Ode to a paper deadline

Oh, that you were succinct and timely
Like the full stop of this strophe.

But instead you run on,
and on,
and on,
Needlessly extending,
delaying,
postponing,
Without hint,
or rhyme,
or reason for doing so
Requiring authors to collect,
and analyze,
and run more data
And ultimately to re-write,
re-shape,
re-reflect on their submission
Spending night,
after night,
after exhaustingly late night
Putting in one last chart,
one last plot,
one last conclusion
Before finally,
thankfully,
mercifully,
(and without warning)

You end.

Nice Goals

I visited a couple of art museums yesterday, and while I haven't had any formal art history training, I feel like I'm pretty good at getting the big picture.

Take Henry Matisse, for example. The "bored, rich, white dude that decided to take up painting." Now he's got a museum dedicated to him. The commentary provided for his artwork went on and on about how he really wanted to infuse the colors of the blue, blue Mediterranean sea into his paintings and everything changed substantially after his visit to Tahiti and blah blah blah. I don't know if I buy it. I think he might have just wanted an excuse to stare at naked women all day. (Actually, I really liked some of his impressionism stuff, especially the statues. I love the idea of presenting what you see, not what is visible.)

Or take, for example, the museum of Marc Chagall. The audio tour included with my visit (thank the gods for student discounts!) provided the meaning of every last brushstroke. Do you really think Chagall used the crucifix to represent his father's hat on his 26th birthday, the trials of his people in Belarus, and the end of suffering to the Jews? Or do you think that Chegall, a Jew, was merely including the crucifix because his employers were Christian churches? (Actually, I was baffled and in awe at the incredible woven tapestries he designed. The amount of skill and precision they must have required... Incredible!)

But what gets me even more is that Chegall was actually alive when they dedicated his museum. In fact, he designed the museum and placed his paintings. I would have been fascinated to have him give the audio tour–or at least offer a rebuttal to the current version. What would he have said? Would he have called it a bunch of hogwash?


And then I stumbled across XKCD: explain today and realized that Randall probably has an even harder time. Not only do his comics get critiqued, they often get over-analyzed. And he's STILL ALIVE WHEN THIS HAPPENS. What gets me even more is the discussion section: "And you, sir, are a canonical example of an outlier. Seriously, though, go to http://google.com [hyperlink included, just in case you missed it] and type 'is an acquired taste.'"


Someday when I grow up, I'm going to be a famous artist. And then I'm going to show up in disguise at all the fancy-schmancy art dinners and say, "Oh I heard Nathan talking about how his latest painting entitled 'apple by book' is actually a reference to the Garden of Eden as written in The Bible and in fact suggests that history is a tangled mess to nail down." I'd be the master troll.

Love from Nice, where the water is blue, the houses are pastel, and you can't help but look away from the camera when you take a selfie.

Becoming acquainted

I forgot my bike on the bus today. It felt good.

Not because I had left a (mostly just) sentimental transportation device on a public vehicle that would have been a hassle to recover, but because, as I was walking away empty-handed, the bus driver honked the horn and patiently waited for me to realize my error. This was the same bus driver I had chatted with my entire ride about South-By, traffic, the 30 route, and how more people should take public transportation... This was also the same driver who, when I got on the bus, greeted me with a welcoming smile and a reference to the conversation we'd had yesterday.

I love taking the bus. I feel proud to say that I haven't driven once to school this entire semester, and even though the experience isn't always the most pleasant (sometimes it might smell like an armpit and sometimes your bus might be 20 minutes late...and sometimes both of those things happen in the same day), I feel like I'm contributing to a better environment.

But what I really liked about my experience today was that it had become routine enough that the driver recognized me. I haven't had a lot of experiences like that, and I don't really know why. (It might be that growing up not drinking hot or alcoholic beverages prevented my establishing a favorite coffeshop or bar, or it might be that being a poor college student who didn't want to take out student loans precluded my frequenting of restaurants, but it just as likely could be something else.) Lately, though, I've been looking for some sort of consistency. I've been looking for a diner where I can walk in, say "the usual" and they'll know exactly what I mean. I've been looking for a barbershop where I can say, "same as last time," and they won't bat an eye.

So it was nice today when the bus driver remembered my face, remembered my stop, and even nicer that he noticed I had forgotten my bike.

A time-lapse video taken from the car (loser) in the official Austin Rush-Hour Race–another reason to take public transportation.

It builds character

I was talking with some friends the other night about absolutely terrible experiences that were incredibly profound, but were also terribly painful to go through. I've thought about it some more, and have come up with:

The 9 life experiences I believe everyone should have*^,**

1. overcoming an addiction (and I don't mean something mamby-pamby like a mild fascination with sugar or caffeine or an "addiction to cracking knuckles"; I'm talking a serious, chemically-induced, behaviorally-modifying, possibly-health-or-even-life-threatening one you fight with for several years)
2. coming out of the closet (and this doesn't just include gender or sexual orientation (and could, perhaps, be even more) but any experience that requires you to drastically change the expectations of many–if not all–of your closest associates)
3. a ritualistic burning of the boats
4. a seriously traumatic experience
5. mental therapy and/or counseling in any of its varieties 
6. being heartbroken
7. wanting something so badly it hurts, and then realizing–all in a short period of time–that you'll never actually have it
8. being picked last in gym class
9. realizing you're so strapped for cash at the end of the month that you can either fill up your gas tank or eat dinner, but not both

* but couldn't really consider myself a decent human being if I wished them on my friends
** somewhat in order of significance

black and blue

I used to paint the world in black and white
  the whites clean, pure, sometimes a little stale
  the blacks deep, rich, and often very meaningful

one day I woke up
  physically
  metaphorically
  maybe a bit of both
and realized I wanted a life more rich in color

so I poured a measure of blue ink into my bottle of white
  gradually
  carefully
  then all at once, with reckless abandon

the world was more beautiful, colorful, alive
  I could see things I'd never before seen
  imagined vistas I could never before consider
  and was less concerned that my black was a bleeding,
        permanent stain on my white-white palate

until today, when I woke up
  physically
  metaphorically
  maybe a bit of both
and looked at my blue ink
so deftly poured from the well
and wondered how I hadn't realized before:

blue is just another shade of white

Bad Feminism

I am a bad feminist.

The other day, a friend asked me if I was a feminist and I hemmed and hawed and qualified and... I finally had to admit that, even if I had some pro-female qualities, I really couldn't label myself as a feminist.

And then within only a few short days, I was called out on several occasions for saying or thinking things that really were counter to the feminist movement. I like to think of myself as more of an egalitarian, somewhat progressive and forward-thinking, typically politically correct, culturally aware, etc, etc, etc. I also am fairly aware that I have a ton of middle-class-white-educated-male-I'msurethere'salotmore privilege, and I do a fairly decent job of recognizing when someone says something fundamentally ignorant or racist. But twice? In two days? Being corrected for very male-centered thinking?

This morning while I was playing basketball, I found myself wondering how certain darker-skinned guys (how do I say this without being racist?) had a very similar cadence/accent to their speech. Is it just because they were raised that way? Because they've been around it from a young age? Is it a conscious choice or something that just happens? And then on the way home, the Ted Radio Hour addressed just this issue. An African woman talked about how she had control of three "languages": her native African dialect, the African-American dialect she was raised on, and her "articulate" American dialect she's developed so people think she's "qualified." The program further went on to describe how even Prime Minister Tony Blair (definitely not American) was considered "more American" than Barak Obama.

And then Paul Bloom went on to say something that really stuck with me:

You can't change implicit biases by just sitting in your room and concentrating, saying, "I'm not going to be racist, I'm not going to be racist." But what you can do is, you can actively expose yourself to real-world instances which give you maybe a more accurate and more fair representation of these groups.

Maybe I am a bad feminist. And I probably have a lot of hidden biases that will come up with terrible timing. And I certainly hope I'll be corrected in the future for my self-centered thinking. But instead of being sorry for this reproof, I should welcome it as real-world instances that give me a glimpse into another group.


So I'm going to stick with Roxanne Gay on this one, and proudly proclaim that I, too, am a bad feminist—and that's not a bad thing.

A Grief Observed

I've recently gone through one of the hardest experiences of my life.

During the month of December, I made a new friend (a girl who worked at the University) and enjoyed the brief time I was able to spend with her. The getting-to-know-you phase was cut somewhat short by the holidays (I went home for a few weeks), but we still kept in contact. On December 30th, I flew back into town to plan a New Year's Eve party, and picked her up to help buy decorations. About 5 minutes after I had picked her up, I made the turn into my apartment—the same left-handed turn I'd made hundreds of times in a year and a half of living there—and was broadsided by an oncoming car. I was knocked unconscious so there's a good chunk of my memory that's rather blurry (and I remember none of the incident or the supposed other car), but after a few CAT scans and other procedures, I was released, completely fine.

She never made it out of her coma.


The ten days between when the accident happened and when she finally passed were some of the hardest days of my life: wrestling with God, with my emotions, trying to accept what happened. And the days and weeks that have followed have not been any easier. Since that time, I've gone through a complete gamut of emotions: intense guilt followed by sweet peace; sadness and fear that things will never be the same, followed by an optimistic hope and a knowledge that they would...followed by the confused, gradual, heavy settling that she was permanently gone and I was powerless to do anything about it; concern that I had forgotten her and moved on too quickly followed by intense, violent sobbing...

I've also learned a lot about comfort in grief. I've learned that the worst (and yet most common) thing one can ask is "How are you doing?" (Are they using the phrase in its trite, meaningless greeting sense, or do they know what happened—and are they prepared for the floodgates that might be opened in response?)

But most of all, I struggle with the "What can I do for you?" question—which is traditionally followed by "No really, what can I do for you?" and almost always wrapped up with "Well remember that if you need anything, I'm just a phone call away." As if repetition and emphasis makes up for the burden they've just (knowingly or otherwise) placed on my already-weary shoulders, the burden of making them—the non-grieving, nonetheless—feel better by offering them control in a situation that for me has been spinning violently out of control for days and weeks and now months... I've since quit telling them, "Well for starters, you can never ask me that ever again," and have instead opted to just smile and thank them for their concern. Sometimes, the simple repeated song is all that humans or birds know how to sing.


In stark contrast, the most meaningful expressions since that day have been in the form of gifts. Gifts I neither asked for nor expected, but sent me to tears nonetheless—tears of appreciation and gratitude and friendship and love. One such gift was the remote to our apartment complex gate, so I could take the back entrance instead of revisiting that same left-hand turn day after day, driving over the fluorescent-green painted lines in the street that shouted to all passers-by "something terrible happened here."

The other gift that meant the world to me was a pair of pants. Someone should have told me when I got on the plane that cold December morning to put on a pair of ragged jeans and a sweatshirt I didn't care about. When they pull you from your totalled vehicle, they don't ask you nicely to lift up your arms as they gently take off your jacket. They don't even spend the time to unbutton your shirt or unzip your pants. Instead, they take scissors (or a knife or bolt cutters or a blow torch or whatever they have handy, I guess) to the lot of it, giving it back to you in a hospital carryout bag like a prize from Dave & Busters. No, they really should have told me not to wear my favorite outfit, to keep my faux leather jacket I still haven't replaced safely hung in the closet, to keep my brand new pair of Bonobos safely unpacked, and to save my favorite flannel shirt for a different chilly Texas day. So when the pants came in the mail (from one of my very best of friends who, despite her attempts at remaining anonymous, left her billing address on the packing slip), I was once again reduced to tears. But this time, they were welcome tears, appreciative tears, and--most important--tears I could experience on my own, in the comfort and privacy of my own car, and at the rate I wanted or did not want.


Maybe this is the way all grief is: the disgust with trivial "checkins," the appreciation of gifts. Or maybe I'm different. In conclusion? Save your favorite outfit for a day when you'll decidedly maintain a comfortable distance from ambulances and paramedics with blow torches. And buy a friend a pair of blue jeans.