lichen lace

We went to Craftsbury Vermont to cross country ski and snowshoe. There had been an ice storm so the trees had crackle-snap-crashed from the weight of the ice. There was this one tree covered in reindeer lichen, and then with the ice it looked like it was decorated in green lace scrunchies. I was enamored.

Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries 1957 Swedish)

True Romance (1993 USA)

Иваново Детство (Ivan's Childhood 1962 Russian)

We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011 UK)

Stoker (2013 UK)

The Godfather (1972 USA)

four days

in cycles:

In the morning I met with Frank to talk about senior project for the last time this semester. I frantically finished up some prints. The watercolors came out too pale, the citra solv barely transferred the ink. [cycle] Rehearsal, Concert. J. S. Bach's Magnificat in D and Schubert's Mass in E-flat Major. [cycle] I bumped into Lisa from Humboldt and we talked until we had to part and say good bye. She asked me how old I am and told me “oh! You’re still young”. She’s 24 and an undergraduate student: everything is slower in Germany. We talked about how sometimes it is necessary to leave the people you know to find out who you are, and how ages 16-19 or so, everything that sparkles; sparkles more furiously than it does later. She told me to tell her if I ever go to Berlin again. [cycle] I went to play mafia with some of the exchange students. All spoke Russian and some of the names were more foreign to me that others. Familiar ones where Valya and Yura and Yuliya (AUCA) Tim (Smolny). Less familiar but still comprehensible is Albina (Tajikistan, AUCA).  I had never heard before Agerim and Akylai (Kyrgistan, AUCA). We played until 3 or so and then I went to Kelsey’s room and fell asleep by 4. [cycle] 

We woke up at 9, got breakfast and then I went to my last printmaking class. There were two bottles of wine and this is the least happy I’ve been with my art work in a while. I went home and slept. [cycle] I worked and packed and went to bed at 2am. [cycle]  

I woke up at 6 and finished packing and got picked up at 7:15, went to the train station with Agerim, and we got off at Grand Central.  I made sure to find the bus for her to get to JFK, before going my own way to Kostya’s lab at NYU. I finished my coursework there. We went wandering to get food and then we went to Bedford Stuyvesant (BedSty) where he lives. [cycle] We walked to Bushwick where Shinno’s multimedia installation was. The room looked like it used to be some industrial space, but had been redone for events. The bottom of the walls rounded off into the floor and everything was white. The show consisted of a dancer in the dark, except for a projector light. It refracted through fog, produced by a fog machine. The dancer was wearing a mask made of squares of mirror. He danced with the light, the music built up and became more frantic. It felt more like I was having some sort of subconscious experience, rather than watching something happening in front of me with a hundred other people. Esther was there too, and after the show the dj came on and we danced. The projector was still on, and it was a fun body-exploration to watch ones silhouette on the wall, a different way of entertaining ones vanity. I went to the indoor-balcony upstairs and fell asleep on the couch, which was vibrating from the bass of the music. At two Kostya and I left. [cycle] 

We went to Manhattan and I took a 5:30 bus back home. [cycle]

soft yellow

Снег, снег, снег

The desire to do work has not waned in me, but the ability to do it is currently simmering below a desired level. This morning I handed in 15 pages on cognitive behavioral therapy for auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia (antipsychotics decrease agitation, but often hallucinations continue: a problem since 60-70% of cases exhibit auditory hallucinations, mostly voices. I didn’t do much research on the brain this time, since it was for my clinical class, but the one study that I did look over found changes in brain activity in the group that went through cognitive behavior therapy. I always find that this is the easiest way to convince people that it is working, though the other ten articles I read were also convincing).
Currently, I am at the library, and if I had gotten more sleep perhaps I would be reviewing an article and writing five pages on infant visual synesthesia over the course of development (apparently babies detect motion based on color as well as luminance. This capacity dissipates early in development, quickly deteriorating so that light/dark detection becomes significantly more critical to the detection of movement. The main problem, of course, is that setting up a choice paradigm for babies is hard, and that looking at changes over development that cannot be explained by – well, normal developmental stuff – is its own challenge. I was also excited to see a citation of the professor I’ll continue working with this winter in the paper). The seniors in the psychology department were supposed to do power point presentations of senior projects today, but because of the

Snow, snow, snow
                                                                                                                                         it has been cancelled. But the choir rehearsal for Shubert hasn’t been, and so I’m dawdling. Debating if calling subconscious motivations behind what could be considered as reciprocal altruism, as opposed to ‘true’ altruism, is simply a cynical semantic differentiation, as opposed to a social ‘truth’. The part of me that usually inhibits these thoughts, as well as the part of me that allows me to have gross motor coordination, isn’t working quite as it usually does. The books at the library sit in beautiful rows but the florescent lights are ugly. The exhaustion the punctuates the souls and bodies of college students during finals does not correspond to any romanticized depiction shown in movies. Rather, it is tiresome. “Not sleeping is the worst thing in the world” says Kelsey: they forget fatigue in movies. They forget that once you pull an all-nighter to study for an exam or write an essay, the work is not done. There are more exams, other classes, further work to be done. They also don’t include the exuberance that comes with intellectual pursuit, the surge of adrenaline or endorphines or dopomine or cannabinoids that mitigates the fatigue-induced headache. 

Ah, choir is canceled as well, and I'm at Hannah's now. The snow on the road has built up, and I pity those driving low-rise cars in this weather, desperately coming back from work, reeving desperately against the fricktionless snow, desperate desperate desperate . There is banana bread in the oven.

“TOMORROW'S SCHEDULE:
3-5PM BACH DRESS REHEARSAL (2:45PM CALL)
5:30-7:30PM SCHUBERT DRESS REHEARSAL (5:00PM CALL)
8PM CONCERT”

brilliant.
Saturday night I was at Hannah’s and it was snowing and we painted our nails and then I painted Will’s nails and then David’s as well. We went wandering into the storm after dinner, watching the flakes sparkle with reflected light, and cars skid dangerously in the road. The street lights are yellow and the world is quietly beautiful.

I’m a hero.

Friday it hailed and rained and snowed. There was a play-festival going on with six plays, with each night showing three of them, so I saw three short plays.

Saturday I went to the senior dance show and then a party at Megan’s house: my first ever Christmas party, oddly enough.

Sunday I went to the first of three in the second set of plays, because someone at the party said it was the only one of that set worth seeing

Monday the president of Ghana, Mahama, came to speak so I skipped class and went to that instead. Security came a week in advance to make sure it was safe, and then Mahama right after to go to the funeral.  Literally the only thing he did on this continent during that trip was talk at my college, in part because when Mahama said he was going to do it Chinua Achebe was still alive and it was Achebe's conference.

Tuesday was normal, except that our rehearsal for chamber singers was later and longer than usual. I think I shoveled the driveway angrily because I had slipped on the ice and hurt my wrist earlier in the week.

Wednesday I had my midway board for senior project. I had braced myself: “they are going to tell me I have to do a lot of work and that I need to be more efficient and that it’s severely lacking”. But they said it was great, suggested some things to make the transition from the mechanics of the eye to the more attention-based parts. Twenty minutes later I had an exam and then printmaking hw and then I went to the Bard Orchestra concert because Hannah and Leila are in it.

Thursday evening I went to Lucas’s senior show (he drums) and then signed up for classes.

And today, Friday, I went to This Bardian Life at the Root Cellar and took photos. There was music but I left halfway through the first set.

one week left

Thanksgivingukkah

I came home to a house full of family and friends and started frying latkes. I was sick but relived to be home. Eventually I told my body to shut up by taking some pseudoephed and proceeded to go to the annual Thanksgiving celebration in Belmont: the night tapered off with Eloosha on keyboard and singing. I stayed up until 5 am and left the next morning by train, where Yosef met me and walked me home in my last few hours before getting picked up by a fellow Bardian to go back again to Bardland.
On Thursday we had a one-day-late Hannukah-end party. I talked to people I don't know there, and later walked happily home, chipping the solidified wax drips off my chanukiah as I went.