Please don't get too excited.

The other day, as I drove home from class, I realized there was a fly in my car. A tiny little fruit fly, not unlike the ones we studied once upon a time in high school biology lab. It was albino. He flew around for a bit as I drove out of the parking lot. A bit annoyed, I tried to wave him out the window. He would always fly back in and land on the dashboard. Finally, he landed on my finger. I moved my hand about, trying to get him to fly away. But he never budged. He sat on top of my knuckle and faced forward, looking out toward the road. I tried raising my hand to the open window, but he would walk down my arm until I brought my hand back inside the car. And he would face the road again.

So I let him drive with me, my ever vigilant fly buddy. During the trip he faced forward, unyielding in the face of the uncertain path. And in that moment, I connected with him. He wanted what I wanted: to move forward. To go somewhere. Somewhere new. To have an adventure. We continued our trip in respectful silence. Finally, we arrived home and I stepped out of the car. I raised my hand and he turned to look at me with his red eyes. "Good luck out there," I said. He nodded and flew away.

Comments

Pseudo-science (like psych).

I consider myself a man of science. I try to approach problems and deal with them logically, using observations previously recorded to handle new problems. So of course my interest was piqued when someone I knew posited that men are needier and more complicated than women. An interesting theory. But to properly examine it, one must understand the concept of sexual selection and its two aspects: male competition and female choice. Which brings us to point one: men are needier [in relationships] than women. This is true. In a natural/primal setting, the males are generally love-'em-leave-'em kinds of guys. Their main objective is to reproduce as much as they can. Humans, in their infinite wisdom, have decreased the emphasis on this to the point where it has become a footnote in male purpose. Civilization dictates that, instead of finding a partner for the sole purpose of reproduction, males find females for life companionship. With the effective removal of their natur...

I'm a geologist, not an alcoholic.

I thought I had seen people drink before. Hell, I thought that I had drank before. But, clearly, I thought wrong on both of those counts. I cannot, for the life of me, think of a reason to justify all of the drinking that transpired down there last week. There was no rhyme or reason to it, it just was. Field work just makes a man thirsty. Taking this class was easily one of the best things I've ever done. We worked hard every day out in the field. Wake up at 7, leave the beach house by 8, hit the water by 9. My first three field days were in service on the R/V Acadiana , a 58 foot vessel that towed the CHIRP fish , the air gun, and the streamer to measure all the seismic data--looking at the subsurface of the seafloor we drove over. My second ship was the R/V Itasca using the multibeam , sidescan , and grab sampler --getting seafloor surface bathymetry. They were long, exhausting days and we returned to the docks around 6 or 7 every evening. And then, drinking. So much ...

Past the butterfly wall.

Spontaneous pneumothorax is a collection of air or gas in the space between the lungs and the chest that "collapses" the lung and prevents it from inflating completely. Spontaneous means there is no traumatic injury to the chest or lung. There are two types of spontaneous pneumothorax: primary and secondary. Primary spontaneous pneumothorax occurs in people without lung disease. It occurs most often in tall, thin, young people. I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket but I can't answer it. We are in the middle of rehearsal. It is not an uncommon event. We continue to play. The strap of my saxophone cuts into my neck. The nylon is rough against my skin. I look out of place. Everyone else is dressed casually; shorts, shirts, shoes optional. There I stand, a button down shirt and slacks. I'm entitled to dress up a little. It's my birthday. My phone vibrates again. I always used to roll my eyes whenever I saw those scenes in movies. The phone call. The bad news....

everything is fine

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