That Blithering Idiot

Useful Latin Phrases

2010-07-25T05:16:00.002+05:30

These Latin phrases nicely sum up some useful expressions:

ex vi termini - by force of term

crux interpretum - a point in a text which is impossible to interpret

quod erat demonstrandum - that which was to be demonstrated (used usually in geometric proofs)

ex nihilo - out of nothing

ab initio - from the beginning

ad interim - in the time between

ad nauseum - until the point of nausea

eo ipso - by that very fact

I stumbled upon this by reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which contains a few Latin phrases, some quite humorous ones later in the novel. It was the hardest book I've ever read; not because of any syntactical characteristics or difficulty in understanding it, but because I felt like I related to Stephen Dedalus. He's not a glorious man to relate to, being not even as admirable as Leopold Bloom, but, nonetheless, each sentence about him sparked an ocean of thought in me (I like that. "sparked an ocean") Every line I read took me several minutes to finish because somewhere along the journey of each sentence, I got lost and ended up thinking of my own past loves, sins, and thoughts -- each of which in some way reflect Stephen's. Eo Ipso, (:D) the scant 150 pages took me more than a week and a half to finish. I loved the book and it was worth it. But, somehow I sort of wish I didn't relate to it as much as I did. I felt guilty relating to it, I suppose. Maybe that's the point.

Poignancy

2010-07-10T01:32:00.000+05:30

How to Become a Man of Genius

If there are among my readers any young men or women who aspire to become leaders of thought in their generation, I hope they will avoid certain errors into which I fell in youth for want of good advice. When I wished to form an opinion upon a subject, I used to study it, weigh the arguments on different sides, and attempt to reach a balanced conclusion. I have since discovered that this is not the way to do things. A man of genius knows it all without the need of study; his opinions are pontifical and depend for their persuasiveness upon literary style rather than argument. It is necessary to be one-sided, since this facilitates the vehemence that is considered a proof of strength. It is essential to appeal to prejudices and passions of which men have begun to feel ashamed and to do this in the name of some new ineffable ethic. It is well to decry the slow and pettifogging minds which require evidence in order to reach conclusions. Above all, whatever is most ancient should be dished up as the very latest thing.

There is no novelty in this recipe for genius; it was practised by Carlyle in the time of our grandfathers, and by Nietzsche in the time of our fathers, and it has been practised in our own time by D. H. Lawrence. Lawrence is considered by his disciples to have enunciated all sorts of new wisdom about the relations of men and women; in actual fact he has gone back to advocating the domination of the male which one associates with the cave dwellers. Woman exists, in his philosophy, only as something soft and fat to rest the hero when he returns from his labours. Civilised societies have been learning to see something more than this in women; Lawrence will have nothing of civilisation. He scours the world for what is ancient and dark and loves the traces of Aztec cruelty in Mexico. Young men, who had been learning to behave, naturally read him with delight and go round practising cave-man stuff so far as the usages of polite society will permit.

One of the most important elements of success in becoming a man of genius is to learn the art of denunciation. You must always denounce in such a way that your reader thinks that it is the other fellow who is being denounced and not himself; in that case he will be impressed by your noble scorn, whereas if he thinks that it is himself that you are denouncing, he will consider that you are guilty of ill-bred peevishness. Carlyle remarked: ``The population of England is twenty millions, mostly fools.'' Everybody who read this considered himself one of the exceptions, and therefore enjoyed the remark. You must not denounce well-defined classes, such as persons with more than a certain income, inhabitants of a certain area, or believers in some definite creed; for if you do this, some readers will know that your invective is directed against them. You must denounce persons whose emotions are atrophied, persons to whom only plodding study can reveal the truth, for we all know that these are other people, and we shall therefore view with sympathy your powerful diagnosis of the evils of the age.

Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions; do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.

28 December 1932

Bertrand Russel

2010-07-06T18:28:00.000+05:30

I'm 18 years old.

Today

2010-06-21T03:20:00.004+05:30

Today*, I read The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane and Netochka Nezvanova by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Today, I slept at 10am and woke at 4pm. I assume that it was unhealthy. Today, I had fresh pork, from my own pig farm. It was delicious. Today, at 3am, I sweated from heat. It is India.

Today, I learned how beautiful T.S Elliot's poem "The Hollow Men" is. But, it was a perfectly ordinary day.

Edit: * Note that all references to the word Today, refer to Yesterday. It is 3:23 a.m. So I still feel like it's yesterday.

What I've Read

2010-06-19T20:25:00.003+05:30

Well, it's vacation again. In fact, it is the last vacation I will ever have from high school. The last mandatory vacation of my life. Still, it feels mundane. I'm currently reading The Foundations of Arithmetic by Gottlob Frege, which is warping, rebuilding, and destroying (in that order) the way I view the world. Since I last wrote I read:

Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Strange Pilgrims

One Hundred Years of Solitude

(All by Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

The Castle by Franz Kafka

Dance, Dance, Dance and The Vanishing Elephant by Haruki Murakami

Silence by Shusaku Endo

The Good Earth by Pearl Buck

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

The Collector by John Fowles

Coriolanus by William Shakespeare

Nausea and Huis Clos by Jean-Paul Sartre

and before that is essentially time immemorial, but it contains another 10 or 15 books.

Notes on them: Coriolanus is the best Shakespeare tragedy. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is unforgettable. One Hundred Years of Solitude is beyond comment, but as Salman Rushdie said on the cover, it is the best book of the last fifty years, only perhaps Ulysses matches it in sheer literary vigour. And the rest of the books were also wonderful.

Classical Music

2010-01-23T16:15:00.002+05:30

My favorite composers, in order:

1. Schubert

2. Faure

3. Rachmaninov

4. Paganini

5. Tchaikovsky

Collegiate Miracle

2010-01-20T12:18:00.003+05:30

I've been accepted to Sarah Lawrence College in New York. It's expensive, so financial aid was applied for and gotten. It seems like the most wonderful school in the world; it's a lot like St. John's but without the rigidity of the great books program. Plus, they offer Russian as a second language, and an optional abroad year in Moscow or St. Petersburg. I have an obsession with Russia. I think I'll have huge amounts of fun, only bad thing is that the girl to guy ratio is 70:30. So there will be barely any guy friends...and probably the ones who are there will be emo-artsy poets who don't like to fight. Poetry/Emo/Artsy is all fine, but retaining some semblance of masculinity is important in a friend.

2010-01-20T12:13:00.002+05:30

Place your hands over your ears, palms down

Push hard, not harder than hard

Listen to rumble, deep growl

Sound of the universe singing in your ears

You’re not alone

Murmer: “my mind minds more men than myself”

They’re not alone either

M. M. M. M. Say the letter

Sing the letter,

Keep the sound.

Open mandible, insert ohm.

Your ear is the seashell

Close your ears, Kaiser,

Caesar, and open your hands

To the rumble grumble of others.

2010-01-09T01:28:00.001+05:30

I'm ashamed of praise because I quietly yearn for it

?

2009-07-31T00:13:00.003+05:30

I go off to school in a day and a half; it's been long in coming.

I am currently infatuated with the phrase:

methamphetically speedy

and

narcolepticly comfortable

(courtesy of David Foster Wallace)

Speaking of whom, if you haven't read his speech "This is Water," do so at the soonest possible opportunity. It's what a speech should be like, what all speeches should be like.

Finished 2 of my 3 essays for St. John's. I'm satisfied with both I suppose.

Trivia: "I am" is my favorite sentence in English.

Beds

2009-07-17T04:58:00.002+05:30

We don't think about beds nearly enough. They are everything for us. We sleep in them, we play in them, we were (probably) born in them and will die in them, we make love in them, we rest in them. A bed is all you need to have a home. Forget the structure, you don't need a mattress or a frame. All you need is a place where you regularly lie your head. Why don't we thank our beds? Maybe there is a bed god...makes as much sense as a Christian god. I lie down in my bed and I know that it is the last place on the planet which I would have defiled. The warmth and comfort of lying my head here every night is beyond a spiritual experience. It's as if the world could be known from lying in bed. It's a great place. A bed...

If anyone's reading this, anywhere, at anytime...thank your bed. And if you are, perchance, lying in a bed at this moment, give it a nice big hug from me.

Predicting My Death

2009-07-11T23:55:00.002+05:30

You know how they say practice makes perfect?

Complete Bullshit.

Wanna know how I know?

People die from respitory failure.

Blank

2009-07-11T23:50:00.002+05:30

People ask me why I'm so violent.

I tell them it's because I'm a lover, not a fighter.

A Girl

2009-07-06T00:14:00.003+05:30

One of my favorite people left my school for good this June. She was an exchange student from Connecticut and a really great friend. She's half Sri Lankan and half American. Her name is Katrina. When she left I cried a few tears. That's something...it's the first time I've cried in over 5 years. I dunno. Anyone else could have left and I wouldn't have given a shit. I don't mind people leaving anymore; I think I've gotten quite used to it. But she was so amazing. I mean...just look at the picture. She was dressed up in saree that day because we were having some Indian cultural festival. It's my favorite picture of her. I'm not entirely sure what senior year will have to offer, but I am quite sad that she won't be there to join me. She didn't want to go but her parents had already paid the fees for her old school in advance. Balls.

College

2009-07-04T23:27:00.002+05:30

I started my application for college yesterday. St. John's here I come. I think I'll get in, it's not supremely hard. I'm looking forward to it alot; the kind of people who would go to such a radical college are the kind of people I've been looking for my entire life. I'm sick and tired of morons, even though they make the people I enjoy so much more bearable. Intellectual people have a severe tendency to fall into melodrama (something which I'm guilty of) and to constantly try and prove themselves as intellectuals. It's frustrating and sometimes I suppose it's nice to get away from it. Though I have a lot of essays to write. Well...3...but still, it's summer! I don't like spelling "a lot" with the space between the two...I think I'm gunna rebel and stick with alot. Ooh. Admire my daring.

Juice?!

2009-07-02T05:35:00.002+05:30

I love juice. Well only really this kind that you only get in India. It's made my a company called Onjus and it's a mixed fruit juice. I love it. I drink it with toast. I just had some with my omelette at 3AM. I am happy.

I have an irrational fear of juice. I fear that when I pull off the scary little thing under the cap (when you have a brand new carton) something will come out of it and eat me. Or the juice will splatter...of which I am equally terrified.

My School Situation

2009-06-30T19:10:00.002+05:30

Sitting down somewhere, reading this, you're probably wondering why the hell I'm telling you about my schooling situation. It's not exactly the most riveting of stories nor is it important to you at all. But in writing on this Internet thingy, I'm going to assume that's what important to me is worth hearing. =)

School has changed my life, probably forever. I've always hated High School, a lot. It never made sense to me, it was a microcosm of everything that's wrong with society. I hated the concept of working for a grade rather than working towards knowledge. I hated the huge pressure to conform. You know, most people think that they are their own person and that they stick out, but most of the time, they are flattened out by the juggernaut which is high school. And its a testimony to their idiocy and complete lack of self-perception that they feel like individuals after they've been raped by pedagogical conformity. You know, most of the time, I like to imagine myself as being an individual, as something/someone (not sure yet if we're things or ones) that can think for myself and isn't forced to my knees by school and an addiction to consumption.

But then I realize that no matter what I think, I'm still impacted by things that go on around me. And I don't know if I should be happy about that or sad.

You see, my entire life I grew up in California; I lived in a city which ranked on the Top 10 list for the most violent crime in the nation. I knew life there, and I knew what I hated about it and what I loved about it. But then, at the end of 10th grade, I made the decision to move. Not just out of Stockton or California, but out of America. I decided to go to India. O.o. I don't know why I did. I just knew that there was a boarding school nested in the Himalayan foothills that wanted me there. So I decided to fuck it all and go.

And I'm so damn happy that I did. I can't say that my school is immune to the ravages of Western culture...but there are some kids who have changed my perception of the world. The kinds of friends I've made here are the only kinds I ever want to have. The kind of people who would leave their country to come to India of all places are the kind of people worth knowing. I've met people who have demolished my ideas of religion and forced me to reconstruct them myself. For example, this staff member named Caleb is a hardcore jesus-lover. We had a few talks about religion and I realized that I was pursuing everything the wrong way. Not really because of what he said, but because of what I thought in my head after he said it. I realized I wasn't happy with my religion so I did several months worth of research and rebuilt my ideas up from scratch. Now I'm a Taoist. I'm a Buddhist. I'm a Pagan. I'm a Sikh. My idea of religion is built up from those four beliefs and it's working damn well for me.

And I don't know if any of that would have ever happened if I hadn't decided to go chill in the Himalayas.

That was too long...

Storms

2009-06-29T16:00:00.003+05:30

From what I've been able to deduce all life is a series of storms and their eyes. It's a storm that blows against you, forcing you to endure. Then it gives you a modicum of peace, not to lull you into a false sense of security (the universe wouldn't be so cruel) but to genuinely give you some rest. Then the storm begins again. And it's during the storms that we fall in love, that we fight, and change. The eyes are brief and serene; just glimpses into an unattainable Nirvana. And in any case, I would not want to be enlightened; I would not want to live completely peacefully. I love the summits we reach when in love and the valleys we fall into when alone. But the storms define us, how we react and endure is the most apt judge of our character. To find who you are, I suggest you look at what you've done when in a storm. Have you helped others? Have you been selfless? Have you lusted? Or been greedy? Forget the eyes of life, everyone can be good there.

Birthday!

2009-06-27T14:05:00.002+05:30

Happy Birthday Taj. Woohoo. 17 now...It's incredibly unexciting.

I passed the 12:00 mark singing and dancing in my room to Kiss of Fire by Louis Armstrong. Well...not really singing, more like mumble-wailing...and not really dancing, more like skipping...but it was good.

Prejudices

2009-06-26T01:30:00.003+05:30

I find Racism, Sexism, Chauvinism, all those nice prejudices to be absolutely hilarious. Except when it's serious, obviously, I don't approve of hate crimes and the like. But I see no harm in joking about women or Mexicans or Canadians or anything else. In fact, I find it hilarious and I wish people would do it to me.

No one ever makes fun of me...for anything. It pisses me off. Well, this one teacher does Mr. Prakash, but he got fired. So everyone just goes about and doesn't offend me. What the hell! I'm easy as hell to make fun of. Someone should do it sometime.

Asinine Ramblings

2009-06-26T00:43:00.004+05:30

Objects of Asininity:

1. The word Sapraemic. It's gorgeous, why? I have no clue. It stems from a latin root which denotes decay. Sapraemic is used as an adjective to denote the process of decaying. I find something in it's use to be...romantic. A sapraemic soul, or mindset, a sapraemic country. A sapraemic emotion. It's a nice image. I found the word in some huge English dictionary and haven't seen it since. Though, I may have the meaning all wrong...if I do...don't let me know, in this case ignorance is bliss.

2. Crack whores. What about them is so damn hot? I don't know...for a few years now, I've found them hot. Not actual junkie crack whores who sell their bodies and soul, but the whole...fashion behind being a crack whore. The short hair, the lack of make-up (or extreme excess, which I do not like), the raggedy clothing. Something about it all just fits together nice. Like Hippy chicks. And like that whole fashion behind over-sized flannel t-shirts and skinny jeans and stuff, whatever that's called, I love it.

3. Oh shit...My birthday is in...22 hours and 59 Minutes...I want a camera, a really really nice camera. But I don't think I'll ask for it. I didn't ask for anything last year either...but my parents bought me a cake. A pink cake. A pink cake with ribbons on it. A pink cake with pink ribbons on it and pink frosting and little glittery things. Then they made me take pictures with it...

4. You know how restaurants and things always have the Soup of the Day, or the Drink of the Day, or the Sausage Roll with Zucchini of the Day? They should have a Something of Eternity. Just for the novelty of it. I would by it simply by merit of its name. Think...wouldn't you by The Taco of Eternity? Italicized and everything.

5. There was a sentence in Albert Camus' The Plague...I can't remember the exact words. It was on the bottom of page 68 in my copy. "Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress." Thank you Google. Camus is my favorite author, alongside Hesse, Goethe, and Tagore.

6. Speaking of Tagore: "I thank thee that I am none of the wheels of power, but I am one with the creatures they crush." I believe it's from Strange Birds.

7. Serial Killers should be forced into eating chocolate and giving hugs. It would be therapeutic.

Psalm I

2009-06-25T19:12:00.002+05:30

I am flesh and blood, but my mind is the focus of much lightning.

Allen Ginsberg

Poor June

2009-06-25T03:54:00.001+05:30

WOMAN. NEVER AGAIN WILL I BE FRUSTRATED BY CONSUMERISM OR BY PEOPLE WHO HURRY OR BY THE IDIOCY OF A STRANGER. NO LONGER WILL I FORSAKE MY HUMANITY AND CONDEMN THE DENIZENS OF THE WORLD FOR MY CRIMES. FROM HERE, UNTIL THE END, I SHALL LOOK UPON THE WORLD AS AN ONION. A GREAT BIG ONION. AND THE ONION SHALT BE PEELED. PEELED IT SHALL BE BY THE GIANT PEELER OF MY MIND. AND I SHALL SUCK ALL OF THE JUICE OUT OF THE ONION, I WILL TAKE IT AND I WILL PISS IT. FUCK THE ONION. THE WORLD ISNT AN ROOTY FRUIT/VEGETABLE WANNA-BE; ITS A FUCKING MONSTROSITY OF A COCK. THATS ALL IT IS, THE WORLD IS A GIANT COCK WAITING TO IMPREGNATE ALL THE INNOCENT BYSTANDERS WITH ITS CYNICISM AND HOPELESSNESS...WELL YOU KNOW WHAT WORLD?! IM ON THE PILL. THAT'S RIGHT, FUCK YOU. YOU CAN'T FUCK WITH ME ANY MORE. I AM A FREE MAN (so i guess u cudnt impregnate me in the first place). YOU KNOW WHAT MORE? WELL...I'M NOT SURE YET, I'M GUNNA GO WALK AROUND SAFE IN MY CONTRACEPTION AND THINK AND ILL GET BACK TO YOU.