Britt's Blog

burn some incense
say a rosary
spin a prayer wheel
sacrifice a chicken
make a sign against the evil eye
do a little dance
cross your fingers
think good thoughts

I just uploaded my thesis. If it passes inspection, I’ll be done.

Hey, look! Cornell astronomers! Fancy finding them them in Washington, D.C.!

Or, rather, from a Holiday Inn not far from the American Center for Physics.

I’m attending a workshop for new faculty in physics and astronomy. So far we’ve had a workshop on grant writing, sure to pay off down the line with beaucoup tax dollars for yours truly to squander on taking more pictures of Saturn, and a very thought-provoking discussion on diversity in physics, why it sucks not to have it, why physics sucks particularly hard at it, and some ideas about what we ought to do to get more of it.

I didn’t go to bed early last night as planned because my students emailed to complain that I hadn’t posted some material on the website like I promised, so I had to do that, then I woke up even earlier than I had to to catch the bus to O’Hare ’cause I’m always nervous before a trip, and I’ve been going full steam ever since then—bus ride to ORD, flight to DC, a trip on the Metro, a 10 minute walk to the ACP from the Metro stop, workshops and discussions, and now I’m going to go out and get “coffee” (probably herbal tea for me!) with Tim, a fellow Cornell astro grad alum who lives down here now.

I keep getting these weird calls to my cell phone from numbers that aren’t actually phone numbers, like “1-01-1000″ and “2364″ and nobody’s there when I answer. I’ve also been having strange auditory hallucinations of my cell ring whenever there’s any background noise, like Muzak or white noise—I had to turn off the fan in my room because I kept hearing it ring over and over, kind of like an ear worm except I was actually hearing it and it was driving me a little nuts.

Anyway, the magical formula of caffeine + sugar = energy has kept me going, and I grabbed a 20-minute power nap, and the ringing-phone hallucination has stopped, so I’m good to go. :)

During my self-imposed blogging moratorium, I finished Sputnik Sweetheart, by my favorite Japanese surrealist, Haruki Murakami. It’s the story of a young woman named Sumire, who is taken under the wing of an older, more worldly woman. It’s told from the point of view of your Standard Murakami Narrator (wary and introspective, likes jazz, likes to cook), a close friend of the girl. Sumire is transformed almost overnight by her mentor, Miu, from a mousy, bookish aspiring writer to a stylish, capable assistant.

“I hardly recognize you these days,” I said.
“It’s the season,” she said disinterestedly, sipping at her drink with a straw.
“What season?” I asked.
“A delayed adolesence, I guess…”

But it’s not clear how deep the transformation goes. Is Sumire really as competent as she seems, or is she still the same confused and frustrated young woman who would regularly call the narrator from a phone booth at three o’clock in the morning to sort out her existential angst? Miu whisks Sumire off for a European adventure, and when Sumire mysteriously disappears on an isolated Greek island, the narrator is called in to help.

In Murakami’s work, the mundane world is often revealed to be a facade over a deeper universe of metaphor, fable and psychology that can yawn open to swallow us when we least expect it. Seemingly ordinary people who have gone through the motions of their ordinary lives feeling unconnected, even isolated, suddenly find themselves enmeshed together in a morass of weirdness, struggling to understand the rules that govern bizarre events and narratives, only to be ripped apart again as the secret world claims one or rejects another.

I found out today that Sputnik Sweetheart is on 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I don’t know if I agree that Everyone Must Read It Before They Die, but if you haven’t read any Murakami yet, you should. Kafka on the Shore is another Murakami novel that makes the list, as does After the Quake, which is a short-story collection, but I haven’t read either one. My favorite novel of his was probably Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, which is the most science-fictiony of his works. I also liked Dance, Dance, Dance, the slightly less weird and more touching sequel to the extremely weird and bleak A Wild Sheep Chase.

Although a sequel to Sputnik Sweetheart has not been published, it has a rather abrupt “The End????” kind of ending tacked on after the plot has wound down, which I found irritating. Overall I was very pleased with it, though, mostly because of the relationship between the narrator and Sumire, which, strangely, cannot grow or evolve until after Sumire disappears. I need to mull it over some more…