Simply Put

... for the new you seek in the not new and for the not new you seek in the new.

To travel, to read

Rereading The Namesake for Mother's Day, and this passage struck a nerve. A discussion, on the value of travel. The author stages Ghosh and Ashoke as having competing viewpoints, whereas I think they're complementary?

Ghosh shook his head. "You are still young. Free," he said, spreading his hands apart for emphasis. "Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late."

"My grandfather always says that's what books are for," Ashoke said, using the opportunity to open the volume in his hands. "To travel without moving an inch."

Friendship

Celebrating Pam's birthday last night reminded me of meeting her almost ten (!) years ago...

"Grown-up women do the same sort of thing that Charlene and I did. Not the counting of moles on each other's backs and comparing toes lengths, maybe. But when they meet and feel a particular sympathy with each other they also feel a need to set out the important information, the big events whether public or secret, and then go ahead to fill in all the blanks between. If they feel this warmth and eagerness it is quite impossible for them to bore each other. They will laugh at the very triviality and silliness of what they're telling, or at the revelation of some appalling selfishness, deception, meanness, sheer badness. There has to be great trust, of course, but that trust can be established at once, in an instant."

Value Systems

"My father's generation grew up with certain beliefs. One of those beliefs is that the amount of money one earns is a rough guide to one's contribution to the welfare and prosperity of our society. I grew up unusually close to my father. Each evening I would plop into a chair near him, sweaty from a game of baseball in the front yard, and listen to him explain why such and such was true and such and such was not. One thing that was almost always true was that people who made a lot of money were neat. Horatio Alger and all that. It took watching his son being paid 225 grand at the age of twenty-seven, only two years on the job, to shake his faith in money. He has only recently recovered from the shock.

I haven't. When you sit, as I did, at the center of what has been possibly the most absurd money game ever and benefit out of all proportion to your value to society (as much as I'd like to think I got only what I deserved, I don't), when hundreds of equally undeserving people around you are all raking in faster than they can count it, what happens to the money belief? Well, that depends. For some, good fortune simply reinforces the belief. They take the funny money seriously, as evidence that they are worthy citizens of the Republic. It becomes their guiding assumption -- for it couldn't possibly be clearly thought out -- that a talent for making money come out of a telephone is a reflection of merit on a grander scale. It is tempting to believe that people who think this way eventually suffer their comeuppance. They don't. They just get richer. I'm sure most of them die fat and happy.

For me, however, the belief in the meaning of making dollars crumbled; the proposition that the more money you earn, the better the life you are leading was refuted by too much hard evidence to the contrary. And without that belief, I lost the need to make huge sums of money. The funny thing is that I was largely unaware how heavily influenced I was by the money belief until it had vanished."

Beauty

"Down the upper part of the woman's right arm there was an eight-inch-long herringbone-pattern scar. When she saw him looking at it, she at once crossed her arms and put her left hand over the injury, not understanding that it made her more beautiful, that it perfected her beauty by adding an essential imperfection. By showing that she could be injured, that such astonishing loveliness could be broken in an instant, the cicatrice only emphasized what was there, and made one cherish it... all the more."

Sorority

After we've looked at the photographs, as we're walking out, Monalisa says to me about the model, "She's also cut."

"What?"

"I saw, on her arms."

Rustom later confirms this. I've met Marika at least a half-dozen times, but I've never noticed the cuts. Monalisa knew within five minutes of meeting her. The bar girl noticed some tension on the model's face, noticed she was talking a little too much, laughing a little too much. So she looked at her wrists. Later I find out the model's story. She is the mistress of a married man with three children...

Her lover will never leave his wife, so Marika marks time on her wrists. There must be a citywide sorority of these woman who've slit their wrists and survived, who recognize one another automatically. A sisterhood of the slashed.

Reading about Running

"I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run to acquire a void. But as you might expect, an occasional thought will slip into this void. People's minds can't be a complete blank. Human beings' emotions are not strong or consistent enough to sustain a vacuum. What I mean is, the kinds of thoughts and ideas that invade my emotions as I run remain insubordinate to that void. Lacking content, they are just random thoughts that gather around that central void."