Data now emerging show the fascinating and unexpected ways that genes and culture actually interact in animal mating situations. Consider the case of a fish less than an inch long: the guppy. In this species, females have an innate preference for males with lots of orange body color. Combining the importance of female mate copying with the documented genetically based preferences that female guppies exhibit for colorful males creates an ideal system in which to examine the relative importance of genetic and cultural factors in shaping mate choice. In a 1996 experiment in my lab, I did just that. Essentially I created an evolutionary soap opera. A female’s genetic disposition was “pulling” her toward a more orange male, but social cues and the potential to copy the choice of others was tugging her in the exact opposite direction – toward the drabber of the two males. When males differed by small amounts of orange, females consistently chose the less orange males. In other words, they copied the choice of a female placed near such a male. Here, culture – in this case, the tendency to copy mate choice – overrode a genetic predisposition for orange males. If, however, males differed by large amounts of orange, females ignored the choice of others and preferred the oranger males – in this case, genetic predisposition masked any cultural effects. With guppies, it is as if a threshold color difference exists between males in the eyes of female guppies. Below that threshold, cultural effects are predominant in determining female mate choice, and above that threshold genetic factors cannot be overridden – and this in fish with a brain the size of a pinhead! – Lee Alan Dugatkin in The Imitation Factor
Lee, in his book, talks about how females imitate other females when choosing partners. If a female sees a man surrounded by other women, she gets interested. So much so that she might choose that male over another, one that genetically appears more attractive to her.
Doesn’t that sound like high school? Not even a little bit?
I remember being in college and feeling amused, mostly cause I don’t want to use a worse word, about how a male would date one sorority sister and then another, until half the house dated the same man. A guy who’s dating looks appealing. Maybe cause the female thinks that since another female found him attractive of date-worthy, there must be something special about this guy. Especially, if the girl is popular or pretty.
Why is that?
Obviously, if all the women chased after the same man, there’d be one very lucky man and tons of not-so-lucky ones. So, obviously, some women choose different partners. Maybe cause they are oranger. But many women do go after the same man. Many women like to pick a man who’s desirable. The joke about how much more attractive men become when they’re wearing a wedding ring is not entirely without substance. Maybe women like the competition, the idea of having been chosen from a crowd. The idea of being the one that this desirable man picked. Or maybe it’s the safety in numbers.
Lee also talks about how young women seem to imitate more than older women. As if young guppies know that their elder equivalents must have good taste in men. I think that also has validity in its correlation to human lives. I, personally, see this competition much more in teenagers than in adults. When an adult goes after a married man or an adult pursues some other woman’s boyfriend, it’s considered somewhat immature. Like she should know better. But women of all ages seem to do it all the same.
I don’t really know the reasons for the imitation factor, but I can certainly agree with Lee that it’s a part of our society. Even if it isn’t the most desirable one.
Previously? To Have or Not to Have.
Another Monday, another happiness day.
We started the class talking about Aristotle, objectivism, stoics, and Bertrand Russell. As it’s now become foreseeable, the class started on one topic but another one took it over completely. Here’s today’s topic:
“Is it better to have had it and lost it than to have never had it at all?”
Yes, you are reading it correctly and no, I didn’t leave out the word ‘love.’ This question is meant to apply to all topics. For example: Let’s say you had an amazing job, your dream job, and then you get fired. Is it better to have had the job or do you wish you never had it? The argument against having had it says that since you now know what you could be having, you become very depressed after losing it. Whereas if you never had it, you will never know what you are missing and therefore you’ll never be that miserable. Especially since happiness and misery are relative, which is conversation for another day.
The argument for it basically says that happiness, no matter when you had it, is valuable and it’s always better to have been lucky enough to have had any happiness. A common saying does involve love. ‘It’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved.’ Or something like that. Again, the idea, I believe, is that if you’ve ever loved, you’ve been lucky enough to feel the amazing elation that comes along with love and no matter how things ended, you should feel blessed to have ever gotten to feel it.
I side with the ‘better to have had it’ people.
To me, life is all about the experience, the journey. Another gentleman in class today said he never makes specific plans because this way he doesn’t have to feel upset when he doesn’t fulfill them. He has this very general plan and takes each day as it comes. There is nothing wrong with his approach, but it’s one I strongly oppose to. I firmly believe that big risks bring big rewards. If you never put yourself out there because you’re too scared to be hurt, you will never get to live your life fully.
Yes, losing someone you love or a fantastic job might depress you thoroughly, but it also means that you had the extreme happiness of having had those. People who never try, don’t miss anything but they don’t gain anything either. They don’t get to feel the surreal happiness that comes from being loved. Or the fulfillment of a perfect job. It’s like a delicious fruit you refuse to taste just because you might not get to taste it again tomorrow.
If you never plan anything, you never get the satisfaction of having achieved it either. I guess, to me, the pursuit is just as much, if not more, fun. I like to plan. I know that I can, or even will, change my mind down the road and factor that into my plan, but I also like to have a goal. A destination. A reason for walking down the path I chose. I like the idea of committing to a path. Being madly passionate about something. Even if it crumbles to pieces, you have had an interesting, life-changing experience. Not to mention the lessons.
If you’ve never had it, it’s true that you will never lose it, but you will also never know what you missed. Sometimes a single moment is enough to fill a lifetime of memories. Memories that help you endure hard times. Memories that make you smile even after the details have blurred. Memories that you hold on to like rare treasures.
To me, it’s always better to have had. It’s always better to try to have.
Previously? Idea vs. Reality.
I firmly believe that many of my not-so-close friends like the ‘idea of me’ as opposed to the ‘reality of me’.
We all have a side that we show to the outside world. An amalgamation of our resume and the properness of being in the company of others. It’s how we act in an interview. When we meet a significant other’s parents. When we make a new friend. It’s the information our parents tell others when they want to brag. Putting on our perfect behavior.
I call that the ‘idea of me.’ To an outsider, I am an overachiever. I work at a top-notch investment bank, I volunteer six to eight hours a week, I take six classes, I have a Masters degree, I read voraciously, and I speak seven languages. To an outsider, I am intelligent, caring and inspirational. I am good at heart. A loving person. I am a collection of positive traits. To an outsider.
And then we have the side that only the really intimate see. The one that awakes with a hangover. The one who’s too lazy to replace the toilet paper roll. The one who’s clipping his toenails. The one who picks her nose in private, or when she thinks no one else is around. The one who reads an embarrassing book or is hooked on a TV program he’d never admit to in public. Those really not-so-pretty and human sides of us.
That’s what I mean when I say, the ‘reality of me.’ What the insider gets to see is that I worry too much. Sometimes the smallest decisions are the hardest to make and I need reassurance about the stupidest things. I still freak out before every exam. I am never satisfied with my results. Every achievement is replaced quickly by another goal, a harder, more complicated one. I am perfectly capable of being petty, holding a grudge, and being selfish. I don’t take care of my skin. I steal the covers. I have been known to talk and even walk in my sleep. I grind my teeth like mad. I am far from perfect. Behind the scenes.
The idea of me is wonderful. The reality, not so much so.
When I meet someone who tells me how great I am and how they like this and that about me, I automatically think that all they have is the idea of me. The surface. It’s easy to polish a wooden table so you can see your reflection on it, but it’s hard to get rid of the rotten wood inside the legs. Which is why I don’t often pay heed to compliments from people who don’t know me that well. Even my friends, not really really close friends but the acquaintance ones maybe, at times, never move past the idea of me.
The real reward comes when someone takes the time to see the reality of me. The rotten wood and all, and still chooses to have me in her or his life. I don’t have many of those in my life, but the few that I do have, I hold very dear to my heart.
The idea of me puts me on a pedestal, one I am bound to fall from. The reality of me makes it okay for me to screw up. It lets me know that I don’t have to worry about my mask falling off when I am with this person.
Because I don’t have to wear one.
Previously? Agenda.
We all have opinions. I don’t know when it begins, but we form opinions really early on in our lives. A while back, I talked about how, by the time we go to elementary school, most of us have a theory on how the world works and how teachers should not assume that students enter school with a blank slate. The same rule, I think, applies to opinions. Somewhere along the line, we hear someone else’s opinion, we read a newspaper article, we watch a TV program, or possibly an amalgamation of all three.
Depending on the issue, and how much we care about it, our opinion can be well thought out or superficial. If we’re passionate about the issue, we dig deeper. We read voraciously, we follow the progress of the subject matter and make sure our opinions are up to date and we use every opportunity to bring our opinions up in conversation. Sometimes, we argue an issue when we’re not even well educated on it, but my beef today is not with those people.
Today, I have a word or two for the people who care about an issue and have done their homework on it. People who’re thick in the mud of it. People who claim they are well acquainted and passionate about a topic. These people are intelligent. They often are passionate and care about the issue, but just as often they are so deep into their own beliefs that they have stopped listening to others long ago.
These are people who glance at a few lines of the opponents’ article just so they can lift one or two sentences and attack them. They don’t care if the sentence is taken out of context. They don’t even care if it’s an outright lie. They are only concerned with their own agenda and they use everyone and everything to further their cause.
I have absolutely no respect for such individuals.
I’ve also previously talked about people’s listening skills, or lack thereof. Most of us are busy preparing our replies before the other person even finishes his statement. This is even truer in the case of people with strong opinions or agendas, the ones I mention above. People who claim that they are speaking for women’s rights or for minority rights or any other equally ‘touchy’ subjects. Each time I hear or read about a case when a woman, claiming she’s a feminist, start berating men for being men, I cringe. I am embarrassed that such a person represents my gender and feels like she can speak on behalf of women everywhere.
Personally, she can never speak for me.
I think what matters most in life is not that we have opinions or that they are right or wrong (not that there is such a thing when we’re talking about an opinion). What matters is that we’re open-minded and that we never lose sight of the issue. We should be careful when we listen to our allies and even more careful when we listen to our opponents. I believe that the more dignified person always wins. Not that this is a race. But in the end, we only have our integrity.
Next time you disagree with someone, I recommend you listen or read twice as carefully. Who knows? You might even learn something.
Ps: Apologies for the preaching tone today, I guess I am slightly peeved.
Previously? Uninspired.
I’m not a good fiction writer.
To be fully honest, I’m not the greatest writer to begin with, but I’m even worse at writing fiction. I’m not telling you this so you can tell me how good I am and stroke my ego. I’m saying it cause I know it to be true and I’m thinking that putting it down on paper might make me stop struggling with it so much.
I started writing fiction about two years ago. It was a whimsical decision, not based on any other event in my life at the time. I signed up to a fiction web page, and even from day one, I could tell didn’t have it in me. I loved the idea of having written but not writing itself. When I read over my stuff afterwards, it sucked so bad that I couldn’t even begin to fix it so I’d leave it as is. I forced half the people in my life to read it and I hid it from the other half.
Here we are over two years later, and in no better shape. I’m struggling through what appears to be tidbits of my second novel, when the first one is far from completed. Its pages are collecting dust in the back of one of my drawers, alongside the research I left undone for it. I wrote the outline for this novel, last fall. The characters are nagging me constantly, making me feel bad for not sitting at the keyboard and telling their story. But each time I sit to write it, words refuse to cooperate. Bleak and two-dimensional characters exchange unemotional words. My descriptions are the opposite of vivid. It becomes so unbearable that I need to stop.
Yet I can’t let it go. I can’t stop writing. Well, in reality, I can’t stop thinking of writing. I can’t let my story go, even if it’s a stupid one, it’s my story. I want to tell it. The characters want me to tell it. In the middle of one story, I start getting ideas for another novel. Yet when I want to write a short story, all the ideas have disappeared. It’s a lose-lose game.
When people tell me that my writing shows promise, I know they are being kind and not entirely truthful. When they criticize it, I feel this awful resentment and sadness in my gut. It’s like someone ripped my heart. Neither extreme is healthy for a writer-wannabe. And I know all this.
Yet I simply cannot let it go.
Previously? Ideal vs. Ought.
“Empirical research reveals that there is a significant correlation between low self-esteem and psychological disorders and a high correlation between high self-esteem and happiness.” – Marvin Kohl in Wisdom and the Axiom of Futility
Self-esteem is an issue I’ve grappled with often in my life. When someone has it in high doses, others call him self-centered. When others lack it, they would often give up a body part to accumulate more of it.
I wonder if we’re born with high self-esteem. Is it something that our parents instill in us or is it something that comes with the genetic makeup of every individual? If we’re born with it, then that puts a lot more responsibility on the parents and environment of a child to sustain it. If it doesn’t come inherent in our genetic structure, how exactly do parents, teachers, environment, or mentors establish it?
As I kept reading the above paper, I ran into this most interesting distinction of different causes of lack of self-esteem:
“Of the many sources of low self-esteem, two are central to the present discussion. That is to say, human beings compare their behavior to at least two different kinds of expectancies which typically have become internalized standards (or selves) whose point is to guide self-regulation. These selves are the ideal self and the ought self. The ideal self is the kind of the person an individual would really like to be…The ought self is the kind of person an individual believes he or she had the duty or obligation to be?”
The distinction between the two different forces at play fascinated me. Once I saw it on paper, it was obvious but somehow I’d never made the connections before. Since I’m a list-maker, I took out my pen and paper and tried to list the influences of my two selves. Here are a few from my lists:
| ideal self
weighs less
is less messy
reads more
performs better
is kind, caring and giving
|
ought self
weighs less
knows how to cook
dresses more elegantly
has children
is tidy
|
I think it’s important to make the distinction of feeling bad cause you can’t become who you want to be and feeling bad because you’re not what others want you to be. If your list looks like mine, it has a lot more things on the ‘ought’ category than the ‘ideal’ category. Which is a good thing. It means that I have been reaching the goals I’ve set for myself and that I’m controlling the things that I can. It also symbolizes that the conversations that repeat in my head are just other people’s priorities and I really need to shut them up, which is easier now that I can easily see they are not mine.
What are some of the items in your lists?
Previously? Picky.
A week ago, I called my mom and asked her why she chose to marry my dad.
“I was sixteen,” she replied, matter-of-factly.
She went on to explain that she loved my father and in those days, people were too young to analyze it much further than that. My sister got married when she was twenty-three. Her boyfriend, who became her husband, has consistently been her best friend. So she was using more long-term criteria than my mom, but nothing too detailed.
Many of the unmarried women around me have a much more complicated set of requirements from a plausible marriage partner. To them, it’s not enough to love. It’s not enough to be best friends, either. They wonder if this man will make a good living. Is he successful? Is he patient? Does he like children? Will he make a good father? Will he be caring to her parents? Is he going to let her have her independence? Can he cook? Will he share some of the chores?
These are just some of the issues my friends raise. Not to mention the fundamentals, like physical attraction. They are twenty-seven and they have their own career, their own priorities, their own lives and the man is supposed to fit into all of that smoothly or it’s not going to work.
Which is why it doesn’t.
They either can’t find a man or won’t put up with the imperfections of the ones they do find. It seems that the longer you put it off, the more complicated marriage becomes. The older we are, the more established our lives are, the harder it is to fit the man into it. The more demanding we become, the less likely such a man exists.
What’s the right way? Do we marry in faith and with love or do we compile a list of demands and find the man who meets them all?
My opinion is that, as in most things, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. While it’s not a bad idea to make sure the man in your life is kind and caring to babies as well as you, it’s also okay to not dwell on every tiny detail. It’s really not that big a deal if he doesn’t bring you flowers every weekend. He can forget to unfold a piece of clothing. What matters still are the core things. Love, friendship, caring and having similar values.
Sometimes it’s best not to be so demanding.
Previously? Limbo.
Is there an age when the world suddenly starts falling apart?
An age when life-long friends suddenly seem to disappear?
I don’t have that many close friends. I don’t feel like I want to. For me, being a close friend in an intense experience. This is not just a friend. This is someone who is there through the thick and thin. Someone who knows you so well that, you don’t need to say anything for them to understand everything. You know what I mean. It’s all the stereotypical movie stuff.
I guess that friend for me is Jake. The one who loves me not in spite of my quirks but because of them.
Other than him, I had a few close friends. Some I met in college, some before, and some after. All are special. All have significant places in my heart.
All are starting to disappear.
As far as I am concerned, short of death or illness, there are few more awful feelings than losing a friend. One of those few, is limbo.
I hate limbo.
Limbo is when you’re still friends but you know something is wrong. Limbo is when you start thinking whether it’s a good time before you make each call. Limbo is when you are reading into each word so much that conversations start losing meaning. Limbo is when some of the calls get returned and others don’t. Limbo is when you alternate among acting nonchalant, sad and angry. Limbo is when you stop being yourself. Limbo is when you want to grab her and shake her until whatever it is, is gone, but you can’t.
Limbo is when you know it’s dying.
Limbo is what I’m going through with two of my close friends. The uneasy calls. The paranoia. The unusual politeness. Not knowing what’s going on. Feeling scared, lost and angry all in one. Desperate to do the right thing. To stop the inevitable.
I don’t know why it’s happening now. Is there something about growing up?
Is it really possible to have the friendship that the books and movies display? Can you really have a friend who’s normal and has her own family and life and yet is there for you each time you need her? Is it possible to have a great family, husband, children, career and a best friend? Or is it more realistic to assume that you have a friend to hang out and chitchat with but nothing all that deep?
Maybe it’s time to accept that life is not the movies and not a fairy tale. In life, we have friends that come and go. In life we have limbo. Maybe it’s time to let go.
I can’t imagine it will hurt as much as limbo.
Previously? Hedonism.
Today was another Monday, and such, another happiness day.
I’m still struggling with this class. I must say that I don’t like the lack of tangible reality in philosophy. But I do enjoy the mental tug-of-war. Here’s an interesting issue that came up in today’s class.
The passage below outlines a problem Professor Robert Nozick presented.
Nozick is concerned that if we accept hedonism, we will loose sight of those aspects of life which are most important to us; namely, what kind of person we want to be and what kind of life we want to live. In order to illustrate this problem, Nozick imagines a science-fiction type story in which it is possible to plug our brains into machines which would provide us with any kind of experiences we could possibly desire. It is very important to note, here, that Nozick’s experience machine produces experiences of such perfect clarity that we cannot tell the difference between these experiences and reality. Therefore, says Nozick, there is no reason why we would not “plug in” to an experience machine. [ source ]
The teacher gave us the above setting and asked us whether we’d choose to be plugged in to this machine or not.
No? Come on! Here’s a machine that will make you feel like you’re getting all that you desire, are you sure you don’t want to take it?
Well, Nozick claimed that people would not want to be hooked up to this machine. The above-linked article goes on to say “[ Nozick says that] we are concerned with more than just our experiences of pleasure or pain (or any other experiences, in fact); not only do we want to experience things, we want to do things and be a certain way. Nozick contends that we would not be happy if we were plugged in to an experience machine because we would know that we are not actually doing the things we experience.”
So, if I understand it correctly, he claims that having pleasure come to us without our doing anything isn’t what humans want. Does that mean that part of the pleasure is accomplishing something or achieving in the face of adversity? I can’t put words in Nocik’s mouth but I must agree that I wouldn’t want to be plugged in either.
As far as I am concerned, if I agree to be plugged into this machine, I am agreeing to give up who I am as I know it. I am choosing delusion over reality. Even the certainty of positive delusions doesn’t convince me to give up reality. Artificial is artificial no matter how pleasant. The idea of exchanging fake for real sounds creepy to me. How could I consciously choose to stop being me?
After the class agreed that most of us wouldn’t hook up to this pleasure machine, the teacher put a twist on the scenario. Imagine, he said, you’re an Ethiopian suffering from starvation and disease, would you now agree to be hooked up? Some people nodded. It seems there is a limit to human suffering where delusion becomes way more desirable than reality. I assume it’s correlated to the amount of lost hope. Maybe even the helplessness that usually leads to extreme measures such as suicide.
Long after the class is over, I’m still thinking about the question. Still trying to properly pinpoint the reasons behind my extremely strong instinct not to agree to be hooked up. Which, once again, proves to me that this is indeed an interesting class. Even if it’s thoroughly frustrating.
What’s your answer? Would you choose the pleasure machine?
Previously? TV.
I’ve been meaning to write.
Wednesday, I came home and stared at the TV.
Thursday, I fasted all day so I spent half of my day watching TV and the other, sleeping.
Today, it’s 9pm and I just got home from Japanese class and I am worn out, tired and my back is exploding with pain.
So you can see that I’ve accomplished a tremendous amount in the last three days. And since I’ve had absolutely no intellectual input, it’s been hard to produce output.
October is going to be a long month for me. I have applications to fill, essays to write, homework to do, a novel to keep writing, a short story to rewrite and another to write from scratch, GMAT to take, two volunteer jobs to maintain, not to mention my actual paying job. Each time I sit down to make a list, it gets so big that I just turn on the TV and watch it till it’s time to sleep.
Of course, my back’s acting up again doesn’t help matters much.
The good news is that much will change after October. The applications will be finished, the essays and the GMAT will be completed. The novel? Well, the novel will probably still have a long way to go. Come January, things will be even further resolved because I will have received many of the answers.
In the meantime, I need to tear my face away from the TV, try and forget the piercing pain, and do what must be done.
So my writing may suffer in quality (and I will not entertain jokes on how it never had any and all that crap) or it might be intermittent and I apologize in advance. Right now it seems crucial to make sure I can accomplish the goals that will ensure my future and do them well, without affecting my health more. All right, enough cheese. I just got work to do. That’s all.
If anything, this entry should make you happy that I’m not writing more often.
I must stop now, the Tivo is calling my name.
Previously? Pursuit of Happiness.
Mondays at 3:45 I was supposed to take a class in Introduction to Theories of Learning. I thought the psychology class would give me a little insight into education theories, but obviously others didn’t. I got a call on Thursday to inform me that the class was cancelled.
Since I cannot not take a class, I went through the catalogue and picked the only other class offered at the same time. Another psychology course: Pursuing Happiness. Actually it’s a mixture of psychology and philosophy. As part of the teacher’s survey of the students, he asked us to write our theory of happiness on the back of an index card.
He said that, in his opinion, everyone has a theory on happiness, on what makes someone happy, what we need to do to be happy. He claimed that people develop this very early on and internalize it. So I thought about mine.
I’ll tell you what I wrote on the index card. My theory of happiness is that for a person to be happy, first the ‘big’ things have to be in place. The big things are: health, financial security, physical safety, etc. You might have other big things or consider some of the ones I mention as not important, but this is my list, so I’m talking about mine.
I think that if you’re not healthy, it becomes very difficult to appreciate other aspects of life. Yesterday, I threw out my back and have been in acute pain since, and it has overshadowed all other good things in my life.
Assuming the big things are in place, happiness is celebrating the little things. Most major accomplishments take time, so it’s crucial to notice and celebrate minor accomplishments. Happiness is noticing details and appreciating life’s little delights. Happiness is accepting others as they are. And accepting yourself as you are while trying to better yourself according to your own standards. It’s minimizing the stumbling blocks while maximizing the celebrations of good events. Knowing that life is not a means to an end, but a journey.
That’s what I wrote, give or take a few words.
I’ve been thinking about it since the class. What makes people happy? There are fatalistic theories of life is life and we let it work without struggling too much. Then there are others who believe that life is what you make it and you create your own happiness or lack thereof.
Some people say money makes them happy, but often, those people spend their whole life making the money and no time enjoying it. Do they just like to say they have it or are they doing it as a means to an end? The problem with having big goals (like being rich) is that they are often not well defined (how much money exactly) and they take too long to achieve. What makes me happy often is having a sense of self-accomplishment and self-growth, being loved, loving, and being hugged.
I don’t exactly know what my theory of happiness is, I’m still working on developing it. Maybe this class isn’t going to be so useless after all.
What’s your theory of happiness?
Previously? Thirteen.
It’s been thirteen days.
Thirteen.
It doesn’t feel right. When I think of that Tuesday morning, it feels like just yesterday. I’m still dazed and confused as if it were yesterday. I’m still numb and awe-struck as if it were yesterday. I’m still unable to work and function as if it were yesterday. I’m still as confused and frustrated as if it were yesterday.
On the other hand, the Monday before feels like centuries away. The team meeting we had on the eleventh seems so far away that I can’t recall any parts of our conversation. I can’t remember what I did on that Monday. I can’t remember what I wore or what I ate. It feels like a hazy part of my past life, not like only a fortnight ago.
When I walked down to the corner of Broadway and Cedar on Thursday, I was amazed at effect of the layers of dust on the surrounding buildings. The area gave a feeling of having been untouched for months, or maybe even years. As if an area time forgot. If it weren’t for the workmen, ambulances, and the smoke, I’d have bet it was a site preserved from a historical past. As is, it looked more like a film set than real life.
   
Two days ago, Jason aimed me to see if we were interested in going to the prayer service in the Yankee stadium with Shannon and him. I’m not religious and Jake’s even less religious than I am so I hesitated.
I wasn’t sure about the details of the event and thought being in the same place as hundreds of other New Yorkers might help me. I’ve been having a lot of trouble coming to grips with what’s going on. I’ve had a hard time crying. Or feeling in general. I thought being surrounded by others might allow me to grieve.
After confirming with Jake, I told Jason we’d go.
  
  
One side of the stadium spilled with people and the other was completely barren. The home base was covered with flowers and the pitching mound had been converted to a snapshot of the American flag. People were wearing pins and waving flags. Representatives of every religion sat on the L-shaped podium set up in the middle of the field. President Clinton and the New York senator, the governor, the mayor, they were all present. Many people gave inspired speeches. Reassuring the crowd that America was indivisible and that we would rise more powerful from this than before. I choked up several times, but I still didn’t cry.
Many representatives of several religions talked about God watching over us and the victims being proud of us, and God protecting us. While some were good speakers, I would lie if I told you that their words influenced me as strongly as the ones of the mayor and, ironically, Oprah. But only two things brought out my tears today: singing of the National Anthem and, much to Jake’s dismay, Bette Midler’s singing of Wind Beneath My Wings.
It’s been thirteen days.
I still haven’t really wept. I still can’t believe my eyes when I stare at the void in the sky. I still haven’t digested any of it. It doesn’t feel like thirteen days. On one hand it feels like one hour and on the other it feels like it’s been years.
But not thirteen days.
Previously? Two Hours.
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projects for twenty twenty-six
projects for twenty twenty-five
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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