नीरज् उवाच

Favorite quote: “I was first in my class at Princeton, I have an IQ of a hundred and eighty-seven, and it’s been suggested that Stephen Hawking stole his Brief History of Time…from my fourth grade paper.”

Del divertimento prima di ritornare a scuola: Road trip to Seattle and Victoria, and a concert in Gorgias Lake Tahoe.

Sto facendo: Reading the श्रीगीतोपनिषढ्, which makes me content. My copy of the Gita was given to me by a good man from the ISKCON temple I frequented years ago. I used to go intermittently until my first year of college, and more often about 12-15 years ago. But, like many things, I’ll hold a special place for the Hare Krishnas and their philosophies nel mio cuore. And Puskar Das’s paintings are always a very sublime thing to view.

And LeBron: I must sadly inform you that I am filing for a divorce. This just isn’t going to work out.

Io ti ferirò, io ti guarirò

Last night was a sleepless night. My weak, defeated, and ultimately broken heart could do nothing but flounder helplessly and hopelessly throughout the night.

With a gaping hollow where my stomach should have been, and a dead, electric numb coursing through my legs and fingers, I was absolutely destroyed emotionally and physically.

And as I lay there, staring into the darkness that blanketed me, the best I could muster was, “Why?” and “How?”

“How could the Cavaliers lose a 15 point lead at the half?”

“Why did LeBron miss the crucial free throws in the final minutes that would have given his team the win?”

“Why couldn’t they stop Dwight Howard?”

Cleveland, if you lose again, I swear to God I’m going to dump you faster than a girlfriend who refuses to bear me children. I’ve suffered enough heartache from the Buckeyes, Browns, Indians, and from you, in 2007, to be able to take any more.

My regards to the lovely Dolcenera for the lyric from “Il mio amore unico” that serves as my title.

Things of a Moste Various Nature

Thank you, Caltech, for your speedy seismic information. This is the second fairly large quake in my immediate area in the last few weeks. I predict we will all be dead by the end of the week.

Food currently eating: Double bacon cheeseburger (ok, more like Morning Star’s equivalent, but still good and tasty in a vaguely familiar way).

Favorite songs at the moment: One I picked up a few years ago from Little Steven (and which also seemed to be a favorite of his), “She Cried”, by the Lords of Altamont. It’s a punk/garage reworking of an oldie from Jay and the Americans;  “Do It Again”, by the now-defunct Makes Nice; and anything by the Satelliters.

Favorite quote: “1 in 7 hamsters is a rapist.” (Source: here)

Baseball holds a special place in my heart. Back before golf was my game of choice, I enjoyed all-star success at baseball. After I hurt my throwing arm badly, however, my interest in the game waned a bit, as I was forced to trade varsity baseball for varsity golf. But this spring, it was rekindled, and I had the opportunity of going to a baseball game recently between the Los Angeles Angels and the Boston Red Sox. Baseball has been for the past century and a half this country’s game. It’s quotidian accessibility and availability to people from all economic backgrounds make it a quintessentially American game to watch and experience.

I was kindly asked recently to design a piece for a new church that is being built. The time constraints mean that I cannot commit to something more grandiose. But a several foot by several foot wash in ochre seems to be in order. Outlines and so on will be done in ink, which is a favorite medium of mine. There is great pleasure in knowing exactly where to purposefully place an inkblot to great effect, and to bring about a dynamism and depth that chalkier media lack.

I’ve had no real religious conviction ever since I first seriously considered the problem, some ten years ago. But I still have respect for and good knowledge of religious beliefs. And if my philosophies were to be described in any such terms, I would say they align (in the everyday, and in a very, very loose sense) with Christian Socialism, and in the more profound, with Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism.

The idea of a pervasive but unseen karmic consciousness has been attractive to me for maybe the last seven years; it was something I arrived at myself perhaps back in late 2001 and early 2002, and it was the same point Oppenheimer and Schroedinger came to. These floating strings would seem to be the only bona fide aspect of the religious experience that, along with human consciousness, may be explained in a mathematical fashion. That should be left, though, to people much cleverer than me.

In the meantime, people are compelled to rely on supposition and faith, but, as always, it’s not wise to commit oneself wholesale to any one conviction; it’s much more meaningful to explore things by yourself and draw your own conclusions. And going to church or temple, if good for anything, is still a pleasant, peaceful experience with generally kind people.

A few Monday mornings ago, I woke up in a sweat, looking for my gun. I couldn’t find my gun, because, naturally I don’t have one. But I did have a very, very vivid dream. It seems to me that whenever I have a dream of some potential real-life event, it comes to pass. I’m not sure how possible it is, however, that aliens will decimate our major cities with dozens of atomic bombs any time soon. It did, however, prompt me to begin writing a science fiction story, even though science fiction (with the exception of the old Twilight Zone shows) has never been a genre of interest.

Rod Serling was an immensely gifted moral fabulist and visionary years ahead of his time. (”Moral fabulist” is a bit redundant, isn’t it? Probably “moralist” or “fabulist” alone should suffice.) His Twilight Zone shows were beautiful and relevant 50 years ago, they are so today, and they will be many, many generations from now, provided the legacy is carried on. I am always excited when a marathon is on.

God, I hope the goddamn aliens don’t come. I’ve already had trouble sleeping lately as it is.

Pensieri e memorie d’Italia

One of the most tranquil days, this past March: On the bus from Rome to Ladispoli, I met a young French woman. We spent the whole day together, peaceful, nameless hours that, in the Italian countryside sun and marble moonlight, ran until the day no longer existed. Whether flanked by the funeral cypresses and bleating of livestock, or surrounded by countless hillock turfed tumuli and twenty-five hundred years, or blanketed by the always-alive Roman night–I don’t think I would ever forget.

Bofton

During my days of undergraduate study, I used to have on my walls pictures of Isaac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci, Carl Gauss, and several other luminaries of science, mathematics, and art. In Killian Court, these are the names engraved on the towers flanking the grassy square. When I first stepped into my home of the next two or more years this Friday and saw these names, I knew I would be right at home.

The campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is not florid and museum-like, as is Stanford’s, nor does it carry the musty aura that comes with the ancient, bricked facades of Harvard. The architecture and layout intimates purpose.

Perhaps when my time in East Cambridge is over, I’ll return back up the Charles. But for now, I’ll concentrate on my research at MIT in mechanical engineering, nuclear engineering, and materials science, for which I am exceptionally excited.