I talked to him on Monday. It was a difficult, strained conversation, with long, drawn out silences. It was cold outside, and I stood there, on the sidewalk, a small dark speck against the grayness of the day, smoking a cigarette, feeling the fingers holding the phone to my ear get colder and colder, with a sudden and very acute awareness that the man on the other side was not the man I had taken a liking to.

Now I can write the story - a version of a Dorris Lessing story that seems to be most fitting. A trite story, for what we've got here is something trite, and trite is much easier to come to terms with.

***

A woman letting herself be deluded about the nature of a man she has taken a liking to. She ends it with him out of sheer exasperation, and spends days crippled with pain and longing. And yet, once aware of this delusion, all the brief moments of closeness that she thought they shared suddenly lose their meaning, and the warmth she used to feel for him quickly dissipates. She blames herself for her inability to see what in hindsight was obvious, gives a shrug, and moves on about her day.

Waking up in the morning is the worst. Besides the heaviness in my limbs and the tightness in my chest- consequences of smoking too many cigarettes - there is pain in my heart, sharp, piercing pain, and I miss him more than ever.

I miss him. I'm angry at him. I'm bargaining with him in my head... and quietly, I'm pleading with him... even though my pleas are unworded and I'm not even sure what it is that I'm pleading for... The finality of it is hard to grasp, the loss of those simple moments of joy is hard to cope with. But then, the realization of how badly I may have deluded myself about him, about what we had, makes me feel like a fool...So I'm angry at him, but more angry at myself. This most pedestrian, banal ending has unhinged something in me - for what I feel is not a simple heartache, longing, or ennui... It's desperation. And I feel more helpless than ever.

It ended out of sheer exasperation. Because of too many unspoken words and misplaced expectations... Because I couldn't bear to be anything but. Because he refused to be anything but.
...

It had to end - in my mind it is so clear that it had to end. Yet the tightness in my chest is unbearable, and my heart hurts... It hurts all the time. And there is nothing more painful than his silence. And this silence is the most unfair.

...

The only emotion that I ever managed to get out of him was anger. Misplaced or misdirected anger. Whether this anger was due to misunderstanding, or his unwillingness and inability to listen, will never be known to me.

...

It will take a while to get through this. And maybe, one day, when it does not hurt so much, I'll write yet another short story and move on...

I'm sorry it had to end like this. It's a bad, sad and frightening time for many of us. It's a particularly bad time for me, and I know things are bad for you too. I had hoped that maybe we'd be able to carry each other through this, and I'm sorry if my timing was so so bad...

But I want you to know that I will always always think fondly of you. We had a really good beginning - I won't forget that. You gave me many many of your free days, and I'm grateful for that. There are many moments, frozen in my mind's eye, where I was with you, and I was happy. I'll think of them often, and I'll think of them fondly. Like the first long date we had on that park bench, or how you kissed me, for the first time, so shily, in front of Starbucks. Or lying in your bed, between you and sleeping Linus, listening to your even breathing in the dark. Or drinking coffee on your deck, early in the morning, looking at your still sleepy face, and smelling the early fall. I'll remember how excited I'd get right before seeing you, as I'd scramble to get ready, because with you I was always, always running late. Or how I went into Sandy's office with a big smile and told him "I think I'm going to fall in love with this guy..."

It really was a good beginning, and I am very sad and sorry it couldn't be anything more. But it's ok - sometimes things are the way they are, and the best we can do is accept them for what they are. When I talked to you last night, it became very clear to me that what I wanted was closeness, and that perhaps you merely wanted someone to have a fine time with. And that's ok too. I can't ask you to give me what you are unable or unwilling to give. But I also cannot be someone casual for you. Perhaps this isn't the best way of wording it, and I wasn't any better last night, but it had to be said, even though I didn't want you to get defensive.

I hope things get better for you, for me, for all of us. It will hurt for a while, and I will miss you... Please, don't be mad at me - if there is anything I want to ask you is to please please not be made at me.

I really, really like you, regardless - the charming, shy, stubborn, clumsy tired orbit. I will always think of you fondly, and I will smile, and I'll wish you well...

Be well...

Cold, cold and rain...

The dread that has settled in at the pit of my stomach continues to grow...

My muscles are tense and sore, my chest is tight, and my heart hurts with a dull ache, in anticipation of a doom.

A long winter lies ahead, with a string of cold and dreary days, and once again, I can picture myself - a small, dark, brittle figure, in sharp relief against the background of gray, shivering in the wind and looking dolefully at the sky...

The unspeakable happened...

I keep thinking about Seymour Glass. That story is stuck in my head and it won't get unstuck. Right when I thought that I had finally figured out why he would kill himself for being too happy, it turns out that I had it all wrong...

I read some of the interpretations of the story on the internet. Seymour was clearly unhappy - having been in World War II had a deep impact on him - after the discharge, he spent some time in a hospital for psychiatric evaluation - a condition that is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder. After the war, he was having a hard time readjusting to the life in the U.S., which was becoming more and more materialistic. The bananafish is to symbolize greed - these fish, looking like any ordinary fish, swim into a banana hole, where they consume large number of bananas. "I've seen a bananafish eat as many as seventy-eight bananas..." They get so big that they get stuck in the hole and eventually die of banana fever.

And here's where I'm stumped - although this is more of an indicative of my ignorance about depression and PTSD, than anything else... If you're unhappy, there is always something you can do about it. It's being happy that you can do nothing about...

Even if you're scarred by the horrors of the world, you live through it out of spite - to prove that despite all that, human will for life and goodness prevails... You just don't give up like that, calmly and methodically...

***

If I were to document at least a portion of this trip, here is how it would go:

• I travel like a prissy American girl. 
• Despite carrying with me copious amounts of reading materials and math textbooks, and having made lofty plans to get a lot of work done during my layovers, I managed to do absolutely nothing, killing huge chunks of time by listening to music and completely zoning out. It was oddly comforting...
• Speaking of comforting - there is nothing more comforting than the sight of a ham and cheese sandwich that I had in a nondescript eatery near my hotel in Covilha shortly upon my arrival. After bad airplane food, skipped breakfast and the granola bar that I had on the train from Lisbon to here, this piece of fresh baguette stuffed with slices of ham and Swiss cheese was nothing but a slice of heaven itself...
• Four in the morning, local time: "Your green dot is on! I'm jet lagged and hungry and looking for people with green dots to talk to, since it is too early to go look for food. Indulge me please, otherwise I'll have to talk to my uncle." "Not your uncle! What time is it there?" Conversations with Flenner are a delight! 
• I still cannot shake off Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Banana Fish." For the longest time that story bothered me. It was one of Salinger's stories that I read only once, right after reading "Raise the Roof Beam High, Carpenters." Somehow, during all these years, I had the story wrong - in my mind, those two had merged, and I thought that Seymour  killed himself because he was too happy, whereas, in fact, Seymour was too happy to show up to his own wedding. All this time, that's what I thought went on in the story, and all this time I couldn't figure out why one would kill oneself because one is too happy. But then, a couple of weeks ago, I caught myself thinking "I'm so happy I could die..." and "If I were to die today, I would die happy..." And I immediately thought of Seymour Glass - I thought, "Aha, I finally know why!" And then, on Saturday, I reread the story, and it was not at all how I remembered it, for Seymour was clearly far from being happy...
• This place is a bloody good place to feel existential about things...

Covilha

I'm in Covilha, Portugal, still in a pleasant shock that despite my complete lack of direction and any sense of orientation, I managed to bring myself, all in one piece and without any adventures to this middle of nowhere place. I am finally on my own, for the first time in the longest time, in a very unfamiliar place, far removed from everything that I know. And yet, I have never been at more ease with myself and this new place. This feeling of calm, quiet confidence, the awareness of  how easily I move in space, occupy this new space, fit in without fitting in. Like the cliche - wherever you go, there you are...

***
I decided to ditch the conference and spend my time soaking in this solitude. I never have a chance to be alone anymore, despite the fact that there are very few things that I like more than being on my own. Likewise, there are only a few things that compare to being alone in a quiet, quaint and unfamiliar place.

***
I think I'm going through something, although I am not quite sure what. I have been feeling this mixture of ennui and longing, my usual precursors of existential crises of sorts. Now I have to figure out where it's coming from and what exactly has brought this on...

***
This place, of all the places in the world, is a bloody good place to feel existential about things.

***
Curiously though, unlike my previous crises of this sort, this one hasn't completely consumed me (at least not yet). It is as if there is a part of me that watches it unfold as an objective specter, with all of the amusement and "Are you fucking kidding me? Not this again!" look on her face.

***
I'm not sure what it is about this place that brings about this strongest, almost overwhelming feeling of longing, even though what exactly it is that I am longing for is not at all clear to me.

***

I cannot account for the last five years. Sure, I can enumerate the events that took place during this time, like getting a job, quitting running, getting engaged, getting married, buying a house, going to Rome, publishing a paper, getting a cat, etc.

But besides these events, everything else is a blur. I cannot account for either my mental or emotional states, mostly because I do not think I was aware of these states, or of myself as much... It is easy to lose this awareness when one is busy thinking about unmeasurable sets, or convergence of recursive sequences... They leave little time or desire to think about anything else, existential or otherwise...

"Mathematical truths are 'trivial' - they are true only in a trivial, purely formal sense of 'true' (i.e. namely by definition or by derivation from arbitrarily posited axioms, rules of operation, and primitive definitions)."

Donald Crosby
The Specter of the Absurd

Hell Must Have Frozen Over

It’s Sunday night, late March, and it’s snowing. Work has two hour delayed opening tomorrow, so I am staying up. And just like that, on a whim, I am resurrecting this blog. I have had this nagging feeling lately to start blogging again, so I am giving in, in hopes that it turns into something more substantial than a fleeting whim. To be quite honest, it is somewhat a lunatic idea, given my current time constraints and the fact that there are only finite hours in a week to deal with everything that is and will remain on my plate for the foreseeable future. So I am not sure how committed I will be to writing here regularly, but what the hell...

I remember fondly the time when I used to write here more or less regularly (relatively speaking, of course), of the handful of comments that I would get from the people I grew quite fond of without knowing them in real life (does being friends on Facebook count?). I read back some of the entries I wrote in the past and they make me nostalgic… As a side note – I truly miss Digest. T.S.T – I hope you’re reading this…

Anyway, last time I wrote here, I was in a midst of a self-created existential crisis of a mess that, in an attempt to rationalize, I had reduced to a two-dimensional choice dilemma. I was ambivalent about my relationship, torn about future career paths, and in general was having what in shrink-land is commonly refereed to as an “adjustment reaction.”  And yes, my therapist told me so, but more on that later, perhaps. For now I will just highlight some of the major things that have happened since them, although each probably deserves a more detailed post of its own at some point.

Since you last heard from me:

-          I finished my Master’s program in Economics.

-          Got enrolled (somewhat accidentally and half-heartedly) in a PhD program in Systems Modeling and Analysis (a hybrid between Statistics, Applied Mathematics and Operations Research).

-          Landed myself an awesome (and hard to come by) research job at a place that I will refer to as the Macroeconomic Mecca. While the job itself was temporary (2-3 years tops), it put me on an excellent track in the event I decided to pursue a PhD in Economics. I decided not to.  Where is my “I am not an Economist and am Proud of It” t-shirt? Since then, I switched departments within the Mecca and currently work at a similarly awesome (albeit less glorified) research job.

-          The boy and I got engaged.

-          I turned thirty. The last two events happened all on the same day!

-          I became a proud citizen of the United States.

-          Three days later, and somewhat accidentally, I signed the purchase agreement for the first house that the boy and I bought together, and just like that, I became a first-time home buyer. Remember the days when buying a couch would give me a meltdown? It’s amazing how things can change…

-          The boy and I got married.

-          And currently (you know where I am going with this, don’t you?), with part reluctance, part trepidation and all encompassing fear, I am contemplating the idea of having an offspring. And of course, existential hang-ups abound. Things, after all, are quite predictable with me.

So, in a matter of three years, I went from being a wistful graduate student to being (ahem)… a wistful graduate student, while moving up an age-box,  getting a “real” job, changing my marital status and becoming a homeowner. So Day in the World will still be running under Graduate Edition for quite a while. Quite frankly, doing a PhD part time, while juggling a full time job and a part time job on the side and simultaneously trying not to completely fail at being a wife takes a lot of time (and not to mention the effort). Any advice on how to maintain a semblance of sanity will be appreciated. But more on that later, perhaps…

A lukewarm, ambivalent, equivocal relationship, with no definitions, too many unspoken words and too much uncertainty. At its best it is comfortable and comforting in its familiarity, at its worst it's got no reference points or indications that it could potentially grow beyond what it is and become something more definite, or rather, definable - that is objectively. And if I were to describe myself in this relationship I would be nice, agreeable, undemanding, yet at the same time slightly neurotic and sporadically emotional (at least at moments when i don't try to restrain myself), whereas he's calm, rational, level-headed in a non-flippant way, nice by his nature rather than by circumstances. This pretty much sums it all up, and yet to elaborate a little more (although I am not sure why I continue this pointless exercise), I'd give it credit for being civilized to the extent that there are no sharp disagreements or unnecessary arguments, let alone fights, and that our differences are reconciled in a quiet, compromising and complimentary way. It's a polite relationship. Respectful. Considerate towards each others' immediate needs and discomforts. And yet it still is what it is - a lukewarm, ambivalent, unequivocal relationship...

...and the question is, what do I do now, that I am finally able to objectively see it for all it is.

One day it will all be a distant memory, Nika, yet I can tell you now, with the supreme confidence of someone who's gone ahead in time to know, that you'll look back on this life and be so flush with love and admiration for yourself, your journey, and who it made you, that you'll wonder, as I do now, how it could possibly have escaped you then.

Maybe this will help.

Your greater-self,
The Universe

Theorem: Every natural number is INTERESTING.

Proof (by contradiction): Suppose there exist some numbers that are not interesting. Then by the well-ordering principle, there has to be a least such number.  But that would be INTERESTING. Contradiction!

Therefore, every natural number is interesting. ■

Consider a simple two dimensional choice dilemma

Suppose you have two choices, option A and option B, A ≠ B. The constraints are such that you cannot choose both. Each one of these options is equally appealing, yet choosing each will lead to a drastically different outcome. Each outcome, in its turn, is just as appealing as the other, i.e. you know that you can be happy with either outcome. An economist, then, would say that you are indifferent towards either one of these choices, since each choice gives you the same utility (fancy word for satisfaction). Except that in real life you’re not “indifferent” in the true meaning of the word, because (i) you can’t compare these choices, since outcomes are so different that we’re talking apples and oranges at this point; (ii) when you choose A, you will never know what it’s like to have chosen B and vice versa. Therefore by choosing A you have eliminated the possibility that you could ever have B (and vice versa). That does not leave a lot of room for indifference now, does it?

Q: How would you make your choice?

Nine millions bicycles

Every time I see Sevada, no matter how long it’s been and how much catching up it involves, our conversations always end up with discussion of music - about how we can no longer bring ourselves to listen to Zeppelin; about the immortality of the Stones and the fact that Mick Jagger might just as well be the sexiest man alive; about the merits and demerits of the new U2 album; about our lack of interest in “sad bastard” music and how instead of falling for the next generic alternative band number one hundred and eleventy six, we are now slowly switching towards the mellow, more ear pleasing tunes of the newly found and (relatively) less famous and nonetheless favorite artists of ours… These type of discussions inevitably lead to grand music swaps of sorts, although long gone are the days when we’d trade Sonic Youth for Pearl Jam (! Sonic Youth, by the way, sucks. I don’t know what business I had listening to it in the first place).

Sevada seems to be into chick music these days. I am not a particularly big fan of chick music – too loaded, too emotionally charged for me. But then, sometimes there is just that one song that is so perfect in its simplicity and so harmoniously melodic that I can’t stop listening to it over and over and over again…

More on Katie Melua here.

Oh the wonderful world of possibilities

Sometimes I wish I could get a contractor job with the State Department and move to Armenia on some kind of a foreign policy “mission”, taking the boy along with me, and he would teach history to the embassy brats and do whatever else historians do when they are in a country full of history, and we would live the good life of pretentious expats and scout out neighboring Georgia, Turkey and Russia on long weekends…


At other times I want to just say “Fuck it” and apply to the Math PhD program here at VCU and stay in Richmond forever (or at least for the foreseeable future) without having to move or think about anything else but being happy and content… But then they tell me stuff like “You could do better than VCU. You should try to do better than VCU,” and that makes me want to smack people in the head because the fact that a VCU professor would tell me to go to a “better” school appears to me somewhat disturbing…


I know that between these two options there is a world of other, infinitely many possibilities. I also seem to have a much better idea than I did before about where I’d like to be in the next five/ten years. And yet, even though the shortest distance between point A and point B is always a straight line, that’s not how things usually work out for me, as far as choices are concerned… And this is just a tiny glimpse of the kind of an ongoing debate I have been having with myself that I am sure will be reappearing here on a more or less regular basis.


I do find it rather ironic that of all subjects in the world I chose the one that deals with decisions and choices while being the worst type of person whenever decision making is concerned. I wonder whether I need to really see someone about this…