Nancy's Musings

Thinking is hard. I actually considered leaving that as the entire post, because I'm having a bad brain day, and that would illustrate it pretty well. But I don't want to give anyone the impression that I'm giving up just because something is difficult. I struggle with academic thinking. My biggest problem seems to be finding my way to an argument. I have a few friends who think that's scoff-worthy, because they write arguments in their sleep. However, my logic circuits work well enough to understand that being good at something doesn't give you any leverage to make fun of somebody who isn't good at it. Writing an argument is more than just thinking. It's vulnerable and risky. Writing an argument is like growing a toe out of your shoulder and then wearing cap sleeves. Everybody knows it's wrong, even you, but you grow the thing first, and then you can graft it where it really goes. You're breaking a long-established pattern, and there's nob...

I love vivid and lucid dreaming: they're side effects of my superpowers. A common theme in my dreams are elevators: I dream about them when my brain has something to say about my career, when I think I have one. The library elevator, for instance, is a plate of glass suspended by wires that connected to a single wire overhead. Several of us ride that elevator at the time, clinging to the cables, not speaking to each other. We are silent with fear. The elevator has no shaft, it just moves up and down without reason or command from floor to floor through empty blackness, and you leap on and off when you can. It is so dark. Just books and blackness, steel and glass. Hospital elevators are narrow and a nasty shade of mustard yellow. They're boxy and vinyl, and a great place to hide from the man with the gun. They do not go all the way up or down, and I have to run down a hallway to transfer to an identical elevator to get anywhere. They go several floors underground, but do n...