Work-in-Progress

[Hunting for a good quote]

Thursday, October 22, 2009

99 Balloons

What a shame that I am going through my afternoons with caffeine and eyes half-closed. Every single day ought to be celebrated...

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Oooohhh....

I think I think, therefore I think I am.
(Ambrose Bierce)

This is kewl stuff....



Makes a good wedding piece!

500 Days of Summer is frank and has a brilliant script. I love how nonchalant Summer is, I can imagine her rolling her eyes to Taylor Swift's "Love Story". Her character is such a refreshing change from the guy as the player...it makes girls feel empowered.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Secret Place

Every once in a while, we discover something new about ourselves and I recently realized that I want to be in control of the situations in my life. Instead of going with the ebb and flow of life’s daily ups and downs, I want to be sure that I am in the pilot’s seat steering and ensuring that everything goes as planned. That could be the reason why I am often indecisive because I need guarantees and certainties in the choices that I make. I get myself worried and end up going through a thousand hypothetical What-If situations in my head.

And every once in a while, I need a reminder from God. Recently the essence of this revelation is quite the opposite of a ‘revelation’: All the times I’m in a fix, I need not understand the “Why?” behind it but simply have Faith in God. I learnt that it is when I no longer require explanations from God over the situation that I am in that my faith has matured.

Actually, in a weird way, this reminds me of Bentham’s Panopticon: “the machine for dissociating the see/being see dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen”. We think we are seeing, but we actually don’t see anything beyond the walls of the ‘cell’, we don’t see the bigger picture. On the other hand, we can be seen all the time. Okay, just a loose association...This is what too much Foucault does to the self.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Golden moments

I held my breath each time he was gonna land...Nobody said cycling on rooftops isn't allowed:

Monday, October 12, 2009

Black Widow

2am mornings are made complete with one of life's best creations: ice cream. Life is full of wonderful surprises! I read this passage from one of the books I saw at an art exhibit and I love it:

"Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words.

It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it.

The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled."

It reads like a puzzle and it took me a few reads before I got it.

I wish I could document here the crazy and outrageous thing I've done but sadly, I didn't do anything that comes close to crazy. Something has gotten over me and I feel like I want to be a Deviant. Another quote I picked up somewhere: "If you can't solve a problem, it means you're playing by the rules"....And it makes me want to get into some kind of trouble, not for the fun of it but because it'd be a refreshing change from sterility.

Monday, October 5, 2009

You gotta be bad....

W. H. Auden says, “The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in”, which is actually true for most things in life. We either make up our mind about the fairy tale we want to read and immerse ourselves in it to enjoy every page of it. Or don’t at all.

I am wondering tonight what is it like to live life dangerously: to not make calculated decisions, to act on impulses and spur-of-the-moment rationalities. What does it mean to lead a life that throws rational choice theory out of the window? I must try something outrageous, and crazy this week….Though I can’t seem to think of anything at the moment….: ( How more exciting can I get?

I have always believed in agency within structure but I just read this which made me see things in a new light:

According to Durkheim, although the social is external and exists prior, to the individual, it is also embodied in the individual. If the individual does not feel the externality and coerciveness of the social, it only means that he is so well socialized that his individual desires are similar to what the social demanded.

Durkheim pointed out that:

When I perform my duties as brother, husband, or citizen, and carry out the commitments I have entered into, I fulfill obligations which are defined in law and custom which are external to myself and my actions. Even if they conform to my own sentiments and I feel their reality within me, that reality does not cease to be objective, for it is not I who have prescribed those duties; I have received them through education.

Gosh, woe is me!