Feynman's musings on the fun inherent in imagination, in this case, of the real world:
Author Archive: Ankit
Feynman's fun to imagine
Posted by Ankit On June 29th, 2013
Cosmicomics
Posted by Ankit On June 8th, 2013
Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics is a brilliant selection of his short stories. Each story takes a scientific fact and weaves a very imaginative fantasy around it. All these stories are told from the point of view of a know-it-all and ever present narrator called Qfwfq. Some of the stories are a little bit of a stretch in terms of the patience required of the reader but most of them are just pure inspired storytelling of the highest order. What I find amazing about his stories is a certain kind of absurdist humor which I have found in some other places (most conspicuously in Woody Allen's insanity defense, Alice in Wonderland, parts of Catch-22, and to some extent in Vonnegut and Douglas Adams)Â and which, in my opinion, is incredibly hard to do well.
As an example, his story 'All at one point' begins with the scientific fact that back in the day all the matter in the universe was concentrated at one point (Big Bang) which is followed by Qfwfq casually saying 'naturally, we were all there.' The story goes from there but to me there is something amazing about that first sentence as well. It represents a discontinuous leap of imagination which makes possible lines of fiction which are unattainable to most of us. There is a certain logic behind it (I mean, of course everybody was there!) which makes this line so much more funny than a scenario which doesn't necessarily have a logic of its own (like a man falling over a banana peel). The story carries forth this style which is the hallmark of such absurdist humor. In which characters behave in manners which appear highly unnatural to the reader but which make complete sense to the characters themselves. These characters state the most jaw dropping of facts in the most natural manner and often find themselves in situations which are perilous but ultimately ridiculous. It is their incapacity to tell how ridiculous their situation is which makes their stories so funny. Which makes me think, if there is a God looking down at humans he must be having a damn good time. I find that in such stories, as important and satisfying as the actual fantasy is, it is almost more important and funnier how the author maintains that internal logic of the characters themselves. The former part appealing to the creative side and the latter to the rational one.
Such internal logic is also necessary because it shows that just because the book is a fantasy the author is not taking the reader for a ride by freeing himself of all rules. This, I feel, is what makes it so difficult to write good fantasy because a good fantasy must have an additional responsibility to be coherent and logical since it is so easy to write something which isn't. Any Tom, Dick, and Harry can come along and spew his dreams and nightmares over the sorry pages of a novel. Unfortunately when that happens the world has to make room in the cosmic trashcan for another 'Kafka on the shore'. Guided with beautiful logic, however, we get Calvino's book which treads the trembling and faint line between believability and absurdity with such finesse that reading his stories becomes a pleasure.
Pointless issues
Posted by Ankit On May 27th, 2013
I am reading The Great House by Nicole Krauss and the book has fomented enough waves of emotions within me to pick up my fingers and bang in this post. There is absolutely no doubt that Krauss is a top rate intelligence and if the worth of a book has something to do with its ability to make one feel alive again then this is a top rate book as well. This intense feeling can either manifest itself in the form of positive emotions or negative ones - both are fair game and none makes the book any less great - the eternal failing of a purported work of art being when it leaves you merely indifferent. This book presses some of the buttons which haven't been pressed in a long while. So this post, rather than being a review of the book, is more about the red lights which those buttons have set alight.
One of the unmistakable traits of the American culture is, without doubt, its incredibly inward looking attitude. You can see it in the awareness that an average American seems to have of the affairs of the world and you can see it when the American football teams play against each other and become world champions. In general I view this trait with mild amusement, very aware of the many failings that I myself have as a human being but every now and then I come across a particular manifestation of this general trait which drives me up the wall. I think I can say, with reasonable give and take and with an acceptable degree of accuracy, that most of the problems that Americans face are ridiculous problems that pale in comparison with what a lot of people around the world have to face. When there are children dying of malnutrition in many parts of the world and when there are people getting killed almost everyday due to civil wars, I find it incomprehensible how the collective focus of this culture can revolve around such superficial issues as 'not being able to make a lot of money' or 'yet another breakup.' I don't quite want to argue that the existence of this much more sinister and much more broad reality beyond the comfortable American life must lead to some kind of guilt but I do want to just put it out there and hint at the smallness of it all.
The issues that people in this country face are mostly of their own making and they often have the power to change things for the better unlike a lot of other people around the world who are irrevocably and mercilessly condemned to a life and future beyond their control. All the huge gamut of issues which are basically a result of people running after goals and standards and expectations that others have set for them, therefore, evince nothing but a sneering chuckle from me. These standards not only include the corporate structures that one is expected to follow but also the lifestyle that one must keep. Getting a house in a fashionable area, being able to buy expensive branded clothes, drinking 20 dollars cocktails in the hippest new clubs, weekend getaways - all at the cost of a hateful job and a ridiculous soulless grind of a life. This is essentially the story of many on the professional side of an urban environment. To complete the hellish circle, the culture promotes an inclination to be casual towards one's relationships, thereby, filling in all the ingredients necessary for a life continuously caught between the rock of anxiety and the hard place of dissatisfaction. The Indian life is by no means the ideal one, being plagued by some of the same ailments as the American one although in a different form, but I can safely say that people appear happier and more satisfied on average even though they have much less and have to deal with graver issues than people here.
The reason I bring it all up now is because the book The Great House repeatedly brings up characters who appear sad and aloof and inclined to concentrate on the loss of it all. Their stories are touchingly told and Krauss has a great knack at writing highly fluid English. Her powers of observations make me incredibly jealous. But, somehow, I fail to sympathize with the sadness of the characters that she writes so beautifully about. What I do feel is an intense anger at the thanklessness of her characters even though they are born in an affluent country where they do not have to wonder if they will get enough to eat. I keep muttering under my breath, godammit, stop this relentless onslaught of self-pity and loss and try to be happy and thankful for what you've got. Most of her characters don't really have issues. At least issues not grave enough to warrant my sympathy. Just like so many people living here who don't really have issues but would not hesitate to go on and on about their predicaments which, when you consider closely, they themselves generated in the first place and are completely within their powers to change for the better... But the book is good!
Edit: I want to mention again that this is a very good book with some of the most poignant passages I have ever come across. My visceral reactions which lie beneath the surface of general equanimity lie there in an uneasy calm and require but the faintest whiff of the wrong kind of smell to burst forth in a varicolored display. In the present case they are triggered by certain characters whom I find ungrateful and I object to their sympathetic treatment, both in fiction and in life. There are other characters, however, who are absolutely beautifully rendered.
To U
Posted by Ankit On May 19th, 2013
It was one of those muffled days which zips around me in black and white streaks as I tread its cobbled alleyways in a perpetual state of deferred suspension. People zooming past with their lattes and their kids and their bright sunny faces moistened with a million emotions. The scattered flimsy clouds over a self-absorbed blue sky, the birds in aerodynamic formations, the capped ocean swelling below a melting Sun, the brisk breeze in which precipitate a million different voices of a thousand different people all with substantively the same general life, the foamed top of an espresso in a white cup with a chipped handle revealing brown ceramic beneath, the blonde with the Aviators, with the attitude and with the insecurities which she shares with other blondes with Aviators and attitudes, the shade below a lazy tree which is mottled by the Sun shining through its foliage, its single leaf translucent green twinkling at its tip and alone among uncountable others which seem exactly the same as the one, the sunny house with the cute red wooden door and the white picket fence which is hardly white anymore, John Doe's love for Jane Doe lovingly scratched on the concrete pavement just below my feet, all the people who have plans to attend to, determined to have the fun which must be had on a sunny day like today, the inky dark night with its friendly street-lamps and its illuminated, boxed, and windowed lives, the silhouettes of trees and of lamp-posts and of derelict buildings and of sad looking, slow moving homeless people, fancy new cars cutting through the silence by their rude yellow lights and their alpha male engines, lives, complete with all the emotions that will forever be unknown to me hanging in the sky all around in little puddles of yellow light. Just one of those days when I experience an infinity without really experiencing any of it. Rather I sit on the proverbial parapet wall of life with my legs dangling on the other side, hands clenched behind my back and eyes closed, and wait for the confusion to subside, for the next day which will pull it all together and back within the perspectives of reality.
Handcrafted and artisan
Posted by Ankit On April 21st, 2013
I was walking around the quaint and upcoming neighborhood of South Park in San Diego today when I noticed a growing fad on the shopfronts. I noticed how a lot of them had started using generic healthy sounding words like 'artisan' and 'handcrafted' to describe their fares which included stuff from chocolate to beer to clothes and more. Terms like these were all over the place and although generally they can be dismissed as merely a quaint amusement, it is also worthwhile to prod the topic a little because to me they belie a demographic which is as gullible and, might I say thick, as the one which it looks down upon so much. And America, being the fascinating place that it is, with all its freedoms and its tolerance, harbors them all and listens to them with patience. I hear people from outside the country coming here and feeling dissatisfied, even angry, with certain facets of America - and I do too sometimes - but I am eternally amazed by the fact that in this country you can always find a chunk of people whom you don't like very much, who have very different values than you do, and it's all a testament to the country's incredible diversity and tolerance.
And, therefore, you can find here wide swathes of land inhabited by those whose lives revolve around hard religion and conservative ideologies and numerous coastal pockets of population who are their complete opposites. I am intellectually fascinated by all this variety but I also cannot help but be cognizant of the existence of follies in any form of 'belief system'. I am not sure if I have a belief system but I am sure that if I have one then it's both flawed and inconsistent. I am also aware that it is okay because finally the only important thing is the color of life and all these badly constructed systems add to the humor of life and to its botched iridescence. So on the one hand we have the far right of America with its heavy insistence on the final word of the Bible, and on the other we have the far left with its own superstitions in pseudosciences such as homeopathy, astrology and other new age claptrap. They both look askance at each other whereas people like me, who think of themselves as being in the middle, are allowed to feel smug!
I was struck, then, by the repeated usage of terms like handcrafted and artisan on the shop windows because these terms don't really mean much. They do however intend to make the buyer believe that the things which these shops are selling are somehow superior to those which come from huge factories. Whenever I come across such words I cannot help but think that there is a sly effort to sell me vague associations of green pastures, clear streams, and old grandmotherly knowledge. To me the intent is so incredibly devious that I am instantly repulsed by it and am rather inclined put my trust in the red bottle of coke with its honest description of high fructose corn syrup and 150 calories.
Feynman on quantum mechanics
Posted by Ankit On April 2nd, 2013
An amazing lecture on the quantum mechanical world, especially the double slit experiment and its ramifications:
Comma
Posted by Ankit On February 24th, 2013
For those who are regular visitors to this blog and who are disappointed by its increasingly infrequent updates, I apologize to the both of you! I have had quite a busy last month and I expect this hectic schedule to extend into March but when the dust settles beyond the horizon I hope for the advent of a new spring in its wake. I hope then to have the time and the experiences to, as Ezra Pound rallied, 'make it new'. For now, here's the frozen Niagra which I visited recently, thereby accomplishing my life's purpose as far as being an Indian in America is concerned (having already visited the Grand Canyon):
Death of a motorcycle
Posted by Ankit On January 26th, 2013
5 years, 30000 miles and the motorcycle that I have come to refer to as my noble steed has decided it quits. Since I have had relatively few material possessions during my time in the US, I have grown fond of the few that I did have. And the 2003 blue-white yamaha yzf600R is perhaps the one that I have cherished the most. In the company of a certain yellow suzuki sv 500, it has taken me through the stunning mountains of Utah and to the incredibly desolate deserts of Nevada in the North and Baja in the south. On it I have scaled the beautiful Southern California shore under its mild cold Sun an innumerable number of times. I have crisscrossed across the myriad neighborhoods of San Diego, from the affluent north to the seedy south and the surprisingly diverse east. I have ridden it in the sweltering heat of Calexico and the cold damp of Flagstaff. I have ridden it on ribboning mountaneous roads with nary a soul to be seen and on the suffocatingly clogged freeways. I have taken it to its limits, to speeds which would be imprudent to mention and I have slipped it through exceedingly tight tolerances. And it has always responded with vigor and has made me feel alive on those sweeping curves where I had to bend it low, very low, with the asphalt a small distance away and the world frozen in an amber drop of serenity: the Sun reflecting in the visor, the rippled jeans, and the incredible drop a few feet away. Well it has been an absolutely great run and hopefully there are bigger and better things ahead!
Model railroad museum
Posted by Ankit On January 1st, 2013
I visited the SD model railroad museum to begin my new year. The museum has elaborate models of rails set within the industrialized settings of early 20th century. What I found immensely fascinating were the little models of shops, people, cars, bicycles etc. which formed the setting within which the trains were plying. I presume that the models represented some form of reality which must have existed 60 years ago. The deserted roads, the old beetles, an afterthought of a graffiti on the wall, little kids playing soccer, a wedding scene, all with a moving train in the backdrop.
