I had a brilliant idea about spacetime this morning, but upon writing the blog explaining it, I came to realize that it is wrong - at the very least, I have come to realize that it requires more thought.
I needed to write this little bit because I spent so much time constructing my beautiful explanation, and I felt it required some acknowledgment.
heh
Friday, October 31, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
Maine (Part 1?)
Right now, I'm in Maine with the geology department from Wellesley, and we're basically taking a tour up the coast of all of the interesting rocks we can find - and man, with 4 geology professors along, 'interesting' basically encompasses EVERYTHING. I don't know enough terminology yet to accurately scientifically convey what I've seen, and I haven't yet uploaded my pictures, but when I do I will post them somewhere because the rocks here are absolutely incredible!! The whole coast (and then some) of Maine wasn't originally part of the North American continental plate - it was probably formed along the coast of Africa, and over millions of years, it's worked its way over, eventually colliding and accreting. So basically, not only are these rocks incredibly old, but they also formed on the other side of the world!!! (Granted they may not have traveled particularly far; it depends on time after Pangea and stuff like that, but anyway.) So we have these huge formations of igneous rocks that have been incredibly metamorphosed (we saw a section where the rock had been heated so much that it nearly melted - but it didn't, because if it had then the layering wouldn't still be visible - so you see these incredible swirls in the rock!! Swirls!! In ROCK!!) There was this whole other section that was both more dramatic and less - more because it was easier to see, but less because it probably required less heat and pressure to form, but basically there were these HUGE folds in the rock, and there were these perfect cross sections where you could see this huge curve in the rock - once upon a time, I would have been like 'hm. That's pretty neat looking.' - but now that I know some of the processes involved, I can't get over how awesome it is.
Man, Geology is so cool.
Ok. We're heading out now, going farther up the coast to look at MORE ROCKS!! Tomorrow morning we're going to Desert Island to hike up Cadillac Mountain to see the sun rise on the highest point on the Atlantic coast of the US - we'll see the sun first that morning! hehe!
:D
Man, Geology is so cool.
Ok. We're heading out now, going farther up the coast to look at MORE ROCKS!! Tomorrow morning we're going to Desert Island to hike up Cadillac Mountain to see the sun rise on the highest point on the Atlantic coast of the US - we'll see the sun first that morning! hehe!
:D
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Wise words
Ellen Hayes - selections from her essay on electives.
"Compared with Jupiter and Saturn, this is not much of a planet, but it is your own planet. Will you feel quite satisfied to go up and down it for seventy years and remain deaf to the long, long story, blind to the pictured page? You are planning to visit, some day, the Yellowstone and the Alps. However much you may think you enjoy those regions, you will see, but understand not, and your enjoyment will be far less than it might be if you fail to study geology...... Do you think that ability to express yourself in French and German will in any degree make up to you for ignorance of the language of mother earth?
...Recover yourself from the conceit that you are an important person because you are a college graduate. The girl who spends the long day tying up bread and cake in a city grocery probably has as good a mind as you have, - perhaps a better one... You have lived for a while in a uniquely constituted community, all of whose members have sufficient food and wear good clothes, where there is light and warmth, books and music and pictures, - enough and more than enough; where there is exemption from responsibility and from the necessity of initiatve, and where there is freedom from the cares, the sorrows, and the dangers that beset many young women's lives. Depart quietly. The real test of you is yet to come."
"Compared with Jupiter and Saturn, this is not much of a planet, but it is your own planet. Will you feel quite satisfied to go up and down it for seventy years and remain deaf to the long, long story, blind to the pictured page? You are planning to visit, some day, the Yellowstone and the Alps. However much you may think you enjoy those regions, you will see, but understand not, and your enjoyment will be far less than it might be if you fail to study geology...... Do you think that ability to express yourself in French and German will in any degree make up to you for ignorance of the language of mother earth?
...Recover yourself from the conceit that you are an important person because you are a college graduate. The girl who spends the long day tying up bread and cake in a city grocery probably has as good a mind as you have, - perhaps a better one... You have lived for a while in a uniquely constituted community, all of whose members have sufficient food and wear good clothes, where there is light and warmth, books and music and pictures, - enough and more than enough; where there is exemption from responsibility and from the necessity of initiatve, and where there is freedom from the cares, the sorrows, and the dangers that beset many young women's lives. Depart quietly. The real test of you is yet to come."
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Seeing Double
I was reading Anna Karenina last night, and a phrase of Tolstoy's struck me: It's the morning after Anna informs her husband about her affair with Vronsky, and whereas just after she came clean she felt startling clarity about her future and her new position in life, in the morning she suddenly feels as though she has done everything wrong and there is no more hope-
"She felt that everything was beginning to go double in her soul, as an object sometimes goes double in tired eyes. Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know."
How does Tolstoy KNOW? I just can't get over these descriptions of these states of mind... and I guess the amazement lies not in that he knows, but in that he has this ability to describe it so perfectly.
Sometimes, I think this happens to me. It's really disconcerting. For example - now that I've explored most of the lake in my kayak, I can just go out and float around, looking at clouds and the water and the buildings that I can see through the trees... and I get struck by these feelings that the only thing that is real in the entire picture is the earth and the sky. I can't quite capture the feeling because I'm not stuck in it right now, but essentially, it's at times like these where I start to feel like I, myself, don't quite exist. I'm dust on the wind. Intangible, unimportant, insignificant. True, true, and true - but I think that at some point, you have to throw up mental glass barriers. Define the limits of your world, and ascribe meaning (on this level, I can understand the creation of religions, to some degree) otherwise you're just floating in space, alone. That's not to say that I now think it's necessary to invent a deity to give my life meaning, because I have no problem with being a product of evolution and *not* having a god-given purpose - I'm just saying that when I let down my mental barriers and put myself in the universe, I feel blurred. Maybe one day I'll learn to deal with this and from it I'll be able to garner great wisdom (:P), but in the meantime, it kind of freaks me out. It's like I try to look at myself and I see double (yeah Tolstoy!).
In other news (and sort of related - at least in my head), the other day I had lunch with a girl in my geos class, and we were talking about the weird dynamic that we perceive exists at Wellesley - the drive to simultaneously be better than any man and also to be the best woman possible (cough. That's not exactly what it is. I just don't know how to put it into words), and yet - I can't shake this feeling that the truly important things in life revolve around love. Wellesley wants us to go forth into the world and be the next CEOs, the next leaders of the world, and part of me can't help but think that while there are definitely very many valuable things to do in the world, what does it mean if you have no one to share it with? If I devote my life to saving the world, but never have love, that seems like a waste. At the same time though - if I find love and don't try to do all that I can to save the world, isn't that also a waste? Perhaps a bigger waste? (and by waste, I mean... I don't really know what I'm trying to say here. I'm trying to explain it to myself. I don't mean "WASTE" like garbage... I just mean that there are things that I feel like I have to do, and if I don't, then, well, something is wrong.)
It all comes back to this whole mortality thing. I think that my understanding of this basic fact is what makes me think such strange things sometimes... like - let's say that I'm going to live to be 100 years old (woo!). That means that basically, at this time, I have lived one whole fifth of my life. It's gone. I can't have it back. I have memories, sure! But after my life, after I die, that's it. I can't go back and live this again. I don't know what happens after, if anything at all, but man, this is it. I've got one chance to make every mistake and fix it. One chance to say everything that needs to be said (when I put it like that, all of my wishy-washy indecision seems glaringly pathetic), one chance to be me.
Or maybe this is all a little melodramatic - certainly you get more than once chance for many things within your lifetime, but on a larger scale, in the sense that you can't go back and re-do your life, you've got one chance to live.
Hmm. I think it's time to go immerse myself in some italian busy work.
"She felt that everything was beginning to go double in her soul, as an object sometimes goes double in tired eyes. Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know."
How does Tolstoy KNOW? I just can't get over these descriptions of these states of mind... and I guess the amazement lies not in that he knows, but in that he has this ability to describe it so perfectly.
Sometimes, I think this happens to me. It's really disconcerting. For example - now that I've explored most of the lake in my kayak, I can just go out and float around, looking at clouds and the water and the buildings that I can see through the trees... and I get struck by these feelings that the only thing that is real in the entire picture is the earth and the sky. I can't quite capture the feeling because I'm not stuck in it right now, but essentially, it's at times like these where I start to feel like I, myself, don't quite exist. I'm dust on the wind. Intangible, unimportant, insignificant. True, true, and true - but I think that at some point, you have to throw up mental glass barriers. Define the limits of your world, and ascribe meaning (on this level, I can understand the creation of religions, to some degree) otherwise you're just floating in space, alone. That's not to say that I now think it's necessary to invent a deity to give my life meaning, because I have no problem with being a product of evolution and *not* having a god-given purpose - I'm just saying that when I let down my mental barriers and put myself in the universe, I feel blurred. Maybe one day I'll learn to deal with this and from it I'll be able to garner great wisdom (:P), but in the meantime, it kind of freaks me out. It's like I try to look at myself and I see double (yeah Tolstoy!).
In other news (and sort of related - at least in my head), the other day I had lunch with a girl in my geos class, and we were talking about the weird dynamic that we perceive exists at Wellesley - the drive to simultaneously be better than any man and also to be the best woman possible (cough. That's not exactly what it is. I just don't know how to put it into words), and yet - I can't shake this feeling that the truly important things in life revolve around love. Wellesley wants us to go forth into the world and be the next CEOs, the next leaders of the world, and part of me can't help but think that while there are definitely very many valuable things to do in the world, what does it mean if you have no one to share it with? If I devote my life to saving the world, but never have love, that seems like a waste. At the same time though - if I find love and don't try to do all that I can to save the world, isn't that also a waste? Perhaps a bigger waste? (and by waste, I mean... I don't really know what I'm trying to say here. I'm trying to explain it to myself. I don't mean "WASTE" like garbage... I just mean that there are things that I feel like I have to do, and if I don't, then, well, something is wrong.)
It all comes back to this whole mortality thing. I think that my understanding of this basic fact is what makes me think such strange things sometimes... like - let's say that I'm going to live to be 100 years old (woo!). That means that basically, at this time, I have lived one whole fifth of my life. It's gone. I can't have it back. I have memories, sure! But after my life, after I die, that's it. I can't go back and live this again. I don't know what happens after, if anything at all, but man, this is it. I've got one chance to make every mistake and fix it. One chance to say everything that needs to be said (when I put it like that, all of my wishy-washy indecision seems glaringly pathetic), one chance to be me.
Or maybe this is all a little melodramatic - certainly you get more than once chance for many things within your lifetime, but on a larger scale, in the sense that you can't go back and re-do your life, you've got one chance to live.
Hmm. I think it's time to go immerse myself in some italian busy work.
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