{"id":8513,"date":"2013-11-09T18:09:51","date_gmt":"2013-11-09T23:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=8513"},"modified":"2013-11-09T18:47:56","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T23:47:56","slug":"on-being-a-ghost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=8513","title":{"rendered":"On Being a Ghost"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.”
\n\u2013 Rainer Maria Rilke, Herbsttag<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Wanderer<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent my life being a feral orphan \u2013 an outsider in my adopted culture and in both my beloved vocations. I suspect the attitude formed and hardened early, a result of being a bright loner and part of a politically persecuted family. In school I always sat in the very back, against the wall, able to see everyone and be seen by none. In science I consciously chose to explore paths rarely traveled \u2013 which set a feedback loop of invisibility even when the results of my research carved new paths. By deciding to write fiction and poetry in English but with content (and, in part, a mindset) rooted in my natal culture, I ensured invisibility in that domain as well.<\/p>\n

At the same time, by becoming a bench scientist, I tethered myself to equipment, to the need for lab personnel. Being a hostage, a captive chained to oars, went against my grain. Sometimes I felt like Anakin immured inside his prison shell. Whenever I contemplated my precious unique reagents, I always thought of my great-grandparents, forced to abandon their home in Constantinople. Such an uprooting happened to me, too, though I kept control of the ensuing Viking funeral. I disassembled my lab with my own hands, walked away from my academic title with its ambiguous perks and prestige. Now I\u2019m free again, a leaf on the wind, a nomad with few possessions except what\u2019s between my ears.<\/p>\n

As I write this, I am attending a two-day conference focused on RNA metabolism and its effects on brain function. I watch well-known names jockeying for dominance and more fame, newcomers fighting to establish territories and alliances, the stomping-till-churned-to-mud over this year\u2019s \u201chot topics\u201d and I find myself hard-pressed not to smile. Science and writing can no longer scrape my heart, even though I still love them passionately. Pain goes through me like neutrinos through matter. I wonder if that\u2019s what Virginia Woolf meant when she spoke of the Olympian detachment she deemed the highest attainment for a creator \u2013 though I suspect she knew, as do I, that passion is the last thing to die in us.<\/p>\n

\"Moon-Owl\"<\/a>\u201cThey’re all gone now, and there isn’t anything more the sea can do to me…. I’ll have no call now to be up crying and praying when the wind breaks from the south \/\/. I’ll have no call now to be going down \/\/ in the dark nights after Samhain, and I won’t care what way the sea is when the other women will be keening.\u201d
\n\u2013 Maurya, in Riders to the Sea<\/em> by John Millington Synge<\/p>\n

Images:<\/strong> The Wanderer and Her Shadow<\/em>, by BobCatD;<\/a> Moon-Tree-Owl<\/a> (detail)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.” \u2013 Rainer Maria Rilke, Herbsttag I\u2019ve spent my life being a feral orphan \u2013 an outsider in my adopted culture and in both my beloved vocations. I suspect the attitude formed and hardened early, a result of being a bright loner and part of a politically […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}