I'm still here..

I'm still here. I'm around, I promise...
I finished my thesis/dissertation/monster... Submitted end of August.. Phew!
Since then, i took a too short but much needed holiday in durban, visiting two of my favourite peoples, my brother and TUE (I would insert some photos from the trip. Except this is unnecessarily complicated to do from my iPad, and I'm lazy. I admit it.), and have been oscillating between catching up on much needed sleep and frantically preparing for my oral exam/defense.. Which was potentially going to be this week. Seeing as I found out yesterday that its in the beginning of november I can breathe a bit, maybe write some blog posts (?) and keep studying, because i'm so not ready yet... But i'm nearly there. I'm nearly finished. this bumpy three-year ride is nearly over. The end is in sight.

This is a familar feeling for this time of year. We have the most beautiful weather, with spring rapidly merging into summer, jacaranda trees bursting purple blooms all over the place, jasmine bushes and syringa trees more subtly perfuming the evenings, and the most fantastic high-veld storms cooling the evenings and lighting up the sky. And the only thing getting in the way of you just sitting back and soaking in the beauty is the last stretch of school work, matric, or university exams. Strangely enough its actually enough to incite some melancholy, it brings back so many memories from childhood through to student days, plus the remembered sense that you just have to get through this last stretch, and then its full blown summer, december holidays, and everything that comes with it...

Today has been a stormy, gloomy, rainy day. I love such weather, its the perfect punctuation to our mostly bright and sunny heat. And with it all comes some of the familiar and not unwelcome melancholy as well. I've been looping the Jars or Clay Furthermore double album all day. This is some of my favourite music, heavy with emotions and memories for me- and perfect for this weather, and this time of year- there are just so many memories to link the two, good and bad.

So hopefully more posts will follow with some D-related stuff that needs to be written and told. For today, i leave you with a particulary beautiful live version of a track from the Furthermore album- enjoy :)

dark romantic

In the spirit of finishing those experiments I mentioned last time, I've spent about 25 hours working on our lab's fluorescent microscope in the past week. Besides the obvious operating-the-microscope part, this also involves sitting in a specially cooled, 3x3 meter room, with walls painted black and no light bar that which the microscope itself throws at my sample on the stage, and a dim computer screen that I view the images on.  Spend enough time in the bat-cave that is the microscope room, and it's easy enough to go a little bat-nuts, especially in the moments (I've had many, many such moments) where stuff just doesn't want to work. That said, I love this microscope, lasers and all (in my science-warped head,  she's my baby), and this room can be as much a sanctuary as a mad-house.

I woke up this morning frustrated and exhausted- in the past 72 hours, just as I've decided to finally get round to basal testing, my blood sugar's gone bats on me. I've been chasing lows, I spike a little, I plummet back down low, I spike a lot, i level out, i plummet again... on and on it goes. add to that my CGM alarms that kept going off all night last night, convinced that I was dying, when this really was the one time I was level and in range.well, until i went low again as my alarm went off this morning...

suffice it to say I was in a dark mood when i got to the lab this morning. As I opened up the microscope room, surveying the quiet, the gloom, the little blinking lights on the monitors and boxes- there was a heavy, velvet peace in the air. As if the electronic darkness spoke to me, welcomed me into the sanctuary.
"hello, darkness, my old friend"
but a heavy darkness, not Art Garfunkel's, as melodic as his is. no, this darkness is deeper than that. And so today I share with you an old favourite, and the soundtrack to my refuge in the microscope room this morning.

The music, like an old friend, lifts my spirit a little, sparks some life in my gloom. My mood may still be dark, I may still be stuck in this dark bat-cave sanctuary for a while, my body may still be stuck on the glucocoaster. but i have hope and i seek patience. my sugars will level out. this work will finish.

It may still be dark where I am. So today, I'm calling myself a dark romantic. And I wait for the light.



[hat tip to the Awakening, by the way. An old favourite SA goth band, and owners of the music in the video and link]