a bunch of asterisks

Some architects believe that buildings should be designed to minimize the extent to which scenic views might be taken for granted: soaring vista of the Pacific on the stairway landing, not in the living room. I think this view has a lot of merit*, and I think it also applies to choosing art to hang on your wall.

I find this print, for example, tremendously both aesthetically and intellectually appealing. I love to get lost in it, and I love to think hard about it. But if it were hanging on my wall, would my pleasure in either diminish?

If I were to see it every day in the context of the room that it was in, I would almost certainly start to find it less arresting. And maybe I would stop looking at it, and instead begin to passively see it, and finally see it without seeing it and have my visual cortex process: “there’s that Ole Kortzau** print I loved*** and bought."

*It shouldn’t be applied indiscriminately, of course: ocean views, for me, are less thrilling (and thus rewarding when glimpsed) than meditative. I’m contemplative enough; I don’t need to be detained on my staircase due to prolonged gazing.

** These asterisks link to his website. More of these kinds of prints under “Serigrafi.”

***Just after I typed that “d” I reflexively deleted it, and felt disingenuous and added it back - and now it seems that this could be the crux of the matter. What’s the difference between:

“there’s that print I loved and bought.”

“there’s that print I love and bought.”

I think “loved” may be used more often to echo “bought.” The mere act of saying something increases our belief in it - is this grammar affecting our feelings? Does the fact that English doesn’t have a verb form that corresponds exactly to the imperfect tense make us, on any level, think we’re done with something we’re not?

And sorry about the formatting. Word.

news flash

Evidentally, the way to meet boys up here is to look for an apartment. I have another is-it-a-date (which is so much more organic and great and exciting than the previous is-it-a-date, which was really rather creepy in genesis, if not in reality) with someone whose apartment I looked at moving into and with whom I've been trading energetic email. Naturally, he's a philosophy grad student. I should see if I could start holding interviews at the APA.

personals

Short, moody crypto-perfectionist seeks broad-shouldered, pragmatic Media Lab affiliate. I change my mind frequently; you grew up on a ranch in Wyoming yet learned to sail as a boy. No writers, law clerks, or P.R.men. I hate dill.

adorable

After my lunchtime muscle conditioning class, I was reading wikipedia to see whether my inability to know without looking whether my back was straight or hips aligned was a failure of proprioception per se, and I found the following sentence:

Magnetotatic bacteria build miniature magnets inside themselves and use them to determine their orientation relative to the Earth's magnetic field.

I think we know which bacteria got picked on by the cool bacteria.

Also, I bet they have their own little version of Wired. Maybe I could pitch it.

okay

My friend H. is coming over for dinner and we're going to discuss the whole not date/not not date/predate issue.

Ha! I just realized what pre-date without the hyphen looks like! Now we know where we get the word "predator."

I will let you know what we decide.

It's occurring to me now, when I should be shopping for food, that maybe the question of "is it a date" needs (such as it is) to be posed twice: before the encounter, and as the encounter begins. So before the encounter, you may arrive at some conclusion, and it determines how you conceptualize the meeting to come. And then as soon as you get there, the date/not date counter gets set back to zero, and the encounter unfolds with its own indications of whether or not its a date.

And then there is after a date. Skipping past how you've initially conceptualized it, what appeared to have been a date could turn out to not have been a date after all.

Okay, I just previewed this post. Am I seriously like this?

Now I'm thinking it's not a date.

get thee to a nunnery

Let's say you met someone two years ago when you were looking at renting his condo. Say you didn't take the condo, and that later he emailed you to see if you wanted to get together for coffee (your academic interests would hang out at parties, occassionally be each other's dinner guests, that sort of thing), but you didn't respond (possibly because you were intimidated by him).

And now, 2 years later, you saw that he was again advertising his condo, so you email to say hi and see if the situation with the condo was the same, and it turns out that it is, and you are again invited out for coffee, to "catch up."

The point is, if you go for coffee, and you're pretty sure you will, you must act as though it's not a date. And even as I type that, I don't know what "act as though it's not a date" means. I think I always act like I'm on a date, which is to say never act like I'm on a date. So there is no acting. I think it's that in the absence of information, it's impossible to conceptualize something as both not a date and not not a date. Is this a problem with genre or with romance? This has to be written up somewhere.

Is there such thing as a pre-date, or is a pre-date a date?

oh dear.

I just realized that I had slept with earrings in, and immediately felt a flash of wicked glee, as though I had gotten away with murder.

How do you know when it's time to ratchet up the excitement in your life?

as if apartment-hunting weren't hard enough...

I'm putting together a kinda professional website. And I expect that to a lot of people who aren't familiar with the area, the difference between:

Lore & Ipsum is an editor and writing consultant in Cambridge, Massachusetts
and
Lore & Ipsum is an editor and writing consultant in Somerville, Massachusetts

is marked.

That's not the case, right? That people would think that?

interesting.

If you mistype “theoreticians” as “theoretians,” spell check suggests “tearstains.”

ugh

I've been apartment-hunting for Sept 1, and haven't had much luck. Yesterday I went to see this ridiculously amazing house in Inman Square for $3200 (I'm primarily looking with 3 out-of-state people), and I was the first to see it, and was bonding with the owner, but because I couldn't immediately plonk down $3200 and 4 signed leases, she rented it to the next person. But called and told me that I was a lovely person and that she'd love to stay in touch!

So, I'm starting to freak out. Please send positive apartment-finding energy my way and/or beseech the universe on my behalf. And if you don't believe in that sort of thing (M), well, then tell me a great joke.

Now I think I might actually do a shot of vodka before heading off to work.

(I'm going through old papers and things)

Coincidentally enough, that original FAAR person had volunteered early on that he had a blog, but wouldn't tell me what it was. My friend L. and I were at the Starbucks at the corner of Forbes and Murray (it was the summer I was obsessed w/their chocolate-chip banana cake) when I mentioned the secret blog. A most resourceful researcher, L. had it on up on the screen of her laptop within minutes, um, before I...had time to...object....on moral grounds... Anyway, the blog was quite unintentionally funny, and she and I discussed blog references to which I might airily refer, and proprietary phrasing I could use just enough to make him a bit freaked out, but not enough to give it away.

I should mention that this was when it was beginning to become clear that he wasn't a very good guy. I never did the subtle references, but I think I eventually told him about the discovery and the subtle reference plan, which looking back seems considerably more malevolent.

anaphoric *

Several years ago, I had just begun dating someone whom I met online, and I forwarded my friend S. the link to his profile. Of the pictures, the only one that was at all clear was one of him rock climbing. S's comment was that he looked good flat against a rock.

It slowly dawned on us, as we drank together, over the phone, almost 600 miles apart, that looking good flat against a rock is actually an excellent and very desirable quality in a mate. We pitied girls who didn't know what their swains looked like FAAR, and imagined a service whereby women would send us photographs of their men from behind, and we would use Photoshop to render them FAAR. And then there was someone in particular whom I wanted to see FAAR, and S. suggested that we break into this person's apartment and replace his mattress with a giant slab of granite, and then hide in his closet. When he returned, and got into bed, we would jump out from the closet, dressed as old-timey paparazzi with old-timey cameras, and take a bunch of pictures.

At that point on our lives, we had more than a few scenarios that involved dressing as old-timey paparazzi and jumping out from behind lampposts and popping out from behind bushes, etc.

The horror, the horror!

The good news is that I’ve met the FMCG. Tall, beautiful, seemingly kind, Indian, elegant British accent, working on a PhD at Harvard. The bad news is

> I “met” him when a realtor showed me the house he is living in. I don’t know his name or what he’s studying or what he looks like from behind* or anything.

> He is almost certain to have a knockout girlfriend who looks good in scarves, is quiet but never, ever self-conscious, wears jewel tones and interesting jewelry, and whose impressively-populated academic web page has a link to photos of her being outdoorsy, probably standing by a huge rock in some obviously foreign land or northern California.

> Every time I try to picture him now, my fickle mind conjures up Mohinder from Heroes, who is pretty much the most fey character ever created.


I suppose the good news is also, creepily enough,

> I know where he lives.

I could stop by and be like, “oh, hey, I lost my MacArthur award the other day, and I’m just retracing my steps…” Or I could stop by dressed as a sexy electrician. Or! A sexy electrician who lost her MacArthur award! Eh, he’d suspect something.