my cup overfloweth with updates
Jul. 23rd, 2001 10:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aslantand so,
it was not a blackout but we sat in the dark anyway, saturday night, jason and i. another long conversation. he had snuck back into the house, i didn't hear him there and i was all set to read by myself in the living room, but he was sitting there with the lights off. so we lounged on our respective couches and talked for another long long time. this time it was more math, and personal accountability versus corporations. chaos in math, and another kind of chaos called, i think, stocastic math. which is what we mean as lay persons when we say chaos. because in the land of jason's mathematics when he says chaos it is a mappable state.
we talked for so long that i became tired. in the dark it was hard to tell if he was looking at me when he was speaking, so i shifted my eyes around randomly as i rolled around in my tired brain everything he was saying. more silences, in which i caught him looking at me as i looked out the window, with an unreadable expression on his face. expectant? i couldn't tell.
and he showed me the most amazing thing. he went on an ocean research vessel, to the sargasso sea, to study sargassum. they sent down a bag of styrofoam cups to a depth of 6 miles or so. when they came back up they were compressed down to thimble-size. i am a great lover of small things and this was very amazing to look at. also he had a small vial of the mud from the bottom of the sea, labelled and very scientific looking, resting inside the little thimble-sized coffee cup.
and so that was our second session of soapboxing.
meanwhile the apartments this weekend were all far away, hot, dirty, dull. expensive as well, and far from transportation. i feel very young and tired when i think about needing to do it again. i want to give it all up.
when carrie and i returned on saturday we took a nap. but my waking brain insisted that i had not been sleeping. what was it then? a new undiscovered country of suspension.
at nina's going-away party on friday we met the most interesting people. a tall thin man who once lived on nine thousand dollars a year. a woman named summer who is in law school and made the funniest jokes. nina was so very drunk when eireann finally arrived, and put her head into e's shoulder until i despaired of ever interrupting to find us a ride home. mollie's apartment was very beautiful, with a wide porch and a generous kitchen that i envied very much. we lit sparklers and threw sparks all over the backyard, and blew bubbles from these ingenious little rings. nina had bags and bags of food she had to give away and we left with sushi rice, dried kosher apricots, lentils galore, jars of spices.
yesterday i read and slept all day in the stifling heat. this week it is supposed to stay up in the 90s. luckily my walk is shady or i would have to commit suicide. it is unbearable, this humid soupy air. i just finished jeanette winterson's the passion last night, which was excellent. totally erased any memory of that horrible fluff novel i read the day before, all about empty throwaway lesbian relationships that all took place in boston no less, and depressed me. a horrid campy ending. instead i fell asleep dreaming of the rich vocabulary of the passion. it made me remember venice quite clearly. along the canals you see all these odd-looking struts on the walls of houses. at first i thought they were to hold banners during the feste, but instead i learned they were structural precautions. tensile steel threaded through crumbling canal walls to prevent them from sliding into the briny water.
also i was remembering the first time we went there, the way san marco opened up from that alleyway like a golden mirage. the way the gondoliere pushed off the wall in the tight corner, as if gravity and the canal's surface were temporary forces. he refused to sing for us, insisting that it would rain if he did so. at carnevale drunken heather leaned into me, her wire collar tugging at my ear and her skirt trailing in a puddle in the alley, and i desperately told a leering horde of veneziani boys that she was affianced. their dog barked at us briefly when they sprinted away, and i felt chastised for lying. the corset cutting into my hip as we stumbled across endless bridges with stazione signs disappearing and reappearing like ghosts in the dark crowd.
it was not a blackout but we sat in the dark anyway, saturday night, jason and i. another long conversation. he had snuck back into the house, i didn't hear him there and i was all set to read by myself in the living room, but he was sitting there with the lights off. so we lounged on our respective couches and talked for another long long time. this time it was more math, and personal accountability versus corporations. chaos in math, and another kind of chaos called, i think, stocastic math. which is what we mean as lay persons when we say chaos. because in the land of jason's mathematics when he says chaos it is a mappable state.
we talked for so long that i became tired. in the dark it was hard to tell if he was looking at me when he was speaking, so i shifted my eyes around randomly as i rolled around in my tired brain everything he was saying. more silences, in which i caught him looking at me as i looked out the window, with an unreadable expression on his face. expectant? i couldn't tell.
and he showed me the most amazing thing. he went on an ocean research vessel, to the sargasso sea, to study sargassum. they sent down a bag of styrofoam cups to a depth of 6 miles or so. when they came back up they were compressed down to thimble-size. i am a great lover of small things and this was very amazing to look at. also he had a small vial of the mud from the bottom of the sea, labelled and very scientific looking, resting inside the little thimble-sized coffee cup.
and so that was our second session of soapboxing.
meanwhile the apartments this weekend were all far away, hot, dirty, dull. expensive as well, and far from transportation. i feel very young and tired when i think about needing to do it again. i want to give it all up.
when carrie and i returned on saturday we took a nap. but my waking brain insisted that i had not been sleeping. what was it then? a new undiscovered country of suspension.
at nina's going-away party on friday we met the most interesting people. a tall thin man who once lived on nine thousand dollars a year. a woman named summer who is in law school and made the funniest jokes. nina was so very drunk when eireann finally arrived, and put her head into e's shoulder until i despaired of ever interrupting to find us a ride home. mollie's apartment was very beautiful, with a wide porch and a generous kitchen that i envied very much. we lit sparklers and threw sparks all over the backyard, and blew bubbles from these ingenious little rings. nina had bags and bags of food she had to give away and we left with sushi rice, dried kosher apricots, lentils galore, jars of spices.
yesterday i read and slept all day in the stifling heat. this week it is supposed to stay up in the 90s. luckily my walk is shady or i would have to commit suicide. it is unbearable, this humid soupy air. i just finished jeanette winterson's the passion last night, which was excellent. totally erased any memory of that horrible fluff novel i read the day before, all about empty throwaway lesbian relationships that all took place in boston no less, and depressed me. a horrid campy ending. instead i fell asleep dreaming of the rich vocabulary of the passion. it made me remember venice quite clearly. along the canals you see all these odd-looking struts on the walls of houses. at first i thought they were to hold banners during the feste, but instead i learned they were structural precautions. tensile steel threaded through crumbling canal walls to prevent them from sliding into the briny water.
also i was remembering the first time we went there, the way san marco opened up from that alleyway like a golden mirage. the way the gondoliere pushed off the wall in the tight corner, as if gravity and the canal's surface were temporary forces. he refused to sing for us, insisting that it would rain if he did so. at carnevale drunken heather leaned into me, her wire collar tugging at my ear and her skirt trailing in a puddle in the alley, and i desperately told a leering horde of veneziani boys that she was affianced. their dog barked at us briefly when they sprinted away, and i felt chastised for lying. the corset cutting into my hip as we stumbled across endless bridges with stazione signs disappearing and reappearing like ghosts in the dark crowd.
