Acceptance

A student once asked his Zen master,  "Why did you not ever marry?"

The Zen master replied, "Well, I was looking for the perfect woman".

The student eagerly asked, " Did you not find the perfect woman?"

"Oh, I did", replied the Zen master with a smile.

"Then...what happened.. why did you not marry her?"

The Zen master paused and with a twinkle in his eye said, "Well, she was looking for the perfect man."

(paraphrased from  John Gottman)

Is he a robber?

A few days ago, I walked out of the gym in my black track pants and black jacket and I overheard a mom say to her child,

"No, darling! He is not a robber. People often dress in all black clothes"

Got education? more likely to marry

From the Economist:

Data from the Census Bureau (US) show that married couples, for the first time, now make up less than half (45%) of all households.

This may seem to be bad news, but on the good news front the divorce rate has gone down with lesser marriages. This seems to imply that those who marry these days tend to stay married, or in other words, it is weeding out weak marriages.

There is more to the story, as it seems that marriage is now a privilege of the educated.

There barely was a marriage gap in 1960: only four percentage points separated the wedded ways of college and high-school graduates (76% versus 72%). The gap has since widened to 16 percentage points, according to the Pew Research Centre.

The article quotes that those without a college degree earn less and prefer to raise children out of wedlock as they cannot 'afford marriage'. I find that hard to explain. In the state of Michigan, you could walk over to the courthouse, fill out a few forms and get married for less than $30. You would probably pay more for a meal for two in the City of Ann Arbor than for getting married in court. It is perhaps understood that if that educated are more likely to get married, then they are older as well.

And as for the children born out of wedlock, the disparity is immense:

Only 6% of children born to college-educated mothers were born outside marriage, according to the National Marriage Project. That compares with 44% of babies born to mothers whose education ended with high school.

The article did not comment if those children born were out of choice. Another interesting question is: Are children better off, or rather, no worse-off in single-parent (more like single mothers) families? If there is a significant difference then the huge disparity between kids born to educated, well-off two-parent families vs. lower-educated, poorer single mother families can only get amplified in the decades to come.

Now I am One and Thirty

Now I am One and Thirty, so what would A.E. Housman say? Not that it's particularly relevant currently, but it was on my mind today. The old trope remains true - older and wiser. Plenty of sighs and rue.

When I was one-and-twenty...

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
'Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.'
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
'The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.'
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.
- A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

Similar dark humor on loving and leaving was the theme on Poet's.org, my daily fix of poetry. For the record today's birthday poem on Poet's.org

Traveling Light

I'm only leaving you
for a handful of days,
but it feels as though
I'll be gone forever—
the way the door closes

behind me with such solidity,

....

our lives have minds
of their own.
- Linda Pastan

Full text of Traveling Light on Poets.org

Lending out Books - Hal Sirowitz

A lesson that I simply fail to learn...

Lending Out Books - Hal Sirowitz

You're always giving, my therapist said.
You have to learn how to take. Whenever
you meet a woman, the first thing you do
is lend her your books. You think she'll
have to see you again in order to return them.
But what happens is, she doesn't have the time
to read them, & she's afraid if she sees you again
you'll expect her to talk about them, & will
want to lend her even more. So she
cancels the date. You end up losing
a lot of books. You should borrow hers.

The first obscenity: lines from The Primer

In the history of language
the first obscenity was silence.

Full text of this excellent short poem by Christina Davis on poets.org.

Baby Profile Pics

There are way too many people putting baby pictures on their profile. What's up with that? I mean not pictures of babies created by themselves or by others, but their own pictures from decades ago.

I posed this question a little while ago on Twitter. In the spirit of full disclosure I mentioned that I was guilty of the same for a period of a few weeks and I received a many (un)helpful responses from friends and family.

These are the responses:
Javed Shaikh - Well you could answer that yourself then :)2:01 am
darshan parikh - whose ur baby man?6:25 am
Mifrah Abid - what's up with people who do something and wonder when others do it too? :P5:36 pm

I did it then thinking that it seemed to be the norm. For now I will talk about others and why they do it. As I thought of this more in light of the above comments, I made two observations:

a) It's usually, no almost exclusively guys who are doing this
b) They are not really baby pics, but toddler pics or pics from when they just started going to school.

I have put 2 + 2 together and this is my conclusion: Guys, despite appearances to the contrary, are pretty vain. They want to look good out there on the internet. You never know who is stalking or looking at your pics, right? I mean you can photoshop the hell out of your pics, or get a nice photographer to take a studio pic, but then that looks too staged and you can easily be found out.

Most guys my age are either in the process of balding or greying and don't think that adds much to their sex appeal. On the other side of this equation of balding, slightly pot-bellied males are the girls. Now, barring a few rare exceptions (I know a few myself) girls are naturally attracted to babies. If you placed Brad Pitt, or whoever is current-hunk-of-the-moment, and a pudgy baby dribbling all over itself in a white diaper, the baby will win the attention of the women around.

So, the smart guys have decided to show themselves at their appealing best by posting pics when they were babies, but still distinguishable as an individual. In one fell swoop, you solve all the problems plaguing your current face in the mirror.

Humor as a sign of maturity

I thought it applied only to individuals, but the Economist extends the view for countries too,

"Self-deprecating humour is the ultimate sign of emotional and political maturity, just as a rabid prickliness is typically a sign of unresolved complexes about superiority, inferiority, and lack of attention from the outside world."
From the Economist: Eastern Approaches

Simple Pleasures

I remarked to some of my friends the other day that one of the greatest pleasures in life is to shave with a nice new razor, warm water and lots of foam. I was told, "I am too easily pleased". Yes, perhaps. Tony Hoagland has news for you.

I Have News For You

...

...

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.

- Tony Hoagland

For a Dollar more

It was pouring all day and I decided to do the unholiest of unholies which is to drive to work. I got there, parked and then made my way to the parking meter and decided to pay. The meter maids in Ann Arbor are pretty diligent about dishing out the parking tickets.

At the parking meter some people needed help. They did not know how the machine worked. It takes credit cards and cash and has a bunch of options. I was glad to help. In the meantime, more people showed up and were waiting behind me which included my advisor.

When it was my turn, as I never have cash I had no option but to use my credit card. The machine just would not accept my credit card and like most places won't take American Express (there go my Delta skymiles). I tried this three times and the machine would not obey my commands. Given my masterful support performance a few minutes earlier, people in line knew that I was no newbie at the machine. It truly did not work. I said loudly, " Damn, this machine won't work. I have no cash". Then the girl behind me asked me, "Do you need a dollar?". That was pretty embarrassing. I said thanks and said that I would prefer to borrow the dollar from my advisor who was in line behind her. I was thinking that borrowing a dollar from someone I know is better than from a complete stranger.

My advisor Daryl pulled out dollar and responded with a priceless remark.
"I have been supporting this guy for years. What's a dollar more?"

End of Days

It's 6pm and everybody has gone home. I am sipping my last coffee as a graduate student. I had always looked forward to the day when I would finally be able to say 'I'm done with this crap'. Sometimes, it looked like that day would never come. It always seemed a goal that was too impossible, too far, somewhere in the distance, a year or two away. Now it's finally here, it's not what I had expected to feel.

Today everyone, including my advisor, told me to go home early and get some sleep. Actually, for the first time in my life I genuinely want to stay here. Not because there is work to be done, but I just want to enjoy the last evening here at my desk - alone. I see piles of old papers that are all marked up and with coffee stains, old lab notebooks with failed experiments and incorrect analyses. They make feel that was time well-spent. My finished papers, in comparison, look too clean.

Tomorrow, in about 45 minutes I am supposed to wrap six years of work. They want the cream. I shall present three of my greatest hits, and if that's a hit with the committee, they are going award me a PhD.

My personal experience makes me compare doing a PhD to running a marathon. You have to be slightly mad to think of doing one, and a little more so to finish one. Just as the marathon is not a test of speed, but of stamina, a PhD is not a test of quick intelligence, but of rigor and intellectual determination. For the most part, you hang in there and keep going, and not be afraid of falling down or going down blind alleys.

I recall Chicago. After many miles, I finally rounded the bend on Columbus Drive and saw the finish, less than 400 meters away. Suddenly, all the weariness of those miles disappeared seeing that green banner with large, friendly letters reading, 'FINISH'. It was nice to get that medal around my chest once I crossed. That will always remain. And looking back, what I really enjoyed was running all those miles in the different neighbourhoods. Today, it's that same sort of feeling of seeing the finish line, one that you dreamed about for a few years. Yes, I look forward to crossing the line tomorrow, but tonight I want to sit here and look back.

Yesterday

This is a heartbreaking poem by W.S. Merwin which I came across a couple of years ago. Then I thought it was beautiful. Over the years, it has become more and more personal and private. Today on the occasion of my father's birthday, I thought I should celebrate it with you.

Poems need to be read, and read aloud. None more than this one, because it's about things unsaid and undone.



Great poetry is like that. First you read it, then it reads you.

The truth about bags and bags

Interestingly, today's WSJ reported on the topic of the last post - reusable or not. Of course, the chief issue is about learning to change behavior. Unless the shops themselves don't raise the bar on the bags, or in the absence of legislation there is a great tendency to slide into the convenience of the plastic bag.

There are bags and then there are bags. A high-end designer made these bags that are cool, but completely impractical unable to store anything other than a head of a lettuce.

It was rather sobering to note that I would have to first use my reusable bag a number of times before I start reaping the green benefits. In the short term at least, my house is relatively clear of plastic bags and I am happier for it. There were about 100 billion, yet 100 billion plastic bags used.

Reciprocity

There is no reciprocity. Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters.

- Alice Thomas Ellis

My Ph.D. thesis

Why does this ring a bell?

Caffeine Break

Today is Day Four of my caffeine break.
To convince myself that my soul can be redeemed and realizing that having close to a pot or more of coffee everyday isn't going to do me much good, I'm on a caffeine break this week. Taking its literal meaning, I won't (or will try not to) have coffee or any caffeinated drink all of this week. So far, the flesh has done the bidding of the spirit. Nothing like conducting an experiment on yourself.

One things about quitting is that there are always people handy to give you advice. One of the things suggested was to drink hot water from the mug instead of the usual joe. It worked, sort of. On Day Three I buckled in to drink hot tea (decaf, of course). That's keeping me going and I'm convincing myself that it doesn't count as cheating. (It's a lot better than the hot water for sure!)

All I have to worry about is Friday. Funnily enough, I don't drink coffee at home. It's a conditioned reflex of sorts that I need it when I am at work or going to work.
In the meantime, every coffee-shop looks enticing and I am tempted to snatch a cup from someone.

Drugs, man! they make you do these things.

What Men Want From Women

For a few months now, I have been carrying Hugh's Gaping Void on the sidebar. He has a quirky sense of humour that reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut.



Today's comic is a true gem, more so when you realise the subtlety of the order. It has inspired me to send this man a cheque. Why not? He does as much to make the world more livable than any bleeding-heart social worker. When Hugh figures out what women want from men, I guess his mailbox will be flooded with cheques. We won't have any more troubles with homo sapiens XX and no more comics. What is worse?