Monday, July 09, 2007

I've Been Learning in the Dark for Years!

in no particular order...


photo courtesy of Flickr and Spiralz

A. why are hugs from children infinitely better than hugs from grownups? RHETORICAL, that's why.


photo courtesy of Flickr and Kristian Bertel

B. speaking of kiddies, my family friend's 2-year-old daughter is a little nutty in the best way. she's never not jumping. spinning, bouncing, quivering with joie de vivre (joie de quiver?), that's her default. yesterday, while visiting her house, she was everywhere. here is the montage breakdown.

1. on the computer looking at pictures of her recently born younger sister, and poking the screen after each time her father told her not to touch the screen
2. insisting a particular dvd be put on so she could watch a musical number, which she then watched with wild hand gesticulations of enjoyment
3. potty time
4. running around pantless
5. reading a book, by which i mean reading it in her own personal language and then slamming it shut
6. drawing with permanent marker on the floor, rudiments of circles mostly
7. unburdening the countertops of anything they had on them and sacrificing these things with conviction to the floor
8. potty time: the sequel
9. trying, with success, to get people to feed her off their plates
10. undoing the ponytail in her hair, leading to full metamorphosis into a tiny enthusiastic banshee.

on and on and on. she's like a lit fuse of dynamite in terms of urgency but a neverending fuse. burning away away away and when it will explode, no one knows. here's the kicker. her name is shanti, which in sanskrit means "peace."

C. some people are really good at learning. they thirst for the flame of knowledge. they have a passion for books and classes and having tea with teachers. they pretty much put the TEA in teachers, naw mean? yeah ok, no sense that made. but anyway, i am not one of those people. i did well in school but mostly because it seemed like a reasonable life choice. i'm not sure if i will go back to school ever again though it certainly seems like, once again, a reasonable life choice. however, i will note i slept in (not through, mind you, because i did show up) 75% of my classes in college. i have considered my relationship with academia one of the biggest successful hoodwinks of my life. scam of the quarter-century!

i will also say that some of the smartest people i've met haven't been those that have necessarily excelled in formal education/schooling, but rather those who just have a genuine, delightful interest in the world. so i'm not sure what it all means except that i'm trying really hard to love learning, to at least hang out with it a few times a week one on one. be a responsible parent to my brain. i want to know things. i just have trouble not zoning out when i see a textbook. but the smallest wonderings are now babied and nurtured. the other day, for example, i wondered how bats "see in the dark." so i made a note to look it up. and today i look up "how do bats see in the dark?" and i find this lovely entry.

"So if you see a bat on a documentary or in a bat cave, think about how marvelous it is and how good its hearing is."

WHAT A LAST LINE, eh?


this photo is aptly titled 'It's a bat'
photo courtesy of Flickr and Hans Dekker

i also found a link to the Ultrasonic Bat Blaster. (terrifying)

no sleep till enlightenment.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

i wrote about bats in my creative writing class today! cwazy!

Anonymous said...

Wanna hear something weird? Of course you do. So I was walking through my neighborhood last week - maybe Thursday - and I was thinking for some reason about bats and how I never see any during the day even though I see several at night flying around my house catching little bugs. THen later that day as I was walking home (this was after one of those big rainstorms last week) I look down on the sidewalk and there was a dead bat. It was kind of freaky. I sorta wanted to poke him but I was afraid he might not be dead and might be rabid so I just looked at him as close as I dared. I was thinking maybe I should call some city agency to report that I saw a dead bat and it might be checked out for rabies before some dog or cat came along and ate it but there was this really good episode of Magnum PI on...

Aparna said...

burgos - huh. interesting.

mandrake - that is freaky. for some reason, i've never stopped to consider bats as mortal creatures. i don't know why. but you raise an irrefutable point since you saw one that had passed on. but magnum pi, mandrake, really?!

quincy - how dare you. just kidding.

Anonymous said...

I think you mean vivreing with joie de quiver.


By the way, it's because formal education doesn't make a person smart it just prepares you for certain career fields at a time when you're so naïve you couldn't get any actual experience.

A reasonable life choice is also to keep working whatever you're working now because with experience & burn you'll eventually be as valuable as any degree holder. 4-8 years school or 4-8 years becoming great within an occupation. All the same and equally lucrative.

Do you have any more specific thoughts right now of what you'd want grad school for?

Aparna said...

anon -- i think i know who youuuuuuuu areeeeeeee.