what i do

so, many people have asked me to explain what i do, professionally, academically, whathaveyou, and i till this point have typically provided circuitous answers and evasions. it's not that i don't love you, it's just that eyes tend to gloss over when you mention words like "cortex" and "semantic encoding." but this hurts me, deep, like a knife. The short answer is that i study the biological basis of memory. glaze. What i do is interesting, at least to me, and though i have given short answers, i shy away from explanation because, frankly, who likes to talk shop?

But it is important, or at least interesting to discuss this sort of thing. These are things we use everyday, and i personally might benefit from you thinking about it and telling me what you think.

So, imagine that when you think about boobs, something in your brain happens. Whether you are thinking about what boobs look like, what boobs feel like, the last time you saw boobs, or the last time you felt (your own or someone else's) boobs, something in your brain is active and helping you think about those particular boobs. Keep thinking about that particular pair. Please.

So, let's say that you are thinking about the last time you touched the aforementioned boobs. Do you remember their softness? Do you remember how they looked? Do you remember that they made you feel grrrreat? There are lots of components to your memoryboobs, whether you are a more visual person, or a more emotional person, or you just slobber. These different qualities of your memoryboobs are things that i'm not really interested in. (Well, of course i am, but we're speaking academically.)

What i go after is what happens in your brain when you did what you just did. You brought up a thought of boobs. You had to use some sort of quality to get there, whether it was touch, taste, smell or emotion, but once you were thinking of your memoryboobs, you didn't rely just on those qualities. You could answer any number of questions about those boobs, desipite the most memorable feature. In otherwords, the qualities of a memory (of boobs and other things) have to come together somewhere. I study that coming together.

don't bomb when you're the bomb

What is obvious to me at this point in time is that i face almostcertain death from the Finnish Mob (no pun intended). The drunkenness of the night has finally wornoff, and i started remembering details that warrented me writing this out in full. So. In narrative form.
Last week I went with my friend Tom, who is the most affable andknowledgeable British dandy you could hope for, to a dinner his girlfriend Liz was hosting for her work. She is, currently, a junior marketing analyst for Forbes Magazine; remember Steve Forbes, the dork that ran for president (twice), under the guise of a "flat tax", and then bowed out (twice) only to make fun of himself by appearing on SNL as ... himself? Well, these people all have Steve on their speed-dials, they all wear tailored suits and trendy Italian eyewear, and they all get drink like fish when the bell rings.
We started at a pub, something slightly posh but still loud and dark, and i started drinking Guiness (on the tab, of course) becauseeven though i usually drink bitters, i hadn't eaten in a while (coupledays, actually). I earned a bit of respect from the American editorfor drinking the Guiness as fast as a normal beer, which goes to showyou how little Americans know about drinking in the first place. Then i started hitting on the Finnish editor's daughter (why he brought her, i have no idea, maybe he uses it to test for assholes), which was met with quite a few looks askance, and Tom pulling me aside, telling me "You tosser, she's pledged to Finnish royalty!" After 3 rounds (3?), we stumbled over to Brick Lane, which is this street that Brits go to if they want to feel colonial again; it's just rows of Indian restaurants, and the streets are full of Indian guys either trying to sell you hash or get you to come in their restaurants. You actually bargain with them outside before you come in, and typically you can get a couple nice bottles of wine and a 10%discount out of the deal before you step into the restaurant.
So asone of the junior executives is argueing his way into a bottle of Scotch, I'm outside fucking with the Finnish editor (who was, by theway, named "Finn"), in some ridiculous attempt to win over the dad.He's trying to ignore me, but he's also a bit dusted, so when herealizes i'm cooler than he is he humors me. Then he trips on thestreet. We get inside, and i by this time have turned the charm on to 11, cracking crude jokes and wearing tableflowers in my hair. I'm fuckingwith Finn's food, pouring onions in to his chicken korma, but he'ssort of beyond doing anything but whining, which is funny, given thathe's the spitting image of George Plimpton. Funnier because at somepoint everyone at the table starts comparing chesthair, and I with myItalian rug take the cake (Finn's chest, i remember, was bald asSavales, though i remember more some failed demands on his daughter)They goad me, because they get drunk easy, and they like theentertainment, and before i know it i'm eating a vindaloo that wouldburn a child if she sat next to it. I breathe fire on everyone, theyeat it up. At this point both the Finn and his daughter are rolling on thefloor, along with everyone else, and so i try and direct the madnesstheir way. What follows can only be described as a showstopper, but not really in the conventional, "positive" sense. I was getting readyto give Finn this great dare about putting his baby blue sweater overhis head and guessing who at the table is flicking him in the nose,but I open the sentence with, "So Finn, as one former Nazi sympathizerto another..." and the table goes silent (everyone forgets thoseFinnish were Axis), for about 3 seconds, after which Finn turns thecolor of the spicy food in my belly, and makes a grab for my face, to which to be done to torn asunder. I sprint from the table, as Finn isheld down by the burly London chief editor (Bob), and head down to the loo, which was, I remembered, quite posh, and had a nice couch i could cower on until Finn cooled off.
I was down there about 5 minutes until Tom came down, laughing hysterically, asking me what I was doing? When I said Hiding, he said "Yeah I know you're hiding, you'd better get used to it. Liz says Finn's got mob ties and you'rescrewed." I don't know if they were kidding, I haven't really talked to them since, and frankly I'm surprised I can remember this much. I remembercoming back up, and half the table gone (Scandinavian contingentincluded), the other half laughing and drunk and unrecognizable. Liz has a pretty grave face on, and she puts me in a cab while she stays and "does a bit of damage control," though, again, i have no idea ifthey're still fuckin with me. I just get in the cab, because I've got The Fear, and in my state i'm in no mood to exacerbate.

i missed the bus

I miss busses every day. I have to take two separate busses to getfrom my place to my school--the bus trips aren't long, it's just that London is a mess of streets and it's rare you take one to get to whereyou want. And the busses are the old double decker style, and usuallyfun to ride unless you've had too much to drink. Nonetheless, bussesmust be caught, and i am an expert and how not to catch busses. Part of it is inattention, part of it is obsessiveness. I would sit at abus stop and record every time and bus number if i didn't have ahundred things to do. Usually, one of those things is actuallycatching the bus. Missing a bus uually makes you feel like you are losing time. Time out of a schedule that is crafted, not by you, and not necessarily by a higher power, but by the world as a whole. In the complex system ofthe world, you had a place, and it was on that number 29 bus that just whisked past you. You can usually even watch them pass by. A visual marker of your inability to flow with your own program.

And this sort of thing happens all the time, not just with busses. Meetings, mail calls, TV shows, trains, dates, friends' parties, salesat H&M, double features at the cheap theatre, late night exhibitionsand due dates for presentations. Sometimes i get it right, and iremember to unlock my cell phone before i get the bus to the train tothe plane to Italy for the weekend, to see my parents and to give themimportant mail. But sometimes i miss. I think it's inevitable. Ithink anyone living in a city will only get 60% of it right. At best. I never really felt this way in St. Augustine. I never felt therewas a bus passing me by that i was missing. I don't mean thismetaphorically. I mean, there is nothing operating, really, to tell you if you're on time or not. My life there was, show up for work,leave work, relax myself until i was feeling unstressed, and then work on a project. Do it again. It wasn't so much that it wasn't a busylife; it was more that i never had to feel like i was/wasn't doing theright thing. Anything was ok, because "nothing" was so pervasive. I realize this is starting to sound like gibberish, but it's late and there are loud girls saying "Oi" next to me, and they won't fucking shut up.

I got a Chinese girl drunk today. I'm proud of that. Me and my greek friend, Demitrius, took out Mai Cheun and ordered her beers. It's officially a secret, but Chinese people are fucking hilarious drunks. Not on purpose, of course.

how are you doing in London?

short answer is that i am fine. If you took a statistical average of my moods over the past 3 months, running the gamut from urban wonder to gutter depression, the average, with a high degree of variability, would be "just fine." Of course, i don't think that i have been "just fine" since i got here, owing basically to the fact that London is both the perfect and the worst city for someone like me. Somedays i am working crazy, devising psych experiments and reading papers, writing on consciousness and what memory might look like in the brain, and then i come home and stay up all night with Greeks and Indians (london is full of greeks and indians), drinking and telling stories in ways that only cross-cultural groups can enjoy. Like a benetton commercial.

Some days are not so good, and they typically involve money, because most anything in this city involves money. London is, by far, the most expensive city on this earth. Never mind the crappy (and getting crappier) exchange rate with the dollar, just getting across the city can cost you $2 (bus), $4 (tube), or $10 (taxi), and that's just from my apartment to school. And i havent even mentioned my program, which is sort of a great example of why i have been sticking to neuroscience rather than psychology; my program is in the psych dept, and it's no surprise to tell you that psychologists are roughly 95% of the time full of horseshit. I don't know if it's a mark on the greatness of my New College education, but i learn little in the classes. The saving grace is the project i'm doing, which is good and is with good people, who are neuroscientists and not psychologists and like facts and socially relevant information.

What keeps me happy, what keeps me delighted and amused, is the details of history and the people around that i cannot help but become audience to. I live in an apartment within stone's throw of Harrod's, the hugest department store in the world, and also the poshest. Right now i sit in a hall 10 feet from the preserved body of Jeremy Bentham, the original Libertarian. People here speak in British accents ALL DAY LONG. How could i not be constantly amused?

The key is not to be lonely. Scratch that, the key is not even to be alone. I used to think there was significance in the difference between the two, but living in London is all or none, you're in or you're out, right now, join the party or suffer. So i'm trying to join the party, trying to date Finnish girls and Swiss girls, trying to drink half as many pints as my British friends and still be able to walk home.