About a week ago my mother was hospitalized after a rare reaction to the antibiotics she was given for pneumonia which caused her lungs to seize and interrupted her breathing. She was shopping with a friend of hers when she collapsed and had to be rushed to the hospital. Thankfully she’s making a full [...]
Archive for the ‘Mind & Brain’ category
Die, monster, die
Exercise: take a piece of blank paper with some crayons or felt tips. Draw a monster. Put the monster in the middle of the floor. Select an imaginary (unless you have kids’ toys available) weapon. Take the weapon and kill the monster.
What did your monster look like? Describe the qualities of the monster. How did [...]
The Intersection of Small Things
I like unexpected patterns, the ways in which seemingly unrelated threads might find themselves woven together. There’s a beauty in the small details. In the ways in which one thing informs another. Sometimes through sound. Sometimes through history. The mind forms associations, building both practical and improbable bridges, linking words and elements of the world. [...]
35 amazing science fair projects
Update: Oooops… Threw this online in a hurry this a.m. when there was no other post, but it seems I’ve been punk’d. At least some of these are photoshopped, if this is any indication.
So, these may or may not be actual projects, but at least the kid with the orange spiky hair seems to be [...]
Music, Weightlessness, and the Waking Dream
I used to wake every morning to soundtrack of Gattaca on my cd-player/alarm clock. The incessant call in the music evoked something both melancholy and haunting. The dark tones of the string instruments resonated with something deep inside me, striking some blend of longing and worry, as if I weren’t quite certain where or who [...]
Things I worry about
Is my metabolism slowing down? Am I getting soft around the middle without really noticing how much? Do people look at me and see a forty-something trying to cling to thirty-something-ness? Do these shorts make me look fat?
Should I dress better? Is it boring to wear jeans and t-shirts all the time? Is it too [...]
Unexpected Cosmologies
I’m a believer. I believe in numbers. In textures and lines. I believe in shadow and light. How the grade of darkness is sometimes tied to the word value. I believe in beginnings. In origins. I believe in ruptures and faults. In borders and intersections. I believe in pattern and chaos. Sitting in a restaurant [...]
Ghost plant
Walking on a country road in Barre, Massachusetts, last week, I came across what looked like a bunch of mushrooms growing under some dense trees:
They were ghostly white and clumped in little groups the way toadstools are often clumped. I figured they must be the fruiting bodies of some underground mass of fungus. But looking [...]
