I, a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe.
~Richard Feynman
A universe of atoms…
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Madness & Love
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There is always some madness in love.
But there is also always some reason in madness.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
AGU Fall Meeting 2012
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Here’s a quick blogpost about my favorite moments at AGU 2012 in San Francisco. Enjoy!
A new year!
Hello my Sweet Symbionts,
My 2012 was filled to the brim with many ups and downs, leaving little time to dedicate to my website. This year is going to be a fresh start! More artwork. More updates. More awesome. I’m going to keep a regular blog going where I will post about awesome things I stumble upon and learn. I’ll also regularly update my portfolio and current work.
A lot has happened since my last website blog update. Here’s a few of the highlights in a somewhat chronological order:
- Had an internship at NOVA Science, WGBH
- Wrote three articles for the NOVA Blog
- Co-chaired a successful MIT Senior Ball 2012
- Partied it up with all my friends at the Sheraton with a view of all of Boston and Cambridge!
- Took my favorite class at MIT – Philosophy of Love with Lee Perlman
- Visited a women’s high security prison and spoke to the women about the philosophy of love and their personal experiences–it was absolutely amazing
- Saw the Fractals Rock! Planetarium show at the Boston Museum of Science and became completely obsessed with fractals
- Completed my senior thesis without spontaneously combusting
- Had a crash course in and therefore learned LaTex while writing my beast of a senior thesis (wish I had used it more in undergrad)
- Awarded the Christopher Goetze Prize for undergraduate research for my senior thesis work
- Had my senior thesis published on the MIT CGCS website
- Completed senior year of MIT with straight As…never thought I’d see the day!
- Graduated undergrad and had a great Commencement
- Visited the Harvard Forest, Alpaca Farm, & Carter & Steven’s Ice Cream in Petersham, MA
- Had a short stint as a researcher to wrap up lab work
- Spent a relaxing summer in MA, AZ, CA, PA, and D.C.
- Had time to start painting my universe series of watercolors
- Moved to Washington, D.C.
- Started my master’s program at CCT in Georgetown University
- Learned python
- Learned Adobe InDesign and Illustrator
- Edited my first Wikipedia article (of many to come)
- Visited Boston for Laura Meredith’s PhD defense and got to catch up with friends
- Had an amazing 22nd birthday filled with family, sisters, and loved ones
- Voted for our President and ran the streets of D.C. to the White House on election nights to celebrate!
- Became a Fractal Ambassador for the Fractal Foundation
- Conceptually designed a Botany Game App
- Made my first tumblr portfolio
- Attended AGU Fall 2012 and presented a poster on my senior thesis research with generous support from MIT, CCT, and AGU
- Started honing my areas of interest in the Earth Sciences
- Decided to pursue a degree in Earth Science after my masters!
- Traveled to AZ, NM, TX, OK, PA, and DC over winter break and celebrated New Years in Albuquerque, NM with awesome people!
- Built my first snowman and it was over 6 feet tall!
- Saw my first snowman melt away just 2 hours after we made it…
Phew!
Now as 2013 beings, I’ve set some exciting goals for myself to accomplish by the summer:
- Be more active and continue to cook interesting foods
- Get better at Python and programming in general
- Stop biting my nails (already doing better)
- Edit key Wikipedia pages in which I have a strong knowledge base
Figure out a topic for my master’s thesis- Get back to playing the piano
- Make at least one piece of art every month
- Figure out a good way to either get work done or actually sleep on MegaBus
- Apply for PhD programs and fellowship grants
- Design a product and develop it – more details to come!
Travel.Travel. Travel.- Find a great internship or job for this summer :)
Use my Android sleep app to get better at sleeping (sad, but true)- Take a stab at starting my own science podcast with my favorite physicist
- Publish my first paper in an academic journal
- Continue to learn about my favorite concepts such as emergence, complexity, fractals, chaos, life, the universe, and everything else
- Update and develop sweet symbiosis on a regular basis!
Here’s to a happy, active, and exciting new year and website ;)
The Last Cookie
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Now, most of my lovely visitors are used to seeing my artwork on Sweet Symbiosis. This time around, I wanted to showcase the artwork of my wonderful boyfriend, Robert. Although we share many of the same perspectives on life, we often see the world through different lenses. I am an earth scientist and he is a theoretical physicist. In this gallery are two images: one from a Deepa perspective and one from a Robert perspective. For our one year anniversary, Robert drew two intertwined nautiluses and this year for Valentine’s Day he surprised me with a cosmic, space-time version of the original drawing. Intelligent and elegant, as always.
Although tempting, I’m going to refrain from going into a philosophical rant about love. I think Cookie Monster said it best: “Sometimes me think what is love, and then me think love is what last cookie is for. Me give up the last cookie for you.”
I love you, Robert!
- by Robert Haussman
- by Robert Haussman
A Little Cosmic Perspective
Our ability to dream has always been intertwined with the universe. When our ancient ancestors looked up at the night sky, they didn’t see just a tapestry of stars–they saw stories, the unknown, the future. Their imagination turned the stars into constellations!
It makes me wonder about the world’s largest cities, clouded by light pollution, surrounded by sound. In our time of constant information transfer, do we ever really have a moment to ourselves? A moment to listen, to look up to the stars, and to dream?
When I was a young girl, every week I would receive a pamphlet (or two) detailing some interesting tid bit of the universe from alien lifeforms and black holes to strange stars and x-rays! I now have a collection of hundreds of these pamphlets and it’s one of my most prized possessions.
I remember being entranced by the knowledge, the speculations, the mystery of the unknown. It made me dream about life on Earth and life elsewhere in the universe and what it must feel like to see the Earth from the surface of the moon! My childhood wonder is a product of my ability to imagine. As Carl Sagan said, “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.”
Space, more than anything else, inspires man. It is the most vast, empty, and limitless construct we have come to understand. Every day we learn more about our universe. But its emptiness is a gift because we can fill it with our dreams. So what about the future of NASA and all later missions that have shaped human technology and thought? I think Niel deGrasse Tyson captures this notion well:
As Carl Sagan once said, “We are a way for the universe to know itself.” Our search for understanding the cosmos reveals more about humanity, our accomplishments, failures, our limits, and our unbounded vision. It is imperative that we always question and examine our universe and that we do so with the most modern of technology.
Now, enough of that, here’s the real reason NASA is amazing!
Images via Unimpressed Astronaut
And lastly…
Hold Your Breath
Consciousness drifts like
a dandelion dancing in air
Free
Curious
Seeds tickling my nose before I blow–
The instant of pure magic
between a wish and a floating
Dream
Dancing
Drifting into infinity
Where I call your name
and a heartbeat answers…
It is my own.
Hold your breath.
I
you
we
are an echo:
A shared dream bouncing across the universe
Found only through the
echolocation of souls–
An unspoken
unknown
understanding.
Somewhere between us
a wish is heard
and through a shared consciousness
A dream becomes
one
wishful
breath
closer to reality
Make a wish of your own at http://neave.com/dandelion/
Emergence
Click on the image for a larger version of my painting!
Inspired by the processes of accretion and evolution, I painted Emergence as an exploration of color and the medium of watercolor itself. Unlike other types of paint, watercolor’s fluidity makes it an interesting challenge. In order to achieve certain effects, you need to let the water guide your brushstrokes.
Haikus on Love
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Open your book and
press me in like dried flowers,
for your eyes to readTake me in your hands
and hold me there forever–
you are my freedom
‘Twas only a game
of cosmic hide-and-seek, Love.
Bound to happen, right?Jump start the rhythm,
you pacemaker of my heart.
Always right on beat.Why do we dare seek
that, which we know, may harm us?
Curiosity.
Blushing Trees & Crunching Leaves
If I had only one word to describe autumn, it would be…crisp.
The chilly breeze, crunching and rattling leaves, and the changing colors of the trees.
All of my senses absolutely love this season. In particular, I love
- Getting caught in a whirlwind of amber, crimson, and ocher leaves
- The smell and taste of pumpkin, cinnamon, allspice, star anise and clove
- Bundling up in layers of clothes because I’m never quite ready for the cold
- Letting a perfect breeze blow through my hair
- The sound of rattling leaves getting tossed in the wind
But what I love most of all is going out of my way to find the driest of leaves and crunching them! It is so utterly satisfying. It’s a personal challenge that causes me to constantly seek out the crispiest leaf. Every sidewalk suddenly becomes a new adventure. Every pile of leaves is a new playground.
All of you who know me, can understand how much I love trees. My admiration for them exponentially grows with this season. I will miss their luscious canopies but I just love how beautifully they blush before they shed their leaves, leaving them exposed and naked to the elements in the dead of winter.
Taking a stroll through Cambridge and Boston, I wanted to capture the beauty of this season. Here’s what I found:
On my way back, I even stumbled upon an existential (yet comforting) message…
I will leave you all with a haiku I wrote about the fall:
Spiraling downward,
flames of photosynthesis
become ash and earth.
If you would like to see more of my autumn photos, check out my gallery!
The Northern Wind
The northern gale paralyzes all in its path.
Sneering through the skies,
each gelid breeze chills the veins of the leaves
and rips off the autumn pages
from the oak tree’s spine.
It is far too cold to hold on.
One by one,
The shivering leaves spiral downward
until the last has fallen
a shaking, rattling, blinking farewell.
Inspired by my first autumn in Cambridge…
Once piled near the roots
that brought them to life,
the pages of her story flip away.
Deciduously crisp, the skeletal oak stands.
Her full strength for all wandering eyes to see;
Parables for those who choose to listen;
Ancient secrets planted in concentric rings,
hers alone to hold onto,
while the elements wash through.
The once blazing mass simmers and sinks into the earth,
and from the glowing ashes,
another chapter starts anew.
