First (and Last) Post From Indiana

So, the reports are true; Indiana is quite flat. Notre Dame is also very, very large in addition to being flat. Yesterday was a game day and from the 12th floor of the library we could see into the stadium, which was overflowing with people.

My voyage here wasn't bad, except for my flight from Philadelphia leaving an hour late. Naturally, when I got to Detroit and had half an hour to make my connection, the gate was at the other end of the airport and the express tram was broken. There was running, but I made it onto the tiny puddle-jumper airplane that took me to South Bend. My flight out leaves at 1:30, and Sean insists that we only need to leave here at 12 because the airport is ten minutes away and it's South Bend so it's not like there's a line, but I have such a fixation with being over-early for things like appointments and plane flights that it was quite difficult for me to agree to head out less than two hours beforehand. I have a 2.5 hour layover in Detroit this time, which is fine because not only do I have three articles to read for Palladio class, I could also use some time to brush up on my Italian verbs, as my translation exam is tomorrow.

I'm sad to be leaving Sean here, even if it's only three weeks till he'll be coming to Philadelphia (it had been five weeks since we'd seen each other this time). Maybe it's because his apartment is so reminiscent of the Fairfield apartments, but I've had the strangest feeling like we're back in school together, living on the same campus, and I've just been too lazy to walk back to my townhouse the past few days.

Today, of course, is also my mom's two-year anniversary. Sean and I decided it should be called "Mrs. D-Day" in honor of my mom's hostile takeover of heaven, although "Operation Overlord" was also under consideration. Here's to you, mom--we miss you.

D.C. and the National Gallery

Yesterday I got up at the (literal) crack of dawn for our trip to D.C. It was a lot of fun; I haven't been to Washington since our family vacation in sixth or seventh grade, so it was amazing to see how little my memories of the layout of the Mall corresponded to the actual thing. For one thing, the National Air and Space Museum is directly across from the National Gallery; totally didn't know that. The bus driver tipped us off that the best food was to be had at the cafeteria in the American Indian museum, so several of us went there for lunch and afterward walked from the Capitol down to the Washington monument. One of the girls, Agnes, is from Poland and this was her first visit to Washington, so she was really excited. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to make it all the way down to the Lincoln Memorial, which I remember being incredibly awed by as a kid.

The National Gallery is purely amazing. The building itself is unbelievable--when you walk in the main entrance of the West building, you could be forgiven for thinking you just walked into the Pantheon. The main difference (aside from lacking the Pantheon's amazing multi-colored marble decoration) being that here the massive, coffered dome is supported by monumental columns of a dark green marble.

The galleries themselves are likewise beautifully constructed, although a bit labryinthine; Agnes and I walked around in the morning before lunch and thought we had hit most of the Italian and Flemish galleries. Um, no: we managed to miss the Raphael room, the Titian room, Bellini's "Feast of the Gods" and van Eyck's "Annunciation." D'oh! The latter painting I had no idea was in this museum, or even in North America--I expected it to be in Europe. It's really quite marvelous, but much smaller than I imagined: less than a foot wide by a couple of feet tall, maybe.

There was so many incredible pieces to see that I really felt I was only about to see about a quarter of them. After our group met with Dr. Hall I used the last 45 minutes to dash madly through the galleries taking photos of my favorite pieces with my cell phone. I hadn't even thought to bring my camera, but they're so much more relaxed about photos there than almost any other museum--I'm looking at you, Metropolitan! (Actually, the weirdest attitude toward photos was definitely the National Museum in Athens; they're OK with photos of the objects, but you're prohibited from taking a photo of yourself with the object. Sean and I asked a guard why after we saw him yell at this couple trying to photograph themselves with a statue of Neptune. His answer was basically that the artwork is important and part of history and you have no business putting yourself in there with it. Um, OK.)

Oh, and in the room with Canaletto (who I love for the reason everyone who's visited Venice loves him, for the picturesque tourist-postcard quality of his paintings) I saw this painting by his nephew and pupil, Bernardo Bellotto (who confusingly and perhaps fraudulently sometimes signed his own paintings with the name of his famous uncle):


I'm looking at it and thinking, that looks familiar. Then I read the title, "Campo dei S.S. Giovanni e Paolo," and remembered that that's where we had lunch with Jasmine when we met up with her in Venice. I got a porchetta sandwich from the excellent shop that was across the bridge you can see in the picture (and which was sadly closed when we tried to go back the next day, a Sunday) and we sat on those canal steps and I asked her every question I could think of about Temple. Talking to her was really one of the most influential factors in my decision to choose Temple, really, so seeing this tickled me.

Also, I think this church was on the route between our hostel in the remoteness of Castello and basically everything else in Venice, so it was one of the few landmarks that began to look familiar as we routinely got lost and walked in circles. That, and Rialto. That damned bridge!

Yay Kids, Learning Time!

Tomorrow I have my first class presentation in Making of a Renaissance Painting. All of the presentations are about articles detailing conservation efforts on particular works of art; the one Jasmine and I are presenting dealt with the 1967-9 cleaning and restoration of Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne" of 1520-3, now in the National Gallery in London. This is the painting as it was in 1967 with cleaning tests:



And this is the painting after it was cleaned and restored:


Pretty amazing, right? The article pointed out how hard it must have been hard for people looking at the painting in the "before" stage to recognize Titian as a master of color and paint. The culprit here, in addition to age, flaking paint, and dirt, was the layer of varnish that yellowed with time. It wasn't the original coat of varnish by any means; this painting had seen numerous cleaning and revarnishings in its lifetime, as it was possible to determine thanks to the detailed records of the National Gallery (they had records on this painting dated 13 years before they even bought it--how English!) While it's impossible to know if Titian originally varnished it himself when he was finished, varnish has been applied to virtually every painting up until the 20th century, both as a protection against the environment and also for the pictorial effect it has of giving everything the same sheen. Unfortunately, every couple of decades it turns yellow and has to be painstakingly removed and replaced.

The other focus of the article we're discussing is the set of scientific tests performed on the painting before beginning the restoration process. This includes X-rays (they can show damage to the paint layers and also changes made to the composition by the artist), infrared photos (they can show you underdrawing by reflecting off the carbon in black ink or pencil) and paint samples, which were extracted via syringe near areas of damage, photographed and blown up 200x so you can actually see the layers of paint and analyze the pigments contained in each.

For example, in the X-rays of this painting the figure of Bacchus was quite clearly defined, while the figure of Ariadne was an illegible mass of white. Because X-rays bounce off the lead contained in white paint of the time (which they unsurprisingly called lead white) it can be determined that Bacchus was probably painted early and not changed, while Ariadne was re-positioned, painted out, and re-painted while Titian tried to figure out what to do with her body, a process involving much more lead white than with Bacchus, hence the blot on the X-ray. The paint samples supported this conclusion by revealing in the Bacchus sample just a few thin layers of pigments over the gesso ground, while in the Ariadne showing first the ground layer, then layers of paint for the sea and sky, which were topped by several layers of flesh colors interspersed with lead white from the re-painting.

Chemical analysis of the pigments themselves can also provide interesting results. In this case, the conservators determined that not only was Titian using the fanciest, most expensive pigments, he was also using them in their purest form, which contributes to the boldness of his colors. The blues, for example, are depicted using ultramarine (crushed lapis lazuli, practically more expensive than gold at the time) for the sky and the cheaper azurite for the sea; the really cheap blues, indigo and smalt, make no appearance whatsoever. This makes sense considering the fact that he painted this work and two others in a series of Bacchanals for the Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara; the patron had deep pockets and wanted the best.

So that, in a nutshell, is what I'm going to be presenting in class tomorrow. As it was pointed out in our class last week, since conservation info is rarely, if ever, included on a museum label, you have to be careful in writing a painting off for looking dingy or having dark, faded colors, as it may simply be in dire need of restoration; although on the other hand, it could be a Leonardo and then the smudgy darkness just all part of the "sfumato" effect.

I do find the topic of restoration quite interesting, although I would go insane if it were my job, both from the stress of worrying that I'm going to destroy a world-class painting with the wrong cleaning solution and from the amount of patience required to sit there for hours on end pressing down individual paint flakes with a heated spatula. God bless those people, because it's only through their efforts that we can appreciate a painting like this one in the way it was intended.

Party and a Cross-Town Journey

Last night Dr. Hall hosted her annual welcoming party for new graduate students. Her house is kind of hard to describe--one of those very modern, flat-topped constructions. The patio and yard were very nicely laid out,with definite a Asian-garden theme going on, and the interior sported a highly eccentric collection of paintings, sculpture, and other objets d'art, which apparently stemmed not only from Dr. Hall but also from her husband, a rather intense guy who has worked as an art restorer all over the world. For all that, the house definitely had problems with flow, and the rooms felt very boxy and cut off from everything else. It wasn't an organic design, I guess you could say.

This probably doesn't pose as much of a problem most years when the weather is nice, but it was raining last night, so all forty-odd guests were crammed inside, where it was quite warm and very loud. Eventually about eight of us first-years settled in a den/office that was cool and quiet and where we could actually hear each other talk. It was really the first chance any of us had had to talk to other "novices" about all things graduate school. It was a relief to hear the same concerns that have been running through my mind these past two weeks come out the other girls' mouths, and it was equally instructive when one of the older students in the doctoral program came in and started giving us the low-down on various things. A bunch of us are in the Palladio class together, for which we have an insane-sounding assignment due Monday that basically entails surveying the scholarly literature on Palladio since 1980 and developing a bibliography of ten sources that we feel best identifies current and future trends in the field. Our feeling on this: WTF. However, our informant told us that Dr. Cooper likes to assign these mind-blowing projects, without feeling that they're really all that difficult, and that we shouldn't stress over it too much, which was yet another relief.

All in all, it was a really good time, but as I had predicted to Sean earlier it didn't go too late; in fact, we emerged from the den around 9 to discover that most people had already left. What can I say, art historians just really don't party hard. Today I got up early, determined to snap a copy of Dr. Cooper's book from the Central Library in Philadelphia to tide me over until the copy I ordered arrived. This turned out to be more of a trek than I had anticipated. It did give me my first experience of Philly's subways, which aren't bad but which everyone's kind of leery of right now because some guy randomly attacked another rider with a hammer last week right in front of a security camera--and none of the other riders helped, naturally. After the subway it was about a five block walk, which isn't bad in itself, except that it was along a service street-slash-expressway, so more like a place where you feel you're going to be run over by a semi at any moment than a nice pedestrian avenue. The library, when I got there at last, was absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately, the book I wanted was reference only--they don't like letting expensive art books circulate. So as not to make my visit pointless, I picked up a different Palladio book instead:the one she had mentioned was a good text for someone outside the field who knows little about architecture. Sold!

As the Italians Would Say, "Madonn'!"

Today I attempted my first full-scale article translation: an article on the three models created for the Redentore project. Several hours later, I'm on page five. Page five of nineteen. At the beginning of page three I decided to clock myself: it took me thirty minutes to get through the page--and this is while using an online dictionary to save the time of flipping through pages, mind you. At that rate it's only going to take me seven hours to read the rest of it! Yes!

Doomed to a Life of Early Evenings

News bulletin: graduate school is hard. Quite hard, in fact. I knew it would be, I expected it, but the view from underneath is certainly daunting. For today's seminar, which was Making of a Renaissance painting, we read two hundred pages of text on techniques of 15th and 16th century painting, which was interesting, if rather dense. With that much material you usually wind up with the over-arching themes fairly well-imprinted in your mind, but a lot of the specifics inevitably slip through. Not so with my professor, who responded to a question about the precise definition of a glaze with "It should be on page 237." It was. She didn't have a copy of the book in front of her; she hadn't even re-read these chapters recently, having put her copy in our grad lounge last week. That's just the kind of memory Dr. Hall has. Needless to say, that is not the kind of memory I have (far from it). Intimidating. She personally is not, though; in fact, all of my professors are great.

I think Dr. Cooper's class may be my favorite--that's a seminar on Palladio, this being the 500th anniversary of his birth. We chose research topics this week (which can be a rather tense jostling for the most popular choices, often with Dr. Cooper deciding which topic would be best suited, based on everyone's interests) and I managed to get the one that I wanted, which was Palladio and the East. Venice is a great laboratory for the co-mingling of Western and Eastern influences, having always had strong trading ties with first the Byzantine and then the Muslim worlds. There was actually a really interesting article in the Art Bulletin a few issues ago about a glass vessel in the treasury of San Marco that juxtaposed classicizing reliefs and Islamicizing script in its decoration.

Anyway, this topic is of course different because it's architecture, which is obviously not as easily diffused as doing faux-Arab writing on a dish to make it look exotic. The article assigned to the topic as its "jumping-off point" was on possible Ottoman influences in the church of the Redentore (redeemer) on the Guidecca in Venice:



Basically it argued that Marc'Antonio Barbaro, a friend of Palladio's who at the time of the commissioning of the Redentore had just returned from five years as a consul in Constantinople, might have been the means for transmitting some aspects of Ottoman-style architecture to Venice. I didn't find the article entirely convincing (a couple of minaret-like structures do not an Ottoman influence make, especially when they've been done elsewhere in Italy beforehand) but, as with all things in grad school, you can't form an opinion until you've done about five thousand pages of reading. However, my lack of familiarity with architecture beyond the basics made itself known when I sat down with a book on the Redentore and had to spend fifteen minutes staring at the ground plans before they started to make sense in terms of what the book was describing. When it got into a really theoretical discussions of spatial relationships within the structure, though, my eyes simply started to close.

Reading Italian is also going to come quite in handy, if I ever doubted it--this book was the kind that quotes directly from period documents with no translation, either in the text or in the footnotes. Of course, it's a lot easier for me to figure out modern Italian than 16th century Italian (think of how people wrote in English in the sixteenth century, ie, in needlessly complex sentences that went on for freakin' ever) so I'm lucky right how that I can get a general idea of what's going on.

The result of getting up early and spending many hours each day in a library is that I'm tired at a very early hour in the evening. I could totally go to sleep now, and it's 9:30. I am OLD!

Raining, Pouring

This is definitely a day when I wish I were a napper, but I'm not. I did finally buy some curtains (green, of course) for my bedroom today, so if I don't want the five-year-old boy who lives in the house next door constantly waving at me and yelling "Hi!", I can block him out.

This morning Phyllis and I checked out a rummage sale at a church nearby that had to be one of the biggest sales I've ever been to (is it a coincidence that the Episcopalians have all the best sales?) The church itself was really striking. It's Gothic style, like a lot of Episcopal churches, but this one actually observes more of the forms than just having pointed arches and stained glass; there are buttresses on the external walls, a 'crossing tower' where the nave meets the transept, and the tympanum over the entrance even had sculptural decoration, although, alas, Jesus was not depicted within the full-body halo called a mandorla. Every time I see one I think of Lucia Giardino, a very eccentric professor I had in Italy who always called it an "almond of glory." In fact I got so used to thinking of it like that I had really forgotten the actual name for a while.

After getting drenched coming out of Target later(thank you storm Hanna) I was quite cheered to return home and find a package waiting from none other than my dear expatriate roommate containing an(early) birthday present purchased in Malta. In just a few weeks I'll be 23, which is hard to believe--harder still is believing that it will be two years since my mom died. I thought of her this morning at the church sale (which she would have thoroughly enjoyed). Walking in with Phyllis, who is middle-aged and is about my mom's build and coloring from the back, I wondered if the women at the door thought I was her daughter when she paid the admission for both of us. It reminded me of so many rummage sales and flea markets when I would run up to my mom with whatever treasures I'd found and try to wheedle her into paying for them. Today, of course, I was paying, so while I looked longingly at a gorgeous baroque-style mirror, it was not worth $50 from my own pocket.

I think my mom and Phyllis would have gotten along quite well. I wish they could meet.

First Day of Class

I don't think I have ever seen as many students milling about at one time as I saw when I got to campus today. I think I hit right around the change of classes and lunchtime, which I was warned about by one of the older grad students. It was like a stampede! Although I knew the numbers already (Temple's entering freshman class of 4,000 just about equals the entire number of students at Fairfield) it was a fresh reminder that Fairfield was really quite small.

So I have my first class today at 4:10, the making of a Renaissance painting. I checked the syllabus and there's a field trip to the National Gallery in Washington on the 20th, which is really exciting. During our family vacation to Washington we saw many museums, including the Holocaust Museum, the Smithsonian, and one very long day spent entirely in the Air and Space Museum-- thanks to my dad, who managed to take dozens of pictures just of fragments of the Enola Gay. Of course, we skipped the big famous museum with the paintings in it, because my parents were not art people (to be fair, at age 12 or however old I was, I probably wouldn't have cared, so I can't hold it against them.) But I'll get to see it now!

Travel

Thanks to the wonderful flexibility of my class schedule (classes end for me Wednesdays at 11am) I'm planning to fly to visit Sean in Indiana later this month. By plane it's about four hours and a couple hundred dollars; by train, however, it's the same price, but fifteen hours! Madness. Meanwhile, for Sean to travel between Philly and New Haven when he's here, it's the same price for a train and a bus, but the bus takes twice as long. I don't understand how they're able to maintain those prices...who would opt for the bus in that situation?

As an aside for those of you living in New York, Amtrak to Philadelphia is rather expensive, but Bolt Bus is just $10!

Getting Settled

These are pictures from my new digs...I'm not sure what to call this room. It's not the bedroom, and it's really huge so I don't want to call it 'the den.' It's kind of a combination living room, office, library...thing. Anyway, loves it.

I had my orientation yesterday! There were about fifteen new art history students, a handful of doctoral entrants but mostly beginners like me. As always in art history, almost everyone is white and female, although there were actually two guys, one middle-aged guy who's going back to school after "35 years in the fish business" and one guy who looks like he could be Jack Black's darker-haired twin. The professors trooped in and introduced themselves, and we met many seasoned art history students, who told us about the Graduate Art History Organization or GAHO, which, believe it or not, they actually pronounce "gay-ho." Then we split up for tours of the campus, which was basically re-covering what I saw in April when I visited (I was quite proud that I managed to navigate to the right hall when I got off the train without having to look at a map like a freshman!). I also got my ID card, which is hideous in the way all IDs are required to be.

Then I signed up for classes--all three of them, if you can believe that! I was expecting four, but apparently nine credits a semester is just how Temple rolls. I'm taking a class with Dr. Cooper on Palladio, a course with Dr. Hall on the making of a Renaissance painting, and an undergraduate-level course on medieval art with another professor that I get to be the random graduate student in. I don't have too much background in medieval (beyond Lucia Giardino's Romanesque and Gothic class in Italy, which was, shall we say, not academically rigorous?) so that should be good. I also have to work on teaching myself Italian and German, though, sigh.

Later in the afternoon I went to a reception for people who received fellowships. Both I and this other girl I was talking to had assumed there would be some sort of program, like a speech or something, but as the dean told us when he introduced himself (his name is Achilles!) it was really just a chance for us to stand around and eat cheese with people we'll never see again.

Tomorrow Phyllis offered to take me on a sight-seeing tour of Philadelphia, which is awesome because I'd been planning to go myself anyway, but going with a local who has a car is just so much better! However, the commute to school is really easy; the train station is a block away, and then it's fifteen minutes to Temple. I purchased a monthly pass, which was not cheap ($116) but it works for all trains, buses, and subways, so that's pretty cool.

And now, I should get back to my 'homework': I'm re-reading the chapters of Stokstad that deal with medieval art so I'm not entirely clueless next week!

Now Reporting from Philadelphia

My very first post from my new hometown! Actually I will make this short, as I still have a car full of stuff to unload back at the house. My trip was as quick and painless as possible--3 and a half hours, beating the Google Maps estimate by a whole fifteen minutes. I'm at the library which is three blocks from my house, which is not nearly as well-supplied as the library in Shelton, but hey, it'll do for DVDs and novels.

It was pretty sad to leave my apartment this morning, and to drive away from Shelton. Such a great little town. But we're on to new adventures!

Baby's First (and Second) MRI

Three weeks later, the burning sensation on my left side has receded upward to occupy my left shoulder/upper back region; my right hand is still tingling; and if I bend my neck downward I get a strange electrical tingle through my right leg. Weird, but according to the spine and brain MRIs that I had last week, it isn't MS. Because that was what the neurologist was concerned it was--except he didn't tell me that at our first meeting because he didn't want to freak me out. No, he told me at our second meeting when he pronounced my spine MRI fine with great relief--and then followed up that piece of awesome info by telling me me he wanted me to have a brain scan too just to make absolutely sure. Gee, thanks for not freaking me out, Doc. So I had a spine MRI on Wednesday morning and a brain MRI on Friday. I had to wait until today at 1pm to find out the results of the brain scan, which left me with a wonderful four days to freak out that I have MS and my life is ruined. It was a good time, let me tell you. However, I can say thankfully that my brain scan came back completely normal, so although he can't tell me what it is, he can tell me it doesn't look like MS. Which is AWESOME, not least because I'm moving to Philadelphia tomorrow and it would really suck to be diagnosed with a disease the day before.

Anyway, now that I'm an old hand with this MRI business, I can say it's really not as bad as I thought it would be. Unless you're claustrophobic, because then it would be pretty awful. Hey, now I know I'm not claustrophobic! I was surprised how small it really is, though--the top of the tube was about six inches from my face, and you're far enough in that you can't really see the other end. So they stick you in there and give you a panic button to press if you freak out, and they give you some headphones and tell you to pick a station. The first time it was early morning, so I asked for NPR, but they didn't find the station with the news and I got classical music instead. That was fine, because turns out once the machine starts doing its business, it's kinda hard to hear the music anyway. It's like a jackhammer doing different rhythms around your head, not deafeningly loud, but enough to drown out the music.

After he told me I had to have a second MRI I was kind of annoyed that I hadn't just had everything done at once, but the nurses told me on the second round that that would have kept me in the machine for an hour and 15 minutes. As it is, the thirty minutes that the scans take is about as long as you really want to spend trapped in a tube. Even if you aren't claustrophobic, you start thinking things like "what if there were a fire? what if the machine broke and I got stuck?" etc etc. I was actually pretty surprised by how calm I was. During the first scan it was kind of unpleasant whenever I opened my eyes and saw the top of the tube so close to my face, but during the second one it was OK. Because both of my scans were with contrast, they pulled me out right before the end to inject me with a solution to make you light up from the inside and then popped me back in for another few minutes. Freedom! you think....and then not so much.

But on the whole, it's really not bad. For the brain scan I asked them for a copy of the images, both for myself if I needed to show another doctor and also because Rae giddily asked to see them, little scientist that she is. I was in my kitchen an hour after the exam, looking at pictures of my brain and emailing them to her. Everything looked OK to me, but what do I know? Luckily it was indeed all normal, so I have these lovely keepsakes of my intracranial beauty.

The freakiest part really is the waiting. For the first scan, because of some scheduling shuffles I was able to have my test at 8am and see the neurologist with the results at 10:15 (it helped that his brother was the radiologist who looked at the films). For the brain scan, when I was already hearing the refrain of "MS MS MS MS MS" in my head, I had four days to worry. Luckily, I was able to spend the weekend in New York with Sara and Heather, which helped to distract me a lot; of course, any moment when I wasn't actively engaged in something found me worrying about what they were going to tell me Monday.

Still, I'm really glad to know that my head got the all clear. I talked to my sister this morning (I hadn't mentioned the possibility of MS to her before because I didn't want her to freak out as well) and she told me that in the late 80's, after my grandmother died, my mom had all these weird pains and the doctors were concerned she had MS; she had tests and they didn't find anything, and it went away. So we'll see. Once my student health insurance kicks in I'll have to follow up with a doctor in Philly. For now, my symptoms aren't really so bad; I mean, I can live with a tingly right hand. At least it's not my left. And I really am grateful that I didn't hear something worse from the doctor today. Even though I don't believe in a God that intervenes in our lives (and thus I resisted the automatic urge to pray and bargain with God for a good result) I'm thankful for the life that I do have. After all, if God had never created everything that is, I wouldn't be here to enjoy what life has to offer.

Also--I'm moving tomorrow! My last post from Shelton, CT! I've really loved living here. The town is great, my apartment was fantastic, and it was really enjoyable year overall. I'll miss the Valley. Mount Airy, here I come!

Almost Gone

It's been a strange couple of weeks. In and among the general countdown to my last day of work (last Wednesday!)I woke up with a mystery ailment a couple of weeks ago that consisted of a burning sensation all along my left side down to my foot, and on the underside of my left arm. It wasn't severely painful (unless something cold touched me), but it was uncomfortable and extremely difficult to ignore, especially since I kept imagining the horrible diseases I could have that caused this. Then, two days later, the vision in my left eye was blurry, and I really freaked out because symptoms like that all on one side can be a sign of stroke--I know, I know, I'm 22, but stranger things have happened. Off I flew to the eye doctor, only to discover I had a small infection in my left eye, probably caused by scratching myself taking out my contacts, the cure for which was an antibiotic and a whole week spent wearing my glasses, which I hate, followed by an eye exam that pronounced my vision completely fine (aside from being near-sighted, naturally.)

The burning remained, however, even after the eye thing was gone, so I went to see a neurologist (after two visits to a walk-in clinic and a couple of entirely unhelpful prescriptions) who had no idea what could be causing the symptoms. By the time of the visit, I had also had really severe cramps in my right leg one night, my right hand was tingling, and--weirdest symptom of all--every time I yawned, my right arm would reflexively bend at the elbow. Freaky, right? The doctor said my overall neurological exam was totally normal, but he scheduled me for an MRI this week to make sure no nerves have been compressed in my spine.

Thankfully, the burning subsided gradually after hanging around for a week and a half and is now entirely gone, but the tingling in my hand is still there. The yawn reflex seems to be diminishing as well. I'm still going to have the MRI done, just in case (plus I might as well use my good health insurance from work before I switch to crappier school insurance!) but I'm much less freaked out now that I have some sort of unmentionable illness. It was a very stressful week, coupled with my worry that my move to Philadelphia was coming up and I wouldn't be able to lift anything, but luckily, things worked out and Sean and I were able to move almost all of my stuff this past Thursday. Driving a giant cargo van was interesting, but not as hard as I expected, and though we had a couple of near-misses when Sean took over (to be fair, he spent his first 45 minutes of van-driving navigating across Philadelphia in rush hour and into New Jersey to Richardson's place) it all turned out OK.

Now it's only a matter of days before Sean leaves for Notre Dame, and a couple more till I head south to my new home as well. Sigh. It hasn't set in, not really, and I'm sure I'll have a very sad moment of realization come Friday morning when I'm all alone in Connecticut. Gah! Even that sounds so depressing!

I will end this on a positive note. My house is amazing, I have more space than I know what to do with, and all of my books only fill the bookshelves halfway. Also, Phyllis (housemate) left me a plate of brownies and a Diet Coke for me on Thursday. Heaven!

The Momentous Occasion

I almost posted something here at the end of last week but refrained at the last minutes, because it was a pretty inconsequential post and it would have become the 900th entry to this little blog o'wonder. Somehow I felt like I should wait and have something really good to write. Lo and behold: I can now report that I know where I'll be living in Philadelphia for, quite possibly, the better part of six years.

I'll be sharing a gorgeous turn-of-the-century house with an older woman named Phyllis, who is really cool and works as a community organizer in Philadelphia. The house is in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, which is basically a suburb and looks like the older, fancier parts of West Hartford (but with even more giant, beautifully landscaped houses that had Heather and I hanging out of the car window and gaping like peasants at every turn). It's a Craftsman house, which as Phyllis explained was a movement that focuses on workmanship and detail in architecture, so the house is full of these period details like leaded glass windows in the living room, an original chandelier in the entry hall, decorative woodwork, handmade tiles in the fireplace, etc.

Anyway, we drive into this neighborhood and it's just so gorgeous that I'm willing to take the apartment practically sight unseen. Then we meet Phyllis, who was really nice and down to earth. She bought the house in 1995 and has shared it with a succession of housemates; she was prepared with a rental agreement that stressed that it's a house share, not just renting an apartment, and that she always wants it to feel like a home. The house has three floors: the first floor is the kitchen, living room, dining room, etc, the second floor has four rooms that include her bedroom, office, and a really awesome-looking study/library, and the third floor (where I'll be) has two giant rooms, a storage room, a bathroom, a cedar closet, huge windows, and best of all, built-in bookshelves! There's even a backyard filled with flowers. You can imagine I was kind of in heaven. Did I also mention that there's a cat? His name is Thomas, he's gray and very adorable, but he's also small because he has the feline version of HIV, which is sad. So cute though. Phyllis mentioned that she doesn't really allow him to go upstairs, so hopefully if he stays out of my area it'll be OK for Sean when he's around.

Anyway, we talked with Phyllis for a while, and she seemed very easy to get along with. She was originally from CT and went to UConn for sociology, then she got a M.A. in finance so she could actually make a living, and now she works for a non-profit in Philadelphia called Impact Services. In the end, I gave her my application and left with fingers crossed, because she had one other woman coming by. As I told Heather, I didn't know what I would even do with myself if she didn't pick me! Luckily, she called me back about an hour later with happy news, and now I have a home to look forward to in Philadelphia. It's a couple of blocks from a train station on a line that goes right to Temple, too, which is just awesome. Plus, I feel a little better about moving to a city where I know no one, because at least I'll have some human interaction, instead of potentially going home to a tiny, anonymous apartment every day.

I can't even say how good it feels to know exactly where I'm headed. I don't have to spend the next month freaking out about having a place to live and whether I'll be living in the ghetto (which is where the apartments we looked at on Saturday were kind of located). Instead I can enjoy the fact that as of today, I have exactly one month left of employment! Whoot!

Of Grapefruit and Verse

Maybe it's my own fault for not having expanded my fruit-tasting horizons earlier in life, but I was completely unaware that grapefruit tastes like a really awful orange. It starts off so promising with that delightful hint of citrus, and then finishes with a mouthful of nasty. I tried putting some Splenda on it, but it didn't really help, plus I realized why in God's name should I have to ADD sugar to a fruit? They named a whole kind of delicious sugar after what's supposed to be found in fruit! Anyway, the sole reason for this experiment was that I bought a grapefruit for Rae to eat when she and Heather stayed over this weekend, but due to some unforeseen circumstances *cough* hangover *cough* she was not in a position to eat it the next morning, and I figured it shouldn't go to waste. Of course in the end, after a couple of wincing bites, that's exactly what happened to it.

This weekend, spent with two of my best friends (alas, Sara was busy moving apartments in NY) brought the realization that even though we were all so close in high school, there was so much we didn't know about each other, things we hid, things we weren't comfortable saying out loud. It reminded me of something Greg said to me after we broke up, that after everything it turned out that we didn't know each other's insides that well at all. You can only really know as much as the other person chooses to reveal to you, really, and I guess in adolescence there's only so much you feel secure enough to reveal, even to friends.

I was also reminded of the following poem by Phillip Larkin:

This Be The Verse


They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

July Already

A year ago this month, I had a newly-registered Corolla, a sister about to take the New York Bar, and a bruise the size of a grapefruit on my ass from hitting a rock while tubing on the Connecticut river.

Two years ago, I was headed to Massachusetts with my mom and Sean to finally introduce him to my grandfather, who told inappropriate stories about my grandma's cleavage and invited Sean to come back anytime, with or without me.

Three years ago this month, I got a signed poem from Billy Collins, the best delayed anniversary present ever.

Four years ago I dated Tommy, worked at Sofia's, and ran into Greg once while he was cutting the grass on the town green. I locked my keys in the Tahoe in the parking lot of the Trumbull mall, got my first massage, and was still friends with Wendy and Meghan.

Five years ago this month, I dated Greg, had a dog named Sheena, introduced Meghan to the art of coning, got perfect 5s on AP Bio and English, and went to a Harry Potter-themed sermon at Rae’s church. Sara moved to West Hartford, Rae and Heather had college orientations, and I pondered the future of my relationship with Greg.

Six years ago, I started working at Sofia’s, saved for the HILL trip, missed Greg while he was at Boy Scout camp, met him at the airport when he came home, drove Jen to her job every morning, and got a 5 on AP History but only a 1 on Physics.

Next year this month I will be married and just back from a month in Rome. What else? I don’t know yet, but I’ll be happy.

Already Tired at....9:15

I feel very...slow today. Not dumb, just tired/bored. Part of it is work, because now that my replacement-in-training has arrived, there's very little for me to do, and it's pretty freaking dull. I sort of wish I could just leave early, but I really can't, not only because of the paychecks I'd like to keep receiving until mid-August, but also because I know Paul has planned on having me around to train Deidre for the next couple of months and I don't want to disappoint someone who's been such an awesome boss. Plus I'd miss Work-Heather, and I'd probably be incredibly bored without somewhere to be for eight hours a day, and, yes, there's the paycheck thing again. My mind runs in silly circles.

Then I was saddened thinking about how things will be changing when I leave for school. It's more than a little frightening to be moving to a city where I know virtually no one. Sean will be ten hours away, and my closest friends will be in New York--and I can count Heather among them, because by then she'll have moved back to Brooklyn, according to her plan. It's been so awesome to be living near one of my best friends this past year. The four of us spent college in different states, so being able to dash down to Heather's after work on a Tuesday to indulge in some Stew Leonard's frozen pizza has been a pleasure that I'll really miss.

It's sad, too, that I'm leaving Connecticut, the last of us to strike out for new territory, and who knows, maybe none of us will ever call this state home again. Rae will probably stay in Massachusetts and be a doctor, Heather will live the glamor life in Brooklyn, and maybe Sara will stay there too, or maybe she'll move on to some other city. I have no idea where I'll end up, years and years down the line when I have my doctorate, and that kind of unsettles me too sometimes, but that's part and parcel of the path I've chosen.

Sometimes it seems forever since high school, since we spent all day in the same building, passing notes, hanging out after school, having sleepovers on weekends. It's been a long time, and they're still my best friends. Sometimes I flash back to Jen telling me when I graduated eighth grade that Sara and I wouldn't be friends in high school--but we were, even though we went through several different phases in our friendship, and we're friends now, which is nothing short of amazing, and the same is true for Heather and Rae. I try to remind myself of that when I peer into the future and wonder what it holds for us, when I wonder if in the years to come we will indeed be fabulously middle-aged women sitting around in a coffee shop, like Rae asked in a text message once. I try to think of it when I have one of those moments where I realize how sad it would be not to have them in my life.

Maybe also this introspection and weird sad-not-sadness is also being brought on by the combination of me getting my period and having gotten officially engaged this weekend. Everyone can't help but comment, and I totally agree, that it's so weird that I'm actually getting married. This time next year I'll be his wife, and even though my name won't be different (sorry, Sean) I'll still be introducing him as my husband. It's a change, and it's weird in the way all changes are, even the awesome ones.

And it's sad that my parents won't see it. The changing, the leaving, everything new--I guess I feel like it's all happening out of sight for them. My dad saw me into the beginning of high school, and my mom saw me through almost to the end of college, but now this phase they've never seen, and they never will. Leaving Connecticut will be like saying goodbye to them yet again, and getting married will be the second major life event after graduation that I won't have any parents to witness. Of course, if my mom were alive I'd probably be even more worried about moving away, worried about being too far away if she needed me. Irony.

My Diamond, Let Me Show You It

...Yeah, I just Lolcat-ed myself in regards to my upcoming nuptials. But hey, as of yesterday, it's official, and we're engaged! Whoot! I told Sean I refuse to refer to him as my 'fiance,' though. That just sounds ridiculous.

Besides Sean's grandmother, who happened to be in the house at the time (and who was disappointed because she apparently wanted me to use one of her diamonds)the first people to find out were Richardson and his parents, for the sole reason that he had invited us out to dinner so he wouldn't have to hang out with them solo. They started mentioning this cruise that they had signed their family up for in May, and we look at each other and are like...what day in May, exactly, because...

Happy was very proud that she could say we started 'dating' in her house three and a half years ago. Obviously, we refrained from correcting her that we just hooked up in her basement that New Year's, and only actually started dating a week later. Either way, the Richardson casa did mark the start of it all.

So now Sean's parents know (his dad was like, 'but I thought you were already') and Carla has been emailed, and Sara/Rae/Heather got a group text message (Sean commented that Sara should have gotten a voicemail, to make up for the not one, but TWO times I left her a voicemail regarding a parent who had died on me) and it strikes me that I haven't told Jen, but when I tell her I have to call my aunts too, and I'm too tired for that. She'll probably just grunt at me "Congratulations, Bob" and then tell me everything the cat has been doing to torment her today. I tried describing her to Richardson last night with little success. She's just Jen, ineffable, inimitable Jen. Ah, family.

.....

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Dude, I'm getting married! WTF?!

The Age of Reason, Part 2

And from the conclusion of Part Two:

"…Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form instead of fact; of notion instead of principle: morality is banished to make room for an imaginary thing called faith, and this faith has its origin in a supposed debauchery; a man is preached instead of a God; an execution is an object for gratitude; the preachers daub themselves with the blood, like a troop of assassins, and pretend to admire the brilliancy it gives them; they preach a humdrum sermon on the merits of the execution; then praise Jesus Christ for being executed, and condemn the Jews for doing it.

A man, by hearing all this nonsense lumped and preached together, confounds the God of the Creation with the imagined God of the Christians, and lives as if there were none.

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.

The only religion that has not been invented, and that has in it every evidence of divine originality, is pure and simple deism. It must have been the first and will probably be the last that man believes. But pure and simple deism does not answer the purpose of despotic governments. They cannot lay hold of religion as an engine but by mixing it with human inventions, and making their own authority a part; neither does it answer the avarice of priests, but by incorporating themselves and their functions with it, and becoming, like the government, a party in the system. It is this that forms the otherwise mysterious connection of church and state; the church human, and the state tyrannic."

… It has been by wandering from the immutable laws of science, and the light of reason, and setting up an invented thing called "revealed religion," that so many wild and blasphemous conceits have been formed of the Almighty. The Jews have made him the assassin of the human species, to make room for the religion of the Jews. The Christians have made him the murderer of himself, and the founder of a new religion to supersede and expel the Jewish religion. And to find pretence and admission for these things, they must have supposed his power or his wisdom imperfect, or his will changeable; and the changeableness of the will is the imperfection of the judgement. The philosopher knows that the laws of the Creator have never changed, with respect either to the principles of science, or the properties of matter. Why then is it to be supposed they have changed with respect to man?"

The Age of Reason, Part 1

Below I've posted some extracts from the pamphlet "The Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine, known most widely to us as the author of the Revolutionary pamphlet "Common Sense." He wrote "The Age of Reason" later in life, living in France during the days of their Revolution, where he was quickly dismayed to see the ideals of freedom turned to bloody ends. Eventually the French imprisoned him as an enemy foreigner, and he passed the first part of the manuscript off to a friend as they hauled him off to jail.

According to Susan Jacoby, the writing of "The Age of Reason" was responsible for Paine's relative anonymity throughout much of the intervening two centuries. It was only in the 20th century that he was re-discovered by scholars; in the interim, he had been thoroughly tarred and feathered with the brush of secularism, atheism, blasphemy, and, most ironically, for such a staunch supporter of revolutionary ideals, lack of patriotism. "The Age of Reason" is a rational deconstruction of the claim of all religions to authenticity, but in particular, it is an attack on Christianity, which, unsurprisingly, earned it and its writer the full opprobrium of the Church.

The beginning and the end of the essay are the most powerfully written portions. The middle, where he basically goes book-by-book in the Bible showing how it's all nonsense, Moses didn't write Genesis, Luke and Matthew can't even agree on a geneology of Jesus, etc., is a little much, not in the least because that knowledge has become part of an educated reading of the Bible nowadays, even for many devout Christians. However, the passages where he defines Deism and where he attacks the way organized religion has clouded our perception of the world are quite striking.

And without further ado, from "The Age of Reason, Pt 1:"

"I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

… Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.

Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all."