therapy at Secaucus Junction

Secaucus Junction is the station at which all NJ Transit trains converge. Every morning, I join thousands of other commuters in the mezzanine, people teeming from all corners and spilling out of platform exits, all desperately trying (and failing) to beat the bottleneck that forms amid the finite number of automated turnstiles protecting access to the Manhattan bound trains.

This morning, right after a woman with a cane shoved me toward Sbarro, I briskly walked past the station attendant talking to a very petite woman wearing Louboutins. I was about to scan my ticket when I heard, "I know, I know, let it out sweetheart. You're fine. I'm here."

I turned back to see the station attendant stroking the woman's back, and the woman's face streaked with tears and mascara. Time stopped for them, and the two women were in an elusive nimbus, untouched by frenzied commuters.

The woman smiled bleakly back at the station attendant, nodded, regained what little strength she had left, and then walked towards the turnstile.

The station attendant yelled to her as she walked away: "Remember, honey, you're beautiful."

A mother with an infant child (most likely a Cabbage Patch Kid wrapped in a snuggie) elbowed me in the ribs and I lost sight of the woman in Louboutins and the station attendant, both of whom seemed to have vanished.

the Higgs boson: Man is Matter, and now we know why

On July 4, 2012, while my friends and I joined the rest of the country in toasting to America, to summer, to veggie chips, physicists across the ocean at CERN uncovered the final clue that could potentially solve the mystery of the universe. The Higgs boson, a fundamental particle whose existence was posited by Peter Higgs and his team to explain the diversity of existence, was (most likely) discovered by two teams of persistent physicists this past Wednesday. The New York Times' piece on the breakthrough provides more detail.


The powerful implications of the (almost) confirmed existence of the Higgs boson are a bit difficult to understand without a keen understanding of physics, of outer space, and of the Higgs' position in both fields (or without a very gifted and patient college science professor, as I was fortunate to have).


Essentially, this specific particle explains the fundamental question of why the universe is as it is, not solely how or what. Third grade science has taught us that we are surrounded by, and are part of, "matter," which is simply, "things." But we were never taught why these "things" came into being. Why is that that an atom can be of various weights, that oxygen is in vapor form, that humans have opposable thumbs? The immediate responses to those questions are much like responses our parents would provide to us as children, when we asked the fundamental questions of our childhood.

Daddy, why is my hair brown?

Because your mother and I have brown hair.

But why do I have to have the same hair color as you and Mommy?

 Just because.

In the same way, atoms of different isotopes can be different weights because they are composed of different numbers of neutrons, oxygen is in vapor form because at standard pressure its molecules bind as a gas, and humans have opposable thumbs because we evolved from primates. And why does all of that happen? Just because (well, and some more profound scientific rational, but for the sake of example, work with me).


However, there is an underlying structure, a gorgeous rhythm that pervades the seeming arbitrary nature of the universe.


It's cooler than Jesus.


In 1964, Peter Higgs theorized a mechanism (later dubbed the Higgs Mechanism) by which particles, everything in the universe is given mass. Essentially, there is an invisible force, a field that permeates the universe. It is the "quantum excitation," or breaks in the symmetry of this field that give rise to the seeming arbitrary distribution of mass in matter all around us, within us. It's a flaw. It's a screw up. The entire universe is a series of flaws, snowballing screw ups, exponentially expanding, creating, evolving. 


The Higgs boson explains why there was even a Big Bang in the first place. There was no man on the moon beating pots and pans, no looming head in the sky grinding his teeth. It was an arbitrary excitation of a point in this field that propelled into creation our unique universe. Though random, arbitrary, it was a flaw fundamental to the existence of the universe.


I'm not conventionally religious. I can't sit cross legged because of my bad knee and houses of worship make me queasy. However, the grand implications of this flaw are awe-inspiring. This singular "error," the quantum break in an otherwise beautiful symmetry, could have easily occurred on another point in the field, could have easily created a completely different universe, or potentially no universe, an existence of which we would not be a part. The specific excitation in the particular point on the field put in motion the creation of the universe as we know it, the creation of Earth, the creation of humanity.


I'm not sure what is God, and I don't think I'll ever be sure what people mean when they refer to God. The only certitude is that humanity, life, the entire universe is bound by a single, fundamental flaw, an essential asymmetry that shapes, creates, and renders mass to "things" and meaning to life.


I guess this just means we're all just a bunch of screw ups, but we're in it together, and for the long haul. Amen.

Parents Got Swag

I like walks on the beach and chocolate behind glass counters and used leather diaries with frayed yellow edges. I also like texting words like, "quintessence."

I know, I'm a bit outdated. I like to think of it as classic or "old school," but I think the harsh truth of the matter is that I'm still living like a kid from 1995.

My parents, on the other hand, have unintentionally functioned as the foil to my [lack of] youth and modernity. They have subverted the notion of age, of generational gap, and have created with vigor a new sense of the word, "cool." They're hip.

Most people find it amusing when their parents discover the Google. Sometimes, amusement concedes to frustration when their parents text their children blank messages, with false hope that the apparatus will convey messages in the same capacity as telepathy. Most people, however, do not have parents who can build and program computers, who look thirty years younger than their age, and who use "lol" the way it was intended--not when they're actually laughing, but when they don't have time to humor me.



The Young & the Restless (25 years ago, "lol")

 Last week, I had my usual mid-May, half-birthday break down, and I reached out to my parents for emotional support. Our basement is currently undergoing renovation, so our home phone has been acting a bit shoddy, and my sister's phone got rained on, so I was left with my parents' cell phones. I first texted my mother.

Rucha: Hi. Miss you!
Mother: mu
Rucha: What's mu?
Mother: miss you

I then tried my father.

Rucha: Hi. Love you!
Father: luv u2
Rucha: [insert blank text of exasperation]
Father: u try2 send pic?

I subsequently ate a $15 salad topped with veggie burger strips and watched Parks & Rec on my iPad (extent to my connection with Gen Y). I then got ready for bed. When I'm home, right before I go to bed my mother smiles at me, strokes my hair, and with a sincerity unparalleled, one that can only be produced by my parents (Gen Y's guests of honor), will say, "Jai Sri Krishna." It's a blessing, something that my parents sort of automatically chant without much heed, or at least, one that I usually receive without much heed. It never mattered much to me, but it's the entire practice around it--the smiling, the warmth, the genuineness--that touches me, that subverts the indifference of the world.

After I burped up some veggie burger meat, I texted my mother again.

Rucha: Love you! Good night.
Mother: lu gn beta
Rucha: gn?
Mother: good night
Rucha: how fitting
Mother: lol jsk

It took me about 12 seconds to realized "jsk" refers to the aforementioned blessing. I audibly sighed (to no one in particular.)

Rucha: Quintessence.
[no response]

six months in, and still can't microwave a cookie.

I almost burned down the office today.

(My bad.)

Today officially marks the six-month countdown till Death of Youth Day. (Yes, every year I seem to go through the same gastrointestinal acrobats about my increasingly apparent senescence. However, this year it's significantly worse. No, really, it just is. Humor an old lady.)

In six months, I will be the age my mother was when she gave birth to me.

In six months, I will be the age Nat Turner was when he sold Invite Media to Google for $70 million.

In six months, I will be the age Lawrence Braggs was one year before he won the Nobel Prize for Physics.

In six months, it will be the 24th Veterans' Day since 1988.

There was some sort of rager on the third floor of the building last night, so I slept with my ear plugs, the ones I bought on overstock.com with my LivingSocial offer. I woke up about 45 minutes before the alarm clock to take out the ear plugs, so that I would then hear the alarm clock when I woke up.

Evidently, I had thought much about this morning when I was tossing in conscious, exhausted misery all night.

And what I realized when I awoke (for the second time, after my alarm did go off) was not just that my most pronounced gray was leering at me, or that I may need to switch to Sensodyne, or that my perfume no longer masks the scent of Ben-Gay, but that the more I fall prey to the vagaries of a cold, indifferent world, the more I desperately hold onto the comfort of a past in which heartache was raw, friendship was pure, and hips did not retain pizza, which was inevitably voraciously consumed.

So it's not youth I miss. It's the fact that my screw ups were just that--mistakes in their most honest, benign capacity. No implications of cataclysmic proportions. No calculations, no derivations.

When my family first moved to this country, we were not as fortunate as we are today. Still, my mother, my father, and I (we were not blessed with my little sister till two years after our migration), lived gorgeously. In the first year in which we lived in America, we had not yet come to associate the notion of choice restrictions and authentic living as characteristics of wealth; rather, we were enamored of the mass producing capabilities of the American food & beverage industry, and so without heed to our effectively clogging 56% of our cardiovascular system, we engorged upon Entenmann's and fruit colas and Ellio's pizza.

My favorite snack was those large Pepperidge Farm cookies, the ones in the paper bag with tops folded over. I liked the white chocolate chip macadamia ones. I never knew till I took a bite if the piece in question was a nut or chip. It was a surprise every time. To emulate the just-baked sensation without just baking anything, my family would pop these already processed cookies into the microwave for ten seconds. (Yes, in addition to our cardiovascular health, we may have risked cancer. I personally think little gustatory pleasure is worth genetic mutations.) The microwaved cookies would be gooey and warm and exude a sense of American spirit so wonderfully pervasive on WB11 (CW11's predecessor, a station of the 90's).

I wanted to feel warm and gooey (and genetically mutated) today. We had Pepperidge Farm cookies in the office, and so after I bought my Oren's, I grabbed a cookie from the paper bag. I brought it to the kitchen on a Chipotle napkin, and put it in the microwave.

I stood around, looking up at the dusty ceiling, thinking about chocolate and young people and new Americans, when I smelled smoke.

I had put the cookie in the microwave for over a minute.

I ran to the microwave and opened the door. Dark grey smoke billowed from the apparatus, and the entire kitchen was engulfed in a thick stench. My cookie was steaming, the napkin was burned through, and the chocolate chips went beyond melty and gooey to blackened and hardened.

23 and a half years later, and I still manage to transform a bout of culinary genius into a case of pyromania. No, I may not be able to cook a precooked, thoroughly processed cookie, but I can definitely set things on fire and get ash on recently dry cleaned dress, all before 8:30 AM.

The office manager came running to the kitchen, smelling the smoke. I looked up, abashed, still holding my elfish cookie.

"Good morning. Did I tell you today was my half birthday?"

GroupThink

New York City is typically considered a metropolis of individuals, a community of distinct entities, each defined by a specific reservoir of values, perspectives, and frozen yogurt preferences (I like green tea and original swirl Pinkberry with mochi, mango, strawberry, and lychee, if it's summer).

However, New Yorkers may actually be subject to a psychological phenomenon that undermines the very notion of cosmopolitan individualism.

This morning, when I crossed over 42nd street on my way to work, I noticed an older, slightly greasy man with a large blue jacket racing to the other corner of the street. I double checked the walking sign, and saw that the "white man walking" or pedestrian green light was on, and that there was still another minute or so to leisurely cross the street. I rolled my eyes and looked back down at my shoes, which proved to be more interesting than Midtown East during rush hour.

In about two seconds, I felt a breeze by my left ear, and turned to see a woman in high heels, and two men with brief cases running (one of them inducing a slight asthmatic episode) towards the corner of the street now populated by the aforementioned greasier gentleman and a short man handing out flyers for a new Turkish restaurant.

I again checked the sign, and saw that pedestrians still had a very explicit "go." Literally, we had the green  light.

I then quickly checked behind me and saw several people, having taken note of the earlier joggers, make similar decisions to sprint across the street. A small Thai woman pushing a stroller jogged a bit to keep up with the older Mexican lady walking four dogs.

I was unsure as to what we were running, or from what we were running, but since everyone after the runners in suits seemed to follow suit, I presumed I was also expected to do the same.

So, I walked into the office with pit stains and a throbbing knee. My doctor has advised me against running, but in this situation, I felt I had no choice.

the higgs particle & other beginnings

Today, we are reborn.

And by "we," I mean me, you, Man, Matter. It's the Higgs Boson collision of Man is Matter, an explosion that will propel into creation a new vision of the world.

The curious, blurred vision of a little girl with three gray hairs and two left feet, and a strong affinity for spinach and thunderstorms.

Man is Matter originally formed to chronicle my adventures in London in the summer of 2009. I made observations about high tea and about British accents and about yellow tomatoes in Borough Market. I desperately recorded every moment, even the most mundane, hoping to hold on to every bit of London summer that the U.S. Border Patrol allowed.

When I returned to America, I found that my discoveries did not cease with the close of my summer travels, but that I continued to unearth treasures in the gullies of oblivion: the sterile, fluorescent aisles of Duane Reade, the rocky seats in front of the homemade ice cream parlor in Ridgewood, the open urinals in highways of Rajasthan.

When I could not leave my seat, I explored time, taste, touch and sometimes stuck out my tongue to check if it were raining. And when I had the opportunity to explore outside my own senses, I discovered mischief in the Dominican Republic and complex familial interactions in India. There were Mayan massages in Mexico and gray suits in Washington, DC. There was the man who sold $.75 coffee in the cart by my office, and the smiling blonde who sold $2.00 coffee at Oren's down the street.

Every day there was someone, there was something, of note.
And as with all things beautiful, I soon lost touch with the meaning of it all, with the meaning of discovery, forgot how rare it was to laugh on Tuesdays, to touch someone on a Wednesday afternoon, to figure out how you like your burgers cooked. The need to observe the world was reduced to an ephemeral phenomenon, something I did in my spare time, after I finished everything I was obliged to finish. I soon found myself searching for something I was missing, but searching in the wrong places, making futile attempts to move mountains, when all I needed to do was skip a rock into the river.



And, as the geographer told the Little Prince, I soon stopped recording life, because it became ephemeral, subsumed by the falsity of obligations and futures and responsibilities.

But it's precisely this quality, this "danger of a speedy disappearance," that prompts the Little Prince, and that has reminded me, to fall in love all over again.

I tasted the summer rain yesterday. My legs had goosebumps and my Calvin Klein flats landed in puddles and my hair formed its own sort of Indie-fro, but the rain tasted sweet, almost like warm milk and almonds and dates and peaches.

2009, when I tried desperately to claim all of London for my own, to grasp through slippery fingers a city that would forever evade me, is not unlike any other time, not unlike every other day.

So, once again, I shall desperately grab and clutch and scratch and fight, fight for a stillness and pause that will forever evade us.

I reclaim Man is Matter.

We're kickin it old school.

the perils of functioning in society

On St. Patrick's Day, I was infected with a terrible case of melancholy, as I allowed myself to be taken over by some existential angst and seeming warranted self-pity. I bought a green bagel with roasted red peppers, tomatoes, tofu cream cheese, and a large coffee, and sat celebrated the Irish through carbo-loading and "methods of reasoning" flashcards. The streets were teeming with green 20-somethings, and I found myself lost amid a sea of inebriated, swaying emerald on my way to hot yoga. I made my way through masses of joyous meatheads, and on my way back, I trudged through the same crowds, though the proportion of those still standing had slightly changed. As I sat by my window, slightly shaking from a raucousness reverberating through the thin walls of my new bedroom, I felt a profound sense of loss.

The following day, I woke up with a renewed perspective on my First World problems, most likely induced by a full night's sleep. I finished all my laundry, did extra hot yoga (along the lines of a double shot of espresso), and generally felt good about industriousness of the weekend (it had been a good green bagel). After my shower, I decided to take a stroll around my new neighborhood (i.e., head to the overpriced grocery store one block away). It was a particularly balmy evening, and I decided to dress to impress (myself), and wore my diamond earrings and my  yellow birthday scarf and my red lipstick.

I walked down 35th Street and caught some people staring at me. I noticeably turned away from the regard, to make a point about sexual equality, but I secretly thought, Rucha, you still got it. You got grey hair and you haven't seen daylight all weekend and you inexplicably smell like glass noodles, but you got it.

I walked into the grocery store and felt a slight breeze, the normal draft that follows a door opening.

People continued to stare. I continued to be falsely indignant, and clandestinely proud.

I had to itch my left leg (a continuation of the aforementioned First World problems), and so bent back and realized there was no fabric for me to scratch.

My whole skirt was tucked into my underwear.

People were still staring.

I did not still "got it." 

I officially lost it.