That's the thing with handmade items. They still have the person's mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone.
This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in. Nobody cooked that burger.
Aimee Bender, "Tiger Mending"
15:08:31
Rose Reading Room, NYPL, overlooking Fashion Week's tents in Bryant Park
Still trying to cram my body and mind back into regular life after two weeks of glorious vacation. In one week there were two great Wydelles shows, much gallivanting around Athens ("I just died in your arms tonight" sung in a private room after midnight, studying computer science fundamentals and reading Martha Stewart magazine at the bright breezy public library by day, a trip to swim in the deep cool quarry, the enjoyment of space being everywhere available to breathe). In the other week there was an excursion to Mexico, which I'll just lightly state was ridiculously beautiful and by turns, serene as I could imagine and strangely different, almost surreal, as all major changes in atmosphere are.
I broke my camera (from email to mom: "I was carrying a bag, to have my phone and camera and towel in when I went down to the beach, and you can't really tell in that picture, but the beach is still pretty rocky, and I stupidly chose to walk on the rocks closer to the water because I was wearing flip flops and the water was so pretty and cool, and of course didn't realize until too late that those rocks near the water were also slippery because they had algae growing on them!! Gah. So I slipped and fell, and the whole bag and my whole cover-up shirt and everything got drenched. Phone and camera did not like the salt water.") and am yearning without cessation to have a shiny new SLR; it feels as if I've already passed a thousand opportunities for photos on the streets of NY just in the past three days. There's nothing like a change of pace to make you see your everyday in a new eye and a new sense of wonder. A man on the street almost ran into me a few hours ago. From afar he looked like just another Hasidic Jewish man (they frequent that block for its "Kosher Delight" deli, full of matzo and weirdly to me, entire roasted chickens), but as he got closer (too close, dude!) I realized he was much taller and dirtier than average and he didn't have ringlets alongside his beard so much as scraggled, greasy, wiry whiskers sticking in every direction. I think I may have forgotten how mean and crazy some people on the streets look. And how little anyone expects you to ever be surprised by it.
My course schedule is still not concrete (though it must be by Monday) and I'm a little lacking keel because of it. I would love to rave about the Interactive Telecommunications course I visited last night (Recurring Concepts in Art), but I have an irrational sense that I could jinx myself out of being able to take it. My desire to do so is a little extreme an extension of my belief that computer science needs more of a concern for creativity and aesthetics (most people recognize the need for the former, but still heed it just as rarely as the latter), but I've performed adequately enough in the more mathematically rigorous courses that I think they just may well allow it.