le mot du jour

Parental Dreams, Parental Nightmares

2008-07-22T17:20:00.003-04:00

Bringing children into the world and raising them is an act of optimism relying on obstinate hope for the future despite grim prognostications: melting ice floes, unbreathable air, poverty and a panoply of violence and unreason. New parents are often stunned by their abruptly altered view of the world as a dangerous place.

Most of us, taking measure of that world, make a series of promises to our children when they’re very young: I will protect you. I will help you to make sense of your experience. You will not be alone.

As our children grow up and away from us, inheriting the world’s complications, we discover how poignant and futile those promises are. We begin to suspect that our love for our children, although essential, is also inadequate, because no matter how fervently we love them, we can’t keep them from harm.

- Schumacher, Julie. "A Support Group Is My Higher Power," The New York Times, July 6, 2008.

"It's Complicated"

2008-07-22T17:16:00.003-04:00

After hooking up with the same person several times I’m sometimes haunted by the “Relationship Status” question on Facebook, and I’ll linger over the button, wondering whether to make the leap from fun to obligation. I envision holding hands, meeting her parents and getting matching ankle tattoos.

Then I come to my senses and close the window.

- Walkowski, Joe. "Let's Not Get to Know Each Other Better," The New York Times, June 8, 2008.

The Last Kiss

2008-07-11T15:53:00.001-04:00

been up all night
staring at you
wondering what's on your mind
i've been this way
with so many before
but this feels like the first time
you want the sunrise
to go back to bed
i want to make you laugh
mess up my bed with me
kick off the covers
i'm waiting
every word you say i think
i should write down
i don't want to forget
come daylight
happy to lay here
just happy to be here
i'm happy to know you
play me a song
your newest one
please leave your taste on my tongue
paperweight on my back
cover me like a blanket
mess up my bed with me
kick off the covers
i'm waiting
every word you say i think
i should write down
i don't to forget
come daylight
and no need to worry
that's wastin time
and no need to wonder
what's been on my mind
it's you
it's you
every word you say i think
i should write down
don't want to forget
come daylight
and i give up
i let you win
you win 'cause i'm not counting
you made it back
to sleep again
wonder what you're dreaming

- "Paperweight," Schuyler Fisk and Joshua Radin

You will never understand...

2008-07-11T15:46:00.001-04:00

From night skies dressed in clouds
Morning came, your taste in my mouth
I like the way that your hair falls down in your eyes
And you blush when you smile
When sleep combs your side then far away flies

I love the way that you stare when the sleep fills your eyes
So yesterday has gone
Who knows, tomorrow may bring all we'll desire
Tomorrow brings the sun

Kiss the world with fingers crossed
I've kissed the world with fingers crossed
I've been praised
I've been cursed
I've been blamed
And I've won
And I've lost

On waves that fill your heart
The future glides
I hope the serpents in the tide
Are all gone
What's done is done

A song for no one's in my hand
A song they'll never understand
Til I have gone
And tomorrow brings the sun

- "Song for No One," Ian Broudie

M.

2008-07-11T15:45:00.001-04:00

I'm in love with a friend
It's been going on a week
I'm in love with a friend
I can hardly speak
I can read between the lines
and I can read between the sheets
In my passion you will find
my face as red as beets
I'm in love with a friend
I don't know what to do
I'm in love with a friend
and that friend is you
Don't be surprised by my remarks for they surprise me too
If I weren't shooting in the dark
I'd be as confused as you
But I'm in love
All that you told me
All that we've been through
If we end up together
What would my friends say to you
I'm in love with a friend
I don't know what to do
I'm in love with a friend
and that friend is you
Be surprised by my remarks
for they surprise me too
If I weren't shooting in the dark
I'd be as confused as you
But I'm in love

- "I'm in love with a friend," Deep Dish

House of Cards

2008-07-11T15:42:00.001-04:00

I don't wanna be your friend
I just wanna be your lover
No matter how it ends
No matter how it starts

- "House of Cards," Radiohead

A Good Indian Girl

2008-07-11T15:40:00.001-04:00

"Cute Boy wasn't Indian and so he had a lot of India Questions which I was happy to answer including, "Are you a good Indian girl?"

"Why, of course," I said, demurely, "But then that totally depends on what your definition of a Good Indian Girl is."

He leaned forward and whispered it into my ear and I smiled.

"In that case," I said, "I'm definitely a good Indian girl."

But since I don't kiss and tell (oh all right, don't kiss and blog anyway) suffice to say that as the evening proceeded he knew a lot more about India than he had before."

- eM. "The Compulsive Confessor."

Delhi is for Lovers

2008-07-07T16:06:00.003-04:00

"We came to Delhi, my girlfriend and I, like so many who migrate to cities to which they do not belong, to build a life in the comforting shelter and wide open spaces that are the gifts of anonymity. The coziness peddled in that Cheers theme song was anathema. We wanted a place where nobody knew our names. I am perhaps making our motives sound murkier than they were; if we were fugutives, we were fugutives from law school, in her case, and, in my case, well, she was my reason to finally flee my chronic sloth, my fragile paperbacks, my taxing roundtrip from bed to couch, couch to bed.

In Delhi, we had no, in the language of American cop shows, priors. No family. No touchstones. No friends. No exes. I got a low-paying job at an afternoon paper. She worked for a proper newspaper. We lived in crummy 'barsatis,' first in GKII, then in Defence Colony, where the psoriatic walls shed paint like skin. We worked; we argued; we read; we had sex; we went to the movies; we laughed; we at dinner. It was utterly mundane, utterly banal. I was terrified it would end. Through it all, Delhi mouldered magnificently. A city, like everything else, is transformed, lifted by love. Delhi, to me, was unutterably beautiful.

I cannot pretend we lived in this city in any meaningful way. I still don't know my way around it, despite having been here nearly four years. I cannot pretend to think this city great to live in. The restraunts are third rate; the movies in the shiny multiplexes are third rate; the infrastructure is third rate. And during the power cut five minutes before the end of the Italy-Germany World Cup semifinal, I cannot pretend the words loathing and disgust didn't accurately convey the strength of my feeling. But restraunts, culture and uninterrupted power (yes, the wound runs deep) are accoutrements, varnish. People make a city. Sometimes just one person. The city you hold in your head has almost nothing to do with the physical entity around you.

None of Delhi's ugliness soils the simple, unanswerable truth that this is the city where for me a fledgling but unusually intense love turned into something real, with heft, something you wouldn't mess with in a downtown alley, something with the force and snap of a Zidane headbutt; that this is also the city where we made our last stand before the rest of a lifetime of dutiful middle class pottering. As this is a Capital Letter, I suppose I ought to say something about the grace of Delhi. The way it looks in the rain, like a once great beauty on the cusp of desuetude. But Delhi itself, its beauty, or its mephitic drains, is only incidental to the Delhi I'm talking about here, in a piece ostensibly, nominally about the city. My Delhi is the product of solipsism, my image of it a reflection not so much of the city as of myself.

Delhi, in these last days before we leave for New York City, has taken on the ectoplasmic aspect of an idea, a dream. Bogart and Bergman can keep Paris, we'll always have Delhi."

- DasGupta, Shougat. "Capital Letter," Outlook Magazine, Summer 2006

Whom Not to Marry

2008-07-06T18:27:00.003-04:00

“Never marry a man who has no friends,” he starts. “This usually means that he will be incapable of the intimacy that marriage demands...What do your friends and family members think of him?

“Steer clear of someone whose life you can run, who never makes demands counter to yours. It’s good to have a doormat in the home, but not if it’s your husband.

“Is he overly attached to his mother and her mythical apron strings? When he wants to make a decision, say, about where you should go on your honeymoon, he doesn’t consult you, he consults his mother. (I’ve known cases where the mother accompanies the couple on their honeymoon!)

“Does he have a sense of humor? That covers a multitude of sins. My mother was once asked how she managed to live harmoniously with three men — my father, brother and me. Her answer, delivered with awesome arrogance, was: ‘You simply operate on the assumption that no man matures after the age of 11.’ My father fell about laughing.

“A therapist friend insists that ‘more marriages are killed by silence than by violence.’ The strong, silent type can be charming but ultimately destructive.

“Don’t marry a problem character thinking you will change him. He’s a heavy drinker, or some other kind of addict, but if he marries a good woman, he’ll settle down. People are the same after marriage as before, only more so.

“Take a good, unsentimental look at his family — you’ll learn a lot about him and his attitude towards women.

“Finally: Does he possess those character traits that add up to a good human being — the willingness to forgive, praise, be courteous?

"After I regale a group with this talk, the despairing cry goes up: 'But you've eliminated everyone!'

"Life is unfair."

- Dowd, Maureen. "An Ideal Husband," The New York Times, 6 July 2008