understanding of existence. Thus, her abhorrence of children was, indirectly, an abhorrence of herself.

Her mother, an acclaimed psychologist who plushly resided in a penthouse apartment on the island of Manhattan, had bore a hole, a boundless cave of a hole, deep into her daughter’s sense of self. She felt that her daughter had an inability to decide, which, thus, she reasoned, lead to ineptness to succeed. What her mother didn’t realize was that her daughter simply lacked heartfelt interests, passions, and driving desires. Except, that is, an interest in envisioning a world where she was the nucleus of humanity, with an idealized man at her side and a train of admirers who regarded her as the picturesque beauty.

Katy continued ranting about the hardship of being a someone, while the girl glided into another fantasy. Katy would bring her to the next gathering of famous people where she would meet directors, actors, actresses, models and photographers. They would all listen with reverence as she spoke about the meaning of life and all existence. She would become their guru and all their best friends. No longer would she be at their feet, begging for approval, or, better yet, in line waiting to beg at their feet, but high above them on a pedestal of popularity. She would be their leader, and the newspapers would call her “the new religion among rich and famous.”

“Katy, when are you going to another one of those parties, like the one where you met Brad Pitt?” asked the girl.

“Oh, I go to them like almost every weekend. There’s always some famous person having some party somewhere. The company I work for always sends me to them for publicity. And I always get to wear some avant-garde dress that some stupid designer made. Next weekend, I think there’s some big thing in LA I’m flying out to go to. I don’t even, like, know what it’s for.”

“Do you think I could go with you? I don’t have any plans this weekend, and I’ve been saving up money, so a flight to LA wouldn’t be a big deal.”

Katy paused awkwardly and rearranged herself on the diner-esque glittery red stool, “Um… I don’t know, I mean it’s not really like anybody can go, you have to know people, you know?”
“Well, I know you, don’t I?” The girl’s eyes were frozen seeds of desperation as she waited for her friend to respond. The world wasn’t working with her. It never had. It never gave her what she felt she deserved. Time and time again it disappointed her. She couldn’t quite understand how life never worked in her favor, which was the root of naivety of existence. “Wasn’t it bound to work out at some point or another, just by chance?” she thought. If she was patient enough, one fantasy will come true. It just has to, by chance.

“Look, I’m really sorry, but it doesn’t really work that way. I wish you could go, but it just wouldn’t make sense for you to go, you know? Your presence wouldn’t do anything for the group, no one would know what to say to you, and you wouldn’t know what to say to them, and that’s why you would get to go in the first place. You have to be able to contribute something, or represent something.”

The girl melted into a puddle of her own sorrows, but her face remained a statue of fake happiness. Her slightly yellowed teeth peeked out from behind her thin, flat lips to force a smile. She tensely clasped her hands together, her tiny fingers nesting in each other, “Oh that’s cool, I just thought I would ask, you know. I thought it couldn’t hurt.” She cleared her throat for the quandary that clung to the oxygen molecules in the air, and looked out the window at pairs upon pairs of young people with dancing feet of happiness, and strands of fluttering weightless hair.

“Well that being said, I think I should go. I have to meet my agent to go over some shoots I have this week. Check ya later girl.” Katy walked out of the burrito shop, and the girl watched her friend’s glossy red leather purse glisten in the sun as she walked down Haight street, through the throngs of stylish San Franciscans that flooded the sidewalk.

The girl woke up Sunday morning with a gallon jug of gloom pressing her into the earth. With the exodus of slumber, her habituated mind commenced its churning of fantastical possibilities. But this Sunday morning proved unlike the others: the thought of some unclaimed reality twisted her stomach into a greasy county fair funnel cake.

She lied in bed, only her eyes peaking out from under a deep crimson down blanket that spanned her queen-sized bed. She listened as the pigeon mother outside her apartment window dutifully shoved insects into the mouths of her defenseless, whimpering chicks. She listened to the click-clacks on the sidewalk and the wide mouths laughs of the liberal San Franciscans, the jovial, water-drought Californians. She listened to the tires of visitor vehicles screaming up and down the precipitous city streets.

“Every new place is a strange place”, she thought, “But my whole life has been strange; from childhood, where shyness overtook me like the plague, to now, where I’m throwing business cards into the garbage resentfully, as if that will change the fate of my own life. Is it just some inevitable truth, that being alive is inherently strange, inherently inadequate, or am I just inadequate? Probably both.

Is this the truth of our existence: to feel as if our lives are not within the grasp of our own hands? Why do we feel this? Because our lives are not in our hands? Because we are nervous little apes, with too much mind and too little instinct to just jump up and catch the currents of existence, and see what happens? Why have I been given this fate of nothingness, and Katy, a fate of popularity and excitement? Who the fuck gets to decide these kinds of things?”

She felt uncomfortable in her own bed; the thought of a lack of control both frightened and infuriated her. She tossed and turned, rearranged her legs and arms, but no matter the endless positions in which she could mold her body, her mind was lost in the alleys of human strangeness, and thus, she felt strange. What used to feel like an infinite well of possibilities, now felt like a black box of seclusion. A series of prospects had become a series of discontents.

She always thought about life like this: that, in the world, there were an infinite number of ways things could turn out, and that becoming aware of this infiniteness allowed her to be driven in the right direction, the happy direction; as if acknowledging the possibility that she could be discovered, or wooed would somehow initiate a chain of events that led to it actually happening.
She was only adept at putting herself in a position where others could act on her thoughts. But only she knew her thoughts. Silly girl. Her life was a fantasy of a fake life; a life she didn’t hold in her hands but one that flew above her in the abyss of idealism. And desire is no substitute for action.

It was six pm. A week had skipped by her like a little girl in pick tails. “Ha ha ha,” laughed Time, “I’m still passing, and you’re still in the same place”. She continued to go to work, but no longer did she think of confident businessmen walking in the door. Work was a monotonous bundle of actions, almost a dance of between her hands and the swivel chair in which she sat; from one end of the counter to the other, filing this, signing that. She didn’t think; she didn’t feel; she didn’t fantasize. She didn’t call Katy, and when she went to grocery store, she made a list and was in and out in under twenty minutes.

On Thursday night, she laid sprawled out on her thrift store corduroy couch watching TV, and becoming more like a zucchini as time passed. While flipping through the flashy consumerism images, she came upon a wildlife show about birds, narrated by none other than David Attenborough. She fell asleep to the soothing English intonation of Mr. Attenborough’s voice and gently from reality to reverie.

In her dreams, she was walking through a field of yellow flowers on the coast of California. She heard the ocean synchronously crashing against the cliffs, like the metronome of the earth. Her footsteps made no sounds. The tall grasses growing where she walked failed to whisper in the wind. All she could hear was the sounds of the waves. The sound of the crashing waves then began to morph into the deep oboe of Mozart’s Serenade for Winds. And all of a sudden, as if they were creating the music, as if the earth was singing to her, a thousand red birds flew up and speckled the sky. As the birds flew higher, she felt herself lifting up slowly, following them. As she flew higher and higher, she could feel the curves of her mouth turning up, and she smiled. In her dreams, she smiled.

She woke up the next morning with a thought. “This is it,” she thought, “I’m going to fly. If nothing else is going to go my way, this will. I’m going to fly.”

Now, it was Sunday. She stood at the top of Mt. Tamalpais, ten miles from San Francisco. Ants of people were crawling around on the ground below her. Her toes hung over the edge of the mountain. She could see San Francisco in the distance and the fog that frequently kept the city company.

Her feet hesitated on the edge, but she knew if she just jumped, she would fly. And then without a thought she jumped.

“How do you like the view?” asked the instructor who attached her to the bright red paraglider that hung above them. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

Party.

2009-08-23T18:25:00.000+02:00

Scientists like playing games. It's the organization of it, I think. It's the end of the season, so we had party. We played wiffle ball (I did too), drank many many home brews, and ate too much good food. I have one week left, and then the world is open to me. I've discovered a few things while living in the middle of nowhere with people that are very different from me. At first, being here was strange, new, and exciting, and now it's normal, and hence a little mundane. To parallel my friend Stephanie's blog, it's really amazing how seeing owls everyday (or living in a foreign country for her) can become normal. It's a inevitable spiral towards normalness. We become used to things so quickly. All I can hope is that one day, I will be in place, around people I love, doing something I feel is fulfilling and exciting, the normalcy of my life will be a blessing, rather than a curse, that I had realized I had found what I was looking for, rather than just getting used a life that didn't satisfy me. Onward. First stop, San Francisco.

Long, long, ago.

2009-08-15T10:28:00.000+02:00

Brilliance.

2009-08-07T23:56:00.000+02:00

Baby.

2009-08-07T23:53:00.000+02:00

Western Fence Lizard.

Bigfoot.

2009-08-04T09:14:00.000+02:00

Home is not a place.

2009-08-04T09:11:00.000+02:00

Snow in July.

2009-07-31T03:01:00.000+02:00

Lassen Volcanic National Park.

Like Yellowstone, Lassen is a bubbling center of volcanic activity. My dad and I climbed to the top of Lassen Peak, a volcano that last erupted in 1915. The highest point was around 10,500 feet. Surprisingly, I could breathe up there. In September, I'd like to hike up farther in Rocky Mountain National Park, in search of serenity, awe and challenge. Hopefully, a good friend will accompany me.

No, I am not the scientist. (A trip to San Fran)

2009-07-22T09:47:00.002+02:00

Parents.

2009-07-22T02:21:00.000+02:00