Hello from Boston, MA!

Today was my first day of work at my new job. To be direct, I am filling out my W-4 tax form right now (which, I just figured out [all by myself!] is to tell the govm'nt how much money to take from you so you don't have to pay them later and be screwed) as a non-dependent. Oh yes.

Why does this always have to be about me? This blog, I mean. Perhaps it is because that is all I really know about right now. I know that I enjoyed my first day of work today. I know that it took me about 50 minutes to get there today. I know I had to walk up a long, gradual hill for 15 minutes after I got off the bus and then was really sweaty, flustered, embarrassed. Embarrassed that I forgot my passport and my belt and my lunch and had no tax forms with me. I forgot my pen in the human resources department. A dream, a whirl of novelty today.

New faces, new people. New laboratory. Its like being away from your parents for the first time! Different protocols, roles, habits, like different dinners, kitchens' silverware drawers, smells. I have a new desk, no longer by a window but by a fume hood. I spoke for an hour with my new professor today about science, asking questions, trying to follow, getting overwhelmed but nevertheless feeling satisfied, leaving the office with a stack of reading material. But this was all good! I feel at home, appreciated. I look forward to being there tomorrow.

Reeling.

"Variations on a Fragment by Trumbull Stickney"

I hear a river thro' the valley wander

Whose water runs, the song alone remaining.

A rainbow stands and summer passes under,

Flowing like silence in the light of wonder.

IN the near distances it is still raining

Where now the valley fills again with thunder,

Where now the river in her wide meander,

Losing at each loop what she had been gaining,

Moves into what one might as well call yonder.

The way of the dark water is to ponder

The way the light sings as of something waning.

The far-off waterfall can sound asunder

Stillness of distances, as if in blunder,

Tumbling over the rim of all explaining.

Water proves nothing, but can only maunder.

Shadows show nothing, but can only launder

The lovely land that sunset had been staining,

Long fields of which the falling light grows fonder.

Here summer stands while all its songs pass under,

A riverbank still time runs by, remaining.

I will remember rainbows as I wander.

-Mr. John Hollander

And now, encroaching the sea.