“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.”

- Sylvia Plath

“Djuna wanted to laugh, and forget his words, but he did not allow her to laugh or to forget. He insisted that she retain this image of himself created in his talks at night, the image of his intentions and aspirations. Every day he handed her anew a spider web of fantasies, and he wanted to make a sail of it and sail their barge to a port of greatness.”

-The Four-Chambered Heart (Anaïs Nin)

Worpswede, near Bremen, July 16th, 1903:

You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Letters to a Young Poet

sweet nothings whispered
“think good thoughts” she says
patiently he waits

Throw it before it’s too late.

I finally listened to the Radiolab episode “This is Your Brain On Love” on my bus ride to Connecticut this morning. In it, they referenced a hilarious story from Rutgers anthropologist Helen Fisher’s 2006 TED talk about what can happen when you take the chemicals of love into your own hands.

There was a graduate student and this graduate student was madly in love with another graduate student. And…she was not in love with him. And they were all at a conference in Beijing. And he knew from our work that if you go and do something very novel with somebody, you can drive up the dopamine in the brain and perhaps trigger this brain system for romantic love. So he decided he’d put science to work and he invited this girl to go off on a rickshaw ride with him. And, sure enough, I’ve never been in one but apparently they go all around the buses and trucks and it’s crazy and noisy and exciting and he figured it would drive up the dopamine and she’d fall in love with him. So off they go and she squealing and squeezing him and laughing and having a wonderful time. An hour later they get down off of the rickshaw and she throws her hands up and she says “Wasn’t that wonderful? And wasn’t that rickshaw driver handsome?”

Today is my last day at Sony/BMG. My exit message, written in the five-minute rush before the bye-bye party, follows:

Hi:

As you’ve no doubt heard by now (most likely from Tim’s email), I’m leaving Sony. I don’t mean to send another painful note (sniff sniff), but you knew I couldn’t possibly leave without making some noise and saying goodbye. There’s also the chance that Tim’s email got caught by a filter and went straight to the “I’ll bloody well read it when I feel like it” folder or to the Trash, so this note is very much needed in many inboxes.

I know I’ve been unusually quiet recently and this news actually came as a surprise to many of you, but you must believe me when I say I’ve been quiet [sic] busy the last few weeks. If I had been able to find the time to talk to each of you individually about it, I would have. You’ve each meant something good to me, in whatever capacity it may have been.

And I’m not just saying that last bit to be sappy. I really mean it: I’m a completely different person now than I was when I first started Sony as a fresh-faced 21-year-old. It is in part because I got to know you and learn from you and grow with you (both professionally and outside of work).

I hope we can get together at some point in the next few weeks (or at one of my many going-away parties) for a chat. I look forward to great things from all of you. Just make sure I’m somewhere close when greatness happens so that I can come take credit for it. And don’t worry, I’m not going far. New York still needs me as much as I need it and I will remain in the city.

My personal contact details are below. Get in touch anytime. Especially, you, you cute little new girl. Coffee?

my love

naveen

You probably heard this advice before when you were a little kid: if you ever find yourself lost in a crowded place - like a mall - stay put. It’ll make it easier for the person you were with to come find you.

I’m staying put in NYC.