Facaaga ha ka harin.

That's what my aunt said to me. Apparently, it's time I settled down and started a family. To be honest I've been feeling a little left out lately, everyone I know and their younger siblings seem to have been bitten by the marriage (or at least cohabitation) bug. The few still standing are just waiting for Cupid to let loose his fatal arrow (how's that for purple prose?).

On the other hand, I feel like everyone is heading into dangerous territory without any preparation. On the other other hand, perhaps I'm just a worrywart and have prepared myself so thoroughly that I keep finding reasons to postpone the trip.

Anyhow, this isn't the first time an aunt has sagely advised me that I'll be a cajuuso any day now. It just hit a little closer to home because I've recently witnessed the very painful and destructive end of a 20-year marriage. I don't want to go through that. The best way to avoid it is to never get married, isn't it? So why do I want to get married? It just doesn't compute.

Tax Hell

I'm sure nearly everyone in the States is breathing a sigh of relief that April 17 is behind them. Why does the government make us do this every single damn year? Big Brother probably knows more about our finances than we do. Why doesn't the IRS stop pretend it needs us to send in all this paperwork? Just automatically withdraw the measly $3 I owe the state, and deposit the $14 the federal government owes me! Then I can buy my next two grande lattes at Starbucks knowing I'm only spending my tax refund money...

Oh, I forgot.

The reason I wanted to update in the first place: I saw K'Naan at the House of Blues in Cleveland, Ohio on March 30. He was opening for Stephen Marley and his brother Jr. Gong. The Marleys were alright.

K'NAAN, if you happen to be one of the three people reading this, you should know that I think you were awesome. I didn't think you were awesome before. I thought that your voice was grating, and your lyrics completely lacking in irony. But you sound way better live, and sometimes unironic, unselfconscious singing from the heart is moving. I nearly cried during "Blues 4 the Horn", (which has a theme similar to The Arcade Fire's "Haiti") and happily bopped my head with the audience of largely doped-out kids for every beat in "Smile". I'm sure "Soobax" will grow on me, since I bought the album and it's on heavy rotation at home, in my office and at the lab.

Thank you!

And thank you to the Somali cabdriver who wouldn't take my fare after the show. That was really sweet.

Ahem

It's not like I didn't know that this thing wouldn't get updated much. But still, four months? Holy cow. My sole excuse is that nothing much is happening in my life. Really. Aside from the occasional life-altering decision or three, I've had a blessedly mundane winter.

Speaking of life-altering decisions and cows (how is that for a segue?), I've been seriously considering becoming a vegetarian. I do experiments with mice, and we (that's to say, I) often have to kill them. It's the worse part of doing research, and I feel so guilty about taking innocent lives. So I came up with the brilliant idea of restoring some kind of karmic balance by not eating meat. Everyone I've told this to has at first acted surprised to discover I actually eat meat, and then predicted grimly that I will starve to death. I told my supervisor last week, and ever since he's been hounding me, telling me it's a terrible idea, that I will completely blow my future by being too weak to study or conduct proper scientific research. He's not heartless; really, he's a sweet, caring person. It's just that his priorities tend to be somewhat skewed occasionally.

Anywho, are there any vegetarians in the house? How difficult can it be to prepare a balanced meal without killing poor defenceless animals?

Weird Things About Me

Firefly's tag

Rule:

• "Each player of this game starts with the “6 weird things about you”. People who get tagged need to write a blog post of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names."

I'm so normal it's sad. I'm really racking my brain here to think of something weird. I'm just boring.

1. I like food, but rarely feel motivated to eat. I mean hunger is not physically unpleasant for me, and often I don't notice that I haven't eaten all day until I move suddenly and feel a rush of dizziness. I've started working out to kick-start my appetite, but all it does is make me feel thirsty, so I drink lots of water and feel even less hungry. According to some, I need a keeper.

2. I'm happy alone. Not happiest, just content. I will go for a couple of days without talking to anyone or taking calls. It used to freak friends and family out, but I've trained them to get used to it. During my alone time I'm not doing any soul-searching or anything, I'm just recuperating from the little socializing I do the rest of the time.

3. I have these moments of complete shock at my existence, and a niggling suspicion that everything (me, the world, other people) is a dream in someone else's head. I can bring them on, but most often they take me by surprise. The first time I had this feeling I was about 9, and running away from home (which consisted of running away to my aunt's at the other end of town). I was on the bus, and this lady came on the bus with four little kids; they were crying and screaming and the lady was so overwhelmed I decided to entertain the little brats. Soon they were laughing and sitting still and the lady was so grateful. My stop approached and I decided to stay on the bus because one of the little ones was sleeping in my lap. That's when I had this surreal feeling that I wasn't real. It was freaky, to say the least. Since then it comes on maybe once or twice a year. I just sit still for a bit until I've convinced myself that it doesn't matter anyway.

4. That's it, that's all I can think of, except...

5. I don't know 6 people to tag!

To Autumn

Another poem written by John Keats, one of my favorite Romantic poets. The third stanza is just incredibly beautiful, from the rhetorical question to the pensive answer.

1.
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Communication and Commitment

Are the two most dangerous words in the English language. They mean nothing and everything.

It's all fungi to me

I love taking pictures of insects and flowers and stuff that I can zoom in on :) Mushrooms I like because of the textures, and because the scale can be mind-bending.

A Day at the Beach

A fisher man threw this fish away, and kids ran over to watch it flop about. Apparently, it's got botulism, so the fisherman wouldn't let me toss back in the water. Kinda sad.

Bus Stop Companions

Mike and The Mechanics - "The Living Years"

I heard this song on the radio today and loved the lyrics.

I posted the music video from Youtube but it's been pulled. I found a live version which I actually like more. Hope it sticks around.

How You Live Your Life

You are honest and direct. You tell it like it is. You tend to avoid confrontation and stay away from sticky situations. Your friends tend to be a as quirky as you are - which is saying a lot! You tend to dream big, but you worry that your dreams aren't attainable.

How Do You Live Your Life?

Slow and Steady

Your friends see you as painstaking and fussy. They see you as very cautious, extremely careful, a slow and steady plodder. It'd really surprise them if you ever did something impulsively or on the spur of the moment. They expect you to examine everything carefully from every angle and then usually decide against it.

How Do People See You?

It's the little details that kill me, like the garter belt with the folded bills.

I'm self-absorbed and uncaring

This is no epiphany, and nothing new to me. I've always known that I'm not moved by passions and emotions in the same way that most other people are. I just can't get worked up over things. Whether it's anger, joy, jealousy, or despair, nothing people do really gets to me. I also can't read people's emotions very well, and when they tell me how they do feel (having given up on hinting), I'm surprised and baffled. Family and friends have been pointing all this out for years, so I've come to accept it, and mostly shrug it off. The problem is that lately I feel embattled, forced to concede that there's something wrong with me, rather than with all these irrational people who keep wallowing in hormone-induced emotions. And I sometimes resent the stereotyping and occasional snide comments. My ex used to drive me crazy (I lie, it was only mildly annoying) by going on about how I should be more spontaneous, I should express how I feel (ie, be clingy), and I could be more considerate. I wasn't demanding enough, would you believe? So I've developed a complex about this, and the only time I do get irrationally frustrated is when someone demands that I talk to them about how I feel. My heart starts pounding, palms get sweaty, mouth gets dry, the whole nine yards. I frantically search for something, anything, to throw out and appease the questioner. I've learned that it doesn't even matter if what I say makes sense, and in fact the less sensible the better! By hearing something neurotic and unjustified, people feel as if they've been given insight into the core of my being. They go away satisfied, I go away relieved.

The problem is my current boyfriend. I love him, I really do (yes yes, ceeb calayk nayaa). And I know he loves me in return. But there's already this tension that arises when he asks me to tell him what I'm really feeling. Or he says that I get lost in my own head, or that my responses are a little cooler or slower than his. So I feel a little tense, unable to be fake with him because he makes me want to be myself, and yet worried that I lack depth of feeling and my shallowness is off-puting. What I like about him is that occasionally he'll take a step back and admit that maybe, just maybe, he's not being entirely reasonable. We haven't known each other that long, I'm still getting over the ex, and we don't even see enough of each other anyway. But we don't see enough of each other. Surely I could be a little more open and honest to make the best of the time we are together. I try, I really do, but there's this niggling feeling that I'm going to lose him because I'm self-absorbed and uncaring.

Living in Sin

Adrienne Rich

She had thought the studio would keep itself; no dust upon the furniture of love. Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal, the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears, a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat stalking the picturesque amusing mouse had risen at his urging. Not that at five each separate stair would writhe under the milkman's tramp; that morning light so coldly would delineate the scraps of last night's cheese and three sepulchral bottles; that on the kitchen shelf among the saucers a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own--- envoy from some village in the moldings . . . Meanwhile, he, with a yawn, sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard, declared it out of tune, shrugged at the mirror, rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes; while she, jeered by the minor demons, pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found a towel to dust the table-top, and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove. By evening she was back in love again, though not so wholly but throughout the night she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming like a relentless milkman up the stairs.

Steve Irwin (1962-2006)

Steve Irwin, the Aussie zoologist better known as "The Crocodile Hunter" died today. He was filming stingrays off the coast of Queensland and one stung him through the heart. The loss of such a sincere, exuberant person is a real blow. I've often watched his show with bemused affection and assumed, like most people, that he'd never actually be killed while while whispering passionately about one dangerous creature or another. His family must be devastated.

Flower Redux

It rained. Again I got bit by something. That, or the flower is poisonous or something.

Isn't It Pretty?

What's not pretty is the goose-egg I got from some insect that bit me while taking the picture. A quarter-sized bump over my left eyebrow, and painful too. I should take a picture in case it turns out to be the first recorded contact between giant alien insects and mankind.

India.Arie and Akon "I'm Not My Hair"

Wicked good.


Upload music at Bolt.

The Gate to Women's Country

Sheri S. Tepper is an American science fiction author who explores gender, conflict and the environment in her often excellent novels (though they do have definite flaws). I was introduced to her by a friend who loaned me The Gate to Women's Country when I was a freshman in college. It's a sort of utopian tale: after a terrible war, society in America becomes matriarchal, with the women living in towns and essentially running things while men live outside in military installations and make war on the men of other towns. That may sound terrible rather than utopian, but really mostly the men play at war to appease their basic confrontational nature, while the women manage the economy and society with careful attention to preserving the environment. I don't really remember the plot, except that it seemed kind of depressing to me at 18. I was the kind of feminist who believed that men were really reasonable creatures who could actually see the inherent appeal of making society fairer for all involved (given proper encouragement and training of course). Our job as feminists was to loosen the death grip of patriarchy so that an egalitarian future would be the natural heritage of our children. Truth be told I thought American women had little to complain about, compared to what Somali women have to suffer. But I figured even Somali society could be changed without resorting to segregation of the sexes. We already have that, thank you very much, and it's no utopia. Now a more jaded and older me wonders if Tepper's idea doesn't have some merit. However, it's idle speculation only;, I'd get martial on anyone who actually tried to remove the lovely men in my life.

Anyway, I was helping my friend (not the same one) move today and found the book among her collection and I think I will re-read it. It's been sufficiently long enough to forget most of it, so it should be enjoyable. I'll give a second review if anything else strikes me (which I promised for The Years of Salt and Rice but honestly, I lost that book on a trip).