According to two servers and a regular customer

When I showed up at the café this afternoon, I could not find my subjects as usual. I asked the server at the beer tap, as he slid excess foam off a glass.

"You must be talking about the couple who sometimes spit to their faces in the heat of the moment. I had always felt lucky that the counter was not their preferred spot, because you see, they may spurt onto me. Yesterday, I don't know why, but they sat right here and talked about reenacting the meeting between Henry Morton Stanley and David Livingstone. They couldn't agree on who gets to play Stanley and say "Dr. Livingstone, I presume." I saw foam in their mouths, so I had to ask them to find a table for themselves. Luckily, they obliged. After that, I don't know what happened."

It sounded a bit too excessive, even for them.

"Hey, I also heard two people talking about going to Lake Tanganyika." It was a customer, waiting for his glass of beer. "I thought they were a bit, you know... Anyway, they ended up sitting close to me. After being banished from the counter, the plan was changed to go to Asia instead and help rescue the disaster victims. But they couldn't decide whether to go to Myanmar or China. When I left, the talk had evolved into Theravada Buddhism versus Mahayana Buddhism, and further into individual versus society."

It surely sounded like them, but if they indeed had touched upon the last topic, they should still be at the café, possibly covered with foam. I turned around and asked a server who was carrying what looked like a banana and Nutella crêpe.

"Oh, those guys. Yes, they were supposed to be here today, around this time, in fact. That's what I overheard. But yesterday, they argued over which tastes better on a slice of bread, Nutella or Marmite. I thought it was an inane argument, because one is sweet and the other savory. The discussion escalated into Continental Europe versus UK, rationalism versus empiricism, and so on. As they stood up to leave, they were talking about experimenting how many slices of bread they can have in one serving, with either Nutella or Marmite. If they did have a food competition, they may be suffering from indigestion. But I bet they'll be back. My hunch is in about three weeks or so, because they would probably have a few rounds of Nutella-Marmite competition."

This sounded most plausible to me.

It's so conditional, it ought to be unconditional

Mau-rrrri-zzzio!

Excuse me, haven't we met before? I'm not Maurizio, I'm afraid.

I know you are not. Sorry, I just couldn't help thinking about his performance that I listened to.

I'm relieved, because I was about to take you by the arm to the optometrist's. Psychiatrist was only my second option.

I hadn't listened to Maurizio Pollini's piano performance for quite some time. It's nice that what used to move me so much still has the same big impact.

We could say that your taste simply hasn't evolved, but let's be a bit merciful here and say that your judgment proved to be timeless. But if you like him so much, why the hiatus?

It wasn't intentional. It's probably because if you listen to the same thing over and over again, you become numb to it and its value becomes much less evident.

You had to listen to other performers in order to appreciate him again.

I guess it comes down to that. Appreciation comes from comparison. Our intrinsic need for variety can be traced to that fact, too; we can have too much of a good thing.

Occasionally, I come across something that my instinct tells me that it is of great value. That happens even if I do not have any comparison material.

I think you do have some, but you are just not aware of them. Others in the same category that you encountered did not impressed you enough, either positively or negatively, to make you form an opinion. But the information has been stored.

Whenever I think "Oh, that's pretty," or "It's boring," it's in comparison with what I know already?

Exactly.

What happens when you encounter the very first item in a particular category, for example, the first oil painting in your life?

You compare it with something that you know and is close in nature. You may think, "I thought I liked watercolor paintings and this is the only oil painting that I have seen, but I probably like oil paintings better." I'm sure you have had experiences along that line. Everything has to have a reference point.

I've read somewhere that we don't know what is beautiful unless we are taught. I suppose you are of the same opinion.

Yes, although I think the word, taught, needs some qualification. Think about some people that you knew some time ago. Isn't there any whom you appreciate much better now because you have met more of undesirable characters since?

I recall some people whom I underappreciated before, but that's because I didn't have enough understanding of human behavior and psychology.

I think we agree on this issue. If you have changed your view over time, it means that your thought system has been reorganized, and the process necessarily includes comparison. That happens with incorporation of new information, or possibly without.

You're a relativist.

A bit of structuralist, too.

And post-structuralist. I know you are into deconstruction of almost anything.

Talking about comparison, haven't you ever felt that the raison d'être for people other than your lover is to make you realize how special your lover is?

Just like it is for your Maurizio and other performers?

I do like some other pianists and the types of music that Pollini does not care to play. I enjoy them with or without him. But I also know that if it were not for them, I would not love Pollini as much.

Isn't that a choice by elimination?

I love Pollini for his talent and skills, and I value him because I have listened to other performances, including my own. It's not quite right to say that it's by elimination, but I may say that it's conditional.

Whereas romantic love is supposed to be unconditional...

Which is outright impossible.

You shouldn't draw a conclusion like that from your own, bizarre experiences. The sample is too small---an error of hasty generalization!

It's deduction, pure and simple! You fall in love with someone because s/he is different from others, right?

True, I don't fall in love with everybody.

That means your preference for that person is conditional on what you see as her/his personal attributes.

True.

If your lover-to-be feels that you are special as well, you two may become lovers. Once that stage is reached, your lover, yourself or both of you, would want love that is unconditional.

That happens...

Which is contradictory to the premise that led you and your lover to be lovers in the first place.

Your feelings for your lover is conditional, but you want your lover's feelings for you to be unconditional. And your lover has the same problem with you...

Long time ago, I read about a husband who married his wife on the condition that they would get divorced if she gained three kilos or more. He apparently said it tongue in cheek, but I got the sense that it wasn't entirely a joke.

That's callous, selfish, superficial, childish, anti-feminist!

I used to see it that way, but now I'm more sympathetic toward him. Both the husband and the wife were quite stylish, and I could tell that being so was quite important in their relationship. If you promise to love a person more than others under any circumstances, including habit, personality and appearance changes, plus incompatibility that is revealed only after you declare your undying love, how is that different from picking a lover by lottery?

A big lottery, that's what life is. I thought you knew it already. If it weren't and you could choose, would you have chosen to be you?

Wanted: a real "El Camino Real"

"Is there no shorter way of coming to geometry than through your 'Elements'?"

"There is no royal road to Geometry."

A question by King Ptolemy, the First, and Euclid's answer. It was around 300 BC...

We've known it all along. No pain, no gain.

Lately, I've been reading books with titles like, "The Forty-Three Most Important Scientific Experiments in Cartoons," "All the Historical Facts That You Wish You Knew and More," "Learn in Three Hours: Everything About Post-Communist Era Stand-Up Comedies in Hungary," or...

Those are cheat-sheet books!

Some are quite readable, and they give me the impression that I am learning so well that I will always be able to recite the information on demand. But after having read the last page and putting down the book, I can't even recall the very first topic.

I think they are similar to self-help books.

Agree. Information and knowledge obtained through search and query that are frustrating, time-consuming and sometimes confusing tend to stick a lot better. Anything long lasting in memory is accompanied by strong emotions.

By picking up a cheat-sheet book, we think we are motivated enough to learn the material, but that is apparently not enough, at least in your case.

The same is true for languages. Trying to learn one in an artificial environment is difficult, because we don't get real-world responses. I was in a canteen when I tried to order an eggplant dish... Boy, the way the server laughed at me! She laughed out loud and repeated my way of saying the name of the dish with great contempt. I thought she was going to spit on the floor. When she finally stopped laughing, she gave me a stern look and said it with the correct tone.

A tonal language, I see. So, it must be...

I was terribly embarrassed, of course, but she was so honest and the message so clear that I felt amused in the end.

And you haven't forgotten the tone to this day.

Correct. It is often said that picking up a new language becomes difficult after reaching puberty. That is partly because we are, in most cases, taught exclusively in classrooms where there is no repercussion to what we say, except in terms of grades. It is also because with age we become set in our own ways and emotionally unresponsive. We feel we have accumulated enough wisdom and there is no need to acquire more or revise.

So long, feeling and thinking!

That's a true sign of aging, rather than wrinkles, I think. Self-righteous tranquility, bordering on boredom...

It's natural that we economize on anything painful, including heavy-duty thinking.

Thinking is fun! It requires no equipment, starter kit or set of twenty DVDs. Plus, it's eco-friendly.

Has anyone ever told you that you think too much?

What if I see what they do not?

Are we getting self-righteous? Thinking could be destructive, you can't deny that.

You may reach a conclusion to destroy yourself and/or others, but that's only because your thinking in that particular instance happened to be destructive. Reflection is what separates us from other animals, and it is possible only through thinking. All the potentially destructive emotions that are wired in us, such as hate and jealousy, can be prevented from turning into a destructive act, only if we think and reflect. Moreover, I object to dismissing somebody's perception and thoughts offhand.

Are you sure you're not guilty on the last account?

Okay, I admit to some violation of that principle of mine. But I tell you, very rarely...

We can't possibly verify all what people tell us, so I guess it becomes a matter of trust whether we believe what we hear.

It's simpler than trust, I think. The line, "You think too much," is used as a stop gap.

Let's say it's an expression of surprise, astonishment, incomprehension, even irritation or anger that you have been thinking.

I don't tell my friends who like jogging that they should stop jogging. Likewise, I don't tell people who love fishing that they fish too much.

You mean you have never accused people of not thinking? Or told them that it would be their fault in case we plunge into totalitarianism?

Just as they can't force me into jogging or fishing, I know I can't make people think if they are not doing so already. What is most bothersome is that if they were at the table with Jean-Paul Sartre, they wouldn't be telling him that he thinks too much.

Est-ce que vous avez entendu ça ? ... Sartre says he was lying on his right hand side, but hearing what you said, he is now lying on his left hand side.

To me, the distinction between he and I touches upon one of the fundamental principles in relationships.

Instead of "You think too much," they could say that your blah-blah is just that, blah... In my opinion, many don't realize that it's actually your favorite pastime, even though you often end up being pessimistic afterwards. Here's my suggestion. When you hear that "too much" line next time, say "Cogito, ergo sum."

If I'm given a quizzical look, shall I lay it on the line by saying "Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum"?

Let's not talk about Nobel Medals, or about bargains for that matter

After we parted last time, it came back to me that you once had said your paternal grandfather had been self-employed. Do I remember correctly?

Good memory. He had his own practice.

Practice... You know that's business.

Profit maximizing wasn't his goal. As a proof, he left little upon his death.

In other words, he failed as a businessman.

Hush! He engaged in professional activities loftier than fleecing, and in his spare time, he drank at home and wrote poetry. It's a mystery to all of us how he ended up with so little for his children and grandchildren.

I can tell it's a bad idea not to talk about money. What about your other grandfather?

Ah, he chose to be unemployed.

Another poetry writing type, making no money?

Kind of. You see, business and poetry do not blend well.

I'm afraid very good counterexamples exist. Tsujii Takashi, a.k.a. Tsutsumi Seiji in corporate circles, is well known in both business and literary worlds. Better known is Wallace Stevens who was a lawyer and Pulitzer Prize winning poet. Another Pulitzer poet, William Carlos Williams, was a medical doctor. Federico García Lorca was not in any business, but if he went down in history as a poet, painter, pianist, and composer before dying at the age of thirty-eight, he must have had awesome marketing skills.

What can I say... I'm blessed to have failures on both sides of my parentage!

Now, now, don't be so maso...

I mean it. When I was about ten years old, my father told me how lucky I was that he wasn't a Nobel Prize winner.

He said that?

Yes. He happened to know a scientist whose son could not bear the expectations as an offspring of a Nobel Prize winner.

Counterexamples! Marie Curie, Pierre Curie, Irène Joliot-Curie and Frédéric Joliot-Curie: parents, daughter and son-in-law in physics and chemistry. Niels Bohr and Aage Niels Bohr: father and son in physics.

... Mediocrity runs in my family. A wonderful excuse not to be outstanding in anything! What more can you ask from your parents?

One more piece of evidence against what you said earlier. May I?

Go ahead, another punch in the face wouldn't matter at this point.

The other day, I saw you coming out of what you would call a fancy and glitzy store, with bags seemingly full of purchased items. If I am not mistaken, you took advantage of a big sale.

Some activists like to be seen on the street in style, you know.

You who criticize consumerism, materialism, labor abuse and...

At least, I'm a formidable bargain hunter!

You who claim to have been disciplined not to talk about deals and money...

Trust me, I entirely avoid talking about prices.

And pretend that whatever you own is expensive!

By instinct, I'm into bargains. By lineage, I am not supposed to talk about deals. By nature and upbringing, I am drawn to beautiful, artsy and high quality objects and goods. By conviction, I am not for buying more than I need to survive. Have pity on me, I get totally confused sometimes!

I'm glad that I have a much better reason than you do to celebrate Mother's and Father's Days.