More walls

New paint

I finally finished painting our bedroom - a project we just casually started over the weekend. I put on a base coat of Benjamin Moore's Navajo White, and color washed over that with Georgia Green, mixed 1:4 with Benjamin Moore's clear glaze. I'm pretty pleased with the results, although it was a lot of work. It's nice to no longer have to stare at the arctic white walls that all the unwallpapered surfaces of this house were painted in. Now our bedroom is soft and green and warm.

A pig in the ocean

For some reason I am obsessed with my poor little pig-sister swimming in the ocean (the photo comes from the news article on the pig - if you look under the photo you will find a link to a slideshow with more pix). The photo they use in the main article - the one here looking straight into the pig's face - almost looks like it has emotion and thought. With this image, it's easy to anthropomorphize and imbue the pig with human reactions, human feelings. Babe: Pig in the Ocean. But if you go to the slideshow you will find more photos which show the pig as she is - alien. Is it the geometry of the face? The spacing and relationship of the features that fools our brain into thinking - like human? Or is it the romanticism of the story? Is it the metaphor?

I love the metaphor of it all - the little shock and pinprick of humor at seeing such a crazy metaphor made real. I feel a gennuine kinship for that pig. I know how it feels to be cold and alone and not in a safe place. And tired. Very, very tired. You can't let your guard down, you can't stop paddling, or you'll go under. And the temptation to stop paddling and let gravity do it's work is tremendous. But the piglets want you back. You know that they're huddled under a banana leaf somewhere, waiting for you. So you keep paddling, snout up, and hoping that you're heading in the right direction, even though you're just swimming into deeper water.

I keep imagining different stories for how she got into the ocean:

Story 1 - Grabbed by a Wave

There she is, the poor little pig-sister, happily munching on some taro root, following this crazy smell onto the beach. All innocent and full of the pigginess of it all. The weather is a little rainy and gray. The ocean is large and angry. One minute pig-sister is on the beach and the next the ocean has reached up and pulled her into itself.

Story 2 - Chased into the Ocean

It all started with these boys, these human boys. Loud and hungry, they saw pig-sister wallowing in the mud. They wanted a nice pig dinner and chased after her with their rocks and their little guns. She ran for the safety of the river, but the current was too strong and she was swept out to sea.

Story 3 - A Pig Tries to End it All

What does a pig really have to live for? What joy is there in life? Is this really all there is - the dirt and the taro root and the loud boys chasing you, throwing rocks that sting and bite, running until you're tired and you're feet hurt and you don't know where you are? Better to turn to the cold, clammy arms of mother ocean.

Story 4 - What's on the Other Side?

The sea is immense! Look at it there (thinks pig-sister), just look at it! It goes on forever! How can there be so much water in this world? Is it really all just ocean from here? I wonder what's on the other side? She tells pig-brother of her wonder.

Pig-brother says: These questions are foolish and pointless. Who cares what's on the other side? The taro-root is here. The banana leaves are here. The pig-husbands and the pig-wives and the pig-lets are all here. Our life here is good.

Pig-sister pointedly replies: The loud boys with rocks and guns are also here.

Pig-brother responds: But we can always run. They only catch the slow and the old, and that will never be us.

Pig-sister says again: But what else is out there? Maybe there is something better out there. I think I will find out.

Catch of the day...

is apparently pork-of-the-sea in Hawaii!

The fishermen said the 40-pound feral pig seemed relieved to be rescued...

No one knows for sure how long the pig was swimming or how she got nearly a mile off shore.

I know how you feel, pig-sister, sometimes you're just a teeny tiny pig lost in a strange and tiring alternate reality, trying gamely to paddle your fat little legs and keep your snout above water.

I had forgotten Walt Whitman

From Song of Myself

52
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab
and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yaws over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd
wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

Why I love the Manolo...

I love The Manolo because he writes things like this:

It is like the handsome woman in the full-bloom of middle age, demanding that you judge her not by the shallow and popular standards of our day, but by that which is eternal and unchanging. That there are many who will not recognize her beauty does nothing to diminish it.

Two words of the day (for the price of one!)

Today, I bring you two words of the day (for the price of one!). The first word is:

choice (chois) n.

1. The act of choosing; selection.
2. The power, right, or liberty to choose; option.
3. One that is chosen.
4. A number or variety from which to choose: a wide choice of styles and colors.
5. The best or most preferable part.
6. Care in choosing.
7. An alternative.

Choice is power. Choice is an action of power, an ability to choose paths, an affirmation of freedom. When we lose choice, or when we realize that we don't really have choices, we lose freedom and we lose power.

The second word is Lexapro:

Escitalopram (Lexapro, Lexaprin, Cipralex, Sipralexa, Entact and Seroplex)^[1] is an antidepressant of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) class. It is approved for the treatment of major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder; other indications include social anxiety disorder, panic disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Escitalopram is the S-stereoisomer (enantiomer) of the earlier Lundbeck drug citalopram (Celexa), hence the name escitalopram. Escitalopram is noted for its high selectivity of serotonin reuptake inhibition and, as a result has fewer side effects not related to its serotonergic activity.^[2] The drug is marketed in the United States under the name Lexapro by Forest Laboratories and elsewhere under various brand names by Lundbeck.

Something about taking medicine to change my internal chemistry and alter my perception of the world in a permanent rather than transient way really bothers me. A good friend of mine suggested that it might be a loss of power/loss of control/loss of choice issue, and the more I gnaw at, chew over, and roll my mind around these hard to understand feelings of fear and anger and sadness the more I think she is right. It's hard to have your face rubbed into the fact that in the grand scheme of things, you are powerless. You are a honu floating in a giant and uncaring sea. You cannot control even how you feel.

At the very least, you think, you should be able to trust your feelings to guide you as you float along, but suddenly you are told that you can't even trust them. They are valid, they are how you feel, but they're inappropriate for the situation. You must change them, but you are powerless to do that on your own. Your brain needs to be reset chemically. You are wrong.

And you don't really have a choice about whether you try this medicine or not - everyone says it will make you better, everyone says your quality of life will improve, how could you not do this? How could you not try to make the lives of your children and your husband better by not having to subject them to your awfulness?

There really is no choice.

You really have no power. Not at home, not at work, not in life.

What were you thinking?

Some days you just have to wonder what you were thinking, getting an education where the employment prospects are so dim (well, where the jobs are not the kind that you are interested in). I guess it's not really fair to blame your young self because your old self is a different person.

Lessons learned from recent failed interview - learn to fake enthusiasm better, be better prepared, it's hard to get something like a job if you can't show that you want it.

I looked at business school applications last night. Somehow writing blog posts,which are basically essays, are so much fun, but looking at a business school ap where you are forced to write essays is a totally different beast. And also brought with it all the horrible memories of taking classes and exams and having homework. No thanks. And of course there is also the cost of business school.

I need a plan.

The thoughtful dresser

One of my boyfriends (it's always neck and neck between Cary Tennis and The Manolo) has led me to a great new blog, The Thoughtful Dresser, by a British writer/journalist who writes on life and fashion. She is very funny but also thoughtful (as her blog states) - her blog's motto is:

Because you can't have depths without surfaces.
Linda Grant, thinking about clothes, books and other matters.

I like this quote she has on her sidebar from a book about a very serious and sad time in recent history:

'The only true and lasting meaning of the struggle for life lies in the individual, in his modest peculiarities and his right to these peculiarities.' (Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate.)

The post which caught my eye today is this one with a still from Ugly Betty and an Edith Wharton quote:

It's almost as stupid to let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them proclaim you are beautiful. Edith Wharton

I'm firmly of the belief that the image we project is supremely important to the way people respond to us. Dressing nicely and neatly projects (to me) an image of self-confidence. After further thought, I realize that for some of us it's actually a false shell.

Books for kids

My sister's son has started really enjoying books, and she asked me if I could recommend more books. Of course I said, sure, and then did nothing. Fortunately, Teeny Manolo has two posts on books for younger kids and books for older kids that lists really excellent books. I love the internet - it allows you to harness the work of others so that you can laze around all day eating bonbons (or working, whichever).

What's the cause?

CNN has this amazing graphic which shows the increase in obesity in the US since 1984. It's pretty amazing to watch the map go from no color to red (>25% of the population with a BMI of over 30). What is the cause? Why? It really blows my mind (and illustrates the power of images over words, as the "obesity epidemic" is something I've been reading about for a while now, but it didn't hit me so dramatically until I saw this graphic).

On beauty

From today's Manolo:

"And a spasm of pure rage passed through me. Who was this fat bastard to tell women that they were obese if they couldn’t fit into a size 10? To make clothes that half the population couldn’t wear? I am tired of fat men telling non-skeletal women that they don’t exist."...

It is difficult to desire physical beauty so intensely and yet have it denied to you, as the Manolo, from his own personal circumstances, can tell you.

Word of the day - equipoise - and poetry in unexpected places

I've been reading scientific journals again, and have been finding a lot of poetry (strangely). Today's find includes my word of the day - equipoise. Here are the first two definitions from wikipedia (which I love):

Equipoise is the state of being balanced or in equilibrium, usually connoting something that is a product of counterbalancing.

Equipoise is also a poetic term.

The phrase I found today's word of the day in was here (Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 6, 871-880 (November 2007)):

Thus endowed with remarkable regulation and an extraordinary versatility, the cell may respond decisively or maintain its equipoise as appropriate, filtering out signalling noise, resisting harmful assaults and orchestrating specific and coordinated responses. In this way, a strange harmony of contrasts is born from the union of two pivotal paradoxes — a simple complexity that enables the cell to exhibit a sensitive robustness.

It is pretty amazing the way the cell can exist in a complex and changing environment, and pick out the most relevant pieces of that environment to respond to. I think the "simple complexity" refers to the limited repertoire of biochemical mechanisms through which signals are relayed to the interior of the cell (the simple part) but the complexity refers to the actual architecture and wiring by which these simple mechanisms are connected - in ways that seem to me to be much more complex (possibly because of the way they originate) than man-made electrical engineering designs. And the "sensitive robustness" refers to the way the cell can respond the same way, repeatedly, to signal, even if the internal wiring is damaged, or suffering from other perturbations.

My reading from two days ago also had a pretty excellent passage (from The EMBO Journal (2007) 26, 4555–4565, Published online 11 October 2007):

These discoveries highlight unexpected flexibility in the genetic code, but do not elucidate how the organisms survived the proteome chaos generated by codon identity redefinition.

I like the idea of "proteome chaos" - it sounds so dramatic! - and "codon identity redefinition" - it sounds like gender reassignment, or something like that.