I have been home from New England for three days now and I am still unpacking. I have a fondness, inherited from my mother, for tote bags, briefcases, backpacks, and other portable bags with lots and lots of inner compartments. These bags are now fashionable and available all over the place so I have acquired more tote bags than the proverbial God. Each of these bags, which I took on my trip, was packed with Stuff, picked up at Worldcon or wherever, which I have to examine. Some of the Stuff may be important business contacts, I never know. Other Stuff includes ancient packets of sugar, Pepcid tablets, little sheafs of (unused) tissues, small notebooks which may contain important information, a floppy disk or two, an eraser, tiny pocket calculators, pens and pencils, and maybe even money. (I wish.)

ThatÂ's just examples of the small stuff which got into the pockets. I also collected papers and booklets, especially freebies which were handed out at the convention. They are tucked into the larger, flat pockets of the tote bags. Some of these papers have math demonstrations worked out on them, from when a Friendly Scientist explained exponential functions to me in the Con Suite. Others have more jotted notes on them, which may or may not have important business or artistic potential for me. I am still picking up this material and much more. I havenÂ't even gotten to the more valuable stuff yet, such as my own remaining prints and other art-related purchases I made at the Worldcon dealersÂ' room.

I unpacked my Â"media bagÂ" tonight, which contained many books and papers, and my film camera and roll of film containing shots of the costumes at Worldcon. The media bag also had my math books in it. I was wondering when I would get to take the math out. I had not done math for about five days and the internal reminder light was blinking. I opened up my book and put the math things back in my studio. Looking at the book I got that momentary sick feeling I get when I havenÂ't done math in some time and I donÂ't recognize what I was just studying intensely a week ago. This feeling is exactly like descending from a high-rise floor in an elevator. When it first starts downwards, you have the unpleasant feeling that it may not be under control and will accelerate toward the ground until you are smashed. But as with math, the elevator (at least so far) delivers me safely to the ground floor, and I realize that the forbidding equation on page 690 is the one I did dozens of exercises with just a week ago.

Meanwhile, my favorite volcano, Mount Etna in Sicily, popped open last weekend (10-12 September) and started pouring out lava again, after more than two years of inactivity. It is still pouring out a river of lava, on a high, uninhabited slope. Within a day of the new activity, Web cameras were trained on the new crater and lava river, so that volcano fans like me could get a close-up view. You can see the river of fire at this Italian site where it appears as smoke by day, fire by night.

I have not unpacked everything. There is no art going on in my studio. A number of things went undone at my day job because I was not there, and they were glad to have me back. ItÂ's nice to have oneÂ's work appreciated and even needed. I also have a number of small art jobs, long ago promised to friends, that I must do right away. But now I must go back to rummaging in all those hundreds of pockets. There are still many things I have not found yet.

Posted at 12:12 pm | link