Osmosis

occurs not only on a cellular level. It's the reason why this bloke in my Paris in Lit's Imagination class refused to read Hemingway. Osmosis of language. He was terrified of taking on Hem's sentence structure if immersed himself, dunked his head in the unconcentrated solution of A Moveable Feast. Hypertonic, he was scared water would osmose from Hem's Seine into his writing. Afraid adjectives'd diffuse from his head to pages to solve the imbalance, correct the concentration gradient. And he was right. It's a natural law. Unfortunately for you I'm reading Nick Hornby's crap novel. Might have guessed if you've been unlucky enough to pick it up. Usually he's got it, but the new one's shit. (And not the shit.) Could claim reading it out of loyalty. And it is partly out of affection for About a Boy, High Fidelity, Polysyllabic Spree I inhaled with glee. But it's mostly because I'm addicted. And now his language diffuses across the semi-permeable membrane of my mind. And I'm tempted to write in crap confessional style like his crap characters. As I a) have not tried to kill myself recently, or ever, and b) do not commit felonies, fabricate scams, or go on benders or breakfast talk shows, I have significantly less to confess to. I do find myself, however, with my own apartment in New York City. It's not a brownstone or anything, but surely what with the lack of housing around here, my occupation, not just of a room of ones own, but of an entire loft, should be something to be guilty of. And living no roommates, no cats, does come with its set of advantages to confess to. The highlights: music as the mood minds me. Whatever I want. Playing records of Roches, Joni Mitchell, Grateful Dead, Elvis Costello large enough to fill the entire apartment. Eating pasta out of the pot, no plate, no utensils. Nudity. No, I don't sit around dinner table naked, but rushing after a run mornings, jumping into, out of shower, looking for clothes from closets, dryer, or mostly unpacked suitcase, it does make things easier. And when wearing clothing, get a kick out of my flip flops, gym shorts, and old lower school phys ed shrunk shirt walking out of Met foods, groceries in hand past the feet of laughable ladies in stilettos and hair narrowly escaped from iron bondage. My apparel says this is a neighborhood and it's mine. I belong to it. They belong to Tiffany's or Prada. That's what their chains say. I also have to admit to being pretty happy with my job and to witnessing the live dissection of Carassius auratus, or the common goldfish. It was a dissection/murder, depending on your point of view. Mine was quite good. There was a microscope camera view of the brain on a screen and I was close enough to peer over shoulder of the post-doc performing the prep. Fish immobilized by prongs and drugs, first she exposed a piece of the spinal cord, a wiry white line. Tough but also terribly thin, feeble fragile for its importance. Then she took tweezers to the cranium. I could hear the crack as the tool chomped and peeled back skin and flesh to reveal the soap bubble layer of fat insulating the brain. Ok, ok, swear I am not just writing this because it might make you twitch like the half open goldfish when the anesthetic ran out and she was poking around its brain and she had to add more. Really got a thrill when she pulled back the cerebellum and there were two halves of the medulla oblongata. Shiny white mounds. Stimulated the eighth nerve next to the medulla and also the spinal cord to create an electrical field to find our Mauthner cell. Electrodes and dissection and directly manipulating a neuron, making the mind react like it'd heard a sound when it was only the ghost of current. So cool. Oh and my main confession. I am really unreasonably rich. The communist of spiritual and emotional wealth complains to me that these resources are unfairly divided. I am too lucky. This is not just because I am reading a book about suicide and depressed Brits or spend two hours a day traveling through the Bronx and not the part like Riverdale. Not just because I got to go to Paris or because I got to come back to my family and to doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Not just because I found out the fear is unfounded that I wouldn't like labs and lab work and lab people and now I can safely and happily imagine myself in one for a long time surrounded by not stupid minds intent on what they're doing. Not only for friendship expectedly and unexpectedly. And not just because I get to go back to my other home in the fall or that I'm pleased with all my major decisions (save one) like the English major/science coursework plan or Yale or choosing to be born into my family or to be happy. But those might be some of the variables and constants that are contributing factors.