another dimension (pay close attention)
Dec. 6th, 2006 03:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deviI am pissed off and glum today. I could blame it on writing burnout, or missing London, or having a gazillion little things to sort out, or sitting up too late last night (drawing a comic strip about how I'd like to kidnap some of my students and force them to have a day away from studying, having fun), or worries about not taking any exercise and eating rubbish, or feeling out of touch with everything. But actually I think it's just a big, grey, gluey lump of winter sitting on my chest, that gloms on to everything I think about and makes me feel there's something wrong with it.
I never used to be such a seasonal creature, but the dark and murk are hitting me hard this year and I crave sunlight. When I look back on the summer it seems to have consisted entirely of blue sky, bellydancing, barbecues, raving it up in fields, basking in the sun, having astonishingly good sex and biking around the greenest bits of town listening to Wubble-U. It can't all have been like that, but I've forgotten the dull bits.
Not to diss![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
badasstronaut's hosting and cooking skillz at all, for they were l337, but the Midwinter Comics Retreat was... odd. We arrived at the farmhouse in pitchy, wet dark and I never really got outside, so until the very end when we left in daylight, the house could have been disconnected from the rest of the world or on some other plane where there's an awful lot of howling wind. (Pandemonium?) I drew lots of wonky-looking magpies that ended up looking like Greys with beaks, but not in a way that made it seem deliberate. There may have been ghosts in the attic. I woke up both mornings with my legs and arms aching, as if I'd been fighting battles in my sleep.
Oh well. Cheering me up most right now is Warped Passages by Lisa Randall, a book about other dimensions of space and time. Not in a New Agey way, mind - she's an MIT professor. Apparently there are tiny curled-up extra dimensions like doughnuts at every single point in space. The book is full of doughnuts and garden hoses and Alice in Wonderland analogies and is bloody fascinating.
A couple of weeks ago I had lunch withmr_snips and he cheered me up in a similar way by explaining the differences between theories of relativity. I sat there grinning and going "Whoa. Man." Physics makes me happy. Am I normal?
I never used to be such a seasonal creature, but the dark and murk are hitting me hard this year and I crave sunlight. When I look back on the summer it seems to have consisted entirely of blue sky, bellydancing, barbecues, raving it up in fields, basking in the sun, having astonishingly good sex and biking around the greenest bits of town listening to Wubble-U. It can't all have been like that, but I've forgotten the dull bits.
Not to diss
badasstronaut's hosting and cooking skillz at all, for they were l337, but the Midwinter Comics Retreat was... odd. We arrived at the farmhouse in pitchy, wet dark and I never really got outside, so until the very end when we left in daylight, the house could have been disconnected from the rest of the world or on some other plane where there's an awful lot of howling wind. (Pandemonium?) I drew lots of wonky-looking magpies that ended up looking like Greys with beaks, but not in a way that made it seem deliberate. There may have been ghosts in the attic. I woke up both mornings with my legs and arms aching, as if I'd been fighting battles in my sleep. Oh well. Cheering me up most right now is Warped Passages by Lisa Randall, a book about other dimensions of space and time. Not in a New Agey way, mind - she's an MIT professor. Apparently there are tiny curled-up extra dimensions like doughnuts at every single point in space. The book is full of doughnuts and garden hoses and Alice in Wonderland analogies and is bloody fascinating.
A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with
mr_snips and he cheered me up in a similar way by explaining the differences between theories of relativity. I sat there grinning and going "Whoa. Man." Physics makes me happy. Am I normal?
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Date: 2006-12-06 03:26 pm (UTC)Sorry to hear about all the car hassles.
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Date: 2006-12-06 03:15 pm (UTC)I have been spending lot of my weekends out RAVING. The dancing all night seems to do a cheering-upping thing to my brain, right now. So you should clearly come to London and come clubbing.
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Date: 2006-12-07 12:02 pm (UTC)Days when you miss the daylight completely are horrible. It used to happen all the time in my Crappy Publishing Job (tm). If I was lucky I'd get out for ten minutes at lunchtime to buy a sandwich.
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Date: 2006-12-06 03:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 02:55 am (UTC)Hello! I know you! Welcome!
Recommendations of pubs around here with open fires also welcome :)
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Date: 2006-12-06 03:25 pm (UTC)Come down earlier that day & see if some London-based daylight can be caught?
It was v weird over the weekend - I spent it in a Romany caravan/little cabin thingy & I think barely went outside the whole of Sunday other than to journey between one & the other. Until it got to nighttime, & the sky cleared, & the moon was so bright that it cast actual shadows. At that point, I stood outside in nightie+fleece+scarf, freezing my legs off, going 'wow' extensively :-)
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Date: 2006-12-07 03:17 am (UTC)Weekend in a Romany caravan? You should tell me more when I see you. And I might be in London all weekend - I have to be there on Friday afternoon to be a guinea pig for some sociological research! - and am considering various ways to Have The Fun...
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Date: 2006-12-07 01:37 pm (UTC)Re weekend: email me when you have plans further planned? Or in order to plan plans, or whatever.
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Date: 2006-12-06 03:30 pm (UTC)Yes. I got halfway through Warped Passages (did you see what she did there) and put it down, and haven't taken it up again; must do that.
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Date: 2006-12-07 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 03:43 pm (UTC)I'm looking forward to a week's time. ;-)
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Date: 2006-12-07 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 04:05 pm (UTC)Nah, you're far more interesting than that. :-)
IKWYM about the winter glooms, totally. Get up in the dark and go home in the dark and ARGH WHERE IS THE SUN? If only somebody could bottle sunlight... But anyway! Do you want to go for a gloom-busting drink/lunch/something/whatever some time later this week or next week? I'm busy Tues and Weds nights next week but otherwise free (and usually free for lunches -- are you in town in the daytime?).
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Date: 2006-12-07 02:44 am (UTC)Do you call yourselves the Botley Crew, or did I just dream that?
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Date: 2006-12-08 10:12 am (UTC)In the meantime though let us know when's good for you for meeting up. Or just give us a shout when you're around & see if we're free. My powers of decision-making were eaten by the flu, sorry...
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Date: 2006-12-06 04:16 pm (UTC)e
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Date: 2006-12-07 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 05:06 pm (UTC)Physics makes me happy. Am I normal?
'Normal' means craving and slaving for a semi-detached house to fill with consumer durables, your mind filled with the beauty of satellite entertainment, cheap paperbacks and glossy magazines.
Somehow, however grey your day, it is not so dark and so benighted that the high point is a happy ending in EastEnders - or mastering Marie-Claire's latest cosmetic tip in a picture-perfect designer bathroom from a decorating show, while your husband brags of his success the day he makes the down-payment on a Mercedes.
Normal, indeed. And all too true for millions of people - and worse, a source of dissatisfaction and unease to millions more who think they 'ought' to be enjoying the journey to consumer nirvana.
The physics sounds rather cheering - try mastering some mathematics, too: surprising yourself is always a bright spot in a grey day.
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Date: 2006-12-07 03:03 am (UTC)And yes, I do get a kick out of the bits of maths I know, and it pains me a bit that I haven't the brain to understand the advanced, really exciting stuff. I failed university maths a bunch of times and always had this tantalising feeling that some sort of eureka-moment was just beyond my grasp.
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Date: 2006-12-06 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 03:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 02:54 am (UTC)There's a lot to be said for making an effort at the seasons thing. I've had whole summers disappear unnoticed while I sat in almost windowless computer labs, too.
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Date: 2006-12-07 11:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 11:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 11:42 pm (UTC)If
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Date: 2006-12-07 02:57 am (UTC)