Lessons from Computational Chemistry!

Hello, hello!

If anyone could explain to me how there is less than a week left of the long month of August, I would be most grateful.

I find myself back in my SoCal home... somewhat disoriented, excited, distraught, happy, lonely, scared, nostalgic... yearning at turns for comfiness&coziness and for excitement&adventure.

Mostly, I feel very unprepared about the unreal reality that, granted the benevolence of the Fates, I shall be leaving for Budapest in five days(!!).

The last two weeks or so since I last wrote were a little crazy, and quite wonderful.

Research ended nicely- and I shall attempt to provide an explanation of the exciting things I was doing! :]

Brace yourself, dear Reader. We are in for a trip!

So... Our simulations for LTA were failing quite miserably, and we believe the cause (or one major cause, anyway) to be the presence of a dipole in our unit cell structure (we'll talk more about dipoles later).

Backing up a bit. My work was with zeolites. Zeolites are pretty crystals, which means they have repetitive structural units-- aka unit cells. What this means is that you can tile a bunch of unit cells together to get a zeolite-- this not only contributes to the beauty of staring at atom-level pictures of zeolites (which I am fond of doing), but it also means that we can save ourselves time by exploiting the symmetry of the system. Look! A picture!

A unit cell is here boxed in red.

In order to run our simulations, we tile together something like 12 to 36 unit cells (pretending we actually have a 2D system, we can see 4 unit cells in the picture) because 1) we can't afford to try to model a super large system and 2) we can use tricks to make the system seem bigger than it actually is (to get more realistic results).

[For those more mathematically inclined, refer to periodic boundary conditions (we’re mapping onto a torus!!)]

We have essentially two versions of the code that controls our simulations-- one which uses Ewald summation to deal with interactions between charges, and one which does not. For the purposes of this discussion, it doesn’t matter what Ewald does. I’m just using it to differentiate between two different ways of running the simulation. The important thing here is that the version of the code which uses Ewald (which is the version we were interested in) needs the coordinates of the unit cell to be such that the center is (0,0). The other important thing is that using Ewald requires that the unit cell not have a dipole.

For those of us who do not remember what a dipole is, dipoles emerge when you have an imbalance of charge. To use my professor's example from intro chem, think of elephants pulling on a rope tied to a tree. If you have two elephants pulling just as hard in exactly opposite directions, the tree will not fall over. If one is pulling harder than the other, or if they’re pulling in a way that the forces they are exerting on the tree don’t cancel out, the tree will fall over. So having a dipole è the tree falls over.

In this case, we don’t want the tree to fall over.

So we want a structure centered at zero. However, the crystal structure does not start off this way. Instead, it starts off such that the (0,0) point is at the lower left corner.

Original, Uncentered LTA Crystal Structure

Ewald thinks that this is not okay, and so there is a function in the Ewald code that “centers” the structure to make sure that the structure is the way that it likes it.

At least theoretically.

Problem: Somehow or another this function was not working quite properly. The original crystal structure has no dipole (we know this because when we use the non-Ewald version of our code, all is well, and when we use Ewald, things go terribly wrong), but after centering it, it does. This suggests that something funky is going on... and the crystal is not, in fact, being centered properly.

 So, my job for the last few days of summer research was to understand what was going on with the centering process— with the goal of modifying the crystal structure such that it is centered (and dipole-less) to begin with, and undergoes no modification when put through the centering function in the Ewald code.

Summary:

How things are--

 Crystal structure (no dipole, uncentered) --[Ewald centering function]--> Weird, dipole-carrying structure

How I want things to be--

 Modified, centered structure –[Ewald centering function]--> Still nice and centered structure

Alright, so now the problem-solving part.

First, some terminology. 

Because I can’t look at the structure in 3D very easily, I was looking at projections onto a plane.

So what does this mean?

Imagine you’re looking at a cube. This is 3D. Now imagine you start to push on the top of the cube and the inside of the cube kind of collapses so you can flatten the cube into the ground, and you’re just left with…. 

A square, yes? (Yes.) That square is the projection of the cube onto a plane.

Or, if we started off with a delicious donut and for some reason decided to squash it down instead of eat it, we’d get two concentric circles as the projection onto what I shall arbitrarily term the xy plane:

A torus (or mathematical donut)

    

Projection of torus onto plane

(Credit goes to http://mathforum.org/mathimages/index.php/Torus)

[Of course, there’s no reason why you must squish your donut down towards the floor. You could also think of squashing it against a wall—what would that look like?]

Now that we have that, the pictures we saw earlier were the projections of the crystal structure onto the xy plane. And, again, here is the original, uncentered structure:

And here is the output of the centering function (again, projection onto the xy plane), which then gets used in the simulation:

Centered structure.
Red = oxygen atoms, blue = silicon atoms

See how we’re now “centered” at zero?

However, there is a problem, and it is one which would clearly give rise to a dipole. Remember, we want things to be nice and symmetric (such that for any elephant pulling in one direction, there is another elephant pulling just as hard in the opposite direction to balance things out)—but they are not!

(The problem is with the O atoms, specifically, so here we're just showing the oxygens)

Essentially, in the orange circles we have little oxygen elephants pulling on an imaginary tree at the origin. The problem is, the other two edges are missing little oxygen elephants-- so the tree is going down! Oh noes! 

If we look back at the uncentered structure, which has both Si and O atoms (they're just both in the same color [we also have these "X" atoms at the center of each "ball," but don't worry about that]), we see that we have elephant oxygens along all four edges (as well as two sets along each axis)-- but once we center it, we lose two edges of elephant oxygens, and the tree comes crashing down. Clearly something is amiss.

This means it is time to understand the behavior of the centering function!

Initially, I started trying to think in 2D, and this led to my being very confused about what was happening, such that I didn’t get the point of how things worked. Bad idea.

Lesson learned: when trying to understand something, it’s not stupid or simple-minded to start off with the simple model. Au contraire! Keeping things basic allows you to see and understand the important behavior, which will help you out when the system becomes more complicated. At any rate, it’s what scientists seem to believe, and it was wisdom that served me well.

So, let’s focus on 1D.

First, the function:

 x_new = x_old – ROUND(x_old/L)*L    (where L is the length of the unit cell)

So let’s pretend we’re looking at a unit cell (in this case, let’s just look at a line segment) of length 8, and let’s see what happens at each “quarter point” – so what happens to 0, 2, 4, 6, and 8.

 

For 0:                          

  x_new = 0 – ROUND(0/8)*8

        = 0 – ROUND(0)*8

        = 0 – 0*8

        = 0

For 4:

  x_new = 4 – ROUND(4/8)*8

        = 4 – ROUND(0.5)*8

        = 4 – 1*8

        = -4

For 8:

 x_new = 8 – ROUND(8/8)*8 = 0

For 2:

 x_new = 2 – ROUND(2/8)*8 = 2

For 6:

 x_new = 6 – ROUND(6/8)*8 = -2

To illustrate what happens, we can look at the original line, and see where the original points end up in the centered line:

                

             Original line:

               

             

Transformed line:

The color coding is intended
 to "trace" points.

Now, I will point out the interesting things. The points from 0 to right up to 4 (or more generally, from 0 to right up to L/2) end up being unchanged. The points from 4 to 8 (or L/2 to L) end up becoming the negative half of the line (well, plus 0), with L/2 becoming –L/2. It’s like we have cut the original line at the halfway point and moved what used to be the upper half to the end, so that the last point (L, or 8 in thi case) matches up with zero.  

The problem is, that now we have two points that get transformed to zero, and we have no point mapped onto 4, or L/2.

To look at more pretty pictures of projections of LTA….

Below, I noted how the transformation works. The blue is the original input structure, and the beige is the “centered” structure. Because the unit cell has so many nice lines of symmetry, I considered what happened to each of the four “balls” that make up the unit cell. If you don't get what's going on, don't worry about it, and just admire the pretty picture (at least, I think it's pretty). Or use the discussion about our 1D model to try to make sense of it! :]

     

Once again, I used color coding to trace things.
The arrows are intended to provide  perspective.

And here we see that the “missing points” in the projection are located at Lx/2 and Ly/2, which is to be expected from our discussion.

 

In other words... it's like instead of having a set of elephants along each edge, as well as along the axes, we now have relocated the elephants which should be along the edges corresponding to the midpoints (Lx/2, and Ly/2) to the x and y axes (respectively). This means we have two sets of oxygen elephants located along the axes... stacked on top of each other, so to speak. This image, quite properly, is rather ridiculous.

Now I’ll fast forward the story, because I’ve probably already long lost my few readers.

(As always, feel free to ask me about anything I've mentioned. I'd LOVE to talk about it!)

Basically, we have the points at both 0 and L mapping on to the new zero point. So what I did was figure out which points in the centered structure which were located at zero (or rather, along an axis) originally came from a point whose x, y, or z value was equal to L, and then moved that point in the centered structure from 0 to L/2. [Well, actually, I moved it just a teeeeny bit to the left of L/2, because if you’ll remember, a point at L/2 gets moved to –L/2 (4 got moved to -4, in our 1D example above)].
To translate into elephant language, I looked at the silly stack of elephants on the axes and relocated the elephants on top to a more dignified position-- along the empty edges.

At the end of this process I had a centered, dipoleless structure (uh, in theory…). Moreover, because this structure is already centered, upon going through the centering function, nothing changes.

Here is the result of centering my new centered input structure (also, just so you know, the projections onto the yz and xz planes look the same):

                         

Yay! Things appear to be fixed!

BUT WAIT. The problem was the dipole, and now I needed to actually calculate the dipole and make sure it was zero. I’ll spare you the detail, but… THE STRUCTURE STILL HAD  A DIPOLE! Granted, it was a much smaller dipole than it originally had… but still! Not cool, man!

Unfortunately, this realization happened at nearly the end of my last day of research, and there was no real time to do more problem-solving.

What I can say is the following. If you will recall, all these pretty pictures are projections onto a plane—aka, squished donuts. I would argue that squished donuts are not as enjoyable as real donuts, and it is much the same with these projections. You lose information in the flattening process.

To get an idea of this, imagine that cube again. Now imagine giving the side edges of the cube a jagged cut, so when you look at it straight ahead, you see something like:

  

                                                             

The problem is, if you squish it toward the ground, you still just see:

This isn’t the best example, but the point is, we can imagine that there was important information being lost in the squishing process, such that while the projection was nicely symmetric (and thus dipole-less), the 3D structure still had rowdy elephants causing problems and knocking over trees.

Unfortunately, my story ends here. I have a bit more detailed information about the remaining problem (ask if interested), but alas, at this point my research time was over, and I needed to get ready to get on a plane to visit a certain Russian-enthusiast close to my heart (if very far away in spacetime). So I still don’t understand exactly what was happening in the 3D structure that I wasn’t seeing in the projections, and I don’t understand at all how that problem came about.

I did learn a few things, though, including:

1) I love staring at pictures of pretty crystals. !

2) Start small when trying to understand tricky things.

3) It’s okay to feel clueless and lost and not good enough. You are good enough. Just take a  deep breath, and start grasping onto whatever you can. Eventually things will start to make   sense.

4) It is good to start small, but don’t be surprised (or traumatized) when you take it up a level, and suddenly things are broken again. You’ve made progress! And you’re that much better at fixing things.

I learned this while getting lost in lines of Fortran and suspecting I was actually stupid and incompetent and while fearing that I would never understand what the hell was going on with these zeolite things…

But I suspect that what I learned this summer will extend far beyond the abstract world of atomistic simulations and impact the way I carry myself in everyday life--  in the same surprising way that playing around with code can extend beyond the virtual world and uncover some truth about reality.

Huzzah for computational chemistry! :D

A Summery Crescendo- And a Happy Belated Blogiversary!

Ah, hello lovely people!

Well. It is strange to say, but my summer is coming to a spectacular crescendo finish.
This image of my dry-erase monthly calendar, as written in on August 1st (more things have since been added) may give you an idea of how spectacular life appears right now:

I am currently in the ninth, and penultimate week of my computational chemistry research, which transitions to a Dylan-reunion in which I get to spend FIVE GLORIOUS DAYS with a most-beloved boyfriend I won't have seen in 5 months (and whom I will almost certainly not see again for another four...), only to arrive home with just enough time to bask in the light of kinship before going to BUDAPEST for a semester.
AH!

These super-exciting things are interspersed with smaller but also very exciting things-- like the happy "girls' night" which awaits me in but half an hour, a happy anniversary, a chem talk to be delivered on my research for the last nine weeks, a canoe adventure with the chem department, a celebratory dinner at my professor's house, and my last four remaining Summer Social Dance clubs! If we conveniently ignore the miserable packing process which must occur in the next ten days, the next three weeks promise virtually nonstop happiness and excitement. And, given that I then transition into a voyage to Europe...
Life is so great.
I am happy and excited.

In general, I think this summer has been a happy one. I think I have done well in life since turning twenty. Despite the suggestions of my previous post... (it was not a good day or week, and it is acceptable to have those moments of sadness and weakness) I really have done a much better job of feeling confident, worthy of love, and capable of standing alone.

In the past I have struggled tremendously with giving myself credit for anything. While I highly prize modestly and humility, I still think that it is important to give credit where credit is due-- and I have slowly been able to say, "You know what, self- I am proud of you for that. That was difficult, but you pulled through. Nicely done."

Near the end of my "Spring Quest" I mentioned that, in a way, I would be away from Home for a while. I expected year 20 to be a hard one. It's certainly not over yet, but as I reach the almost-half-point, I would say it is less of a hard one than a challenging one with great opportunity for growth. It is true that I have had moments of insecurity and loneliness and sadness. BUT those days could be counted on a hand! (Maybe two hands...) I expected to feel estranged and alone in a kind-of-exciting-but-mostly-scary foreign land.
Instead, what I see is a large number of new friends and acquaintances-- I have effectively expanded the stretch of metaphorical land that I can call "home."
I have helped create a wonderful summer social dance community filled with people I have grown exceedingly fond of, I have deepened old and developed new friendships, I have learned that I can hold a conversation with people I don't know very well and have a wonderful time without crumbling into crippling awkward-nerd-girl-awkwardness. I have gained a smidgen of culinary experience, explored the natural beauty surrounding my Carletonian home, learned that I actually kind of enjoy running (what?), discovered that piano is awesome and beautiful, become fluent in the language of zeolites, and generally partaken in wonderful growth.

There are challenges ahead, however!
I have about a year before I need to make scary decisions about life post-Carleton.
I have three months to take Europe by storm. (Yeah, life is hard...)
I have to learn to be strong and to actually communicate my thoughts to those around me.
I have to push myself to continue creeping outside my comfort zone.

I thought I wouldn't make it past the level of Slightly Slower Slug... but we're making it to Slow Swan this year!

To my very small handful of Readers, happy belated blogiversary!
Yup, this little blog has been in existence for a little over 365 days (372 to be exact).  I don't know that the blog has grown all that much... but I think that I have grown more than I expected. And I would like to thank you, rare and dear Reader, for sharing in that wonderful process with me.

I hope year two brings even more exciting challenges, adventures, and happiness.

Huzzah! Cheers!
:D

Enter that Lovely Maiden, Beauty

Hello Reader-Dearest!

The summer is now well underway.

I am now a competent Fortran-er and somewhat literate in the zeolite world.
Wait, now that I think of it, I don't think I ever mentioned what specifically I am researching this summer. Well... as specifically as it gets.

A model of  LTA, one of the zeolites
we shall be focusing on this summer. 

I am working on simulations of these lovely aluminosilicate minerals called zeolites. "Zeolite" is a fairly broad category. There are a number of different crystalline structures and zeolites can have different chemical compositions, but we're mostly dealing with silicon, oxygen, and aluminum. The cool thing is, their microporous nature makes them good molecular sieves. In particular, zeolites have been found to selectively adsorb carbon dioxide over nitrogen, hydrogen, methane, and other gases. This makes zeolites very promising materials for a number of processes, most notably carbon dioxide separation and sequestration. In the past, my professor and her students have studied pure silica zeolites (well, Si and O actually, but the key point is no aluminum) with varying structural properties, so as to examine the importance of pore structure to selective CO2 adsorption. This summer, we are going to start working on introducing aluminum into the mixture.

A structural model of MFI, another cool zeolite.

As for my own contribution... well, I only just received "the code" on Wednesday... and was immediately utterly lost in the dense network of files and the endless sea of Fortran lines contained therein. Yesterday I managed to calm some of that despair and anxiety so as to make fair progress in getting a better idea of how things fit together, but there is a very, very long way to go. However, I did submit my first few runs today! Yay! Look for more updates in the future!

I must say that, overall, I have been rather pleased with the path my summer has taken. I think I may say that I have successfully rekindled my devotion to the fair goddess, Beauty.

I cannot assure you of the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, benevolent God, but I can attest to the presence of this lovely maiden. I have caught glimpses of her darting swiftly between trees, and placing blossoms in flowing hair strewn over sun-kissed prairie grass; I have seen her floating serenely on the river and heard her joining in on birdsong whilst I make my way through the arboretum. I have heard her at turns laughing at me and soothing me with her song as I feebly attempt to coax music from the keys of a piano. I have seen her hand in gorgeous sunsets and clear blue skies, in giant dandelions, and in graceful, swooping little birds. I have yet to see it myself, but I have heard that she has even taken some of her beauty and placed it within tiny creatures, that they may bring light to the summer sky even when she has gone to her slumber or joined her sisters in distant lands for merrymaking.

Yes, piano adventures and arb runs have made it a lovely, beautiful summer indeed. The arb runs are unfailingly splendid- the piano, less so. But I think I have fallen in love with it nonetheless. I cringe whenever I play a false key, and I feel terribly embarrassed when I stumble over pieces like the too-familiar "Jingle Bells," but my soul begins to thrill when a piece which initially sent a series of winces shuddering through me comes together to resemble something which I may call music. Granted I can only play short and very simple pieces, but I am easily enraptured by the lovely sounds which that instrument is capable of producing when properly encouraged to do so. All in all, I am pleased with the progress I have made in two weeks of playing for about an hour a day, and I am very excited for the next seven weeks! I dare not strive for beauty, for something deep and soul-striking, but I do hope that by the end of it I can play something which may be rightly termed lovely. Nothing crazy or complicated, but still charming.

In addition to the beauty of piano and the natural wonders surrounding Carleton, I have found great pleasure in the social benefits of a Carleton summer. It is wonderful to be at Carleton, to be learning new things and challenging myself intellectually on a daily basis, and to still have time for casual hour-long chats with new acquaintances, for skype sessions with old friends, for cooking adventures, for Sayles slumber parties, for movie-watching, and for pioneering a summer social dance club. I have great hopes for this Summer Social Dance Club (hereafter to be referred to as SSDC), despite what appear to be administrative attempts to crush it. Well, not exactly. But it is very frustrating that the school insists on shutting down all of the buildings after work hours. Nonetheless, this week was very successful in bringing together new and old social dancers, and I now feel like I have dance children to teach and tend to and befriend this summer. It is very exciting! Hopefully logistics will not prove disastrous... but I have high hopes. I look forward to making friends with these new people and hopefully incorporating them into social dance culture!

In short, summer is lovely and sweet. I have been reminded that life has great potential for beauty, if I only toil faithfully to seek her out. She is a shy creature, and must be treated tenderly, but she is sweet and devoted if you patiently cultivate her friendship. I do hope that we may become fast friends.

Happy Summer, dear ones!   

Renewing Aurora-worship

Lately I have felt extravagantly, guiltily lazy. This morning I arose from my bed at 11:15. I wasted time on the internet. I did listen to a fairly interesting philosophical podcast, but I also idled away with alarmingly mindless facebook-ing.

I often find it difficult to become energized over the summer for what appear to be essentially existential problems.

I could go and read a book. I could stare at the wall for hours. I could go for a run. I could stare emptily at a screen.

Who cares? (No one.) What difference does it make? (None at all.)

This bothers me.

I hate mindlessness, idleness, purposelessness.
It’s the accusation I can never rid myself of. I don’t know how to pinpoint flaws; there’s nothing wrong… but nothing that’s quite right, either. There’s not much of anything, really.

I want very badly to do something. I crave purpose and passion. I have a passion for passion, but lack the substance at which to direct this energy. I am sorely in need of a mission.

It can be difficult for me to make the connection between my day’s decision (Do I read? Do I sketch? Do I… do nothing?) and the advancement of some worthy cause. It seems clear that it is preferable to embark on some task of self-improvement than to engage in obviously useless activities…

But why is this preferable? What assumptions are at hand? My behavior seems to suggest that my body contests assumptions which my mind is eager to promote.

It bothers me to feel overtaken by lethargy when I know that the pursuit of ideas is noble and exciting. Reading a book is a wonderful thing! Okay, maybe the production of this sketch is not particularly important, but cultivating a skill is a wonderful thing, and this is a step in that process. My life feels narrow and inconsequential, and yet I persist in believing that the individual is important!

How do I reconcile this? How do I “feel” better, when I “know” better? How do I convince myself that my decisions are consequential, when, at the moment, they seem so unbearably trivial?

I think this is part of the reason I am so enthralled by Walden. “Economy” and “Where I Lived and What I Lived For” are spectacular. Particularly the sections on Aurora*. Thoreau’s writing teems with infectious vigor, and I can always count on certain passages of Walden to inspire me to look beyond the seeming smallness of my life and to strive to take charge of my existence.

Yes, I am incredibly small. But I am neither wholly powerless nor meaningless.

Perhaps it’s not immediately apparent that my decisions carry weight. But choosing to create meaning in my life is remarkably powerful. Even if it’s just reading a book rather than thoughtlessly scrolling down a page- I will respect myself more for that decision, and if I respect myself I may trust myself to do important work for others. I may come across powerful ideas. I may gain valuable knowledge about myself and others. I may set myself on a path filled with strange wonders.

And that can, indeed, make all the difference.

*What follows is almost certainly the most inspiration-dense text I have ever come across, straight from “Where I lived and what I lived for,” Walden, by Henry David Thoreau. For me, reading this is to fall in love anew:

I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching-thang to this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again." I can understand that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint burn of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sailing with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer's requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air- to a higher life than we fell asleep from; and thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove itself to be good, no less than the light. That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way. After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries again what noble life it can make. All memorable events, I should say, transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say, "All intelligences awake with the morning." Poetry and art, and the faire stand most memorable of the actions of men, date from such an hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness, they would have performed something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan- like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

Tacos and Kings

There's something delightful about summer.

I love long, warm evenings of golden light and contentment... I love frolicking without thought of jackets or sweaters... I love the feel of floating through perfect warmth.

I think home and summer have become mentally intertwined since venturing off to a land of seasons and cornfields. Christmas felt strangely (wrongly) summer-esque after leaving a home of snowy whiteness in favor of a home of mild-climated "pompous palm trees" (as Brynna terms them).
But summer fits home (real home) perfectly.
Driving down PCH with gorgeous, dramatic, coastline views can only make my lips smile proudly and my heart delight in the beauty of home; catching a glimpse of blue, shimmering, watery vastness never fails to make me happy. Home may not be perfect, but it's home... and it's beautiful.

The last few days have been wonderfully summeresque.
Sunday evening there was a very happy bonfire, complete with storytelling, discussion of life-plans, a brief bit of sand-waltzing (note: sand is a terrible surface for waltzing), nonsense songs, and delicious s'mores. T'was merry and warm and delightful!
After the bonfire a group of us decided to travel to a popular taco truck (yes, that's right) and gorge ourselves on very, very tasty carne asada tacos. The few outdoor tables and chairs that were available were, of course, taken. So we opted to stand and eat off the trunk of my car instead. As I watched my recently-washed-and-therefore-unusually-clean car become littered with pieces of onion and tomato, I could only laugh at the odd picture our feasting forms must have made to a casual observer.
The tacos were delicious and the rendezvous delightful. Ahh, summer! Ahh, home!

Yesterday afternoon was also fun and summery. I met up with el señor Lubbers at the Coffee Cartel- a cozy, beachy-chill (dare I say hipster-y?) café bedecked with unique art pieces, obscure books, a suit of armor (why?), and comfy-shabby couches perfect for lounging and enjoying the company of friends…whilst sipping coffee, I suppose. Actually, the barista who was working there when we got there was extremely amusing, if not altogether present. I quite appreciated his appreciation of the word melatonin (“Say it. ‘Melatonin.’ Isn’t that such a cool word?”), his inability to remember whether both or neither of us wanted whipped cream (“I knew it was both yes or both no. They’re such similar words. They both have three letters. Don’t start with the same letter. Have no letters in common. Makes it so hard to tell them apart. Umm, two, three- it’s the same thing. Less than four letters. ‘Yes.’ ‘No.’ It just makes it so difficult to distinguish between them.”), and his assertion that the day's special contained unicorn blood and was nothing short of magical- yeah, he was a fun guy.

But the activity that took over the Coffee Cartel reunion was not coffee centered.
No, a different activity consumed us.
 Much to my consternation, Lubbers forced me to play chess. I begged, I pleaded- to no avail. Against my protestations, the chess board was promptly brought out, set up... and before I knew it I was engaged in battle.

Now allow me to provide some background.
For reasons I can't quite fathom, I had never actually played chess before. I had distantly watched others play... I had a basic understanding of the pieces... But throw myself into battle? Nay, not I! 

This almost makes no sense. Chess seems a pretty... thoughtful, intense game- just the sort of game I would enjoy. And as I found myself trying to decide on moves and thinking through how to save myself from death, I did indeed find myself enjoying the game immensely. It was just the sort of focused thinking I tend to relish. But then I recall my state at the beginning of the game: I had no idea what I was doing, I felt stupid, I desperately wanted to evade a situation which could only result in embarrassing, bloody massacre... in short, I was terribly, cripplingly afraid of the sense of shame and failure that one risks when trying something new. Afraid to the point that I would plead for a different activity. And then it makes sense.

Okay, so I lost. But it was not a bloody massacre (er, right Lubbers?). I made a few short-sighted errors, but it was okay. It forced me to focus and think and do my best, and I loved it.

Something causes me to suspect there may be a lesson in here somewhere... It will probably take a few more (many more?) classes for it to stick, but at least it's a small step in the right direction. Hopefully I have a few more friends willing to ignore my initial protestations and to be supportive when it counts.

Oh and a note on drawing- I'm pretty sure I achieved the zenith of my artistic career yesterday. I pretty successfully managed to capture the slender, flowing, glorious beauty of a nymph statuette which I have admired since girlhood. Annette is very pleased.

Oh, summer! Warm, carefree summer!