.: Who invented up? This seems, to me, a crucial question unfairly ignored by nearly every philosopher who ever committed quill to paper (doubtless it is ignored by a fair share of laymen as well). I’ve searched online databases of texts by Plato, Descartes, and Derrida to see if they had anything to say on the origins of up, but each philosopher I examined appears to take it entirely for granted, as if it didn’t matter who made it for us.

.: Up is one of the more useful tools for survival we possess. We use it when left, right, forward, backward, and down are unsavory options. And while up has been around for a long time, it only really came to use relatively recently when our ancestors started climbing up trees just a few million years ago. Clearly someone out there knew we would need a place to go when we could no longer advance, retreat, turn around, or bury ourselves, but even more miraculously they had the foresight to provide it to us before we even knew we needed it (indeed, before we could be said to know anything at all).

.: But up need not be limited as a tool of mere survival — up has many applications in areas of pleasure. For instance, to better appreciate a rockin’ tune we simply turn the volume up. When we want to show approval, up is where we stick our thumbs. And I need not remind you how best to position the sunny side of an egg.

.: One troublesome aspect of this beautiful gift has been its subversion for nefarious aims. Long-range missiles would not pose the threat they do if not for the existence of up; owls and other terrifying birds of prey would not be able to pounce upon helpless field mice without access to it; indeed, the more unpleasant effects of alcohol would have fewer means of manifesting themselves if there were no place for the contents of our stomachs to be thrown. I am left wondering if our world would be any worse by up’s absence; I am beginning to conclude that it would not.

.: The only thing preventing me from asserting this conclusion with absolutely certainty is our lack of knowledge concerning who designed up. If only we could ask them directly or read the instruction manual they left behind, then we might be able to know whether or not we’ve been going about this up business all wrong. The former possibility depends entirely on whether the designer still exists, the latter on whether we could read their handwriting.

.: The only thing I know for certain is that up clearly could not create itself. You could argue that up is entirely subjective to the observer’s frame of reference and not at all inherent in the structure of the universe, but soon enough you’ll find yourself sliding down that slippery slope to conclude that the universe itself wasn’t invented. To even say as much would be absurdity! You can trust me on this matter – it’s not the kind of thing I would simply make up.

“I’m a very religious person. I probably should’ve told you that on the phone.”

.: So began a three hour conversation with a potential landlord/roommate. Some background: I start grad school in September, but I want to spend the summer here beforehand to get a feel for the place. I can only withstand so much culture shock, you see, and I’d rather not have it from both grad school and Jersey at the same time.

.: I researched some apartment listings online, but I also wandered around campus looking for fliers with those little tearable phone number slips. I found one that looked decent: $530/month in a shared household; I’d get my own room. I called the number on the slip, and the man answered with a distinct but not oppressive east coast accent. The house was far from campus, and I was without a car as well as ignorant of the bus routes, but he said I should go by foot because I probably needed the exercise. Likable enough.

.: I started in downtown and reached his house in just half a back of sweat later. Not bad time. He answered the door and immediately showed me a copy of the lease. “By the way,” he said, “I’m a very religious person. I probably should’ve told you that on the phone.”

.: I told him I just spent the last five years at Baylor; I was used to being around religious people. “Are you Baptist?” he asked. I must confess, I hadn’t anticipated this natural follow up to my statement, so I fumbled a “No…” and let the matter rest there, hoping he wouldn’t pursue it.

.: He asked me what I was doing, and I told him I was going into plant biology. “I was real big into plants a long time ago,” he said. “So peaceful.”

“Well,” I said, “not always.”

.: In what I thought was a continuation of the topic, he said he wanted to show me something special when I was done reading the leasing information. I figured something was up when I got to the last line in the handwritten section on house rules: “This is a Christian household. If you hate God do not move in!!!”

.: That’s when the crazy started. The “something” he wanted to show me was two statues — one of Mary and one of some saint — that wept. He keeps them in his room, right next to other iconography and, for some reason, this poster of the fundamental particles of the universe.

.: The babble came fast and furious. “Cody” — for I made the mistake of telling him my name — “This right here is proof of God’s majesty. These are actual tears — unexplainable tears. And they came from nowhere. Matter, from nowhere. I didn’t put them there. Nobody put them there. It’s not like somebody came by and sprayed water on them. I’ve heard people say it’s humidity and condensation, but that doesn’t make any sense. God directly broke the second law of thermodynamics. So the big bang theory has another headache. But that’s what they still teach in school.”

.: I may have received only a B⁺ in physical chemistry, but I know damn well that’s not what the second law of thermodynamics says. In fact, I told him as much. I also told him that the big bang theory was first postulated by a catholic priest. He dismissed both facts without much consideration and bemoaned once again the current “gospel” being taught in schools.

.: His attention returned to the statues. He pointed to the places of the miracles — namely, the faces — and mentioned how they are without blemish or dust, unlike the tops of the heads and shoulders. This was strong evidence because, as we all know, miracles of God are kept clean. He then took the opportunity, since I mentioned my Baptist environment, to alleviate my fears by explaining that Catholics don’t worship icons. “These are objects.”

.: He then asked me if I liked photography. I knew where this was going. He pulled out a well-worn binder of photographs and placed it atop the glass casing of an old record player (the house scored massive retro points, if nothing else). He flipped across page after page of excruciatingly detailed photographs from disposable cameras until he found the one that he, presumably, thought most impressive. It was a picture of a man standing in a parking lot at night. Stripped of the important details (as we shall soon see), it looked pretty much like this:

.: But this was no ordinary picture my ordinary eyes were gazing upon! There was something else to behold, something that (according to the testimony of Mr. Miracle) the eye didn’t see at the time the picture was taken — because the human eye and cameras work exactly the same, so when they don’t record a phenomenon the exact same way, we should get all worked up about it.

.: No, when this picture was developed, there was magic smoke everywhere. What’s more, I had a handy guide right next to me who could interpret the significance of every whirl and twirl of said magic smoke. The billow to the left of the guy, see, was clearly God’s guiding hand giving a thumbs up (I am not making this up; he is):

.: Let me assure you (though you have no reason to trust my artistic ability) that I am accurately representing the contents of the photograph with my renditions. (The fingers, I confess, are an embellishment.)

.: Then, right next to the guy, you can see a seated Jesus Christ with His right hand raised in the air. No outline distinguished God’s hand from Jesus’, obviously — it’s smoke. But he assured me the two were separate:

.: But the next one is truly astounding. To the right of the man you can see, as clear as day, the beak and two wings of the holy spirit (who is, I did not know, a bird):

.: So there’s the Trinity right there. But you know catholics aren’t content with just The Big Three; naturally, they have to bring along Mom, who you can plainly see praying in profile:

.: You can kind of make it all out too, can’t you? Even though it’s just my poor drawing (from memory!) of an equally nebulous apparition caught on film, you can kind of see a godly thumbs up, an angel bird, and a burrito-shaped Virgin Mary. But like I said, I had a handy guide right there telling me what I should see. He had picked out all the important details to highlight and ignored everything else. In reality, the photo looked much more like this:

“Cody, you wouldn’t believe it, but some people once they look at this tell me they don’t see anything.” This anomaly (their negative reaction to the miracle, not the miracle itself) is explained by a lack of grace from God. That’s not what he said, of course. What he really said was God’s grace towards him allowed him to see the otherwise clear as mud miracle in the image; I’m only assuming that the logically consistent converse also applies.

.: I still hadn’t said much by this point to challenge any of his assertions. As gently as possible, I asked him if he had ever shown the picture to other people without first explaining what they should be seeing. He said he hadn’t, and he seemed confused as to why he should.

.: I tried to illustrate by analogy with double-blind tests in medicine: neither the patients nor the doctors know who’s receiving the medicine and who’s receiving the placebo until after the results are recorded. Likewise, a simple test for the anomaly in the photograph would be to give people two photos (the “miracle” and an ordinary photograph) and ask them to point out the one with the miracle in it. Unsurprisingly, he felt no need up until now to perform any such test, but he did happily offer me the task.

.: I didn’t get a chance to tell him that it’s not my burden, because he liked to move from topic to topic. He returned once more to his statues, and I couldn’t resist offering another test concerning the perennial cleanliness of the their faces: the parts that accumulate dust all happen to be horizontal surfaces; the weeping faces are both vertical. A simple test would be to lay the statues on their backs, face up, and see if dusts accumulates.

.: He objected, “That part isn’t really that relevant.”

“Well if it isn’t relevant, why would you tell me in the first place?” Subject change.

.: There were several annoying refrains throughout the conversation. “I used to be a skeptic like you when I was younger” popped up more than once, as did “I’m a scientist by training too.” (Electrical engineering, in case you’re collecting data points for the Salem Hypothesis.) For some reason, maybe because I have a bad habit of nodding my head when somebody talks to me at length, he assumed I was religious, even though the only information I offered on the matter was that I was not a Baptist. Far be it from me to correct him. Maybe, I thought, he’d listen a little more closely to what I said if he weren’t immediately prejudiced by my renunciation of belief in God (a folly strategy, I realize, but whatever).

.: The last miracle he thought worthy to mention had to do with some old lady who allegedly lives on nothing but the wafer used in the Eucharist. I pointed out that there are those who can one-up that claim, and his youthful skepticism returned! I also offered a simple test for the old lady’s claim: ipecac. We would expect the stomach of someone who lives on only a meager wafer to hold nothing more substantial than acid and mucus. A single kernel of corn would give the game away. Unfortunately for him, the test is one-way: nothing but mucus and acid could simply mean she hadn’t eaten anything that day, not that she eats nothing else ever.

.: Mr. Miracle demurred. “What could be more simple than just watching her?” Indeed. What could be more simple than maintaining constant surveillance of an elderly woman for weeks on end, never letting her out of your sights for a moment, recording her presence on camera and having others review the hours and hours of footage? He’s right: one sip of ipecac is too complicated.

.: He wants it both ways: he wants the real-world validity miracles offer, but he immediately rejects the use of any real-world methods of verification. What gets me is that he shouldn’t be afraid of such investigations, because when push comes to shove he always has an ace card up his sleeve: Satan.

.: Satan, I’ve learned, is the Great Unfalsifier. So the lady took some ipecac and barfed up tuna salad? Satan put it there. He’s capable of miracles too, I was told. And as near as I can tell, his role is to render all religious claims unfalsifiable. Can’t see God’s presence in the picture? Satan’s messing with your grace. You can see God’s presence in the picture? Congratulations, you’ve bested Satan!

.: I’m sure some thoughtful Catholic reading this will correct me and tell me that’s not how Satan really acts, according to church doctrine. Thing is, I’m not the one who needs to be told that. This wackaloon is the one claiming to be an adherent to doctrine. But there are more simple Catholics than there are thoughtful Catholics (his words, not mine, so spare me the griping), and for them miracles and cartoonish visions of Satan are more important than philosophy and reason. Unfortunately, the childish superstitions this man holds are unlikely to be repudiated from behind the pulpit any time soon, and until they are I am free and right to criticize any religion that tolerates them.

.: Damn shame, too, because the house was a pretty nice place. Decent sized room, serviceable kitchen, and nice location, plus the cheapest rent I could find. Of course, overnight visitors were forbidden — he does not abide fornication in his residence. (This kind of moral steadfastness did not preclude him from describing the balcony as “a nice place to look at all the cute girls passing by.”) He described a previous female tenant in more than flattering terms but was quick to point out that he doesn’t take in tenants to date them. “Phew,” I said, placing my hand on my chest, “I sure am relieved.” He squirmed a little and said, in all seriousness, “No, I don’t do that kind of thing.”

.: We said our goodbyes and I left. I never told him what I really thought. In fact, I told him quite a few things that I didn’t think. I’m a little ashamed of that, too. I wish I were more open about my beliefs, if not for integrity’s sake then for pragmatism’s:

“I’m a very religious person. I probably should’ve told you that on the phone.”

“That’s nice. I’m not a religious person.”

“Oh. On your way, then. No need to talk to you for three hours.”

“Very good. See you never.”

[Exit]

.: There is one redeeming aspect to this story: on the way back to my motel room I hailed a taxi cab. Before driving off, the driver had a short conversation with a fellow cabbie. Apparently somebody had committed suicide by throwing themselves on the train tracks, and this had caused several delays and considerable loss of business for the taxis by the station. The friend said something about this being a reason why people should go to church:

“That’s what happens when you don’t believe in God — you commit suicide.”

My cabbie vehemently agreed:

“People who don’t believe in God are fucked up.”

.: I sat the whole ride in silence. When we finally arrived, I reached for my money and said, “You know, concerning that conversation you had with your friend, I just wanted to say that I don’t believe in God and I love my life. Here’s your fare.”

.: He paused for a second, genuinely, I believe, bemused. “You don’t believe in God?” he asked incredulously.

“I don’t,” I said, gently closing the door and walking away.

.: So yesterday, after four five long years of hard work, lazy work, and everything in between, I finally got that fancy piece of paper that says I’m qualified to say a thing or two about biochemistry. I know that this is one of those times in my life where everybody typically says I should be excited about the future and proud of myself, and they are right: right now is awesome.

.: But I’ll be talking about the future in later posts — there’s a whole summer ahead for that sort of stuff; this post is about everything before now, specifically yesterday:

-The person next to me during commencement, one of the few students with a 4.0 GPA in my major, was visibly hungover. She informed me throughout the ceremony about her pressing need to urinate, but in not quite as pretty words.

-Before the ceremony began, we were clustered in the hallways waiting to line up properly. There was the typical bashing of the perceived ‘lesser’ majors wherein we haughty biochemists dismissed the accomplishments of our colleagues in the business school. This point of conversation followed unironically from the admissions of most of those present concerning their abysmal performance in Dr. Trawick’s Topics in Human Biochemistry class. (Yours truly received an A in that course, thank you very much.)

-Short backstory: when people ask me what my middle name is, I like to tell them that up until Eighth Grade it was Michelle, and then I learned how to spell Mitchell. So of course when I walked across the stage to receive my diploma the dean said, “Cody Michelle Cobb.” These kind of events always have a large amount of background noise, but I could still hear my mom’s cackle from across the stadium. As I was walking back to my seat, Dr. Kearney intercepted and assured me, “It’s okay, my middle name’s Michel too!”

-Nobody quite knew when to stand up or sit down.

-At the end, after singing the official school song — or, rather, after listening to the official school song be sung to us — nobody tossed their cap. There was a hesitation, and a few people looked around waiting for others to initiate it, but nobody followed through. That’s not quite true — I threw my damn cap. Three or so other people did too. Mine, unfortunately, smacked some girl square in the face. I was afraid I’d be immediately identified, what with my lack of cap and all, but fortunately one of the other tossers’ cap landed right behind me — after it had smacked another girl in the face, of course. I quickly picked it up, even more quickly put it on, and coolly averted calamity.

-My mom, dad, stepdad, stepmom, grandmother, grandfather, sister, and other sister all came to see me. Of the nine people sitting at the dinner table afterwards, only two had not graduated from Baylor. Where the next generation decides to go to college remains to be determined.

.: That’s all I have right now. I have quite the week not-completely-planned ahead of me. If you see me ambling down the street not doing something, slap me across the face and tell me to do what I need to do, because there’s a lot of it.

.: Confirmation bias aside, why does this always happen?

First Burrito Assembler applies rice, beans, and meat to tortilla and passes unfinished burrito to Second Burrito Assembler.

Second Burrito Assembler: What else?

Me: Pico de gallo and corn please.

Second Burrito Assembler applies pico de gallo and stares at me, confused.

Me: …and corn please.

Second Burrito Assembler applies corn and burrito continues towards completion as usual.

.: At least they offer corn, unlike these bastards.

.: The following is a response to a note by Scotty Ellis, which is mirrored here (with permission) for posterity’s sake. This was originally supposed to be a comment on Facebook, but it has clearly grown too long. Forgive me if the subject matter bores you — you are not bound by any law to read it.

Science, most properly understood, is a virtue of the intellect, a perfection of knowing. At least under the Aristotelean conception, science is knowledge of necessary, eternal truths, truths which are unchanging and cannot be other than they are. In pursuing and attaining this scientific knowledge, the mind is perfected according to its object, Truth. The mind is conformed to the world, and becomes more perfectly a kind of mirror reflecting all reality.

.: In other words, science — as understood by a non-scientist — is something very different from what practicing scientists would recognize. I shall let them know at the next meeting.

.: Alternatively, we can define words as they’re actually used and state that science is a method of accumulating knowledge based on observation and logical inference — always provisional and open to anyone with a curious mind. Not quite the grandeur of “necessary, eternal truths,” but modern science has been somewhat wary of philosophy as of late.

Today, science more commonly refers to a very specific and limited sphere and method of knowing. The physical elements of the natural world are subject to clever experimentation in order to reveal its inner workings. We are willing to break open the world to see how it works.

.: Now we’re getting closer, but you’re glossing over a large part of what science is. Experimentation isn’t just clever tricks and manipulations — it’s the core of science. Experimentation is the admission that we might have gone wrong somewhere in our thinking so we’d better check. It’s the admission that sitting in our armchairs and thinking is insufficient to actually get things done.

It is important to note that such experimentation rarely is performed on subjects near and dear to the experimenter’s heart. A Nazi will freeze a Jew or the disabled; he will not immerse his own son in the freezing tub. A boy who will dissect a frog will not dissect his pet cat Whiskers.

.: Now this is actually an important point that I wanted to reiterate. Science, noble endeavor that it is, must still be performed by humans, and humans always have been and forever will be first-class jerks. Whether you ascribe to original sin or simply recognize the animal origins of our species, the outcome is the same: humans, by nature, come with a lot of baggage that’s difficult to correct for. We like the people who are in our arbitrarily designated group and hate those who are not. But this is not a sin of science. I can do no better here than to quote Jacob Bronowski:

It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz, this is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known, we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge or error, and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

… We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.

.: Back to your post:

A study of the human person reveals that a virtue, when isolated from the others, is hardly virtue at all.

.: I do not think this is proper conclusion you can draw from the examples given. A better conclusion would be something like, “Virtue, when combined with vice, is virtue in service of vice,” but that’s patently obvious and not very helpful. Science as practiced by the Nazis was not an isolated virtue run amok; it was a virtue compounded by an evil (the notion that Jews were not people and therefore their consent and well-being need not be considered). Again, we are broaching rather obvious territory here: science in the service of evil ideas results in evil actions!

.: The question “How much cold can the human body withsand?” is not in itself an evil question unworthy of pursuit. Ethical considerations — a field separate from science — prohibits a great many experiments from being performed. The problem with Nazis was not their rigorous adherence to scientific procedure (though they failed miserably there, too) but rather their poorly developed sense of ethics.

One of the chief causes for the excesses of modern science is the myth of perpetual scientific progress. Like any mythology, this particular story has been retold in various times and places with a number of variations, but the essential core of the narrative is the eventual triumph of science over ignorance. Mysteries once accepted through tradition are put to the rigorous test of empirical methodology, in the belief that knowledge is an end which is justified in itself and without reference to further ends or contexts.

.: Again, the driving force behind science is not this naive notion that knowledge is an end which is justified in itself — the driving force is that observation and experimentation is a more reliable guide to the world we find ourselves in than hearsay and magic. Yes, those mysteries once accepted through tradition are put to test, and, yes, they fail miserably. This is as it should be, at least among people who agree that it’s not a good idea to keep fooling one’s self. Or would you rather the rich intellectual tradition of astrology — Kepler! Brahe! Ptolemy! — perpetuate in the halls of academia to this day?

Projects such as eugenics, nuclear and biological testing, even pharmaceutical tests are artifacts of this myth.

.: Eugenics was a policy to better the human race which was based on erroneous science and which was advocated and criticized by representatives of every group, from Christians to scientists (and, indeed, those who were both). But enacting policies is a very different thing from pursuing knowledge. Once you begin speaking about what we should and should not do, you’ve stepped from the realm of science and into the realm of ethics. That’s not to say science can’t inform ethical debate (just what exactly is a human, anyway?), just that science can neither take credit nor blame for the application of the knowledge it has uncovered.

Additionally, modern politics has embraced this myth, seeing it as a subset of its own myth of perpetual progress. Some of the empty rhetoric of the Obama administration makes use of this connection. When a spokesperson of the administration claims that we must allow science to proceed unfettered by ideology, he affirms a belief in science as justifiable in itself.

.: This interpretation of their statements can only be made by someone who hasn’t paid much attention to the actions of the previous administration for the past eight years. Ideology has infiltrated science to science’s detriment. By this I do not mean that the previous administration has made edicts on what scientific research can and cannot be conducted (though it certainly has); I mean that it was not enough for them to simply dislike certain areas of research — that had to lie about what was known.

-Global climate change isn’t occurring because humans can’t possibly change the Earth that way (and anyway, if they could, God will just fix it).
-Research on embryonic stem cells is unnecessary because adult stem cells can do it all and do it better.
-Intelligent design should be taught in schools because there are serious weaknesses in evolutionary theory.

.: These notions are not the result of ideology directing scientific research; they are the result of ideology replacing scientific research, and they all happen to be lies. Obama isn’t calling for science to have unfettered access to experiment on whatever the hell it wants; he’s calling for the results of experiments that are allowed to be respected and accurately represented, regardless of ideology or prejudice.

.: To give an example: you obviously are against abortion, and no doubt you wish you could convince every woman not to have one. Some people think an easy way to do this is invoke a link between having an abortion and developing breast cancer. It’s an interesting idea from a scientific standpoint, but the studies have been performed and it’s been conclusively demonstrated that having an abortion in no way increases one’s chance for developing breast cancer. The honest, responsible thing to do is respect the science and abandon the tactic as a means for curtailing abortion. But this is ideology we’re talking about here — of course they’re not going to give up such a useful device! What Obama would ask for in this case is for those who oppose abortion to recognize that subverting or ignoring the results of science is a dishonorable thing to do.

Not to see and hear in the changing airs
The propagation of light waves and sound,
But to see my wife and to hear her voice
Bent down at the table by me at her work:
Making a garment and mending my soul.

.: Believe it or not, some of us scientists have no trouble doing both. Indeed, I’m of the opinion that understanding the former experience enriches the latter.

Knowledge of the particular requires the contact of our own inscapes with that of another creature. In such a moment, we are united with another particular in a unique way. Over time, we can develop a familiarity (in fact, such familiarity can only develop over time). This patient understanding leads gradually to an ability to treat other creatures with a true respect and act according to a true wisdom.

.: And what better path to this sort of wisdom than science, which has revealed that even the smallest of fish is related to us by a relatively short millions of years? That every particle of our being once occupied the space of another creature, indeed the center of a star? That the boundaries between self and non-self are not as clear as originally thought? I think you and I appreciate a lot of the same things from very different perspectives.

However, the unreflective practice of science can itself crystallize into something sentimental. The quest for universal knowledge can itself become an idol; iconoclasm can (and, perhaps necessarily, does) become an icon. This is how the myth of perpetual progress was born in the first place.

.: I was under the impression that the idea of perpetual progress in science was brought about by continually knowing more today than was known yesterday. It’s an arbitrary metric, to be sure, but a rather obvious one to use.

When this has happened, it is necessary to return the mind to the particular, to recognize the unique inscape of the concrete. Navigating between these two tendencies, the false sentimentality of the particular and the idolatry of science, is the duty of wisdom. It requires keen vision.

.: I’m tempted to dismiss this as nonsense, but I know better than to dismiss something that I don’t immediately understand. Could you please expand this line of thought into something a lowly scientist untrained in philosophy and poetry might understand?

It is possibly the primal sin of modern science that its chief aim is to conform reality to the desires of the mind. The most monstrous examples of this has been in the areas of genetic manipulation, but it is found wherever knowledge has been used as a tool for power and mastery over nature.

.: Really? The most monstrous example you can give is genetic manipulation? Pray tell why is it monstrous for me to introduce genetic material from one organism into another, when a creature as lowly as an agrobacterium does it routinely and a thousand times better? I honestly do not understand the often concomitant phobia and exaltation of nucleic acids, by which I mean I find it curious that people so often equate the DNA sequence of an organism with that organism’s intrinsic identity (exaltation) while at the same time tremble at the prospects of manipulating said material (phobia). It’s not magic, people, it’s chemistry.

.: And besides — everything we do alters reality to conform to our desires. Whenever we find ourselves hungry (an event triggered by simultaneous expression of several proteins and neurotransmitters — all processed squarely in reality), we search about for solutions to our problem: we pluck a pear from a tree (alters reality), we stick a sharp thing through a small animal (alters reality), we shove a greasy TV dinner in a microwave and zap it with electromagnetic waves at just the right frequency to vibrate water molecules (alters reality). We’ve been altering reality to conform our desires long before science ever came along — it’s not that hard.

Another sin of modern science has been the refusal to suffer the long and difficult road, as lab after lab has turned its attention to a variety of shortcuts. Instead of the generation-spanning, even century-spanning task of perfecting crops through traditional farming methods, scientists seek in short years to develop super crops. I have nothing against labor-saving devices and technology in principle; such technology can be extremely helpful. When it is used to render virtue unnecessary, however, a line has been crossed.

.: No, of course you have nothing against labor-saving devices in principle; all you did was just describe it a mere two sentences back as a sin of modern science. And just what exactly are traditional farming methods? The dwarf strains of wheat and rice developed in the sixties are often given as examples of traditional breeding methods in contrast to modern genetic manipulation, but those strains were made possible by the innovation of shuttle breeding — hardly a traditional method (and indeed impossible before the 20th century) yet for some reason more embraced by the DNA phobics.

.: And here I must protest. You cannot seriously be suggesting that current research methods are circumventing generation-spanning hard work and labor. Every method I employ in the lab today is the end result of the cumulative hard work and dedication from hundreds of thousands of scientists previous to myself. Each one has twisted their mind around a problem and struggled to find an answer with their (comparatively) limited arsenal of techniques and rudimentary knowledge of the way the world works. I have stayed up throughout the night struggling to find a solution to a problem only to discover there isn’t one, rendering months of research useless. I’ve spent countless hours trying to comprehend impenetrable texts in the hope that something in them might be of use, often to no avail. And yet to you this equals the easy life, a life of virtue obsolete, passé. Why? Because I don’t have to feel the sweat of my back or develop calluses on my hands from working the field? Suffering is inescapable, but that doesn’t mean it has to take the same shape and form as the suffering that afflicted our ancestors.

.: Keep in mind that the century-spanning task of perfecting crops through traditional farming methods had failed humanity. People were starving. I know you believe in the afterlife and that those who suffer in this world will reap the benefits and glory of Christ in the next world if they believe, but I do not share this view. To me a world with starving children is a terrible thing, made even more terrible because nobody benefits from this suffering; the child who dies at four years of age from malnutrition is not made a better person from their suffering — they are dead. To think otherwise trivializes their pain. That’s my opinion, anyway, and it is what has motivated me in part to choose my field of study, knowing that my efforts will not merely satisfy a curiosity of mind but also benefit the world with their proper application.

Farmers are discovering that their seed has become a liability, as species after species of plant seed and strain after strain are patented by large corporations eager and willing to prosecute anyone growing unlicensed seed. Local strains are becoming infected by strains of genetically manipulated varieties, with unexpected and sometimes catastrophic results for the small farmer whose livelihood is becoming increasingly threatened by the easy promises of new biotechnology.

.: One minor correction: corporations cannot “patent species.” Nor can they patent genes. What they can do is patent the novel use of genes (say, expressing the gene for the Bt toxin directly in corn instead of spraying the fields with bacteria that produce it naturally), much the same way someone can patent the novel use of wood (a fully natural product) to build a new kind of mousetrap. Also, farmers can (and have) bill the companies responsible for variants of crops that have infiltrated their fields for cleaning up any contamination.

.: To be sure, the business ethic of companies like Monsanto can be charitably described as questionable at best, but then our beef is now with the lawyers and not the scientists, isn’t it?

Such a catalog of carnage might include the embryos destroyed in stem cell research, the workers fired because of technological efficiency, the privacy shattered because of increasingly sophisticated methods of surveillance, the metaphysical quandaries introduced by the monomaniacal obsessions of materialistic accounts of the human person and causality, the loss of a meaningful and unified account of reality, and the ease with which a globalization made possible by technology has gradually destroyed a sense of responsibility to place and persons.

.: Here again is a perfect example of science informing but not dictating ethical debate. One of the interesting developments in science is the obviation and radical redressing of previously-thought-to-be fundamental questions. The ethical question “When should we recognize the beginning of personhood?” is often linked with the scientific question “When does life begin?” But then science is not as helpful here as some might wish, for it demands a restating of the second question to read “When did life begin?” before it can properly answer it. (The answer is 3.8 billion years ago, by the way.) Okay, you might ask, but surely science can tell us when human life began? Again the answer is not much help to the current debate (100,000 to 200,000 years ago).

.: Science has a way of thumbing its nose at our desire for a reality with neatly defined boundaries and categories. The fuzzy borders of biology have infuriated many students and confused several many more. In fact, the picture of reality as painted by science (and it is, despire our enthusiastic bloviations to the contrary, just a picture) does precisely the opposite of what you claimed earlier: it conforms the mind to reality, even if we don’t want it to.

It is a crime against nature, for instance, to trod our way straight into the innermost depths and marrow of another creature and set about reworking it for our own imagined convenience.

.: Says who? That’s not an endorsement of the activities you decry, but a genuine inquiry into the nature of the authority behind this queer edict.

For one thing, we do not even know fully what we are doing when we muck about in the long and immeasurably complex sequences of DNA that form the secret depths of other creatures.

.: This kind of sentiment is fear-mongering humbuggery familiar to every age of science. Today it’s DNA, yesterday it was the atom, tomorrow it’ll be the brain. It’s a common refrain: let’s not venture any risky prospects until we are absolutely sure what we’re dealing with, which of course we cannot be until we actually start doing it, and which creates an impassable Catch-22. The best part, though, is that, consistently applied to all aspects of human behavior, the advice inevitably leads to stagnation:

We do not even know fully what we are doing when we consume an apple and send it through our long and immeasurably complex digestive tract. Let’s recognize our humility and refrain from eating apples.

Consider the fact that we have found that bloodflow and neural activity in particular regions of the brain correlate with certain mental states and even choices. The hubris of materialism, which sees only one causal chain, is to declare determinism. The humility of wisdom refrains from this reductionist account; it knows the boundaries of science and is free to choose what Wendell Berry calls “the way of ignorance.”

.: “The way of ignorance” — I like that. Of course, materialism sees only one causal chain because, as far as we can tell, it’s the only causal change that can be seen! It’s folly to speak of things unseen and things unheard, especially when they are unseen and unheard in principle, and especially when other people are the sources.

What are, practically speaking, the boundaries of science? One most immediately presenting itself from what I have already said is that science had ought to be practiced by those who have developed an intimate love and knowledge of the particulars who their discoveries and accompanying applications may effect. Science must be tempered by love.

.: No argument from me on this one — everything is made better by more love.

The second is that science must be bounded by a spirit of service and passivity.

.: I don’t think this is necessary, but it certainly helps and definitely doesn’t hurt.

The third is that scientists must be aware of the limits of human knowledge.

.: Have you ever talked to a scientist?

The fourth is that science must constantly submit to the dignity of its subject.

.: Excuse me for crudity, but I find it a little difficult to submit to the dignity of E. coli when I shit them out by the billions.

The fifth is that scientists may not justify their method because of its fruits. Let us imagine that we could kill a man to save ten million from a disease. It is still murder. It would not matter to those who do not love that man. It would matter only to those who love him, and, of course, to the man. Science must side with those who love the particular.

.: This is a rather easy example for you to make your preferred conclusions, but how about a less obvious one? Take the smallpox vaccine: it is actually a harmless live virus relative of the variola virus called vaccinia. Anyone exposed to vaccinia will have, at the cost of a short-lived itchy bump, a lifetime immunity to smallpox. But the live virus in the vaccine is still capable of infection, and indeed a small number of immunocompromised individuals (an inherited trait) who were inoculated died from complications. The doctors had no way of knowing at the time of inoculation that the patients were immunocompromised, but they also knew that exposure to smallpox was a real and deadly possibility. Furthermore, immunocompromised patients are eventually going to have complications no matter what they do. So the question becomes, “Was it right for doctors to inoculate everyone (including infants) against smallpox when they knew there was a non-zero possibility for an adverse fatal reaction?” This is different from your scenario because some degree of consent is involved, but does that really absolve science of the deaths on its hands? If you do wish to argue that the elimination of smallpox was a bad idea because of a few deaths, um . . . I guess we’ll just have to see what you say?

The sixth is that science must heed tradition. There is a reason tradition has endured as long as it has; the novelties of a new theory, however seemingly grand or revolutionary, cannot replace the knowledge of tradition. Local communities ought not be destroyed for the sake of progress.

No, this is just wrong.

The seventh is that scientists ought to remember that the life of the particular is directed towards an end which is beyond their control and to which they, like all other creatures, ought to submit.

So far I’ve resisted asking this question throughout this entire response, but nowhere else is it more pertinent: how do you know that?

The eighth is that they had ought to perform no experiment upon a subject that they would not perform if the subject was near and dear to them. Perhaps they should be required to write a love sonnet about their subject before any experimentation began, and keep that sonnet close by them during the whole course of the experiment.

How about a haiku?

Arabidopsis
Gibberellin-deficient
Ha ha, sucky seeds.

“How foolish!” one might object. “Everything worthwhile involves a degree of danger and risk.” I agree. Farming implies a risk; building a home implies a risk; science implies risk. I am not by any means advocating the cessation of any activity that might in some way endanger life or health. In fact, if my rules are followed, it may just be the case that, in some respect, there will be more dangers, just as there are more dangers if one abandons the soft promises of birth control. I am advocating a careful weighing of the costs that cannot be accomplished in any other way than by investing one’s life wholly in what might be lost.

.: While your advice of investing one’s life wholly in what might be lost sounds simple in presentation and profound in meaning, I have to call hogwash. The fact is you are calling for the cessation of important activities that you see as improper (indeed, monstrous!) when you know nothing about them. You may balk at the accusation, but you’re effectively advocating Luddite principles under some bizarre and scientifically naive understanding of what it is scientists actually do.

.: Which is fine! You are absolutely, one hundred percent, perfectly free to abstain from knowledge uncovered by scientific research. If you think it is wrong to tamper with what you perceive to be the core, inviolable nature of an organism, that’s your business; nobody is forcing you or your diabetic friends to purchase human insulin grown from recombinant bacteria. If you think genetically modified organisms are an affront to nature, you don’t have to buy them; sure, it’s difficult to avoid them at this point in civilization, but what was all that stuff you were saying before about struggle and suffering?

.: With all that said, a post filled with as much snark and condescension as this one is a waste of both our time, so let me try to redeem myself by searching for some common ground:

-One of the beautiful aspects of science is its openness to everyone. There is no such thing as “Jewish science” or “Christian science” or “Muslim science” or “Atheist science” — just “science.”

-Science is not in the business of answering questions of “should,” only of “how.” It is the task of every human who practices science to also practice ethical considerations and to never deliberately bring lasting harm to another human being.

-Science is a social activity exposed to the same pitfalls of any other activity involving humans; practitioners should always strive to be aware of their own limits and biases.

-A rose by any other name: learning what something is in no way diminishes its beauty.

.: Every semester Baylor sponsors a program of concerted community service called Steppin’ Out. Participating student groups, sororities, and fraternities are assigned special projects (e.g., painting a community center, cleaning up a playground, organizing items at a donation center) which they all do on the same day. This semester’s Steppin’ Out was yesterday, and my group was assigned lawn care at a home for mentally disabled people.

.: I arrived at the same time as Oscar, the only other person to show at the designated start time. He spent a few minutes calling other members of the group to remind them, but they had other plans for their Saturday morning (”I’m grading papers,” “I’m asleep and won’t answer my phone,” or “I’m going to New York”). I looked at the papers Oscar handed me and learned the details of our assignment. Supposedly, fifteen people had volunteered. I didn’t even know we had that many people in our group.

.: While Oscar raked the leaves, I decided to eradicate every weed I could find, plus every non-weed that had the bad sense to get in my way. I wasn’t entirely convinced that the weeds were on the whole more unpleasant than the gaping holes left behind by their extirpation. In fact, ever since I was forced into lawn care labor as a child, I never understood the animosity humans harbored towards weeds. Part of the problem is the word “weed” itself which basically means “any undesirable plant.” It makes sense that humans would want to rid their lawns of undesirable plants, but what made the plants undesirable in the first place? I happen to like dandelions; their resilience is nothing short of amazing, and their iconic fruits are just too much fun on a windy day. Nevertheless, these wonderful little organisms are considered a nuisance by most gardeners, so I spent the better part of the morning mercilessly slaughtering them with my bare hands. By afternoon, I was slaughtering them with blistered hands.

.: Shortly after we started, Ryatt arrived and increased our workforce 50%. He was followed by Melissa whose assistance, while appreciated, could have been easily replaced by a $15 wire. At some point, a few unknown students showed up and asked us if we needed anything. I interpreted their question as an offer to help, so I pointed out some sticks that needed gathering and some hedges that needed clipping. They explained that they weren’t there to help with specific tasks; rather, they were assigned by the Steppin’ Out organizers to patrol the various projects underway by our group and others and assist us in ways that let them use the word “assist” without regard to its actual meaning.

.: The rake to person ratio had fallen to 40% with the arrival of Morgan, so Oscar moved to hedge duties. However, the two large hedge clippers provided by the Steppin’ Out organizers suffered from the same affliction: someone had bent one of the blades so that, instead of cutting what was place between them, the shears would cut themselves, creating a small cavity in the metal that would snag the blades every time. The problem was such that, unlike all other problems, applying more force actually made it worse. My solution was an ingenious adaptation of the fight fire with fire approach: I used the blade of one clipper to file down the sides of the cavity on the blade of the other clipper. If the problem resulted from the arrangement of two blades in the first place, then clearly the solution required the use of even more blades.

.: To make the experience of lawn care more enjoyable I turned on my $19,000 stereo system. The fun was short-lived, however, as a neighbor across the street emerged from his garage with an industrial-sized riding lawn mower, overpowering my music with its awesome excess of rotating blades and torque. He finished his lawn in a matter of minutes and, drunk with lawn mowing power, turned his attention to his neighbor’s lawn. One by one he powered through the succession of lawns on his side of the street, eventually escaping from the cul de sac and leaving our sights. With the Road Warrior gone, we could finally listen to my music again.

.: Towards the end of the event several unexpectedly large piles of leaves had been accumulated in the lawn. The two trash bags given by the Steppin’ Out organizers were clearly inadequate for the job, so we called the roving crew of assistants for more. In the meantime I asked one of the neighbors if he could spare us a bag or two. I figured he owed us since, moments before, his dog marked one of the leaf piles as its own.

.: Still waiting for the crew to arrive, Ryatt and I made a snack run on a local gas station. The local in line ahead of us giddily announced his intentions to buy a $50 lotto ticket and nonchalantly mentioned his stint in jail just six months ago, further cementing my opinion that anyone who willingly buys lotto tickets deserves to.

.: We returned bearing bottled water and Gatorade to our comrades. A few minutes later the crew arrived with additional trash bags and a cooler of water, though they neglected to bring cups with which we may drink the water. Right before they left the Road Warrior returned, this time on our side of the street. He motioned for us to step out of the way, and we watched as our leaf piles — painstakingly assembled over the course of hours — were devoured in a matter of minutes by his mower.

.: We made a token effort to finish the job, but seeing a whole afternoon’s worth of work undermined by an overeager neighbor with a (most likely unsolicited) sense of duty towards his community kind of takes the wind out of one’s sails. At least we didn’t have to touch the pile with dog pee in it.

.: In my old apartment, my bathroom was connected to my bedroom. I was, for the most part, the only person to use it, and it served my needs quite adequately. During the last few months, though, other inhabitants moved in.

.: I think it was residual mouthwash — the sorbitol, perhaps — that attracted them, but every morning I would wake to find a dozen or so ants in and about my bathroom sink. They didn’t bother me much, and after a few days we fashioned a sort of compromise: I would wake up at 7:30 every morning, and they would wait willingly to be crushed by my finger. The whole ordeal became a sort of ritual for me. No matter how stressful or erratic the day before was, I could always count on greeting the ants every morning and executing them without delay.

.: Most times I would simply press my finger down and skate it around on the surface, its path of destruction intercepting anything that lacked a backbone and moved. Other times I would get creative. Sometimes on the night before, I would plug the basin and fill it with water and a few drops of mouthwash. In the morning I would find a ring of ants sipping carefully from the surface line. The volume of water displaced by my fist would be enough to raise the line and pull them in, powerless to escape the strong surface tension.

.: My favorite memories of the ants, however, involve the other inhabitant of my bathroom: a small black spider, about 2 millimeters across, who took residence in the corner where the bathtub met the floor. His web was small and disappointedly lacking in symmetry, but the carcasses of other insects littering the ground around it indicated that it got the job done. Once I discovered his hideout, I extended the practice of my early morning ritual to include a heavenly-delivered meal for spider Bolton (as he was christened). Ant carcasses, still writhing perhaps out of a sense of duty to warn the hive but more likely due to elastic proteins contorting into the most stable configurations, were dropped from above onto spider Bolton’s plate, and he feasted well for the next few months.

.: Then, weeks before I was to move, spider Bolton disappeared, his web mysteriously swept away and all signs of his existence erased. I don’t know where he went or why, but it is likely that he perished in the move. However, his short life on this planet, unlike many others of his species, was appreciated and remembered fondly by this primate.

.: My mom works in Austin but lives in New Braunfels. Her commute is about 45 minutes, and sometimes she just doesn’t want to drive the whole stretch after a long shift. She also happens to have a lot of excess furniture in need of a storage. As an occasional remedy to the former and a more permanent remedy to the latter, she rents a small apartment which she calls her crashpad.

.: Since she doesn’t use it often for sleepovers, and since Waco is a fun-suck on the weekends (and weekdays, but there’s little I can do about that), I’ll occasionally stay in the crashpad for a night or two — provided I ask for permission in advance, clean up after myself, and not throw wanton debaucheries.

.: This weekend, for my sanity, I needed to get out of Waco. I also needed to return a pair of gloves and pay the hotel bill to my step-dad for last week’s adventures, so the crashpad was a convenient stopping place.

.: The whole drive down I imagined the glory awaiting me in the apartment’s freezer: a half-eaten tub of Candy Jar flavor Blue Bell ice cream still likely delicious from the week before. My sister, demon dream-eater she is, saw fit sometime in the intervening week to eat both my dreams and my ice cream. For this transgression she will not be forgiven.

.: I arrived sometime after noon on Saturday and spent the next few hours unwinding and watching a terribly awesome movie with Sean Astin and Louis Gossett Jr. The plot was basically Die Hard with plucky, rebellious teenagers who, surprise!, become heroes and save a captive school from terrorists. Those years of snotty, dickish behavior are, as the tag-line helpfully explains, about to pay off.

.: Afterwards I met up with Hunter, Chris, and several rowdy Scotsmen at Stubb’s. The Scots, members of a band called We Were Promised Jetpacks, were in town for SXSW, and Hunter and Chris were their gracious hosts for the week.

.: I found them in the basement in the middle of an unusual game of pool. The cue, eight and one other ball were missing and the six and fourteen balls had duplicates, bringing the total number of balls on the table to one short. To compensate, new rules were developed: if whichever ball they designated as the cue ball scratched, then the next player got to assign the new cue ball; and the four ball was the new eight ball.

.: Before we left Stubb’s, Hunter wanted to take a group picture of everyone. One by one they jumped into the picture, and soon a problem of all group pictures surfaced: how will the person holding the camera have their picture taken with the group? The Scots, rowdy sociable folks they were, conscripted passersby to solve this problem, but being too sociable they soon wanted the passersby in the group photos as well, reestablishing the problem they wished to solve in the first place.

.: In all the excitement, I accidentally knocked a can of beer from an equally enthusiastic participant’s hand. Honor-bound to correct for this wrong, I offered to buy her another drink. Reader, this is the point in the narrative where normal people meet future spouses, so you will no doubt be disappointed to learn that the ten minutes I spent waiting in line with her at the bar amounted to nothing more than her saying, “Thank you so much, I really appreciate you doing this!” and walking away. To add insult to my chickenshit-induced injury, the bartender shortchanged me $3. And that’s the story of the first drink I ever bought for someone.

.: Hunter announced to everyone the existence of a party on the other side of the highway, and we slowly dispersed. I managed to find a decent parking spot a few blocks away, so Chris asked if I could give him a ride to his car. On the way to my car we were accosted by a short but stocky Mexican who, after asking if he could use our phone, mentioned that he just got out of jail. I will try to recreate the story he told us, but as it did not make any damn sense when he told it I will not claim responsibility for any errors that creep in.

.: The guy needed to call a friend at a bar to get a change of clothes. The shirt he was currently wearing (inside out, no less) was apparently not late-night-Austin-bars-on-sixth-street-appropriate. When Chris offered to dial the number for him, the guy changed his tone and said he didn’t know the number. Chris then tried GOOG411, and while he navigated their directory the guy turned his attention towards me. He explained how he just got thrown out of an Irish bar and spent two nights in jail. He demonstrated what transpired in the scuffle with a quick swing of his fist, and I realized just how helpless I would be to dodge one of those if directed towards me. Chris cut the guy’s story short to say that the bar’s phone wasn’t answering, and we scuttled off without saying goodbye.

“So . . . that guy just wanted to steal my phone, right?”

.: I couldn’t think of a better explanation to account for the guy’s behavior. When he first asked if we had a phone, I wanted to say no, but who says that in 2009?

“Hey, can I borrow your phone?”

“Sorry, I don’t have a phone.”

“Really?”

.: The party, I found out, was actually hosting a concert by three bands. It was a bit of a high school reunion for Hunter, but I only recognized three faces in the house. I stayed pretty close to Chris throughout the first half of the party, describing to him some fascinating details about herpes after Hunter made note of my cold sore. I was just about to explain how aciclovir works when the first band interrupted us with music that rocked most pleasantly.¹

.: They were Mumpsy, and they played six or so songs. The last one, Ain’t It Hard (When It’s Over), was easily the catchiest of the bunch. Not ten seconds after it ended I heard two people at other ends of the room whistling the chorus.

.: The second band, The Wildest Fictions, was a brother-and-sister drums-and-keyboards duo unavoidably reminiscent of Mates of State. (I am almost certainly getting their name wrong since Google is giving me nothing.) I didn’t immediately take to their music as I had with the previous band. The guy yelled at us more than he sang, and the girl’s keyboard was ear-breakingly loud. Whatever my initial misgivings, they were redeemed by one magical moment when, the keyboard suddenly dying at just the right time, they finished their song in a beautiful a cappella duet.

.: However, the unquestionable winner of the night was the band that followed, an eleven piece mini-marching band named Mount Righteous. Sousaphone, snare drum, bass drum, trombone, smith bells, accoustic guitar, accordion, melodica, trumpet, and slide whistle? They had it all. That weird metal bowl thing they used in that one Jane’s Addiction song? They had that too. Imagine a Gogol Bordello without the gypsy or a Polyphonic Spree without the suck.

.: Unlike the previous bands these guys eschewed amps and microphones, but they exuded more than enough energy and good times to make up for it. There were several times when I feared the bass drummer, in his enthusiasm, would soon become enemies with the television set nearby. The house, as large as it was, was not the proper place for this group to perform. (I should also note that the house was a duplex and the festivities didn’t end until 2:00 am or so. At least it was a Saturday.)

.: Naturally, the audience demanded an encore. The band complied with one more song, and when that ended the bass drummer asked if anyone would be willing to freestyle while they laid down a backing beat. Hunter, ever the rhymesmith, volunteered. He rapped about the salient features of Austin, noting that it was not quite Boston but was in fact a city one could get lost in.

.: The party over and the night no longer young, half of We Were Promised Jetpacks piled into my car, and I drove them to Hunter’s place. They had to make a flight in about six hours, but Hunter convinced them that Taco Cabana was a better idea than sleep.

.: Shortly after we placed our orders, a gaggle of girls poured into the restaurant. “Party’s here!” yelled one of the Scots, and the rest clapped and cheered approvingly. The girls were rather non-plussed and unresponsive to this show of European affection.

.: The next group of people to follow were informed by the staff that the restaurant was closed. The doors were locked, they were told, so they should not have entered. Struggling to comprehend how three men could enter a restaurant through locked doors, one of the Scots proclaimed, “My God, they’re ghosts!”

.: Meanwhile, the gaggle of girls remained unimpressed with our foreign visitors. One girl openly doubted the authenticity of their accents! Their standoffish behavior a drag on the Scots’ spirits and the window of time for sleep becoming ever smaller, they all agreed it was finally time to head home.

1) I believe I am the first person to compose this exact sentence.

.: Since she led me there, I gathered that this subway station connected somehow to Penn Station. I didn’t know which line to take, though, and I had already swiped my card through the turnstiles. I spent several minutes looking for a map that would lead me out of there until I realized all of them were on the opposite side of the turnstiles. I walked back from where I came, found on the map where I needed to go, and tried to pass through the turnstile again, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Card swiped too soon.”

.: I swiped it again, but the same text appeared, this time even more accurate. Cursing the assholes who made this coldly efficient system necessary, I surfaced. I didn’t know how long “too soon” was, so I walked to Penn Station.

.: There was quite a bit of New York to explore during this relatively short walk. Even though I told her I didn’t particularly care to see it, I did pass the Empire State Building and confirmed that, yes, it’s big. It certainly puts the Alico Building to shame. And, though I have an active disinterest in sports of any kind, I walked an extra block to see Madison Square Garden. The building was nothing special — a sports stadium is a sports stadium — but standing in the plaza before it I thought about all the emotions evoked by and invested in the place: the collective gallons of dopamine released over the years after epic wins and the corresponding neurotransmitters for bitter defeats.

.: I didn’t stay long; I have an annoying fear that if I dawdle at all before going to a bus, train, or subway station I will just miss its departure. Like most fears, mine was unfounded and made no difference. I waited half an hour for the next train.

.: One man — ageless only in the sense that it would be futile to assign an upper limit — sat still on a bench and stared at me as if I were the most fascinating object in the whole god damn universe. I considered the possibility that his head was simply frozen in my direction, but incredibly his eyes were able to follow me as I moved behind a pillar. I gave him several minutes to lose interest, but when I emerged he was still waiting there like a god damn parrot. I reviewed myself in a window’s reflection for any signs of embarrassing spills or tears, but I found nothing that could explain this man’s fascination. Whatever I possessed, it was not interesting enough for him to follow me on the train. His loss, really.

.: The next morning I woke up to a whole suite of feelings and emotions: sore from all the walking, conflicted over Baylor and Rutgers when I didn’t think I was going to be, elated that I got to see my friend again, and just plain old uncertain about the future.

.: The greater source of uncertainty concerned major life decisions, but the far more immediate source had to do with whether or not I would make my flight back to Austin on a standby ticket. Also, I forgot where I parked at the airport.

.: There were five seats remaining on the plain. Five people were booked as non-revenues, and I was the fifth. Fate, that same bitch from before, just couldn’t let go of the past and encouraged some jerk to book a last-minute first class ticket, booting me from a comfortable 2:20 pm departure to a 7:45 pm date with boredom. (On the bright side, I probably wouldn’t have found time to write all this otherwise.)

.: Still not satisfied with setbacks and misfortunes of my own, Fate also saw fit to ruin several L.A.-bound passengers by catching a service truck on fire in front of their plane’s engine. While empathetic to their plight, I couldn’t help but be wowed by the awesome visuals.

.: One benefit of waiting in an international airport as opposed to a domestic airport is the sheer variety of languages spoken. There is a good chance that the people sitting next to you will not converse in English. While this fact may bother the more xenophobic among you, I found it pleasant for the sole reason that it sparred me from having to listen to the inanities they were surely speaking, a luxury not available from their English-speaking counterparts.

.: I was the last non-rev to make the 7:45 pm. The plane was packed, the overhead bins were full, and the jerks in the seats next to me decided to have a baby and bring it along. My only source of consolation for the rest of the flight was knowing that the damn thing was suffering from an intensely painful pressure differential building up in its ears.

.: Four hours later, I was in Austin. The airport was empty, a sight I’d never seen before. Everything from the past four days fit nicely in my backpack (another benefit of my reportedly “disgusting” habit of wearing the same pair of pants for days on in is that I save a lot of room not packing more), so I didn’t have to waste time in baggage claim. Instead, I wasted time trying to find where I parked. My strategy was to wander down every other aisle clicking the panic button of my key fob while I held it firmly pressed against my chin. In crazy wackaloon internet forum theory, my head should have acted as some sort of antenna and boosted the signal so I wouldn’t have to walk down every aisle. In reality my key fob was dead. I found my car eventually, and two hours later I was home, ready to wake up for an 8:00 am class (which, I learned after arriving that morning, was canceled).

.: I suppose near the end is a good place for a conclusion, but I feel all the important bits are too scattered and disconnected to be properly summarized here. You’ll know what they are if you read them, so I’ll leave you with this short scene I woke up in the middle of Thursday night to write down:

:-: Wait, turn on some music.

.: Okay. I think it might be on shuff–

:-: Shut up and get over here.

*he does*

Download audio file (12-some-fantastic.mp3)

:-: Umm, do you want to change it . . . ?

.: No way, we got this.

*they do*

:-: I’m sorry…

.: Are you listening to the song?

:-: It’s ridiculous!

.: Well shut up, I can’t hear it!

.: Cheers.

.: While I could have returned to Waco after the interview on Friday, I would have been a fool to pass up an opportunity to see the metropolis next door. More alluring than a tour of the city however was the tour guide, a friend who last Christmas I forced myself to stop talking to. Seriously, Cody from 84 days ago, fuck you.

.: I woke at 8:00 am, pleased to know the Colgate I purchased yesterday was waiting eagerly to erase last night’s accumulations. My mind — excited, deprived of sleep, and more anxious than ever — found several points of disagreement with my body. It seemed to anticipate the sheer mileage of walking ahead and preadjusted itself accordingly.

.: Allotting myself an extra hour to buffer misjudgments of transit, I boarded a train to New York and tried my best to relax. The plan was to meet at Broadway and Lafayette at 11:00 am, but I arrived half an hour early. I purchased a $3 drink that would have cost $1.19 in Waco and, not wanting to wait thirty minutes at a gas station, renegotiated a new place to meet: Bryant Park.

.: I saw the remains of an ice rink and several wiry tables with equally wiry chairs, but I did not see her. Even though she knew where I was going to be and when I was going to be there, I still felt I could surprise her by suddenly appearing in person, perhaps by hiding behind a food stand or something. I really wanted to make an impression, but after a few minutes of looking I capitulated and called.

“Hey . . . I’m here. Where are you?”

“Okay, I’m by — never mind, I see you.”

.: She hung up. I turned and turned but could not find her. She emerged, slightly flustered, from a throng of goons later revealed to be from the internet.

.: Neither of us addressed my silence of the past three months, but if she was anything at all like me she was surely thinking about it. Instead, we hugged, and I mentioned the need for a restroom. (The ones at Bryant Park, I should note, were the classiest public restrooms I ever had the pleasure of using.)

.: First on our agenda was Rice to Riches, a fun place that sold terrible puns and rice pudding by the stomachful — or, in my case, by the double stomachful. Unlike the rest of the places we visited, this place was not crowded or loud, so we had a good opportunity to sit down and play catch up.

.: One of my favorite things about her is her ability to just talk; there is almost never a quiet moment around her. And though that description can sound negative when applied to certain people, in her case it simply means that she’s usually telling a funny story that makes you wish your life was as exciting.

.: When she finished her bowl of rice pudding and I finished half of mine, we headed to the New York Public Library so she could return a book. We also stepped across the street to see the Beaux-Arts building (the one with the lions out front — if you like libraries but don’t care for books, then you’ll love this place; the hallways are majestic and there’s even a mural). We didn’t stay long.

(A note on memory: unlike my trips to New Brunswick, I can’t rely on specific geographic positions to reconstruct a linear series of events since I didn’t keep track of which subways were used or where they went. If anything appears out of place, forgive me — not that anyone but one of you would notice.)

.: There was talk of going to a specialized mac ‘n cheese restaurant — imagine a city capable of supporting such frivolities! — but a dense, cheesy grain doesn’t well follow a dense, creamy grain.

.: Somewhere along the way we wound up in Central Park. She taught me an easy way to distinguish the vast majority of tourists from the locals: tourists don’t jog. The air, for the most part unnoticeable, took a sudden turn into noticeable territory as we crossed paths with a horse carriage. Why not? The idea tumbled around in my head until she spoke:

“God, look how glum that must be. Why would anyone pay money for that? Look at those people. See them? They look glum.”

.: They did. And that was all I thought about horse carriages. Then we came across an ice skating rink, and she remarked how empty it was compared to earlier in the season. I remembered, back during Christmas break when she was in town, how I stupidly suggested we go ice skating instead of something more sensible like meeting for coffee. It didn’t seem as silly this time around, so I suggested it again.

“Oh, God no. It’s way too expensive. First they charge you entrance to the ice, then they charge you for the skates.”

.: Two in a row. I shelved all idea ideas that could be perceived the slightest bit touristy. At her suggestion we stopped for a street show billed by the performers as “black guys dancing.” It was awesome. The performers seemed to have no use for improvisation by virtue of having already imagined every possible scenario. I knew this because they all spoke in perfect unison. The highlight of the show for me, though, was listening to a small girl lying on a stone railing as she talked five-year-old New Yorker trash.

.: Nearby, a restaurant called the Boathouse floats on a body of water that Google Maps informs me is called, simply, The Lake. When the show was over we wandered past the Boathouse, and she made mention of the number of paddle boats out and about. Ignoring my freeze on all touristy-sounding activities placed earlier, I suggested an outing in one of the boats, and to my surprise she agreed.

.: I figured a paddle boat in the middle of a pond would be the perfect place to really open up and talk to her, but I found myself more occupied with avoiding other paddle boats and fishermen. A steady breeze from the west precluded any tranquility in this regard. Luckily, as mentioned before, she likes to talk, so I spent most of my time rowing, working up an appetite, and listening to her.

.: As I paddled under a footbridge we saw two pigeons engaged either in pigeon kissing or pigeon combat. Soon after, one pigeon assumed the position atop the other, not clarifying matters any. Across the pond, two paddle boaters had disembarked from their craft onto a small, partially secluded outcrop where they could make out in partial seclusion from anyone who didn’t look north. I wanted to be them or kill them — there seemed no intermediate impulse.

.: We docked the paddle boat a cool ten minutes before our time was up, and I reclaimed my $20 deposit. The topic of conversation returned to food. She warned that, though they may advertise their existence, no cart vendors actually carried pretzel dogs. The rice pudding from morning long since passed, I could stand to eat something more substantial than a mere pretzel dog and suggested again the specialty Mac ‘N Cheese shop (S’MAC, for those wanting to know).

.: In transit to S’MAC we passed through a subway station, and I saw listed along a wall the names of every September 11th victim. Scrawled nearly illegibly above them all were the words, “No Jewz.” No Aleutians either, I thought, but pointing that out would not have made quite the same impression.

.: She told me stories of riding on the subway. Once, when she and her friends found themselves sitting next to a skeazy guy, her friends all moved one by one down a seat. But when she, the person most proximate to the man, moved from her seat, the guy exploded. Expletives were spoken and obscenities gestured. They got off a stop early. Another time, her friend was waiting for the train to arrive and was tapping his umbrella against a hard surface. A woman, looking straight ahead and crazy, asked out loud repeatedly and to nobody, “Why is he doing that?” He tapped harder.

.: S’MAC, as is a sign of all quality restaurants, was packed. I was assigned the task of staring down the weakest-looking party to make them vacate their table more quickly. I am not a particularly intimidating person, so we waited a while. Lest you think $17 a laughable expenditure for what is essentially two bowls of macaroni and cheese, I will say here and now on this blog that S’MAC made the best mac ‘n cheese I ever had. Also, and this I cannot legitimately credit to them, the tap water was an amazing relief from the crap the pump into Waco homes.

.: She told me she was going to abandon me at 6:00 pm to meet another friend. We finished our meal, and she led me to my final subway stop. I knew I’d be forever regretful if I let this opportunity slip by, so I asked what need to be asked and said what needed to be said. I admitted my self-imposed silence was a mistake — three months of terrible sleep was as good a clue as any — and thanked her for showing me a wonderful time. I still had to be realistic and couldn’t ignore everything that had been said, but walking down the steps to the station I couldn’t help but feel good about myself for the first time in months.

.: That feeling soon abated after an encounter with a turnstile, but I suppose now is a good time to stop.

.: I find it amusing that some hotels offer both wake up calls and programmable alarm clocks. The phones in the Marriott went a step further and offered an automated wake up service right there on the phone. Neither seemed any easier to use than the other, so really it came down to my preference for ringing phones or beeping clocks, which to me was like asking to choose between slow painful ringing death or slow painful beeping death. Lured by the novelty, I programmed the automated service to wake me at 7:45 am. The next morning, in groggy semi-consciousness, I conversed a full ten seconds with the robot secretary on the other end.

.: Consciousness fully regained, but no less groggy, I surveyed my situation. My mouth tasted like fermented last night, and I was still without toothpaste. In desperation, I brushed my teeth with a naked toothbrush and water, making do with the minty residue of a previous brushing. I wouldn’t pass the kissing portion of the interview, but this would get me through the day.

.: Having successfully scouted the rail lines and schedules yesterday, I was confident that today’s navigational demands would be no different. I purchased another ticket to New Brunswick and scuttled down to track five. A middle-aged man paced quietly back and forth in the waiting area with his mouth agape and a bicycle tire in hand. I wanted to know his story, but I felt safer not asking.

.: Only after I boarded the train did I realize there could be more than one line sharing track five. The map in the cabin confirmed that there were in fact two lines, but nothing around me indicated which one I was on, although an LED above the door did helpfully display “NJ Tranist.” I asked, or started to ask, the ticket collector if I was on the right train. I got as far as “Exs-” before he said, “Tranrerratrahray.” The older couple in the car translated for me: “Transfer at Rahway.”

.: I think I would have to live in New Jersey several years before I could begin to comprehend their railway’s ticketing system. As near as I can tell, you buy a ticket which, depending on the station, may or may not allow you access to the waiting area. Then, on the train, you present this ticket to the nice man with the hole puncher, and he either takes it from you, throws it back in your face, gives you a second ticket and takes the original from you, or gives you a second ticket and throws the original back in your face. Regarding this strange new second ticket, he will either leave it pristine or lacerate it at random with his hole punch. The indecipherable markings on the second ticket is the most mysterious part of this system. My current hypothesis is that the confusion is deliberate and built in to prevent people from using the same ticket twice, since by design they will not know if it is still legitimate. One advantage of this explanation is that I do not have to expend additional effort understanding the actual mechanics behind the system.

.: I eventually transferred at Rahway and finished the rest of way to New Brunswick on the correct line. Walking down George Street again I made a second note of places to stop on the return trip: the fancy-looking 7-11 (for toothpaste and razors), the Starbucks (to recharge my phone), and Douglas Pizza & Grill (sorry Rick, didn’t have a chance to look for Stuff Yer Face). Growing up in Texas I was accustomed to everything being accessible only by car. Here in New Brunswick, however, an area the span of a Wal-Mart parking lot could hold a dozen or so interesting shops. And if faster transportation were required, you would not have to wait an hour before a bus would find you. What’s more, I discovered the bus stops were veritable repositories of well-structured philosophical arguments.

.: I arrived early to my interview, so I looked around the building for interesting things to photograph. I had to make sure I didn’t walk into the women’s restroom because the goofy-looking urinals in there resembled these failed experiments.

.: With thirty minutes left before go time, I found a spot to sit and finished the rest of my reading material, “Biology and evolution of beneficial and detrimental viruses of animals, plants, and fungi.” (It never occurred to me that picornaviruses are so named because they are small — pico — and have RNA genomes.)

“Are you Coby?”

.: I corrected him. He was the second person in the long process of grad school applications to confuse my name with that backwards-d-having asshole. The thing is, I’ve met several other Codys in my life (and distrusted them all — there can be only one), but I’ve never come across a Coby. How is this name more popular than Cody in the minds of others when not in actual fact?

.: The first interview went well. The professor had quite a few projects that all looked interesting, and one even had to do with VIGS, my current research area! A long-term project he’d been working on involved using viruses to curb the spread of a parasitic fungus in order to save a certain species of trees — precisely the crazy kind of science that most attracts me. Several textbooks on the shelves were familiar titles. I took that as a good sign.

.: After the sit-down interview he gave me a tour of his lab. It was messy without being disorganized, spacious enough to twirl without breaking something, and full of a science. He introduced me to one of his grad students who laughed when I asked if grad school was the 24 hour party they say it is.

.: Already twenty minutes late, we then strolled over to the recruitment luncheon in no hurry. I asked him what the deal was with state laws mandating full-service gas stations, and he said that someone once explained to him why it made sense, but that he had since forgotten all but the argument’s conclusion.

.: When we arrived all the tables were full save for one. We claimed it for ourselves and were soon approached by additional faculty.

“So how come you two get this table to yourself?” inquired a friendly prof.

“Simple,” my interviewer explained, “there weren’t two adjacent seats available.”

.: Up until this point I had been rather intimidated and anxious by the interview process, giving them a skewed presentation of who I really am. Without consulting my prefrontal cortex, I decided to loosen up.

“Alternatively, it could be the case that we are of such exceptional character and quality that we deserve our own table at the exclusion of all others present.”

.: I took their light, somewhat bemused chuckles as a positive sign and continued in that vein for the entire evening. I started to relax.

.: The prof that joined us (he, too, must have been of exceptional character) asked me where I was from (”Baylor!”) and followed with, “Do you like basketball?”

“No,” I said, “if it has a ball and competition of any sort I am generally disinclined to watch it. This character defect has alienated me from members of my family, interfered with making friends, and made me a pariah among my peers.” I might have played it too strongly. At any rate, he asked because apparently Baylor did something noteworthy.

.: As I liberally shoveled food onto my plate from the dessert line (”Blackberries!”), a lady informed me that my second interviewer was ready to meet me. His delightfully infectious laugh helped put me at even greater ease from any lingering anxiety. Though not involved with viruses, he sold me on his areas of research.

.: For all you biology and biochemistry majors reading this out there, your years of metazoan-biased education is depriving you of the some of the more fascinating aspects of biology. I speak, of course, of plants. Take a look at the amazing properties duckweed, a subfamily of flowering plants. They grow on the surface of waste water, double their biomass in as little as two days, and hold the record for the smallest known flowers. One species of Wolffia produces flowers that are only 300 micrometers long — smaller than some prokaryotes!

.: My interview with this professor was scheduled to occur immediately after the luncheon, but he explained his conundrum to me, “My wife was supposed to pick up my daughter from preschool, but she has an appointment right now. So, we could either do the interview here and now, or you could come along for the ride.” I chose the latter. That showed spontaneity and flexibility on my part — both desirable qualities in this most industrious of graduate school recruits.

.: The car ride, in addition to its express purpose of retrieving his daughter, gave this professor a chance to show me around the city and other parts of campus. I saw both the building that houses his second-generation sequencing facility as well as his house, around which he hopes to erect thickets of bamboo to obstruct the view of his neighbor’s home (the local wildlife, I’m told, has been most unhelpful in this endeavor).

.: During the tour, his daughter would sporadically interrupt our conversation to announce that she knows all about DNA.

“It’s inside you!”

“Very good. And what else is it inside?”

“Animals!”

“And plants. Don’t forget plants!”

(Way to go, Dad! Disabuse her of the rampant metazoan focus that’s crippling her schooling!)

.: After dropping her off, he took me to see the plant sciences library in the Foran building. We found many prominent plant science journals devoted to wolves, fish, and butterflies because why not? I also glimpsed a view of the Nabisco Food Science Building, where I’m told they synthesize delicious.

.: I parted ways with my second interviewer and wandered upstairs to the previous professor’s lab. Earlier he invited me to sit in on one of the grad student’s lab meeting presentation. The professor was no where to be found, so I introduced myself to another grad student. While doing so, I lost my stride so firmly established at lunch and reverted to a mealy-mouthed mumble bum. I couldn’t think of interesting or pertinent questions to ask and just stood uncomfortably in a corner while they worked on their business.

.: Finally, possibly to diffuse the awkwardness, one of the grad students sat with me and explained a few basic facts of the program. I learned that there are 53 students, the professors are great, and most students shoot for a fellowship or GA instead of a TA. I tried to make a joke, failed, asked her where the lab meeting was going to take place (”You’re going to that?”), thanked her for her answers, and left.

.: Time was killed for thirty minutes, and I returned. The professor introduced me to more people and mentioned that one of the professors slated to attend had started his career working on Potato Virus X, a potexvirus closely related to my current obsession, foxtail mosaic virus.

.: The first student’s presentation progressed smoothly — nice pictures of lysobacter infecting hyphae and everything — although there was some almost comical back-and-forthing over whether the small black dots in the pictures were vacuoles or not.

“They didn’t stain red, but that’s because the hyphae were dead.”

“How do you know they didn’t stain red because of a pH shift?”

“Because look at them — the hyphae are dead.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because they didn’t stain red!”

.: Repeat for 20 minutes. I saw myself fitting in quite nicely with this group, though the only time I ventured a remark I wound up saying something stupid.

.: When the meeting adjourned I left the remaining professors and grad students as they enjoyed a particularly unBaylor treat. With my schedule exhausted and my phone’s battery dying, I boarded a train back to the hotel.

.: Two girls sitting across the cabin — friendly, talkative types — introduced themselves to me and demanded my story. I explained my aspirations as they related to the field of plant biology (”You want to be a botanist?” “I prefer plant biologist.” “Botanist sounds cooler.”) and answered their questions concerning the relative safety of certain plant-derived recreational compounds. I later learned that Kasia and Fedora were biology and biomedical engineering majors, respectively. The forty minute train ride to Newark was not long enough, but it’s nice knowing that, if I choose Rutgers, I’ll have people to contact.

Note: I wrote this and the remaining installments during the flight back. They will appear automatically over the next few days.

.: When it became clear that the campus by the station was not the campus where I would interview, I slipped on my gloves, zipped up my jacket, and headed towards the other end of the city. I thought about hopping on one of the buses, but I was low on cash and high on time. Only later did I learn that most of the buses in the city were a complimentary service provided by the university, free to all.

.: The half hour walk afforded me a nice, albeit linear, view of the city. A stroll down George St. exposed me to more culture than Waco has in five years of living there. New Brunswick’s diversity was a welcome change from Waco’s two-pronged choice of rich white college kids or impoverished locals.

.: I made a note of places to visit on the way back from campus, but I misplaced it and, consequently, have no stories to tell of places never visited. There was much to see on campus, however. One of my first sights was the front page of the student newspaper The Daily Targum, which announced the state’s $15.5 million budget cut from university funding. A few pages in I saw a captioned photo that read, “Senior Corbin Laetlein plays a dildo ring toss game Tuesday at Latex Luau Spring Break: Sun, Sand, and STDs, sponsored by Rutgers University Programming Association.”

.: I found Martin Hall, the building in which my first interview was to take place, with considerable ease. Satisfied with my ability to confirm the accuracy of campus maps, I trekked across the park towards the next building on my schedule. A small pond filled with geese lay at the center of the park’s gentle decline, and a red-pebbled trail decked with sparse benches outlined the park’s perimeter. I cut through the grass and noticed that students walking to class universally avoided this obvious shortcut. I wondered why they would prefer the inefficient, circuitous route demanded by the trail when they could easily shave a cool thirty seconds off their travels, and I saw my answer when I looked down: geese shit, everywhere. Not the two-dimensional paint jobs left by pigeons and other city birds, either; I mean stuff they would rightly fine you for if it were left by your pet.

.: After scraping clumps of former geese off my shoes, I wandered in to Foran Hall. To first approximation this was the BSB of their campus: grand, magnificent, and full of labs. The walls and stairs were worn, and decorations were sporadic to nonexistent — but these were all scientists here, why should they care?

.: My next stop was the Cook Campus Center, which I guess would be their analog to the Baylor Student Union Building. One neat feature in the café was the wall of napkins, whereby you simply write down an idea, request, compliment, or complaint on a napkin and pin it to the wall. The staff will respond in kind on a napkin and pin it to yours. An informal, transparent, and efficient way to run an operation if I may say so.

.: Having mastered the train schedules, gauged the amount of time required to travel from hotel to campus, located the relevant buildings, and with nothing left to do, I left. I never learned how to accost strangers or initiate conversations with any degree of comfort, so to pass the time in the train station I listened to others. A fifty year old woman opined without restraint to a cheerful Vietnam veteran on topics as diverse as the economy and how best to raise one’s kids (with a special focus on doing so in today’s economy).

“I told them, ‘You wanna go to college, you put yourself through.’” She spoke in a way that suggested her philosophy, if rigorously adhered to by all, would surely solve everybody’s problems. She apparently did learn how to initiate conversations and even maintain them in the face of intense disinterest shown by her chosen word receptacle. When her discussion with the veteran ended, she immediately engaged the stranger in the seat behind her. As the ride progressed, I noticed the unlucky passenger would slowly raise her book higher and higher. Topics among which Talk Box held strong opinions (if, indeed, it was able to hold opinions of any other intensity) were: Bernie Madoff, day traders, mortgage holders, her kids, and what They (i.e., everybody else) should do.

.: Another girl behind me held what I am forced by my limited vocabulary to label a conversation with her friend on the phone. After exchanging information in the barest, most mechanical of sentences, the rest of her words consisted exclusively of “Yeah, that’s funny” followed by a hideous burst of “həh”s. I used the schwa because that’s exactly what her flat laughter sounded like. There were always seven in a row: “Həh həh həh həh həh həh həh.”

.: I reached my room at the hotel an hour later. Exhausted and enshrouded in Marriott sheets, I took an unexpected nap for five hours. While pleasant for its duration, I woke up groggier and more anxious than before. I was also beginning to feel hungry, a consequence of overlooking the many quality restaurants in New Brunswick.

.: All the food courts in the airport were behind security checkpoints. However, had I so wished, I could have simply [redacted], but I didn’t want to. I opted instead for a salad at the hotel bar, where I overheard a desperate drunk trying his lamest to score his server’s number. Among his advertised qualities were “I just quit smoking” and “I have nothing to do.”

.: Groggy, nervous, sleepless but exhausted, breath reeking of Caesar dressing and no toothpaste in my bag (d’oh), I did my best to go to sleep and prepare for the second biggest event of my trip.

.: Last December I applied to three graduate schools: Baylor, Purdue, and Rutgers. There were more, but I never completed their applications. Since then, Baylor accepted me, Purdue rejected me, and Rutgers invited me for an interview. Now, Baylor’s offer is nigh unbeatable: nice stipend, wonderful work environment, and a sweet program that aligns exactly with my interests. Nevertheless my professor, swell guy that he is, urged me to visit Rutgers anyway, saying that I deserve to fully realize my options. All of this explains why I woke up at 4:45 am this morning to catch a flight to Newark.

.: My otherwise event-free episode at the airport was punctuated by a loud fatherly type who announced to those who cared to receive the news that he could not find his “got damn cellphone” (the Lord’s name surely altered so as to avoid offense). Later, when he and the rest of his tribe were removing their coats and shoes, I glanced at the youngest boy as he tried with no mind for haste to finish his root beer. “Marley” — it could have been Marvin or Martin — “what are you doing? Throw that away!”

.: Poor Marley. His bag was already on the conveyor, and the nearest trash can was three meters backwards. What’s more, he still hadn’t removed his shoes! Marley’s trivial mistake exceedingly poor judgment prompted his father to decry, “Got damnit Marley! Hurry on! You’re keeping everyone waiting! You do this every time!” Unable to dispose of his root beer, remove his shoes, and accept his father’s destructive criticism all at once, Marley froze, and for a moment the creeping line crept slightly slower.

.: Marley — if you’re reading this — I know your father only from the few words he wished to share with all of us, but you have my assurance that you need not listen to anything he has to say, ever.

.: After I sneaked through security theater with my 3.5 ounces of colloidal emulsion, I waited nervously at gate for somebody I didn’t know to not arrive. The flight was overbooked by one and I was first on the list for standby. Though it is wrong to celebrate the misfortune of others, I do wish to thank whoever didn’t show up for their first class seat. Never in my life have I eaten a fancier bowl of honey nut cheerios.

.: During the flight I had planned to read a few articles by the two professors I was schedule to meet tomorrow, but there are few items read at 6:25 in the morning that won’t trigger swirling migraines or other unsettling thoughts. As intriguing as “Baculovirus expression of the 11 mycoreovirus-1 genome segments and identification of the guanylyltransferase-encoding segment” sounds as I write this now, 18 hours earlier it was as if someone had asked me to read Hindi scripture.

.: Our flight arrived 15 minutes earlier than expected, but fate would have none of this good fortune and intervened to wrong our right, making us wait 15 minutes before the gate opened. I was the second passenger off the plane, following a no-nonsense businessman with an important briefcase. An airport employee urgently instructed us to wait for her to pass us. The businessman and I were equally confused, but we acted on our confusion in different ways: I stopped and he plowed ahead.

“Sir, I need to open the door so the alarm won’t go off!”

.: I wish instructions were informative at the start rather than merely authoritarian. “You doing action X will cause consequence Y” seems to me far more effective at controlling behavior than “Don’t do action X.” At any rate, once the employee opened the first door, the businessman continued his march towards the exit, oblivious that second door would need authorization as well.

“Sir!”

.: Gesturing towards me as he spoke, another man said, “You can tell he’s not from around here: he listened to you.”

.: I met with my step-father — the man who did his best to make this trip possible, and to whom I am thoroughly grateful — and he imparted to me all I would need to know to survive in the city as well as the key to the hotel room.

.: I had time to spare, so I decided to scout the campus to learn exactly where I had to be tomorrow morning and how long it would take to get there. My only previous experience with mass transit was in Europe where I simply entrusted my itinerary to my friend Oscar, so I was somewhat bewildered by the New Jersey Transit. As I studied the time tables, a red-coated assistant inquired about my destination. I said, “Um, erm, I, uh, New Brunswick, to…” and with several deft jabs to the kiosk she purchased my ticket for me. (”Slide your card in the slot right there. No, the udder side. There ya go.”) She then announced, with professional concern, that my train would be departing right now so I should hurry. As she spoke, the man in the booth announced the same. Trying my best to accommodate both of their attention, I stumbled through the turnstiles (which I just learned are also appropriately called “baffle gates”) and sprinted down the stairs, catching the train just in time.

.: Forty minutes later I found myself at the New Brunswick train station, overlooking the College Avenue Campus of Rutgers just across the street. Nice, I thought, forty minutes shouldn’t take long at all. Fate, still irked by our 15 minute early arrival before, saw to it that the buildings of my appointments tomorrow should be on the Cook Campus — a 30 minute walk south of the train station.

.: But I fear it’s getting too late, and I have an interview tomorrow!

.: Starting now, most of my blogging effort will be directed at my new blog, The Weekly Virus. Please check it out and tell me what you think.

Today I told the best friend I ever had that I had to stop talking to her. I feel awful just typing those words, and I can’t imagine these feelings abating any time soon. She understood that I need some time to process everything, but I could tell how much I disappointed her when I said I didn’t know how long that would take. I could hear just in the way she spoke how hurt she was, and I nearly lost it then and there.

The truth is I don’t know how much time I’ll need. Things are different now. For the longest time things between us have been one “maybe” after another. “Maybe” gave each of us some kind of hope — it was unrealistic and unrealizable hope, but it was comforting in its own way. The problem with “maybe” is that it is, at the same time, incredibly painful when it lasts so long. I can only speak for myself, but living with “maybe” hovering over my head for so long brought a type of pain that could only be relieved by delusions. I can’t describe them here because, frankly, they’re a little embarrassing, but the common theme throughout them was that any moment now things could change, if only I did this or that or said the right thing at the right time.

I couldn’t go on living like this; I had to get a “yes” or “no” response from her, and when I pushed for one she chose “no”. Living with a “no”, I found out very quickly, is a lot different from living with a “maybe”. Actually, I don’t know how to live with “no” yet. I still don’t want to live with “no”. I miss “maybe” already, but now I know the reality of the situation with unimpeachable certainty, and the reality of the situation is that she chose “no”.

I cannot keep deluding myself into thinking “maybe”, and if I keep talking to her that’s exactly what I’ll do. I need to move on now if I am to be honest with myself and honest with her. I hope one day I’ll be able to call her up and talk to her without all this trouble, and I hope that day comes soon, because she is the most wonderful person I’ve ever known and my life will all the more impoverished without her. And now I have to be honest with myself one more time. The main reason I’m posting this here is because, damnit, I just told her I couldn’t talk her, and yet I want her to better understand why I’m doing what I’m doing. It’s almost 2:00 am on Christmas morning and my eyes are still burning and blurry from earlier, so I might not have written the most coherent of posts, but I hope you’ll understand anyway.

Context

.: Generally, no matter what happens to me over the course of a day, I can almost always go to sleep knowing that tomorrow I will wake up to

• two toasted slices of bread with bits of grain stuck in them
• no sugar added blackberry preserves
• old fashioned smooth peanut butter
• and five to six bifurcated raspberries

…and that makes most things okay.

.: I can’t help but think “Body Feeling” and “Aerobic Surprise” are somehow related: