[1] I used to be moderately obese during my early teenage years.

[2] Even as a young man, I used to cry very easily, as well as get angry very easily. I have since gotten better at pretending indifference.

[3] Well into the early years of high school, I used to play by myself in a sandlot in my parents' backyard. I still can't pass by a Lego store without feeling strong nostalgia for those happy and solitary evenings.

[4] Many significant shifts in my life, including the geographical migration to this new world, and even more recently the getting the job position I am currently employed in, were in part triggered by certain relationships and certain women. And I often wonder, is this because in my mind I unconsciously link love to having to prove myself some external other?

[5] In my subconscious, I wrestle with the ideas of "suffering" (and relatedly "sin")and "happiness" (and the question, "what is good?") constantly. Which is why I think Woody Allen's dark comedies appeal to the optimistic pessimist in me.

Note: Elizabeth had tagged me with this meme: "Five things you may not know about me". And since I am supposed to infect others, you, kind reader, if you are reading this bathetic list, consider yourself tagged.

a blue lightning of laughter, he remembers Ghalib:

"vuh gul jis gulsitāñ meñ jalvah-farmāʾī kare ġhālib chaṭaknā ġhunchah-e gul kā ṣadā-e ḳhandah-e dil hai"

In the garden in which that rose grants us audience, Ghalib, The opening-burst of the rosebud is the sound of heart's laughter.

Strolling in Central Park, Auden in hand, he looks with astonishment at the buds about to break into bloom, and curses human memory, which was lovingly instructed by his old friend in that Southern City where spring must have already unfurled her flamenco skirt, on the etymology of the names of these trees, which he now struggles to name: star magnolia, crab apple, elm, white pine, hawthorn.