Alice Andrews (with philosophy and psychology degrees from Columbia University) teaches psychology with an evolutionary lens at the State University of New York at New Paltz, where she is helping to implement an Evolutionary Studies program modeled on David Sloan Wilson's EvoS program at SUNY Binghamton. She is an editor and writer (books and magazines), and was the associate editor of Chronogram from 2000-2002. She is also the author of Trine%20Erotic/102-5304949-9560913'>Trine Erotic, a novel that's been used in various college courses nationwide because of its exploration of evolutionary psychology. Alice is currently working on a book (based on her essay with the same title, published at Metanexus) called An Evolutionary Mind (to be published as part of Imprint Academic's series: "Societas: Essays in Political and Cultural Criticism"), and plans to begin writing another novel in the summer of 2006.

(my) essays, reviews, stories, poems, musings

An Evolutionary Mind
Playing with Myself: On Trine Erotic (my novel; see amazon)
Beyond Paradox: A Review of The Paradoxical Primate
Meta Review: Reactions to a Review of The Blank Slate
The Semiotics of Shoe Shapes
Being Brave: In Defense of Naturalism and Essentialism
Meta Study: Reactions to a Study on Female Sexuality
Unstandardized Minds
Attention: On Love
Arctic Refuge
Puer Aeternus
The Alien Planet of Sex with a New Man
Naked JPEG
The End of Lies
Essentially
Scrabble
Resistentially Yours

love leaves

It may be that the deep necessity of art is the examination of self-deception. - Robert Motherwell (ref)

In the fall I found two leaves. They were yellow/brown, not my usual favorite color. In fact, this particular muted yellow/brown was a color I had never cared for at all. It was as if suddenly, over night, my nervous system had matured. Whereas before such color on a leaf would have depressed me, now it actually lifted me--not to elation, but to a strange contentment and peace. I was actually appreciating its wabi-sabiness, finding its understated, decaying hue quite beautiful.
Had I 'learned' to love this yellow/brown? I don't think so. I think it's deeper than that. I think it's more as if a developmental bioprogram kicked in, an indication of my neurohormonal profile at this stage in my life-history (four decades now).
But something about their roundness and their largeness and their papyrusy shape also made me want to pick them up. I took them home and pressed them in The Blank Slate. It's 528 pages, so it's a good one for leaf-pressing. The next day, I took a pen to one of the leaves and wrote a note to a man I am fond of. It was a note that was occupied with worry over too much correspondence via email...worried that my electronic chatter had caused a lack of fondness over there with him, for me. I didn't know if the rather long note (for a note on a leaf) would make it, or if it would crumble in the envelope once the leaf got dried. My words gone. And also, I was so used to having a record of my missives to the man I was fond of (I save my sent emails), that it felt a bit sad to part with words I'd never see again. I'm greedy with my own words. I want them all. And I will obsessively read them over and over, as if to gain some new self-understanding, I suppose, or to concretize and hardwire 'self'. But also I read my own words over and over as through the eyes and mind of the intended reader. A kind of 'theory of mind'/'other minds' kind of thing. Though I really reckon it is something more bizarre and rawly neurocognitive than this.
So I sent it to him, my pen on leaf. And he got it. Said he loved the leaf I sent. That there was no chattering that had spoiled us. That his heart grew soft and warm every time I reminded him that I was alive, breathing, feeling...
The other leaf, I saved for myself. On my mantel. As a reminder of the leaf I sent. As the other half.
And a season later, while hibernating body and soul, and incubating ideas, I scanned the second leaf into my computer. And it was so cute and pretty. I cut it along its perimeter. And took some emails. Printed them. A couple from him, one from another, and one of my own. I took tape to the emails and removed the tape, pulling off the words. I placed the tape onto the leaf images. Bits of love words. Some completely revealed, others hiding and concealed. And it just dawned on me, it's a way of having, not losing, the love leaf. Because love leaves.