Ideas on Wings

I feel like I need to mention the fact that, thus far, the promised chocolate calendar has had some extremely empty little doors. Before my "25 days of blog" resolution I didn't post here unless I was somewhat inspired, and I'm discovering that writing anything remotely worth reading on a regular basis takes an extreme amount of effort (slightly too much effort, I daresay, for winter break). I can't imagine that some people write for a living.

My lack of posting, however, is not due to a dearth of ideas. Today at work I was doing the usual thing: transcribing charts while listening to This American Life, sipping free espresso, and eavesdropping on office gossip. As I sat in my office chair, ideas for things that I should write about kept pestering me--they were like little winged poltergeists, incessantly tapping me on the shoulder and distracting me from my mind-numbing labor.

Instead of ignoring the ideas completely, I opened up a Gmail draft and attempted to list their essences and they passed me by. Copied below is that list. Perhaps, at the Yuletide nears, I will conjure the motivation to flesh out these ideas on wings.

1) this is just to say

2) rose, where did you get that red?
3) Sisyphus
4) little doors are windows to my brain...but not chocolate... apples?
5) old houses

6) some thoughts on traveling

7) to be!!!

8) small talk is the devil

9) espresso: a love story
10) words, failure, and enlightenment

Silly Jobs

'Tis the season! This means that I'm working, as I have been for every break since I graduated high school. As I start my new job, I think the time is appropriate to reflect on my resume. Listed below are all of the jobs I've worked, starting with the oldest. Silly? Maybe. But I've been pretty blessed as far as cheap labor goes (my Dad never hesitates to mention the beet cannery)--I've learned some stuff and earned some dollars along the way.


#1 Translator for Eugene Urology Specialists
The Good: I got to work on my Spanish, and was well-payed.
The Bad/Ugly: AWKWARD. Awkwardawkward. My dad is a urologist.

#2 Ice Cream Scooper for Cold Stone Creamery
The Good: People who buy ice cream are happy. Free ice cream. The owner of the store took us white water rafting.
The Bad/Ugly: Carpel tunnel.

#3 Arb Crew in the Carleton Arboretum
The Good: Picking seeds. Destroying Buckthorn. Prairie Burns.
The Bad/Ugly: Huddling behind a Burr Oak to protect myself from a -5 degree wind chill.

#4 Gottshalks Customer Service Assistant
The Good: Gift wrap?
The Bad/Ugly: Silver Bells seventeen million times a day. Angry customers. Coming into work at 4 am on Christmas Eve. (This is the only job I've quit. I'm not proud of this, but, in the same situation, I would quit again.)

#5 Paper Grader for Spanish 102
The Good: Drawing happy koalas on people's papers when they did a good job.
The Bad/Ugly: Correcting multiple choice tests.

#6 Arts and Crafts Counselor at Jameson Ranch Camp
The Good: Camel hunts, downhill running, and stinging nettle tea. Singing around rose arbor and sleeping under the stars.
The Bad/Ugly: Knotted friendship bracelets.

#7 Desk Person for Campus Activities (This is my current campus job.)
The Good: I get paid to do my homework.
The Bad/Ugly: Sometimes I actually have to do work.

#8 Borders Cashier
The Good: Intimate contact with books.
The Bad/Ugly: Holiday consumerism, cash registers, and Borders Rewards memberships.

#9 House-sitting for the Washburns
The Good: Two adorable huskies. Three full seasons of Scrubs on DVD.
The Bad/Ugly: Nutria massacres in the front yard.

#10 REU Intern at the Marine Science Institute
The Good: Diversity of avian life in Port Aransas. Mastering Microsoft Powerpoint.
The Bad/Ugly: Rotten seaweed and 100% humidity.

#11 Data Transcriber for Oregon Urology Specialists
The Good: I can listen to music and make my own hours. The people are hilarious, and there's tons of free food.
The Bad/Ugly: This is the most tedious thing that has ever happened to me.

Istanbul

There is oh so much to write about, as always, but I'm sleepy and very full of delicious mother food. Seeing as how this is not conducive to insightful prose, I'm copying a relic of my Turkey journal below.

To the Gulls

You have a better view of the Bosphorus than I could ever imagine. Whirling and swirling, your two-thousand eyes are the eyes of a thousand winged dervishes. I'll bet you can see the world from all angles up there, complete with every detail.

Tell me, what patterns do the barges trace with their wakes? I want to know your aerial impression of the fishermen in yellow rain slickers lining the Galata Bridge; of the shaggy dogs curled up on the boardwalk with their noses under their tales; of the young men on motorcycles that shout as I run by; of the amiable fellows that roast corn on the cob and chestnuts beneath wide umbrellas, hawking at passersby; of the one lonely buoy that bobs a few hundred meters off-shore; of young couples strolling arm in arm, lost in one another's eyes; of the minarets that admire themselves in the gleaming waters that invented "turquoise;" of the little children drumming in the aisles of the ferry-boats that run between Europe and Asia; of the tea sellers and the winking old men that jog-shuffle with backpacks; of the stiff winds, grey skies, and snow flurries; of musical scores composed by city lights reflected in the sea; of ten-thousand red flags buffeted by the breeze; of the throngs of pedestrian traffic that blend into a parade of ants; of the days of heavy fog with air-brushed flaws and that perfect white sphere of a sun; of the toddlers with dirty faces selling cigarettes; of sunsets that set fire to the westward-facing windows; of Orhan Pamuk, his pen poised, elevated not quite high enough in his office: I want to know of it all.

Can you, from your high vantage point, piece together the post-cards? Is this enigma the reason you forgo sleep to spiral through the night by the eerie under-light of the city? Or is your endless flight a joyful dance?

I watch you circle, spelling out exclamation points and periods and question marks on a Shakespearean skyscape. The wind is picking up, and I dangle my feet over the sharp stones alongside the water. An orange cat is picking over some left-over crab claws, and a man with a gray face stands transfixed, reflecting himself off of the Bosphorus. A fog-horn booms deep in my chest, and I can suddenly sense the density of my bones.

Tell me, if I shook these words from my mind, would they turn into wings?

pineapples, dancing
avoiding inverted cake
tea party of fruit!

Somnambulance

Today I was reading about the extent to which societal influences control our behavior. From the Milgram experiments to abstract art, it appears that our species wavers strangely between submission and expression. We at once thirst for freedom and behave as though programmed automata. Our thoughts are a strange stew of originality and background noise, reverberations mistakes born forward through generations.

It made me think back to the presidential election, to the moment when I filled in the little circle that would cast my vote. Or when I decided that I would come to Carleton, major in Religion, and shave my head in Morocco.

Were these choices really mine?
How can one cultivate the strength and mental quietude to hear their own voice?
What is freedom, really?

As is often the case, I'm lacking a conclusion. It's raining, though, and the water is talking: "Wake-up, wake-up, wake-up," the drops whisper.

My Cat is a Zen Master

I swear to you, it's true. He's laying on the couch right now, his white-tipped paws crossed and his eyes barely open slits. Surely he is in tune with the innermost workings of the universe, for his every sleepy motion is one of strangely enlightened bliss.

I am prepared to welcome the massive influx of pilgrims that is bound to come knocking on my front door in search of the next Buddha. The Awakened One will most likely hold your audience around the wicker basket in the living room. His availability is highly volatile, however, and I must ask that you accommodate his busy schedule of grass-sneaking and rooftop-sitting. Also, please remember to take off your shoes at the front door, otherwise my mother will be upset.

Yes, we of rambunctious and unruly intellect have much to learn from my Zen master cat. He is haiku incarnate, the fluffy fulfillment of enlightened contentment...

As I watch his meditating form, he stirs briefly. His bright green eyes meet mine for an instant:

What?
Suffering?
Paradox?
Hmmm.

He purrs a little, and then sighs, licking his left paw before drifting back to sleep.

25 Days of Blog

You know how, when you were little, you got those cardboard chocolate calendars at Christmas time? They had 25 doors punched in them, and on every day of December leading up to Christmas you would open up a door and find questionably-fresh-manufactured-milk-chocolate. Mmmm. Maybe you didn't get those, but I did, and in honor of the Chocolate Lent Calendar of Yore I've decided to update my blog every day from now until the 25th. I'm on vacation, after all--my brain needs to stay sharp. And words are like chocolate.

So stay tuned!

Arboretum

I'm back in Oregon.
I wrote 36 pages of final papers in a frenzy, hauled my scattered possessions across campus, and then rocked gently westward on the Empire Builder. And now I'm here, where it smells like loam and green and homemade confections. I will reflect on this home-place soon, when it has had time to sink in.

Now, however, I want to write about the Cowling Arboretum. Adjacent to Carleton, the Arb consists of 880 acres of forest and restored prairie. I think it's safe to say that I owe a large portion of my sanity (such as it is) to my runs through its glorious trees and grasses. When I think of Carleton, I think of the Arb just as much as the library, or my dorm room.

I took a two week nature writing class last fall, and below I'm copying two short vignettes I wrote for that course, in honor of the Arboretum.


The Sound of Falling

On certain fall days the atmosphere itself seems to emit a crisp golden light—that’s when I venture into the Arboretum. I go out alone to watch seventeen million leaves sputter like dying embers in that patchwork forest. Leaves crackle as the earth meets my feet, and the snap in the air smells a little like freedom.

The river’s laughing at me now, because I said I was alone. “You silly girl,” the Cannon chides, “stop thinking and listen.” Did you know that, on some afternoons in late autumn, the trees have quiet conversations? I didn’t until I heeded the river and took off my hat for a change.

Once, as I was eavesdropping on whispered forest musings, a raccoon came trundling out of the underbrush all a-bustle. He froze when he saw me, and for an instant my eyes (sleepy) locked with his (bright, russet, and wild). But then his hunchback and gawky forelimbs struck me all at once, and, before I could control myself, my startled giggle sent him galumphing back into the forest.

You’re right, River—now I’m laughing too. Here the grasses are company, and if I’m lucky, I’ll see a flash of the red fox who’s watching. Even as winter’s snuff threatens, the Arb is ablaze, humming in perfect harmony with my footsteps. I just need to listen.



Postage Stamp Prairie

It’s a little swath of land, all but forgotten in the lee of yet another rolling hill. Tufted Asters innocently absorb sunlight, and various prairie grasses incline their stunted stalks, for the wind here is harsh and the earth is dry. You wouldn’t know it just by looking, but that frost-bitten compass plant points straight into the past, toward an epoch almost entirely trampled by cattle, cultivation, and an ever-growing expanse of cement. The students jogging by in their Nikes have no idea that the soil beneath their feet is a unique chemical amalgam, the product of millennia.

Walking along a narrow trail worn into that unadulterated earth, I can’t help but wonder why such an anachronism persists. Can’t this stubborn postage-stamp of prairie see that the times have changed? This land has been trodden and tired, farmed and forgotten, razed and refurbished. The apparition before me belongs with the giant ground sloth in the annals of history, long lost and frozen beneath the ground.

And yet it’s here, unmistakable and alive. Simply because this rocky hillside is desirable for no one else—not farmers, landscapers, or even cows—history claimed it a tombstone, a monument to what lived before there were words.

Dear Mr. Obama,

I know you're a really busy and important person, and that you won't have time to read this. That's ok--I understand. It doesn't matter if you read these words, as long as I write them.

Let me introduce myself: My name is Caitlin McKimmy. I'm a Junior in college, and, at this moment, I'm listening to my fellow students' uproarious celebration, because you just won the presidential election. I'm twenty years old, and I'm both curious and confused. I'm enormously blessed, grasping for purpose, and always in awe. I am an American.

Can I tell you something? There have been times where I've been ashamed of that last part, about being from the United States. Since I've been old enough to think critically about my country, I've almost never been proud, and often felt groundless. I cried the day we went to war with Iraq. I avert my eyes during my travels abroad, reluctant to acknowledge my home. I think politics are slowly succumbing to corruption, and sometimes I wonder if the "noble ideals upon which this great nation was founded" have been buried by the bureaucracy, or if they ever existed at all. Watching the stars and stripes of our flag dance in the wind, I've felt a sad hollowness where reverence is supposed to go.

But something happened tonight. As I sat with my friends watching your acceptance speech, a foreign and wonderful sensation arose in the pit of my stomach. I'll call it hope. Maybe even pride.

Now, I know that you're only one person, and that our country is up to its elbows in economic strife and tough choices. It's going to be hard, and things are probably going to get worse. It's just that, tonight, my peers--members of a generation typified by apathy and post-modern doubt--are celebrating with fire in their eyes. You just may be the catalyst we need to motivate, move forward, and take on the huge challenges we face.

And yes, I'm celebrating too, Mr. Obama, because tonight I realized something important: I'm too young to be cynical, and it's too soon to give up.

Thank-you, and good luck.

Caitlin McKimmy

Still Beautiful

I've been at Carleton for a while now, and I've endured some shitty weather in my day. Winter in Minnesota is a face-stinging-nose-hair-freezing blank gray expanse of frigid cold. With my tendency toward Seasonal Affective Disorder, you might expect that, after two years in the Midwest, I've become just as bitter as those long winter nights.

Today, however, the first snow of the season blew in sideways with a gravity-defying gale, and I LOVED IT. Snowflakes paired up with falling leaves and danced a crazy drunken tango, in no apparent hurry to make contact with the earth. This windy snow-world is fresh and alive and somehow on the brink of the best kind of insanity.

I went to frisbee practice (pictured below) and froze my fingers. My socks got wet on the way from my dorm to the library. But I don't care because it's beautiful. Always.

Elucidation?

For part of my final project for PSYC 263: Sleep and Dreaming, I am going to teach myself to lucid dream. Or at least try. Thus far I have dreamed extensively about writing about my dreams in my dream journal (only to wake up and write about writing about my dream in my dream journal in my dream journal... so meta). I feel as though this is progress.

Why are you doing this, you ask? Well, first of all, it's hilarious to wake up in the morning and read dream-notes that I scribbled in semi-waking states throughout the night. (Last night: "Dining Hall... all the red food. Why was the kale red???") Secondarily, I'm finding that the simple exercise of remembering my dreams may be of practical use. You know that feeling when you have a really good thought, and then it escapes? I've found that chasing down such thoughts feels exactly the same as the struggle to remember my dreams.

But mostly it's just hilarious. You should try it too!

Some sources claim that those who have mastered the art of lucid dreaming can meet and interact in the "dream world." Let's meet there, guys.

Chickens

This is an excerpt from our last class discussion in Philosophy of Mind (which is unequivocally ridiculous):

Student: Sooo... there isn't a single property of a neuron that the chicken couldn't fulfill?
Professor: Correct.

MY BRAIN IS CHICKENS. Or I thought that it very well might be last Thursday night, when I had an existential crisis. I sat in the library, my thoughts clucking as I doubted the reality of my every sense perception, until I just couldn't take it anymore. At roughly 9:52 p.m. I abandoned my desk, trekked to the Cannon river, threw off my clothes, and hurled myself into the wine-black water.

The mud squished.
The icy river took my breath away.
My words flew the coop,

And it was real.

"When I was a student..."

Last week, as I was walking (slowly, of course) back to my dorm after Frisbee practice, I couldn't help but overhear a conversation between a balding man and a small girl who I presumed to be his daughter. "You know," the man said as the trans-generational duo stood arm in arm on the bridge over Lyman Lakes, "when I was a student..."

I don't know how the man finished his sentence, because those five words halted me mid-step. Was. With that stranger's offhand comment, I realized that I have almost no memory of, nor can I particularly envision in the future, a conception of myself that is not a student. I've been entrenched in some sort of educational environment for over sixteen years. When I began my academic career, George Bush the elder was in office, the Democratic Republic of the Congo was called Zaire, and the cost of gasoline was 95 cents a gallon.

I gazed upon the inverted projection of autumn on Lyman's glassy surface, staggered by the sheer temporal magnitude of my studenthood. Then, looking down at my grass-stained shirt and scuffed purple Crocs, I wondered if this is what America had envisioned as a product of her mighty and unparalleled Educational System.

Father and daughter and long since moved on when I realized that I was late as usual for some evening commitment. But the words still echoed across the still lake water: "When I was a student..." It's hard to believe that one day, perhaps not too far in the future, I will be able to utter that phrase. The prospect is at once terrifying and exciting beyond measure.

On Rummy and Buckeyes

It's raining. The whisper of water falling through leaves sounds unmistakably of home, and the chapel bell is tolling the quarter hour.

Has it really been over three weeks since I barreled eastward on the Empire Builder? Are the welders that taught me how to play gin rummy in the observation car on their way to another construction site? Was the almost unnerving sense of inevitability I felt during that 1800 mile train-ride justified?

The questions are always easier. Time is a tricky fellow, and I haven't seen those beaming, grease-stained faces since North Dakota. This school has challenged every element of my being, like always. But it was a challenge I was looking for, after all.

And last Friday the world was a time-lapse video of falling leaves and warm fall winds. The atmosphere itself seemed to be glowing golden, and as I sat beneath a big-leaf maple (ancient) with my religion class discussing Islamic philosophical discourses (yet more ancient), I had a hard time feeling lost or overwhelmed. My brain hummed almost musically as I processed my existence in terms of Sufi mysticism, and I wanted to learn Arabic so that I could really understand how one word can mean "experience," "discovery," and "rapture" all at once.

In front of my dorm there's a grove of buckeye trees. These trees frequently cause me to be late to wherever I'm going, for I can't walk through that treasure-trove of glossy buckeyes without stopping. I hit people with perfect projectiles, and I fill my pockets until they are lumpy and bursting with those waxy wooden marvels. My favorite thing to do is roll the sun-warmed buckeyes in my hands like meditation balls, words, or barely-remembered dreams...

I love the sound of rain falling at night.

Dear Blog,

It's been a while, and I'm sorry. The truth is, the Research Adventure that originally inspired your inception has drawn to a close, and it's been difficult finding time to write lately. That doesn't mean, however, that I have been lacking for things to relate. Quite to the contrary, my friend.

Over the course of the past few weeks I've reconnected with old friends, white water kayaked, and rode my bicycle 80 miles to the coast on a whim. I was humbled in a sweat lodge where my whole body cried and sat for over 24 hours in a two person tent with five people during a deluge. My mom taught me the secret to pie crust, the Pacific screamed and sung all at once directly into my ear, and I galloped a little horse like lightning across the central Oregon desert. I had a bizarre moment of communion with a salt-water shrimp in my step-mom's aquarium.

Yes, I could have easily doubled your content, but my experiences of late seem to repel language like a slick mallard back. My mentality was uncharacteristically visceral, and I cruised through Oregon with a happiness that flowed too fast for second guessing.

But then the other night I was sitting a steep roof with some friends and all of the Questions came pounding down like Midwestern hail. The contrast dial spun upward once more and I grabbed the rough shingles beneath me for fear of falling into the sky.

Is the secret to happiness just passing through a philosophical phase during your lifetime but then settling down into something more visceral? Should happiness even be the goal? Am I trapped in my thoughts? ...how do I escape? Why isn't everybody dancing?

I don't have any answers, Blog, and I'm not sure that one manner of existing is inherently better than another, but I think that this re-entry into Thought is timely given my impending return to academia. Contemplating papers and readings a week ago was as if my task were to aerate the north pasture with a pencil, but now I'm sincerely excited to play with some question marks. Oh, I'm nervous as hell (Carleton has been known to break my poor little feet, both literally and metaphorically), but I have a deep-seeded conviction that everything's going to turn out all right.

OK, Blog, I have to go stuff my suitcases for the for my 42 hour train ride eastward on the Empire Builder (colonizing backwards?). Please don't feel bad if I don't write as much as I have in the past--school has a way of vacuuming away every conceivable spare second. I'll try to keep you informed, though, because if life has taught me anything, it's that the notions of "travel" and "adventure" can be applied to literally every circumstance.

laughing,

Caitlin

The Zen of Science (not to be confused with the Science of Zen)

I'm in Oregon now, and it smells so different here--like raw life, unabashed and unafraid, extravagantly green. There are beautiful bell peppers in the fridge, and the sunshine is playful and light. This morning I just wandered around the rooms in my house and in between memories, my cat in my arms. When I buried my nose in his fur he smelled faintly of woodsmoke, just like always.

I left Port Aransas yesterday, and I'm still lingering in that psychological transition state that's neither here nor there, but decidedly in between. Of late my life has seemed to consist of discrete segments: ten weeks at Carleton, eight weeks in Port Aransas, and now exactly a month in Eugene. It feels like the time to lay a giant question mark over the Texas bit.

"Crab Counting and the Controversy of the Canal: A preliminary assessment of larval recruitment in the Aransas Ship Channel." That was the title of my project (I couldn't help but alliterate). I read untold papers, built megalopae collectors, tried to make them catch crablets, counted ocean bugs, taught myself statistical analysis, wrote an abstract, and then gave a 20 minute presentation to real scientists. I read a lot, too, and watched birds. And now I'm home.

?

I can tell you right now that I don't see myself with a future in research. I, personally, would go crazier than I already am if my professional purpose dealt exclusively with middle-phase larval crabs drifting in tidal currents. Nonetheless, something odd transpired in Texas, something valuable, something that I have trouble articulating.

In Leaves of Grass, Whitman mentions a state wherein one is "both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it." This may begin to describe my Texan impressions. I didn't experience unabashed glee, per se, but the last two months of my life were permeated by an inexplicable sense of contentment that was, paradoxically, both distant and entirely present. Even though I can mention several reasons why Port Aransas might have been a hostile Caitlin environment, I could be found swinging my crab-buckets merrily as I hummed through the laboratory, and on certain evenings when I was riding my bicycle I felt as though, somehow, my wheels were perfectly in tune with the earth's orbit. Every day I laughed at myself (or perhaps more appropriately, with myself).

And thus, as ambivalent as I may be about Texas in general, it's a part of me now. I can perfectly imagine the stench of sargassum seaweed on the beach, and I can identify at least ten species of shorebirds in Port A. I have amazing dexterity with tweezers under a dissecting scope, and I dare you to ask me something about Microsoft Power Point that I can't answer. I better understand how scientists think, and I discovered that I can even pull off a research project, but I know now that the niche of pure science is one that I could never fill.

So did the "scientist" shoes leave blisters? No, I don't think so--they were fun to try on. My feet are a little cramped, however, and I'm elated to be running around barefoot for a while.

Organizing Gregory

All of the other REU students have fled this premises, but I have two more days left in Port A, and I have resolved not to be bored. One thing I've set out to do is organize Gregory.

Gregory is my external hard drive, and he contains every file I possess. I trust my old iBook about as far as it can sail across the ship channel, so Gregory is my Steadfast Protector of Data. The one problem, however, is that I've uploaded files onto him completely at random. If I want to find something important in his buzzing innards, my chances of finding it in a reasonable amount of time are practically nil, especially considering that I tend to give files names like "bladeehoo" or "thispapersucks.doc." Thus the need for organization.

Below I've copied an interesting document I just found under the title "wordswords.doc." It's one of the first assigned journal entries I wrote when I was in Egypt.

Stay tuned for the next 48 hours. Since I have so very little to do, I may very well revisit this blog, and perhaps even reflect on Science, which is what I've been doing for the past two months.


Some Ruminations on Language

"The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant" is a fascinating and somewhat surprising read for a novice Egyptologist such as myself. The story of how a lowly peasant gains respect and justice through his beautiful eloquence provides insight into a culture millennia past, and, in turn, raises many questions: What are the social and political implications of this story, which so obviously empowers the masses? How much of its message is magisterial propaganda? What does this tale have to say about the mysterious gift of language?

As I consider which question I should address, my eyes play over a manufactured oasis that is glorious despite its garishness. The swimming pool glints coyly, and the sun is warm on my back. In this setting that embodies a languid academic spirit that is all but extinct, I think that I will address the question of language, which, to me, has always been an enticing thing to ponder.

"The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant," along with many other primary sources from ancient Egypt, suggests that, in a sense, Egyptians revered language itself. In "The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant," the power of mere words elevate a peon in the eyes of a king. When His Majesty hears of the peasant's fantastic use of language, the king commands the Chief Steward, "And so that [the peasant] may keep on speaking, remain silent"(30). Aside from this tale, various versions of ancient Egyptian creation myths give language an element of divine importance. For example, there is a myth in which Ptah creates the universe with his mouth (the original source of language). When the creation was complete, Ptah was "satisfied after he had made all things and all divine words"(55). My experience wandering though the ancient tombs of Luxor also suggested that language was of special importance to the Egyptians—seemingly endless hieroglyphs covered the walls of the passageways.

As I explored the tombs at the Valley of the Kings, surrounded by what might be humanity's first calligraphy, I couldn't help but draw parallels between that ancient script and the elegant Arabic writing adorning the walls of mosques I've toured in Cairo. It's clear from the parallel architectural flourishes on Egyptian tombs and Muslim architecture that language also plays a prominent role in the Islamic faith, but from what I've learned, it seems that Muslims think of language differently. According to Carl Ernst, author of Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World, Arabic is a"sacred language" because "Muslims continue to use the original language of their revelation"(102). This statement suggests that,while ancient Egyptian religion and Islam are similar in that language is of special importance, the prominence of language in the Islamic tradition is due to the fact that Allah ultimately gave his message in language form (specifically in Arabic). Egyptians, on the other hand,attributed an intrinsic value to the faculty of language.

It's interesting to think that I can make claims about the Ancient Egyptian perspective on language from the scattered historical documents at my disposal. As I began to research the Narmer Palette for my final presentation, for example, I read several assertions from various Egyptologists that even the scholarly vision of Ancient Egypt is largely a product of imagination. So much of my learning thus far in Egypt has entailed sifting through contradictory opinions and stereotypes… One thing that I read particularly struck me, however: an scholar claimed that the study of Ancient Egypt is valuable because it brings to light what is essentially human. In other words, the parallels that emerge between Ancient Egypt, other cultures of antiquity, and modern society tell us invaluable things about ourselves as biological, sentient creatures.

Thus I return to the subject of language. Although ancient Egyptian religion and Islam seem to treat language differently, language is of fundamental importance to both. The fact that language seems to be tied inextricably into the fabric of religion is not surprising if one views religion as a complex system of symbols, and language as the culmination of symbolic thought.

Is this inclination for religious and linguistic exploration an innate part of being human? The fact that language and religion exist across cultural, geographic, and chronological boundaries suggests that this is the case. Words and gods are related: human beings, who are different from animals and plants in that our consciousness constructs rational barriers between our minds and the universe, struggle to process an infinite experience through symbolic systems like religion and language. This is why language endows the eloquent peasant with special privileges, this is why Ptah spat the universe from his mouth, and this is why gold-gilded Arabic calligraphy shines from mosque walls.

Of course we are doomed to fail. We are finite beings attempting to condense infinity into abstract and equally finite terms. As the Sufi poet Rumi states, "Silence is the language of God. All else is poor translation." And yet we try, through prayers and poems, because that is the nature of the human condition.

The sun is setting over the courtyard now, winking greenly through the foliage. I'm afraid that I've been "long-winded and long-winding," in the spirit of Apuleius, but it's not that surprising. Egypt has made me think. Something about all the contradiction amid all this living history has provoked my musings to rove from the "Eloquent Peasant" to the very structure of the mind. And here they are now, written in ink, for I am human after all.

Figure 1. Crazy Grackle Lady Correlates Positively with Insignificance

So my favorite pants are missing very important butt elements. This has been a source of of major concern for me over the course of the past few weeks, but today, without warning, a singularly bizarre solution presented itself.

I was biking down Alister street as I am wont to do during my weekly Grapefruit Mission, and I passed a small hovel-like shop that I had never noticed before. "Port Island Seamstress" was emblazoned across a single, curtained window in red paint. A sign on the doorknob was flipped to "open." Interesting, I thought, my prayers have been answered... After a hasty pedal to Dorm A to retrieve my poor pants, I was nudging open the door of this peculiar shack.

The inside of this seamstress shop was unlike anything that actually occurs in real life. Shirts, sheets, slacks, pajamas, sofa covers--all of these things and more were literally piled from the floor to the ceiling of a room so small it felt like it was built for hobbits. A white wire cage contained two parakeets in the far corner.

A severely pregnant blond was stitching something lacy by the door, and a frog-like old woman sat hunched by an expensive looking computer, engrossed in a telephone conversation. She was surrounded by stray papers and the ever-present clothing explosion. I thought I could even discern a pinafore.

"She'll be with you in a minute," said the pregnant lady, "Would you like to hold Jeremy? My boyfriend saved him." Jeremy was a baby grackle, perched on the windowsill. He was awkwardly half-fluff, half feather, and too much leg.

I reached out a hand toward Jeremy, but he must have sensed my hesitation, because he fled. "The ceiling fan!!!" shouted the pregnant lady as she heaved herself from her chair.

And thus I found myself practicing Grackle Reconnaissance in a cluttered hobbit hole somewhere on the Gulf Coast. And I even gave them my pants.

In other news, I have to give my final presentation tomorrow. Earlier today I e-mailed my power point file and the outline of what I'm planning to say to my mentor professor, and he stopped by my office half an hour later with one piece of feedback: "Rather than saying that your results are insignificant, Caitlin, I think it might be more technically appropriate to say that they are non-significant."

Thanks, Ed.

Highlights from the Middle East

Another idle Sunday in Port Aransas... No better time to organize the hundreds of photos I took while I was studying in Egypt, Turkey, and Morocco last winter! Below I have compiled a smattering of images that, to my inexpert photographic eye, seem to capture that whirlwind of an experience:

EGYPT

The streets of Cairo

Bussing away from the pyramids at sunset...

An ancient mosque in Cairo

Hot-air ballooning over the Nile and the Valley of the Kings at sunrise.

From the summit of the Sakkara pyramid. We were sneaky.

TURKEY

The Blue Mosque, Istanbul

Cruisn' the Bosphorus, one of my favorite places on earth.

Turkish DELIGHT

A ferry ride somewhere on the Aegean Sea

One of many prayers pinned to a wall next to a stone house where the Virgin Mary is said to have lived.

MOROCCO

My roommate and I, inspired by the lack of shower in our host home, shaved our heads with this result. (See my post "The Awkward Phase" to see how the re-growth process is shaping up.)

A village in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains.

Camel trekking in the desert. There was rain. What?

My host home in the Rabat Medina.

A man on the beach in Casablanca.

Dolly

It doesn't seem like a proper name for a whirling cyclone of destruction. Hurricanes don't let you braid their hair, they aren't cute, and they don't fraternize with toddlers.

OK, so Hurricane Dolly (currently rated as a category 2) made landfall well south of here, but when I woke up this morning with the deluded thought of running it was like God was whipping the world with egg-beaters. The door to our modest bungalow flew round on its hinges to reveal driving rain, flashes of lightning, and palm trees doing that spastic dance that I've only ever seen before on news reports.

Hurricane. Let us all take a moment to appreciate how wonderful this word is.

A joker-esque side of my psyche is so excited by the chaos that I can't even articulate, because heaven knows that Port Aransas could use some dynamite. Currently I'm sitting in my little office watching the drama unfold outside my window as I "work" on a presentation I have to give this Friday, but I long to run outside and dance behind all the weathermen that are surely out on the beach yelling into cameras. I want to stand at the tip of the jetty and raise my arms up as if I myself have conjured the tempest.

Don't worry parents and others who might be concerned--I do possess at least a shred of common sense. It's just... there's something about the elemental roar of this storm that calls me at once to feel like nothing but an insignificant blip in eternity and immortal and powerful beyond all reason.

Indeed. There's no conclusion. Bring on the storm.

"Port A," or, "The Strikingly Odd and Unusual"

When asked to describe my research stint in Port Aransas, I am often only able to come up with a single descriptor: "weird." The following is my attempt to articulate:

This little town known colloquially as "Port A" offers the options of dining, drinking, shopping, getting a tattoo, or some permutation thereof. The permanent residents number less than the student body at Carleton, but the population at least doubles every weekend. Great blue herons wander the streets and are given less attention that squirrels would merit, if there were squirrels here, which there aren't. The number of Hummers I see daily is roughly equivalent to the number of great blue herons. Simply being outside one is threatened by red ants, killer mosquitoes, sand burrs, and unreasonable temperature and humidity readings. I spend my days counting icky yet somehow awesome ocean bugs, wincing when disembodied stomatopod eyes float through my field of view. I have been given practically no guidance on my research, and yet somehow I conquer the lab for eight hours daily, usually finding something that I hope is productive to do with myself. No one suspects that last spring I declared a major in religion with a minor in neuroscience. I have read seventeen books since I've been here, and had a nasty case of what is assumed to have been Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. I've taken up the uncharacteristic habit of introversion. Most days I wake up before six to jog in the watery light of dawn and watch the brown pelicans perform elaborate line dances. I should be bored, and I might even have just cause to be miserable, but I'm neither. I'm perpetually amused by what's happening to me, and laugh at myself from a distance that, strangely, isn't unattached.

Yes, I could say all these things when asked what my experience in Port Aransas has been like, but, in most cases, "weird" seems to be sufficient.

Wandering

Last night, after I had washed and dried my face with my familiar purple hand-towel, my eyes caught the white flash of the tag and for an odd moment I was transfixed by the text printed there: "HOME Collections." I stood bare-footed in the bathroom contemplating this word "home" as it taunted me in all caps and boldface.

A few years ago I would have unhesitatingly told you that my home was where my purple towel's brothers and sisters are neatly folded, in my mother's and father's respective houses in Eugene, Oregon. My home was with my family, my friends, Amazon Park, Sheldon High School, and Spencer's Butte, where winter is drenching and vividly green and where plump blackberries blossom on the side of the road in late summer.

Now, however, things aren't so clearcut. During the last year I've lived in rural California, in Minnesota, in Egypt, in Turkey, in Morocco, back in Minnesota, and now I find myself strangely stationed on a barrier island in southern Texas. A proud sliver of myself will always be Cinderella to the Oregon's glass slipper, and perhaps I'll end up back there one day, but the fact is that I have to stretch the conventional definition of the word "home" to refer to Eugene as such. I love Oregon and the people there, I trek there regularly for holidays, and my extra junk is stashed in my old room, but when I return I sometimes feel like I'm wandering through more memory than experience.

"Home." The black embroidery glared out at me from the tag. It spoke of loving stability and roots, of personal space and convenience and a cozy kitchen where it's OK to make mint tea at three in the morning and then leave your cup out... all things that have been practically alien to me for the past two years.

Am I homeless?

I'm not sure of the answer to this question, and, to tell you the truth, I'm not terribly concerned about the semantical answer. Yes, it's difficult at times, but, in exchange for the uncertainty, I'm as light as seagull bones and susceptible to the slightest breeze. I like that tomorrow could be anything and knowing that I can adapt. In a paradoxical way, I'm grounded in change. And, as she goes vagabonding across the galaxy, this frood always knows where her towel is.

Oops.

I was sitting, hunched over my dissecting scope as per usual, when Brad pushed open the doors to the dead lab and fixed his eyes on me. "It was you!" he declared. I am intimidated by Brad. He is tall and confident, does incomprehensible mathematical things for his research, and goes surfing during his lunch break.

My mind raced, trying to come up with anything that I could have screwed up. I drew a blank. "What did I do?" I asked meekly.

"You put seaweed in the trash can! The live lab smells like death!"

To me it had seemed perfectly logical to put the seaweed that had tangled up my attempt at a plankton tow in the garbage, but apparently sargassum seaweed contains an unimaginable potential for olfactory disaster.

Oops.

I was grudgingly forgiven--how is a young woman schooled in the great planes to know anything about the threat of seaweed in a trashcan?

I'm finding it harder to forgive myself, however, for the fact that I drank at least several amphipods today. I was sorting through my sample, putting the counted organisms in a beaker of water... or so I thought. It also so happened that my cup of coffee was right next to the beaker, and as I took a refreshing sip of morning delight I realized with a start and a gurgle that I was drinking much more than coffee and milk. Blech.

Thus is the life of a "research biologist" who actually has no idea what she's doing. I'm staying positive though. Several graphs that I created in Excel are boosting my confidence, and I found eight blue crab megalopae today, which is practically bordering on data.

And, although Port Aransas can lonely and inexplicably bizarre, the chocolate chip cookies have exactly the optimal ratio of chocolate to cookie. For the fourth of July I sat with some other REU students on the roof of the lab and learned that Texans do fireworks right as I confronted 360 degrees of mortars exploding like popcorn on acid. After I deploy my crabbie-catchers at sunsest, I like to dangle my feet from the pier and make wandering sounds on my harmonica while black skimmers graze the surface of the waves with their beaks. I have an enticing pile of books to read.

It could be worse.

Zoea, sea butterflies, and amphipods, oh my!

They are built: PVC cylinders, roughly 15 centimeters in height, with hunks of AC filter that look like an under-mowed putting green rubber-banded around them. These awkward contraptions are meant to catch blue crab megalopae. I've deployed them off the pier two nights in a row, hoping to entice the little larva's settling instinct... and caught one (1) Callinectus sapidus megalopae. Not exactly a propitious commencement to this project, but I haven't given up hope on my little crablets yet.

And the fact that I've only caught one blue crab doesn't mean that I haven't rinsed a wealth of amazing and entirely ridiculous life from my briny air-conditioning filters. Since I know practically nothing about zooplankton, the grad student that's been helping me identify the critters my "artificial substrates" have yielded invariably stifles outbursts of laughter at my descriptions of the ocean-bugs. "It looks like a clear tube of toothpaste with a gross worm inside," I'll say, or, "I found a chicken fetus with three huge horns!" I could spend forever perusing my petri dish, just finding shapes in the bodies of these alien organisms.

Below I've provided a petite potpourri of the barely-macroscopic menagerie that has become my domain. The pictures are of a crab zoea, a "sea butterfly," and an amphipod, in that order:

Today I tagged along on a sampling mission in the Mission-Aransas Estuary. For five hours the motorboat jolted across green water, huge blooms of cabbage-head jellies left shivering in our wake. There was a thunderstorm brewing over the western horizon, and I watched bolts of lightning hopscotch between nebula-esque thunderheads. From zooplankton to the ocean to the endless starry skies revealed by the waning moon... in that instant I saw the universe spread before me like a fabulous set of Russian dolls.

Ah, it is 9:00 and I must retire--I'm going to try to snatch up some of these elusive blue crab megalopae in a plankton net, and it just so happens that they only come out during the nocturnal flood tide. Thus I, a slave to the lunar calendar, have set my alarm clock for 4:19 a.m.

The Awkward Phase

For all of you that have been wondering about my current state of hair re-growth:

Clarity

Oh to see the world with healthy eyes! The clouds are billowing pinkly upward, creating a whimsical city of sugar-laced skyscrapers. The brown pelicans, no longer nightmarish hunchbacks, appear to be silly old men--the kind that might wink as you walk by. Sunlight flashes off the sea's surface. "Wake-up, wake-up, wake-up..." the waves whisper.

I just spent the last week sick in bed, and just when I had almost completely forgotten what it felt like to be a functional human being, a pivotal battle was won in the war ravaging my immune system. Just to stretch out my toes and jump down from my top bunk with a clear head is beautiful.

Tomorrow I will deal with the fact that I am effectively three weeks behind in my research. Tomorrow I will consider for what else, beyond the creation of Easy Mac, I can use the laboratory I have been assigned to. Tomorrow I will see if these “scientist” shoes are going to leave blisters.

For now I’m going to curl up in my bed with my journal, and think about how much I love words like “confluence,” “delta,” and “estuary.”

Things that are blue

Today was the Marine Science Center's open house, and my (dubious) job was to pass out little blue baggies full of free things to the flip-flop-x-x-x-l-t-shirt clad visitors. I had my first real "Texas moment" when a lady in pink plastic sunglasses leaned over the pad of paper where I was keeping track of where all of the visitors were from and exclaimed, "Awww... Y'all are doin' an expearimeant!!"



I got to go out on one of the boat trips into the salt-marsh, too, and it was wonderful. The little boat skipped all over the water and the marsh-muck was particularly viscous and satisfying. I met my soon-to-be best friend the Blue Crab, got my hair all frazzled up into something crazily wind-swept, and had salt crystals caked at the corners of my eyes. Mmmm.


Yes, so apparently I'm going to be doing something with Blue Crabs and their larval distribution patterns. Not only does it sound interesting, but also I get to escape the laboratory and go on boat trips around the estuary to track down the areas where the baby crablets hide out. (By the end of the summer I'm sure I will be able to describe this in much more official language).

I'm still sick, though. My mom thinks I have mono, but I'm operating under the assumption that my refusal to believe that this is the case will make it not so. It's all very poor timing, though. I would much rather be familiarizing myself with the cloud patterns spiraling through this port town than the spackle on my cieling. Alas.

I will not end of such a sour note, however. I will end on an Indigo Bunting note, which is far from sour, and also blue:


Me and a lab-tech were talking about how beautiful Port Aransas is, and the bird migrations came up. It turns out that this guy was watching Indigo Buntings pass through Texas in March or so, while I stalked them through the Minnesotan prairie this May during my ornithology class. We might even have seen the same little bunting. These guys really do go a long way... Crazy. Birds are crazy! I need to get a hold of a pair of binoculars.

Books, Goals, and Dolphins

So, as I was struggling to write papers last term, I compiled a summer reading list and a list of goals that I want to accomplish before school starts again in the fall. Fortunately, I stumbled across the gmail draft where I saved these ideas--

Books to read:
The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins
The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle
On the Blue Shores of Silence, Pablo Neruda
Fingers Pointing at the Moon, Wei Wu Wei
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
The Places in Between, Rory Stuart
The Gift, Hafiz (This book I actually take with me everywhere, so it will be a re-reading.)

Goals:
Learn something about biology
Rekindle my relationship with my paper journal
Keep a list of birds I've identified
Write Letters
Achieve harmonica competence

Am I overly ambitious? We shall see. If you have any burning suggestions for books I should add to my list, I welcome them.

Today, again, was a blur. I watched some people fiddle with a terrifyingly expensive piece of lab equipment, stood transfixed over a microscope looking at all of these mysterious zooplankton scoot by, and assembled a computer. I still have no idea what I'm going to study. I was feeling pretty awful all day and when I got back to my room it occurred to me that I might be sick, and it turned out that I had a 102˚ fever. That might explain, at least in part, why the dolphins playing merrily at the prows of the oil tankers seemed so much like a dream...

I'm here.

My mind is still whirling with finals and goodbyes, and my bag still hasn't made it, but my body at least is here. Warm winds, sand between my toes, phytoplankton, peeling paint, curious shorebirds with jet black heads, the Gulf of Mexico, hot kitchens and chicken sandwiches... It's all a lot to process. My research mentor, Ed Buskey, gave me a tour of his lab today--it was full of all of these bubbling vials and mysterious cultures. I nodded and smiled a lot while he talked about red-tide coastal dynamics and predator-prey interactions, but I was so tired that I'm afraid I didn't absorb too much. No one here knows that I declared a major in Religion.

"OK, Science Caitlin," I'm saying to the part of myself that enjoys the measurement of oxygen levels and finds perverse pleasure performing statistical analysis, "wake up and and get ready to wield your pipet with enthusiasm!"

Because, although a significant side of me laughs at the bitter irony of compressing this roaring forever of a sea into "data," there is a Science Caitlin. She thinks that biolgical analysis just might compound the mystery.

...this REU thing certainly will be an interesting experiment.