It's a pity this blog is in the public domain. Though I am convinced I have very few readers (can be counted on two fingers is my guess), it still prevents me from blogging entirely openly at times for fear of hurting people who may stumble on it.

But really, the idiots one meets along the way of life. You change your status to strangelove in honour of the movie, and twerps from the past pop up asking if everything is alright, about love, points of view, the indefinable. I humour them briefly by conversing but then the twerp goes into entropy and how thats a point of view. Love and entropy! Fitting that it should follow from Dr Strangelove. What a complete idiot!

But I should feel glad from a certain point of view. He brought up my 11th standard physics teacher and that reminded me of the immense crush I had on him. He was a tiny little gnome, hopping around with energy, sparks in his eyes as he unravelled the wonders of the world. His equations were meticulous and he understood everything he taught, no question too bizarre for him. My world really spun around him at one time. A case of intellectual infatuation, I suppose. I wonder what he's up to.

Still alive

Jerome David "J. D." Salinger (born on January 1, 1919)

Brutus

He's much better.

I love it that Ma gives me his daily functioning in such gory detail because he's functioning normally and I love that my Doggy is back to his own self begging for food, hungry, snuffly, lazy, sleepy, cuddly and lie-upside-down-on-the-lawn-in-the-sun-y

This is real love.

Ivanhoe Introduction

I quote

"Many times in Ivanhoe a character disguises him or herself simply by pulling the hood of a mantle over the face or by muffling the face in a scarf. In this aspect and only in this aspect I find the plotting of Ivanhoe less than convincing- but what the heck gentle reader, I advise you to just roll your eyes and keep going; the book's worth it.

I suppose that perhaps, in an age of no electric lights, it must have been very very dim in those torch-lit halls- with bad lighting and no corrective lenses, it might have been possible for a man of normal intelligence to face his own disowned son across the banquet table and not know him"

Credits to Tia for pointing this out to me.

24

One class

One group meeting

One 4 hour call with Singapore,

One bout of clearing away debris in my life

One trip to the ER

One house party

One trip to the clinic in the morning

One marathon to avoid

One protest march to detour around

4 gallons of gatorade

7 taxi rides

Some sleep

Well, what happened was after my 3 hour corp fin class, I had a call with Singapore, met up with an acquaintance, went to jeannice's, got called away because Soo was very sick and had to go to the hospital. I find out in the morning she's no better and we go around chicago trying to find a clinic thats open only its a terrible day to fall ill. half the roads are cordoned off for a marathon, the other half for a march for something or the other. We get to one eventually but the rain is coming down in sheets and we can barely see across the street. It turns out that Soo is still dehydrated and so we buy gallons of gatorade and I take her home. Aditi's taken over the nursing now so I feel easy in my conscience in coming home (through pouring rain, did I mention?). Finally, I'll drop by again in the evening with more gatorade if necessary.

Settling down to enjoy my cereal. I've earned it.

I should just start my own central bank. All these weeks of passing criticism on governments and their monetary/fiscal/exchnage rate/blah policies have left me wise beyond my years 

(hunting around for a country to acquire)

Hateful

Brutus is ill with liver disease. My mother just called with the news. She said they should find out how he responds within a month.

My mouth was so dry and my throat so lumped, I could barely reply to my mother. Why am I in fucking Chicago where I can't even go home when he's ill?

Edit: I've wasted the whole of this day. Since I am in this hateful city, I might as well get the work done I'm supposed to. I hate myself wasting away what I'm supposed to do while my dog is ill

Cruel

Where has spring gone?

Kutuzov and Javert. When you can write characters like them, then you're a great writer.

Babblita

It's ordained to be so. I am not going to think straight through all of my life. There are some parts i will treat as pure fantasy and let them just be. I can't always worry about right and wrong and pretty things should live.

Also, the place I went for dinner has  GIANT margueritas. 

Too much maudlin stuff went on the blog today. On a cheery note... oooooooooooooooooooh I love economics

Had a long and really interesting chat with my dad today. Some of the times, it happens that I'm busy and can't emote, or he's feeling a little sentimental and then we can't really connect because we're really passing news and information and then passing by. But today I was a little more relaxed and he was in his informative mood and things were just right for a long chatty call. It was really nice to talk to Ma too.

I was crying quietly when I heard that Ma was crying over Brutus. You don't know what that dog means to my family. He's getting old and his time with us is limited and I am miserable at the thought. I love him fiercely, that it hurts across the miles and miles. I have to remember that though dogs feel emotion they do not anticipate events and he is happy. I feel unhappy about Ma too. She is deeply attached to Brutus whether she shows it or not. If Brutus has been a brother to me, he's a son to her. He's made our family stronger and often has been a thread of sanity when all of us are giving in to our inherent madness and inchoate ways. If the unhappy day comes when he is put down, I'm going to fly down for his last day. I must be there, not for him, but for me. There will never be a dog for me like him again. Only once can you love like that. Sure, they may be other dogs in my life in the future and I will love them too, I'm sure. But it will be a different love, possibly as deep, and meaningful. But not the same.

I am unhappy and grieving. This evening has not been a good evening for me. I am haunted by memories of people and now I am tormented by the impending death of someone I love more than anyone else in the world. Great globs of tears are rolling down my cheeks as I type. I am going to preserve every ugly fibre of this emotion. If I love and I can't be there to show my love, let my grief be a disgusting monument to it.

Teacher

A strange bit of poetry I read recently by someone called Taylor Mali. I don't know if Taylor is famous or a just someone who's trying his luck but I don't care. I liked this verse a lot.
"I make kids wonder,I make them question,
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write, write, write.
And then I make them read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful
over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math
and hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand if you’ve got this [brains],
then you follow this [heart],
and if someone ever tries to judge you

by what you make, you give them this [the finger]."

I think back to my teachers and realise that both my favourite teachers are dead, both from road accidents. I feel awful. I'm making new favourite teachers but they're stratospheric, intellectual influences. What is that compared to someone who took a human interest in me and really added to making me, me? I feel like those awful women in movies keening from their grief but the room really did a spin when it came back to me now that both Rani Chandran and Praveena Devarajan are dead. It's suddenly appropriate that winter hasn't left my windows and the ghost of tribune tower is dimly seen through the driving rain and fog. 

I'm going to be dead someday. I can't begin to fathom it. Especially now. I feel so alive and I can't really get my head around the fact that this factory is going to be shut down. Oh bother, I can't even express myself. I bet Anais Nin would have gone prose poetry on this. Well, too bad. She's dead too.

Hurdles

I worry, I worry. its the Peter Principle. Rising to the level of my incompetency. I fear that finance classes bring me closer and closer to my final incompetency; the discomfort is intense. Corp Fin will be the death of me.

I'm reading my other stuff way too casually. Its like the stress is so high, the workload is so high the only way to survive an dsurvive comfortably is to read away, chip away lightly. But I like economics. There's a difference. it gets my blood happy and stirring. I even thrive on its ambiguity.

I am going to be so unhappy when I finally reach that threshhold of no further achievement ever. Till then I am going to fight a little longer. Perhaps this is just a hurdle.

On another note: Egad, mine schnoz. I keep telling myself its not the nose, but the person peeking over it. Soon it's going to get really hard to peek over.