Category: deep thoughts

  • question

    If you order a pair of pants and they turn out to be just a bit on the small side (as in, they fit and you can breathe, but they are definitely ‘snug’). Do you send them back for a size that would be a bit roomier–maybe even too roomy? Or do you hold on to them with the assumption that you’ll soon lose enough weight for them to fit well?

  • I will lift up my hands…

    like a rock
    This passage moved me today, as I contemplated those experiences in our lives that result in a shift of faith. From Aaron Sach’s The Humboldt Current, speaking of Emerson’s loss of religious faith:

    For much of his life, Ralph Waldo Emerson kept a print of Mt. Vesuvius hanging in the front entryway of his house. He had actually climbed the great volcano once and made a point of noting the sensation of warmth in his soles and the experience of peering down at the caldera, “the hollow of salt and sulphur smoking furiously beneath us.”…Perhaps it was meant to inspire him to live with more fire and intensity, to embrace the present–to imagine that at any instant, like the villagers of Pompeii and Herculaneum, he too might be swallowed by ash and frozen in place.

    Emerson started living for the moment when he started losing his faith. He started losing his faith when his wife started to die, in the fall of 1830, when he was twenty-seven. Before Ellen, the church had been his world; now his buttresses were fracturing. Deprived of his imagined future, he tried to savor every present moment with her. When she slept, he read, to distract himself…Facing utter aloneness, he turned not to God but to the physical world. Through much of Western society, science was beginning to challenge religion, and, from now on, immersion in nature would anchor Emerson’s philosophy.

    Within two months, Ellen was dead. Emerson felt a void that could not be healed by any eventual salvation. He couldn’t live in the future tense. Within two years, he had left his pulpit. A couple of years after that, he would start writing his first book: Nature.

    During the months between Ellen’s death and his decision to abandon the church, Emerson reached a watershed in his intellectual an spiritual explorations. In March 1832, on one of his daily visits to Ellen’s tomb, he suddenly ripped the lid off her coffin and stared at her remains. Then, pondering ashes and dust, he urged his congregation, in consecutive sermons, to focus on the “virtues,” even the “pleasures,” that were near at hand…He exclaimed: “Is it not better to intimate our astonishment as we pass through this world if it be only for a moment ere we are swallowed up in the yeast of the abyss? I will lift up my hands and say Kosmos.”

    Pic above is mine of Emerson’s gravesite (flanked by his second wife Lidian and their daughter Ellen) at Sleepy Hollow cemetery

  • hair again

    I keep vacillating between getting another haircut or growing it out. Not the world’s most important decision, but…
    during the summer it’s always nice to have hair long enough for a ponytail,
    but then again, short hair dries so much faster when one is swimming often.

    I think for now, my lack of decision means that it’s growing out. But I’m not sure I’m really committed to it. I saw a vid of me teaching the last time I had long hair and I realized that my hair is just so fine & thin that it doesn’t really look healthy when it’s long. When short it has much more body. So what to do?

  • too squeaky-clean?

    Being a crunchy-granola gal, I’ve tried in all kinds of ways to reduce my carbon footprint and overconsumption of resources, including water. But I have to say that it’s just agony for me to go without a daily shower. I’ve been experimenting with “skipping a day” and that whole day that I do, I feel off-kilter and gross. I don’t particularly want to spend time with non-familial humans when I haven’t showered. And running my hands through my day-old hair grosses me out.

    I’m all for re-wearing clothes until they’re dirty, but I think I’m a big fat FAIL at not bathing. Like when I saw Heather’s post today, I realized, wow, the only times I’ve gone three days without bathing have involved hospitalization (meaning: I’ve had surgery and couldn’t).

    My difficulty with not showering might be a result of my uber-sensitive nose–if I don’t want to sit next to me because of the unwashed smell, it’s pretty tough to feel normal. Of course it might just be that I’m a particularly greasy-stinky human and so I have to bathe more than most people.

    What do you think? Any sympathy or advice for this shower-addict?

  • now, with more cowbell

    Did that crazy meme where you do a google search to see what you need (to play along, enter “[your name] needs” into google and report your findings). My top 10 hits:

    1) Jana needs psychotropic medications
    2) Jana needs A Home
    3) Jana needs your help
    4) Jana needs to get her ass back to new york
    5) Jana needs a bang trim
    6) Jana needs the help
    7) Jana needs at least version 1.4 of Java®
    8) Jana needs to find that peace and soften her anger towards her Father
    9) Jana needs ya Very Happy
    10) Jana needs to stand up for herself

    with a bonus #11:
    Jana NEEDS MORE COWBELL!. JANA COWBELL!

    PS: I undoubtedly need a lot of help, a bang trim, and to get back to New York…

  • Lucky

    We’ll have three Friday the 13ths this year. I’ve never found them to be particularly unlucky days (how ’bout you?). John started a twitter thread to record 13 Lucky Things for today and I’m playing along. Here are my tweets:

    Lucky Friday #1: found fav cashmere sweater immediately upon opening drawer in sleepy fog of awaking and realizing ‘must-now-drive-carpool’

    Lucky Friday #2: Flan. In fridge. And I have a spoon.

    Lucky Friday #3: calendar page: empty. (though ‘to-do’ list is plenty long)

    Lucky Friday #4: New silver hoop earrings, tinkling lightly as I walk

    Lucky Friday #5: Three gigantic farm-fresh tomatoes broiled in the oven. And I have a fork.

    Lucky Friday #6: My podcast intro song, “I Fell Off My Name,” randomly playing on my iPod mix while I’m exercising

    Lucky Friday #7 & 8: Rain outside while I’m cozy inside. Wearing socks handknit by Mom.

    Lucky Friday #9: some fav lyrics–“Oh hold me like a baby that will not fall asleep.Curl me up inside you and let me hear you feel the heat”

    Lucky Friday #10: Finishing up with book that’s been recalled by the univ library. Will put me in good graces with ILL again.

    Lucky Friday #11: Finished reading _Oryx & Crake_ last night so I get to start a new novel tonite. Which one will it be?

    Lucky Friday #12: cornbread w/bean stew for dinner. Daughter asks “is there anything that doesn’t taste better with cornbread?”

  • getting it done

    jade plant flower
    Yesterday I set aside the whole day to attack a pile of papers that needed to be “dealt with” as well as catching up on other tasks that were looming. It was not fun, but afterwards I felt like I’d really accomplished something (and the pile is gone–hooray!). Today I have been doing more of the same and it feels fantastic.

    The weight of unfinished tasks is too heavy a load to carry for very long…

  • creature of habit

    xmas
    Back in 1990 or so I wore this dress when I was a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding. I liked the dress and thought the fit was flattering. I’ve also always been a sucker for plaid taffeta (my fav dress as a young girl was red plaid taffeta).

    Well this pic was taken in 2000, when I was still wearing this dress at least once/yr. Recently I put together some FaceBook pics of numerous formal dates on which I wore this same dress. I was pretty surprised–I hadn’t realized just how much I’d liked it until I thumbed through all those old pictures!
    With Ryan
    With Todd
    With Aaron
    At Steph’s wedding

    So now I wonder how weird it is that I’ve worn this same dress for so many events? I tend to have a fairly small wardrobe of clothes that I really love. I’m not the kind of gal that gets a new dress for every occasion.

    How about you? Do you have some favorite clothes that you’ve worn repeatedly through the years?

  • in the commons

    I’m a fan of Creative Commons. I share my photos, my web content and my podcasts with CC licensing, which means that you’re free to use my stuff, but you’ve got to give me credit if you do so. Sure I know that people ‘steal’ my pics sometimes–it happens most often with pics of me that are reposted by these folks (which, btw, I find fairly disturbing but I try not to think about it too often).

    Recently I discovered that a picture of me was lifted from John’s flickr feed and was used to illustrate a misogynistic blog article. I learned this because a friend had seen the article and recognized me in the photo. This made me feel incredibly uncomfortable–primarily because I felt that my picture being affiliated with the post implied that I had endorsed the writing or was somehow involved with it (FWIW, because the article detailed the sexual exploits of the author, I felt it was possible some people might assume that I’d had a relationship with him). Now in this case the blog author didn’t use appropriate CC attribution, so I dropped a comment on his post suggesting that he review the rules for the Commons and also made it clear that I had no connection to the author’s words despite my image being on display. Within 48 hours my pic was gone, replaced by that of another nameless woman.

    I tend to assume when I license something for Creative Commons, that my generosity will be mirrored with responsibility on the part of those who use my work. Surely I am naive. And there’s little that I can do when my images are connected with content that’s antithetical to my values, especially if the user has followed the rules of the Commons by giving appropriate attribution (which, in some cases might be even more discomfiting than if the image was used anonymously because my flickr identity links directly to my various websites).

    I’m not going to stop sharing via Creative Commons and if anything I think I’ve got a bit thicker skin now–so when this happens again (and I’m just assuming it will) I won’t take it so personally. However, I’d like to know if any of you are wary of the Commons or have been burned by the unattributed use of your work? Many of my friends add a copyright watermark to their photos to discourage theft, and while I’ve considered this, I figured it not worth the time investment on my part. Perhaps I should reconsider?

  • just so you know

    –those blue streaks in my hair…well, I most certainly did not violate my resolve to not dye my hair.

    –so my dissertation adviser now eavesdrops on my blog. How’s a person supposed to blog guilt-free when she knows that there’s research and writing to be done?

    –I swam an easy 1000m at lunch today, trying to keep cool in the nearly-90 degree heat. When I came home I looked rather longingly at the pile of sweaters from my trip that I’ll probably never wear here in SoCal.

    –had the heebie-jeebies last night after reading the “finding the murdered body” scene in this book. Ghastly, creepy stuff, that. Ugh.

    –have been thinking about my costume for this upcoming event when it dawned on me that I already have an Edwardian-era dress–that white one I wore on a rather important occasion 16 years ago. Do you want to take bets on whether it still fits? And I wonder, for events such as this one if being period-correct is really that important, or is it just an excuse to wear a corset and garter belt?

    –my mailbox has been chock-full of this kind of porn lately–what about yours?

    PS: the blue streaks match the color of the new blue wall in my bedroom…

  • because there is no recession for a sick kid…


    I’m sure you’ve all heard of St. Jude’s Hospital, the world-class medical facility that never turns away a child because they can’t pay for healthcare. My biochemist brother David is a researcher at St. Jude’s–his lab has a robot that tests thousands of chemical samples for possible therapeutic properties.

    Recently he called my attention to this video clip of a teen with osteosarcoma (scroll down and click on the link from the Nov 25 show), the same type of bone cancer that I had at age 12. I know it’s a busy season and the economy is awful this year, but if you’re blessed with any surplus to share, St. Jude’s is a worthy cause. Though I wasn’t treated at their facility, they are one of the sponsors of a long-term cancer survivor study that has been invaluable in giving me information about the health issues that I will continue to face because of my high-dose chemotherapy treatments (with their life-altering side-effects).

    Pic above is of me back in 1984 when I was undergoing my cancer treatments.

  • simply overwhelmed

    I just wanted to add one note even though I already blogged today…

    One of the gifts of this crazy internet world has been the many beautiful people that I would never have known otherwise. I don’t dare make any kind of list recounting the various interactions (it would take days and I’m sure I would forgot so many!). But for right now I’m just feeling awed by the sweetness of some recent encounters.

    As I sit here I am wearing a necklace gifted to me by G, who spent much of the last weekend with us. As I make arrangements for our winter trip, I am simply overwhelmed by offers of places to stay as we travel, those who have offered to loan winter clothing, and those who I will finally get to meet in-person.

    Thank you just doesn’t stretch far enough to cover all of this goodness. :)