Dmitry Trakovsky's Robe of Words

Dearest friend and former roommate Dmitry Trakovsky recently wrote to me from Santa Cruz. His email was a response to the Rumi poem that I put on the right of this webpage. I am reproducing it here, and his response follows it:

Those who don't feel this Love
pulling them like a river,
those who don't drink dawn
like a cup of spring water
or take in sunset like supper,
those who don't want to change,
let them sleep.
This Love is beyond the study of theology,
that old trickery and hypocrisy.
If you want to improve your mind that way,
sleep on.
I've given up on my brain.
I've torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away.
If you're not completely naked,
wrap your beautiful robe of words
around you,
and sleep.

Dear Kristina,

A thought just popped into my head. I read the Rumi poem about an hour ago and I was quite moved, I must say. He says that we should put away our brains yada yada, and I agree completely. However, for some reason I felt a slightly paradoxical undercurrent to the poem, because I believe that he is a person who has done some extensive brainwandering himself... otherwise, he wouldn't be able to express the dangers associated with intellectualism as well as he does. If he were just looking aside at people who live with their heads and not hearts, we as readers wouldn't be convinced of his idea. That's not the case though. He's certainly a person who at some point of his life has put on the 'robe of words'. Further still, I think that he is trying to take that robe off while he is writing the poem... through the poem itself... and that's actually why it's so effective. 'cause it's terribly difficult to take it off, as we well know. Only when you mack with a really hot girl does the robe of words come off fully... as well as your socks, shoes, pants... but that's another story...

D

PS. But I may have misunderstood it completely, and actually, I know nothing about Rumi... perhaps he was some kind of crazy sage that surpassed all of the mental states that I've experienced, in which case my analysis would be rubbish.

(Dima admires the Accademia bridge in Venice from a hotel room.)

Dear Dima,

Yes, he was some crazy sage. Yes, I do think that his mental states surpassed yours, but probably in frequency, not intensity. But no, your analysis is not rubbish. Rumi pretty much founded Sufism, so they say, but that doesn't mean that you and I are not as spiritual as he. We put our robes back on to communicate and make sure that others learn to take theirs off - it's part of being alive. But when we are staring into our own pupils in mirrors (haha), or when we have a conversation about theories of Love that turns silent because we have reached a universal truth and can say no more... we are sharing the highest quality of nakedness that every human is capable of feeling and that no human is capable of surpassing.

So, maybe now you understand why the adjective intellectual gives me the creeps: the more intellectual you get, the higher your risk of falling into a deep sleep under a very thick robe.

Nerdcamp 2001

Cleaning up my Safari favorites this evening, I came across an old link that no longer exists. First I felt anger, then confusion, and now it is that familiar feeling that always hits me the hardest: nostalgia. It is quite fitting that two days ago I came across two particular T-shirts, as well. . .

You see, I have this party anecdote that always gets people laughing, especially when I act it out using hand gestures and knee-bending, and the website that proves that it really did happen is gone. Forever.

So for posterity I would like to record the anecdote (in full account form) and the information that used to be on the website. (And maybe tomorrow I will wear one of the old T-shirts under my UCLA sweatshirt.)

In the summer of 2002, I went to the Virginia Governor’s School for Math, Science, and Technology, also known fondly as “Nerdcamp”. The institution still exists at the same old Lynchburg College, and every summer it still opens its doors to 200 or so close-minded, yet somehow diverse, Virginia high school students.

It was the same summer that I went on the Earthwatch Student Challenge Research Expedition to Corvallis, Oregon (which is another story altogether), and it was a big first for me – I lived away from home for an entire month! In college dorms! And, I got a huge crush on a boy named Ian Carleo, who ended up being my prom date, twice.

But the real story comes from the cow farm some hour’s drive away from the Christian college. I took a class on Genetics, which I thought would involve microscopes, but it ended up being a month long discussion on the ethics of artificial insemination. So one morning I woke up really early, got on a bus, and two miles before we arrived at our destination, I began to smell manure. That morning, knowing that I was going to be knee deep in feces, I had put on my bright yellow Colon Crazies T-shirt.

“The Colon Crazies” was the name of the Pep-squad that Hunter Dunlo, one of those “boyfriends” from high school that doesn’t count, had founded. The stadium where our football team played is named after Colon L. Hall, and Hunter gave me one of his screen-printed T-shirts so I could support the players. Until I figured out who Colon L. Hall was, I always associated the shirt with that organ of the human body, so it was appropriate that I wore it on this particular day.

So at dawn, my friend Lindsay Thompson and I arrived with our classmates at the farm. We were instructed to put on clear plastic boots up to our crotches, clear plastic gloves up to our armpits, and clear plastic aprons to tie it all together (actually, I don’t think the plastic arrived up to anyone else’s crotches or armpits, but I have a small stature). We took a tour of the place and learned lots of interesting trivia about manure. Then we watched a live presentation on the anatomy of cows and the expensive nature of cow semen.

After the farmer’s son was positive that we had all got the gist, we lined up, one by one, and mock-inseminated a heifer – the same heifer, over, and over, and over again, until she started backing up and grunting – then we switched cows.

The act of artificially inseminating large animals is actually quite complicated. You must form the fingers of your left hand into a cone shape and shove your arm up past your elbow into the anus of the cow so that you can wrap your fingers around its vagina, by means of the loose tissue of its colon, to hold it straight. Then, you clasp the insemination gun in your right hand and proceed to push it and your right arm into the vagina. Then you pull the trigger. At this point, you have both of your arms inside of a cow and your body is pressed up against its back side.

The really disgusting part of all of this is that the process induces the act of defecation from the cow; hence, the apron and boots.

It seems simple, but, of course, it wasn’t simple for me, and that is why the yearbook dude chose my video to put on the website.

I followed the directions, but when I stuck my hand into the cow, I was so shocked by the heat from the inside of its body – and the feces pouring out of the beast – that I screamed the whole time. It also didn’t help that the hot steaming feces slid all down my body. I remember feeling my eyes get wide as I realized that the hard, moving obstacle within the colon had enveloped my arm and was about to burst out. I also remember a distinct nausea feeling from the smell and having to turn my head away and do Lamaze breathing to survive.

So, obviously, I am sad for the loss of the video.

This is a picture of me and Lindsay Thompson in front of "The Manure Lake". I am wearing my Colon Crazies T-shirt. The farmer's son told us a story about the lake upon our arrival: Apparently, that morning, a cow had waded out into the lake, gotten in it up to its neck, and the farmer and his son had to use a canoe to paddle out into the middle of it to wrap a rope around the bewildered cow's head so they could drag it to safety.

T-shirt #2 that I found the other day is the actual Nerdcampt T-shirt. There are nerd caricatures drawn on the back.

Missing Entry

I found this entry on Thursday, November 9. I thought is was gone forever, as it says in the entry just before this one. I wonder if the differences between the two have to do with my bad memory.

Strange, I think this might be the first personal entry I have written so far.

Here's a newsflash of an update on what is going on in my life and why my electronic life has subsided:

• I got a yellow baby parakeet as a pet last week.


• I had dinner Stefano and his friends Sven, Gabriella, and Martina. I dragged Anne, my roommate, along with me for the one hour adventure. We ate at Damon and Pythias. No further comment necessary.


• I have papers to write, letters to write, packages to mail, tests to take, GRE's to ace, applications to fill out, curricula vitarum to find and edit, new friends to keep up with, professors to meet, an Italian Club to organize, and the hopes of filling a "niche" at the American Cancer Society.


• I am not overwhelmed, in fact; it is kind of fun to be busy and challenged and maintain a small percentage of laziness and apathy in my daily life.


• I met Laura Falcone's best friend so now I am privy to updates on her life and love, but I keep missing Valentina Leoni by thirty seconds every time I walk into or out of a room.


• I love my classes and school, but teetering on the edge of possibly leaving it without a graduate program to easily slide into leaves me with unpleasant thoughts.


• I hate California weather. Why can't it cool down like it does everywhere else?

Dear Destiny,
You know what I want.
Yours Truly,
Kristina Bigdeli

PS- I have added a few things to the links page.

Long period of absence.

The one time I compose an entry online instead of copying and pasting, it goes away.
Two seconds ago, there was a long list here of all the reasons why I am too busy to update. Now that it has disappeared from cyberspace, I am not sure if my problem is that I am too busy or that I haven't been really inspired to write about anything.


Dear Destiny,
You and I both know what I want.
Let's work together as pals.
Sincerely,
Kristina Bigdeli


PS - I have been adding new favorites to the links page.

Something Funny

Here's the story:

Jeff is a Kentuckian who got a job with Ticketmaster in Hollywood and moved here about three weeks ago. He soldiered in Iraq for a year by flying remote-controlled spy planes, all the while training himself to become a highly skilled computer whiz and ballroom dancer. Not knowing anyone in the area, he found me and my myspace account and started asking me questions about places to go, things to see, restaurants, etc. We became friends and went to a KROQ concert in downtown last week. We also fed ducks at Echo Park. At some point during the day, possibly while policemen were coaxing us away from Skid Row (where the car was parked), my little memory notebook ended up in his pocket, unbeknownst to me. I have been looking everywhere for it ever since. Today, I received this image of my newly personified little notebook, bangs and all, attached to an email. I am slightly worried though; don't pictures of hostages usually come with a ransom note?