The Edge of the Ocean

When I was younger and the author of a different blog, I remember I used to be obsessed with Grey's Anatomy. I thought of the much-confused Meredith Grey as a sort of alter-ego and go-to gal for my own life problems. Of course, this was way back when my 'life problems' consisted of dealing with an uber-competitive classmate/frenemy and agonising about a crush who was completely clueless about my existence. Ah, now those were simpler times!

Anyway, since Grey's Anatomy has since fallen off my tv-viewing radar and I'd like to think my life has gotten complex enough for me to now watch trashier television than I used to, and not obsess about it (contrary to what my friends would claim), I thought it might be nice to revisit those old-favourite quotable quotes that made Meredith Grey such an inspiring character in the first place.

Whereas I've clearly outgrown some of them, and now find a few quite mawkish. But the rest of them, I'm happy to report, still make a lot of sense to me.

This one, for example. "You can waste your life drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them." I think those are words to live by, really.

Reading them again made me smile and remember what it was about that scrappy unabashedly-emo chick that was so appealing in the first place. It was that fierce determination to go out and get what she wanted, regardless of the personal cost. It was that unique mix of desperate and zealous, detached and vulnerable, needy and independent that made her feel so real to me. Oddly enough, it was kinda like meeting an old friend - the kind you used to be real close to, but now find you don't really talk to any more, apart from the occasional inspirational text message.

Love makes the world go 'round

'A General Theory of Love' is turning into a bit of comfort-reading these days. I tend to skim through chapters right before I go to sleep. For a neurobiology book, it's a fairly romantic read.

I was reading it right now and remembered how much I'd enjoyed this idea of limbic resonance the first time that I read it. Our limbic systems which are sort of the most primitive and emotional parts of our brain, are not exactly information-sponges. As the book puts it, they don't pick up facts as rapidly as the neocortex does.

The book postulates that the limbic system is capable of something rather profound, however. That it enables us to share deep emotional states and is responsible for our capacity to form non-verbal connections with other members of our species which are in large part responsible for our elaborate social behaviour. And this leads not just to creating the capacity for empathy but in some cases it lays the basis for the bonds of companionship since it allows 'our systems to synchronise with each other through limbic revision'.

All in all, apparently love rewires the brain by changing its chemistry. And to adopt the book's guileless and somewhat mushy tone, 'In any relationship, one mind revises the other; one heart changes its partner. This astounding legacy of our mammalian brains is limbic revision : the power to remodel the emotional parts of the people we love as our Attractors activate certain neural pathways and the brain's inexorable memory mechanism reinforces them.'

What all that means is that who we are and who we become depends, in part, on whom we love.

It rarely happens that a popular science book ends up saying the same thing as your favourite Jane Austen novel. But when it does, you can't help grinning like a fool as you jump out of bed to type it onto your blog.

On the magic of the written word

It's been a while since I watched Carl Sagan's iconic series Cosmos, but I remember the flights of fancy that every episode sent me on. G. who'd watched the series when it was originally broadcast tells me he's been rediscovering it post-exams all these years later.

He emailed me this quote from the episode The Persistence of Memory, a couple minutes ago. And since it makes my heart sing with joy, I'll put it here for safe-keeping. 

"What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."

I have always admired Carl Sagan, his ability to explain complex concepts in simple words without being reductive, his humanism, his deep respect for all life, his unflagging devotion to the cause of spreading knowledge. He inspired a lot of the scientists of our generation and he's always inspired me, too.

But tonight he's given me more to think about. This feeling of belonging I get, when often I read something that strikes a chord within me, or write something that leads to a conversation with strangers, occasionally turning them into friends. It does feel like magic. I am grateful for it. And for Carl. 

Will night never come?

"They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more."

- Pozzo to Didi & Gogo on the lot of humankind, in 'Waiting for Godot' by Samuel Beckett.

When we were young

"I divide my life into two parts, not really a Before and After, more as if they are bookends, holding together flaccid years of empty musings, years of the late adolescent or the twentysomething whose coat of adulthood simply does not fit."

- from When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Winman.

A big thank-you to the Book Florist for this quote. And cheers to all those out there like us! :)

Sing to me of the man, Muse

Dustin: So you're a painter?

George (nodding): Yeah. I mean I'd like to be. I just don't know what to paint.

Dustin: What do you mean?

George: It's just that every time I think of a subject, or even try to visualise an image of what I think I should paint, I just feel like I'm full of shit. Like I'm trying to be something I'm really not.

Dustin (staring at a painting on George's bedroom wall): Yeah, that's the hardest part, you know?

George: And what if it's not any good? What I can do -

Dustin (shrugging): Some say it's bullshit. Some say it's a masterpiece. You gotta be honest with yourself, man. Figure out what you're in it for. You might think it's art. You might think it's money on a wall. If you've got some talent, you gotta hone it. Read about it. Look at stuff in galleries. You can't live inside your own head all the time.

George: Does that make me not a painter?

Dustin: No, that's not what I meant. What you're doing is fantastic. This is what you should paint. Atleast until you evolve into something else. The fact that you struggle with it is a really good thing, you know what I mean?

George: I guess. But I keep thinking is it really meant to be this hard? If it's hard, then it's not natural. And you can't force something like that.

Dustin: Yeah, but you gotta exercise that muscle. It gets easier, I promise. Besides, how can you call yourself a painter if you don't paint?

- from The Art of Getting By.

One Day

"That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it and think how different its course would have been. Pause, you who read this, and think for a long moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or of flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on that one memorable day."

- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.

Dance me to the End of Love

Miriam: There's one thing I want from you.

Barney: Anything!

Miriam: Don't answer 'anything'. That's not real. Life's real. It's made up of little things. Minutes, hours, naps, errands, routine - and it has to be enough.

- from the movie, Barney's Version.

Octopus Garden

My mother tells me that one of my worst habits is the way I treat books. I buy a whole pile of them and arrange them carefully on my bookshelves and start reading a myriad books around the same time, then leave them off to begin new ones and the cycle continues endlessly. She says that this is becoz of my essentially easily distracted attention and fickle nature.

I must confess that while this treatment of books is shabby indeed and I do regret not finishing a lot of the books I start, I have truly honorable intentions and I do intend to finish reading all those books I turned away from in favour of new ones.

But then I love books, I have never let a single page tear or the spine fray and what few stains there are on their pages have been thoroughly regretted.

Then I read these two truly marvellous quotes by fellow booklovers from a bygone era and realized that well, atleast I'm not the only grave offender here.

The first one is the by the famous O. Henry who raised short stories to a sublime art form and in whose stories every character, however ordinary, is treated delicately with great care and tenderness.

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention."

The second one which I adore beyond measure is by the inimitable wordsmith Winston Churchill, one of the singularly most brilliant orators that ever lived.

"If you cannot read all your books...then fondle them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances."

And for me, keep this day.

I had the rare but ultimately fortunate idea of cleaning up my old schoolbooks cupboard again, since Mum kept insisting I clean it or she wud throw the whole lot of books away.

I found this old scrapbook I used to keep, in which I loved to record interesting lines from the books I'd read. Or snatches of a brilliant poem. You know the feeling?

When you read a certain line and are gobsmacked by the truth and beauty and goodness of it?

That happened to me again as I found several tonight.

And now that my blog has replaced that scrapbook, I deposit them all safely here lest the pencil-writing fades and I lose those lovely thoughts.

Hook: And now, Peter Pan, you shall die.

Peter: To die would be an awfully big adventure.

Peter Pan,

J. M. Barrie

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.

Auguries of Innocence,

William Blake

(I didn't actually read this one, I heard it quoted by Captain Picard in a Star Trek movie and immediately loved it and googled it on the first incarnation of my computer on a 56kbps connection and it took an hour for it to load. I still remember how frantically I searched for these lines then.)

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot,

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned...

Eloisa to Abelard,

Alexander Pope

(I didn't read this either. It's from the movie. This was on the last page of the book, and since I'd grown up written with a ball-pen with ink that is now dreadfully smudged.)

Under the spreading chestnut tree,

I sold you and you sold me.

There lie they and here lie we

Under the spreading chestnut tree.

1984,

George Orwell

(I still remember how excited I was when I brought this book home in a terribly tattered but delightfully complete edition that my surly school librarian had handed to me. I finished it in three hours and realised for the first time in my life, what it means to be truly free.)

My words fly up,

My thoughts remain below;

Words without thoughts,

Never to heaven go.

Hamlet,

William Shakespeare

(I shall never be the same for having read this. I have never read words written like this before or after. I had always expected Shakespeare to be a snob's delight. I had never thought I'd be so bowled over by the wrenching depth of his writing.)

And finally, last and definitely not the least,

I sit beside the fire

And think of all that I have seen,

Of meadow flowers and butterflies

In summers that have been.

Of yellow leaves and gossamer

In autumns that there were,

With morning mist and silver sun

And wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire

And think of how the world will be

When winter comes without a spring

That I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things

That I have never seen.

In every wood, in every spring

There is a different green.

I sit beside the fire

And think of people long ago,

And people who will see a world

That I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think

Of times there were before,

I listen for returning feet

And voices at the door.

Bilbo Baggins singing "I sit beside the fire and think.."

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,

J. R. R. Tolkien

(I'd read this in tenth standard when the first movie was about to release. I was moved by the profound wistfulness and latent wanderlust in what is deceptively simple verse. This is written on the very last page. I shudnt really put this here becoz I have it nearly memorized. But it's fitting that it acted as a bookend both there and here.)

Ode to Multitasking

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. "

The Notebooks of Lazarus Long,

Robert A. Heinlein.

P. S. Thank you, Falak, for introducing me to the incredible awesomeness of Robert A. Heinlein's science fiction. I am looking forward to hundreds of hours of pure reading pleasure post exams.

P. P. S. I'll be back after what has been built up into the most important and toughest examination of my whole, entire life. Wish me luck! :)

Grace Kelly

"Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great."

-Nelson Mandela

One of SK's early morning motivational messages.

"Expecting life to treat you well just coz you're a good person is like expecting an angry bull to not charge at you coz you're a vegetarian."

-Unknown

Another one of SK's early morning motivational messages! :D

And this joke,

What do you call a bear that chases after you ravenously, then starts crying and runs away?

Bipolar bear. XD

Exam days wud be oh-so-droll without these messages!

"Poem sunega?"

"Chhoti chhoti chitrayi yaadein

Bichchi hui hain lamhon ke lawn par. 

Nange pair unpar chalte chalte

Itni door chale aaye

Ki ab bhool gaye hain -

Joote kahaan utaare the.

Aedi komal thi, jab aaye the.

Thodi si naazuk hai abhi bhi.

Aur naazuk hi rahegi

In khatti meethi yaadon ki shararat

Jab tak inhe gudgudati rahegi.

Sach, bhool gaye hain

Ki joote kahaan utaare the.

Par lagta hai,

Ab unki zaroorat nahin." 

Satyanshu Singh and Kumar Devanshu.

Udaan.

"Poem achchi lagi? Samajh aayi?" 

Saw Udaan again today with Mishti and Momo. Was deeply affected again. Maybe it was the exam fatigue. But related to and recognised so much. Some of the loveliest of things are also the simplest of things, no?

Wake me up when September ends

"I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself : So, this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course, there will always be more of it. It never occurred to me then, but it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was that moment. Right then."

Clarissa Vaughn,

The Hours.

Comeuppances

For the life of me I cud never finish The Fountainhead inspite of having attempted to read it on three different occasions as many as three years apart, hoping that perhaps at 21 at last I was mature enuff to read the whole thing.

Well, no such luck. Now I just randomly skim the book, stopping and reading wherever my gaze happens to land at that particular moment in time.

Regardless of never having reached the ending, a lot of lines and vignettes come to mind. The one that follows is perhaps one of the book's best-known lines but today, I really envy Roark's self-centered detachment from the world of mediocre minds.

I think there's this famous scene from the Roark's trial, but I cant remember precisely where that falls becoz of my disjointed reading habits. In this scene, Toohey confronts Roark and says to him,

"Why don't you tell me what you think of me, Mr. Roark?" to which Roark replies,

"But I don't think of you."

Exactly.

I have a mental image of me whooping and cheering in the courtroom when he says this. But I'm sure Roark being Roark wud care nothing for it.

Now I imagine I was the one saying that and derive even greater satisfaction from it. Altho' this whole exercise makes me feel like I have missed the point by miles. No matter. My aim is achieved and I am in a much, much better mood now. :D

Echoes

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes, and ships and sealing-wax
Of cabbages, and kings!"

The Walrus and The Carpenter,

Lewis Carroll.

P.S. Now, a lot of people tell me they think this man wrote fantastic entertaining gibberish. You know what I think? I think they got only two out of three assumptions correct.

The goddess in the rain

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore;
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar,
I love not Man the less, but Nature more...

-Lord Byron,
(from Into the Wild)

Magnificent

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars...

- Jack Kerouac

Build me up Buttercup

"If you want to be happy, be."

- Leo Tolstoy.