Dark Dreams

Hello world and welcome to another installment of Andrew's life.

I borrowed two books from the library and failed to finish both of them. They were due last Friday, but they're still sitting in the passenger seat of my car.

I drove to northern Pennsylvania over the weekend to visit a cousin that I hadn't seen in over ten years. We are close to the same age, but she is married now and has two children. I didn't know what to expect when I pulled into her driveway, but I was pleased to find her happy and satisfied with her life, in an exhausted mother-of-two kind of way. I suppose I've reached a point in my own life where my relationship with my family is almost entirely determined by the effort I put forth. I also suppose I reached that point quite a while ago.

I feel tired when I get home from work, but I'm doing so much less now than I was this time last year. If I think about that fact, I feel less tired.

I've found that getting plenty of sleep and drinking plenty of water is the key to perhaps 90% of the problems that face people in life. It may not be a short-term solution for the nightmarish situations that seem to plague so many people, but I am convinced that it is essential in the long run.

This morning, my assistant principal came in to my classroom and gave me an old telescope. No one in this school teaches astronomy, so I do not know why he gave it to me. I'm taking it home this week and playing around with it myself. I'm going to carve out some telescope time and try to feel like a little kid again.

Here's a photograph I recently took at UConn:

Old Habits

As the year has stretched on (and as usual I am stunned by how fast it goes by) I have become keenly aware of the importance and the ritual of habits, my own and those of others that I have observed. It is clear to me that habits and routines are the mechanisms that make our lives speed up or slow down. They can cause us great pain or great pleasure. They can also bring freedom or punishing imprisonment. Because habits often sneak up on you, and are very hard to consciously create, I am often unaware of the habits that I have. I think that periodic personal reflection is a critical component of establishing good habits. Without personal reflection, habits can take the best parts of our lives and reduce them to soldering and malignant tedium.

So here are a couple of habits that I have lost:

I used to have a habit of playing video games. This was not the best part of my life, but it was important for my sense of self worth because I valued who I was when I was playing them. I would never play games alone, and this is important too, because it illustrates that the value in playing them was not in the games themselves, nor in my discovery of values and personal quirks that often happens when consuming media in isolation, but instead lays primarily in the social value of the games. I have always been described by others as an extrovert, but I have also always harbored serious doubts about this in my own heart, because I get socially anxious and often enjoy nothing more than silence and reclusivity (this is not a word, but should be, so in protest to the English language I am keeping it). Playing video games allowed me to indulge not just the part of me that wanted a external validation of my own personality and characteristics (he's a good teammate, he's a solid player), but also satisfied my urge to participate in a collective experience. Playing video games with my friends was stimulating and relaxing, and I have fallen out of this habit in the last two years. I have tried to rationalize it, at certain times, using a variety of explanations and excuses, but it's of no use. I will try to get back into this habit now and in a sustainable way in the future.

Another habit I have lost is the habit of writing. I used to create expansive stories and fictionalized universes, or at least short recounts of personal situations I had found myself in. Writing helped me to think about what I had done or seen or heard and also to think about the way that I reacted to the world. Again, this related to personal reflection. I have largely stopped writing, and I need to develop this habit again. Furthermore, I need to refine and closely examine my writing so that it reflects a consistent tone, approach, and style, and so that my impetus for writing is found in a variety of circumstances and experiences. I don't want to write simply because I was inspired by some monumental but irregular emotional happening in my own life. I want to write well and often about everything and anything, and I want to inspire people with my writing, as I have been so heavily inspired by others.

Lastly, a more recent habit that I would like to carefully consider and methodically eliminate from my life: the habit of appearing to be apathetic about things that I care about, and the habit of feigning emotional investment in things I really care little for. For example, I care very little about my job, or at least about the aspects of my job that everyone else seems to find the most intriguing. I care quite a lot about the implications of our society for the very poor and the very weak, but I have struggled to express this in an effective way. I need to critically analyze my priorities and redouble my efforts every week so that I can proudly and honestly say that my energies are going to the right causes.

This post is more for myself than for other people, but then again that has been the trend of my blog since I was a junior in high school. I'm sure it will continue for some time. Thanks for reading!

Here's a photograph I took this summer, of a very beautiful entrance way:

Air brakes

Have you ever noticed that the air brakes on a bus sound like someone drawing frantic breaths while crying?

I brought one of my Chemistry classes on a field trip to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It was a simple and quick trip. On the train back home, I fell asleep. At one point I was awoken by the movement of the train. Across from me I saw that two of my students had also fallen asleep. Two girls, best friends. They had fallen asleep against each other, the shorter girl resting her head on her friend's shoulder.

I bought a Jeep to assuage my family's concerns about my riding a motorcycle in the winter and also to satisfy my dream of owning a Jeep. My father owns a Jeep. His is beige and mine is red and in slightly worse shape. The mornings are dark now, but I still ride my bicycle. When it is very cold I will drive my newly acquired car. I have figured out how to tune the radio to NPR, and when I turn on the heat, the belt squeaks under the hood and I am reminded of countless dark mornings, driving a cold car and listening to NPR. I feel like I have lived an entire life since then.

There is a new Biology teacher at my school this year, replacing a woman who left to find a better job closer to her new house. She exuded a confidence and stability in the way only an overweight woman can. Her replacement is a young looking man who is very thin and slightly shorter than me. He seems always on the verge of forgetting something, and reacts to small things that I say with what seems to be a genuine and deep surprise. He is twenty nine years old and I am twenty three years old and I try not to sound patronizing when I ask him how he is doing. I think he is overwhelmed with the job.

I have read more books since my last post. I am keeping a list on my computer at home, and I will share it on this blog as soon as I remember to.

Here's a blurry photograph I took at a recent wedding I attended. Believe me when I say that I appreciated the humor in attending a Connecticut wedding held at a Yacht club.

Comeback

Lately I've been reflecting on the elements of personal growth and change which have affected my life. I've also become keenly aware of similarity of the patterns of my own growth and change with those of other people who I have met and known. It seems that everybody goes through cycles of discovery, growth, destruction, and rebirth. The cumulative measure of these cycles is often hard to anticipate, but we all hope to end up as a better person that who we were when we started. I think that a lot of people get stuck in grief and sadness and I think that there is an addictive quality to these emotions which tempts people away from happiness. I think that this addictive quality is based in the simple fact that when you are sad you feel like you have nothing to lose. There is a thrilling quality to this emotion and I have felt it myself. When you are unbearably sad you feel unquestionably alive and vital and the world seems like a terrible place, but an expansive place and a place of limitless potential. When you are sad you think of all the ways you could be happy, and this is an easy and effortless process.

Happiness, on the other hand, is a much scarier and more frustrating state of being. When you are happy, it is hard to ignore the gaping chasms beneath you. When you are happy, it is hard to summon the energy to continue to improve yourself each and every day. Emotions plateau and these plateaus are often mistaken for peaks, and the downhill spiral becomes ever more tempting. I have wallowed in grief and I have known people who wallow in grief and I believe that it is one of the toughest addictions to break and perhaps it is impossible for certain people in certain situations and that this sadness, this victim-complex, this urge to look at the world from the bottom-up with eyes twitching hatred and confusion, this delightful and damning state of being becomes a constant state of being and the world shifts to accommodate this new perspective and everything becomes relative to the grief. And I think that someone people forget about their childhoods and lose the dreams of their future selves. 

Here's a photograph I took at Mammoth Caves National Park:

Back to basics

In a few short days I'll be starting another school year. I've been a student almost my entire life, and a teacher for the last three years. Despite this, I know very little about the process of learning, and what I do know is biased heavily by my own experiences and preferences. However, there are a few truths that I have found to be (and I hope you'll agree with me) universal and objective. Here's one: Learning comes as a result of failure.

For example, when learning how to ride a motorcycle I failed pretty heavily and rammed myself into the side of a dumpster. I was twelve at the time. Now I feel very confident and I doubt that I would run into the side of a dumpster unless I was heavily incentivized in some way.

Learning by failure applies not only to specific skills but also determines the shape that our world view takes.

For example, after numerous abject emotional disasters I have developed a sense of my own values as well as a sense of the values of the people that I meet. This sense did not appear overnight, nor is it the product of good intentions or positive emotional experiences. It is only through pain, loss, anxiety, stress, and fear that I have come to realize what is important to me. These notions are flexible and changing but their range of movement is ever shortening. As we grow older, our ability to learn new things diminishes. I am aware of this happening in myself, I occasionally stumble upon artifacts of my own mental pathways locking into place. It makes me fearful and I am also scared because I observe this freeze-drying process happening in the brains of the people that I know.

During the last month I have read the following books:

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
White Fang by Jack London
Wonder Boys by Michael Chobin
Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

They were all great in their own ways, and I felt like I was journeying with some of the characters, especially as I completed my own road trip across the Eastern US (the photographic evidence of which will be scattered on this blog starting now and lasting, I would imagine, for quite some time into the future).

Now I'm finishing Anna Karenina. On my Kindle. I started this book eighteen months ago and was convincing myself that I was smart enough, mature enough, and perhaps dull enough to enjoy it. Yes, I was just on the verge of this wonderful transformation when my Kindle shut down and refused resuscitation. Last week I resurrected my Kindle and picked up where I left off. I was momentarily lost in the dizzy array of Russian surnames and also disoriented by the frenetic emotional roller coaster that all of the characters seem to be permanently strapped in to. But soon enough I recovered and my sense of familiarity with the plot returned and now I'm back to convincing myself that I can honestly enjoy this book. Back to convincing myself that this is not just entertaining but relevant to my life. Not just the story of disaffected members of the Russian social elite, but an expansive and elaborate survey of the emotional wreckage that often follows great romances. I remain unconvinced.


Here is a photograph I took of a sand dune near Lake Michigan:

Decay

I finish all of my work in this class so quickly. It's easy work and I tell myself that it takes everyone else longer to complete it because they are less efficient workers. This is probably true, but not the whole truth, because there is another slight only partial truth: I work quickly because I do not care about the work. I can write an essay in minutes if its on a topic I care nothing for. It's the things that pique my interest and provoke me on some personal level, those are the things that take time to think about and to write about. Sometimes they take so long to think about that I get lost in the thinking and never get to the writing. I am convinced the writing is an essential compliment to the thinking and that one without the other leaves the mind with an open ended gaping wound on one end which can be filled quickly and quietly without you ever noticing and soon your forget that you were provoked in the first place.

I finished my work and I then I finished my book. I only had a handful of pages left and I didn't finish it last night. I'm not entirely sure why. I could have. The book, The Winter of Our Discontent, was almost finished, as I said, only a handful of pages left. I dog-eared it in the way I have been doing since I was eight years old, in the way that still feels new to me, as if I can't believe how clever I am to save my page without a bookmark, a childish fascination with childish ingenuity. I closed the book and placed it on my nightstand and I closed the blinds on the window and turned off the light in that empty room and it was very dark, like the bedrooms I remember from my youth. I sat in the dark in the cold sheets and I wept.

I woke up this morning and rode my motorcycle to class instead of taking the shuttle bus with the other students. A thunderstorm had rolled in the previous night, although I did not hear it, and when I turned off the main street onto the winding country road, a thick fog hang low in the trees and over the old houses, the remains that the storm had left behind like dying soldiers on a battlefield left by a retreating army. I imagined that there was Spanish moss hanging from the branches of the trees overhead, it was a Spanish moss type of fog.

After I finished my work this morning, I took out my book and finished that. I think I procrastinated the finishing of the book because I was scared of the ending. It was a good book, maybe the best book I've ever read, but I cannot say for sure.  The ending was probably nothing worthy of being scared of, but i was scared of it anyway and as I read it I felt my horror grow and grow and then slightly change and when I read the last line the horror wasn't there anymore and was replaced by the empty but powerful feeling in my stomach that I get whenever I finish a good book. The feeling of looking out over a lifeless immeasurable distance, the feeling of recognizing, with brief clarity, and only for a moment, the scope of my own life and its scale when weighed against the lives of all the people I have met and all the places I have been and yet been.

Here's a picture of the book because why the hell not.

Repair guide

I'm in Maryland, on a two-week professional development seminar in which I get to perform all variety of advanced science experiments and then reflect on the challenges that my students might face in performing those same tasks. Here's a reflection that I wrote two days ago, concerning a research project focused on the history of a biomedical innovation. I was assigned the toothbrush.

Reflection

In searching through PubMed and Google Scholar for journal articles on the biomedical innovation of my choice (the toothbrush), I encountered several issues which may be an obstacle for my students in completing their own research. First and foremost: search domain. The toothbrush is, not surprisingly, a rather common place object and is found as a tangential reference in an almost innumerable number of research articles. Think the toothbrush might not play a central role in modern scientific investigations? Think again. The toothbrush is everywhere. I was shocked. Flabbergasted, even. But determined to succeed, I strove onwards. I dived deeper into the ever-darkening layers of research, stumbling blindly through articles of increasing intellectual complexity, past heat-treatments of bristle nylon, brushing away hanging studies of the effectiveness of counter-stroking in removing plaque, narrowly avoiding the pitfalls of stess-tests on newly developed thermoplastics, before finally arriving at the deepest, darkest, and most convoluted toothbrush-related topic: strategies for microbial disinfectant. The destination reedeemed the journey. Here was the golden chalice of knowledge, held high above the glowing pewter altar of thesis defenses, shining brightly down on the grumbling, slithering, irrelevant malignancies of the undergraduate research world. Microbial disinfectant. Even now, my heart beats rapidly in excitement at the sound of those syllables; those ever smooth constants draped in the senseless and endless finery of vowels as smooth and forbidden as mother's silk gabardine. Microbial disinfectant. Surely this was the destination I had dreamed of, the draft that would satisfy my seemingly unquenchable toothbrush thirst.

But I was not the challenger to be. I was not the one assigned the heavy mantle of responsibility, not the carrier of the streaming standard of research and inquest, hoisted high above the flaming fields of academic ignorance and inevitable financial insolvency. No, I was the fervent lieutenant shouting words of encouragement across the trenches to those noble few whose obligation was absolute, whose task was clear: my students. It was they who would have to trudge through the increasing horrors of PubMed, following the thin trail of toothbrush bread-crumbs which narrowed in places to a knife's edge. How would they fare? How could they survive such calamity?

Again, the answer is domain. “Toothbrush” is too general, too vague. The jungle is too vast, and the search party too tiny. What they have in courage, they more than neutralize with their poor vocabulary skills, pitiful research experience, and predilection for distraction. They will take one step into the vast abyss and then retreat, their eyes searching wildly for some Drake-related succor, their hands fumbling blindly for their phones. No, the search would need to be narrowed to something far more specific. To ensure success, my students would need to focus on a specific aspect of the toothbrush (the handle or the bristles) and by focusing their efforts thus exponentially magnify their individual strengths.

To this, I will give them a special, secret, and additional weapon. Forged in the hot embers of the faculty lounge, I will give them: keywords. By including terms such as “biomedical”, “medical”, “health”, or “safety”, the path would be made smoothers, the dangers of the journey further tamed. These words would push the darkness away from the journeymen, and save our sacred fellowship. I know this, for I have tried myself.

It is with these strategies that I will aid my students in conquering that unknowable fear. The ominous and grating fear. The fear that resides deep in their hearts, and also in my own. The fear of PubMed.

Here's a picture of my bike at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike: