And a year later...

It's been a year since my first post on April 23rd last year. An interesting coincidence is that this is my 23rd post.

Should I be nostalgic?
Should I reflect?
What didn't I know then, that I do know now?
What did I know then, that I don't know any more?
What has changed?
What hasn't?

The yellow clean room is just as intimidating.
Yet familiarity breeds contempt.
The leaps are in infinitesimal quanta.
The results are pin pricks, not resonating thumps.
The progress I think I have made may just be that: thoughts.
I think I know now why they call it the doctorate of Philosophy.

Here's to the next post. And the cabbages and kings that go with it.

Marriage musings

Forgive me, but this is a real cheat post.

So Phaedrus and I are getting married, and going back to finishing up our respective PhDs in our respective corners of the country for the next couple of years. And people ask, so when are you moving to his place after the wedding?
Me?
Why?
People haven't heard of weekend marriages it seems. Or house-husbands, or career women or gender equality ...
Ok, well, this is more like a bi -monthly both-working marriage. It's worked this far, dunno why it shouldn't after repeating some vows or circumambulating a fire ...
Plus at least for now I don't have to clean up my Mess (see earlier post). Heh heh.

Mess

My good friend Gsat suggested I put up some of my poems on my blog (well, not that she's read any other than those I put here :-) ). Considering that this blog is entirely made up of odds and ends, and also a pretty good place to fullfill narcissistic needs, I decided to post here, one of, what I believe, were my "literally" most witty poems written when I was living in an efficiency, in a not very effcient manner.....

14 – 15, March 2003

Mess

It needs a certain degree of finesse
To create the veritable perfect mess
Very few the talent possess
To create a complete havoc, no less.

Yours truly, is a master of the art
Of a cleaned place being the immediate start
For a premeditated pandemonium, as part
Of an inane effort to appear extra smart.

The smartness is evident in the reasons that abound
First, the mess helps in muffling outside sound
(No matter if the physics has basis or ground)
The abundant absorbents cause sound waves to be drowned.

My personal favorite, is the second reason,
This is ongoing cleaning for the end of the season
Or the beginning, or middle, as would please’em.
Cleaning process implies that mess will be some.

The most effective is the one of utter business.
One look is sufficient for you to guess
I am most importantly busy, yes?
No time to reorganize the mess.

Having looked at the purported cause
Let us examine the contents of chaos
Which vary from the elegant to the gross
With money-back warrantee for dropping jaws.

An acrobatic act of book and bundle
Positioned tactically to trip and stumble.
Cultivating colorful clothes to generate a jungle,
Adds a telling touch to the general jumble

Through clothes and papers, navigating your feet,
Is not really considered all that neat.
Better still would be for your derriere to meet
Miscellaneous poking objects on the seat.

It certainly provides vocal variation
Appropriate to the apportioned aggravation
As a bonus, it also creates quite a sensation,
For you and those around your station.


Print and pajamas and poky pins
Are still rather mundane things,
What really makes a mess is hidden beings
Like pet mice or snakes with molting skins

Creative chaos needs an element of surprise
This is where these hidden pets take the prize.
Guaranteed to raise people and cries.
For smaller the animal, greater the shriek size.

A distinguished looking mess is rather implausible
Without electronic storage media that is impossible
To identify or trace or give up as loss-ible.
Many orphaned disks and tapes make this possible.

A hearty havoc is beyond compare
If you add empty bottles of beer
Strewn with abandoned care,
In the path of the mess-see-er.

For the subtle hint of gory and gross
So that there is no doubt that you are the boss
You may want some mustard to tactfully toss
Or add a dash of ketchup and sauce.

The making of a monstrous mess depends
Entirely on the accumulation of odds and ends
That the seasoned mess maker with her life defends
Any rent in which she dutifully a-mends.

Thus enlightened on chaotic component
With due justice to reptile and rodent,
The art of good mess is a power potent
To manipulate alike any foe or a friend.

Should anyone complain a bit
See the scene, and throw a fit
Tell you how much they abhor it
Tell’em This is My Mess, I Adore it.

More Spring in my Step

Spring forward,
Miss a step.
Fall back,
On your Back.....

Ouch!

Back and Forth

Some dead leaves just do not want to leave
Yet, spring will not spring back their green.
Brooding over past fall follies, they grieve
Not making way for the young, yet to be seen.

Green leaves of summer, your time is spent
Brown, still clinging, what good can you do
For a bud, you are no replacement
For a tender shoot, no match are you.

Fighting the seasons, to no avail
Wanting past times of proud and tall.
Brightness fades, light always pale
Spring will always give way to Fall.

Disappear, for betters to take your place
Give way to the sun, let the birds sing
The darkest spots can still then hide an unborn face
Fall will always give way to Spring.

And, so what's the point?

Keeping the phone down, after a long debate/discussion with Phaedrus on the rapidly changing nature of technology, fashions, tastes, needs and the increased disposability of goods, the gear wheels of my brain and mind still kept whirring, refusing to die down. Much like a ceiling fan running even after being switched off, assisted by some invisible, yet gusty gale.

Quite winded, (no pun intended), my thoughts turned to the fact of Need and Want and Action. Why do we want so much, when do do not really need it? Why do we want to be rich, and famous and beautiful and knowledgeable and well read and learned and well-quoted and published and cited and married and virile and fertile and wise and charitable and philantropic and powerful and amiable and loved and loving?
Eventually we shall die. Then, what's the point?

It's not like we shall be around to see if our great grand kid turns out be an Einstien (and even then, what's the point?), validating our choice of genes, or that that 2 room shed turned into a 5 floor hospital (all those patients eventually die too), thanks to all the funds we raised.

This is not to say that I am turning into some pessimistic deadwood or a selfish prick. I feel attached to my loved ones and charitable to my fellowmen, and I want to listen to music and admire a painting. I feel the Need to Do and Act, and Want to do it. I worry about parents, pets, paise and publications (and that's not an exhaustive list). All a race against very finite time, with a very different finish line, one which does not have "the other side", to look back and exalt. It's amazing, isn't it, that we do what we do so that we can hopefully feel elated for that very short period between having run much of the race and now seeing the finish line? Of course, people might disagree and say, well, the joy and fun is in the running, but its not like you can reflect nostalgically on it once you are done with it, coz heck, you are not around! If finally it is dust to dust, then , again, what's the point?

Very literally, as Tennyson wrote, Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die.

Death is not supposed to be dark and ugly and like a black hole. But it sure seems so.

I promise my next post will be more cheerful!

Done For

Yesterday, I took, what I think will be my last graded "final exam" ever. And no, I didn't finish with a bang...it was more like a whimper. The worst exam I ever took. Made me think of all the exams I had done badly starting, from believe it or not, grade 2, right up to last year, and I could find none to match yesterday's disaster.

So much for quantum mechanics. So much for being terrified of it first, that I dropped it last year. So much for reading as much as I could to get over my fear of the subject. So much for my loving it at the beginning of the semester when it answered many questions I always had, and when it helped me as I prepared and read extensively for my qualifying exams. So much for hating it as the semester progressed, because both the teacher and the book somewhat lost track. The prof rushed at Mach 3 speed, and the book became denser than the Dead Sea. And then yesterday happened. When I was not done with classes, but done for.

Arrgh

Studying (band) splits,(energy) gaps, (electrons and) holes, (hydrostatic) stress, (biaxial) strain, (thermally induced) mismatch and tension, repulsion, scattering, bombardment and very short lifetimes.

How can physics not be stressful??!!! :-(

Back from "French Canada"

Back from Montreal, a place surprisingly more French, and more European in general than I had expected. More than once I ran into people I had trouble communicating with. That I was okay with. More than once I ran into snootiness, bothering on rudeness, that i had been warned about. That I was not okay with.

Did I enjoy the sights, the scenes, the scents, the cuisine? Oh yes, I did. From my first introduction to McGill with students in red swimming trunks, and nothing else on (and this is November) to the tropics of the Amazon at the Biodome de Montreal, from a $6 poutine at Patis Patata on Rue St. Laurent to a $28 cheese ravioli (worth every cent) at the Hotel Europea on Rue Montague. From the powder blue gold star spangled ceiling of Basilica de Notre Dame to the crutches and candles at St Joseph Oratorie. From a metro station named Pie-ix, which sounded very suspiciously like a male body part in English to my woefully French-untrained ears, to archaeological digs at Pointe-à-Callière, which is all about the French history of Montreal, not about the natives who were there before them (why do they even mention them, I do not understand).
By the way, the above was accomplished in a day, as I was in Montreal for a conference at the Hilton Bonaventure (huge plastic flower arrangements, no less), but that is another story.

Hmm

Is theatre ,and art in general, necessarily, deliberately, inherently complicated? Or is it that I am a simpleton?
I suspect the latter.
I went for Ratan Thiyam's Nine Hills One Valley yesterday, and was very confused, Not to mention that I do not understand Manipuri. The overhead translations were woefully inadequate, with 5 rapid emotive sounding dialogs being translated into one tame explanatory subtitle.

So, is there hope for the world, or are we doomed even if the wise men of yore give us new directions? Or have we become so helpless that we cannot take responsibility for bettering our own lives? Time is a demon! I do not really agree. I think we demonize Time. It's our fault.

Ok, so I am realy blabbering here. Bottomline being, that the deeper political, sociological philosophies being expressed went over my simple head, so I stuck to enjoying the accompanying music compositions from some exotic Indian instruments, the grace and fluidity of the rich Manipuri dance-form and some of the exotic sword wielding martial-art type sequences.

Time and politics can wait.