The Thing About Pandas

I've been undertaking a slight rest and respite from the rigors of responsible life. I no longer work at Harvard, and though I'd like to work with for my old boss again, I won't be looking for any other work anywhere else any time soon. Instead I'm going to rest and ponder. So I made this:

Answering questions now:

What were you doing at Harvard all those years?

Technical jiggery-pokery in a field that has something to do with genetics. I also pranked people and acted tricksy because I couldn't help it.

Are you crazy to not try to secure work during a recession?

Good question, I've wondered that myself and have decided that this is not a psychotic episode but a cleansing moment of clarity (my italics) .. (Yes, obviously those they were my italics. I just wanted to use the phrase 'my italics' because I want you to take this seriously and when people write something serious they often use italics and then say something like my italics afterward. Look I'm sorry I even mentioned it now).

I live in a strange, shadowy world filled with beauty and light and colour.. and insights of staggering awfulness. You might too, but enough about you, let's talk about me. Many of my close personal acquaintances don't know this but I experience Stendhal Syndrome. Or Hyperkulturemia. Or Florence Syndrome. This is said to be a psychosomatic illness, which sounds unfair really - as if it's all been made up to get attention when in fact it's a very strange and un-looked for experience of sensory overload that dizzies up the mind like vertigo in spaceship full of aliens of the kidnapping-for-kicks variety.

This one time I happened to be in Cologne in Germany one Easter morning and they started ringing the cathedral bells down on the main square there and I had to have a bit of a sit down and recover from feelings of exalted wonderfulness combined with the dread that we were all doomed.

This other time I saw George Stubbs' painting of the zebra and I damn near had a panic attack and wanted to set free every single zebra that had ever been locked up in an English garden at the request of a monarch. Nah, I'm serious, I nearly fell over have never looked at animals the same way since. I'm not going to include a link to that zebra but you could probably find it yourself, though you should see it in person to see the sadness and alienation in the animal's eyes. Of course, you will probably need a soul or at least something very much like it.

Poor bloody zebra.

So all this needs some context and clarity but I'll pass on that now and say that being unable to remain in a dormant state of emotional neutrality in the presence of beauty inspires me to do great and wonderful things, but also terrible, terrible things. And I'd like to add that although my heart brims with a feeling of connectedness and love for the animal kingdom, I'm pretty sure that pandas secretly hate us all.

Now it would probably be best if you go away and think about all I have said because locked inside these blog entries is the key to a very rich and dutifully-pursued understanding of a universe that has assured me, on several occasions actually, that it only wants to be understood.