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?