Thursday, July 29, 2010

Try Me One

Move slowly. Pack. Drive. Drive through the evening, through the sunset, through the night. 

Rejoice at someone else's smile. In your own dark abyss, full of secrets, is a glimmer that came from knowing that you gave someone else a light. 

Satisfy your hunger. Then drive some more. And then satisfy your hunger again, and again, and again. And then look upon the horizon and feel hungry again. 

Feel hungry. Feel thirsty. Feel lonely. Feel insecure. Feel cold. Feel sad. Feel frightened. 

Feel everything, and come so close, and yet not satisfy anything. 

Sleep. The best solace. A warm hug. The best comfort. A beautiful ocean. The best rest. The hunger ebbs away gently.

Drink your sorrow away, then sleep once more. Solace, comfort and rest all come together again.

Drive away again. Relax. Breathe. Calm down. Get excited, then calm down again. Feel restless. 

Share a joke. Share a laugh. The core of everything is cold stone, but the skin always craves warmth. 

Remember an old sequence, from twenty years ago, which looked exactly as beautiful as this. It makes you desperate. You reach out, and the wind envelopes your body, caring nothing for all the props of sophistication and civilization. 

The wind will never leave you, never betray you, and you can never betray it, as long as you breathe. For a moment, your despair dies. 

And then you come back to cold, hard reality. In the form of a highway that takes you inexorably back to the prison where you have been condemned to die. The trance breaks. 

Can you avoid punishment for running away? No. Can you break out and away from the prison, forever? Maybe. That's what this journey was all about.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Random Thought: Boy Meets Girl - the PhD Story

Boy meets girl. Boy is a few years senior to girl. Boy and girl are both doing PhD, in the same institute, same field. Boy and girl have common friends. Boy and girl and common friends do a lot of fun stuff together. 

Boy and girl like each other. Boy and girl go out for movies together. Boy and girl consider that this might be a serious thing. Boy and girl even attend international conferences together (convenient, since both are in the same field). 

Boy finishes first, and goes off to a foreign country to work. Boy keeps sending girl postcards and letters about his work and his friends. Boy and girl talk on phone once in a while. Girl keeps on in the meantime with her PhD. This goes on for three years. 

Boy comes back home, and gets a job in the institute. Boy and girl decide to marry. Girl tells her dad, who is extremely annoyed, but decides to give boy a chance. Boy cooks dinner for dad, and over dinner they discuss Physics, their common love. 

Girl asks dad what he thinks, and he replies that boy's cooking is better than girl's cooking. Dad agrees, though he probably doesn't approve in his heart. But he wants to see his little girl happy.

Boy and girl get married, and later have a baby girl. Baby girl will have her own stories to tell, too. But that's for another day.

(Dedicated to UK and NNR, with thanks for all the love)