Saturday, February 18, 2006

Possibilities

What do you do on a Saturday evening in when you don't feel like being in the least productive because you've managed to wring an essay out of your braincells over several piously hardworking hours being the sole sad person in the Zoology library? And you feel much better both physically and emotionally after the rollercoaster of the first half of term? And you haven't caught up with most of your friends for aeons? Reach out, of course. But none of them are obligingly online at this moment so I am filling in some of the big gaping holes in this little blog'o'mine.

My dance show was a lovely success but then it is every year; producing it really is simply a matter of making sure it happens, and then in some kind of amazing artistic emergent properties kind of phenomenon it just grows wings and turns into a really exciting and visceral thing which sells all the seats in the theatre towards the end of the 5 night run. Much crazy printing of programmes in the Trinity computer room (which my co-producer and I colonised for several hours over several days) in order to save money. Much dramatic dancery horror in my toe bleeding all over stage (two nights in a row before I clued in and bandaged it to within an inch of its life), although apparently the audience couldn't tell and in true professional fashion I couldn't either till I got down to the dressing room (I caused my stage manager much anguish because her health and safety record needs to be squeaky clean for her satisfaction). Much interesting talk in the dressing rooms viz. whether or not one wears underwear under tights, and whether or not this is disgusting. Some comment on how ubiquitous costume item appears to be "girl boxers" from topshop -- not sure if topshop knows it is a lifesaver for dancers who require big pants to protect their modesty. Much laughter last night when one of our dear dancers simply didn't make it onto stage for a short 40 second interlude; the remaining two of us simply danced it without her in a very bemused "what the fuck?" fashion; and dear E didn't realise till we came downstairs afterwards to find her standing and ready to go on. Many, many, many boxes of chocolates (yet to get through them). And of course bucketloads of beautiful, virtuoso, exciting and original dance.

Photos http://www.grisby.org/Photos/335/index.html and http://www.cantabphotos.com/view.php?album=claude/060124202125

The next few weeks went by in a cloud really and I'm not very sure where they went. I spent two weekends in London with Mum and sisters doing lovely exciting things like having Chinese New Year dinner (general steamboat yumminess), watching Mary Poppins the musical (excellent, I'd recommend it to anyone), and walking the doggie. The weeks in between I tried to do some work and also spent much time stressing about my interview at Princeton, which was this weekend just past. The interview itself (or rather the 6 interviews) went okayish, one can't really tell with all this American friendliness. Got caught in the huge snowstorm -- whilst seeing two feet of snow dumped on unsuspecting Princeton was beautiful (you couldn't actually see the porch steps of my host's house when I left), it wasn't so pleasant for me as I'd just at that point spent over 12 hours in bed feverish, aching and listless and then had to spent almost another 12 hours in the airport (drugged up on Tylenol, alternately reading Brokeback Mountain and Cosmopolitan, just what every sick person needs for the airport really, a short story about gay cowboys and a magazine filled with half naked blokes), and on the plane. It had been parked well away from the terminal building so they had to snowplough it out, resulting in something like 5 hours of delay, followed by another 2 hours while they tried to pump water back into the plane (it'd all been removed for fear of it freezing over), only to find the pump was blocked by ice -- or that is as much as I caught from the apologetic captain while dozing fitfully under my blanket in my little cattle class space as we sat on the runway. At least my illness helped me sleep the entire flight away, but I can't say I was overly impressed by my New England send off!

Far better now, just catching up with work (much more to do this weekend really) and speculating feverishly about what to do if I suddenly go utterly bonkers, decide not to do a PhD and dedicate my little life to the greater pursuit of knowledge about fishies for no pay, and actually join the real world upon graduation (or at least after a few months of gallivanting around watching fish for pleasure). It is quite exciting really because having a degree in Zoology doesn't really point you towards any job alternatives from watching fish, so everything is open. Having once again convinced myself that I simply fail to be interested in the jobs that will make me lots of money (they are mostly about making lots of money, which, strangely enough, doesn't fascinate me), I have been flirting with ideas of perhaps going into science communication (science writing, editing, broadcasting, etc.) -- very much an in thing to do for disillusioned scientists, it sounds so exciting, doesn't it? But I am first waiting to see whether this never before heard of urge to actually get a Real Job is only a temporary insanity or not -- perhaps a PhD offer will come in and I will be back to my geeky world of libraries, endless arcane papers with crazy equations, and little beady eyed fish. I have only had this new craziness start for a few days (spending entire days in Princeton trying to sound like science is my all consuming lifelong passion has had a reverse effect), so don't worry, I haven't done anything drastic -- yet! Will try to keep you updated on where the whims of my fickle mind take me. Back to where the Clever People sit in tearooms discussing the niceties of zebra social society models, my parents will urge me. Ah well.

Being young and full of potential is usually a good thing; when it makes you feel like you could do anything, when it's all exciting, when you could jump off a cliff and never crash. At other times it is frighteningly open and stressful. I suppose it is all a matter of knowing the glass is half full and that it is up to you to fill it -- you might as well go about it with a verve. K observed to me today that it is the next 5 years of our lives that will really be the exciting ones, as we all make decisions and start to carve out our adult spaces (before we all get married have kids and become utterly boring). Tonight I'm feeling pretty good about that.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I laugh *hahahaha!* at your friend K's comment on how nice and exciting the next five years of your lives are going to be and how you are carving out adult spaces or however you so nicely put it. It IS exactly what you will be doing and it'll be really really fun! But don't expect to know at the end of it what to do for the rest of your life. *hahahaha* Take a look at my friend's blog entry on "Living to work?" at mrkaif.typepad.com

And hey what's all that about being boring and married and with kids?!