Dear Neil,
Eight out of ten English teachers agree: the best way to write a paper is with plenty of transitions.
Ok, so let me regale you with that old, old story. No, not boy-meets-girl or Oedipus or the gospel (though those might come up later). It's the story, I love to hear, no matter how many times, no matter who it is written by: the story of the atom.
So, me, I'm bad at transitions. I think it's a family trait. One of the many acts of "civilizing" my mother claims to have performed on my father over the course of their relationship is making him begin and end conversations normal.
"Hello, how are you?"
"It was nice talking to you!"
The story of the atom is so delightful in its simplicity and complexity. J. J. Walker (who by the by earned a prize from the estate of the inventor of DY-NO-MITE), Rutherford, Bohr, Schrödinger & Heisenberg. It's like the patriarchy for modern scientific thought. Sub-atomic physics as euangelion. And, it all ends with Oppenheimer becoming Shiva/a martyr.
So, my dad when he drops me off at school, knowing it will be weeks until we see each other again, he's all out of his element. Goodbye isn't his strong suit. The transition is awkward and loaded.
"Well…"
'Have a safe ride back.'
"Uh huh."
In atomic theory, we learn that electrons are terrible with transition. They just can't wait to go from n=1 to n=2, so the skip the in between stuff. Bohr proposed that, but he wasn't sure why it was so.
Like I said, I'm bad at transitions. After my first year away at school, I spent the whole first week in a flurry of work, work, work. I built the hell out of that radio receiver. After I graduated last year, my dad arranged for me to be whisked non-stop from the ceremony to a week long camp out on the Outer Banks.
I was rereading the story of the atom this week. I pulled out an old Asimov explains science book that I got at a library sale at my old school. I love old science books. Their so anachronistic, from the past's future and whatnot.
I think that I'm subconsciously trying to get worse with transition too. I try to be more Daniel Binuya in conversations with one issue friends, the friends that you like because of exactly one common interest. Much as the true master of confusion, old Daniel B., I like pick up old topics without so much as a wa to help them along.
Yesterday, the library here sold off some old books. I couldn't find any good science ones, but they did have the original book incarnation of the old Warner Brothers cartoon where a line falls in love with a dot. So far no one I've discussed it with has remembered the cartoon. Sigh.
In Japanese, wa is a topic marking particle (so to speak), a part of speech that informs the audience what the conversation is centering on. I'm not sure I understand how to use it yet, but I haven't started Japanese 11 either, so I'm sweating it.
The transition I'd most like to make in life is the one from acquaintance to friend to boyfriend. If only some girl would let met. Alas, school is over as of the 27th for me. In my estimation, my trouble romantically this year has been the fact that all I ever do is hang out on my (all male) hall. As a result, most of my close friends are male. Damnation.
Last weekend was "beach weekend" here. Everyone skips class on Friday to run off to the nearest beach for some last second debauchery. I wanted to go to one fraternity's deal, as I have a crush on some the girls I knew to be going with them, but alas it was not meant to be. On Thursday, my art teacher asked who would honestly come to class on Friday. Only I raised my hand. Class was canceled.
Floyd Padget no longer certifies elevators in South Carolina. His position as administrator for whatever state committee is now filled by some other guy. When I noticed the changed form as I lazily took an elevator down on a one story building, I was crushed. I had planned to write Floyd a letter about being an elevator inspector, etc., but I never got around to it. Why do things have to change so suddenly? One minute Padget is chief inspector for elevators, and all is right with the world. The next minute, the school years all but tapped, and some smuck is charged with my well-being. I just wonder how many trips up and down I had taken without noticing. Doors closing to one floor and opening to another magically. I not suspecting that change occurred within my steel box too.
I spent last Thursday and Friday nights ever so slightly intoxicated as I pored over Asimov's "Understanding Physics: The Electron, the proton and the neutron." (I think my current alcohol policy is to drink only whenever there peer pressure, real or imagined.) Why oh, why couldn't I be at some crappy beach side motel angst ridden by my hope/fear of attracting a girl to me in the warm salty air? Why couldn't I feel disconnected from the mass of smiling people conversing around me as I desperately wished for someone to fall in love with me as I am so in love with the idea of someone else? Why couldn't I feel my usual contempt for happy people as I attempted to summon the courage to talk to a beautiful stranger? Oh yeah, I don't have a car and I couldn't get anyone of friends on the hall to make good beach plans. Eh, better off getting drunk without worrying myself about the latest Diana to enter my peripheral vision. Let Apollo's twin bask on the sunlit shores of the Sea of Tranquillity/Intoxication. I'm not going to be the hunter of the moon goddess today. I have Athena's science to keep me company.
As a kid, I liked science because in grade school, science is literature not math. You hear the grand story of the universe from quarks to quasars. It's more like religion then anything else. Everything in the universe makes sense from the smallest parts to largest parts. Only as you get older, you see the trickiness of that middle-sized thing, a human heart.