Paris impressions

Paris is like any other city - people are rude and always in a hurry to get somewhere, motorists can't drive and pedestrians can't stop talking on their phones while crossing roads, garbage bins are full, the streets are full, the metro is full, the cafes are full, you get the idea. There are homeless on the streets and police sirens pierce the air in frequent bursts.  Overworked fast-food workers struggle to mime the menu to the bazillion tourists who can't speak the language.There are tourists everywhere and when they are not taking pictures they are annoying the locals by asking directions to the place they are already at. People avoid eye contact with strangers on the metro, preferring instead to pretend to enjoy music. A common big-city stench seeps through the air. McDonalds or Starbucks are always just around the corner. On the plus side, you can find a restaurant from any region of the world. There is decent beer. You can also manage alright with whatever language. If you can read a map, you can get around with much difficulty. Blah blah blah.

What sets Paris apart are the little things. Like when I bumped into a guy reading Derrida in the metro. That too a book book... paper and ink kind. OK! I thought one person reading Margins of Philosophy does not a pattern make. Another day, another metro, this one completely different line and how do I meet but Mr. Heidegger and his Contributions to Philosophy. And so you meet Kafka and Rimbaud, Hemingway in French and Joyce on a graffiti. Maybe there are Kafkans everywhere but Paris to me will always be the city of Sartre to me.

The King is so not pale

A really short excerpt from David Foster Wallace's The Pale King. Just to show what a bleeping genius we have lost.

Our house was outside of the city, off one of the blacktop roads. We had us a big dog that my daddy would keep on a chain in the front yard. A big part German shepherd. I hated the chain but we didn't have a fence, we were right off the road there. The dog hated that chain. But he had dignity. What he'd do, he'd never go out to the length of the chain. He'd never even go out to where the chain got tight. Even if the mailman pulled up,  or a salesman. Out of dignity, this dog pretended like he chose this one area to stay in that just happened to be inside the length of the chain. Nothing outside of that area right there interested him. He just had zero interest. So he never noticed the chain. He didn't hate it. The chain. He just up and made it not relevant. Maybe he wasn't pretending- maybe he really up and chose that little circle for his own world. He had a power to him. All of his life on that chain. I loved that damn dog.

Horseracing

My view of arranged marriage is that you pick a horse and then you show it to me and say "Is this one ok?". My problem with this arrangement is that I have no context to evaluate if it is. I have never ever been to a race and no clue about horses. I just don't know. One says yes because you like the colour of the horse or it has a funny name or it doesn't snort and balk when you go near it. It is based on intuition more than anything else.

Of course with a love marriage (I am not a big fan of this terminology because the opposite of a love marriage is then a love-less marriage) the choosing is not restrictive to a yes or no. The beauty of this analogy is that at the end of the day, no matter how you choose, it is still a gamble. You win some, you lose some. And you can never be 100% certain of your choice.

Extending the analogy, one of the reasons "western" marriages seem such a failure is because they don't think that it is necessary to bet everything you own to play the race. Some relationships are built for the long haul and some aren't. Changing horses mid-race is bad but gambling everything on one race is a bit reckless, don't u think? You don't want your life completely ruined if you lose a race.

One is absolutely free to believe in arranged marriages. Sure, let's say that it is the greatest bestest system. Or at least no worse than any other system. But please let's not pretend that someone is going to make an informed choice based on a few email exchanges. A trained psychologist wouldn't know anything about a person from these initial emails. Do you agree? So, let's just call the game what it is - it is a gamble. You are betting on a horse. And as a player, given the high stakes, all you can do is take as many variables as possible in to consideration.