Journal Journal: Who doesn't like pasta?! 7
Who doesn't like pasta?! It's a staple food. It's like not liking rice. How can you not like pasta?
Then again, I don't like ice cream.
Who doesn't like pasta?! It's a staple food. It's like not liking rice. How can you not like pasta?
Then again, I don't like ice cream.
I go to protests, write letters, and try to make sure the people I know are informed.
I have a student who emailed me that he had to go "to the base" yesterday at 5am, and would try to make it back in time for recitation. He did make it for the last 20 minutes of class, and after class he said he would be sent over shortly. He won't be able to finish out the semester. A shame. "So you think the war's a bad idea?" he said. Yes, I do. "You must hate me then..." No-- of course I don't hate him. I support and admire our troops. It's the administration that I have a problem with, that I think is jumping prematurely into conflict, is risking the lives of people like my student when other avenues have not, in my opinion and the opinion of much of the world, been fully explored.
I have a friend who was making offhand jokes about how Iceland or Switzerland is looking awfully nice right now. Low unemployment, good social services, no desire to police the world. I love my country; I think that the U.S. was founded on, and manages to adhere to much of the time, some incredible principles. I think that I would rather stay here and try to change the things that I feel are wrong, try to understand why so much of this country feels that it's our place to violate international agreements and invade a soverign nation (however volatile) against world opinion and without fully exploring other options. I would rather try to promote change from within than abandon a place that I love and think has so much potential.
I think it's a terrible thing that the media has twisted so many protests and statements to imply that you either support the troops OR feel that war is not yet appropriate. As I type this, we've bombed Baghdad and a long, drawn-out conflict which will certainly involve a bloody land war has begun. I have a student who will be there, and I hope he and all the other soldiers manage to make it back. And I hope people write letters ot their representatives, assist in movements like War Resisters, moveon.org, the Community Action Network, the Thomas Merton Center, Cities for Peace, Take Back the Media and Women of Vision and Action. A friend laments that he feels so hopeless. No one of us can change everything, but if everyone does a little, together we can do a lot.
I love the way smells bring back vivid memories-- more than anything else, a smell can remind me of someone or something or sometime or some feeling. Tonight it smells like springtime. That, in and of itself, doesn't remind me of anything in particular, but it did get me thinking about smell.
I remember being probably 11 or 12 years old-- old enough that some friends were starting to spend a lot of time thinking about boys but not old enough yet to know much about them. A friend of mine had borrowed her "boyfriend"s t-shirt and was saying that it smelled like him. She was saying that every guy (and girl, for that matter) had his own smell, and that this shirt smelled like nothing but Seth. I'd never thought about it before, and the other friend participating in the discussion thought that the idea was gross-- "eew, Seth smells?" But I knew it was true, and not gross at all. Familiar. Close. Good. Today I was walking down the street and I smelled something-- some aftershave or deodorant or shampoo or something-- that brought me back to the nights I spent in highschool with a boy I thought I loved; it almost stopped me cold. The guy wearing whatever-the-smell-was was feet away from me... I only noticed it because the smell was so familiar, so vivid in my memory. I was walking with a friend about a month ago in the rain and he said, "Oh, you smell good..." and stopped me to smell my hair and try to place it; apparently a girlfriend 15 years ago sometimes used the same shampoo.
Today it smells like spring, like a night with a comfortable smell of Bloomfield, Pittsburgh. I hadn't realized that I knew the smell of this place until I went out onto my porch and realized that it smelled like those days I was moving here, the nights I spent in my unpacked apartment, not knowing where anything was or what I would see when I walked out the front door of my apartment. Now I know the street outside without looking at it, can imagine how to get to a grocery store, a club, my office, the bus, a friend... but the smell of the air tonight makes me think of this place, unknown.
I love that smell is such a visceral reminder. I love that we pick up things that we wouldn't notice otherwise, like a hint of vivid color out of the corner of the eye, that we have such strong associations and can make such minute distinctions when they matter.
And what makes them matter? Familiarity, being so close to smells for so long that you don't smell them, and then when you come back to them they're inseparable from their remembered source. Emotion, having a memory so important stored up that everything about it is fixed, and smell takes the longest time to fade. I can imagine why it would be so evolutionarily important to have strong reactions to smell, to be able to distinguish so finely between smells, to remember smells so well. But it's incredible to me how much smell is tied to emotion, vague or general memory, ideas and feelings and people and places, instead of momentary things like so much of visual memory is, at least for me. I think of a person I see them in a moment or at several moments; I hear a song I remember incidents; I smell something I remember sweeping eras or long-felt emotional ties or general situations.
Noodle kugel makes me think of my mother and my kitchen when I was very small. Thunderstorms near saltwater make me elated. Connifers make me think of nights in northern Michigan. A certain shampoo makes me think of sleepovers with my best friend when we were small, no matter how often I've used it as an adult. The smell of an approaching rain makes me happy; the smell of snow on a really cold day makes me subdued.
What do smells remind you of?
I just spent a couple of hours with a friend of a friend from Michigan; it was very nice to chat with someone about far-reaching topics. Expecially to chat with someone who likes hardware, video games and computers, and who knows what Slashdot is. I've spent the last six months with people who need help recovering their Microsoft Word files and know that I'm good with the "dread machines"-- and without people who can talk to me about that whole realm of my interests. I left my job as a programmer happily, and plan never to work in a cubicle again; I hope never to have a profession in the "computer industry" or the "information technology industry" again... but that doesn't mean that those interests have dropped totally out of my life. And while Slashdot and other electronic outlets are always available, I have found it hard to find real, live people to talk to who share some of these interests.
Where's a geek-gal-in-hiding to go? I'm not really in hiding-- I just spend my days teaching college kids about evolutionary biology and doing research in archaeology, so it seems like the computer geekiness is hidden. Where, oh where, do I go for an outlet?
I start to get comfortable with the world and a friend has a roofie slipped into her drink at a party. How could anyone live with himself after doing something like that? Yet he seems to be utterly remorseless. She's the one who's got to live with it. Imagine waking up and not knowing where you are, how you got there, or where this awful feeling you've got that something terrible happened to you came from. To have a chunk of 8 hours cut from your memory and the knowledge that you'd been assaulted. Of course, she did what everyone does-- took a shower, cried, took some deep breaths, and took a few days to tell anyone. No evidence. Worst thing is, he admits (smirks? gloats?) to her what he did, but denies it to everyone else. How can anyone live with that? At least she's going to file a police report.
ok, so... I went here via a rather circuitous route and was given a list of "active discussions" (those being today's top stories, for the most part.) I was also asked if I'd like to post a discussion. "Sure, why the hell not?" I thought to myself, and so I did. The result is intriguing and slightly confusing.
IF I HAD A MINE SHAFT, I don't think I would just abandon it. There's got to be a better way. -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.