"...the realms of the very small and very large"

So, I’ve been really into astrophysics lately. More so than usual. To the point where I project that others are really starting to be all like, “wow, Nicole is pretty obsessed.” I don’t think it’s just because of watching Cosmos and The Universe and Nova scienceNOW and stuff on Netflix and having a more than unhealthy relationship with xkcd… well, that’s part of it… But I’m sure I’m seeking that out for a reason.

The quick go-to answers may be the precise calculations, relatively irrefutable laws of physics, the cold logic, the seemingly unchangeable facts.

But the more my amateur interest teaches me, the more I learn how chaotic and unpredictable redefine-able EVERYTHING is. Including the math and science.

Like most people, I’m sure, I want order, predictability, and to follow a clear trajectory. Which, sure, may have spawned an initial interest in math and science. But, in a completely counterintuitive way, it’s this exact precision that has helped me to accept ambiguity in life. The more confident I became in facts of the universe, the more clearly I could see all the unknowns.

It’s odd to think how small my world used to be. Only a handful of people with whom I ever interacted. A slowly expanding network that has led me from my small nuclear family to my comparatively large compounds of social and academic bonds.

Things seemed so clear to me in Spokane. Following relatively straightforward and predictable rules. Go to school. Make friends. Mind your parents. Get good grades. Go to college. Easy. Known.

But in looking at the individual unit, me, broken down into its subcomponents, the world is far more complex. And I don’t mean in the emo “look-at-me-so-complex-and-misunderstood” kind of way. I mean in general. Just like how subatomic particles behave in VERY strange and paradoxical ways, so too does human behavior and motivation.

The closer I look at myself, the more confused it can seem. And while I can accept that, and even find humor in it, it can be incredibly maddening. I sit here, on my deck, on the one of the most beautiful Independence Days enjoying at my (boastfully) amazing view of Chicago, feeling somewhat sure of things and waxing philosophic on my life. Until my neighbor above me comes out onto their deck and overwaters their plants and subsequently, waters me. Yanking me from the abstract to the concrete. I was initially pissed, thinking about how fucking disrespectful people can be, until I realized how something like that is a perfect unknown.

It’s actually funny. And maybe what I needed to not overthink my day. I just got a phone call and made plans. The kind I typically sabotage, but now, firmly rooted in the concrete and still damp from the unexpected shower, I think it will be ok. Chaotic and confusing, but ultimately ok.

My favorite birthday song...

So... This is not going to be creative at all, but I just connect so strongly to this particular Bishop Allen song this time of year... Self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone? I love the fact that this song is on their February EP.

You were saving the date but you woke up too late

Pulled the covers down over your head.

You haven't left your front door for a week maybe more

Tell me, hey, what's the news from your bed?

You know your face is all covered with your birthday cake

That you're eating in the kitchen at home

Another banner year, a splendid day

Another inch or two that you've grown

But it's hard to celebrate on your own...

There's a mouse in the cupboard that nibbles your crumbs

And you talk to him every night.

You say, "Hey, Mr. Whiskers, I'm bored and I'm numb,

You can stay if you just treat me right."

Just last year you were fortunate, baby

And your friends circled 'round you in droves

Are they thinking of you? Maybe, just maybe

But not a one has bothered to phone.

Tell me where, oh where did they go?

Called a car

About an hour ago

You're gonna take yourself out

Despite the cold and the snow

Did they forget about you?

Are they in on it too?

You sit and looking in the mirror

At your dancing shoes.

When your family calls, you make nice to them all

And assure them you're fine and you're great

Then you cry in the bath, cry so hard that you laugh

And you watch television 'til late

Who do you need?

Nobody!

You're lucky nobody's around.

I can pour my own drinks, no thanks mister

Go on, get out of town

And you're gorgeous in your evening gown...

An open letter to people I am annoyed with

Because, today, it feels like there are many of that type... Even though I haven't left my bed really at all today long enough to find out if there is any *current* reason to be annoyed. However, I'm feeling what I'm feeling and for that sake, I just need to rant, whether it's justified or not... Here goes:

1. To the supposed former best friend. Ok. I get that we have always been in different places in our lives and that makes it tough to be 100% on the same page. And I have historically been the one to disagree with you when you decide we shouldn't be friends anymore. This push-pull has been going on for 14 years. With you constantly being the one to think that we should never talk again and me being constantly the one to think that friends are allowed to argue without it being the end of the damn world. But, maybe you're the one who's right and I'm the one that needs to back down. Because if you keep thinking that we are SOOOO incompatible that we can't even talk once a week as the best friends we are supposed to be, maybe it's true because that's how you want it to be. You know... my mom has a point and I have no reason to feel the need to apologize for the direction my life has taken and for how happy I am. Plus this whole bullshit about you being pissed about me and Dan? Several comments: a) you were a total bitch to me every time I tried to bring him up to tell you something was happening, b) you liked him 12 YEARS AGO, c) you're MARRIED, d) you REALLY don't like him now, and finally e) YOU FUCKING TOLD ME THAT YOU DECIDED YOU WERE A LESBIAN!!! So... don't even try to act like this is about him. There is something else going on that you are pissed about and are too chicken to tell me. But... instead, here I sit... Really mad and wanting to tell you all this, but I can't tell you because every time there is one little thing that I want to bring up I have to worry that you are going to send me a vague text about how you want to kill yourself and then you won't answer your phone for a week. And don't EVEN get me started on how I'm not allowed to have any other close friends because Kelly and Natalie threaten you somehow. So thanks for that. For never letting me be able to feel like *I* have a best friend... who *I* can talk to when I feel like there is something wrong. No. That gets to be you. So, I suppose you are right. Our friendship cannot work like this. Also, thanks for making me so upset about all of this, that I am now, more than I think I would have already, sabotaging my relationship. I hope that makes you happy.

2. To the doomed relationship partner. Though unfair, I am really annoyed that you are acting all hurt that this is happening. I warned you time and time again that I suck at relationships, I hate feeling tied down, and am nontraditional to a fault. I'm mad that you're so surprised that this is happening. It's all making me just find other faults which are not yours that I am attributing to you. I am annoyed by all sorts of little things. Small behaviors... the terms of endearment... the blind agreement with everything I say. I was not supposed to meet you. I was not supposed to start to like you. And you, certainly, were not supposed to like me. Let alone fall in love with me. Love?!?! Really?!?! I'm annoyed that you put that on me and now it's my fault and I'm the douchebag for not liking or appreciating it. I told you before I agreed to be partnered to you (which, by the way, happened when I was drunk and I really regretted it the next day) that I was really into women. I really don't want this to be my fault and I'm really annoyed that it feels like it is.

3. To the new friends who dislike each other. Just stop it. I waited so long to find cool friends and now that I have, it turns out you all haven't liked each other since before I met you?? Dammit. I just wanted to have cool friends to hang around with and there is already baggage... Fuck.

4. To me. For the usual. Self-sabotaging patterns. The fake attempts at recommitment. The slipping back into gluttonous and sloth-like patterns. All the things that do not make you happy and yet you gravitate towards. Your inability to confront problems directly and to eschew responsibility for your faults. For not knowing your core identity. For not having it figured out. For externalizing that onto others. For not being patient enough with yourself. And for sitting here, doing nothing, and whining about shit instead of fixing it.

So. I'm annoyed. Just one of those days. Here's hoping that tomorrow and next week will be better... It helps that I do not have any patient craziness scheduled til Wednesday.

CAKE can read my soul.

So... I just found out that CAKE is coming to Chicago in a month. The prospect of trying desperately to find tickets to see them live is one of the most exciting things I can think of right now. Aside from finding gainful employment in the form of a job with benefits.

In fantasizing about what it would be like to listen to one of the few bands I have loved since at least junior high, I am obsessively listening to their music and being completely mindful of each and every word and the feelings I had when I first heard them.

Though my tastes have changed over time, more generally, there is something so simple and lovely about CAKE that always has seemed like they are expressing my thoughts, conscious or not, in such interesting ways.

The women they sing about have *always* been who I'd wanted to be. I remember hearing "Let Me Go" for the first time when I was a freshman in high school and instantly thinking to myself that I wanted to be woman who, "when she walks she swings her arms instead of her hips." And then in college and beyond wanting to be the one who wears a short skirt and a long jacket. Those women always seemed more interesting to be around than the standard media representations.

So now, in my obsessive CAKE-music-listening, I have now listened to "Love You Madly" approximately 1,233,856 +/- 325 times. Some very choice lyrics:

I don't want to wonder if this is a blunder
I don't want to worry whether we're going to stay together 'til we die
I don't want to jump in unless this music's thumping
All the dishes rattle in the cupboards when the elephants arrive

I want to love you madly
I want to love you now
I want to love you madly, ouais
I want to love you, love you
Love you madly

I don't want to fake it I just want to make it
The ornaments look pretty but they're pulling down the branches of the tree
I don't want to think about it, I don't want to talk about it
When I kiss your lips I want to sink down to the bottom of the sea

I want to love you madly
I want to love you now, yeah
I want to love you madly, ouais
I want to love you, love you
Love you madly

I don't want to hold back, I don't want to slip down
I don't want to think back to the one thing that I know I should have done
I don't want to doubt you, know everything about you
I don't want to sit across the table from you wishing I could run

I want to love you madly
I want to love you now
I want to love you madly, ouais
I want to love you, love you
Love you madly

Thank you CAKE, for doing it yet again... Expressing precisely and poetically the ambivalence and mindfulness I regularly feel. I hope I get to see you in a month.

An Update

I have been spending a lot of time, over the past several days, remembering a blog I posted almost two and a half years ago. Here are some of the key excerpts.

"'How many times can you snap your fingers at one time? These are the important questions, Nicole...' You told me that once, grabbing my knees and leaning in, quite emphatically. Rather than thinking you were completely strange, I tried it. I can really only snap twice - ring finger and then middle finger."

It's amazing how long I can find myself clinging to something that never was, and had no chance of being. Recalling the total of maybe 24 hours we spent together over a year long period. Not that I'm sad or anything. I am genuinely happy for him, but it just feels weird. Weird that I construct such intense plans and expectations and how quickly I can fall. In both good and less good ways.

Given everything I've gone through over the past few months, I'm pleasantly surprised that I am not more reactive to this. Now I'm just sitting here staring at this page with nothing more to say on the subject, and thinking about a manuscript I have to revise.

Maybe that's a sign I have closure. It feels okay overall... except for the whole thinking about work part.

An Intro

She seems to be surrounded by creative people. She likes creative movies and songs which are not readily comprehensible. She wants to be that creative. That interesting. She wants people like her to look at her life and want to be a part of it. She wants to start trying to write things but is already annoyed with this first attempt since it's not working as well as she would have hoped. Yet she's not sure what, exactly, this should be.

She just watched another Justin Rice movie. Now she wants to be able to prove her depth and worth and value in unspoken, anti-climactic, and uneventful moments like that. As she sat wondering why it was called Alexander the Last, how all of her other favorite movies got their names, she pondered the most challenging question. What to call this? Something that could capture the myriad of pensive and assorted moods she finds herself in. Right now, she is finding herself grateful for deciding to write the first draft of this with the kind of pencil she used to write with in the fifth grade, when she first discovered (and quickly forgot) her interest in creative writing. Or perhaps the "creative misappropriation and alteration of others' ideas" is a better term. Nothing she wrote when she was 11 was from her own imagination -- not surprising that a constant source of criticism from her boss is that she needs to be more independent. To better carve out her own niche, her own skill set. One thing she knows she can do creatively is take an existing thing or idea and modify it enough to feign creativity. And, for the most part, people haven't really seen through it. She fears one day she'll be a caught. Exposed as a fraud.

If she can't name her blog, how will she be able to identify herself, create her own meaning? Which ones are the silent, solitary moments rife with meaning and deep messages? And which ones are simply slice-of-life done poorly?

For now -- a name. Not to get closer to any specific answer per se, just a continuing ability to explore. A sort of Asymptotic Creativity, if you will.