topography

I love topographical representations; two-dimensional maps, three-dimensional structures, etc. My advisor at Lamont has worked a lot on answering the question of how people interpret spatial representations of the natural world--how do we read maps? Why is easy for some people to translate lines and marks into hills and mountains and valleys, and why is it hard for others to do so?

Spatial reasoning ability in a population, like other basic skills or abilities, falls out in a normal distribution. Unlike with basic math or reading, though, there are very few systems built into the educational framework designed to help kids develop their spatial skills (though of course, the efficacy of the systems designed to identify and help struggling kids with math and reading is debatable/sometimes ineffective/socioeconomically divided, etc).

I was always good at reading maps, but I find myself struggling to do more complex mental gymnastics now, as I try to layer information on top of information in my mental maps. If the atmospheric circulation system over Antarctica is doing (fill in the blank) now, and we change (x factor, way the hell far away), then...thinking in four dimensions is hard.

Instead, let's just look at these pretty things. An amazing topo necklace. This, from the PS1 show.

oceans, personal or otherwise

"Men really do need sea-monsters in their personal oceans... An ocean without its unnamed monsters would be like a completly dreamless sleep."

-John Steinbeck, The Log From the Sea of Cortez

and

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”

-Werner Herzog

I spend enough time in the ocean, dressed as a seal (e.g. wetsuited, sitting in the surf zone) that I feel as though I should be more concerned about sharks than I am. It serves essentially no purpose for me to worry about all the things that could hurt me when I paddle out; it won't change my behavior, just make me more anxious. And really, I don't need any more anxiety in my life. If I get chomped, I get chomped.

Happy shark week, all.

amazing.

I'm a total sucker for graphite, and for photorealism, and for minerals, so these blew me away. I only wish I were in San Francisco to go see Marissa Textor's work in person at Park Life...I'll have to go look at some other awesome art to fill the void. I saw this the other day and LOVED it, and last weekend I hit up the "Greater New York" show at PS1--any suggestions for something I should see this weekend?

starting again, perhaps?

I last wrote on this blog nearly a year ago. Since then, I've learned a lot about: the global carbon cycle, dead zones, helium, and how acids digest rock; I don't get lost on the NYC subway; I have failed to finish putting up pictures on the walls of our apartment.

More on all these things later. For now, just a few thoughts.

1) the last 5 recipes I've made from food blogs have been major failures (maybe only minor failures, but since I'm cooking so infrequently these days, they feel worse by ratio/comparison).

2) I miss the west coast terribly. New York is a wonderful place, and I've loved being here this summer (I'm not sure I can in good conscience say that I loved being here during the fall/winter), but I think part of why I've loved it is that I leave nearly every weekend. And because I'm at Lamont all day long, my actual city-time is pretty minimal. So what exactly is it that I've loved? Evenings with friends, our rooftop, biking over the Brooklyn Bridge when the moon is out? Yes, yes, and yes. But I've loved surfing on the Cape, sailing on Lake Champlain, and skateboarding the parking structures of MIT more. My summer is filled with moments of total awesomeness, most of which do not take place in New York.

That's totally fine. I'm really happy right now, and I'm lucky that I can leave to go do the things that I love to do. And I know that there's a reason I'm here; it's not like I'm just hanging out here for the hell of it, I'm working my ass off to learn stuff so I can be a better scientist, thinker, and writer. Totally legit.

So why do I keep having pangs of intense, visceral homesickness for places that are not even my original home? I think about Portland and I want to be there so badly I could cry. I think of LA (Seal Beach, Laguna, even Claremont, for heaven's sake!) and feel as though I will fly away like a pile of dust unless I get in the water to surf Trestles, Sunset, County Line. I even dream about running the ridge--3 miles straight uphill into the San Bernadino foothills, in the blazing sun, a slow shuffle all the way until I crest out and see the smog-filled LA basin, then another few miles of arm-flailing steepness downhill. I loved that stupid run.

I guess what I'm wondering now is whether I'll miss my life here when I leave, because I know I will leave. Or rather, what small pieces of my life here will I miss, and will they grow in size and importance to drown out the annoying bullshit that screams so loudly now? Will running at sunset on the West Side Highway block out having to commute 1.5 hours to get to my stupid lab? Will eating dinner on the roof with Alex cancel out the panic I felt for 6 months, as I tried to catch up to all the other 1st year grad students re: earth science background?

Anyway. What I'm trying to say is that I'm happy, and I'm engaging in a dumb, useless project of trying to compare my happinesses of the past: Pomona, Portland, Hawaii, Brown Ledge. I suppose what I should do is just file this as a good time in my life and leave it at that, no?

Note: the photos are two happy times from the last month or so--top: Breene, sitting in front of his, Justin's, and my skateboards after an epic skate sesh in Boston. bottom: the view of Mallet's Bay (Lake Champlain) that I woke up to on my birthday. Brown Ledge is like a quarter mile to the right out of the frame.

Honolulu

We were out in the country for a week with no internet. It was awesome, and the surf was good.

Now we're back in town, there's a little swell, and it looks like there are 500 people out in the 5 spots I can see from our apartment (Suicides, Graveyards, Tongs, Ricebowls, and Old Man's).
We're 11 floors up, so it's hard to see, but Ricebowls is a couple feet overhead on the sets. Hopefully we'll find some corners!

Lost Angeles

I get a lot of incredulous looks from people when I tell them that I love LA, but I'll stand up to the haters--LA is great. It's wierd, and awful, and apocalyptic, and a disaster, but it's also vibrant and close to everything I love (surf, deserts, mountains, books, really awesome food, I could go on...). It's full of strange people who think they're normal. It's ecology is fascinating--there are vernal pools filled with threatened freshwater shrimp-things next to the runways at LAX! There are pockets of coastal sage scrub that persist in the face of all sorts of invasive species, as houses are built and torn down nearly on top of them! And god, the wetlands, the coastal ecosystems, the islands...

Anyway, I didn't mean to wax rhapsodic about LA just yet. I'll save that for the next few days here (though it's supposed to be 108 tomorrow everywhere but the coast, so I might be changing my tune quite shortly, once I've actually remembered what summer in SC is like).

But I don't know. At this point, LA feels more like home than anywhere else. I know it better than Boston, I like it better than most places I've been, and I can surf all the time--and unlike my dad, I don't get sick everytime I go in the water, which is nice.

I meant to post this like 2 weeks ago, so it's going up now, without revisions--more later!

I guess this is the beginning

So, I forgot that I had a blog for a while! Now, though, I've left Portland, and I'm suddenly feeling very...uncentered, I suppose. A little lost. In times of confusion, I think writing everything out helps me clarify it all.

This will be the blog of my experience throughout my 2-year-long masters program at Columbia. I don't start for a few months, though, so in the meantime--this is a blog of the interim.
I've spent a really horrifying amount of time in that "interim"-type life stage in the last year, finding myself in transit, or waiting to move somewhere, or filling time as I look for a job. Interim periods are strange, stagnant times, when I've got nothing to do but think about myself and fill time. Last August, when I got back to California from Hawaii, I spent nearly two months waking up late, surfing County Line all morning, half-heartedly studying for the GRE's, and calling people in Nevada for the Obama campaign. Then, in Portland, I was unemployed, then underemployed, then...I don't know. Just a little lost for a while.

Now I've left Portland. I'm back in California, with Gabo, playing college-tour chauffer for two weeks, before I head to Honolulu for a few weeks with the family; after that, I fly back east to move in with Alex in Manhattan!

See? When I write it out, my next month or so seems less terrifying. Which is a good thing, because I tend to let things snowball and become much scarier than they actually are.

Anyway! On to happier thoughts! What have Gabo and I been doing, anyway? This is yesterday, in SF, below the Golden Gate Bridge. We were going to walk out onto it, but the whole thing was thickly coated in fog. We went to the Mission to eat tacos instead, which was a great decision.

Gabo finished his lacrosse camp today, so tomorrow we're starting our travels (loosely based on visiting colleges) in earnest. More updates soon!