afternoon

It was a mildly cold, sunny day and after just two hours of class, lunch and errands, a long Monday afternoon stretched its limbs for me to follow. I packed my bookbag and walked down York Street with Radiohead's newest because I'm addicted; it's so delicious. The up and down I routinely take on York reminds me of how we felt like we'd been in Luang Prabang (Laos) forever because there's one main street and we walked it multiple times a day. The intersection with Elm Street reminds me a little of Cambridge, with Au Bon Pain on the corner and the expanse of brick becoming evident as you stand in the middle, a triangular intersection on your left and half of a cross on your right. I saw several girls wearing brown knee high boots. I have fond memories of Amy and I finding ours for $30 at a Nine West outlet in Atlantic City.

I went to Koffee Too to study. I don't like its structure--two adjacent rectangles separated by a wall--as much as Koffee which has two adjacent squares flowing into one another (more angles but open ones so that it feels like one big place with lots of corners). I usually choose it over Koffee for proximity's sake, but today it was also for the busy street view.

I ordered almond steamed milk but the order was wrong and they gave me peppermint instead. I told the guy it was okay and that I'd try something new. I've only had vanilla and almond before, and peppermint wasn't better than those, but it made me want to try all the flavors (there's maybe thirty). Which I can probably do because I always get steamed milk. I thought about how Toscanini's has closed in Harvard Square and how I can never get Vietnamese coffee (coffee with condensed milk, lovingly sweet so you don't need extra sugar) from there again. Steamed milk, which is also warm and sweet, isn't better or worse, just different.

I opened my biochemistry text and began reading about glycolysis, which we started learning a couple weeks ago (um, I'm just a little behind). I've tried looking at it before but it all seemed like mindless mechanism and I didn't think there was any point in memorizing details I'll just forget. But our biochem conferences have been pretty interesting and I find myself with a funny desire to want to understand conceptually the breakdown of glucose and all the related processes. Today it fell into place more and I decided that glycolysis (and all the pathways we've learned since) is an acquired taste, and I believe in letting things grow on you (probably because I'm the type of person who needs to grow on people). There's certain satisfaction in being able to follow a system. I read in more detail about how glucose synthesis isn't the exact opposite of glucose breakdown because breakdown requires some irreversible reactions. You can't just go back; to make glucose you have get around those irreversibilities, make up some new reactions. And there are all sorts of ways your body tells you to make or break down sugar. It's pretty cool.

I took breaks to read Kafka on the Shore, which came in my mail today. Haruki Murakami is like an old friend, immediately comforting. His language pulls you in so swiftly, you don't even notice except that so suddenly you realize you're content. The main character in the book runs away to Takamatsu, on the island of Shikoku: "Shikoku, I decide. That's where I'll go. There's no particular reason it has to be Shikoku, only that studying the map I got the feeling that's where I should head. The more I look at the map--actually every time I study it--I got the feeling that's where I should head. It's far south of Tokyo, separated from the mainland by water, with a warm climate. I've never been there, have no friends or relatives there, so if somebody started looking for me--which I kind of doubt--Shikoku would be the last place they'd think of."

During my solitary trek south to get to Aud's island this past summer, I went to Takamatsu and it was one of my favorite parts of the trip, partly because I felt the most alone there than anywhere else. From my journal that day: "The train getting here was shaky and lacked signs. Getting off at a station, there was one person manning a run-down booth...The train only comes every half hour. It might be the typhoon but everything is empty and desolate, and the air is a bit ominous. I found groves and a small nursery on my hunt for bonsai. There's almost no one around, and the landscape here is so different. Very few buildings. Just sharply shingled rooftops, train tracks, narrow streets, and green and brown, plant and dirt."

While studying, an English teacher began holding office hours with her students at the table next to me. It was so representative of the kind of meetings I'd have back in college. I miss the kind of thoughts that writing essays forces you to consider and develop, but am also glad that I'm free to think without need to commit to a structure and thesis. I eavesdropped on two different students' ideas for their papers (the role of women in proposal scenes in The Importance of Earnest and how language interacts with social context of separate plays) before I decided I needed to move if I wanted to study anything.

I moved to a window-side cushy chair and while I got some work done, I found that my studying requires a hard surface and space to spread my things. It wasn't too long after that that I headed back to campus, darker out now, especially with daylight savings disappearing. Another day over that in retrospect, will be the filler between significant events, but that in the moment is all you have.