The Midas of the Kitchen

Wayne once told me that the author Graham Greene made a point to write no less than 500 words every day of his life. Rain or shine, in sickness and in health, every day he determinedly sat by his little typewriter, trying to put into words life as he experienced it. He was so devoted to this goal that, on the night of his wedding, he made his new bride lie in bed, and wait patiently, while he finished his 500 words before he came to bed and consummated their union. By setting this concrete goal, the author was able to produce such a large body of work that, eventually he wrote something worthwhile, and was published. He practiced a lot, and eventually, he became perfect…well, better than average, anyway. Let’s just say, “good enough.” Sounds pretty good, right? 500 words is manageable.

Later, Joe told me that he took a writing class in which he was made to document his life by taking a picture every day and captioning it. I liked this idea, too. Thus far, the only parts of my life documented in picture-form are the very early year--when my parents took rolls upon rolls of film of their first born--and the parts during which my friends were present with their cameras and decided to take pictures.

So here’s my idea: I’m going to try to take a picture every day and caption it with a 500 word paragraph…well, I don’t know about every day. Let’s just say frequently. Frequently is better. The reasons for this decision are 3-fold:

1. I want to practice writing. As a graduate student in math, my writing skills are becoming woefully unpolished and juvenile, as you can probably tell. (haha, “becoming.” Did you catch that?)

2. Basically all new discoveries about life, scientific and otherwise, come from observing some phenomenon and looking for patterns. Hopefully, by documenting my life in this way, I might be able to look over it and come to some new understanding of myself.

3. To alleviate boredom, and keep my away from my debilitating addiction to Stumble!-ing.

353. Wow. 500 is a lot, hey?

360. Ok, so this picture is of my room. When I first moved in here, in mid-August, the first thing I did was buy some shelves so that I could have some way of displaying my books. As a temporary solution, I stashed all of my books in boxes and cabinets—just to get them out of the way until I mounted the shelves. 5 months later, I finally hung them. Aren’t they just the end? They are white and there are three of them. Only the bottom two are visible because they are the only two with anything on them. I would have hung them sooner, but it was such a pain In the ass to find studs in this wall, you really have no idea. I eventually resorted to watching a video by the “home repair Goddess” on Youtube. She suggested (rightly) that, because studs are generally spaced 16 inches apart, I find studs by measuring multiples of 16 inches from the nearest corner. Her idea was totally helpful, but it involved actually getting a tape-measure, which delayed the project a bit. I finally did it, though. And they look great. Really really great.

Also pictured are some a little necklace or something made of small blue and white cloth bags filled wild lavender hand made by the hard working indigenous peoples of Mexico, delivered to me by my friend Carolyn, who studies them. The indigenous Mexican people, not the necklaces. She also gave me that poster of the Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe, which I originally thought was also from Mexico, but turned out to be from Arizona.

Actually, upon further inspection of the picture, all 3 shelves are visible. I’m sorry I misled you earlier, noble reader.

650.