Bricolage

As a thesis writer with a deadline immediately after spring break (most likely, as you read this, I am dashing to the math department with draft in hand) I spent vacation in a large and very quiet room perfecting my LaTeX skills. At some point in this wide expanse of unmarked time, it began to seem as if I and my thesis were alone in the world. In between chapters, I hit upon an idea.

Perhaps, through some great act of simultaneity, I could re-orient myself. Perhaps, though far apart from friends, I could nonetheless marshal the forces of e-mail towards community. I sent a message out into the void asking a simple question: What are you doing right now?

As a point of reference in future solitude, here is one moment spanning eight Harvard lives:

Babi Das: Just arrived home from my little sister's junior high musical. On the way back we stopped by to pick up cheesecake and congratulatory balloon. Am online to check to see when my plane departs tomorrow and to see whether or not I indeed have a corporate finance problem set due Monday, as suspected--no word yet from my problem set group. Will be off to pick my sister up from a post concert party at 10:30 p.m.

Jess Jacobs: I am sitting in my boyfriend's sister's apartment (we are house-sitting) in New Haven checking my e-mail and drinking wine while my boyfriend clears the dinner table in his boxers. We just finished having dinner and watching La Cage au Folles.

Paula Levy: Sadly, I am getting to know the split environment, i.e. putting in corrections to my thesis format in order to avoid doing any substantive work. Feeling pain in my back. Sitting in a chair with my feet crossed and my wrists injudiciously resting on a gel wrist rest. Drinking apple cider. My life is not exciting. :-(

[E-mail from Paula, dated three minutes later:] I now have a cow sitting on my left shoulder. Really.

David Molnar: I am catching up on e-mail, thinking about math homework, and trying to enjoy a bit of blessed idleness at the same time. Except this idyll has been interrupted by a friend's talk-request, which led to a conversation which has led to me being late for a meeting at Uno's. There we'll talk, and I'll flirt with the idea of having my first legal drink on the way to tonight's Going of the Hour ceremony.

Amy Offner: Well, I just got in from having a big fish dinner on the pier in Boston, and am now being frustrated that my phone doesn't work. The Harvard Student Telephone Office disconnected it because I hadn't paid my bill; then I paid my bill, but now, something like five days later, the line is still disconnected. How does one communicate with the outside world? This is the question right now. The next question is how I am going to write a paper for my poetry class tonight. Synopsis: fish, disconnected phone, poetry paper.

Sarah Pickard: I am writing from home--New York City--and telnet is achingly slow. I have just got back from a shopping expedition and enjoying all the things I love about the city: Tasti-D-Lite (froyo without the yogurt), thai for lunch, Century 21 and Bloomingdales, the 6 train, manicures for seven bucks, and, this morning, running around the reservoir with my Dad and having a cozy breakfast in the bustling upper-east-side Starbucks. Right now I am about to get dressed to have a drink with my old friend who is breaking his back for some investment bank, and in my head are songs from Coldplay and the after-taste of artificial ice cream in my mouth.

Bridget Tenner: I am recovering from a big spaghetti dinner, trying to understand how my clothes always seem to grow over a trip and I can never quite fit them back into the suitcase they arrived in, a bit worried about the fact that somehow I didn't open my books over the past nine days, still drying off from the cold Chicago rain (why? why is it not spring yet?!) and of course compiling and scheduling a list of all the signs on the Northwest Tollway (I-90) that need to be inspected this summer.

Josh Vonkorff: Your request for a report of my activities is marked 6:38 p.m., and therefore arrived at 5:38 p.m. central time. I first read it at 7 p.m., when my clock said 8 p.m. due to having been set ahead in anticipation of Daylight Savings Time. At that point, my family held a special emergency Passover seder seven days early, in honor of my being home. Synchronicity manifested itself when the pizza delivery guy arrived (Is pizza unleavened bread?) shortly after the front door was symbolically opened to let in the prophet Elijah. It is now 9:30 p.m., and I am just finishing up composing an e-mail to Maryanthe.

Maryanthe E. Malliaris '01 is a mathematics concentrator in Lowell House. Her column appears on alternate Mondays.