Sunday, July 24, 2005
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says that if you hold a lungful of air you can survive in the total vacuum of space for about thirty seconds. However, it does go on to say that what with space being the mind-boggling size it is the changes of getting picked up by another ship within those thirty seconds are two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand, seven hundred and nine to one against.
By a totally staggering coincidence, that is also the telephone number of an Islington flat where Arthur once went to a very good party and met a very nice girl whom he totally failed to get off with -- she went off with a gate-crasher.
Though the planet Earth, the Islington glat and the telephone have all now been demolished, it is comforting to reflect that they are all in some small way commemorated by the fact that twenty-nine seconds later Ford and Arthur were rescued.
Now that my life is all up in the air, I keep searching for coincidences like this, to see if they will give some sense and meaning to my choices and make me more sure that I am doing the right thing. As I was visiting graduate schools I became increasingly stressed out trying to see into the future and figure out where I was supposed to be. Colgate turned out to be exactly the "right" choice... I fit there so well and met so many amazing people and did so many wonderful things. But what if I made the wrong choice on this next step? There were no signs to tell me the future or show me the way. I guess you never really know for sure -- you'll never know what you would have experienced some other way.
But the same sort of second-guessing has permeated my apartment-hunting as well, and coincidences are too plentiful for their own good. "Here's an interesting little notion. Did you realize that most people's lives are governed by telephone numbers?" asks the computer in Hitchhiker's Guide. If that's so, then clearly I'm meant to be in the apartment where the last four digits of one roommate's phone number are identical to the last four digits of the number I had in '34 House (with the most wonderful roommates ever.) But what if it's not phone numbers, it's birthdays? Perhaps I should be in the apartment with the girl who was born the day after me. Or perhaps names are the connecting factor. Should I go with the apartment where the dog is named Jezebel? It's not a very common name for a dog -- and yet, it is the same name that my uncle's dog had -- probably the first dog I can remember knowing.
I tie my brain in knots fussing over these ridiculous superstitions, and I know it won't get me anywhere, but how else do you cope with the unknown? It's just too much pressure trying to get my life to work out right again in the face of all these new challenges and decisions, after spending four years somewhere where my life was really just right, after all.
By a totally staggering coincidence, that is also the telephone number of an Islington flat where Arthur once went to a very good party and met a very nice girl whom he totally failed to get off with -- she went off with a gate-crasher.
Though the planet Earth, the Islington glat and the telephone have all now been demolished, it is comforting to reflect that they are all in some small way commemorated by the fact that twenty-nine seconds later Ford and Arthur were rescued.
Now that my life is all up in the air, I keep searching for coincidences like this, to see if they will give some sense and meaning to my choices and make me more sure that I am doing the right thing. As I was visiting graduate schools I became increasingly stressed out trying to see into the future and figure out where I was supposed to be. Colgate turned out to be exactly the "right" choice... I fit there so well and met so many amazing people and did so many wonderful things. But what if I made the wrong choice on this next step? There were no signs to tell me the future or show me the way. I guess you never really know for sure -- you'll never know what you would have experienced some other way.
But the same sort of second-guessing has permeated my apartment-hunting as well, and coincidences are too plentiful for their own good. "Here's an interesting little notion. Did you realize that most people's lives are governed by telephone numbers?" asks the computer in Hitchhiker's Guide. If that's so, then clearly I'm meant to be in the apartment where the last four digits of one roommate's phone number are identical to the last four digits of the number I had in '34 House (with the most wonderful roommates ever.) But what if it's not phone numbers, it's birthdays? Perhaps I should be in the apartment with the girl who was born the day after me. Or perhaps names are the connecting factor. Should I go with the apartment where the dog is named Jezebel? It's not a very common name for a dog -- and yet, it is the same name that my uncle's dog had -- probably the first dog I can remember knowing.
I tie my brain in knots fussing over these ridiculous superstitions, and I know it won't get me anywhere, but how else do you cope with the unknown? It's just too much pressure trying to get my life to work out right again in the face of all these new challenges and decisions, after spending four years somewhere where my life was really just right, after all.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
I always feel disoriented when I travel home from college or back again, because it's like traversing two lives in the same day. But this time it feels much worse and much more hopelessly off-balance, because now I have left every last person behind and there is no return trip to New York looming in the near or distant future. Within the span of one day, all of the basic things about my day-to-day life changed: my residence, my job, my dating status, even the weather. (The weather has been too symbolic for its own good: in the last few weeks at Colgate, the weather was unbearably hot and unusually sunny, right up until my last day there -- but then the dark clouds returned, and while the weather was warm when we departed, it became eerily chilly just as we crossed the Massachusetts border.) When I got home and emptied my pockets, all the spare change and receipts that I had picked up during the day took on different meanings. It is as though they were clearly labelled "before" and everything around me had a sign on it that said "after."
Yesterday just seems far too recent to seem so far away.
Yesterday just seems far too recent to seem so far away.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
So yes -- the library project.
I have been working at the library helping to move all the books out before the massive renovation begins on June 15th. During the last school year they installed this massive robot called the LASR (library automated storage and retrieval, pronounced laser) in the back of the library, and during the renovation most of the library's books will live in it. It is essentially two three-story-high aisles of metal bins, with a crane-like machine in each aisle to retrieve the bins. So each day, we scan thousands of books into the bins so the computer knows where they are, and the cranes take them away and bring back new ones, endlessly. The day shift arrives at 8 in the morning and the night shift (mine) closes up at midnight each day, and during all the time in between the LASR goes back and forth and back and forth with its bins. I try to remember that when the machine starts behaving irrationally and throwing little robot fits. I only work for eight hours a day, and usually don't load the LASR for more than four at a stretch. Even machines like a break sometimes.
The books are stored standing up in the bins, and there are all kinds of other jobs to do to prepare them for this. There is duplicate barcoding, where we stick a new barcode on the top of the front cover of the book to make it easier for people shuffling through bins to find the book they are looking for. We have fascinating little machines that will scan the original barcode of the book and then spit out a sticker of the same barcode, except when they're feeling dyslexic and mess it up. Barcoding can be mind-numbing or interesting depending on what section of books you are working on. The great irony of working in a shut-down library for the summer is that so many books pass through your hands each day, but you're not allowed to check out any of them. (The librarians have informed me that this is the great irony of working in libraries in general -- you will never have time to read all the interesting books that cross your path.) Barcoding also makes you incredibly aware of the quirks of book titling in certain subjects. For instance, now that I have barcoded every book in the criminal justice section, I really wish I could send a memo to everyone with inclinations to publish in this subject area to inform them that it is no longer clever (and probably never was) to call your book Crime and Punishment. Likewise, for people publishing law-related books, it is no longer acceptable to use the title "______ on Trial." Too many things are on trial -- homosexuality, colonialism, your mother, you name it. The lack of creativity is astonishing.
Since the LASR bins come in different heights, the books also have to be sorted by height. For this reason I've developed the incredibly useless skill of being able to distinguish a 10" book from a 12" book from a 14" book at a glance. (It is even more useless because the books we classify as tens fall in the range of 7 3/4" to 9 3/4" high -- those that are too big to fit in an 8" bin and just small enough to fit in a 10" bin. So even if I were to attempt someday to impress someone with my knowledge of book size, the numbers I use wouldn't correspond to an actual ruler.) In some ways this height organization is confusing and scary, because all of a sudden order no longer matters. Our precious library of congress system by which we've always filed books can be tossed to the winds. The whole concept of a shelf no longer applies. This took some getting used to. Also, I feel bad for the people next summer whose project will be to get all the books out of the LASR and put them in order again. I can't even imagine how painful that will be.
Of course, the most fun job (albeit sometimes the most frustrating) is loading the LASR itself. In reality it's a fairly tedious process, like all the others. Scan book, place in bin, scan book, place in bin. But the ridiculous shortcomings of the software and mysterious and inexplicable errors make the whole thing an adventure. The machine itself is often cranky and unpredictable. Sometimes scanning a book will produce an error on the first try but scans fine the second time. Sometimes the cranes carrying the bins will jolt tempramentally into the workstations while other times it will ease in calmly. When we have been at it too long, we end up talking to it like a fussy child. I think that all the movies about machines taking over the world and making slaves of humans have it all wrong. This is truly servitude to machines -- babying them, coaxing them, your life revolving around getting them to work properly, while they infuriatingly refuse to make any sense. When one of my co-workers expressed exasperation that the LASR wouldn't scan books properly on the first try, another said to him "It just wants to make sure you know that it's in control." It is.
The most exciting errors are when you find a book that is listed as "On Search". Probably because it was misfiled on the shelves, no one has been able to find it, sometimes for decades! It is hard not to have a feeling of satisfaction at these accidental discoveries, even though it's entirely possible that as many books will be mysteriously lost in the LASR as well. The best part of this job is, once a bin is full, getting to watch the LASR take it away and bring back a new one. No matter how many times I do it, I never get tired of watching it.
But the movement of books around the library is only half of the project. Right behind us, as we clear books out of different sections, the movers come in and disassemble shelves, move boxes of books, and clear out furniture. Every day I come in and re-explore parts of the library that we had finished getting books from, and I discover a strange new Case Library, empty, and yet immense in the absence of books and shelves. Suddenly the strange arrangements of carpet and tiling are noticeable, the rooms seem larger, brighter. We keep talking about what sort of party we should throw in these new-found empty spaces.
Incidentally, next year, while the building is being renovated, the library is being relocated to two different places -- Donovan's Pub and the old ATO house. It seems that we are fusing Colgate's "work hard, play hard" culture in ways never before anticipated...
Since I will never be able to describe it properly, and since pictures are more fun anyway, I have pictures of the library project for you!
I have been working at the library helping to move all the books out before the massive renovation begins on June 15th. During the last school year they installed this massive robot called the LASR (library automated storage and retrieval, pronounced laser) in the back of the library, and during the renovation most of the library's books will live in it. It is essentially two three-story-high aisles of metal bins, with a crane-like machine in each aisle to retrieve the bins. So each day, we scan thousands of books into the bins so the computer knows where they are, and the cranes take them away and bring back new ones, endlessly. The day shift arrives at 8 in the morning and the night shift (mine) closes up at midnight each day, and during all the time in between the LASR goes back and forth and back and forth with its bins. I try to remember that when the machine starts behaving irrationally and throwing little robot fits. I only work for eight hours a day, and usually don't load the LASR for more than four at a stretch. Even machines like a break sometimes.
The books are stored standing up in the bins, and there are all kinds of other jobs to do to prepare them for this. There is duplicate barcoding, where we stick a new barcode on the top of the front cover of the book to make it easier for people shuffling through bins to find the book they are looking for. We have fascinating little machines that will scan the original barcode of the book and then spit out a sticker of the same barcode, except when they're feeling dyslexic and mess it up. Barcoding can be mind-numbing or interesting depending on what section of books you are working on. The great irony of working in a shut-down library for the summer is that so many books pass through your hands each day, but you're not allowed to check out any of them. (The librarians have informed me that this is the great irony of working in libraries in general -- you will never have time to read all the interesting books that cross your path.) Barcoding also makes you incredibly aware of the quirks of book titling in certain subjects. For instance, now that I have barcoded every book in the criminal justice section, I really wish I could send a memo to everyone with inclinations to publish in this subject area to inform them that it is no longer clever (and probably never was) to call your book Crime and Punishment. Likewise, for people publishing law-related books, it is no longer acceptable to use the title "______ on Trial." Too many things are on trial -- homosexuality, colonialism, your mother, you name it. The lack of creativity is astonishing.
Since the LASR bins come in different heights, the books also have to be sorted by height. For this reason I've developed the incredibly useless skill of being able to distinguish a 10" book from a 12" book from a 14" book at a glance. (It is even more useless because the books we classify as tens fall in the range of 7 3/4" to 9 3/4" high -- those that are too big to fit in an 8" bin and just small enough to fit in a 10" bin. So even if I were to attempt someday to impress someone with my knowledge of book size, the numbers I use wouldn't correspond to an actual ruler.) In some ways this height organization is confusing and scary, because all of a sudden order no longer matters. Our precious library of congress system by which we've always filed books can be tossed to the winds. The whole concept of a shelf no longer applies. This took some getting used to. Also, I feel bad for the people next summer whose project will be to get all the books out of the LASR and put them in order again. I can't even imagine how painful that will be.
Of course, the most fun job (albeit sometimes the most frustrating) is loading the LASR itself. In reality it's a fairly tedious process, like all the others. Scan book, place in bin, scan book, place in bin. But the ridiculous shortcomings of the software and mysterious and inexplicable errors make the whole thing an adventure. The machine itself is often cranky and unpredictable. Sometimes scanning a book will produce an error on the first try but scans fine the second time. Sometimes the cranes carrying the bins will jolt tempramentally into the workstations while other times it will ease in calmly. When we have been at it too long, we end up talking to it like a fussy child. I think that all the movies about machines taking over the world and making slaves of humans have it all wrong. This is truly servitude to machines -- babying them, coaxing them, your life revolving around getting them to work properly, while they infuriatingly refuse to make any sense. When one of my co-workers expressed exasperation that the LASR wouldn't scan books properly on the first try, another said to him "It just wants to make sure you know that it's in control." It is.
The most exciting errors are when you find a book that is listed as "On Search". Probably because it was misfiled on the shelves, no one has been able to find it, sometimes for decades! It is hard not to have a feeling of satisfaction at these accidental discoveries, even though it's entirely possible that as many books will be mysteriously lost in the LASR as well. The best part of this job is, once a bin is full, getting to watch the LASR take it away and bring back a new one. No matter how many times I do it, I never get tired of watching it.
But the movement of books around the library is only half of the project. Right behind us, as we clear books out of different sections, the movers come in and disassemble shelves, move boxes of books, and clear out furniture. Every day I come in and re-explore parts of the library that we had finished getting books from, and I discover a strange new Case Library, empty, and yet immense in the absence of books and shelves. Suddenly the strange arrangements of carpet and tiling are noticeable, the rooms seem larger, brighter. We keep talking about what sort of party we should throw in these new-found empty spaces.
Incidentally, next year, while the building is being renovated, the library is being relocated to two different places -- Donovan's Pub and the old ATO house. It seems that we are fusing Colgate's "work hard, play hard" culture in ways never before anticipated...
Since I will never be able to describe it properly, and since pictures are more fun anyway, I have pictures of the library project for you!
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Occasionally I find in myself the capacity to be a friendly, sociable human being, and today this happened as I was climbing up Oak Drive and met a man standing by the bridge carrying a large camera. I had seen him around before, so I stopped to ask if he was the person who took the viewbook and Scene pictures for Colgate, to which he responded that he did a lot of them, anyway. This began a long conversation about photography, Colgate, its scenery, the library and science building projects, reunion weekend, and so on. We said what a shame it was that so many nice trees had to be cut down because of construction, but that at least Colgate was pretty good about planting new ones. Then he pointed to the grove of flowering trees beside the creek that we were standing over. He explained that those trees are the class of '61 (?) grove, and that when a member of that class dies, they plant a new tree there. In all my time here, I never knew that. What an amazing idea. I wish the class of '05 would do that!
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
I feel like I ought to have something insightful or heartwarming to say about graduation, but I don't really, except that all over again I have this sense of time as being incredibly, terrifyingly erratic. When I scrolled to the bottom of my blog to click on the Blogger link to write this, I realized that all my Copan posts from January were still on the front page. For most of the semester -- in fact, for most of the year -- I've been wishing time away, convincing myself that I need to get out of here and that I can't stand this place anymore. It's not entirely untrue. I am tired of the college life. But for all my complaining it was utterly heartwrenching to realize it was over, which only hit me for real as I was processing in for the graduation ceremony and I looked over the top of the tent at the tops of the hills that have framed my life for four years. But I got a handle on myself and managed to stifle the dizzying sensation of time gone all wrong until the next day, when my roommates of three and four years drove off to Pittsburg and left me standing at '34 House, my still-unpacked stuff occupying just a small fraction of the blank, empty room that was our home for two years. I know that I will never again be as close to them as when we were living together, and their departure drove me into a panic. Much as I was ready to leave this place, I was far from ready to leave my friends.
But ironically enough, they have left, and I am still here at Colgate. After another month working on the library project I too will be gone. But until then I will haunt this town and be haunted by memories of people gone away: walks to Roger's, setting up sound gigs, driving to Walmart late at night, watching the Daily Show together. And maybe during that month time will right itself again and the fact that these things are memories instead of daily realities will seem okay and normal after all.
But ironically enough, they have left, and I am still here at Colgate. After another month working on the library project I too will be gone. But until then I will haunt this town and be haunted by memories of people gone away: walks to Roger's, setting up sound gigs, driving to Walmart late at night, watching the Daily Show together. And maybe during that month time will right itself again and the fact that these things are memories instead of daily realities will seem okay and normal after all.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
This is for anyone who has smirked or rolled their eyes or looked away when I've described myself as spiritual but not religious.
I don't know why it's particularly comforting to know that I'm not the only one with that philosophy. I guess it's just that everyone seems to be waving a flag for something, whether it be Catholicism or paganism or Judaism or Islam or atheism, and I seem wishy-washy from all directions when someone asks me what I am and I can't find one word that will explain concisely so that people can pigeonhole me and move on with their lives.
Last semester I was sitting in the back of a car with some friends in the seats in front of me, almost dozing, while they talked about their religions and their beliefs and their reasons for choosing the paths that they have. And I wanted to speak, and say that I was not empty of faith, that I had a sort of nameless collection of things around which I built my understanding and imagining of the world, but I could not. I meant afterwards to at least write down what I wanted to say, and I can't recall now if I did. It certainly didn't make it to the internet, but perhaps it is buried in a journal somewhere. Or perhaps I put it off and off and off until the memory of even wanting to do it escaped me.
But it is there, just hard to pin down and talk about. This excerpt from "Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens is just about the closest thing I've found to a real description of it.
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.
I don't know why it's particularly comforting to know that I'm not the only one with that philosophy. I guess it's just that everyone seems to be waving a flag for something, whether it be Catholicism or paganism or Judaism or Islam or atheism, and I seem wishy-washy from all directions when someone asks me what I am and I can't find one word that will explain concisely so that people can pigeonhole me and move on with their lives.
Last semester I was sitting in the back of a car with some friends in the seats in front of me, almost dozing, while they talked about their religions and their beliefs and their reasons for choosing the paths that they have. And I wanted to speak, and say that I was not empty of faith, that I had a sort of nameless collection of things around which I built my understanding and imagining of the world, but I could not. I meant afterwards to at least write down what I wanted to say, and I can't recall now if I did. It certainly didn't make it to the internet, but perhaps it is buried in a journal somewhere. Or perhaps I put it off and off and off until the memory of even wanting to do it escaped me.
But it is there, just hard to pin down and talk about. This excerpt from "Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens is just about the closest thing I've found to a real description of it.
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.
Monday, April 04, 2005
For some reason there are few things I find more soothing than water. The falling of rain, the flowing of a river, or the lapping of the ocean have a way of making me feel incredibly peaceful and happy. I love boating and swimming, and as far as weather and natural disasters are concerned, intense thunderstorms, torrential downpours, and flooding are by far the most exciting.
Of course I'm sure I wouldn't be thrilled about flooding if it involved an actual river whose anger would destroy houses and things, but when it involves the little creek that runs through my college, how can it be anything but exciting and fun? And that's what happened this weekend. Water, everywhere, falling from the sky, rushing across campus, filling up the lawns, stranding trees and buildings and cars in deep pools, and making both me and my roommate incredibly giddy. And because I'm overly excitable about such things I took pictures!
Of course I'm sure I wouldn't be thrilled about flooding if it involved an actual river whose anger would destroy houses and things, but when it involves the little creek that runs through my college, how can it be anything but exciting and fun? And that's what happened this weekend. Water, everywhere, falling from the sky, rushing across campus, filling up the lawns, stranding trees and buildings and cars in deep pools, and making both me and my roommate incredibly giddy. And because I'm overly excitable about such things I took pictures!