The Divinity Student and the Science Library: a Story of Mutual Bewilderment

So, just now I went to put a book on the book truck, and I saw another book that was already on the book truck.

This book, I thought, was called God. Huh, interesting, I thought, I like books called God. I went for a closer look.

Alas, it is not called God. It is called Cod. It is about the fish. According to the subtitle, Cod changed the world.

Well, so did God.

:) Happy finals!

From Me, With Love

Hi all,

So, my throat is sore and my head is spacey, and ironically this is making it difficult for me to focus on the book I have with me, called The Body in Pain, by Elaine Scarry. Instead, I think I will make a nice survey for you to take, if you feel so inclined. And I will answer my own questions now, so as to be fair and not pave a road with good intentions like the last time.

1. Close your eyes. Turn your head slightly to the right. Open them. What do you see? A white table, chairs with gray cushions, a sign detailing what is prohibited in Cabot Science Library.

2. Are you reading a good book now? What is it? I am almost done with Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, but can't quite bring myself to finish it. I think this is because it is the last novel I have to read for class, and beyond that it's all scholarly stuff. Not that I'm not reading the scholarly stuff now, but somehow this is psychologically relevant.

3. It's 2008. Do you believe this? Not really. I mean, I get the date right when I write it down or something, but I think sometimes I still believe it is 2004, when I graduated Bryn Mawr. I don't know why, but when I pick up a book or something that was written in 2004, I'm always like, wow, that's really new... wait... it's not.

4. Do you want to do a paper about Christian tattoos as icons? No.

5. Is it abnormally warm today where you live? Yes!

6. Have you ever been in a serious physical fight? Tell me about it. Why did it happen? What did it feel like? If you've been in many, pick one. I have not been in a serious physical fight. I have been in play-fights, and they feel like there's this energy I always carry that is suddenly focused, absorbed, and released.

7. Can you see out a window right now? If so, describe the first person you see out the window. If there's no person, or no window, tell me who is not there. I see a woman in a denim jacket with red-brown hair, walking on the rock fountain with a child who is out of view. I was going to make up a story about her, but it seems suddenly disrespectful.

8. What is right in front of you that you love? Right now I feel warmly toward this man sitting in a chair with his hands interlaced on top of his bald spot. He is wearing a tan jacket, a button down shirt of an indescribable browny-gray color, and a watch.

9. What is right in front of you that you find perplexing? I am perplexed by two small squares of velcro affixed to the circulation desk.

10. Are you tired? Yes.

11. When is the last time you made a conscious decision to lie? Why did you do so? It was a couple of weeks ago. I did it to preserve a man's good opinion of me across difficulties of language, culture, religion, sexual mores, etc. I did it to make my life easier. I don't know if it has or not.

12. What worries you right now? I am worried because I feel like I have a cold or something, and I need to be healthy when I go to Baltimore. I am worried about my school work. I am worried about the future.

13. What pleases you right now? I am pleased to be wearing shoes, not boots. I am pleased by the feel of the rim of the little garbage can against the arches of my feet. I am pleased that my shift is over in 45 minutes. I am pleased by seeing Charlotte every day, and I am pleased to be home with Rachel and Amy. In a general sense, not right at this moment, clearly.

14. What can you hear right now? Security guards discussing politics. It's interesting.

15. What (approximately) was happening in your life 5 years ago? I was 20 years old... I was still in Europe, I think, travelling with Rachel and Katie. Now I want to look up and see exactly where we were, or if we were coming back yet. I'm going to guess that it was a later part of the trip, perhaps Berlin or Paris or Dublin. Was it in Ireland that Katie told us about this blackcurrent ale or cider or something? And we got some in a pub? I remember the way the streets looked in Dublin, somehow, more than anything else. And I remember that statue of Oscar Wilde. That was in Dublin, right?

16. Has anything fundamentally changed about your emotional life since then? That's a hard question. But I have no one to blame for it but myself. I think I'm on a little more of an even keel than I was then, but fundamentally... I'm not sure that anything is fundamentally changed. Or, I think the way I understand my emotions is a bit different, but the sensations themselves are not, really. Oh... I have noticed that I am much more easily moved by things than I used to be. I find myself tearing up over lots of things, on TV or whatever, that never would have produced such a reaction before. I don't know why that is, but I think it has something to do with getting older, having a range of experiences that stretch out to contact more than they could before, and... something I can't describe, something about a broader awareness of just how vulnerable we are, of just how bad things can be. (That doesn't explain what I want to explain at all, and sounds weird. But still.)

17. Do you have any secret that you have never told anyone, at all, ever, even anonymously? I honestly didn't think so as I was writing that, but now I am thinking of things that I don't think I ever told anyone. However, I don't have anything that is a constant presence with me, that I have never told anyone, at all, ever, even anonymously.

18. Have you ever hugged a book? Yep.

19. Thrown one across the room? Yep.

20. Hit one? Yes.

21. Kissed one? I think so.

22. Destroyed one on purpose? No.

23. Yelled at one? Yes.

24. Refused to continue reading at one point due to a moral objection to certain events, but then just had to get back to it? Would I make up such a question if the answer was no? It was The Witching Hour by Anne Rice.

25. Have you done all those things to other people? I have not thrown a person across the room, nor destroyed one on purpose. And... this is interesting... I don't think I have ever explicitly refused to associate with someone because of moral objections. I think the only people I have had deep, sincere, lasting moral objections to with regard to their behavior have not been my friends. What does this mean?

26. What is the strangest thing you have ever hugged? Probably a dumbwaiter. It was a big one.

27. Kissed? A locker.

28. The very first time you were enamoured of someone, what did you do in immediate reaction? I ran weird circles around my room, sort of jumping over my bed, listening to an a capella tape of "For the Longest Time" and singing.

29. Name something unusual that had some influence in your sexual development. Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

30. And something cliched? Spin the Bottle. But I wasn't playing, really.

31. How about a minor guilty secret? Doesn't have to be about sex, just something not-huge that bugged you. Hmm... I never bought Annie on my Mind, in high school, even though I wanted to read it, because I didn't want the cashier to think I was a lesbian. And I thought that was dumb, especially since I was often buying books with gay men in them. But I still didn't buy it.

32. What about a small act of heroism? There was this man lying in the alleyway beside Merriam Theater, and everybody was sort of uncomfortably hoping he was ok and not dead and not in serious trouble, and I finally just went out myself and woke him up and made sure he was alright. That's pretty small, but it felt like kind of a big deal when everybody was older than me and technically more experienced in life.


That's all folks, time to leave work!  Take my survey for a rip-roaring good time!

Notes to (or on) the World

It's snowing. It's been a real winter so far. Several real snowstorms and lots of trudging through ice and snowbanks and having big snow crystals in my hair and finding my feet sliding out from under me. I think I'm happy about it. Or, it's a pain, and it's cold, and it's difficult to get around, but somehow I feel some kind of strange joy when I am out in it nonetheless. I did this morning, anyway.

And last night, I was cutting home through the woods and I suddenly noticed how beautiful it was, and how quiet. I looked over and I saw this small tree, thin and curvy and bent, standing by itself. I felt like this was Christmas, or Advent, this was something I'd been waiting for. So I stood there looking for awhile, debating whether I wanted to get my feet wet to go over to it, and then I got off the path and trudged through the snow, and when I made it to the tree I fit perfectly against the curve of it, with my arm around the side and my cheek against the cold, wet bark.

I hope this will do as a resumption of posting. If I have any faithful readers left. ;)

A more petty note is that people should not write in library books. Ever. Especially not if it's a complicated novel like Midnight's Children which I am trying to read and pay attention to, but somebody has underlined half of every page and written crap like "style" and "shows failure of omniscient narrator" all over the margins. Just read! Don't write! Or, if you must, get your own book or write notes on a notebook or something.

New Job #1

Here are some interesting things about my new job #1, which is working at the Cabot Science Library at Harvard. (These interesting things are brought to you at this point because I am avoiding doing more work on my new job #2, which is online writing tutoring.)

1. The other day I was shelf-reading, which is when you look at all the call numbers of the books on a shelf to make sure they are in order, and I found a book that was not. So, I was bringing it to its spot, and I saw that it was called Order Out of Chaos. This was so pleasing that I wrote it down.

2. I found a book for Charlotte called Newton's Darkness, which was actually two plays about Isaac Newton! But it was not good, so I brought it back.

3. My boss, before leaving to get a battery for her watch, which is two silver wildcats facing each other, came over and said, "Here. You can read about Polish Jews," and handed me a newsletter called "Gazeta" about Polish Jews.

4. My boss is a Polish Jew.

5. Directly after I wrote #4, a man came up and checked out a book called The Nazi War on Cancer.

6. Downstairs, there is a locked room, and inside there are lots and lots of old to very old books, mostly about engineering. When I first came, I thought that ENG stood for English, but not in a science library, it seems.

7. Also downstairs, there are the kind of bookshelves that all squish together until you press a button, at which time they move very slowly and mechanically to open where you want to go, and I am always a bit concerned that they will suddenly move swiftly and autonomously to squish me while I am walking between them to put back a bound volume of periodicals.

8. My boss has announced that she is going to lose 5 pounds "as if her life depended on it," using some newly approved diet pills. I said I doubt her life could depend on 5 pounds, and she said no, but her clothes could. I conceeded the point.

9. My boss has also said that she might go to NYC for some kind of crazy Japanese hair-straightening treatment that costs $500.

10. Another person who works here is a slight, graceful, quiet Hispanic man who kind of sways when he walks, but subtly. And whenever he uses the computer he brings up all kinds of tango websites and leaves them up when he goes.

11. My boss is named Lidia.

12. Lidia and another boss, named Allen, are having a conflict about how many hours I should work, which is confusing for me.

13. The man who just checked out a book was named Claudiu, which strikes me as highly unusual.

14. Somehow when I was closing up yesterday, I ended up trying to help this young Korean woman understand her registration instructions for whatever program she was doing here, but since she did not grasp all the English and I had no idea what her program might be about or require, we did not get very far.

15. I think Lidia thinks that I'm sleeping with Rachel, because she keeps commenting on my necklace, and when I told her it was my roommate she asked all these questions like how long have we lived together and did I get along with her family and kept saying how GREAT it was, and in other contexts kept talking about gay people, even though it was not really appropriate to the conversation.

16. Even though all these interesting things happen here, I am ready to go home now. But it is only 2:28. I guess I will do my other job.

Hell Hath No Fury...

... like me, right now. I was here in Lamont at 12:30 last night, happily using the last 15 minutes of library openness to put the finishing touches on the 8th page of my paper... why, then, was I here again before 9 AM, when the paper is not in any way due today? Let me tell you.

So, at 12:30, the computer abruptly stopped everything it was doing and told me it had gone into a "Deep Freeze" mode and that the keyboard and mouse were inaccessible. I got up to inquire as to why this had occurred, and discovered that all the student computers had, in fact, done this. I then was told that they do this EVERY SATURDAY at 12:30, but usually they are closed so it doesn't matter, and I guess they just didn't both to tell anyone that this was going to happen. If I had known even 5 minutes ahead of time, I could have saved my document and sent it to myself with NO TRAUMATIC EFFECTS whatsoever... but I didn't. A fairly nice young man came over and tinkered futilely with the computer, during which process an appallingly loud FIRE ALARM started going off literally in my ear for a minute and a half. This is apparently the way that Lamont informs its patrons that it is time to leave, and also permanently damages their hearing. My ear is still slightly achy/itchy this morning.

So I left, with no knowledge of how much paper I had lost, and no copy of the paper on anything but this machine. It was, of course, dark and rainy, though thankfully I had an umbrella. I started stomping home, and as I got to the science center, I caught sight of a very drunk young man in something like a slightly oversized suit jacket. And other clothes too, but not a whole suit. He was walking along, swerving all over the path like I've never seen, totally alone. So at first when I saw him I was nervous, not certain of what he was doing or what was going on, but as he got past me I realized, as he stumbled over to the rope that bounds off the grass and then confusedly to a bush, that he was probably totally disoriented and trying to go home. But in this state who knew if he even knew where his home was. I really didn't know what to do. I didn't want to approach him in case he was agitated or scary, and even if I had I wouldn't have known where to take him if he told me he lived in X dorm, but I also didn't want him to keep wandering around and get hypothermia, or stumble into the road, or just fall asleep with alcohol poisoning or something.

So I followed him. It was a bit awkward, since he kept stopping and drifting off in different directions, or just standing there for a long time, but I tailed him all the way back to the other end of the yard. At one point there was a hopeful moment when he seemed to be veering towards the door of what I hoped was a dorm, but it was short-lived, and the next thing I know he was, in fact, stumbling into the road across from the Au Bon Pain, heading on out into Harvard Square. Now I really didn't know what to do. It didn't make sense to follow him all the hell over Cambridge, but it was stupid to leave him now after all that, and when he was potentially in a more dangerous situation.

I was hestitating on my side of the road, when a shadow figure sort of loomed up toward me out of the darkness... and it turned out to be a nice, sweet-looking young man in a big bulky coat who wanted to know when the buses stopped running. For no reason I understand except that I wanted to give him hope or something, I said that I thought they were still running (I actually didn't have the slightest idea) but that I knew the subway had stopped, or stopped around now, or something. When I looked up again I saw that I had lost the drunk boy, and so I decided to go over to the ABP, which apparently is open very late, and ask them if they had seen him, and also if they would call the police. I should interject that my phone had run out of batteries in the early afternoon. As I made it over there, I saw there was a policeman standing in the doorway! I went over to him and explained the situation. He said he had seen the drunk guy and wasn't sure what was going on with him, but, after ascertaining that I didn't know him or where he was supposed to be, he told me that he would check up on him and help him get home, and disappeared purposefully around the corner.

So I continued walking home. At this point my feet and the bottoms of my pants were extraordinarily wet, and I was extraoridinarilly agitated. Being outside in the middle of the night by myself was NOT AT ALL acceptable, and now I had an even longer walk ahead of me than I normally would. At one point I gave up and hailed a cab, only to find that the cab driver didn't know where Beacon St. was. Now, under normal circumstances I could have told him how to get there, most likely, but at this point I was so at the end of my rope that I wasn't sure I could think that clearly, and I also wasn't sure that I wanted to get in a cab with a driver who didn't know where Beacon St. was. It's an enormous street! It's the main street in Somerville, which is so much enveloped by Cambridge that there is NO REASON, at the proximity we were, for this man who navigates streets for a living not to have a clue where Beacon St. was. So I walked on. My shoelaces on one shoe were permanenetly untied at this point, and they and my umbrella made all sorts of unpleasant flapping and slapping noises that I tried not to attribute to frightening attacker people sneaking up behind me.

I finally made it home, called Charlotte and Rachel for some support, and got to bed probably a little before 3. I set my alarm for 7. I got out of bed around 8 and made it in the door here by 9. I came right over to the computer I was working on, and found that it had automatically saved a draft of my paper... that had nothing but gibberish on the very top line, a disgruntled arrangement of the words "Harvard College Libraries." It also had the most recent copy I had saved... about 2 pages short of what I had left with. Two fairly hard-won pages in a paper that is not going at all the way I want it to at this point.

So I went up to the circulation desk and asked the guy working there if there was someone I could speak with who dealt with the computers.

"Uhhhh..." he said with a little chuckle. "Well, there's no one who deals with the computers exactly, but there might be someone who could help..." "

Well," I began, "I was here last night at about 12:30..." And that's as far as I got.

"Oh. That sounds like... I don't think I can help you." He went and got some kind of administrator, telling him there was a "lady" here who needed help. (Am I a lady to college undergrads now? Not that I would necessarily want to be a girl, but it was weird. I've also noticed that in this post I've taken to using 'young man' for men younger than me, meaning they are younger than me but I'm not sure how much. Bizarre quarter-century-ness.) Anyway, the administrator came over--he looked uncannily like Ben from lost--and listened to my tale of woe, expressed doubt that anything would help, but came over to look at the computer. At least he told me that he had told the powers that be to stop the deep freeze during exams, but somehow it had not worked. Which is slightly better than if no one did anything at all and just decided it didn't matter. So Ben looked through my files, and poked through some other files, and came to the conclusion there was nothing to be done, unless I waited til Monday and talked to some computer expert folks at Widener. I said this would not be helpful, and explained fairly calmly that I lived off-campus, that due to this problem I had not gotten to sleep until 3 AM, and that I had to wake up again at 7 in order to get back here, so it really was a major inconvenience. He was not unsympathetic, but seemed more concerned with expressing his own innocence than actually listening to what I had to say, which I find a lamentable human trait. If I am ever in a customer service position again, please remind me that it is more important to hear people than to excuse yourself.

So that's it. Now I'm here, I'm starving, I'm exhausted, and I have to re-write 2 pages of an already plodding, idiotic paper.

Fuck you, Lamont library. If I knew how to dismantle this alarm behind my head, I completely would, and take it as a goddamn trophy to hang up on my wall. If I could dismantle this computer without causing further harm to my paper, I would be sorely tempted. I don't have anything more to say, but I have not exhausted my rage and disappointment. I want my two pages, my breakfast, and my equanimity. Fuck you.

This is100% NOT the Short Paper I Am "Writing"

But everyone seemed so convinced that I would take it, and I don't want to disappoint. I will try to make it interesting.

A Better Survey Than The Ones Above And Below - for girls and gay guys
Basics
What do you prefer to be called?:	Darling.
When were you born and where?:	I'm afraid I don't recall.
Where do you currently reside?:	Any one of a number of libraries at Harvard University.
Getting to know you
What could you eat for the rest of your life?:	Breyer's mint chocolate chip ice cream. And puppies. (Apparently this is going to be one of those liberally untrue surveys).
Where is your favorite place to visit locally?:	I am partial to the tunnel between the really big library and its auxiliary.
What is your favorite place to visit for a vacation?:	It's nice to get out of the library and take a stroll across the yard. I should capitalize yard to clarify things, but suddenly that seemed prententious. The problem with going to Harvard is that you become hyper-vigilant about seeming pretentious, and that in itself may in fact be a form of pretense.
What is your preference: AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, etc.?:	Telepathy. It's really the only way to whisper sweet nothings to world leaders in diplomatic meetings and watch their ears turn red.
If you could magically appear in full costume in a movie, which would it be:	I would like to appear in full costume for Elizabeth, but in something totally different... like Brokeback Mountain, maybe. Or vice versa.
Which role would you play?:	The star. Or the crazy old lady.
What is your favorite accessory?:	I am always fond of my Bryn Mawr ring, and currently charmed by a new little snake.
What is your dream career?:	Telepathic Mischief Maker Laureate.
Which country would you live in if you had the choice?:	Narnia
Do you believe in the Loch Ness Monster?:	Believe in it, sure. Believe it, not after Valentine's Day 1997.
How about ouija boards?:	I like my ghosts like I like my liquor: I don't have anything to use as a punchline, so just pretend.
Which would you rather be stuck in?
Winter blizzard or summer heat/humidity?:	Blizzard, provided no threat to life and limb. I always feel the need to put these caveats. As though some sinister force is waiting to trip me up based on a casual omission of stipulation.
Hurricane or Earthquake?:	Good God, I'm taking a class on Katrina. EARTHQUAKE. Same stipulations apply as above.
An opera or a football game?:	Opera!
A closet or an elevator?:	A closet? Unless I was in the elevator with someone interesting. Like those questions where you have to pick famous people you want to have dinner with. Pick three people, alive or dead, that you would like to be stuck in an elevator with. Or a closet, I guess, but why would you be stuck in a closet? I guess if it were full of people and you couldn't reach the door handle. And maybe if one of the people was malicious and incredibly strong! Choose wisely when you pack your closet, everyone.
a railroad track with an oncoming train or hanging from a carnival ride?:	Hanging from a ride, but only with Noah from Into the Dream.
A fight between friends or a room filled with scary spiders?:	I'm usually fine with spiders.
Randoms
Who are you jealous of and for what reason?:	You, you sexy brilliant thing.
which type of salad dressing do you prefer?:	French. Especially the Catalina/Country French sort. Bleu Cheese. Especially crumbly.
Can you eat with chopsticks?:	I can also terrorize small insects with them. But I don't hurt them. I like small insects.
...Are you addicted to myspace? Tell the truth.:	In precisely the same way that I am addicted to heroin.
In the Opposite sex (or same if you are gay)
What is your favorite eye color?:	Aubergine.
What is the first thing you notice when you are attracted to him?:	Genital area.
Do you like light, sparkling hair or smooth, dark hair?:	Dark sparkling hair. Like if champagne were made with bourbon.
Any preferred height?:	Nope.
What is one thing he could say that would make you melt?:	I'm not going to write that here. Particularly if poised with a tattoo needle and reading steamy poetry.
What is the most romantic scenerio you can think of?:	Sex under the table in the aforementioned diplomatic meeting, while transmitting crucial moments to the world leaders with their faces substituted for ours.
Do you need a ring, if he were to propose?:	I would rather that not be done over the phone.
Are you crushing on anyone in particular?:	Yes to the spirit, but I feel that "crushing on" is a silly phrase. Just my $0.02.
If not, who is the closest thing to *drool* you can think of?:	Now the phraseology is getting so silly that I refuse to play. Is that pretentious? Alas, I think so.
Fashion expression
What is your favorite color to wear?:	Red? But I wear other colors more. I don't know. Puce.
Is there an article of clothing you wear every day?:	There's an article of clothing I wear NO days. Many, in fact.
What brings out the color of your eyes?:	I guess brown things. And maybe olive. Sometimes black. So if I had a gown made of grass and dried leaves and tree bark and the spaces between stars.
Are your nails painted? If so, what color?:	My nails are actually painted on. It's a swell party trick to peel them right off again. Not for the faint of heart.
What would you call your style?:	Jarvis Erik W.
What is your frequent shop? (department store):	What is my frequent shop??
Is your hair short or long?:	Kinda medium in need of cut.
Is it your natural color?:	No, and I'll never tell you what that is. Not unless you call me darling under the table at a diplomatic conference.
Do you prefer to be tan or pale?:	A gentleman never tells.
Friends
Do you get very personal with your friends?:	Very.
Are you friends with two or more different 'groups'?:	At the same time? I'm not that kind of girl.
Who is most simliar to you?:	Huh...my first instinct is Becky, because we spend so much time together that we've rubbed off. (I'm going to keep Rachel's answer for this one, because I think it is very apt.)
Who is most opposite?:	Huh...my first instinct is Becky, because we spend so much time together that we've rubbed off, and bits of us keep sort of floating ito this central vortex between us, and drifting away, thus creating an ever-increasing number of differences.
Who do you suppose will take this survey after you?:	Good God, you think I am so preoccupied with jealousy to think about that sort of thing in the act of taking it? Well... you're not wrong. It will probably be this handsome fellow across the way from me, damn his non-aubergine survey-stealing eyes.
Finale
What time is it?:	TIME TO WRITE MY PAPER. I'm hungry. This was not a smart idea. I hope you liked it anyway.