the sum total of things was always such as it is now, and such it will ever remain

Tomorrow, I'll be at the American Chemical Society's D.C. conference. When I was in the 10th grade, I failed chemistry. Not "didn't get a very good grade" or "didn't do exceptionally well on the final exam." I failed. Big fat F for the year. I blamed it on spending most of the year sitting the back of the class because my teacher didn't believe me when I told her I could not read the board from that vantage point and my mom didn't believe me when I told her I needed glasses until I tried to get my driving permit and failed the vision test. My mom blamed it (the poor grades, not the vision) on 9/11. Then again, everyone was doing that so I couldn't blame her. Terrorism seemed like an appropriate scapegoat for my inability to master the finer point of covalent bonds and titration. I was distracted by airplanes and anthrax, how in the world was I expected to remember Na was Sodium?

Really though, the was the conservation of matter. Maybe, just maybe you could tie that to 9/11 but it would be a stretch. I was fine in September. When we got to the conservation of matter, that's when I lost all grasp of ions, neutrons, and protons.

The way it's always been explained to me, essentially, is that matter is finite. It can be changed but neither created nor destroyed. In thermodynamics, it means that the reactants and the products must equal out. To me, it meant that I exist because something else doesn't. If this is any kind of closed system and I currently inhabit it, then there is something that existed, then me, then something after me. Maybe it was a bunch of amoebas. Or a family of otters. Eventually, I might be a small shrub. But I am right now, so the amoebas, otters, and bushes are not. It's like C.K. Louis says, "Some things are and some things are not...things that are can't not be...because then nothing wouldn't be. An you can't have, fuckin', nothing isn't, everything is."

For years, even now if I let myself think about it too hard and forget that it's completely ridiculous and scientifically unsound, I'd worry that my failures (that chemistry class included) meant that I was somehow wasting the matter bestowed on me by those benevolent otters. Would the otters regret their gift if they knew I was kind of a petulant shit who talked about writing but never actually did it? I read books upon books for my own amusement, but not the ones assigned for class. I faked headaches to get out of church and was too lazy to return library books on time. This is better than primordial ooze? I realize now that I simplified an incredibly complex theory into a thoroughly self-involved poor-me cop out. I got over it, I think. I'm twenty-four. I have plans, I'm not done with my life-sized checklist but that's perfectly acceptable. So what if I'm not living up to the otters. What do otters do for the universe? I have no fucking clue but I can't answer the question for myself either.

Books I did not finish the first time...

Despite being a perpetual listmaker, I've posted nary a to-do list on this blog. In an effort to remedy that (and in honor of being oh-so-close-to-done with Jane Eyre):

10 Books I Did Not Finish the First Time, 2 Books I Did Not Finish the Second Time and 1 Book I've read so many times I lost count/am embarrassed to admit:*

1. The Great Gatsby-F. Scott Fitzgerald (first assigned in the 9th grade.)
2. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man- James Joyce (12th grade, I've since read it twice despite not particularly liking it.)
3. The Picture of Dorian Gray- Oscar Wilde
4. Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte (summer reading list, 4th grade. Still reading.)
5. Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen (I tried reading this so many, many times.)
6. Heart of Darkness- Joesph Conrad (12th grade. Junior year. It was only 70 pages, why didn't I read it back then?)
7. Cat's Cradle- Kurt Vonnegut (not his best work. Comparatively, I read Slaugterhouse-Five in a single sitting. I only got two hours of sleep the night before 9th grade started.
8. Handmaid's Tale- Margaret Atwood (I think I took this out of the library three times before actually finishing it.)
9. Atonement- Ian McEwen (Cheated. Got it at audible.com. Started on a cartrip back to Radford. Finished it by taking Bagel on hour-long walks for the rest of the week in 30 degree weather. She did not complain.)
10. King Lear- Shakespeare (My 12th teacher kept referring to King Lear's classic hubris as "a problematic first example of Modern Man's tempestuous struggle with the rest of the world." There are many things wrong with that sentence--namely, it's bullshit. Lear's tempest was of his own making, he's no more an example of modernism than Oedipus or Jason. Asshole.)
11. Ulysses-James Joyce. (Giant, fuckin' accomplishment the first time. Mini accomplishment in the next go round)
12. Catcher in the Rye- J.D. Salinger. (First time I read this, it changed my life. Second time, I threw it against the wall. You have to be in a very particular place to read this book. I call it the 1oth grade.)
13. Bridget Jones's Diary- Helen Fielding (I read it when I don't feel like thinking and nothing is on television. Has not stopped being funny.)


*in that order