Month: January 2007

Visitors to Thorson 107 in the past month may have been struck by a patch of gritty residue that had accumulated in a small patch outside the door. Thorson 107 is Kevin’s and my room, and the gritty residue, it so happens, was formed from sidewalk salt, sand, dirt, and whatever other mineral deposits are to be found in stale January snow. All that grit would have been in my closet, where I store my shoes, if not for the fact that, upon returning from my daily sojourns, I had developed the habit of dutifully placing my still-soiled shoes on the hallway floor next to my door. Later I would take the shoes in and place them in my closet, handily avoiding the problem of dirty melted snow evaporating in my closet only to leave its solid contents behind, where it is hardest to remove.

From hereon after, I will no longer continue this practice because my shoes were stolen on Friday night. At first I was really angry about what was obviously an instance either of greed or spite, but upon further reflection and the help of Marcus Aurelius, who wrote, “Reject your sense of injury, and the injury itself disappears,” I soon took my shoe experience as a lesson. A lesson, that is, in being a better person. You see, recently I saw a girl leave her iPod in plain view in the open in a common area (Fireside) at St Olaf. I thought, for just a moment, that if I were guaranteed to get away with it, I would consider taking it for myself. She probably got it from a rich daddy or mommy, after all, and I am broke, and I’ve never had a damn iPod before. It was probably her third one anyways, wasn’t it! But then of course I corrected myself and remembered that the human mind is never more resourceful than when involved in self-justification. This was before the theft of my shoes. Afterwards, I thought about this brief toying with the thought of theft, I thought about the advice of Aurelius, and I thought about my newfound conviction to be more positive, and I decided not to be angry anymore about the shoes. I made it into another lesson in being a better person. I’m making an effort NOT to re-evaluate my faith in other people but rather to reaffirm my intent not to inflict that kind of harm on others, now that I’ve again experienced petty theft.

I learned my lesson, but to the individual who stole my shoes: you’re still a jerkstore!

It just occurred to me how important it is for doctors to pass on the right information and to make sure the advice they dispense as part of their job is evidence-based. An individual (thanks, Amy!) with whom I ate yesterday told me about a factoid that her friend’s doctor told her friend, and she passed it on to me as advice for my own personal life. So not only was the advice repeated to two people by the time it got to me, but it was also years ago that the original advice was dispensed. The doc may have been tired or distracted, he or she may not have have remembered the exact facts or the exact source of the information and perhaps had no idea whether the advice would be passed on. How often have we made big changes in our lives because “my doctor said I should”? It’s kind of sobering to have that kind of responsibility, but then again the responsibility only comes as a result of the enormous faith that people have in physicians and their knowledge. Then again, the newfound media wiredness symbolized by Wikipedia undermines that authority and has the potential to replace top-down instruction with more of a dialogue.

– Had a really Freudian dream. I told someone I didn’t want to be a pastor and my dad heard and was heartbroken and angry at me for the rest of the dream. The poor unoccupied neurons must have needed some exercise. Then I woke up, two minutes before my alarm was to go off.

– Got awesome running shoes at Savers for $6.99 and then went on an hour-long run (!) on the treadmill, and burned 870 calories, according to the little display box. Dietary equivalent: two or three of the pastries my mom kept giving to me over the weekend.

– Battled entropy for an hour yesterday afternoon and lost (again).

– Stayed at Betty’s apartment over the weekend to be with the fam, since she died on Thursday, peacefully, though after a long ordeal of course. The funeral is on Tuesday, and my prof instructed me to send an email to the class alias to cancel it for that day, and I did. I’ll be a pallbearer. For comedic relief: my mom saw me naked when she tried to give me the towel I had forgotten in the hallway when I took a shower. Oh well; she changed my diapers until I was fifteen, anyways, so what’s the big deal?

– Went to Uncle Al’s retirement party at the church where he presided for 16 years.

– Drove back down to school in constant terror of spinning off the road due to snow and fast winds and fucking semis I hate semis.

– Saw a digitally rendered reconstruction of Dante’s face based on measurements of his skull made in the 1920’s (!). I had no idea his bones were still around. I must say, I wish for the sake of my imaginings while reading “Inferno” that he would be found to have looked like Gustave Dore’s engravings of him, traipsing toward the edge of the Styx to climb into Charon’s ferry, with that noble and grave look on his face.

– Went to a reading by the authors of “Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation.” The two authors were journalists, and not only does the book offer nothing new (despite the title), but it also has nothing to do with the form of literary criticism known as deconstruction. It looks like it was just a tag thrown on a book which is mostly written in a conversational, lighthearted tone, despite the seriousness of the subject matter. The book is about black masculinity in the media, and with all the misogyny and fatherless kids and violence and gangbanging in America today, there is plenty of room to make a serious attempt at the relationship of black male media titans like rappers and professional athletes to some of those problems. Instead the authors, as I said, use “deconstruction” in the superficial sense that they make it more complicated than it at first seems; and they offer almost no insight or prescriptive analysis in the end. Furthermore, the authors made the whole Q&A session after the reading into a sort of media criticism event. Instead of talking about something substantive, the whole talk became a story-sharing event on Dave Chappelle, 50 Cent, and other current media favorites.

One thing I did like was that one of the authors was originally from the Caribbean, and she said passingly, towards the end, that post-colonial literature was a great place to go for insight on race in a country with a history of slavery, such as the United States. On that I totally agree. When I was in Martinique, my host dad gave me a book by Aime Cesaire – probably the most famous of the Caribbean authors – about the pathology that is instilled in the subjects of slavery. I just wish I had more time to read that stuff. Though a hundred years old or older, it is the freshest insight on what slavery does to the “collective psyche” of the oppressed, though I don’t like that phrase at all.

A Chinese proverb, according to the book on issues relating to water as a resource, which I am reading for class. I’m not exactly sure what the proverbialist had in mind when he or she said it, but it made me reflect on my conclusion, supported by my own experience, that you have to be a little nuts in order to really shine. The people I have most admired – Kristi Curry-Rogers, a paleontologist; John Klein and Melinda Bennett, biology teachers; Carl Sagan (he was the classic engrossed professor) – all of them have something odd about them. Something that sets them apart or a specific interest that they have devoted an incredible amount of time and energy to exploring. On the other hand, some people I try to avoid are the ones with the lukewarm interests and the average, perfectly non-abnormal mindset on the bell curve. To me the proverb means you should encourage and nurture the little things that set you apart or that make you unique. If your life is a roller coaster ride of ups and downs, periods of intense creativity follwed by torpor, better that than a smooth baseline lacking the bad times in addition to the good. I myself remember being a little kid, first with my knowledge of dinosaurs which verged on Asperger’s, then my mold collection, then my obsession with birds and birdwatching, then my series of rats and plants and hermit crabs. There was always something consuming my attention, and always some adult delighted to see a rat poke its snout out of the little boy’s shirt or to see the crystals he was growing in his room. Later that specific engrossment gave way to a kind of generalist approach that forgot the detailed pursuits and conformed more to getting on with high school, friends, and all the other hands on my time. But I’m going to keep the proverb in mind and keep flowing like water on a rugged stream. Fuck being level.

– Currently at St Olaf; plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose! (The more that things change, the more they stay the same!)

– Had a gas station French vanilla cappuccino that was really good at the time but not so good in the ensuing hour or two.

– Four-hour long MCAT practice test went well; apparently I am a retard in biology, but the verbal reasoning section was very good, as if that will help. And I did well in the physical sciences section despite not having taken college physics yet. Perhaps I will take it this summer.

– Betty once again on the out-and-out; portion of bowel that is ichemic is too substantial to derive much nourishment from food she eats. Saw her two days ago likely for the last time.

– One favorite quote in “House of God” so far: “If you want to scrog the librarian, you have to talk about Shakespeare.” If you want to get into med school, Isaac, you have to choke down more organ-ick chemisery and some more math, too.

– New Year’s party marked by outbreaks of random fires, a lot of strange smells, turkey somehow getting ground into carpet, hard man-nipples (why do we have those, anyways?), uncalled-for drunken player hation, and a sword being drawn at at least two points. But the Perkins night cap at 4am made it all worth it.

– Jan 1 is the day of the year you are most likely to be murdered, but I made it through. First day of “Water resource management” tomorrow, 8am sharp.