LustingforNightmares

tumbleweed
2016-06-30 20:18:00 (UTC)

I Drive Myself Insane


"Burning Stars" by Mimicking Birds [god, this band is beautiful]

So I see it seems we've settled down
Quite a bit from the energy we once had
Oh, believe me we've settled down
Way down, way down, way down.

And all we are is burning stars
Shining brightly making sure you dont float too far
I'll keep an eye on you if you keep one on me
And then what happens we'll see
And then what happens we'll see

And all the time it takes til you've had enough
Has shortened even in the last couple of years
But so too have the years themselves
Themselves, themselves, the years themselves


June 30, 2016 Thursday 8:23 PM


I have energy in my skin. My hands are shaking with the evidence.

I went to my dad's lab and did. Pretty much the same thing as yesterday. I hate that metal cart I have to roll to pick up the glassware from the dishwasher. It's so loud (I have to roll it past open office/lab doors too ugh)!!! And it's even louder with the glass on it, beakers knocking against flasks, just. The cart, at one point, nudged my sneaker and even though it wasn't even a violent touch, there was a sharp rise in volume and I was kinda scared someone would come out to check on me when nothing was wrong, nothing had broken.

But yeah, otherwise it was fine.

This guy came into the lab at some point, asked me if I was my dad's daughter at some point, I think. I said yes, and he shook his head, saying:

"Man, he has you doin' the dirty work."

I laughed and told him I didn't mind.

"I told 'im to set you up to work with Julia," he gestured to the girl working at a counter twenty feet away, and she laughed a little, or maybe smiled, I can't remember, "So you could do. Like actual experiments. But, y'know, sometimes he doesn't really listen, right?"

I nodded, laughed kind of awkwardly (as usual), saying, "Yeah, that's accurate."

He then told me he'd try to get me interesting work. But I dunno. I really don't mind the busywork. I like doing dishes. I understand doing dishes:

Wash with dish soap, rinse under the tap, and then do a final rinse under deionized water. Set them out to dry, put 'em away when you're done. Easy.

Experiments are something else. I can imagine Julia saying, "Go get the defragumenterilerator and combobulitimate it! Then centrify the platrenfuge and bring it back to me."

I'll be like: what.

And she'll explain it all to me, and I'll think, "Okay, I get this," only to turn around and forget everything out of pure Nerves.

So. Dishes are okay.

But thanks, guy, anyway.

He came back later, was like, "What're you doing this summer?"

I smiled, I think sheepishly because I already know what people think when I say it – "Um... homework, haha."

He shook his head, and was like, "I hope you fit some mischief in there."

"...I mean. I go outside," I said, shrugging. At this time, I was drying either a glass beaker or a bigger plastic beaker with some paper towels before stuffing it in this crazy-packed storage area full of containers of varying sizes.

The dude was leaning, or standing in front of, the hazardous waste chute-thing.

(My dad had told me: "air is always flowing in and never out of this thing," and he pointed to the hazardous waste compartment, which was not very securely protected or anything. I mean, if I wanted to, I could reach in easily – there was nothing in my way. Dad continued, "that way, if there's [insert harmful gas], it won't fill up the room. It'll go up and... Well, I'm not sure where it goes. Out the chimney?")

But back to the dude!!!!!

He was still talking to me, and he sounded vaguely like the man at dad's church when he said, "Well. Make sure you get into some mischief while you still can," and then he turned to Julia. "Didn't you get into mischief in your high school days?"

She only said, "Well, maybe when I was like 11... not in high school," and. I guess we all have a different idea of mischief or something.

So this guy was telling me, basically: don't waste the little time you have as a Youth.

It's actually kind of creeping me out that people keep saying this stuff.??? I hope I'm not wasting my time.

I don't THINK I am.

Good enough?


Well.

Anyway. I also got an ID from my dad's university today. I had to bring my friggin' birth certificate and everything (I actually had to ride my bike back to my friggin' house to get it). It was very legit. The picture on my ID is really, really ugly. My face is very fat. Mom says it is thinner in reality, but got mad when I called it fat anyway, and I mean she actually shouted for a bit and I was very surprised.

She doesn't like when anything I say suggests I am not pretty. Momma is good.

Well. I'm glad I have a university (I guess technically, it's an "institute." Mostly made up of STEM stuff... OH U KNOW WHAT'S COOL??? Okay my dad's building has an observatory on top of it, which, cool – there is a department across the hall from his lab that studies stars and there structure, etc. BUT! Also on top of the roof is a air traffic control thingy that has never been used. My dad thinks it was supposed to be practice for aeronautical engineers or something, which is apparently a thing at this school)

...Anyway.

I'm glad I have a university card. Now I can ride the city buses for free haha. And I can use the gym, and get certain buildings that I did not have access to previously. And I can probably get discounts at certain places around here.

I saw Frozone in the University cafeteria's basement today (that's where the game room, some food places, and the RPI ID department-thing is located. It's actually not really a basement. But it also kind of is. I could totally explain that buuututt I'm not gonna).

I was all, "Hi!" He goes to the community college but I guess works in the cafeteria there. My dad goes, "Are there any available jobs?" and just. That, for some reason, was mildly embarrassing.

--------------

Sometimes, science annoys me deeply. Because. It is incomplete.

Well. Can science itself be incomplete? It's a process. So... no, I don't think so. Science is... I think it's the act of discovery. We have not discovered everything. But we are still discovering. So. Science. I don't think that it is something that can be labeled as "incomplete." That's not to say it's complete either.

But:

I am just. Vaguely annoyed that Things are made by Things are made by Things and then it just ends somewhere. At least I hope it does.

People are made built of organs built of cells built of mito-frickin-chondria and shit, ribosomes and vacuoles and nuclei and whatever else, cytoplasm, myeh.

All these tiny bits. Made by what is with in the nucleus. And nucleolus, whatever (I know this is all vague – I'm using the remnants of my dull life science education. Next year's biology ventures should be muuuuchhh cooler than my stupid sophomore year of science, spent filling in blanks in packets. God damn).

And then there's DNA, RNA, made of all this abstractness that I do not yet understand 100%. Nucleic acids. Nucleotides (I like these). Ummmm.... some stuff I'm gonna have to google.

SO eventually you get down to the elements and yay, atoms, but like. Then what. Go to the protons, or the neutrons but??? What are they made of??? Googled: quarks, apparently.

What are quarks made of?.... I have no idea. It keeps going like that, though, and I have no idea how this question can ever be ended and it freaks me out.

Doesn't everything have to be made of something? Is there ever a case in which something can exist without, like. I dunno. A physical base? But even then. There has to be a reason for its existence.

Existence is just so weird. Is there any "why?"

Can I even ask that?

I feel like I've tried to ask my dad about this, and he gets all head-shaky, like, "You're thinking in terms of time." Cause and effect.

Instead of "outside of time," which is. What? How do I? Do that? Why must there exist a place where cause and effect is not a thing?

(Annnnnd now I'm thinking in the opposite direction: where is the universe? What is outside the universe? What is outside whatever is outside the universe? Does anything end? Is an end even possible in this case? Am I looking at this all wrong? Probably)

I just. Can't understand it. What if these questions are phrased all wrong? Maybe that's why there's no answer... Does there have to be an answer?

Part of me kind of wants to believe that it's all just a nonsensical loop. The universe is big but, if there were something outside of it, that'd be. Y'know. Bigger. And so on.

So maybe we end up the eensy-weensy ingredients to whatever makes up what makes up what makes up what makes up what makes up what makes up a quark in a universe too large for us to ever find.

And then. I'm like. "How did life even BEGIN?"

I mean. I guess I (loosely) understand the approximate mechanics of it.

(I've just read that RNA eventually formed Luca deep underground. But, I mean, before that: the same reading sorta says that RNA was formed out of all those tiny particles that already existed, swirling together, making this... fragile-ass thing. A thousand questions remain haha)

But. On what level did these mechanics have to begin. It can't have started at the first level, because that's too much like that one paradox-y thing (where you run halfway to a goal, and then run half of the remaining half, and then half of the half of the half, and so one). How can you reach the other end of infinity?

Maybe it started on a much higher level.

I'm gonna stop thinking about this. I'm extremely annoyed by my lack of expertise.

---

A sixteen year old boy died on Tuesday at the gorge near my house. Probably... a block, or a block and a half from my house. Plenty of people have died there over the years, as a lot of people go there to swim despite the danger (and all the NO TRESPASSING signs).

He hit his head before going underwater and did not resurface. It's sort of a difficult place to reach so it took the rescue crew awhile to get there, and to recover his body.

I have been to that gorge once. I'm not sure why people go. Maybe I just went on a slow day, but there was a creek that collapsed into a waterfall, which filled a series of small pools that spilled over each other and back into the creek that runs through town.

The small pools are "the gorge." The guy had apparently been climbing down the rocks to get to it. But the falls are actually pretty dangerous so. I don't know.

It was just really, really sad.





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