It's a little alarming, actually. I think that I have yet to achieve the necessary degrees of separation to view college as a part of my past; I can't enter nostalgia proper because I haven't accepted the passage of time. This is a muddled theory, however, because I understand nostalgia as a longing for an idealized version of the past, and certainly my memories of college are pleasantly cloaked in idealization. I recall the stress and scheduling and lack of sleep with a fondness that can only be accessed after the fact. And yet, there is no relinquishment of the experience: I feel like it is still mine to live and breathe, even as I live and breathe something entirely different.

Perhaps in order to mourn the past and move on, we need to replace it with a concrete present. I have been existing in limbo these months, indulging in the escapism of novels and movies and TV shows and waiting for life (read: school) to begin again; my failure to let go of Berkeley is akin to using it as a placeholder. But this stopgap mindset is problematic in itself, suggesting as it does that I have learned to recognize only some tasks/events/experiences as life, dismissing all the rest as breaks. Basically, I'm still running on the academic calendar, which raises the question of what will happen when I finally emerge from the cocoon of academia and into the so-called "real world." Will I perpetually be waiting to return to school?

This is all very worrisome, but time is on my side right now (or I am on the right side of time). Thank goodness for higher education! It can more or less fit into the mold left by undergraduate studies, preserving the structure until school is finally, finally done. I am a firm proponent of avoidance as a legitimate approach to facing problems (or not facing them, as the case may be). That trickier transition to the working world, the complete reorganization of life and outlook, and the inevitable forced confrontation with the meaning of it all, I'll deal with when I have to. (And of course, I could always be a professor.)

The book is brilliant. Greenblatt takes what could be construed as a dangerous approach, interweaving his own insightful analysis with passages from Shakespeare's plays, sonnets, and other poems, and using all these texts as sources of or support for his assertions. The danger of this strategy lies in the possibility of reducing the person (the playwright, the poet) to his works, which would be to demean the great imaginative achievement of writing fiction in the first place, but Greenblatt deftly avoids that pitfall. He never mistakes the myriad of characters that Shakespeare created with their creator, but rather speculates intelligently about the circumstances and considerations that could have resulted in their creation.

What emerges is an incisive, engaging narrative of one possible life that William Shakespeare could have led. I know that this account may be entirely incorrect, but somehow that does not detract from its charm. Perhaps the book is the more poignant for its underlying uncertainty, the illusory quality of its subject, a writer we can only glimpse through the illusions he imagined for his own time, but which have outlasted him into ours.

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
(The Tempest 4.1.56-58).]]> http://www.revatinafday.net/2009/01/when_in_disgrace.html http://www.revatinafday.net/2009/01/when_in_disgrace.html Fri, 30 Jan 2009 23:09:57 -0800 I actually wrote this during my first semester as a freshman, a lowly general chemistry student struggling with the unit on thermodynamics. I was not yet initiated into the College of Chemistry: I had not experienced the euphoric high of succeeding at an organic chemistry synthesis problem after six hours; neither had I arrived at the current sobbing, screaming, unhinging lows of physical chemistry. It occurs to me, however, that while this piece is not particularly lyrical or polished, it resounds now even more than it did two years ago. Note the splendidly bad pun in line 11.

Thermochemistry
Chem-turned-physics: a fiend I dare not face —
I fear the Gorgon and stare into space.
My energy sources hourly deplete
as this, in vain, I struggle to complete.
So, too, does the world's energy evolve
into the work that people do to solve
the other Medusas of problem sets —
question upon question that no one gets.
Energy is conserved, so heat is lost;
for work, the universe exacts a cost.
Each person's a joule, part of the treasure
we combust as fuel, but fail to measure:
We replenish fossil fuels with our own,
cracking chem even as we turn to stone.

Far from harboring a desire to remain Ms. Nafday all my life, I will go so far as to advise you all to clear your calendars for December 19. The year is unfortunately uncertain, although we can be fairly confident that it will not be, at the very earliest, until 2013. As of now, there are no plans for a wedding ceremony of any sort, but there will probably be a reception, and definitely a registry (Williams-Sonoma, at the very least).

It will all begin some three months before the big day, as I could not possibly tolerate a long engagement any more than I could a long-distance relationship. It is folly, I tell you! In any case, I intend to be proposed to in a Barnes & Noble — preferably the one at Fashion Island, but another location is acceptable, provided that it has two stories. The reasoning is as follows. My reverent passion for Barnes & Noble drives me quite to distraction; by default, I acquiesce to all requests made within that sacred space, preposterous though they may be. By choosing such a suitable setting for a proposal, my future husband will demonstrate a most commendable degree of manipulation that I cannot but respect. And is not respect the foundation for every successful relationship?

I do not presume to script the proposal itself in advance, but I will scatter some guidelines into the ether. While I adore lofty declarations of love in literature, in life I am apt to laugh derisively in the face of any man who decides to recite famous poetry (or worse, compose his own!) in order to "express his feelings." One must employ succinct, organized, original prose when paying one's addresses, stylistically sound and grammatically pristine, yet not over-formal. If words were attire, the enticing proposal would register as dressy casual.

Provided that the above conditions are satisfied, and the proposal therefore courteously accepted, we will then sit down at the in-store Starbucks (a location for which my love is well-documented) to discuss the logistics of the union — that is, to ensure that our envisioned future lives mesh well. That long dialogue I will not imagine for you here, but the salient issues (such as income and living arrangements, annoying habits, and the number and spacing of children, to name but a few) will be hashed and rehashed until we formulate a contract agreeable to both. Should these negotiations fail irrevocably, then the merger must be called off, but otherwise, we proceed to married bliss.

You may claim that an uncontrolled variable persists in the midst of all this preparation: my future husband himself. Perhaps you will protest when I say that his identity is of minimal importance, so long as he meets my minimum qualifications (a subject for another entry), but I can only refer you to the incontrovertible authority on such matters, Jane Austen:

"Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other, or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation, and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life."

I enjoy coffee for itself: bittersweet, steaming, aromatic. It evokes memories of home, of breakfast on leisurely Sunday mornings with my family. To use coffee for caffeine is to somehow cheapen its value in my eyes. I do it, of course—I defy anyone to get through one of my semesters without—but I can never bring myself to do it to Starbucks. Those other, more convenient coffee shops serve this purpose, and sometimes even serve a decent drink, but Starbucks remains near and dear to my heart. No white mocha or indeterminate café latte from another source has ever shaken the belief, lodged firmly in my core, that Starbucks is superior to all its imitators and competitors, superior enough to merit an exertion on my part.

I have always said (and still maintain) that the comfort of rampant commercialism, so rare in a place like Berkeley, is worth far more to me than a half hour of my time and $3.35.

While I admire originality and independence, I feel like the fierce revolt against convention characteristic of this day and age often amounts to irrationality. To dislike a brand or product simply because it is popular renders one as pathetic, as much of a caitiff to convention, as the tools who like the brand or product for the same reason. Starbucks may be a big, impersonal corporation, but it is a big, impersonal corporation that offers the comfort of conformity in order to make a profit; that in itself is an act of courage in today's world, with its radical devotion to individuality, charity, and absolute, abstract freedoms.

If you choose to hate Starbucks because you want to advertise your political, economic, or social individuality on a disposable cup, you are no doubt as disposable as both the packaging and the substandard beverage contained within. At Starbucks, however, even that impulse is superbly regularized in the form of "The Way I See It" statements on each cup: individuality stamped with a catchy title, numbered, and mass-produced. I rejoice if this corrupted, compromised form of self-expression offends you. I drink my coffee as a respite and a pleasure, not as a statement of self-righteous, self-referential nonconformism.

Starbucks provides the novelty of choices, and the security of their insignificance: regardless of what you order, you can rest assured that it will be consistent, formulaic, and delightful. One feels standard at Starbucks, no matter what. Employees in other coffee shops have balked or bristled when I ordered their equivalent of a tall, nonfat dulce de leche latte, iced with no ice, which I fully admit is a contradictory sort of concoction. Starbucks baristas simply inquire whether I would like whipped cream on that.

No, I would not. There is solace in exercising freedom within such strict constraints. The trouble with our contemporary tendency to deny limitations entirely, to shatter the fourth wall of the stage and to erase the horizon line on the canvas is that we erase too any sense of what freedom is and why we value it. For a moment in a day, it is such a relief to set down the burden of uniqueness and to be forced to exercise all my creativity and liberty within the confines of a coffee cup.

Rather than play up my early, scant successes, let us turn to more recent reading endeavors. In the week before I returned to Berkeley for Hall Staff training, I bought and read Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. Although this work was not strictly on my reading list, I am admittedly unpredictable with regard to the books that pique my interest. I sometimes buy titles that strike me only to feel disenchanted with the prospect of beginning them, and proceed to read an older "new book" that has been lying untouched on my bookshelf for months or years. On the other hand, it sometimes transpires that I immerse myself in a novel at once and refuse to surface until the last page is turned; this was the case with Gone With the Wind.

Like most people, I had been perfunctorily and culturally aware of this novel for as long as I could remember. Knowing what I did of the premise and the conclusion (from the most unfortunate experience of catching the last 20 minutes or so of the film on TV), I was rather loath to take the plunge. Could an American novel, a novel moreover that was written about events that preceded, comprised, and succeeded the Civil War from a distinctly Southern perspective, which amassed about a thousand pages only to arrive at a most ambiguous ending, be a compelling and satisfying read?

Quite. If one manages to overcome the initial shock of casual racism, so jarring to the modern reader, Gone With the Wind is a deftly crafted and involving work. As I read, it first struck me as a popular entertainment rather than an intellectual one, full of memorable characters who spar in situations that might be better suited to a soap opera. Scarlett O'Hara is certainly a heroine for the ages, simultaneously ruthless and arresting as she claws and charms her way through the difficult times. I suspect that most of the novel's enduring appeal arises either from her admirable characterization or the romance aspect: Scarlett's periodic interactions with the equally unscrupulous Rhett Butler can be counted upon to rejuvenate the text whenever it is in danger of flagging.

On the thematic level, however, Gone With the Wind is first and foremost a sweeping testament to survival. The novel's complex treatment of loss and nostalgia leaves one convinced, if not quite contented, that endurance demands an offering, that some surrender of oneself and one's past is necessary to proceed into the future. Ultimately, while we feel for those characters who cling to the graceful shadows and quiet echoes of the lost South, our admiration belongs wholeheartedly to Scarlett, who sacrifices her morals, family and love, confident that she can get everything back in the morning, so long as she survives another day.

I feel like I've been thrown into the trenches with no training besides what I can pick up as I go along. As far as weapons and equipment go, progress has been slow. I can now use a knife to cut a green pepper (and hence, if we optimistically extrapolate, any bell pepper) and an onion, though a Granny Smith apple got the better of me this afternoon. I successfully employed a spatula to make my first-ever batch of scrambled eggs unassisted, though my prowess at flipping omelets containing the aforementioned peppers and onions leaves something to be desired. Furthermore, I've faced, if not overcome, my fear of potholders. As an avid baker, I have heretofore avoided the potholder problem by using two mismatched oven mitts; you might say that apartment life has stripped me of the safety mitt.

Finally, I have mastered the advanced art of quickly and adeptly rolling up a sleeping bag into a compact cylinder. On that note, sleeping on the floor has not been as much of an inconvenience as I imagined; I'm actually starting to believe that it is better for my back, and perhaps for my mental health as well. I don’t know whether it's the floor thing or the "reduced stress" of summer (ha!), but I've started dreaming again after an alarmingly dreamless semester.

The lesser domestic machinery, such as dishwashing, kitchen and bathroom cleaning, laundry and whatnot, is already part of my arsenal. In addition, my roommate is an indispensable ally in this war I'm waging on apartment life. In the face of all the figurative carnage, there are respites as well. Communal Harry Potter reading nights, romantic dinners to the sounds of Linkin Park, and, of course, the involved discussions on surname compatibility to map out the relevant family trees of posterity... whatever shall I do without them?

But let us not engage in premature nostalgia, not while there are fruits and omelets and clogged drains to be conquered! Moreover, the deadliest foes of my dorm life -- the incomparably vicious 24-7 construction workers -- have pursued me to my new abode: they must be vanquished once and for all. With these and other battles inevitably imminent, I feel confident that I will be an apartment veteran when I return to the residence halls in August.

"'My friendly, card-carrying cupids!' beamed Lockhart. 'They will be roving around the school today delivering your valentines! And the fun doesn't stop here! I'm sure my colleagues will want to enter into the spirit of the occasion! Why not ask Professor Snape to show you how to whip up a Love Potion! And while you're at it, Professor Flitwick knows more about Entrancing Enchantments than any wizard I've ever met, the sly old dog!'
"Professor Flitwick buried his face in his hands. Snape was looking as though the first person to ask him for a Love Potion would be force-fed poison."
(J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

I have it on some pretty hefty authority (Albus Dumbledore and Tom Riddle, anyone?) that seven is the most magically powerful number, so perhaps it's no coincidence that when the seventh Harry Potter book comes out on July 21, 2007, it will mark the end of the seven year journey I began the summer after seventh grade.

With things like this, it's always the same: I can't really recall how the books became so deeply ingrained in my life. I liked Sorcerer's Stone when I read it, obviously, or I wouldn't have gone on with the series, but the degree to which my obsession escalated by high school was unprecedented. The seamless integration of quotes with my regular speech! The Harry Potter hangman games during multivariable calculus and physics! The endless phone conversations about what would happen next!

Like all passions, mine cooled. But like true love after the first raptures have died down, its essence endured. (By the way, be honest. When you read the quote, you thought that this was going to be a characteristically bitter rant about Valentine's Day, didn't you? Shame on you!) Sure, if you asked me to recite the opening paragraph of each book, they would no longer be verbatim, and I don't really have the time to do more than one cycle of all the books per year, but I don't think that I'll ever "grow out" of this love. I don't want to, in fact.

We can quibble over what qualifies as "literature" - I don't presume to know - but regardless of what the dissenters might say, the Harry Potter books are not merely children's books or a fad perpetuated by the mindless masses. Once in a while, popular opinion gets it right. The fact remains that these books inspired me to write a 12 page final paper in Spanish, among other things. They are endlessly witty, hilarious, whimsical, inventive, tongue-in-cheek, suspenseful, mysterious... I could go on, but the more I think about it, the more nostalgic I get. This is the end of an era: I can't imagine my life without the anticipation for the next Harry Potter book. I can't imagine that one day, I'll be able to pick up book 7 and read it with the same air of utter comfort with which I read books 1-4 (I'm not quite there with 5 or 6 yet). The notion is inconceivable, and yet so dangerously near to realization.

My only consolation is that I'll get some of my burning questions answered, and the prospect of satisfaction is a pretty strong lure. On the whole, I think that we can expect great things from Deathly Hallows. After all, resolution is a great thing - terrible, yes, but great. Because seriously, WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH SNAPE?

This week marks my first as a tutor for Chem 3B (which, for you non-Berkeley kids, is the second semester of organic chemistry), and today was the first shift during which people actually asked me questions. It was very alarming; personally, I feel that the first chapter or so of 3B is conceptually the worst, even though most people find the barrage of mechanisms they bombard you with later on more difficult to deal with. So when the coordinator sent us an e-mail warning us to be ready for questions about molecular orbital theory and the stability of conjugated systems, I was understandably nervous.

However, one point she emphasized that I felt not only comfortable, but also eager to explain was the distinction between the thermodynamic and kinetic products. Last semester, when we were learning this stuff, I got questioned about my (lack of) relationship status, and I used this concept as an analogy; I figure if anyone asks me about the concept now, I'l use the same analogy in reverse!

So here goes: I AM A THERMODYNAMIC PRODUCT! (Acceptance is the first step. If you were wondering, "thermodynamic product" is the new politically correct term for "cold, prudish bitch.") I have a high activation energy, but once that barrier is overcome, I am assured that the final product (the Revati-boyfriend complex) will be very stable. On the other hand, kinetic people get into relationships quickly (they have a low activation energy), but the reaction is highly reversible and hence, they also get OUT of relationships quickly.

What's my point? Well, it has a dual nature.
(1) Your relationship is likely an unstable product that no one will be sorry to see dismantled, because its bonds are cleaving as we speak. (Yes, I know that being a marriage counselor is my calling. Don't even let me get started on long-distance relationships, and how EVERYONE CAN SEE THAT IT'S OVER EXCEPT YOU! That's another rant for another time.)
(2) While the thermodynamic product is clearly the preferred state, one concern to keep in mind on this reaction pathway is the fear of being a noble gas. You want to be stable, not inert. I don't think this is a problem for me: I don't feel stable enough on my own to be in possession of a full octet; I could certainly use a nice exothermic reaction to stabilize my life. Of course, I don't want to be one of those desperate alkali metal cations or halide ions, either, snatching at anything just to "complete myself." Molecules (and people) like that are just pathetic.

Okay, class over for today. Don't worry: I'll be back one of these days with that advice book on... "ochem."

Bio 1B
More interesting than expected! The professor (for the first third, at least) is surprisingly un-soporific, considering that it is an 8 a.m. class and he has started off with fungi. Of course, I haven't been to lab yet, so my impression may change: theoretical biology is usually more tolerable than the practical, as most unfortunately evidenced by 1A and 1AL last semester.

Chem 4B
The majority of this class is freshmen and there is a suspiciously science-fair-like research assignment looming in the distance, which prejudices me against 4B from the start. However, the first two lectures have been okay, and we're getting into redox, a topic I rather enjoy. I'm ambivalent about the fact that the last third of this class is an intro to organic chemistry: on the one hand, it will be incredibly dull to go over bond-line structures and nomenclature after having taken a year of organic; on the other, it might boost my grade after what will no doubt be a horrible research project.

Physics 8B
"If you adapt your eyes to darkness for about 15 minutes and then have a friend chomp on a piece of [a Wintergreen LifeSaver] in the darkness. . ."
No. That is one "if" that no "then" could ever justify. With this paragraph-opener a few pages into the textbook, any wild hopes of 8B quashing my long-standing dislike of physics have been dashed. I'm pretty apprehensive about this course, largely because I have a huge mental block against electromagnetism, and I fear that, to overcome it, I may actually have to like the subject. And to like physics, as we all know, would be something of a monstrous taboo, so I intend to push that mental block right under the rug (frictionless surfaces, of course) and blindly force myself through the misery.

English 125C
Oh, right. I'm an English major. This is my first upper division English class, and it's on the European novel. The first book on the reading list - Waverley, by Sir Walter Scott - is beginning most sluggishly, but I'm still hopeful about this class. For one thing, I prefer literature courses that are grounded in history like this one is; for another, I'm just so grateful to be out of the survey of modern lit I took in the fall that I am happy to bear thousands of pages of tangents, so long as they don’t deal with race, gender, sexuality, urban disillusionment, and, generally, utter garbage. And the pages will definitely number into the thousands, as the other novels we're reading are: Notre-Dame de Paris, by Victor Hugo; A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens (always nice to have one I’ve read before on the list); and War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy.

We'll see how it all goes. I've almost survived the first week (I have one more class to go to today), and in my experience, if you can do that, you can do anything. And the title alludes to Wordsworth, if you care.

I have a tumultuous relationship with resolutions. I never keep them, but neither can I entirely dismiss them from my mind, so my own inadequacy nags at me incessantly, forcing me into that spiral of self-loathing from which I am only given temporary respite by the arrival of the new New Year's. I have come up with many innovative ways to extricate myself from the vicious cycle - for example, by resolving to no longer make resolutions - yet I find myself here again, as ever.

The key to resolutions must be to alternate between costly dinners and free lunches. Challenging resolutions are for the superior spirit in each of us - ambition, aspiration, accomplishment and all that; freebies are for the lackadaisical insomniac student with two majors, three lab classes, and a reading list that includes four of the longest novels in the English language. So with that in mind, and without further adieu, this year I resolve to:

• Let my hair down more often. Not figuratively, you fools, but literally! Contrary to popular opinion, I don't need to relax, merely to conserve my hair ties.
• Get in touch with the aggressive half of my passive-aggressive personality. The next time someone harasses me with religion or fundraising on campus, I will politely assert my. . . disinclination to listen. And by "politely," I mean that I will not raise my voice, since venom drips quite as well from whispers. I will contest the many idiots in my discussion sections. I will not base my actions on how I think they will be perceived, which brings me to my next resolution:
• Refrain from actively making people think that I am nice, as I am not. I think the trouble here stems from my innate sense of tact. I have always considered it a vital quality, but I begin to think that too much tact is as distasteful as that much bluntness. So I will try to err on the side of offending as many people as possible.
• Stray out of my comfort zone, do the unexpected. Maybe I'll do my laundry on Saturday nights instead of Fridays! Do my chemistry homework in pen! Dare I try the pepperjack in lieu of the provolone?!
• Update my blog more frequently, if only to avoid bloated entries such as this one in the future.
]]> http://www.revatinafday.net/2007/01/post.html http://www.revatinafday.net/2007/01/post.html Tue, 09 Jan 2007 14:42:27 -0800 Like most of my stories, this debacle began in the shower. I was having a rather unproductive Thursday night, so I decided that a quick shower would wake me up - refreshment, rejuvenation, rebirth and all that.

The shower stalls in this building are examples of the most inept design I have ever had the misfortune to come across. In order to get the outer door shut, you have to step in past the inner curtain (holding your towel and clothes/bathrobe and shower caddy), reach AROUND said curtain (so that you get a faceful of its icky, wet glory), and lock the door. By the way, has anyone else noticed that all locks in dorm bathrooms are kind of shoddy? They rattle and don't slide in completely... how hard is it to make sure the two ends FIT together so that you can live without fear of people barging in on you when you're engaging in activities that are GENERALLY done alone? (Although, if you want to hear about awkward exceptions, ask me about the other shower incident from last year.) Anyway, one of the stall locks is actually like a hook in a loop of thread - knocking on the damn door would cause it to break! No wonder that "Are you pregnant?" is the Tang Center's response to any medical complaint - the ample opportunity for communal nudity in the dorms is rivaled only by the same in a brothel.

Okay, so suppose you manage to get in and "lock" the door. There are two hook-type things to hang stuff on: so far so good, right? NO. One of them is "conveniently" located underneath the most inaccessible shelf ever (hovering some two feet above my head! Granted, I'm short, but STILL). I made the mistake of hanging my towel on this hook and then trying to access the inaccessible shelf. Cut to towel on the (disgusting, hair-filled) floor. Oh, and let me just mention, since I had been at home over the long weekend, my other towel was still in the hamper.

It was a low point in my life: fairly undressed, stooping to pick up contaminated linens off the dirtiest tiles I could even imagine, and facing the prospect of taking a shower with no proper way to dry myself. I ended up just wrapping myself in my bathrobe, soaked, and sulking back to my room like a disgruntled cat that fell in a bathtub.

Am I being over-dramatic? Well, these events are actually just a setup for the horrors of today (and what I really intended to rant about), but I guess I'll leave that for Part 2. I want to go sit cross-legged on the floor by the microwave and compare brooding techniques with Gavin Victor Kenmore (the fridge). Let the downward spiral continue.

]]> http://www.revatinafday.net/2006/07/dorminduced_degeneration_part.html http://www.revatinafday.net/2006/07/dorminduced_degeneration_part.html Sat, 08 Jul 2006 16:38:02 -0800 This is a poem by Billy Collins, the former U.S. Poet Laureate, published in his collection The Art of Drowning (festive title, I know). Sorry, too lazy to write a long article.

Consolation

How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.

There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's
little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.

How much better to command the simple precinct of home
than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyed camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?

Instead of slouching in a cafe ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.

And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.
I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal
what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.
It is enough to climb back into the car

as if it were the great car of English itself
and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off
down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna.

]]> http://www.revatinafday.net/2006/06/poetry_break.html http://www.revatinafday.net/2006/06/poetry_break.html Thu, 15 Jun 2006 10:18:30 -0800 Happiness is notoriously subjective, impossible to consider quantitatively or qualitatively. But if we ignore its nature, we can treat it holistically as follows:
1) Happiness is finite. A commodity that depends on so many factors, even if they are unknown and varying, cannot exist in unlimited amounts because resources are scarce; there has to be a tradeoff involved.
2) The "world" we live in is inanimate and neutral. Outside the poetic realm, the world cannot experience emotion, and is thus devoid of any net happiness (or unhappiness).

This leads me to conclude that happiness and unhappiness exist in a zero-sum relationship: a gain for one side entails a corresponding loss for the other side. The innate mindset is, "If you are happy, there is one more happy person who is not me."

Curiouser and curiouser. Why, then, am I so rarely happy? Surely, you think, the thought that my bliss is indirectly resulting in another's misery is incentive enough! And indeed it would be, were it not for an even more malevolent alternative! There’s a loophole in the law, you'll find...

"Revati Nafday, you made sure there was a loophole when you wrote that law!" you shout (or at least, you do if you know your Harry Potter). Anyway.

Suppose that you and I are friends, and we are having separate but wonderful Wednesdays. You squeal and giggle and go on about yours; I gesticulate emphatically and laugh and fill you in about mine. We are each of us so immersed in our own respective raptures that we quite ignore one another, but that ignorance has no detrimental effect on our relationship because you and I, my friend, understand that the bliss-ignorance equation works both ways.

So we are still friends when we both have terrible, horrible, very bad Thursdays. You sob and sniffle and moan over yours; I rant and bitch and whine about mine. Again, we pay little or no attention to each other's problems, secure in the knowledge that nothing fortifies a friendship like reciprocated wretchedness.

Then comes Friday, the day that we've been looking forward to since Monday morning, and it surpasses your wildest expectations. I, on the other hand, am lying facedown in a ditch of disillusionment, contemplating what was essentially a week of foreplay that never delivered.

It falls to me, then. Do I force you to contain your delight and listen instead to my complaints (knowing full well that a part of you will resent me for it)? Or do I suck it up and rejoice for you with the selfless portion of my being (while the other 90 percent simmers in venom)?

And that brings us to the beautiful paradox: A happy person can make one person unhappy (the tradeoff), but no more people can be made happy; on the other hand, an unhappy person can bring down MANY OTHERS! Moreover, while other people's plights may well be a diversion and amusement, they do not negate one's own misery at the end of the day - thus, unhappiness is irreversible.

This contagiousness of unhappiness appears to compromise the neutrality assumed in (2) above. The solution to the paradox is...babies. Until the terrible twos and threes, babies are overwhelmingly, blindly happy. Sure, they cry, but the unconditional love, trust, and joy that they radiate quite equilibrate the hate, suspicion, and despair of adults. For more on the inexplicable behavior and powers of babies, I refer you to my brother's interesting article on how they are all "whack." As long as their presence allows me to bask in my own melancholy and bring you all down with me, I think they're cute. After all, misery loves company.

]]> http://www.revatinafday.net/2006/06/treatise_on_emotional_economy.html http://www.revatinafday.net/2006/06/treatise_on_emotional_economy.html Sun, 04 Jun 2006 18:51:23 -0800 "It's the most wonderful time of the year..."
Except it's really not. In fact, if the most wonderful time of the year were prancing about like an overly caffeinated ballerina atop either geographical pole, then we would be smack-dab in the center of the abyss of abject misery drilled into the core of the earth. In any case. It is the time of year at which important schedules must be made for the following year. And no, I do not mean Tele-BEARS, which is the spawn of the devil and needs to be painstakingly flayed with a dull razor and then thrown into a vat of brine. (Threat of the Day, yay!)

I'm talking about the summer literature list. At the moment, I've finally gotten back into Jane Eyre, so I definitely want to finish that up. The Brontes aren't particularly my cup of tea, but it's not unreadable.

Hmm. Here's the complete list of possibilities as I remember it. There's no way I'm going to get through all of these consecutively, especially since I'm notoriously given to buying random titles I spy in Barnes & Noble, but I'll try to get through a couple this summer. I welcome both advice and new suggestions!

On the Bookshelf:

• Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
• Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens
• The French Lieutenant's Woman, by John Fowles
• One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
• The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins
• State of Fear, by Michael Crichton
• Don Quijote de la Mancha, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Under Consideration:

• Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
• Interview With the Vampire, by Anne Rice
• Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, by Judith Martin
• A new Jane Austen: Persuasion, perhaps?
• A new Agatha Christie: I've only read And Then There Were None, but that's fabulous and frightening enough for the past six years

Begging for a Careful Reread (because I was too distracted during high school):

• Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce
• The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner
• Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

Worn-out-but-still-tempting Old Favorites (not an exhaustive list):

• Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
• The Giver, by Lois Lowry
• Harry Potter (all six), by J.K. Rowling
• Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
• Emma, by Jane Austen
• Possession, by A.S. Byatt
• The Bronze Bow, by Elizabeth George Speare
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis
• The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
• David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens

P.S. The title of the entry, if you didn't know, means "To read well is to master the ages." :)

]]> http://www.revatinafday.net/2006/04/bene_legere_saecla_vincere.html http://www.revatinafday.net/2006/04/bene_legere_saecla_vincere.html Sun, 30 Apr 2006 16:20:47 -0800