Shh...

The risky thing about keeping a blog that your friends read is that eventually, if enough friends read it, you're no longer able to write about certain things you feel, or worry about, or have been thinking about, or have been experiencing.  Part of the beauty of this blog, for me, has been that in a way I can feel my words are going out into thin air, so that I am articulating and expressing without anyone's knowing.  There are some things I might like to say aloud, or work out aloud, but to no one.  But that feeling obviously decreases as I know more people I know are reading it, and the decrease is a potential problem.

Of course, mostly I love the idea that people are reading.

I've turned over a number of possibilities as to how I might continue to confide my unaimed secrets in this forum, but none seem right.  The best one I've had so far is that I might indulge my love of acronyms by simply writing said confidences as long acronyms, so that you would encounter something like this:  IAMFA, AITIWDKEOABILID.  But that's irritating to the reader, and slightly cruel, and there's always the possibility that someone like Grigori Perlman might actually choose to take the time to work it out.  So that one's out.

So the only current option seems to be to remain silent.  And so I will.  -Ish.

Because I have a secret.  It's not the secret you think it is, but it's a big secret - bigger than the secret you think it is.  At the moment it's just a quiet secret, maybe even only half a secret, but it's a secret just the same.  And I need to say I have it, out here in the infinite unformed night or fog of the internet.

I wish Jeremy read this.

On a totally different topic, since I was speaking of mathematicians I thought I'd look up Dennis Gaitsgory on Wikipedia.  Dennis Gaitsgory is a mathematician I knew of at the Harvard Math Department.  The reason I knew of him is that once, very early in our relationship, my most-recent ex-boyfriend Dr. Higher and I went out for a cup of hot chocolate at some chocolatier in Harvard Square, and when we got in the door a bunch of people sitting at a table waved at him. He responded by nodding tersely and veering (and veering me) in a completely different direction, then skulking apprehensively as we sat at our table.  It came out much later that he'd done this because he was afraid to introduce me to his math friends: he thought I'd be inadequate.  Unfortunately, one result of this veering was that I only got a glance at the table, and in that glance I saw what I thought was a very attractive man with a giant nose.  This was Dennis Gaitsgory (who turns out to be not attractive at all), and he was thus imprinted on my brain.  Then, once Dr. Higher told me his name (which, you must admit, is striking) I never forgot it or him.  

And would you believe it, Dennis Gaitsgory has a Wikipedia entry!  I mean, Dennis Gaitsgory? Go figure.

Ummm....a joke.  But not the octopus joke (otherwise, what would you have to look forward to?). Instead a Soviet joke, I think.  

Stalin gets up in the morning and goes to stand on his balcony.  The sun is rising, and he says, "Good morning, sun."  The sun says, "Good morning, Glorious Leader."  Stalin can't believe it, and he goes inside and says to his wife, "The sun spoke to me!  It praised me as the glorious leader I am!"  She says, "Of course it did."  He can tell she doesn't believe him, and he doesn't quite believe it himself, so he waits a couple of hours, then goes out again.  He says to the sun, "Hello again, sun." The sun says, "Hello to you, Most Magnificent Father of Your Country." Stalin rushes inside and says to his wife, "Again the sun spoke to me and praised me!"  His wife says, "Mmmm."  Stalin is angry, but he decides to wait and test it again.  So at nearly noon he goes outside and says to the sun, "Hello again."  And the sun says, "Hello, Marvellous One. You are like me; you are the Bringer of Light to the USSR."  Stalin runs in and says to his wife, "The sun praised me again:  he said I was as great as he!"  She looks doubtful again, and he says, "You wait until after lunch, and I'll take you out and show you!"  They eat their lunch, and when they're done an hour or so later he takes her out onto the balcony.  The sun is over its zenith now, so they have to face a slightly different direction, but still Stalin greets the sun, saying, "Hello again, sun!"  And the sun says, "Fuck you, you moron!"  Stalin says, "What?  What do you mean?  All morning you've been telling me how wonderful I am, and now when I bring my wife out to hear your praise of me, you insult me instead!"  And the sun says, "Ah, but now I'm in the West."