… Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

This fundamental question, "what are you" is one where there can be many versions of true, all contradictory, all spot on.

I recently had read a ‘blurb’ written for a newsletter at one of my jobs.  I got interviewed, the editor went off, and out came one true picture of who I am:

[…] and a masters of science in statistics.  His current work involves modeling mortality ratios […] He is also employed at XXXX where he has been a sampling statistician for over a decade.  As an active divorced dad raising two blooming adolescents keeps XXX pretty busy.  In whatever time is left, XXX reads an eclectic mix of science text and junk novels, cooks, stays involved in the XXXXX community farm, and imagines he is a writer.  He is also active in community service, working with persons in recovery on a volunteer basis.  Traveling when he can, recent trips have included Costa Rica, San Francisco and the Grand Canyon.  He currently lives as caretaker, at the XXXX XXXX park in XXXX.

I looked this over and I though ‘This is a guy I might want to meet.  This sounds like a guy who has a good life, I thought when I read it.  Careear trajectory on track, traveling, kids, interesting … together.  I might even be jealous of him.   And, every word is true.

Now twist your head slightly, and squint a bit … blink a little to clear the smoke stinging your eyes, and you see …

(more…)

I am reading a fascinating paper, "Scale-free networks in cell biology", by Reka Albert at Penn State, and thought some might be interested in it.

Scale-free networks are a sub-type of "small world" networks, which show up in all kinds of biological and social systems, among other places. As it turns out, the metabolic network in a cell is a scale-free small world network (as are movie actors - see Kevin Bacon Number)

What makes this interesting (aside from being an intriguing glimpse into the details of what goes on in a cell) is that networks that have these characteristics tend to be ‘emergent’, that is, they develop naturally out of certain types of processes. Such processes tend to have very simple local rules that somehow generate complex global behaviors. And, one of the biggest open questions in the search for the origin of life is how something ascomplex as a metabolic network could have formed, for it seems that too many pieces would have to be in place all at once. So there may be a clue to that puzzle here.

(more…)

Window down, radio playing, Aaron Tippen or something, low under the rush of the wind.  John knew she was trouble, knew that feeling of an edge somewhere nearby, one he didn’t want to go over, drawing him.  Concentration playing out in his grip on the wheel, one hand, keeping the left front tire exactly on the double yellow line.

"Popping in is fine," she had said, and he wished she hadn’t, when he asked her about bringing back that book.  Not what a woman should say to him, not one who’s husband had just left, not one who had a whiney pale faced little girl clinging to her leg, some sticky treat clutched in her other hand, a tough woman about to fall.  He didn’t want to ‘pop in’, didn’t even like her, really, she talked way to much, need spilling out like flesh from her too tight dress, need transformed by the latest self-help vocabulary into something much more intellectual, into words that said just the opposite.

(more…)

Warm yesterday.  Up to what, maybe sixty degrees.  And sunny.  And a friday.

So I go sit down on Church street, and the place is packed.  People everywhere, enjoying the sun.  That first sunny day, stepping out without a coat, without that subconcious cringe bracing for the cold, for the shock of a chill.  I sit and have a smoke, and watch everyone strolling about watching everyone.

Who are all these people? Was reading in ‘Guns, Gems and Steel’ that a tribe can get up to a hundred or so people before you have to have a more formal social orginization, some kind of structure.  The ‘big man’ can’t remember everyone’s name.  From somewhere else, I remember that city-states cannot get bigger than say, a thousand or so, before direct governanace dosen’t work.  A thousand being about the number of people you can gather in a stadium, or on a senate floor, and have the conversation be workable.

(more…)

So I’m talking to T. tonight, shooting the shit after the meeting, we’re talking a newcomer out of his tree, and then T. starts on this long term relationship he’s in now, with S.  How he finally cares enough about her to hang on to, to do the work.  He’s afraid to be alone, but that’s not whats running him he says.  "This one is worth keeping," are the words coming out of his mouth and as they are his eyes flicker over to K. … I know what that’s about, mine too, she’s new to the meeting, young, good looking, making that splash the way they do.   

The crowd breaks up, drifting off into the evening and I start heading to the car, we’re still talking, and he hesitates and I wonder at the catch in the conversation here, then I really hear what he said earlier: "Yea, K. and I, we been talking, she’s in the same boat as I am.  Nice to have some female companionship."  Well, I know what thats about too.  She’s walking the other way and T. tosses a ’seeya’ in my general direction and he’s off.

Afraid of loneliness.  Shit, I know that too.  I watch them stroll down the street together, I think "Afraid of loneliness, T. you better walk right into loneliness, straight up to your neck.  Or at least up to your balls, man you wanna be keeping your thing with S. together."

Well.

It has been several weeks packing, organizing the move, moving, cleaning out the old apartment, getting the basics set up here, and … getting an Internet connection.  I’m whipped.

For a move of less than six miles, this took a lot out of me.

But the distance seems a great deal more than six miles.  I have moved from a half-hour commute, hours spent running into town (for meetings, for the movies, for the kids, … ), no-yard, what passes for moderately urban here in Vermont to the a place where I can’t see my neighbors lights at night, in one hundred and eight five acres of protected land. Within ten minutes of my office in downtown Burlington.

And, when I saw this house, walked up the broad wood stairs to the typical hundred year old  second floor full of knee-walls, sloping ceilings, there was this room with a window facing the pines and the fields, in a dormer, just the right size for my desk.  White plaster walls, slightly beat up, flat three inch pine molding, wood floor.  Room enough for my books and a small couch. 

A writers room, the New England Version of the archetypal Paris starving-artist garret.

I knew this place was a home I had been looking for for a long long time.  It only took me seven years and two divorces to get here.

I remember the end of the first marriage, trying to convert a four by ten porch into a study, winding up sleeping down there at the end, amid the sheetrock and half finished wiring, the phrase "Never underestimate the effects of the physical space."

(more…)