this explains my life so well

I live in a super zip, and it means my life is so, so strange, and you should read this article.

some interesting quotes:


“It’s a megalopolis of eggheads,” said William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution.


Life surrounded by affluence can also breed worries that might seem absurd to people who do not live in Super Zips — such as whether to hire a professional tennis coach to help a child make the school team, or get an iPhone for a child in elementary school.


When Kulp travels outside the region, he says he realizes that people he meets don’t talk much about things such as foreign policy and countering nuclear terrorism, as he does at home with other people with advanced degrees. Instead, he said, “people elsewhere talk more about what they see every day.”

“They mention ‘those people in Washington,’ ” he said, echoing a common feeling that the words are perjoratively pinned on everyone who lives in the region, not just its politicians and bureaucrats.

what a weird day

Thia: It's still funny to me that you like hockey now.

Me: I learned something about the Stanley Cup the other night. When it gets full of names, they can just - it's on rings, the names are, I mean, and they can just slide the top one off and put a new blank one on the bottom.

Thia: [blank look]

Me: So each name is on it for like - 13 years.

Thia: So the names aren't on it forever?

Me: No. But they have a vault to put them in!

Thia: What - [helpless giggling] - How did you even -

Me: I saw this picture online and it looked like it was getting full of names, so I wondered what happened. When it got full of names. So I googled it -

Thia: [more laughing] Classic.

Me: - and there were all these threads on Yahoo Ask about the same thing, and they were all answered pretty much the same way, so I figured it was probably true.

Thia: ... It's like David Foster Wallace, setting the novel-about-everything in a Tennis Academy. Maybe this will be important to your writing, someday.

Me: ... maybe.

--

I almost missed the bus today coming out of work - there's construction or something going on in front of the bus stop and the lane was closed and my bus almost drove past without stopping. I ran out into the closed lane and waved at the bus and the driver pulled over half a block down the street, and I ran and got on. It kind of felt like I had suddenly turned into one of those city-slicker New Yorkers from the movies, or something. Like when people very confidently hail a taxi in a crowded street. 

--

Conversations with the Boss always makes me feel vaguely panicky. I could feel myself flushing today when he was asking me about my results/experiments... "Hey, no pressure," he said, "just as long as you're having fun."

Right. Let me just stop sweating nervously and then we can talk.

--

I thought for about half an hour today that my identity got stolen, thanks to a charge I didn't recognize on my bank statement. Then, after I had already called the bank in a panic, I realized it was actually legitimate. 

It was one of those moments that made me feel 'incompetent at life.' One of these days, I keep thinking, I will actually have everything under control. I won't make any more embarrassing mistakes. EVER.

That probably isn't true, huh. : )

so many thoughts in my head

this is what happens now that I don't have schoolwork to occupy my time.

1.) last week was a bit discouraging at work. I felt like I was disappointing my boss, etc., etc. The Housemate gave me a rousing peptalk and said, "well, emily, at least you aren't delinquent."

right. as long as I just keep showing up. just keep going, I told myself. no feeling is final. and wouldn't you know, both The Housemate and Rilke were right.

2.) sometimes I despair of ever being as wise as the family I come from. when I was home the other weekend I was talking with my dad about some of my questions and thoughts and fears about money, power, growing-into-a-person-I-won't-like...

I think Bethesda is so weird, sometimes; driving along River Road down to the C&O Canal is weird. I've got no other word for it. I think about what River Road means in Lancaster, that drive down to the Susquehanna; "trailer trash," banks of weeds, the muddy waters of the Pequea running sluggishly with kids floating in inner tubes. Here, River Road means wealth, the kind of money that buys you thousands of square feet on each floor, turrets and gated driveways and double rows of pine trees planted between your property and everyone else.

I say these things to my dad, and he says, "don't paint with too broad a brush."

he says, "it's like what Paul wrote, about being content when you have little and content when you have much."

is it really so easy? I thought, jiggling my leg anxiously under the table. the thought's been sticking in my head these pasts several days. it can't be that easy. but yes, maybe - it could be -

Actually, I don’t have a sense of needing anything personally. I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am. 

(Philippians 4:11-14, The Message)

3.) ...and man, I love when thoughts about God and how to live and this really important stuff intersects with art and poetry. 

Our hands full or not:

The same abundance.

Our eyes open or shut:

The same light.

-Yves Bonnefoy

4.) I also despair of ever being as awesome as my grandparents, who have, for a time, extended a very generous helping hand to some folks in need. Oddly enough, one of the things that's been banging around in my head in regards to this (quite interesting) development in my family's life is a quote from Tolkien's The Two Towers. Funny, how those books stick with you.

"One who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters."

I am constantly having this feeling that I am almost seeing what God is saying about the kingdom being at hand. It still doesn't quite make sense; it still is hazy, like far-off mountains on the day of a summer storm. 

But it is coming in to focus, and the bits I am seeing keep hinting that it is like what Linford told me, one time on cross-cultural, maybe even on the streets of Damascus (oh, unreal city, may peace visit your streets). That  abundant life is found in giving things away, giving your life away.

...In the re-creation of the world, when the Son of Man will rule gloriously,

you who have followed me will also rule...and not only you, but anyone who sacrifices home, family, fields - whatever - because of me will get it all back a hundred times over, not to mention the considerable bonus of eternal life. This is the Great Reversal: many of the first ending up last, and the last first.

(Matthew 19:28-30, The Message)

5.) Sometimes at the end of a day of work I remember a little sticky note I saw tacked up on the Redmond House fridge. "Everyone wants to start the revolution, but no one wants to do the dishes."

Ah, adult life. How tedious and boring you can be! May I learn patience and perseverance in the midst of this dryness. 

6.) "I'm feeling like it's time for a blog post," said The Housemate. 

"Yes," I said, "I think so, too." 

let everything happen

Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final.

-rilke

---

the email in my inbox asked: 

was it okay? good? not what you expected?



my response:

All of the above. I feel like I'm taking my first deep breath in about 72 hours. Yikes, the real world is hard! But exciting. 

My mentor-figure in the lab is a Chinese woman who is just returning to work after maternity leave. In my little computer-cubicle area are the two of us and a woman from India who is about 6 months into her post-doc. In my line of vision from my desk is an Australian man; tomorrow I'm meeting the guy who's going to teach me things about patch clamping - he's an Israeli scientist. This morning my mentor (her name is Mufeng) started talking to Andres about visas and the length of various flights, and I'm not sure where he's from, exactly, but he sounds European, like maybe German or French is his first language. 

I feel like I'm on the set of a movie or something; everything and everyone so extravagantly interesting. There's a room in the lab that's the "cold room," always at 4 degrees C. A dark room; a room used solely to transfect bacteria with DNA; a room with the equipment for patch-clamping. And the various patch-clamp "rigs" are inside of Faraday cages, and when I first saw them I imagined myself tucked inside like a hermit crab. 

So far I have learned a bit about transfecting DNA in HEK cells, fire-polishing micropipettes, and the beginning steps of DNA cloning. By next week I will be starting to practice patch clamping. Yesterday Mufeng said, "Maybe in 3 weeks you will be self-sufficient," and Kenton (the big boss of my lab) grinned a bit and said "That's ambitious," but she didn't sound like she was joking. 

AHHH. It is very much to take in; and also there is Bethesda itself, the three lanes of traffic headed each direction around NIH campus, the mad crush of people at rush hour, the shock of being two days removed from a place where I knew even the cracks in the roads.

But mostly I am happy, glad to be here, excited to keep learning. I'll be happy to sleep tonight, though.