Thoughts From My Stupid Little Pea Brain

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I had a dream with you in it last night. But that doesn’t mean much, does it?

If you were simply in my dream, I could have seen you across a street paved with gold. Maybe I waved to you as I flew through the sky, or maybe I passed you as I was walking around a town that never existed.

But no, I conjured something equally impossible. In my dream, I lived a perfect life. I held you, I walked with you, I talked to you. In my dream, I felt the very essence of you throughout my entire being.

So I’ll rephrase:

I dreamt of you last night. If I cannot have a life with you in it, at least let me dream of you.

Daedalus

Daedalus breathed life into his creations.

With every scrape of the chisel, every swipe of the brush, he moved in tandem with the gods themselves; an act of creation no other artist could even conceive of. His statues were in chains — so lifelike that if someone let their guard down for one second, they would simply run away.

In a time of imprisonment, he looked up.

He gathered Icarus and together they soared to salvation. For hours, they barreled through the sky, meticulously ensuring that they flew between the heat of the sky and the treachery of the water.

It happened slowly at first. Then, in an instant, Daedalus’ life melted away.

Each second Icarus fell, Daedalus looked for ways to save him. But he could only keep flying. Every flap ripped him further from his heart, the one that Icarus had fallen with. He couldn’t stop flying. Daedalus finally reached land and wept.

Did he lament every meter that he traveled further than his son?

When he grabbed his chisel, did he look at his chained statues and wonder what he could make to fix this?

How he could have destroyed something more beautiful than he could ever create?

I hope that when I die, my love will be released back into the universe. I don’t want to trap it in my soul when I’m no longer able to give it out

There’s definitely something behind the way that love and death are so often connected in art. Not sure exactly what it is, but it’s there.

The first time I stepped into a biology lab, I dreamed of becoming a scientist.

Throughout high school, everything was an accessory to biology. A solid understanding of math was required for any career in science, AP history classes would allow me to focus on more relevant topics in college, even speech and debate would help me present my research one day in a coherent manner. Everyone assumed that my Latin classes were the same way — to learn scientific terminology. And I leaned into it; whenever anyone would ask about Latin, that was my reasoning.

But it wasn’t the truth.

The truth was far more bizarre: the truth was that I didn’t know why I was learning Latin. I simply fell in love with the poetry, the culture, even the grammar. It was my Achilles’ heel — the one weak point of my impenetrable scientific mindset.

When it came time to decide my major for college, it was a no-brainer. Biology… with a second major in Latin. Of course, everyone had something to say about it. The Latin was just a break, a distraction from hard sciences. A major full of easy, useless courses that are only tangentially related to biology.

What I hadn’t realized was that biology and Latin are two sides of the same coin. Throughout my time in college, I was engrossed in stories of the triumphs of the human experience. The creation of Vergil’s Aeneid and the creation of Edward Jenner’s vaccine existed in tandem. I drew the same arrows diagramming chemical reactions as when I was deconstructing sentences of Juvenal. Learning about the complement cascades mirrored stories of ancient heroes in war: all implementing precise techniques to defeat a common enemy.

So, why do I study Latin when I’m planning to become a scientist? I know the answer quite well now. Because I love discovery. Because the process of turning mRNA into proteins is translation, in its purest form. Because the devastation of Aeneas’ troops showed me that I could bounce back after my experiments failed. Because it isn’t an accessory to biology, but a core tenet of who I am.

The final time I stepped out of a Latin class, I knew that I wanted to be a scientist. What else could I do after learning what it means to live?

Your twenties began with an organic chemistry exam. Staring at hieroglyphs of reactants and products, wishing that you understood. You decided not to check your grade for a few days, trying to avoid the inevitable.

But time marched on.

You turned 21 in the arms of your lover. Sharing a bottle of sickly-sweet mango wine and watching trashy tv, you became content with your place in the universe. You prayed to anything that would listen to freeze that moment, to live in warm, domestic bliss until your time on earth ended.

But time marched on.

Eventually you fell asleep. Eventually you woke up. Eventually you drove her home.

I am now 21 years and 351 days old. Soon I will open on a new year and beg those same unlistening ears to start my twenties over again. I’ll do it correctly this time: I’ll pass my organic chemistry exam, I’ll take another minute with her before I drive her home — just to hold her, and maybe in that life I’ll actually enjoy turning 22.

But time marches on.

In 14 days I will be older than she ever was, which was never supposed to be the ending to this story.