Hi Hello Do you have a favourite day of the week?

There needs to be a better social convention for inquiring after people you don’t know very well. For instance,
you say hi &
they say hi &
they look like they’ve had a horrid day but it’s automatic proper social convention
for you to say
how are you OR
what’s up OR
how is it going &
that’s what you do.

But suppose their wife just left them OR
their grandpa just died after a long painful battle with multiple sclerosis OR
they’ve just failed an exam that will more or less determine the rest of their life.
And they will just
FALL APART AND SHRIVEL UP INSIDE
if they have to pull themselves together to give another perfunctory answer of
oh you know OR
nothing much OR
it’s been better,
because they can hardly pour out tales of woe during a 45 second hallway conversation with someone they sort of know,
even if the last thing that is ‘up’ is
NOTHING MUCH
because HOLYFUCKINGGODIAMHAVINGTHEWORSTTIMEIMAGINABLE.

But if you try something like
‘what did you have for lunch today’
after the first exchange of greetings -
mindful of how impossible it is to share intimate mental states with an acquiantance you’ve just run into and will interact with for no more than a few minutes -
people’ll think you’re a loon.
Like you’re some
quirky eccentric when all you want
is to make it easier
to indicate you are interested in them and their life
without requiring an emotional investment that they can’t give.

Maybe we should dispense
with meaningfulness we don’t mean
and just stick with the meaningless that we can.

(and maybe this is only a train of glacially fragile i shatter thoughts.)
(and maybe not everything has to be made of glass)
(The Magnetic Fields are supposed to be cold and glassy in their execution but glass doesn’t have to frigid, you know.)
(I mean, remember the blobs of red hot supercooled liquid? remember blowing? remember torches?)

Biblical Definitude

On the first day of class the professor said:
Porter Easterling is The Bible of phase transformations.
He said:
These are two blokes from Cambridge, the centre of the materials universe & in England, they use a language over there very different from here & in England, they write fiddly little things called sentences.

He brushed at his combover. He said:
Do not be troubled if you don’t understand what they are saying at first because it is all conceptual. Connnnnnn – ceptual.
(The professor is very Scottish. Verrrrrr-y Scottish.)

He said:
There are many pictures. These are deceptively simple. DO NOT BE FOOLED. If you don’t keep up, if you don’t read Porter Easterling, you’re dead.

He said:
This is a beautiful book. Completely logical. We will go chapter one chapter two review chapter three chapter four review dnung dnung review! But if you don’t follow along, YOU’RE DEAD. What will you get? DUCK EGGS.

He said:
WE DON’T WANT THAT. You will be paying for my retirement so the LAST THING we need are DUCK EGGS.

Stupid duck eggs and
emphasis on hyperindividualistic cut-throat competition for monetary success aside,
I was very excited.

There is something beautiful about learning from The Definitive Bible of Phase Transformations.
There is something beautiful about learning from The Definitive Bible of anything, even if it is for a shit course.
Take Engineering Economics and Accounting, the most self-evident of shit-hood in course-dom. If the assigned textbook had been
The Definitive Bible of Engineering Economics and Accounting Practices,
I would most definitely be studying for the midterm we have on Monday from it Right Now.
Instead, I’ve been drinking too many cups of watered down tea and compulsively organizing my file folders on the computer.

I Am An Excellent Steel Horse is the definitive bible of crossing the finish line as a steel horse.
I found the song on my computer during the reorganizing and because I don’t have access to internet as I write this, I have no idea what kind of people are involved with Rock Plaza Central. As far as I can tell, there’s one dude singing and I can’t say I’m a huge fan of his voice.
But.
The law of Definitive Bibles holds. So yes. And yes. There it is. I can’t switch recourse and I can see the finish line. Plow on sweet horse. Plow on Porter Easterling.

Postscript: No one calls me J-Hov OR J-Hizzle OR J-Zee OR J hyphen anything. Not even David. The one time he did, it turned into a Jehovah’s Witness joke – not a good one either.
If anyone calls me anything, it’s Jiayi.
& that doesn’t even happen very often because the name is apparently hard to pronounce.
& I also have difficulty responding to semi-acquainted strangers in real life, a destructive deterrence cycle.
Maybe if I wore a Not AntiSocial Just Shy tshirt all the time, it’d be easier for everyone.
Unfortunately I’m allergic to tshirts.
& my shyness probably has an antisocial component of at least 75%.

No music yet. Just wait.

This is an extension of a conversation we had over a year ago.

We were studying Phase Transformations in the common room at 2 am; Jiayi was pretending to read and I was eyeing the ping pong table like a middle aged woman eyeing Fabio. By 3 am, we were both half asleep, and in bad need of caffeine. By 4 am, I lifted my head up from where it was pressed against my textbook and asked Jiayi, “Wanna take over the world?”

“You mean start a music blog?”

“…exactly.”

First off, I have to say that this is a joint project, not a solo one. We are two engineers with the horrible habits of staying up all night and biting off more than we can chew. Our little team consists of Jiayi (aka J-Hov, aka J-Hizzle, aka J-J, aka any other name you can think of with the letter J and a hyphen in it) and me, David. Jiayi is the idealist; I can’t remember where I was last night.

This is something to care about instead of lab reports. A chance to rest the right side of our brains.

It’s a conversation at 2 am.