Rohit Khare <khare@mci.net> (by way of Rohit Khare about 6:48 PM -0700 on
10/10/97, rang the bell of illumination with this:
> [WARNING: Enclosed is rambling Friday-night, Yom KIppur sap. Please be very
> careful before deciding to wade in. Please keep your hands and arms inside
> the pity at all times...]
>
>
>
>
> ARRIVAL
> -------
>
> I have lots of vague plans for the future, hopeful visions of what all
> these years of toil will someday reap for my personal happiness. But I can
> tell you a few things for sure:
>
> I will absolutely, positively not win a Nobel Prize of any sort.
I never wanted one.
>
> I am even more sure I'm not actually capable of doing anything silly enough
> to win an IgNobel prize, either.
Don't have the time.
>
> But whatever shadow of a sliver of a smidgen of doubt might exist about
> either of those, I can finally admit with dead certainty, she isn't going
> to call back. Or write. Or send a carrier pigeon.
Hey, so what. Lot's of fish in the sea, and your in the most fertile
fishing grounds in the world.
> I'd make a terrible doctor. Oh, not just because I don't have the patience,
> or the bedside manner, or the patience, but because I know I'd never make
> it past losing my first patient. I could handle the accidental or the
> inevitable death, but one day, sure as sunshine, one day it'd be my fault.
> And I don't have a healthy enough sense of my human limits to accept that.
I would make a good assassin. No I would make a great assassin.
>
> As for friendships, I only spin a very few, and they mean a lot to me. They
> mean everything to me, frankly. And this time, I killed the patient.
It's the simple thing in life that are important. However this wisely
knowledge only comes with age, and hindsight.
[snip]
>
> Furthermore, beneath the search for spiritual kinfolk is the even more
> ancient search for The One.
>
> And I have arrived somewhere my One isn't.
Get over it dude. In the course of your life there will be a lot, of "One's."
>
> ---
>
> Now wait, that was supposed to be my kickoff lede to this post, but I just
> realized that it juxtaposes incorrectly with the first vignette. I DON'T
> mean that in particular, the one who won't call is The One. Definitely not.
> I didn't leave my heart in San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Pasadena, SoHo
> (NY or London), Austin, Washington, Chicago, or Cambridge.
>
> [My new UCI colleagues should close their ears at this point]
>
> I mean that, in *general*, my hope for The One lies in those places -- not
> here behind the Orange Curtain.
fat chance, trust me it will be here.
> This post is about arrival. I left Cambridge -- nay, ran away screaming --
> but for what? And so comes the inevitable counterreformation. MIT, Harvard,
> Caltech: that was home, home among the wierdos and the crazies and most of
> all the nerds and geeks and the freaks. A few weeks ago, in my post about
> Disneyurbia, I said I abstractly regretted that there weren't any of my
> kind on the streets here.
>
> Watching the IgNobel broadcast, I passed well past abstract nostaligia. I'm
> beginning to psychically hyperventilate, to feel asphyxiated by the lack of
> intensity. No one walks down the street reading a book! Everyone is so
> goddamned HAPPY! And now, now that I've left my latest orbit through
> Boston, I have the temerity to start feeling homesick? Pthuii!
Prozac. Get some if you want. I prefer tequilla.
>
> But... but... but... before the woman who memorized the periodic table was
> the girl who memorized a thousand digits of Pi and the one who could sketch
> the Krebs cycle on a tablecloth. Where is my One???
See the get over it part.
[snip] Rohit metamorphizing to OC life.
> Enlightenment, or in this case, greed, has changed what I want. This is
> gonna be painful. I don't *want* the degree like I once did (*). My
> fantasies about being happy as unquestioned God of Web Protocols have
> shattered as naturally as they perhaps should. Instead, happiness is now
> built around this void of someone -- or some group, as you all and each are
> to me -- to share together with.
OK, boyo here is Tim's hard learned lesson. Right here for you.
Do not, ever, EVER overestimate people's need for greed. It simply isn't
that strong. People will pass up greed for ego, and power. Not real power
the kind that comes with great wealth, but bullshit power. The power to
bust your balls simply because they can. And then the ego to pat themselves
on the back for a job well done. This dear boy is a drive that is far, far,
greater than greed.
> (*) footnote: this is a *good* thing: now that the degree is a mortal chit
> instead of a Holy Grail, I can realistically complete it. The first step to
> getting out is demystifying the damn thing.
>
> I spent last night arguing with someone who steadfastly refuses to admit
> this first cause. How fulfilling can life possibly be *without* that drive?
> Don't demean it as mere libido! Most of you know what I mean here, but I
> suspect there are a few adorably oblivious FoRKs who thought as I did just,
> say, four months ago. I have to admit, I can't argue from first principles
> what 'a life' might be... except that you can't go back.
Difference between breathing smog laden Pasadena air, and the refreshingly
wonderful OC air.
Glad to see your head is clearing.
> And so, napping on the lawn while the fire ants are nipping, what can I say
> of my decision now? Well, first and foremost, there's no turning back. I
> don't do doubts. I *will* bull my way through this (in both senses of the
> verb :-). No worries on that front. How, though? Possibly by recorking the
> genie. <snobbery> I know that this University can't be my geek home, my
> monastaeries of old </snobbery>.
I believe I bought into the pool at 18 months, can someone please check
that for me?
> Ah, hell, this is all beating around the bush. I'm just pissed that I just
> rended a thread in my web of friendships, and enraged because I don't know
> how or why. Sure, the facts can be read to say it's not my fault, but I
> don't care. When I want to be someone's friend, I damn well make it happen!
> :-)
Wow, how positively new age of you.
>
> But instead, work is still there: classes, ARPA PI meetings, consulting,
> WWW7 papers, another Web Journal issue, ... hell is other people, right?
>
> And then, apropos of nothing, my pants buzz in the grass:
>
> Subject: Page to 1792396@PAGEMCI
>
> I was reading the FoRK faq and... Just wanted to say hello. I hope your
> settling in is going as good as my Portland move was in May. Peace and
> Postings..Your favorite whore--tom
>
> What can I say? I love you all,
> Rohit
and we wub you RoRo.
Tim
--I wasn't born with enough middle fingers: ...Marilyn Manson
<> tbyars@earthlink.net <>