It's April and we love trees
Happy end of April, Newsletter Friends!
Yesterday was Arbor Day. According to Wikipedia there is nothing objectionable or dehumanizing about Arbor Day, and while I’m sure I could dig some stuff up if I tried, I do not wish to try. So hooray for Arbor Day, and trees, which we can celebrate without despair!
This month’s important discovery is that iusedtobelieve.com still exists. Back when “crowdsourcing” was not yet a word and Y2K struck fear into the hearts of software engineers, we the people of the Internet typed in our childhood beliefs and experienced the joy of seeing them on a real website. The site now features a page of the most common beliefs. One I found intriguing is “Everybody except you is a robot.” I always felt the opposite, that I was a secret robot among the humans.
“Everybody else is a robot” is like the geocentric view of the universe; it revolves around you. Which might also explain why I find the vastness of the universe comforting, not scary. I am an insignificant speck? Great. Pressure’s off.
Speaking of the universe, I’m reading The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred by Chandra Prescod-Weinstein, a Black Jewish particle physicist who brings her whole entire self into this book. Her stories about finding her place in the field of particle physics resonate deeply with my story about women of color in artificial intelligence. And she blew my mind by suggesting that instead of space being constant and time marching steadily on, it could be the opposite. Can you imagine time as a steady field surrounding us, while space keeps moving?
Novel progress update: I went away for a weeklong writing residency and came back with a 30-page outline, which I am now transcribing on to color-coded index cards which will soon be spread all over the floor and the walls while I walk among them and rearrange them. I never knew writing a novel would involve so much arts and crafts. Over the years I have spent quality time with markers and scissors and tape, trying to see my words in new ways.
The residency was in Bennington, Vermont, which I experienced as a creepy silent place where everybody but me has an MFA. I met an artist who lives on a houseboat, and the playwright of Horse Thief, and a writer finishing her middle-grade novel about Buddha’s mother. Also an 89-year old woman who has owned a highway gift shop for 44 years and showed me photos of her award-winning show dogs. Vermont was good for hearing people’s stories and feeling that time was temporarily abundant.
Newsletter friends, if you’re feeling up to it, send me your own monthly update! Or just think about what it would be. What’s bouncing around your head right now?
With Arbor Day optimism,
Pia