Week after week of empty pages. You call me on Monday; I let the phone ring.

Week after week of rain — the Fall kind, that precurses only greyness and death, and the endlessly frozen days to come.

On Tuesday, I sit and remember Spring rain — green waterfall rain, Persephone rain.

On Wednesday, I look in the mirror and see that every hair on my head has turned silvery-grey. All the pages are on fire; they fall to the ground like burning leaves, leaving a house full of books without souls.

The New York Times recently ran this article about the ways universities are starting to change their CS programs to attract more women, including restructuring the degrees to put less initial focus on programming skills. And of course, some of the usual suspects at Slashdot were up in arms about how these schools were “watering down” their CS degrees and “making them meaningless” as a result.

I agree that schools should not dumb down their programs to attract more women. That does absolutely nothing to benefit either women or men. But I don’t think that’s what these schools are really doing. They’re not dumbing down their programs, they’re restructuring them to provide motivation to women (and men) who might not otherwise be drawn to CS.

Let me illustrate what I mean. I didn’t start a CS degree at Cornell because I liked programming all that much, to be honest with you. I started a CS degree because I liked art, and I looked around and saw all of the really interesting, new, and creative forms of art that were developing used the computer as a medium. So I started a CS degree to learn a tool so that I could make art.

(Later I switched to Information Science because it was more in line with my interest in applications of tech, while CS at Cornell is very theoretical.)

Nowadays I’d like to think that I’m a competent (though out-of-practice) programmer, and I rather enjoy programming sometimes. There’s something satisfying about understanding how things work. And there’s something very satisfying about having an idea and knowing that you yourself can bring it into existence. (That’s what both programming and art are, after all.)

Anyway, the point is that I learned to program in the first place because I had some other motivation. Only later did I start to like it for its own sake. And I think that the same might be true for many other women in tech.

That’s the point behind the changes these schools are making — that it’s important to learn how to program, yes, but here’s why you should care in the first place, given that you’re an intelligent, creative, curious human being. And having more intelligent, creative, curious human beings busy using computers to do wonderful things could only benefit all genders, in the long run.

The lights were still on in the living room, and there were flowers blooming on the mantelpiece. Anne had been here before — somewhere, in dreams? The house was always pristine, full of windows and doors, without even a speck of dust to settle anywhere.

Outside, birds hung like stars in the day sky, frozen in mid-flight, silenced in mid-song.

Anne looked around her, and suddenly knew that no one had ever been home.

inspired by Borges

He had been walking through the labyrinth for what seemed like weeks. His mouth was filled with dust, his feet sore to the bone. All around him there was nothing but rock and dirt. The only thing that had kept him pressing onward was the thought of his goal: the City of Dreams.

He had spent his whole life searching, following the trail that had led him into this maze. Now up ahead he saw a gate, and he knew in his heart that the day had come — that his prize was finally within reach. He stepped through, stopped, and spun on his heel, expecting to see wonders beyond his wildest dreams.

But instead, he saw only a familiar sight: skyscrapers, trees, buildings that he knew. Streets whose names came easily to mind, because he’d walked them his entire life. Looking down at his worn boots, he realized that he had made a great circle — that he stood exactly where he’d started, outside of the building that he had once called home.

Then he looked up at the piercing blue sky, with its color like nothing he had seen in days; and he looked at the cars and the people and the trees, and all the world humming with movement and life. His days in the labyrinth had left him accustomed to solitude, quiet, and deathly still air. Now he felt intoxicated, enveloped, swept away.

Suddenly, he understood it all.

His quest was at an end. He had reached the City of Dreams.

He turned and went into the apartment, greeting his wife with a smile and a hug.

Cally only ever smoked when she hated herself, when she wanted to do herself harm in some way. Then she would breathe in the nicotine as deeply as she could, watch it stream out of her nostrils in two little threads and shatter against the bright Upstate stars. The smog that surrounded her kept others away, or perhaps it was just a certain aloofness — that subtle touch-me-not attitude that made others so nervous.

So Anne would yell at her and then she would smoke, and this would happen over and over again.

Cally watched the orange ember burn down to a stub, until it sparked her finger and she dropped the butt, grinding it out against the cold, bare mud.

Edit: Why does everything I write sound like chick-lit right now? Bleh.

I spent most of Easter planting things. It seemed appropriate, somehow.

My diningroom table is covered with plants. (And a Mac Classic.)

My bedroom is covered with seed trays. (Note the improvised shelf made out of a suitcase.)

You have to climb out ofa window to get to my “patio”.

But at least I don’t have to worry too much about predators.

I’m having a blast with this.

Even that night when they made love, she couldn’t stop thinking of the other one. Him with the startling eyes, whose gaze she could only ever meet for a second before she had to look away.

She saw him standing there in front of them like a ghost, watching as they did their predictable dance. In the space of one breath, she felt a decision arise and pass, before her conscious mind could even weigh in with its pros and cons and rules and rights.

She turned her head away from her lover, smiled, and looked her ghost straight in the eye.

Last night Mary woke up and didn’t know where she was.

She’d lived in so many different places, over the years: houses with her parents in Vermont and Tennessee, rooms by herself, with him, and then by herself again. Now she couldn’t tell — was it a nightstand to the right of her bed, or was it a wall? Was the door safely closed by her feet, or was it off to the side where she couldn’t see who came in?

That night Mary stayed awake until dawn, trying to remember the exact color of the blankets she’d slept under in her room in Virginia, when she was 13.

Lately I’ve been trying to think of something interesting I could do with this blog. It’s harder than I thought, coming up with things to write about that aren’t too personal or work-related. Originally one of the major themes of this blog was going to be Philadelphia and my experiences discovering the area, but to be honest with you I haven’t had anything new and interesting to write about that for awhile. (Maybe I’m over it, just a little bit.)

So I’ve decided to introduce something new: the 5-Line Story.

The idea is that, at least once a week, I’m going to post a very short story, no more than 5 sentences long. (And no cheating with semicolons, either.) I think it’ll be a good writing exercise for me, and hopefully some of them will be interesting to the 2 or 3 people who read this blog, too. (Hi, Drew!)

The first one will follow within a day or so, and I’ll keep going until I get bored with it or have another idea.

Look for some additions to this site within a week or so, too; I’m looking to add a gallery section where I can put up some of my old artwork from school. (And new stuff too, if I ever get around to finishing any of it…)

I.
you mean,
even when i think as loudly as i can
you still can’t hear me?

II.
she is a minefield
you wander through.
and she throws her body over each blast
just to prevent you from being hurt by it —

III.
there are most certainly
daffodils
now.