The Sublime in the Mundane
The other morning I hiked over to Café Borrone, a local über-hip coffee shop that plays just the right mix of bubbling jazz and forlorn new-age-ish instrumentals. It was about 8am when I got there and 6pm when I left. During that stretch, I stood up four times: once to go to the bathroom and three times to refill my coffee mug. The rest of the time I was waging war with the alphabet soup of Developmental Bio: Gsh1/2, Wnt7a, Sox9, Fgf9, Pdx1 (not to be confused with Tbx1 or Cdx1, 2 or 4) and so on and so on, for ever and ever, biochemistry without end, amen.
During this time, I became convinced of two things:
1) God was having an off day when He devised the pharyngeal apparatus (there has to be a easier way to make a face), and
2) There’s something about intense labor that makes the everyday world beautiful. When I finally packed up, I wondered over to Keppler’s (our heroic, local independent bookseller) and looked at all the novels I don’t have time to read and the customers pawing through them.
Just then, I pined away for my old life as a full-time writer. But of course I was forgetting the loneliness of writing all day, the artistic doubts, the persistent lack of funds, &c. I’m far happier now with a crazy schedule. The coming break, when I will write non-stop, feels like a luxury. Previously meeting a deadline for a manuscript was a burden, now I can barely wait to get cracking.
But first, I have to make it to Thursday. It’s the day before the first and worst exam, and I’m feeling a strange lethargy and distraction. Laundry, blogging, and cloud-gazing keep pulling me away from the study sheet. Hopefully this distraction stems from some accurate instinct that knows I’ve studied enough to pass my exams, and not by a dangerous surge of hubris.
Hmmm…maybe I should get back to NFATc2, 3, and 4.
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