The Fig Tree

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Impossible is Nothing

So some nights i wake up and think with dead certainty that if i go to law school, it will be OMG THE BIGGEST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE. And some mornings i open my eyes and immediately think that if i turn down the law school opportunity, it will be OMG THE BIGGEST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE. These two options are diametrically opposed and therefore cannot both be true. Right? So i have at least a 50% chance* of not making OMG THE BIGGEST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE. Haha. Just kidding. I know it'll come out okay in the end. I think. I'm sure. *statisticians need not tell me what's wrong with this thinking. thanks. math = not my forte. p.s. I'm not sure why this post is titled "impossible is nothing," except that the combination of lofty intent and words that do-not-mean-what-you-think-they-mean seems to echo my own poorly-structured argument about 50% chances. I.e., it sounds OK if you gloss over it but if you read it closely, it doesn't make sense.

LOST

Is anyone else worried that the LOST mythology is going to come down to some crappy "love is the ultimate mystery that powers the universe and the Island la la la la laaaa" shenanigans? I admit to being a little so. I love me some Des + Pen, ditto Sun + Jin, even a bit of Chahlie + Claire ... but we're stretching it a bit with the whole idea that the only way you can see "through" to the alt-universe is by having a True Love (and a near-death experience). It reminds me a little of the movie Pleasantville, where the only way the characters achieved the ability to see in color instead of black & white was by ... having sex. I mean, I'm sure it was supposed to be more along the lines of "awakening from innocence" but it basically boiled down to sex. Which was annoying. Anyway. If that's where this is going, I will be disappointed.

I am having

very major cold feet.

Sigh

I'm in my second UCR at penn. i have a bad feeling about it. :(

Late Fragment

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth. - raymond carver

Bah

That's pretty much the theme of my life lately. Just, bah. Everything is bah. Work. Money. School (or the idea of school). And ... uh ... that's my whole life, right there. What sounds so perfect right now would be to be lying in a hammock in a backyard somewhere, on a sunny afternoon, with a good book or two and a knit blanket, and maybe some. Really, that sounds so wonderful.

I'M SORRY I CAN'T HELP IT

... it's a compulsion.

Frye Honeycomb boots. I love these. Why are all the boots I like Fryes? They're all like $300-$400 a pop. These are $398. Also they are too small in the calf at 14".

WHOOPS.

Since I'm trying to keep the whole "I-am-applying-to-schools-see-ya-later-suckahs" thing a secret from my employers, it would really be smart of me not to print the confirmation email from the Law School Admission Council listing the 7 schools whose applications I just paid for and leave it LYING ON THE COMPANY PRINTER FOR AN ENTIRE DAY omg seriously. What is wrong with me. Oh well. La la la la.

It's Not Even a Contest

Last time I made breakfast for Haines, I made him an egg-white "omelette" with onion, mushroom, cheese, and turkey bacon. Sounds delicious and simple, no? OH HOW WRONG YOU ARE. In retrospect I should have called it a "frittata." This would still have been a lie, but at least a frittata is not expected to maintain, like, a half-moon shape. Or to not disintegrate when you try to fold it. What I made him resembled ... lichen. You know, the grey-green mossy stuff that grows on rocks in wet places. Or maybe it resembled fungus. Whatever, I learned this: 1. Egg whites don't hold together especially well 2. ... if the ratio of dense filling to egg is high 3. ... and there's not a lot of binding agent (aka cheese) Anyway it was not a pretty shape and it fell apart about six times and the egg whites turned the color of old socks and if I could have blindfolded him I would have. However, he gamely ate it and even pretended it didn't taste like dirt (I know he was lying, though, because MUSHROOMS TASTE LIKE THE GROUND). Then, recently, I was working on my apps and he wandered into the kitchen and casually made me THIS:

It's an iPhone pic so it's not a great image, but suffice to say there was wild mushroom rice, skillet-seared tomatoes, fresh-chopped herbs, and black beans, plus the actual, perfectly-browned and beautifully-presented omelette. I really don't know why I'm posting about this except to say ... I know who's doing the cooking in this relationship from now on.

p.s. Then he peeled an asian pear with a knife in only 2 curls. wtf. my best record is like ... 12. I'm just going with grapes from here on out.