To Someone I Forgot

"Now you're just somebody that I used to know." -- Gotye

You were a jock with an impressive high school sports career, stunning blue eyes, a super-hot athlete girlfriend, and considerable popularity. I was a nerd, and though I was also popular, I belonged to a completely different social hierarchy than you. You chilled with other athletes and fellow Long Island commuters while I hobnobbed with academic overachievers and people who joined way too many extracurriculars. But because this was sophomore year of high school, before AP scheduling forced the top 10% of our class into near-identical schedules and permanently segregated our cliques, you and I ended up in the same geometry class. And we sat next to each other in the front row.

We had never formally met before, but I knew you by reputation and expected you to ignore me. But you didn't. You talked to me, asked me questions, and tried to get to know me a little. I did the same. And eventually, we developed... I wouldn't quite call it a friendship. I'm not sure what it was. But we'd share smiles and laughs before and after class. We'd confer on practice problems. We'd exchange rueful glances whenever the teacher said something particularly inane. And every once in a while, you'd lean over and draw pictures in the margins of my notebook. Our tenuous association would vanish the second we left the classroom every day, but for what it was, it was nice.

In May, we switched teachers, classrooms, and, to my horror, seats. Then in September, I embarked on the AP Calculus math track while you decided to stick with a sane schedule. We parted ways. I registered for too many AP classes, made friends with the Science Olympiad team, and set my sights on the Ivy League. Presumably, you returned to your sports stardom and your hot athlete girlfriend -- and I say "presumably" because, once our companionable days in geometry class were behind us, I have no recollection of ever interacting with you again.

We graduated. I moved to Manhattan and became a rocket scientist, but I still kept in close touch with my high school friends and teachers. You, on the other hand, became one of the many kids from my class who vanished off the face of the planet after graduation. No one ever mentioned seeing you or hanging out with you. You never came to any reunions. And, basically, I forgot about you.

Last weekend, I visited my parents and grabbed a book out of my old room to kill an afternoon. The Catcher in the Rye was required reading in sophomore year of high school, and as I flipped through the familiar scenes, I marveled at how much my comprehension of the text had improved since I last picked it up.

About a hundred pages in, I discovered that an old bookmark was still tucked between the pages. It was a fragment of looseleaf about four inches square, torn out of what appeared to be my geometry notebook (judging from the partial circles and angles visible near the ripped edge). In the center of the scrap, someone had clumsily drawn two stick figures -- one with a skirt and high heels, the other with a tie and glasses. The figures shared the same bewildered expression and the same Homer Simpson-esque hairdo. They were holding hands. One figure was labeled with your name and the other was labeled with mine in boyish handwriting. 

I remembered your face -- those striking eyes and easy smile -- long before I remembered your last name. I also realized, for the first time ever, that I had a crush on you during high school. I wasn't willing to acknowledge it back then because you were a jock, I was a nerd, our presence in the same class was a never-to-be-repeated fluke, and girls in my crowd had zero chance with guys from yours, but I fully admit it now. (I'm still not willing to admit that your habit of doodling on my notebook may have indicated even a hint of reciprocity, though; you were a jock, I was a nerd, and old habits die hard.)

I wondered what ever became of you, so I got on Facebook, Google, and Twitter to find out. And it turns out that the man who vanished off the face of the planet after graduation has nearly no online presence either. I did give myself half a heart attack when I found a memorial website dedicated to an athlete in your sport with your name, but one additional search hit proved that you're still alive and competing.

It's been exactly ten years since we last sat next next to each other, sharing smiles and pretending to learn math. Wherever you are and whatever you're doing now, I hope you're happy.

I've Been Waiting My Whole Life To Hear This.

"Don't you ever bring home a wimpy man! You need someone capable! You need someone stronger than you to take care of you!"

-- My mother for the last 25 years

"Don't you ever bring home a wimpy man! You need someone capable! You need someone stronger than... never mind. I don't think you'll ever find a man who's stronger than you. You're stronger than every man I know."

-- My mother yesterday

Silly Love Songs

"Why can't I let you know the song my heart would sing, this beautiful rhapsody of love and youth and spring? The music is sweet, the words are true. The song is you." -- Oscar Hammerstein

A few weeks ago, Rutila tweeted a "break-up song" for each of the last five years. I liked the exercise and wanted to emulate it, but I had trouble assigning one song to each of my failures in love. (I tend to forgive, forget, and repeat mistakes, resulting in several break-up songs per man. Whoops.) I had even more trouble assigning one song to each year of my life. (I make twenty-track albums each year for that purpose.) Thus, I shelved the project.

This week, I decided to forego listening to a particular playlist or album and just left my iPod on shuffle during my daily routines. And many times during my listening, a song played that, for some reason, reminded me of a man from my past. Some songs represent the beginning of my association with these men and some represent the end, some were assigned immediately and some retroactively, some were just plain stuck in my head while we were together. Whatever the reason, they're irrevocably linked with a certain person in my mind, so much so that I could probably relabel each song with the appropriate man's name and still be able to navigate my music library with perfect ease. When my iPod shuffled to any of these songs, I'd stop whatever I was doing -- even data entry and its associated trance-like state -- and think of him after the first few notes.

I thought the observation needed a playlist. Thus, I dusted off my old 8tracks account and created one this evening. The playlist contains eight songs; they're presented in chronological order, and each song represents a different person. Here's a link to play it, plus a tracklist.

1. Samson -- Regina Spektor

"You are my sweetest downfall. I loved you first. I loved you first."

2. Pirate on the Run -- Pat Monahan featuring Brandi Carlile

"I was perfect for her soul. I was perfect for his heart. And together, we are perfect apart."

3. Forever My Friend -- Ray LaMontagne

"I just think if we keep our hearts together, I just think if we build on this trust that we have for one another, maybe we can make this last a lifetime."

4. The Origin of Love -- Rufus Wainwright

"But I could tell by your expression that the pain down in your soul was the same as the pain down in mine..."

5. Follow Through -- Gavin DeGraw

"All I really want is you, for you to stick around. I'll see you every day, but you have to follow through."

6. I Can't Make You Love Me -- Bonnie Raitt

"Here in the dark, in these final hours, I will lay down my heart and I'll feel the power. But you won't. No, you won't."

7. Goodbye Philadelphia -- Peter Cincotti

"Though we may not know it now, things are never gonna be the same. Here on Second Avenue, I tip my old top hat to you. I hope you find somebody who will love you like I do."

8. Holding Out For A Hero -- Bonnie Tyler

"It's gonna take a Superman to sweep me off my feet. I need a hero!"

I Couldn't Turn My Brain Off

"I'll keep remembering kisses from lips I've never owned, and all the lovely adventures that we have never known. One dream in my heart, one love to be living for. One love to be living for -- this nearly was mine." -- Rodgers and Hammerstein

I usually commute in a bubble. I'm aware of my surroundings, of course -- obliviousness is akin to a death wish in New York City -- but the hours I spend on the subway each day are my moments of zen. I read. I knit. I listen to music. I do the NY Times crossword puzzle. I play shoot-'em-up games on my iPod. I spend some quality time with my thoughts.

Today, I woke up to a thunderstorm. I threw together a new outfit better suited for rain, laced up my Chucks, shoved a pair of heels into my purse, grabbed the biggest umbrella I could find, and ventured out into the deluge.

Three quarters of a mile later, I arrived on the subway platform. I closed my umbrella, opened my purse, and faced every New York City commuter's worst nightmare. My iPod was still plugged into my laptop at home, as were my headphones. My pile of knitting was on the couch. My book was on the coffee table. My Moleskine was shoved between the pages of said book. I officially, horrifyingly, had nothing to distract me during my commute.

Hey, a seat! At least I can pretend to be asleep, though it's not nearly as effective a trick without my headphones. Can I keep my legs crossed? I usually feel bad keeping my legs crossed during rush hour because they get in the way of the people who are standing, but the train seems empty enough for me to get away with it today. No one is standing; I can definitely get away with it today. The guy across the aisle has the same headphones as me, but of course, he wouldn't know that because I LEFT MINE HOME. I have so much data entry at work, and it's going to suck -- I need background noise to tackle toxicity coding. Sweet Jesus, how am I only at 36th Avenue? This blue shirt looks terrible with my red DKNY cozy -- I feel like Superman. When I have a minute, I have to remember to wrap or tie it so it looks less like a cape. I wish I had the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound like he does; maybe I'd get to work faster. The original clothes I ironed for today looked a lot better than this does... very good things happened the last time I wore that shirt. [Censored.] WHY ARE WE STOPPING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAMN TUNNEL?! Please let it not be flooded, please let it not be flooded. Of course, just my luck, the stupid tunnel would be flooded on the day I forget my... never mind, it's moving now. Ah, it's nice to be able to powerwalk down the platform without having 900 snotnosed kids and their stupid backpacks in my way. Though that's only going to last for a few more weeks... better enjoy it now. SIX TRAIN ON THE PLATFORM! OUTTA MY WAY! Whew. I need to start running again; two flights of stairs and a thirty-foot sprint isn't as easy as it used to be. Why is the 6 empty? Do people just not come to work when it rains? I'd love to see my PI's reaction if I tried that... his roof blew off last year and he still came to clinic. Someone drew a mustache on the Kim Raver billboard. She's like Jerry's girlfriend on the Festivus episode of Seinfeld... really gorgeous when you look at her from one angle and frightening when she turns her head a certain way. No, I would not like an AM New York... did you say there's a Macy's coupon inside? Nah, it'll get soaked on the way to clinic.

I didn't feel like spending another half-hour with my thoughts on the ride home, so I snagged some looseleaf on my way out of work and wrote this blog entry on the N train.

Now I Know Better

"Tonight, you arrested my mind when you came to my defense. With a knife in the shape of your mouth, in the form of your body, with the wrath of a god. Oh, you stood by me. And I stand by my belief." -- Gavin DeGraw

I graduated from college in May of 2008, and two days later, I started my first full-time job. My first week of work was spent in typical fashion for a career in science -- catching up on data entry, doing lots of literature searches, completing half a dozen web training programs, etcetera ad nauseam. I couldn't get through all of that without background noise and I couldn't justify keeping my iPod on for eight hours a day, so I turned to Pandora Radio for my music fix.

I don't remember the name of the Pandora station that occupied my workdays back then; I chose the music specifically for non-distracting background noise and it served its purpose beautifully. Every so often, though, a song would play that cut through my concentration and made me focus on the music. And every time that happened, the artist was always the same.

Gavin DeGraw. A cute guy with a grand piano who had albums on the charts for five years before I discovered him. And when that happened, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. If someone told me that Gavin was practiced in the art of telepathy and regularly rifled through my thoughts as a part of his songwriting process, I wouldn't doubt it. Not many musicians are able to sing lyrics that feel ripped out of my chest, or play instruments with the same passion or misery I'm feeling, or choose melodies seemingly orchestrated to my daily routine. I purchased Chariot during the first week of June and listened to it nonstop for the next two months.

Those two months were some of the most nerve-wracking, mindwarping, emotionally draining days I've ever experienced. I was settling into real life, meeting new people, and trying to balance what was left of college with my newborn career. I admitted attraction to someone who actually reciprocated -- hey, this never happens -- but I was powerless to do anything about it. A very good friend made a very bad decision and I took it too personally. I said some cautious hellos and one earth-shattering goodbye. Gavin and his piano were there to narrate all of it, to give a voice to my frustration, and to help me make sense of everything that was happening to me. He managed to awaken thoughts I didn't know I was thinking and feelings I never realized I was feeling.

The world kept turning. Things got worse, then they got better, then they got really bad, then they got better again. I gained a few new musical obsessions. My type and quantity of work changed, so I couldn't get distracted by Pandora's uncanny song choices any more. I fell for someone best described by Taylor Swift and Peter Cincotti. I left Chariot to languish on my iPod's ample hard drive.

Fast-forward nearly two years, to March 2010. Thanks to Rutila and her excellent taste in literature, I had the privilege of reading a collecion of essays called Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on the Albums That Changed Their Lives. Each author chose an album and crafted an essay around it, taking care to explain the music in terms of social impact, emotional relevance, coming-of-age, or inspirational value. The collection blew me away; the writers spoke about their subjects with the same reverence I often feel for favored pieces of music, and it heartened me to learn that I'm not the only lost soul who uses other people's lyrics to shove my own experiences into sharper focus.

I've tried to examine that tendency before. I've written about the poetry of Bob Dylan's songs, sang West Side Story in concert during a time when Maria's situation mirrored my own, borrowed a Jonathan Larson lyric that he had borrowed from Stephen Sondheim. I'd never penned an homage to a complete album, though, and reading Heavy Rotation made me want to try.

I was inspired. I was itching to write. I couldn't decide on an album, though. Sure, I have favorite lyrics -- they show up as the first line of every blog post I write, and they often express what's really on my mind far more frankly than my prose does. I have favorite songs that could easily inspire a blog post or two. Albums, however, stumped me. There's my all-time favorite album (Twentysomething by Jamie Cullum), the first album I ever bought with my own money (The Nylon Curtain by Billy Joel), the album that changed my personal definition of music (Jethro Tull's Thick As A Brick), and the album that I hated when I first heard it and loved a year later (the Les Miserables 10th Anniversary Concert). But I couldn't write more than a few sentences about any of them. They all told a story, but none of them told MY story. Or any story I wanted to tell, for that matter. I set the project aside and decided to revisit it another day.

My PIs were out of town last week, so I settled in to enter data and opened Pandora for background noise. I wasn't in the mood to listen to any of my more recent stations, so I scrolled down to the very bottom of my list and clicked on something random. An advertisement for Axe body spray aired, followed by a hushed, plaintive, nearly a capella lyric:

"You need a friend? I'll be around. Don't let this end, for I'll see you again. What can I say to convince you to change your mind to me?"

As Gavin sang about unconditional love in the face of rejection, I was transported to a lawn on a mild summer night, fighting desperately to stay calm despite the undeniable recognition that I was about to lose something forever. I turned off Pandora, fished my iPod out of my purse, and turned on Chariot for the first time in years.

The album used to serve as the theme music to my existence. Now it evokes emotions, sensations, and experiences with far more clarity than the mere act of remembering ever could. "I Don't Want To Be" fills me with blinding rage, utter betrayal, and just a little bit of disappointment. "Belief" recalls lying on a bare mattress on a bare floor in a bare dorm room in light so faint I can barely see what I'm doing but it doesn't really matter anyway. "Crush" makes me feel like I have a secret... sad, but in a nice way. "Follow Through" sends me walking home with a Silver Moon baguette in my hand, smug as all heck and anticipating the next step in my life.

As an exercise prior to writing this essay, I gave Chariot the American Idiot treatment -- I rearranged the songs to tell my story, added some narrative between the tracks, and made an iTunes playlist. Listening to it was like living it all over again... and it was all a lot better the second time.

Fancy Pants and Flooring Inspectors

"You fight like a dairy farmer."
"How appropriate. You fight like a cow." -- Orson Scott Card*

The sun is shining, the birdies are chirping, the cherry trees are blooming, the new series of Doctor Who premiered last night, and the ovens in my house are filled with delicious Easter cooking. In other words, the world is reborn.

And yet, today, I'm going to forego turning over a new leaf by writing about a man I used to have a huge crush on. I've outgrown it by now, but he still means a lot to me. He was prideful and slightly mean and a bit of an asshole, but he was smart, selfless, and deliciously sarcastic... not to mention sexy in an awkward, gangly sort of way. If you want to be melodramatic about it, I guess you could call him my first love.

It's been years, but lately... we've sort of reconnected. I've had the opportunity to spend some quality one-on-one time with him over the last few days, and though I'm older and wiser than I was when he first captured my heart, he's still a pretty amazing guy.

His name is Guybrush Threepwood and he's a pirate.

Hopefully a few of you will recognize his name from your own pasts. For those of you who do not, Guybrush Threepwood is the hero of the Monkey Island series of video games, where players can swashbuckle their way through various quests in a choose-your-own-adventure format. The first game in the series, The Secret of Monkey Island, was released by LucasArts on floppy disc in 1990. I met Guybrush in 1994, when I got my first computer.

Yes, 1994. Which implies 1994 gameplay and graphics. Which means that my first crush looked like this:

Suffice it to say, I didn't fall for Guybrush for his looks. I fell for him because he was a cool, confident smooth-talker who knew he was destined for greatness despite all evidence to the contrary. He could trade insults with masters and seamlessly toss pop culture references into normal conversations. He was clever and resourceful and could solve complicated puzzles with ease. He was still human, though -- bumbling and awkward and prone to making mistakes. And as if all of that wasn't enough reason to love the guy, he was noble enough to risk his life to rescue Governor Elaine Marley from zombie pirates. He was also secure enough in his own masculinity to fall in love with Elaine, even though she was smart, powerful, and never really needed rescuing in the first place.

After I sprayed the zombie pirate captain with root beer to win the game, I was rewarded with a glorious, pixelated, 256-color closeup of Guybrush Threepwood's face:

Yes, he's a hottie, but I was smitten long before I knew what he looked like. (And whether I subconsciously modeled my current hairdo on Elaine's is a blog entry for another day.)

I found an archaic CD-ROM version of The Secret of Monkey Island yesterday afternoon and played it yesterday night. It only took me a few hours to get through it, as opposed to the weeks I spent solving the puzzles when I was a child. It was just as funny, irreverent, and intellectually fulfilling as I remembered it, though, and the jokes and puns still sparkled with clarity and relevance twenty years after they were written.

Right after I vanquished the zombie pirate captain to unlock the portrait of Guybrush that used to make my nine year-old heart melt, I realized something astounding.

My sense of humor -- my wry, snarky, intellectual sense of humor that I adore and often use as a compatibility test -- is identical to Guybrush Threepwood's sense of humor. Both of us quip. Both of us make random remarks about inanimate objects. Both of us can switch from poetry to intellectual banter in a heartbeat. Both of us have a natural gift for rhyme. Both of us can insult someone so smoothly that they don't even realize they've been mocked. And, most notably, both of us enjoy peppering our conversations with quotes and images from old computer games, George Lucas films, and The Graduate.

My sense of humor is definitely on the quirky side of normal, but it's one of my favorite things about me. And since it came into being around the time I first met Guybrush Threepwood, I'm pretty sure he inspired it. Guess I just found another reason to love him.

* Yes, Orson Scott Card wrote all of the exchanges used in the famous "insult swordfighting" sequence of The Secret of Monkey Island.

Giving Up

"Nothing about us is perfect or clear, but when paradise calls me I'd rather be here. There's something between us that nobody else needs to see." -- Jason Robert Brown

Despite the perpetually depressing weather, I've had an amazing couple of weeks. I've been happy, healthy, and living life to the fullest. But now it's Lent, and though I'm not religious by any means, I still like to keep with tradition by foregoing a luxury for forty days. When I was younger, I used to give up my favorite foods for Lent -- chocolate, coffee, even cheese one disastrous year. After I grew into my appetite and learned that my food cravings are cyclical (and rarely last a full forty days), I began to make Lenten resolutions instead of denials. Over the years, I've vowed to stop procrastinating on homework, double my job hunting efforts, and swear off unhealthy relationships. The same should go for this year, but... I'm in a great place in life. My relationships are spectacular, I'm at the top of my game at work, and there's really nothing important that I know I could be doing better. I decided that I'd have to revert to giving up something for Lent... but what?

The answer was right in front of my nose... or, more appropriately, right underfoot.

I love fashion and own a lot of great clothing, but since I spent my formative years wearing a school uniform, I tend to gravitate towards black, grey, and neutral fabrics. Since this approach has a tendency to appear funeral-chic and I don't wear a lot of flashy jewelry, I developed one foolproof method of waking up my sense of style:

These photographs don't include seven pairs of boots, two pairs of running shoes, two pairs of Chucks, one pair of Birkenstocks, or the three assorted pairs under my desk at work.

I can explain, though! I spend a good portion of my workday on my feet, so I started collecting shoes in an effort to find the perfect balance between style and comfort. As I grew more successful in that arena, I just learned to love shoes in general. Some of them really are works of art, and their ability to completely transform what I'm wearing amazes me. Shopping for shoes soothes me, and even walking through shoe stores and browsing online -- seeing the shoes, stroking them, imagining where I'd wear them -- is an uncannily pleasurable experience for me.

Thus, I'm giving up shoe shopping for Lent. No looking at shoes online, no leisurely strolls through any department stores, and most importantly, no touching. And if I'm spending time with someone who wants to go shoe shopping, I'll go but I'm not allowed to buy anything.

It's only been Lent for two and a half days and I can already tell that this will be a tough one for me. I'm writing this blog post to distract myself from the fact that Nine West is having a 60% off sale this weekend.

Who Are You?

"I used to believe I was such a great romancer -- then I came home to a woman that I could not recognize. When I pressed her for a reason, she refused to even answer. It was then I felt the stranger kick me right between the eyes." -- Billy Joel

A few months ago, I wrote about the New Yorker who looks exactly like me. How do we reconcile her existence with the fact that, apparently, I don't even look like me?

The Future That Never Was

"Fifty years after the fair, I live in tomorrow town. Even on a wing and a prayer, the future never came around. It hurts to even think of those days, the damage we do by the hopes that we raise." -- Aimee Mann

Writing my last post got me thinking about Flushing Meadows Park. This, in turn, got me thinking about the two World's Fairs held there -- the first in 1939 and the second in 1964. Both events were the brainchildren of Robert Moses, the Master Builder who single-handedly designed the infrastructure of modern New York City. (Read up on the man if you have time. His life story is unbelievable.) Though Moses used the Fair as an excuse to turn the Flushing cinder dump into public parkland, the people of New York City saw it as so much more.

The World's Fair gave New Yorkers hope for a bright future when reality offered little encouragement; the first preceded World War II and the second came on the heels of JFK's assassination. One square mile of land in Queens was cleaned up for the cause, and different countries, US states, and major corporations erected lavish pavilions to showcase their products, people, and visions for the future of humanity. If you've ever been to EPCOT in Walt Disney World, that was the general idea. (And by "general idea," I mean that EPCOT was an idea that Walt Disney stole from the '64 World's Fair.)

I love learning about the World's Fair for the same reason I love EPCOT: I derive an inordinate amount of joy from studying my predecessors' expectations of the future. It's inspiring to see what innovations first presented at the World's Fair have enjoyed success (i.e. television, color photography, and the modem) and which never found a place in society (i.e. humanoid robots, Smell-O-Vision, and undersea vacation homes). It's even more interesting to compare our current technology with our grandparents' and parents' expectations of how our generation would live. True, we're not colonizing Mars or traveling at light speed, but I doubt that anyone in 1939 could have ever envisioned anything even remotely resembling the iPhone.

Despite which predictions came true and which predictions never came to pass, one aspect of the entire World's Fair experience can be recalled as indisputable fact: its optimism. The people of 1939 genuinely believed that humans would travel on automated highways and eat meals cooked by machines by 1960. The people of 1964 knew that they'd live to see moon bases and flying cars in the new millennium.

Flushing Meadows Park is still scattered with these certainties. Two time capsules filled with microfilm, "new" materials like stainless steel and nylon, knickknacks, and other symbols of our civilization are buried fifty feet under the cement with instructions not to open until 6939. A forty-foot sculpture of a Buck Rogers rocketship stands in a random driveway behind a building. A geodesic habitat designed by Buckminster Fuller houses forty species of birds at the Queens Zoo. The future of American architecture is slowly rotting despite preservation efforts, but it doesn't matter because most Americans only know it as something Will Smith shot out of the sky in 1997. Meticulous etchings of cars, robots, and transistor radios are underfoot everywhere. Tokens of world peace -- whether they're actual depictions of the world or pieces of native architecture donated by friendly nations -- are everywhere, too.

All of it makes me nostalgic and curious, but it also makes me sad. I'm a smart, forward-thinking research scientist with a firm grasp on technological innovations and a degree in the most cutting-edge discipline on the planet. And you know how I envision the future? Thinner cameras, iPods, and televisions. And that's about it. There are no robot butlers in my old age. No flying cars, teleportation devices, or jetpacks, either. I don't think we'll ever cure cancer or even come close to it. I don't think humans will travel any farther than the lunar surface. I don't envision food, architecture, or fashion significantly changing. No end to world hunger. No world peace.

I don't know if this makes me a pessimist or a realist, but when I walk through Flushing Meadows Park, it's nice to look back, look forwards, and forget.

All My Love To Long Ago

"I might have to wait. I'll never give up. I guess it's half timing and the other half's luck. Wherever you are, whenever it's right, you'll come out of nowhere and into my life... I just haven't met you yet." -- Michael Buble

Old things fascinate me and I've spent most of my life trying to figure out why. Is it the byproduct of growing up in a disposable culture? Is it sentimental? Is it part of the engineering mindset to appreciate things designed to withstand the test of time? Is it a consequence of always wondering "why?" Am I just an old soul? Whatever it is, I can't walk around an antique structure without thinking of people treading the same path a century earlier, and I spent far too much of my childhood and adolescence poring through Historical Society records, microfilm, and old photographs to learn about the origins of some of my favorite pieces of New York City.

Imagine my excitement, then, when I discovered that the aerial map on New York City's official website gained a new layer last week. You can now type in any address, district, or place of interest in the five boroughs to see what it looked like in 2008, 2006... or 1924.

Sure, I know when all the city's major landmarks were built -- most self-respecting history buffs have a general idea of timelines -- but it's still difficult to envision the way things looked without them. Well, it's all there in black and white on the NYC.gov website. I spent hours of my Friday poring over every inch of Jazz Age New York City, and the ways in which it's changed since then blew my mind. Half of the city's bridges didn't exist in 1924. (How the hell did people get to Staten Island?!) My place of employment looks like a row of tenements. Flushing Meadows Park, site of two World's Fairs and one of my favorite places to think myself back into the past, looks like F. Scott Fitzgerald's valley of ashes -- a barren wasteland covered in cinder. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was half its current size. And the location of my favorite building on the planet, Eero Saarinen's TWA Flight Center at JFK International Airport, was completely undeveloped:

I then decided to punch in the addresses of three places I've called home. First was my high school, situated at the intersection of four major highways in one of the busiest parts of Queens:

Next came the Seeley W. Mudd building, which houses my college's engineering department:

Last was the apartment house where I grew up:

The building's current foundations are outlined on each map in red... but the outline is merely a hint of what's to come. I've spent most of my life inhabiting those three places, and only eighty-five years ago, they were someone's backyard, an empty lot, and the middle of the freaking wilderness. It certainly puts my surroundings into perspective -- and makes me wonder what New York City will look like when I'm eighty-five years old.

Golden Poo

"Are you sad because you're on your own? No! I get by... with a little help from my friends." -- Lennon/McCartney

I pride myself on knowing a lot of stuff about a lot of different things. I'm well-read and well-educated, I'm familiar with many subject areas, I can hold a decent conversation with many types of people, and I have a head filled to bursting with many random facts. Thus, it's very rare for me to find myself in a place or a situation where I'm totally out of my element.

Well, it happened last weekend.

After two days that fit every possible definition of "homecoming," I found myself wandering around Chinatown. It's something I've done countless times before -- I've traversed Canal Street, ventured into Pearl Paint, eaten dim sum, and browsed the wares of the street vendors pretty regularly for years. However, I'd never been to Chinatown accompanied by actual Chinese people... and, accompanied by Q and DW, Chinatown was a whole new world.

They led us to places I never even knew existed -- streets that barely looked like New York City and shops that contained no English signage whatsoever. We went to a grocery store selling live frogs in a garbage can. I became acquainted with dried shellfish, and I'm still not sure if it requires rehydration or if it's eaten as is. I waited on line to buy dried udon noodles and briefly panicked about whether I could use US dollars for my purchase. We had Vietnamese for lunch and I didn't know how DW's coffee pot worked. Q took me to a bakery to get some buns I once tried, but all I remembered about them was that they had sweet yellow filling and that description basically fit everything in the display case. We went to an underground shopping mall filled with plush depictions of bear excrement. ("Golden poo" is allegedly a symbol for good luck, but no one knew why.) I pointed at what I thought was an endive and was told that it was actually a torpedo vegetable. I then pointed at a vegetable that looked like a carrot, asked what it was, and was told that it was a carrot.

We continued to wander, deeper and farther into shops and streets that I never knew existed, and I truly began to feel as if I had been transported out of New York and onto a different planet. Despite my cultured upbringing, the obscene amount of time I've spent with my Chinese friends over the years, and all of the reading I've done during the course of my life, I was totally clueless about everything. I felt incredibly ignorant.

Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, we stumbled upon a pocket of Little Italy. Q decided that she wanted sfogliatella, we stopped into an Italian bakery... and and all of a sudden, my world once again made sense. The sights, the smells, the biscotti in the window and panettone boxes hanging from the ceiling all felt comfortable and familiar to me.

We approached the counter. One of my companions pointed at a display case, turned to DW, and said, "Ooh, have you ever had a cannoli?" I'm not sure how he answered; I was too stunned to listen. Have you ever had a cannoli?! What kind of a question is that?! In my world, asking someone if they've ever had a cannoli is like asking them if they've ever breathed oxygen or if they've blinked at least once today.

I then realized that I was the only person in the crowd with any Italian blood, and that my companions probably weren't weaned off the bottle onto cannoli like I was. And then my entire day made sense. I wasn't ignorant -- I just have a different cultural identity than the one I happened to be facing. And I'm lucky enough to have an open mind and friends willing to help me fill it. All in all, it was a pretty amazing afternoon.

Brainy Specs

"Aw, and out they come! The brainy specs! You don't even need them! You just think they make you look a bit clever!" -- The Tenth Doctor

I got my first pair of eyeglasses at the beginning of the sixth grade -- horrible round-ish lavender wire-framed atrocities -- and, consequently, I hated my life for the next year. I swapped those out for a sleeker pair with Flexon frames in the seventh grade, then swapped out those for even sleeker bronze no-wire frames in the eighth grade. Then I went to high school, got contacts, and only wore my glasses for the five minutes in the morning before I could pop my lenses in.

After three years of contact lens-wearing, my prescription had deteriorated to the point where I had to get the lenses on my glasses replaced. I opted for a new set of frames too -- and chose a Nine West style modeled in chunky black plastic. Now this was 2003, way before horn-rims came to epitomize geek-chic, but since I hated the way I looked in near-invisible frames, I figured I'd try the other extreme. I found that my new glasses fit my personality surprisingly well, and for the first time during my vision-impaired life, I didn't want to vomit when I looked at my glasses-wearing self in a mirror. I started to wear my contacts less frequently and ignored the countless critics moaning about how my frames looked too retro and hid half my face.

Halfway through college, I swapped out my chunky black frames for an even chunkier pair. The same year, David Tennant replaced Chris Eccleston as the title character on Doctor Who and chose a pair of rectangular tortioseshell frames -- he called them "brainy specs" -- as part of his new costume. This blew my mind; I wore glasses like The Doctor's because they didn't make me completely hideous, while Tennant wore them because he wanted to. He was suave and confident while wearing his brainy specs, and for the first time in my life, I started to view my glasses as stylish... and even kinda hot.

I'm now on my third pair of brainy specs, and I love them so much that I only wear my contacts around once a week. I can slip them on with my Chucks and feel nerdy (in a good way). I can slip them on with a pencil skirt and pumps and feel professional. I can slip them on with an armful of unintelligible textbooks and feel smart. I can slip them on with tousled hair and an intense look and feel sexy. My glasses are a part of me, and I'm a total advocate of people like Tennant, Tina Fey, Diane Keaton, and Johnny Depp who try to redefine the public's notion of beauty by wearing their glasses to public events.

On Sunday night, I sat down to work on a graphics commission and turned on the Primetime Emmys for background noise. Andy Samberg was interviewed on the red carpet... wearing reddish glasses. Then Justin Timberlake presented in a pair of plastic tortioseshell frames. Then Simon Baker walked out wearing chunky horn-rims. Then Dana Delany slipped on a pair of brainy specs before reading a list of nominees. All of them looked absolutely gorgeous, too. I stopped caring about the winners and started watching for bespectacled audience members... and there were far more of them than I ever thought possible.

When I climbed into bed that night, I took a fond look at my brainy specs before setting them on my desk. It seems like the world has finally caught on, and the sixth-grader in me is jumping for joy.

Capturing Castles

"A few hours ago, when I wrote that I could never mean anything to him, such a chance would have seemed heaven on Earth. And surely I could give him... a sort of contentment?

That isn't enough to give. Not for the giver." -- Dodie Smith

I just finished reading my favorite book, Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle, for the... Nth time, where N equals anything between a dozen and three dozen. I first picked up the novel during the sixth grade when my school imposed a mandatory half-hour-a-day reading period; it had been collecting dust in my locker for six months, so I decided to give it a try.

A hundred pages in, I thought it was an intriguing enough story. The narrator -- a mature, intelligent, hopeful 17 year-old named Cassandra -- lives in poverty in a derelict castle in the English countryside. Her journal entries (i.e. the text of the novel) speak of the castle, her eccentric family, her beautiful yet stone-dumb sister, and how all of their lives change when two American brothers become their landlords. Simon Cotton, the elder brother, soon establishes himself as Cassandra's intellectual equal and the only person alive who truly understands the way her mind works. Cassandra falls deeply in love with Simon... then he proposes marriage to her sister.

The novel, since it poses as Cassandra's journal, chronicles her interactions with Simon in minute detail, from their first meeting to their final touch. As a result, I too fell in love with Simon Cotton. Together, Cassandra and I dissected his words, thrilled in his kisses, mourned his impending nuptials, resented his fiancee, and dared to hope when the wedding was called off. Then, in the book's last few pages, Simon decided to return to America. I wept as he visited Cassandra for the last time... and then I cheered out loud when he asked her to come to America with him.

Then Cassandra said no and let Simon walk out of her life forever. Why? She recognized that he didn't love her in return and felt that both of them would be selling themselves short by ending up together.

For the next five years of my life, I thought Cassandra was an effing idiot. She found someone who saw the world the exact same way she did and she threw it away out of ridiculous sentimentality! My feelings were understandable, too; after all, I spent junior high and the first half of high school surrounded by immature idiot boys who had nothing in common with me. Ever finding a man as good for me as Simon is for Cassandra seemed like a close to impossible wish, so finding one and then letting him go seemed like downright lunacy.

Between then and my seventeenth birthday, I grew up a little. I learned more about how to critically read and analyze literature, I fell in love a few times only to later recognize it as mere infatuation, and I met a few men who understood my mind and my jokes. Consequently, when I re-read the novel during my senior year of high school, I adopted a new interpretation of the ending. Cassandra rejected Simon because she recognized that she may be in lust instead of in love and she didn't want to pledge her life to an emotion she may grow out of feeling.

I'm now twenty-three years old. In the last seven years, I've learned the difference between love and lust and I've said my fair share of goodbyes. I've also met men as good for me -- and maybe better for me -- as Simon is for Cassandra. I finished I Capture the Castle this morning and cried over the last ten pages just as I always have, but for the first time, I understood why Cassandra rejected Simon. Her feelings for Simon weren't lust and they weren't a crush; when you truly, honestly love someone, you want the best for them even when the best isn't you. More importantly, though, I now understand that Cassandra rejected Simon because she wanted the best for herself. She wanted to spend her life with someone who understood her AND loved her, and honestly, that's the best any of us can ever hope for. This morning, for the first time in N readings, I would have rejected Simon too.

Growth and Invasion

"It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me... and I'm feelin' good." -- Anthony Newley

Praise of the mundane will have to wait a while, since my past two weeks have been extraordinarily life-changing. Last Wednesday was my one-year anniversary at my job, and the following day, I left for my first-ever business trip. This was no run-of-the-mill jaunt, either: I got to spend six days at the largest cancer conference in the United States.

"For now there's life. For now there's love. For now there's work. For now there's happiness. For now there's comfort. For now there's friendship." -- from Avenue Q

Six other study coordinators were also selected to represent our department at the conference. We took turns driving, attended each other's poster sessions, stayed up until three in the morning confiding in each other, made each other breakfast, ironed each other's suits, sunscreened each other's backs, shared straws and clothing and bathrooms and beds, flirted and fought and compromised and laughed and took care of each other. Strangers often marked us as friends, relatives, or married couples... and we never made a correction or clarification.

"Anti-angiogenesis really works in TCC!!!!!" -- one of the presenting MDs

On the last day of the conference, I sat alone in the back of the biggest lecture hall I've ever seen and listened to three of our best discuss where our field is headed. A stupid grin was plastered on my face the entire time; two of the three speakers discussed my team's work as pivotal to the future of cancer care. My commute, my long hours, my diminishing knowledge of engineering... all of it became blindingly insignificant when I realized that the data flashing across the room's three projector screens was collected and abstracted by my hands.

"I'm finding who I am! And for the first time, I have no doubts! Yes, for the first time, I understand!" -- Phil Collins

The day before the lectures, I stood in the exhibition hall for four hours. Six feet to my right sat an MD from my team and between us stretched a poster representing her brainchild and my data. Doctors, scientists, statisticians, and pharmacists asked me dozens of probing questions about our work... and I was able to answer them, converse with them, share laughs and oncologic commentary and moments of enthusiasm with them. I've amassed more knowledge about this stuff over the past year than I ever thought possible, and when asked to put that knowledge to the test in front of the toughest crowd imaginable, I was able to deliver. Once my initial nervousness subsided, I began to operate with a confidence so genuine that, one week later, people can still see it in my eyes.

Ensign Ricky

"Nothing you have said is revelation. Take my blues as read! My consolation: finding out that I'm my one true obligation." -- Tim Rice

I don't work on Fridays, and since I'm lucky enough to have a few friends who share the same fortunate employment situation, we were able to spend the entire day lazing around midtown. After stalking an actor friend at his place of business having lunch at Ruby Tuesday's, discussing the men in our lives, and planning a camping trip or three, we caught a showing of Star Trek in IMAX.

The film is new, it's different, it screws canon to high heaven, it completely rewrites Star Trek history... and I loved every minute of it. The new cast kicked ass, the new Enterprise is stunning, Eric Bana made the sexiest villain since Khan, and the writers were able to include Leonard Nimoy in the film without campiness or contrivances. (Not to mention that I finally see why Rutila has loved Zachary Quinto for so long... he's talented, he's insanely hot, and his scenes with Zoe Saldana were way more intriguing than I thought they would be.)

We took a long walk after the film, went shopping for sheet music, and ended up meeting my coworkers at Butterfield 8. I had a few glasses of whiskey and a few laughs, scared off a few cocky bankers with the phrase "biomedical engineering," and handed my phone number to a couple of un-cocky scientists who didn't frighten so easily. I argued with a man who claimed that my straight hair and oversized sunglasses made me look exactly like Megan Fox. I watched the Yankees game, cheered and yelled and booed appropriately. I stood chest-to-chest with one of my colleagues -- a Twins fan -- as we screamed in each other's faces about whether or not Mariano Rivera has played his whole career for the Bombers. (I was right, of course; Mo is indeed homegrown.) Five of us went to Taj after that, then we went to a dive bar across the street after we were thrown out of Taj for wearing sandals, then we went to another dive bar half a mile away to sing bad karaoke. I hailed a cab on Park Avenue South a little after one in the morning, and while stuck in traffic, I watched a man throw a lit cigarette into a trashcan. He panicked as the contents caught fire and ran away as half a block's worth of garbage began to blaze. I could hear the sirens in the distance as my cab approached the Queensborough Bridge.

On my ride home, I thought about my incredibly full day and night -- the people, the moments, and, of course, Star Trek. And despite everything that happened over the course of the day, only two things really stuck out in my head: my lunchtime conversation and my in-your-face Mariano Rivera argument. The rest of the events and the individuals were interesting in their own right, but they were mentally expendable. To use a Star Trek analogy, they were my Redshirts -- or to borrow the term popularized by Family Guy, they were my Ensign Rickies.



For those unfamiliar with Trek lore, it's a fact of life that, on every away mission, the random dude in the red shirt always bites the dust first... and no one ever seems to care. It happened in the original series, it happens in the sequels, it happens in the old movies, and it happens in the new movie. And more and more nowadays, I'm starting to recognize Ensign Rickies in my own life -- people who serve a purpose at the moment, but if they were to encounter Nomad, the vampire cloud, or the orbital platform and vanish, I wouldn't be too devastated.

The complication lies in separating the truly expendable from the diamonds in the rough -- after all, Scotty wears a red shirt too. Thus, on Friday night, I made a conscious effort to fight the urge to only focus on the Spocks and McCoys of my day and take notice of the anonymous ensigns too, regardless of how little interest I initially showed in them. I thought things through, followed-up... and was pleasantly surprised. Twice.

Dream On

"Half my life's in books' written pages. Live and learn from fools and from sages. You know it's true; all these things come back to you." -- Aerosmith

Six years ago, when it came time to choose classes for my senior year of high school, I petitioned for permission to take more classes than normally allowed. My request was approved, I carefully chose my five-and-a-half classes, meticulously plotted out my schedule... and was foiled by timeslot conflicts. I was left with half a class to fill after I rearranged things, and motivated solely by the Honors curve it offered, I chose Psychology in Literature.

"I was in an outdoor cafe and the sky turned red. I looked to the west and saw a mushroom cloud. A fireball started towards us, rolling across the land. Some dude in the cafe started chanting 'USA! USA!' which struck me as the downright worst thing to say or feel at the moment." -- 12.20.2003

I don't remember too much about the class, but I'll never forget one of the teacher's weirder requests. On our first day of class, she introduced The Metamorphosis by discussing the importance of dreams to writers. Then, as a tool for inspiration and self-analysis, she asked us to start recording our dreams.

"I was in the desert at dusk with a machine gun. Bruce Willis, Steve Buscemi, the entire family from 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding,' and I were camped out on the highland, while Louis XIV, Lucius Malfoy, some storm troopers, and my old lab partner were on the lowland behind a rock." -- 11.03.2003

Every day for eight months, I kept a notebook and a green pen next to my bed and wrote down anything that crossed my unconscious mind. The practice stopped once I finished high school, and almost as punishment, my ability to recall my dreams diminished as well.

"He ran up to me, started telling me about this petite blond girl that he met, and asked me to help him find her. I agreed to help and off we went, wandering the streets, calling her name. I was searching half-heartedly because I was upset at the prospect of handing him over to someone else, but I just wanted him to be happy." -- 09.29.2003

I dug out my old dream notebook today, just to see if my seventeen year-old subconscious was more insightful than I remember. The entries shocked me; apparently, I was dreaming about dilemmas, crushes, and life crises weeks and sometimes months before my conscious mind acknowledged their existence. (Some of the stranger and/or more insightful entries are scattered between these paragraphs.) Sparked by this realization -- as well as two recent dreams on two consecutive nights that were so strange and interesting that I can't get them out of my mind -- I resumed recording my dreams this morning.

"I was a contestant on The Apprentice and had to search someone's living room for index cards bearing my name. No problem, I thought... then Donald Trump stole my glasses." -- 03.19.2004

In Thursday's dream, a man and I walked through a small-town street somewhere in the south. We entered a store filled with nothing but tomatoes and tomato products and started kissing between the beefsteaks and the heirlooms.

"Then I saw a man in black climbing the stairs to my new apartment, and I knew that the mob had hired him to kill Johnny. I had no idea who Johnny was and had never seen him before in my life, but my dream self seemed to be pretty attached to this guy. I snuck up on the assassin, disarmed him, smashed his head against the banister, and flung him over it." -- 09.23.2003

In Friday's dream, I was staying in a cabin in the Catskills, heard a weird noise in the bathroom, and walked in on someone horrifying in the shower. I freaked out, but my shower intruder locked eyes with me, spoke rationally, and I calmed down instantly.

"I went to spend the night at Columbia University and forgot pajamas and a change of clothes. I was staying in a room with eight other girls and all of them were borrowing my toiletries but refused to help with the clothing situation." -- 04.13.2004

My notebook and green pen are next to my bed. I'm looking forward to what tonight may bring.

"I was in school and my kidneys disintegrated. I ran to JS for help and he massaged my back so I'd live for five hours rather than three." -- 10.12.2003

Better Than Ever

"I'm twenty-two for a moment. She feels better than ever... and we're on fire. We're making our way back from Mars." -- Five For Fighting

I became an engineer to put my talent for innovation to good use, to help people without having to directly interact with them, to satisfy my curiosity about the way things work, to play with fire and electricity and chemicals and really cool machines, to solve problems, to fix things that are broken, to "improve" things that aren't broken, to feel like a total geek and a total badass all at once, to live on the cutting edge.

Those are the basics. The specifics have changed a few dozen times during the last fifteen years and will undoubtedly change a few dozen more times before I retire, but last weekend, I was forcefully reminded of what started it all. I spent a few glorious days in DC with a few old friends, and despite meals, movies, Mythbusters, and many other fun experiences, we still found time to take a seven-mile walk around the city. We didn't stop for too long at any point along our stroll, but we did duck into the National Air and Space Museum for a few moments.

I walked through the doors. The security checkpoint was new, but the Gemini command module still loomed to my left, the moon rock still sat on my right, and The Spirit of St. Louis still hovered overhead. I was nine years old when I first set foot in that room and recognized my destiny in its contents. Biomedical engineering didn't really exist back then, so instead, I wanted to be a rocket scientist.

Specifically, I wanted to be John Aaron. Never heard of him? Not surprising, since he's the most perfect example of a true engineer that I know -- he made a career out of creatively fixing other people's messes from the sidelines. Aaron graduated from college in the early 1960s, and armed with nothing more than his physics degree, he took a job at NASA on a whim. Six months later, he was working for Mission Control handling flight operations for the Gemini missions. While nationally recognized heroes like Gus Grissom, Jim Lovell, and Neil Armstrong were out testing the limits of space, Aaron was one of the many faceless men keeping them alive from behind his computer screen.

I was obsessed with the NASA of the '60s and '70s during my childhood. How thrilling it must have been to explore space when space exploration was still so brand-new, and to actually have the ability to get your hands dirty in it! Troubleshooting efforts in those early days -- astronauts fixing broken lunar rovers with old maps and duct tape, flight controllers trying to make CO2 filters out of tube socks -- always sounded like so much fun to me. John Aaron was the unequivocal master of troubleshooting, and his common-sense cleverness saved the entire space program on more than one occasion. He was the guy who figured out how to bring the crew of Apollo 13 safely back to Earth using only 12 amps of power. He was also the only person able to teach the crew of Apollo 12 how to reboot their electrical systems after the spacecraft was struck by lightning, saving the mission from certain abortion. How? Years earlier, he had heard of a similar problem during an obscure test mission, researched it to satisfy his own curiosity, and consequently became the world's only expert on the issue.

John Aaron made himself superhuman using only his brain and his ingenuity, which has elevated him to Batman-esque status in my estimation. He was my hero for most of my childhood and adolescence, and he's one of the main reasons why I had my sights set on a career with NASA for so many years. Problem is, there's no place at NASA for Aaron's brand of quick-and-dirty, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants brand of engineering any more. Everything is planned, budgeted, methodical, and triple-checked nowadays. It's neater and probably more efficient, but it's not nearly as fun.

It's not exactly better, either. On my way home from DC, I read an article on Project Constellation, the new NASA missions that plan to return humans to the moon by 2019. I learned that NASA plans to phase out space shuttles during the next few years and begin using Orion spacecraft -- which bear an eerie resemblance to the Apollo command module I wandered past in the museum last weekend. Seems like Aaron and his fellow engineers were more right about things than any of us could have guessed.

Seeing and Knowing

"I have a friend who's an artist... he'll say, 'I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull.' There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts." -- Richard Feynman

Everyone has a completely different perspective on life, but just how different does the world look to someone with a strong educational background in physical and biological sciences? I pondered this question a great deal during the nine months between my acceptance to engineering school and my first day there. I thought about how an in-depth scientific education would change the way I look at the world and what the ramifications of such an understanding would be. To work through my conflicting emotions, I started writing a short story about a high school senior lured into a scientific education by extraordinary promises:

"“But when all of this is said and done, you’ll know exactly who you are and what you’re doing on this planet.”
“I won’t have time to think, let alone find myself.”
“It’s intrinsic to science, don’t you see?!” Tommy slid onto the desk and leaned close to me. His eyes, bright as hummingbirds and just as jittery, flitted across my face. “And you're going to learn more about your own life than anyone! You’ll get some paint on your shirt and visualize the chemical structure of the pigments. You’ll blink and calculate how air resistance curls your eyelashes. You’ll laugh and recognize what muscles relax to form the dimple in your left cheek." His gaze softened. "You’ll understand the reflex pathway causing you to blush whenever I look at you too closely.”
I lglanced at my hands, then remembered my molecular biology. “Beta-adrenergic stimulation activates adenylyl cyclase, which raises cyclic AMP levels, which dilates facial capillaries.”

The perspective of the story flits between the curious student and the jaded doctor she becomes, between a girl searching for some beauty in life and a woman who can't find beauty in anything. It took me four years to finish writing because it took four years for me to understand what I was trying to write.

120 credits of technical courses happened during those four years, and every circuit and every metabolic pathway and every differential equation made my world look a little bit different. So much science happened so gradually that I internalized an entire new world outlook without even realizing it.

Today, I took the elevator with a woman who tried -- and failed -- to make a phone call as we traveled between floors. She frowned at her BlackBerry, I muttered the words "Faraday cage," and she had no idea what I was talking about. For the first time in a long time, it dawned on me that people actually exist who can stand in an elevator without thinking of electrical fields rearranging charges.

As I rode the subway home today, shifting my weight from one leg to the other to balance against the inertia of the moving train, I tried to remember a life before scientific enlightenment and realized that I couldn't. But why would I want to? Honestly, how can someone book a stateroom on a cruise without first calculating the center of mass of the ship? How can someone examine a windshield crack without knowing how the defect will propagate? How can someone make cream of tomato soup without understanding why a spoonful of baking soda needs to go into the pot?

I agree with Richard Feynman; I adore knowing and find that life is incredibly beautiful when you understand the science behind it. But honestly, on some level, is not knowing just as fulfilling? Does my lack of ignorance mean that I'm missing out on the simple pleasures?

Gratitude

"If I told you that I loved like an ace, then I'd be lying 'cause I've made some mistakes. But I'm trying with perfect faith! When I let you in, I began to win, and now I'm just all gold. After all I've done and the road I've run, I want to thank you. I want to thank you." -- Gavin DeGraw


I'm thankful for early-morning Thanksgiving mass at my high school and late-afternoon debates about genetics, Family Guy, and everything in between that almost always follow them. I'm thankful for family traditions, and even for the gaping slice wound on my thumb (because no holiday in my world is complete unless someone slips with a knife, burns oneself, or falls into the oven). I'm thankful for food, and for having enough of it to be able to use it creatively. I'm thankful for having a roof over my head, even if I complain about it incessantly. I'm thankful for two-dollar subway fares and the men who powerwash the Bryant Park station at one in the morning on a Thursday. I'm thankful for New York City, which is equally beautiful when it's packed and noisy and crazy and when it's eerily desolate (like it was during yesterday's commute). I'm thankful for an office window with a view of the Chrysler Building and a windowless clinic seat with an, um, equally gorgeous view. I'm thankful for cancer research, I'm thankful for my job, and I'm thankful for the contract I signed yesterday that officially changed my status from new hire to full employee. I'm thankful for my quick mind, my calloused hands, my strong back, my flat stomach, my freckled cheeks. I'm thankful for the love I've offered, the love I've received, the love I've made, the love that still awaits me. I'm thankful for the opportunity to find more things to be thankful for today and tomorrow and the day after that. I'm thankful for my ability to use words to express what I'm feeling and thinking, and I'm thankful for the writers and songwriters who inspire me when my own words fail. And I thank you for reading.

Destroyer of Worlds

"I explained that the visual effect of an atomic bombing would be tremendous." -- J. Robert Oppenheimer, via Peter Sellars

I spent yesterday evening in the highest balcony of the Metropolitan Opera House to see the closing-night performance of Doctor Atomic, a new John Adams/Peter Sellars opera about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, the days leading up to the first test shot of the atomic bomb, and the conflicting emotions of the scientists involved in its creation. As a woman with a little opera training and a lot of scientific training, I was ecstatic to see two of my passions merge on stage. Of course, since I was headed to the world's most renowned opera house to see a production composed by an ultra-modern, minimalistic visionary, I didn't expect much nuclear physics to be involved in the production.

Thus, I was genuinely surprised to enter the house and face a white-on-black projection of the Periodic Table of the Elements rather than the usual heavy damask curtain. I examined the familiar grid as I settled into my seat, but something didn't feel right about it. It eventually dawned on me that a few elements -- and the entire actinoid series -- were missing:My companion, a chemist, deduced that the scrim showed the Periodic Table as it looked during the summer of 1945. We picked over the projection, noted what was there and what has been discovered since, became increasingly aware of the knowledge base of the scientists and engineers we were about to meet. When the house lights dimmed, we were already immersed in a singular moment in time, in an era of science before the discovery of francium and promethium, before the threat of nukes hovered over every war, before E=mc^2 was proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Then the curtain rose and the neat grid of boxes was replaced by... a neat grid of boxes. Forty-two boxes to be specific, stacked three high and fourteen across, each covered by a screen bearing the ID card photograph of a Trinity Project scientist. The photos were creased and faded and covered in cellophane tape. Some names were typed, others handwritten, some misspelled and crossed out and re-inked. The names were difficult to read from my vantage point, but Richard Feynman, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, I. I. Rabi, Niels Bohr, Robert R. Wilson, Edwin McMillan... they were all there. The men who dedicated their lives to stretching the boundaries of human thought were each identically posed and encased in an identical little box.

The photographs then rose to reveal forty-two cast members dressed as scientists, one in each cubicle, each armed with a piece of chalk, each madly scribbling unknown equations on the back wall. Over the next three and a half hours, some of them break free from their confines to express human emotion -- Oppenheimer, our Doctor Atomic, takes center stage and becomes almost Faustian in his efforts to balance his dedication to the bomb and his fear of its potential -- but, for the most part, the scientists remain spaces on a grid, insignificant parts of a significant whole.

Ultimately, the opera about nuclear physics becomes an opera about dozens of brilliant innovators who surrender their individual identities to accomplish something for their country. And that opera ultimately becomes an opera about scientists being forced to choose between doing what they know is right for their own edification and doing what they know is right for humanity.

During intermission, I said to my companion, "I've never been so proud to be a scientist, but I've also never been so ashamed to be a scientist." That's because, shortly before the curtain fell on the First Act, when the glowing wire-covered bomb rose away from Oppenheimer to cast a vaguely spherical shadow over half the stage, I realized that, if fate had somehow landed me and my engineering skills at Los Alamos in 1945, I would have made the same choice that Oppenheimer did. Despite being surrounded by discussion of Japanese target cities, possible ignition of Earth's atmosphere, and a new age of destructive power, I would have used every skill I possessed to get "the gadget" working properly. Just because I could.

The opera ends at t-minus-one second, but that one second is stretched into ten minutes of orchestral cacophony that nearly shakes the house with its intensity. The entire cast is bunkered down on stage, unmoving, staring wordlessly into at the audience as the scenery warps behind them. The audience never sees the explosion, but for a brief moment just before the curtain fell, I felt like the bomb.