dreams oil joints
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
the state of the union speech is, as far as i'm concerned, meaningless drivel. how can we believe anything this guy says anymore? how can we believe any thing he states as fact? how can we be sure that he will fund any program he describes, be it for iraq or for aids relief? in the past he hasn't exactly shown himself to be truthful or forward in many situations.
harvard interview was today. it was a much more pleasant experience than i had anticipated. had a really good discussion with my first interviewer about the more general aspects of my research, such as its goals, its utility to science etc... A welcome change from being quizzed on the details of the experiments and the background. penn on friday, and that's it. all this traveling has started to wear on me, and rehashing canned answers to canned questions, accompanied by any quantity of free food or alcohol, gets old quickly. i've seen the places i would attend, enough now. i want to relax and enjoy my last semester at columbia.
Monday, January 23, 2006
new, long overdue title.
it's from a translation by peter hargitai of a hungarian poem entitled "Consciousness."
the first two stanzas go:
Dawn sifts heaven from earth
and all the insects and children
swirl into sunlight.
Everywhere the brilliant lightness.
Last night the leaves lit
the trees like butterflies.
I have seen
blue, red, yellow in dreams
and felt the order of things -
not one stone out of kilter.
Dreams oil joints,
and machines become the order of things.
The moon rises by day,
the sun by night.
while that line may not hold for everyone or for every dream, it's certainly something to aspire to....
animula vagula blandula
hospes comesque corporis
quae nunc abibis in loca
pallidula rigida nudula
nec ut soles dabis iocos
my new favorite poem, written by the emperor Hadrian shortly before his death.
it may be a little depressing, despite the cute sound of it. and depressing my life hardly is (vix fracta animula, as it were).
so yeah, there is no point to that contrast. i just like the poem.
(i hate translating poetry, but, roughly:
little soul, wandering, pale, guest and companion of my body, who will now go off to places pale, stiff, barren, nor, as has been your wont, will you make jokes.)
Friday, January 20, 2006
been a while. things have happened. bahamas were awesome. for a pictorial account, check the facebook sites of the people who went.
i've basically sold my soul to school for the next 8 years. but it'll be fun because i'll be in new york for most of my 20's, i already know a bunch of people who are here and/or staying here, and i'm sure i'll meet new people. i just said most of 20's.... shiiiit. the next time i'll have to think seriously about what the hell i'm gonna do for the next stage of my life i'll be almost 30 fucking years old. that's very, very old. many things can happen in 8 years. 8 years ago, i wasn't even in high school. 8 years ago i only had 3 siblings, i hadn't the faintest clue what "ultimate frisbee" was, college didn't even register as something to be thought about. 8 years ago, i was a little kid, twelve years old, not even a teenager. my life wasn't in my hands. so now, to think i've signed over the next 8 years is a little weird. my life will be in my hands. since md/phd programs are free and provide a stipend, i won't be relying on my parents for financial support in any way. i'm not sure how big of a change in my life that will constitute. i don't expect it to be drastic. i'll just have to be a little more careful about how i spend my money, something i think i'm pretty good at right now.
in other news.....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060120/us_nm/life_university_dc_1
this is absolutely fucking incredible. if the students weren't offered money to do this, i'd be less outraged. but to pay students to identify left-wing professors to a right-wing activist group? this should be illegal, at least within the university. i have trouble thinking of actions that would more obstruct a student's potential to learn from these professors, or more stifle a professor's ability to teach and conduct research.
maybe one reason that the vast majority of academia is non-conservative stems from the fact that conservative ideas SUCK, that they aren't good for the world. academia is a setting in which people can examine ideas, think about them extensively, research them etc... perhaps the fact that persons whose job it is to think and research reject conservatism overwhelmingly these days is not solely due to intellectual ferment or intentional ostracism of conservatives in academic circles.
whew. i construct my sentences too much like latin or greek. sort of. in those language, you can make sentences as long and complicated as you want, with many clauses and subclauses, phrases and subphrases, and it's considered elegant, as long as the sentence is grammatically logical. not so with english. oh well.
this semester looks like it's gonna be a blast. if i can get a job.
