Slowness

I spent the first half of yesterday's workday reading the blog of a friend and old colleague, which proved a worthy activity from various points of view. It was there, where I came upon this article by Anna Damianidi, for which I have to be grateful to both her for conceiving and writing it as well as to my friend for posting it. For the non-greek speaking, -probably the majority of this blog's rather limited readership- I can try to summarize the concept of that article, simply by translating the first phrase:
"I wonder what will our lives be like when we stopped being in a hurry".

And honestly, I don't think there's much to say beyond that. The article goes on describing some beautiful images of everyday slowness, where everything is seen, felt and perceived in slow motion, therefore regaining its initial meaning and becoming once again important. Then an image of a very beloved person came to my mind, one of these people that never get stressed or anxious, lying on my couch, silently enjoying her cigarette, while reading Milan Kundera's "Slowness", postponing doing the dishes with a charming smile and with her delightful state serving at the same time as a self-referential proof of the book's point.

"What will our lives be like when we stopped being in a hurry?"
If you ask me, they would be very much like Tammy reading Kundera on my couch, smoking.

I spent the second half of yesterday's working time, messed up in between program optimizations and high-throughput sequencing, neither of which has anything to do with slowness, nor could possibly help in its appreciation. Then I re-read the post, sticking to the first sentence once more, realizing that there was an optimistic "when" where I would have expected a dull, utopic "if".
"I wonder what will our lives be like *when* we stopped being in a hurry".

And I said, let's see.

I went back home, cooked for my ex flatmate Pauline, then we watched "High Fidelity" and then I read a bit of Lobo Antunes's "Natural order of things" before going to bed. I slept for a good ten hours straight only to wake up at 10 a.m., to make me a nice breakfast, which I felt no guilt for enjoying on my couch, re-reading parts of "Fever Pitch" by Nick Hornby. During all this, I was listening to Chopin's Nocturnes, which apart from amusing served as another demonstration of this new concept of slowness. A concept whose practice I carried on, arriving late at work, slowly browsing through yesterday's results, unhurriedly walking to the cafeteria for lunch, leisurely discussing with my student Sonja about her progress, while having coffee.

And here I am, at 7 p.m., blogging my slowed-down experience, having done fewer things than I could have done in one day, but certainly having entertained myself far more. In the end, work will be done, programs will be as optimized as possible and the sequence reads will eventually take their place on the genome (or the endless series of failed experiments). And it will all be done the right way, the slow way with me in the middle of all this, at the center of all this, realizing their true meaning, or at last being given the opportunity to judge if there is such a bigger meaning in mapping sequence reads than listening to Chopin.

I mean, after all, how meaningful would it have been if Tammy had done the dishes instead?

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Thanks once more to Julien for providing the photo for this post, a collaboration I 'll try to keep ongoing.