love

And really, when you want to profess your love for someone, what could be more meaningful than biting off each other’s ring finger?

“… it had to be our ring fingers. We were both just out of rough relationships, and wanted to both reclaim and be rid of those fingers… this has a permanence to it as well. You can take a ring off your ring finger, but you can never put your ring finger back on once you take it off. It’s something that will last forever — it’s a physical testament to how much I actually do love him.”

“Hey, we seem basically compatible. I enjoyed kissing you. What do you say about trying a three-month love contract?”

“The important thing is to never stop questioning.” That quote is often attributed to Einstein. I cannot confirm that he ever actually said this. But I doubt I would hear many arguments if I suggested he was one of the greatest thinkers in history.

Is “questioning” really all that important? I guess it depends on how you interpret “important”. At some point in my life I decided to take that path. “Questioning” … “knowing” … is very important to me.

It’s even more important to me than “happiness”. At caterina.net right now there are some questions about … well … questioning. Caterina says:

I also read a study once of a conjectural connection between intelligence, depression and a “sense of reality”: they tested people who identified themselves as “happy, content” and people who identified themselves as “unhappy, depressed” and gave them a test to assess their knowledge of history and current events. The “happy” people had no idea what went on or what was going on, whereas the “unhappy” people did. Whether they knew these things because they were depressed type people or were depressed because they knew these things is hard to guess.

I know from experience that there is a very definite correlation between how aware I am of current events and how happy I am. I don’t even need to use the example of my extreme “awareness” during the weeks immediately following September 11 to illustrate my point. A much simpler analysis can be made by using the weeks surrounding the whole “Cuban-raft-boy-Elian” episode.

I remember that the events of this boy’s life so overwhelmed the media that I simply stopped listening. I went from being able to tell you which specific bills were before Congress and the names of all of the Cabinet members to barely knowing what the day of the week was. I went from listening to NPR for two or three hours each day and reading the newspaper to listening to nothing but my CD player and reading only mind-numbingly boring tomes on database access.

If you’re waiting for some flash of brilliance here, you’re not going to get it. I apologize, but I’m just thinking out loud now. It’s amazing, sometimes, how reading someone else’s blog will spark a whirlwind of confusion and contemplation in my mind.

In the end I am - and always will be - someone who believes that it is truly better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. And in the end I think … well … the love you take … is equal to the love …

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I think that the best linking weblog on line right now is Follow Me Here. Every time I visit I find a half-dozen or so excellent articles. Eliot must be a voracious reader, and his comments are insightful and thought-provoking. If you have never been to his site, go right now. Here are a few of his more recent links that I found particularly interesting:

· A few months ago - just after Sept. 11 - I wrote a little rant about parallel universes and how I deal with the concept of infinity. I never claimed that it was an original idea, or my own. But I like it. It seems like this theory, which dates back to at least 1957, has sparked some renewed interest. The Economist has a very enlightening and much more scientific explanation of a theory of infinite universes than the one I provided. If you’re as fascinated by the concept of infinity and its implications as I am, you’ll appreciate the Economist’s essay.

· The London-based eZine Spiked published an article on “the Singleton Society” last week. I’ll give you an excerpt here, but I recommend reading the whole thing.

… the age-old tension between the aspiration for self-realisation and commitment is difficult to resolve. In the past this tension could be contained through the widespread influence of the ideology of romantic love - which celebrated the value of self-realisation through an intimate encounter with another person. The synthesis of autonomy and commitment helped diffuse conflicts of interests, at least for a brief period of time.
But the ideology of romantic love could only effectively contain conflicts of interests because women were expected to renounce their desire for autonomy in favour of maintaining the relationship. Since the 1970s, this one-sided arrangement has come unstuck. At a time when women seek to develop themselves no less than men, love ceases to provide the focus for an ideology that can sustain durable commitment.

· The Crackpot Index claims to be, “A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics.” It’s very funny, more so if you often find yourself trying to debunk those with seriously high levels of bunk.

I wrote this in high school, sometime between 1989 and 1991…
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This is something I wrote a long, long, long time ago…
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While visiting evhead this afternoon I read a quote from instantloser.com and immediately identified with the emotion the writer was expressing. So I clicked. Some people have a gift for writing. This guy does. Go read some of what instantloser had to say. You’ll be glad you did.

“after we stopped and ate i made some faux-sexist comments and she expressed some faux-disdain. for the last hour of the ride home she slept, and i kept looking over at her and smiling very true smiles.”

The History of Valentine’s Day
Every February, across the country, candy, flowers, and gifts are exchanged between loved ones, all in the name of St. Valentine. But who is this mysterious saint and why do we celebrate this holiday?

<soapbox>
Slip Slidin’ Away is one of my favorite Paul Simon songs. Sylloge wrote about the 3rd verse and how it so captures a feeling of loss and desperation. It is a beautiful song, in much the same way that Yesterday is a beautiful song. I believe there are certain songs … writings … pieces of art … that are such perfect examples of a purity of feeling that they overwhelm. It is in these that I find faith, and hope, and love.
</soapbox>

Every now and then I find a site that just screams, “Blog me!” There isn’t much to read at the site I found tonight; I guess she’s just getting started. But the premise behind reasons to kill my boyfriend is hysterical and her first post made me laugh, so …

The Pompatous of Love

I haven’t been this scared in a long time
And I’m so unprepared so here’s your valentine
Bouquet of clumsy words, a simple melody
This world’s an ugly place, but you’re so beautiful to me - Blink 182

Embedded in Week 152’s essay by John Baez for This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics is a very sad love story. I mean it. I think I will subtitle this post, Love Surrounded by Confusing Mathematics.

In the interests of apologizing for how simply vile my last post seemed, but rather than retract my statement, I will now post for you, dear reader, the only piece of poetry I ever wrote that I like. In return I ask simply that you admit I am not so mean as to torture you with bad poetry very often.

fourteen red roses
sitting casually
discussing her eyes