Christmas and all that

I'm in a tropical beach north of Goa. At midday is still too sunny so I usually have to hide, it's a good time to go in front of the cold one-eyed computer, and to update the blog maybe - it's been a couple of weeks since last time, but the simplicity of my days here leave me quite silent, not much to say then...

Yesterday it was christmas eve, you could say this is a good place to spend the holidays. Although I guess it's as good as any other. The best christmas in my life were probably last year, I was also in India and I went for a visit to a tibetan settlement in the south; but those days were for sure amongst the best in my life, I had just left everything and I was travelling with a very very good friend - christmas did not have much to do with it, neither against it, it was just a date in the calendar which was quite unrelated to what was happening to me.

Well yesterday I did not have many plans, did not feel like going into a party for sure, there's some friends around, mostly from yoga classes, and I was guessing I would meet them and have a quiet dinner with them. It's funny though that I had not seen them during the full day and I was getting a bit kind of anxious as dinner time was approaching: the perspective of spending christmas eve on my own did sound weird. I was surprised I had that feeling, (I have had lunch on my own yesterday and it was perfectly alright), but there it was.

Eventually I met them of course, and we went for dinner, it was not much different than usual, (we have food together pretty much daily), except for the fact that we decided to go to a good italian restaurant, supposed to be the best in town, for a change. Afterwards we were all tired and sleepy and went straight to bed.



If you believe that the external things are your problem, that you get disturbed and stressed because of the daily hassles, the job, the responsibilities, the family, or whatever else, then the solution should be easy, no?, then you would know what to do if you wanted to get out of that disturbance, of that stress.

But, whatever your reasons, if you actually do it and leave everything, maybe you find a lot of peace of mind, or even you find something huge you had not realised before, or you start feeling happiness, or I don't know which good things start happening to you. However, if you are lucky, you might also figure out what was the origin of that disturbances and the stress you felt in your "old life", because in your "new life" there's also annoyances, and you may get very angry about them, as much as you want...

It does not mean that you've learnt automatically to deal with all those problems, even worse, no matter how small they are they may go out of hand, probably you're even further away from solving them, and it is very frustrating since they are so tiny now that you are free and you have no reason to get disturbed. The good thing is that you've learnt something very very important, something you know it makes the difference!! - and it's so obvious you kind of wonder how it is that you've never known and you needed all these adventures to get to the point...

The sausage machine

It does not sound well in English, "the sausage machine". Not even in Spanish, but at least there is the expression "there are more days than sausages", and from there you can more or less guess it. I imagine a very big sausage machine in which the pigs enter alive falling from the trunk into a door on top, and then on the right side the sausages come out in a chain. The core mechanism of the device is quite complicated, not only mechanic but it also involves electronics, and there's regulators and bottons that look old fashioned like the ones on the chest of Darth Vader.

Well I could try to draw it, maybe it would make a motive for a nice Buddisht tanka. But I'm kind of busy you know in this tropical beach, attending to yoga classes in the morning, writing a bit, and I hardly have time to go for a swim before sunset... if anybody is reading, and bored enough to do it and send it, I would be very happy to post it in the blog. Besides I could show it to some indian artisans-for-tourism and maybe they like the design, and start selling tankas like sausages.

Anyway the point of the sausage machine is not the tanka. Some months ago I was talking about some "funny" characters in a neurotic mind like mine, such us the croupier or the thing, so that nothing never seemed to be really in peace. Even if I was emptying my days, my days were not becoming empty, etc.

These times I'm by far more relaxed; (probably because relaxation is a matter of practice also). When I thought about it, I was expecting that the croupier would leave me alone so that I could spend more time with the thing. But no no no. The croupier is indeed sleeping in his shinny shirt with his head over the green kind of carpet of the gambling table. But the thing is not closer or further away, and my mind has become a machine of sausages.

You know sausages coming one after the other look similar, but if you look more closely they are all somewhat different in shape, length... (I guess it depends on how precise the machine is). Anyhow that's the feeling, it's what's coming out in my head, all the time, the soft noise of the machine, the smell of the raw meat, always in the background.

Definitively, it is an improvement!.

Indian wedding in the dry season

... had nothing to do with the "monsoon wedding". Not that all movies should have anything to do with anything of course, but western expectations might be too high sometimes.

Even if it ended up not being an exciting kirsch party, it was very interesting. It was high caste and quite formal, lots of attendees, maybe a peak of 1000 (?), and the ceremonies and rituals were really complex. Although in essence not so different to the west I would say: there's more people invited than anything you can handle, there's a kind of script so that everybody knows more or less what's going to happen, there's a feeling that it is a very very special occasion. Ok there's the indian "exoticism" (to our eyes), and the colors, and the rituals, and it is soooo long - the full thing was one day and a half.


The most curious part was actually behind the scenes. The marriage was arranged, in India in most cases it is still arranged, even for the educated and wealthy people, (the example my friend who works in IT). Quite an unromantic deal: the "1st cut" of the candidates is done by the family, based on 3 main criteria: (1) caste is the same, (2) astrology matches, and (3) he/she looks alright at the photo and has the right height. Afterwards both families meet and have some lunch, and the husband and wife hold a private interview of a few hours and have the last word.

(Besides the situation is not balanced for him and her, but that's a bit like complaining about some of the monarchies e.g. the spanish which give preference to males even if there is an older daughter - either you like the idea of having a king or not, you cannot give a modern touch to something as old as that).

But the really surprising issue for me is that my friends are ok with it. I've been fascinated about this subject since my 1st trip to India, actually. I even got to understand that 2 people may fall in love with each other in that situation, if they are willing to go for it and they are very very honest - they pursue real love?. But why, why doing it this way.

Why there is no chance for men and women to meet in India?. In the wedding they were gorgeous ladies very dressed up, and my friends showed me how to know if they're married of not by their neck collars. But why, why did they tell me that if I kept looking at women we would all get into trouble. Why any kind of seduction, even the most innocent staring, seems to be banned in India?.

Love stories

A very very good friend, who I met in Rishikesh, got to know I am an amateur writer and wanted me to tell her a love story. She even gave me the beginning, the 1st statement, which would be "when he saw her she was standing by the open window with a red rose in her hand and the untamed wind caressing her face", or something of the like.


Possibly as a counter reaction, I ended up telling her a story of unfulfilled love, dramatic, the main character consumed in pain and fear. I'm not sure she enjoyed it, but I think it was actually the same kind of love she had asked me to tell her about, the romantic love; the feeling of a teenager craving for a beautiful girl, the impulses and the blindness of somebody taken by passion and desire, the jealousy in a relationship...

There's the nice poems meant to express that one cannot even breath without the loved one, there's the possession and the strong fear of losing the loved one, there's the despair, desperation and craziness when the loved one does not love the one. All seem to be aspects of the same kind of love, romantic it is usually called, which regards the loved one as an object of love, and not so much as a person to love to, which happens in the mind only; and it is not such a big exaggeration to say that it hardly needs the loved one. At least not for the romantic game, for which a single person, the one taken by love, is enough.


I tried to explain to my friend that I don't really like this romantic love, even if I'm not sure I believe that I don't. Well, love for me is a struggle, since reluctant women always manage to make it that way. Then, I kind of despise romanticism, but start my quest for "real love", for that love happening only when the two people are together, that kind of magical feeling in the present, pure, crystalline, (not when I'm missing her or waiting or looking for her or just thinking about her).

But what about that quest?. It is probably a new pattern, a solution for the struggle in which the impulse to look for love and the fear, blind fear for it, both get into a new balance which looks rationally sound and beautiful - or maybe just very very unromantic and a bit insane.

One year!

Today it's been one year that I left everything including my job, one year that I've been a nadaist - even if I started the blog only around 3 months later.

So it's a kind of anniversary and could be a reason for a celebration, maybe. I'm doing nothing though. I'm in Delhi, which is a kind of uninspiring city, and only here on my way to Mumbai. Besides today I've got my shoes stolen and a famous "delhi-belly" - and I don't mean the last one as a travellers' cliche.

Furthermore, only yesterday I left Rishikesh and it was tough. I had a very good time there and it was not easy to say good-bye to some of the friends I've made - maybe I should talk about them in another post, maybe I'd like to insist a bit on the somewhat boring ideas regarding the struggle...

Anyway, it does not matter, here it is where I happen to be in this important date, that's it. There's no good way or bad way to celebrate. There's not even a reason to celebrate when everything you eat goes down to the toilet so fast.


It reminds me, when I left London in April I decided I would find an island in the Mediterranean and maybe rent something for a few weeks and spend the time writing and going to the beach. Eventually I decided the island would be Sicily and I got there beginning of June after a tough night train journey from Rome. I was in Catania, very tired, very early in the morning, I went to a guesthouse I had kind of booked and it was nice and cheap but they told me to go for a walk, since the room was not ready yet. The city looked nice even if I was exhausted. When I went back to the guesthouse, in an impulse I negotiated with the owner for a better price if I stayed longer. He said yes.

But when I got a bit of rest I was not so sure about the decision. I had just arrived, maybe I wanted to take a look to other potential cities to stay, like Siracusa or Taormina, maybe I just wanted to think about it. Eventually I realised, it took me hours or even days, that all the anxiety I had about my decision to stay in Catania was actually about the trip itself. I had been one month an a bit just on my way from London to the "promised island", and everything in the way was enjoyable and easy, because I was just on my way. Then in Catania I realised that I was there.

It might sound silly. But the rest of the trip was lovely. I was there, in whichever place I was. And now I have the sensation I'm always there, anywhere I am.


So here I am in Delhi, with my delhi-belly, with my new shoes, in a day that by chance is related to a very very good decision I took one year ago. And I have the feeling that I could stay as a nadaist for ever, if only somebody would give me the funds to start it up.


There's another nice thing I remember about Catania. The owners of the guesthouse were very nice, invited me for dinner a few times. Eventually the house was full and they proposed me to move for a few days to the apartment of a brother of the man who was living in Milano. It was such a nice place, such good days, cooking and writing and doing nothing.

The apartment was in the via Amore 4, which means "street of Love 4". When I left I decided that whenever I could I would always try to live in the street of love. But I havent kept the promise!.

Struggle

There's quite a few confusing ideas in eastern phylosophies and systems of belief, one of them is about renunciation. Not that I understand anything, of course. But I had the idea of the indian or buddhist ascetics leaving the material world and going to the forest to live in endurance as a path to somewhere superior. Somehow it is related to the karma as well, although these two are completely different concepts I believe.

Anyhow, maybe I was making a mistake here with the renunciation. In the yoga class I learnt that these guys are not really interested on the self torture, but rather on the struggle. It could be anything, it may be attempting a very simple yoga posture, (one of those that myself I can attempt and never make right), or, just to take a completely unrelated example, it may be confessing your mum that you are gay on your 40th birthday. When you have the impulse to go for it, the 1st internal reaction is fear, is "I cannot make it" or "I'm going to hurt myself or somebody else" or whatever. There is a conflict between the willingness for the action and the fear of it, and there is a counter-reaction which is the struggle when you are actually trying to do it.

That's the point they want to focus on. Since the struggle may become creative, since something new could come to your mind as a result.

If does not really matter if you make it or not, there's many other yoga positions to try; even if you've made it is not enough, since surely it was not perfect or you could not hold it long enough. And your mum probably knows at this stage you are gay, (even if she did as if she didnt), so the problem is really why you havent told her yet, and a new struggle will come when you are trying to figure out what to say next.


It is the struggle itself which is really the important moment; not what you make of it, nor the sense of achievement, nor what you rationalise afterwards. My guru-bitch tried to show me I should forget about any of the struggles as soon as they are finished, and not to make a fuss of it, of course not to write about it. So I leave it here.

My guru is a bitch

There are two yoga asanas o positions called with complicated sanscrit words which mean "dog streching with the head up" and "dog streching with the head down". Next time you see a dog streching up or down, you know, just look carefully, and keep in mind that there's millions of yoga practitioners around the world trying to imitate those movements.

Some yoga teachers insist that you should study the nature so that you will understand some of the positions, like the 2 mentioned above, plus some many others called after animals.


Everyday after the tough yoga sessions I go to the Ganga river for a bath. The water is cold, it is coming from glaciers a couple of hundred km up, which makes it even better, a massage for the back and the muscles in pain. At the beginning not even after the swim I was able to relax. Until I realised that there was always a dog around, a female dog, a bitch, sleeping under the sun. Then I tried to imitate its posture, not literally lying on the floor but let's say the "soul" of its attitude and itention, and it worked, I found some peace of mind. So the bitch, which never ever seemed even to notice me, there sleeping under the sun, became my guru.


One day after dinner I went back to the guest house, it was 10 pm, very late for somebody walking up before the indian sunset. Then I saw a dog running towards me. And it was it!, it was the guru-bitch, who came to say hello shaking its tail!. I tapped its head a little bit, showing respect, and excused myself since I had to go to sleep.

Of course the day after the dog did not move when I went for the bath - it was giving its class.

Nadaist principles: revision

I'm once again breaking my nadaist principles. I've joined a yoga course and I'm already at the 10th lesson.

In my defense, there's a couple of things that I can say.

First of all, I'm a very bad yoga practitioner. Whomever knows me long enough, or has played basketball or football with me, is perfectly aware that I can be more or less clumsy or effective, but anyhow my hips are like the trunk of a tree, and flexibility is not my asset. There's around 50% of the yoga positions that I cannot make, and for the ones I'm able to get closed, I suffer quite some pain. Thus it is not that I'm learning a lot.

But, most importantly, it does not matter. The point of going to the yoga class is exactly that: going to the yoga class. There is no long term or even short term objective. You go there and do your practice as good as you can and try to focus on your body and on your mind, and you have to let go at the same time. I'd say it is a sort of nadaist activity.

I'm in a very cheap but nice guesthouse by the Ganga. It's very quiet and it has a beautiful garden. I spend most of the day after my class there, I write, read, and listen to music, I go for a swim to the river even if the water is very cold. When I'm hungry I knock the door of my neighbour and we go together to the restaurant. It's a wonderful life, and even if I'm still working in the novel most of you know about, (another breach of the nadaist principles), I'm trying to do it in the yoga way, in the nadaist way if I may say, focusing on the page I'm at, even on the sentence and the word I'm at. And when I'm finished I could either throw it to the trash or try to publish it, it does not matter.

It may look as if I'm trying to find a way to excuse myself. But honesty, even if I'm kind of busy, I feel as closed as ever to be doing nothing, and it feels really really very good!.

Sadhu's fashion statements

You see the sadhus all around in India, they are the ascetics, have taken a fully spiritual path and they've given up any material possession and live maybe in a cave or go around travelling or I don't know. Buddha was actually a sadhu. Besides it is supposed to be the last stage of the live of every brahmin (higher cast). Anyhow, in particular in holy places, you see lots of them, e.g. like in Haridwar where I am now, (Uttaranchal) - bathed by the river Ganga, same as Varanasi.

I was having a tea at the (holy) promenade by the river, taking a look at the scenes. A guy came and asked for a chai. He was telling off a sadhu that sat down with him and shared the chai. I did not understand a word, but it was obvious the guy was upset. It seems some sadhus are not so genuine and try to cheat people in different ways, maybe this was one of them, anyhow the sadhu eventually stood up, said his last words, and left on his own.

Sadhus are poor since they've renounced to everything, they're dirty since they've given up soap. Their hair is a mess how knows if they ever wash it, or themselves, (except in holy rivers and lakes). They spend a lot of time in the open so their skin is really dark and some of the hair looses color; some of them look as if they've been to the hairdresser and had it done rasta style. But then, I realised that this sadhu possibly a cheater who was leaving had actually a perfect rasta hair, which could not be just the effect of dust and dirt, wind and sun, but had to be the work of a professional!!. Besides, he had several necklaces and his loincloth was shinny orange.

I started looking around at the sadhus with my new eyes, and indeed, this one had bracelets at his forearm, the other one was wearing his shabby pieces of cloth with lots of style, and most of them used that kind of bags that the westerns half mystics like so much (see previous posts, and by the way I have one of those bags myself), they all painted their faces a bit... I went for a short walk around the Ganga and yes it was confirmed, every one of them had a peculiarity, something nice even if humble, bracelets or necklaces or the hair vogue or the smartness of the rags or sunglasses.


The western half mystics don't look like indians nor western, the sadhus are actually the only indians that dress in the same wave as the half mystics. (However, of course, it has to be the other way around).


I don't know if the indians manufacturing clothes for the half mystics (there is already a kind of industry around it) have realised this fact. They should come to the shores of the Ganga as if the sadhus were on display in their catwalk and take ideas and create fashion.

Spiritual materialism

Pushkar (Rajasthan) is a small town beside a lake somewhat related to Brahma the Hindu god. The water of the lake is holy for the religious crowds and they go and bath and drink from it, (it looks quite greenish by the way, and big big fish lives in it since fishing is not allowed - they survive despite the amounts of incense and flowers that are thrown daily from the shore).

When I arrived in the late afternoon I thought of going to watch the sunset, but there are lots of warnings in the magic guidebooks about touts that want to "help" you to make a pooja (offering). Thus I looked for a quiet place, (actually there was not even a direct view of the sun setting down). A guy here and there would come and do their ablutions in the green water. Then a priest came and cleaned up (indian cleaning) some of the steps by throwing buckets of the holy water, and then his gadgets for the ritual. Afterwards he went for a bath himself and, since at that moment I was the only alive person around, he asked me if I could stay at least for a few minutes and then I would look after the gadgets - in case a doggy would come I should keep them safe.

The guy even swam a bit and went to change loincloths and came back and started his pooja. An old man joined him with a cymbal and a stick. Eventually they needed somebody to wave a kind feather duster (holy one) to welcome the gods - they asked me as a last resort. I joined and we did the thing and tossed flowers to the lake and the priest sat down and started singing (praying). It was nice, relaxing, lonely, even if his voice was not melodic. Pleasant. When the fire was finish the priest stopped. Then we talked a bit, he explained me that he was praying for shanti, (calm, meaning non-aggression). His english was crap, when I asked something the answer made no sense to the question (or maybe it was mysterious), and I guess he got a similar impression of me since I did not understand when he was asking something. At the end he recommended me a couple of simple mantras. I'd guess he was a honest hindu believer.


The ritual was kind of nice, curious, as I say the full scene was peaceful, agreeable, and maybe if I tried the mantras I would feel ok with them. It's quite common for we westerns to have those kind of feelings. There's a buddhist writer who explains it using a very good example: some meditation techniques are supposed to bring boredom to the practitioner but actually for the foreigners are enjoyable, they say they find them "an amazing experience". This guy (Trungpa) calls it "spiritual materialism", a mistake of even truthful spiritual seekers, who try a technique and find it nice and get a result, but then their rational mind makes a full setup about it which has nothing to do with it, (since it has nothing to do with anything rational), and in the worst cases there is a masala mix of rituals and details that he/she likes or finds powerful, of several religions and woodo and shamanism.

Of course the half mystics of Leh and Pushkar and all around India are the perfect embodiment of it. But nobody seems to be free: myself if you would had asked me only a few days before I'd told you that no no way I would never be the altar boy of a priest, whichever religion it was...

Leh is cool

Leh, (Ladakh, J&K, north India), is for sure a cool city, a touristic city.

After some wandering around you realise that the residential area for locals occupies hardly the same surface as the section for hotels and guest houses and restaurants and travel agencies. Luckily is the low season now, not too many people, although still you can find the main kinds of touristic subspecies.

There's the Israelis, (not all of them of course, it is always wrong to generalize), with their very long and tough military service, 2 years, and after that they're crazy to take a holiday at least as long, and they come to India since it is such a cheap place to go around, and they smoke joints and drink and do nothing. On the other hand, it's important to note that the Israelis (the ones of this kind) literally don't move around so much, they don't get out of hotels and restaurants, thus unless they are exactly in the same as the one you've decided to go to, (since it is said in the magic guidebook the food is good), they will not bother you, you won't even notice them.

There's the half mystics as well. They are easy to identify for their clothes, which in Europe would look a bit like Indian, but in India they just look weird. Lots of colors, loose garments, which appear to be worn out. (It seems Indian recycle old sarees for the manufacture; they've realised there's a big market for the half mystics' peculiar style). Anyhow, besides the clothes, the half mystics are interested on anything that may sound spiritual and religious and traditional, although make no mistake, just interested enough, not going much into details that would be boring.

Besides in Leh there's lots of the specie of trekkers, who all dress as if they were going to go on a trek, (of course). It is true they're going to go on a treck, sooner or later, but not necessarily in the next five minutes, as a neutral uninformed observer could think when looking at them. "Wow, all these people in this city just about to go on a trek at this moment, how many there will be then in the mountains".

And there's plenty of shops of handicrafts and clothes, (in particular for the half mystics but also for the other travellers), and bored and somewhat but not too much annoying shopkeepers, and low business in low season. And plenty of restaurants and different kinds of good food. Well, and Buddhist monasteries, surely too many.

So it is a weird cool city, and it is good luck there's not so many tourists now. Since I don't know what day is it today, you could probably convince me that I've been either 2 days or 1 month here, or both with only a few hours' difference.

Indian home stay cliches

There's a travellers' cliche about home stays in India, for sure. It's said it's supposed to be a very enriching and deep experience, even if nobody knows what exactly it's meant to be.

And then there was a nice village in the middle of nowhere and I really liked it and I decided to have my piece of home stay in India and for sure it was intense. HOWEVER:

- The owner of the house was a drunkard

(Well he had a broken leg in a plaster, and he was really bored, he said he needed the alcohol for digestion since he could not go to work -- ?, anyhow at the end of the day after 2 litres of a hellish artisan liquor he was quite pissed, and I had to have dinner with him and it was annoying, even worse with his limited english).

- The friends of the owner of the house also enjoyed drinking

(Even if they could and had to go to work. One evening I prepared dinner for them, and they got so drunk, and when we ate and they liked the food so much, the conversation got so bad about me being so nice to cook for them and about eternal friendship and about god in the tribal kinnauri views - and it implied me drinking the undrinkable, at least a bit, whenever they got more enthusiastic).

- And I got a marriage proposal

(Actually the 1st evening the owner asked me if I was married and then he started talking about his land and the dowry, if I liked any of his 2 daughters. And I tell you it did not feel good, not at all, I nearly felt like vomiting, even if it was a stupid reaction and I only had to say no).

- And women in India are treated like shit

(Myself trying to make the point, e.g. helping the daughters at the kitchen or bringing the plates back and forth, was stupid and hopeless. Women are nothing in India, at least in rural India, they're treated as servants).

- And there were nice and warm moments but I wonder

(I wonder what did we actually share, what was the cultural exchange. They're just supposed to treat guests as half gods, thus they make you feel good. Traditions may look nice, you might feel curiosity, but mixed with annoyance and pity about the things you don't like or that are unfair - I had lots of pity for the girls, but how honest it was?. And what are their perspectives, their possibilities, their choices? - are these people really interesting?).

- And I got some bugs as a good bye present

(Which were biting me all around, and took me 3 days to remove after nearly striping my skin, and all my body was still itchy for a couple of weeks).



As a positive note, I guess experiencing is the best antidote for naivety. And it was a perfect nadaist activity, since I did nothing in those 3 days.

Well there's travellers' cliches and so many ways of travelling and nobody seems to like being called a tourist. Maybe we should start an anonymous club and introduce ourselves to each other saying something like "my name is Lorenzo and I am a tourist". And then we could start saying the truth about the trip, since it is not always so fantastic...

Disappointed guru

For a number of reasons I've stayed in Shimla for nearly 2 weeks. It's a city closed to the Himalayas but not yet there, altitude 2000m. There's lots of tourists that pass by for a couple of days on their way to the deeper valleys. They come, chat a bit, and leave in a hurry even if there's so much rain and landslides - the tourist agents call it "adventure".

But there's also people that stay, some days ago I met a german girl, quite young, who told me she had found a very spiritual person who was helping her a lot, who was exactly what she was looking for, the reason she came to India. She looked really happy.

Then yesterday I met an israeli girl at a coffeeshop and it was raining so much and she was bored and wanted to do something and we ended up going together to one of the sights in the city. At a certain point we talked about nadaism, of course, and she said in a way she wanted to leave everything and go travelling for a while, but on the other hand she was happy with her life in Jerusalem and with her job and she did not want to risk all that. She was in a big doubt for the short term as well, not sure about what to do for her 2 weeks left in India.

The israeli girl had some pain in her back and wanted to get a massage, but a good masseur was not so easy to find. There was a guy, male, that somebody told us about, and we went to visit him together. This guy did not look so interested in the massage itself, and starting talking "spiritually". He said he was a very intuitive person and wanted to prove it, he made some amazing guesses, at least with me, he told me I'm afraid of water, (which is more or less true, I was very much when I was a child, now I can swim but still feel it is not my element), he said I look at everything with the stomach, as soon as there is tension or worries it goes there, (just true), and finally that I have had a lot of problems with women, (well this one was not so difficult, just looking at my face I'd say, and also it is quite a common issue). Anyhow, he tried some guesses with the israeli girl and I don't know how right he got but she was all the time asking for more. The guy was repeating here and there that he would be able to help her, that she was doubting a lot about her life, not sure which way to take, and she needed some balance in her mind.


I honestly don't know how genuine was the guy, but I really think that he's been able to help to a lot of people, the ones that believe in him. The german girl that I met a couple of weeks ago was still visiting him, and she was so happy.

Anyway I don't know what people are looking for when they come to India.


The day after, i.e. today, the israeli girl left Shimla and headed to Rishikesh - one of her friends was sick but feeling better this morning. By chance I met the guru again and I was having a coffee and he joined me. The conversation was quite disordered, discontinuous, he was looking at people, observing them, (potential clients?), smiling to anything I'd say, but not really interested on more guesses or deeper conversation with me, (maybe he saw using his intuition that I had no intention on hiring his services, but only a lot of curiosity). From time to time he was talking about the israeli girl and saying that he knew she was going to leave but he would have liked to help her. Finally I asked him if he was disappointed because she was gone.

- No!, he said, how can I be disappointed, I'm the happiest person in the world!.

- Well, I said, maybe it was a bad choice of words, but it looks to me you really wanted to help her.

I did not tell him to look for the meaning of the word in the dictionary. The guy left after a while, I had to insist a bit so that he would let me pay his coffee. I didn't change my mind about him, I'm sure he helps people. He lives a good life as well, thanks to the "donations". Any good tout has a reasonable good life.

Only I don't see why a teacher should not be disappointed sometimes.

They call us pinkus

The deeper I get into the Himalayas the more difficult is going to be to get access to the Internet - good excuse for eventual lack of updates.

Now I'm in Shimla, a very popular hill station, lots of indian tourists but also some whites, (we're are just everywhere). I was hanging around lost and I found some locals getting drunk in a kind of picnic place, it was a good-bye party. They invited me to join and in the heat of the conversation they told me they call us pinkus, "the pink foreigners".

One of them in particular was amazing. Doing nothing for a living (he has some land), a drunkard, in favor of the Palestine cause in such an extreme way that you could say that he's a neo-nazi, but also very very spiritual.

At sunset there was a beautiful view and the birds were singing. He told me if I could feel god in that beauty. I answered that I saw it was beautiful but there is beauty in a way in my hometown as well and I never felt god there, so why here. He agreed, that's exactly the problem with all the western people, he said, looking for something which actually they will not find in India but only on "their perception".

For me this guy could be the archetype of indian spirituality, (maybe not the one of the enlightened, but of the common folk).

Ropes tied everywhere

My apologies for this 1-month kind of break in which I havent updated the blog.

It's not that I'm looking for an excuse, but I was in a mess with some ropes (see below). Anyhow, I am in India now, back here once again, and I really think this is the place for doing nothing, thus I will also have more time to talk about anything.


There's this old personal image that I have about myself. Since I started working I became a nomad in a way, wondering around. It was nice, I made good friends here and there, but it was also tough, since I left my family and my old friends in the first place, and I had to start again from scratch every now and then. And I kept making it worse since when I managed to make good new friends I turned them into old when I left and I moved somewhere new.

For the image, I picture myself really big size walking on the earth globe, and there is a rope tied to my ankles, the other end strapped to the places I've been to, linked to the people there. Eventually it gets impossible to move, since the ropes get into a net and then into a mess, and I get stuck and I cannot move. However, when it happens, I'm not in the place that I would like to be at, but I'm just in the middle of nowhere, in the place in which by chance all the ropes got messed and stopped me.

I must say I like the image because it describes the way I feel about it. These nadaist months, after the wondering around in Europe, I went to my parents' and I visited old friends and the feeling of the ropes suddenly came back and it made everything very hard.


One could wonder what are the ropes. Or what make them tied. Being in India maybe it would be easy to put an "elightened" kind of answer to that question. But there's a point that comes first. It's a bit obvious, (these obvious points that don't help at all unless you realise them yourself, in whatever the way). I can look at the image at any moment e.g. right now and see that it makes it for the explanation and, even if it is exagerated, it is accurate - but I can regard it coldly and not feel any sadness or anything. And there are these other times, (e.g. the weekend before the flight to Delhi), in which the image overtakes me and dominates me and makes me feel anguish, but it is not because it becomes more correct, or less acurate, it is just because it has just triggered the fear, in a way.

So the image is a thought which is always right, and which generates a torment but only sometimes. When it does hurt and when it does not is a mistery to me, but I'm thinking maybe that's the whole (obvious) point.

Doing nothing to save the world

Yes nadaism is not only amusing, besides doing nothing helps to save the world. Of course it is not making a big difference, it is quite a subtle contribution; that's probably the reason why nobody had not noticed till today.

As a start, doing nothing is by far better than doing something wrong. If you do nothing you don't break the law. Ok you don't stop the wrong doing that is already happening, (I'm thinking about the real day-to-day bad stuff like wars, people smuggling, killings), but at least you don't participate nor contribute to it. If everybody did nothing the world would be no doubt a better place to live; not every single person, which would not be sustainable, but if we had a significant percentage of the world population functionally disfunctional, let's say 10%, there would be a lot less evil acts, by around 10% on average for the example.

Additionally, by doing nothing you don't meddle or interfere with local affairs. It is common to criticize some organizations that try in their best goodwill to help 3rd world countries, but they don't understand the situation and by their actions they might end up harming more than helping, bringing unbalance instead of wellbeing. However there is not a more tolerant or agnostic approach to problems than doing nothing.

As for environmental problems, ok the nadaist still consumes, (not so much anyway, due to lack of funds), but it is guaranteed that he/she does not produce at all, and production is a strain for the nature as big as consumption, (in particular in sectors like mining or fossil fuels, but also in others that might sound more common, like electronics). I would dare to say that the "ecological footprint" of a person who does nothing is halved due to the lack of production.

Besides, (the more one thinks about it the more advantages are found), from a more right wing pose there could be a fair criticisim for the doing nothing, since development is exactly what some countries need in order to improve the living conditions of their citizens. But the nothing-doers are just spending their money, all of it until and it is finished, which is a perfect catalyzer for growth, (as any high school student should know). If in fact the nadaists go and travel around developing countries, their pouring of money can only be move beneficial.

This is a great finding I believe. The little remorse that I had left for my attitude is gone now; everybody wants to some extent to do something to help deal with global problems, although they don't always find the energy or the good way to do it.

I'm going to propose to the authorities that they create a new NGO, (and to fund it!!).

The point of travelling & the croupier

All the stuff about the point of travelling of the previous post sounds ok of course, it is a rational explanation, you may or may not agree. But actually it is not so simple, because of the croupier.


The croupier keeps on checking at every moment that I'm not so amused, (I don't remember the last time I got bored), or worried, or not feeling so well, to wonder once again about the purpose of the trip, (if at least I was spending less money or I had some contributions to the nadaist project).

Of course the cheapest is to stay in the same city for a while, to avoid transportation expenses. For the rest, the hotels I go to are usually the cheapest and the food in Italy if you are a bit careful is quite inexpensive. As for the doing nothing, the least possible, that's cheap. The croupier should be happy in that situation. But no, if you are really doing nothing, are you not wasting your money in a country like Italy, since there are much cheaper places to be?. If for whatever the reason you engage more activities and for example you enter the Colliseum you always wanted to and the ticket you know the ticket, (and maybe you don't enjoy it so much for whatever the reason, maybe you are a little bit saturated of art), then the croupier complains again, and so loudly!.

So the croupier will look for every hole, anything that is not exactly perfect, and will wonder about it, and depending on the mood will manage sometimes to torture me a bit. (Well torture is probably a word too harsh, but that's its mechanism, that's its field).


Then the only solution is to rely on the thing (also from previous posts) to take decisions on the spot, to decide whether to visit that temple or to go that city. But the decisions have to be on the spot, and it is annoying, for example I have to get to the entrance of the place to let the thing decide if I get in, sometimes I start phone calls looking for accommodation in places that I barely think they are interesting just to let the thing decide that of course I won't be going!.


This one is not rational and the consequence is that it does not make sense. What can I say.

The point of travelling

Sometimes you're just travelling around going from one place to the other, moving out whenever you feel there's nothing more to see or to do.

Some other times you stop somewhere for a while, maybe just because you are tired and it is a nice place, or because you are really tired, or maybe because you know people over there or there's something you want to do and that's a good place. And then you may spend a few days or weeks happily doing very little, closed to nothing, because at the end you are travelling, in a kind of a holiday.

I guess there is no good or bad way for travelling, and eventually if you do it for a long time you will find yourself enjoying in both situations, combining them, (i.e. in my case moving quite slowly and doing little in the places I go to). Also, you will have moments in which you won't feel like anything, of course.

Because the real point of travelling for me is that there is really no point, apart from the amusement, either in the journeys or in that place I've stopped for whatever reason. But I guess this one will only be wood on the fire for the people (if there's a few people left reading) that believe that my trip is a kind of existential quest.

A bit annoyed today

I wonder why there is not an entity to oppose the croupier, to balance it in a positive way, just to remember in an honest way the good staff about one self?.

It is not the ego; the ego is not constructive, it will always protect itself, it lacks integrity, it is biased by definition.

Which one is it, the croupier or the ego, the one that makes me occupy myself only about myself, about the small world around me?. Is it both?.
(Small world, but of course very important for me; that's the contradiction between "nothing really matters to much" and "satisfaction").

And, by the way, has the thing anything to do with any of this?.


Bah, don't take me seriously, it is just that I'm a bit annoyed today.

The thing

During my wandering around, I've noticed there is something taking my decisions, I've started calling it the thing; (by decisions I mean the small simple steps that I take at all times and make up my journey, starting with what am I going to have for breakfast until whether I'm sleepy enough to go to bed).

The thing listens to the rational arguments, but is seems to be much in contact with emotions as well. When it takes decisions, all the different options I had considered seem to acknowledge the verdict from the thing is ok. Also seems to make my behaviour a bit erratic, since sometimes I take a weak decision, e.g. rationally I'm hungry and think of going for an icecream, but then the thing intervenes in front of the icecream parlour because it wasnt such a good idea, let's say I was tired and it was better to go for a siesta and I hadnt thought about it. (Those are the simple steps of my easy life, it makes it not such a complicated or emotional example).

Maybe forget about the example; I'm just trying to say there is no doubt something that takes the decisions in your mind which is not fully rational, which is over the rational stuff in a way, because it takes into account other contributions to your mind like the emotions, and also because it happens in present. It is like the (classical?) difference between the moment in which you understand something, which happens somewhere deep in your mind, in present, and it is not verbal, compared to the moment afterwards, when you take your time to rationalize it.


Of course the thing sounds mystical, one could think it is a paranormal voice, from god even, (???). That you could surrender yourself to the thing and nothing wrong would happen to you. But the thing does not make you a superhero, does not decide that you start trying impossible things, however sometimes it will surprise you (it has surprised me) putting you into situations you thought you could not handle, and you will get through. The thing knows more than my fear. But it also knows that if my fear is too strong I will get paralyzed and do nothing. So it will not take decisions completely against my fear.

The thing will always decide the right thing to do according to the circumstances. If it is a scared decision, it will be because fear is dominating. A decision by the thing is never wrong, it is just biased sometimes, (e.g. biased by fear, ego, rational). And, well, with that explanation, the thing itself does not even need to exist.


Anyhow, if you believe in the thing, that it exists, that it will always do the right thing, at least you will remove the fear of taking the wrong decision, and that's good, because that fear could only have made your decision wrong, (possibly that is).

The croupier

If I empty my days, my days should became empty... but actually it does not happen that way.

I think it is the croupier, the thing that is always giving cards, whatever there is available. Well, it is probably useful, a kind of mechanism to worry about things that are important, to remember that today you have to do this or that, an alarm system. The problem is that it does not relativize at all, any small issue can make me feel as worried or fearful as any huge problem.


There is a good example that happened in Belgium. I spent there a few days for some administrative stuff, anyway it was very good to meet my ex-colleagues and some old friends. One of them lent me his house; he does not live anymore, anyway the place is amazing, he basically built it with his own hands and the hands of some friends for I don't know how many years. It was really a special feeling staying there, sometimes emotional.

Anyway, one of the days I had to leave more or less early in the morning, just after the breakfast coffee, in a kind of hurry. I took the bicycle to get to the bus stop, and when I was on my way I realised that I had not double checked that everything was alright in the house before leaving. Not that anything was going to be wrong. I guessed the only thing was the burner for the coffee, and I thought about it and I remembered myself switching it off. So I did not go back to double check anything. The amazing thing was that at some parts of the day I got really anxious about it. Imagine: how do I let the house of my friend burn !!!!! I was really worried and at the same time so surprised about worrying, since it was pointless, since I knew that everything was ok, and it was just that thing I call the "croupier" checking on me again and again and again, playing with something pretty emotional like my friend's house.

In the evening when I was getting back riding my bike I was smelling smoke. I could not stop laughing at the nonsense of the sensation.


But then, I guess, sometimes you worry about something which is important, or sometimes you are not so sure that you've switched off the fire, or it is just something that does not depend on you, and in those situations the mechanism must be the same, coming back again and again to cause you pain, but not really helping so much on itself.

On the other hand I guess it is the same mechanism that allows you to remember that you have an appointment, or that you have to switch off fires of the kitchen, or whatever you need to take care of.

Funny thing that it seems impossible to stop, and that it will try to play with whatever cards are available. I'd say it is just the results of years and years with my "habit" of worrying so much about everything, and it will take me still some more time to relax the mechanism, (if it can ever be relaxed). On the other hand I'd also say that the only fact of knowing about it makes it by far less powerful.

I'm in Sicily now. So nice, so relaxed. And the cropier humorist keeps amusing me every day.

Germans and Spanish

In Belgium now, on my way to Rome, and I still had to prove the point that the Germans might be the most similar central Europeans compared to Spanish. Well, the results of the investigation are quite negative. Sometimes it is just good to refute a hypothesis.

Anyhow, at the beginning there were a couple of clues thatwere very good, it appeared to me since the very first day in Berlin that (1) Germans seem to speak loud and (2) spend a lot of time at the streets.

As for number (2), well it was the spring, although at night it was getting a bit fresh, the weather was pleasant, and in the city there's really a lot of restaurants and cafés, always crowded. There was also a big park closed to the room I rented, (the famous Tiergarten), quite full of people; this one day which was really sunny and I went there for a walk and there were so many people on the grass lying under the sun, some of them in swimming suits and some others in their underware, and some even naked!, then looking more closely I realised there were all men, one of them was even distractedly exposing his everythings to anybody passing-by; probably in the wrong place, I just kept walking straight staring at my own feet and got out of there. Then, it's been quite afew years I haven't lived in Spain, but that's not anything you'll see over there, (I've double-checked with my mum).

Then about (1), they definitively do speak loud in a bar when they are drunk, but I thought at home also... until the landlady came to me and kind of apologized since by chance I seemed to entered the house whenever she was in the middle of an argument with her son, she claimed she does not usually yell to him but he's in a difficult age, (around 15 is my guess?). Then I started switching off the mp3 player more often and yes, the streets and the underground are completely silent of conversations.

Anyway, there's a lot of clichés about the Germans, and they still drink beer on those huge jars, but they don't seem to be fat and big anymore, in fact kind of old ladies tend be skinny and to dress like teenagers, showing the belly, (for the confusion of the typical male staring at spring-dressed girls at the streets).


This week back in Antwerp has been nice, there is a guy who has find a finantial hole in the nadaist contract, (although that's more like a luxury problem), and there were some pseudo-trascental findings in Halle. I'll explain in following posts, (sightseeing in a place like Rome could be stressful but I will try to keep calm and cool and find time for doing nothing and also for the Internet).

Nowhere worth going except where we left

From “Girls”, by Nic Kelman, a novel about power and sex: “And so we want faster cars, faster boats, faster jets, faster computers – anything more powerful than everything else. And we continue to want them even after we learn that there’s nowhere worth going except where we left, and that the faster we go the further away from there we get”.

Myself, I just wonder how is it that we have that small machine in our heads which seems to be programmed for melancholy and sadness, for missing the past, for sticking to the crap. A human being is an impressive artefact, and the human mind is in particular amazing, the outcomes it can produce, the puzzles it can figure out, however it seems to be in fundamental conflict with, (if not driven by), those emotional mechanisms that make up the wonderful feelings sometimes, but also the background noise, the remaining sensation that there’s nowhere worth going except where we left.

And the point is, despite of the fact that the sorrow is there, while it didn’t need to, if you just neglect it, and try to make your living at the rational part, it doesn’t seem to work at all.

Anyhow, I am going to take a rest from transcendental kind of stuff; the post for next week (or whenever) will be the results of an investigation I am working at, under the hypothesis than German are the closest people to Spanish, (at least, when they are drunk).

Real life

Some good friends have confessed that they regard me as a kind of guinea pig, and my decision to leave everything as a big laboratory experiment; that they want to see what happens to me, they want to know the end of my story, (although of course they don’t mean any harm and they don’t want anything bad happening to me). They meet me and see that I’m happy and relaxed and enjoying my time, but they’re afraid that eventually when the money is finished, (because the nadaist project itself does not seem to be self sustainable), I will fall and get into a hole, a depression even bigger that I had before. Well, I’m also a bit concerned about that moment, (maybe around the end of the year), in which I have to go back to "real life" and to work and deal with real problems.

Then, in Berlin, my landlord is a psychologist; we started with a kind of corridor conversation for politeness, and the guy does not speak much English (and I’d say he does not speak much anyway), anyhow he looked interested on my story, here and there he was asking questions and making short statements, however there was this issue in which he insisted quite a lot more: he did not understand why I was calling it "the moment to go back to real life", it did not make sense to him, it wasn’t the good words to put it. He did not add much, which was the perfect way to make his point.

Nadaism reborn

One of my nephews has posted a message complaining it’s been twenty days since I last updated the blog. Well, I’ve been busy breaking the nadaist principles. My landlord in London offered me to work for him some 15 hours a week to pay the rent, and I accepted.

The fact that it wasn’t for money but for shelter (or a basic need), and that I did not enjoy it, (we’ve built a bathroom), are not good as excuses; anyhow, since nobody had given me not even a cent to help me through the blog, (still waiting for Leo Bassi to order the money transfer), there’s nothing to reimburse in the nadaist fund.

Some other people had been complaining that I was a bit cheeky asking for money, (until I removed the buttons to make a donation, which did not work anyway). Well I think it was a fair commercial transaction, you wanted to know the answer for a big question, and I was going to sacrifice myself and my lifetime for the cause. But I still think we can make a deal. You can host me for as many days or weeks as you want, giving me shelter and food. Of course, I don’t do anything in exchange; (nadaism, remember?). Please send me your coordinates and the dates that would be suitable for you. I’m going to leave London in a few days, and then I’ll go to Berlin for a couple of weeks, and afterwards it’s up to you darlings. As a start, I’d rather go somewhere in the Mediterranean, in May is still not too hot and there’s not so many tourists. For the summer, I’d prefer to go North, somewhere fresh. Thank you.

More on apathy

For somebody apathetic, doing anything is always more difficult than doing nothing at all. Such a person could find a rational backing for their lack of interest; although they would need to spend some effort, probably it would have some benefits as well.

Writing the nadaist contract could look like an example, (but not a effective one, since it does not bring any profits at all). Anyhow apathy means a certain kind of agreement in which you take less risks, but you don’t get the real thing. Could be seen as a contract between you and your fear, your insecurity; just going through life like a tourist with a guide: it’s safer, you don’t waste your time, but you don’t experience the genuine stuff. Nobody is sure what’s the genuine stuff anyway.

The contrary is absolute freedom. Nadaism is not a frame for that absolute freedom, but at the end everybody needs food and shelter, no matter how free they feel. A fake enlightenment could be used as a similar kind of setup, I’d say.

Apathy?

Thanks to the site meter, (wonderful tool), I’ve seen that this blog conversation is getting more and more intimate, nearly a monologue... maybe now, knowing that hardly anybody is listening, I could address a fundamental subject: how to figure out the differences between nadaism and apathy?.

Well, I’m not going to avoid the easy joke, I’m not really going to bother explaining it.

Clichés and anticlichés

There's a number of clichés that I've always found quite annoying, and I've been fighting them by trying figuring out other statements, the anticlichés, which at the end, repeated continuously, became new personal clichés, and got me even more bored.

For example, the cliché about life that passes quicker the older you get. My anticliché claims the explanation is pretty simple: when you were little everyday was a new adventure and it was truly important, not only subjectively but also as a percentage; if you are 5 years old, 1 year more is 20% compared to what you've lived, while if you are 50, 1 year would be only a 2% of living that you add.

If I had an anticliché about the weather, it would be the most boring thing to repeat I can imagine, even more than the comments themselves about the weather.

All the enlightened writers and thinkers eventually talk about silence, they might put it into words in slightly different ways, but whenever you read it rings some bells, since it has become a kind of cliché around; e.g. in the explanation of E. Tolle, “every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its lifespan is surrounded by silence; silence enables the sound to be.”

Alright!. And then you start listening to the noises around in your room and wherever looking for that silence and indeed realize that the concept itself is tricky, (and beautiful, maybe). But in fact they’re talking about god, the unmanifested, the being, the self, (depending on the author). They use an irrefutable sentence with poetic kind of meaning and you are put in a trap unable to argue. How are you going to tell them they're wrong. But still you (I) don't understand.


Then, I'd like to explain you that during my introspections, (nadaism leaves a lot of free time), I've been surprised of how much I cheat myself, intellectually and emotionally. But then, how can I tell you that honesty with yourself is the 1st step, not making a personal cliché out of it?. What do I do, when you agree and tell me that you see the logic on it, but you complain that it does not necessarily show you the curative proprieties of honesty itself.

The dark side of the force

When I first saw “Star Wars” my preferences were divided but I was mostly in favor of Darth Vader, even if he wanted to sweep off the Republic, even if Skywalker and the Pricess and Han Solo were heroic, fighting only with their hopes, with no means, to save a full planet. The dark side made so much sense: using hatred, wrath, and moslty fear, which come from a very deep place in the self, and creating such a powerful entity, maybe physically harmful, but encapsulated in a wonderful black dress, so smart; that’s the Darth, an impressive character, who seems to be living in a world apart, not needing anybody else, independent. The ones at the good side are the weak, they don’t have balance, they are ambitious and at the same time they’re confused, unpredictable; they reject violence but actually use it, they cannot see that the dark side is so much above them.

The step to the dark side is the neglection of the real world, which does not make sense, and the creation of a new vision based on the own identity; that’s why Darth Vader seems to have a certain aura of integrity, honesty, and although I’m not so sure of the reasons why I was attached to him when I was a child, I think I understand it fully now, and in a way I’ve regarded myself as a Darth.

Anyhow, at the same time I understand that everybody else probably believes that they’ve done something similar, (although they might express it in different terms), and everybody walks around believiving they are a lonely Darth Vader, making their way, on the dark side, safe in their total distrust.

Looking around

The day after I stopped working I went to the Indian consulate in Brussels, (for the visa, which was getting urgent). I remember it clearly, it was a shitty day in mid November, last year, tough wind and cold rain. After a queue nearly 2 hours long, I went for late lunch to a Chinese restaurant in the center, which is a place that I liked a lot, the restaurant I always went to when I was in Brussels. I even knew more or less the menu, anyway that day I asked something I was not sure that I had tried before, and it was really excellent, what an amazing taste, unbelievable. Then, I had a nice coffee and I went to the station, to go back to Antwerp; it had stopped raining for a few minutes, and I passed by the Place de la Bourse and I found that the building was beautiful and I didn't think I had ever noticed before, even if I had been around so many times.

It’s a different kind of feeling when you actually look around you, when you don’t just spend your day mechanically and not perceiving what’s going on. I think I have had full weeks going to the office and back home, including the weekends, with my eyes and senses quite shut. It does not have to be very big things, (depends on your day I guess), but starting the basics; e.g. maybe in your visit to the loo you are not focusing and you don’t quite feel that sensation of relief; it looks quite common to eat quickly and not really tasting the food; or even if the sky is grey there might be nice clouds moving around or a storm or a yellowish sunset due to the smog.

I’m not saying either that everything is beautiful or that it is all going to be alright or that your life is going to be bright or that you should be always there with a smile or anything like that. If by chance you thought I’m saying that, I suggest you read the text again taking it more literally.

Today it’s bitter cold outside, crazy London in march. The icy sensation gets inside through your clothes into every single corner of your body. This is not a fable and there is no moral.

Antecedents to nadaism

Several people have warned me that the word nadaism has already been used. Some might go a bit further and say that not only the name but the ideas and the philosophy behind are not original either - which is true. They point out that I'm falling into big contradictions as well.


A Colombian poet called Gonzalo Arano wrote the first nadaist manifesto in 1958. "Midnight. I get down the ceiling through a staircase. There's a nice full moon. I get dressed. I go out to the streets. After a few steps I have this reassuring feeling: today I haven't done anything". (http://www.gonzaloarango.com/). However, as most artists, the author gets extremely pessimistic in his "pious progress to madness and suicide".
As for me, no endurance path makes sense at all.

Besides, there's a Austrian female artist called Nada Hribernik-Godler who wrote a book called ¨Nadaism: philosophies of life and art". In her own summary: "Innerspace is filled with images of splendor as words fulfil the promise of thought and inspiration in this offering of a personal philosophy". Seems to address some paranormal subjects and also supposed to be a "nice coffee table book for any artist". (??).

Also, there's some British musicians and DJs who call themselves nadaists, @ www.nadaism.co.uk.
In total, there are around 2000 entries for "nadaism" in google, and about 10000 for "nadaismo" (since it seems the unknown Colombian poet had certain influence; some critics compare the movement he started with the Beat Generation).


As for the ideology, it is true that nadaism might have some roots on existentialism, and shares some of its mistakes. Is life worth to be lived? - that's a question you cannot rationalize, nobody would commit suicide so coldly after facing an intellectual deadlock, (except maybe some artists).

A friend suggested me that "La Salle de Bain", by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, is still his nadaist bible, "showing the way, but also showing the futilility of it all as in the end he renounces and returns to the struggle of life". From the novel: "Lorsque j'ai commencé à passer mes après-midi dans la salle de bain, je ne comptais pas m'y installer ; non, je coulais là des heures agréables, méditant dans la baignoire avec le sentiment de pertinence miraculeuse que procure la pensée qu'il n'est nul besoin d'exprimer". (I should translate it I guess; you can copy-paste e.g. in www.worldlingo.com, the result is readable, more or less).

And finally, some could even find plagio in nadaism from Eastern thinkers like Krishnamurti. There's plenty of authors trying to go deep into the uselessness of thinking, suggesting that we should spend more time being present in our lifes. But they write very long books about it, in order to encourage you to think about it...

Enlightenment in London

Every tourist in London knows the feeling: whenever you open the wallet you get a heart attack. The locals recommend the use of credit cards. In particular if you smoke or drink, everytime you indulge yourself, or just when you buy a ticket for the tube, you'll feel as if you've been just raped.
However it's true there's a number of attractions for free. For example you can go to the Tate Gallery cafeteria to watch the sunset. You'll find out a lot of people has had the same idea, (it must be suggested in every tourist guide). Also, there's a lot of cheap concerts, a lot of talented young musicians, luckily one of the bands will play not too far to your place, (so that you avoid expenses in transportation). On the other hand, raw food can be so expensive, that a number of decent cheap restaurants can be a good alternative to cooking.

Anyway, there seems to be a community of people looking for enlightenment in London. The other day I was in a lecture about meditation, and they had a kind of weird ceremony at the beginning, one of the steps was that each of us in the audience had to talk for a minute to somebody you don't know and explain the reasons why you've come. Then the girl sitting on my right started talking to me, she told me that she had seen me the day before in Brixton, in a similar kind of gathering!. I thought it is probably a good place for a pick-up, you may get a nice confused girl and be as merciless as you want to her.
But even with the promise of good sex while you are seeking, the silence of the mind seems to be a very tough discipline. I see no other option than giving up meditation, following by the way my nadaist votes. Giving up is such a natural process, brings peace to your inner mind, and the subconscious, (that monster inside you which believes that you don't deserve happiness and that everything you do is wrong), gets a lot of relieve, you feel it stronger each of the occasions you resign.

Stop thinking!

Thinking is pretty pointless.

My mind spends most of the time making projections about the future and reviewing carefully the past and that's nonsense. You might say that thinking about the future could be good since it helps you to be prepared and to foresee what’s going to happen, but I have my doubts.

For example yesterday I was in a car going to the airport, I already started a bit late and I was in a hurry, and there was a traffic jam. Then I got worried because I might not make it in time, and then start thinking if the ticket was refundable or not, how urgent it was to get to London yesterday, if there would be a plane later, or today or tomorrow or whatever, also, to whom I should call when I miss it, the things that I won’t be able to do, where I was going to stay last night, etc, etc, etc. And it is not that I looked at it very rationally and looked at the different possibilities and the solutions and create a kind of scheme that will define the future action depending on what happens, a tree of decisions, no; I was basically looking at it with anxiety and getting worried. I was not getting prepared for the outcome of the traffic jam, I was not foreseeing, I was just worried. So it was useless.

Of course, I made it on time to the plane and at the end it was just a stupid episode. But, even if I was late and finally I had taken one of the actions I had been thinking about for so long, how long would have taken me to decide what is the right things to do after getting to the airport and being rejected at the check-in counter?, 1 or 2 minutes maximum to get to the same conclusion?. And it is not only the anxiety, it is that maybe in the car the radio was on and there was a song that I loved and I did not listen to it. Or there were beautiful birds flying around, or it was a nice sunny day and you could have opened the window and feel it, or there was a chance for a nice conversation.

I’m not saying that projecting to the future is always useless, but the way I do it most of the time is pretty clumsy and stupid.

Now in London I'll try to investigate meditation, the silence of the mind, a bit further.

Diary of the nadaist

In a regular day, I wake up early, although it takes me some time to get out of bed. Then I go for a shower, I shave slowly, get some light breakfast, solemnly I visit the toilet, and relax for a while. I go to the street to buy the newspaper, and for a walk, and when I'm back it's already time to start preparing a nice meal for lunch. Then I eat, I check there's nothing watchable on TV, and that's the moment for some mild activity: meeting a friend, going to the cinema, for a bicycle ride...

When I'm back, depending on how hungry I am, maybe I can open the newspaper, maybe not. After cooking and dinner it should be ok for sure, but perhaps I want to read a book instead, or write a little, I'd rather listen to some music, or play some chess or a computer game, or there's a good movie on TV. Sometimes I can only take a quick look to the paper drowsy before going to bed, or maybe the morning afterwards, having some coffee.

Probably it's not a good idea that I spend a while everyday in the writing routine for the nadaist blog. Most of the times it will look just as the text above. Besides it would add even more structure to my day, and there's already a framework too heavy by feeding myself and logistics and other physiological needs, (and not so much time for the paper). Thus I will only cover the nadaist exercises and some real activities.

So, next week I'll try to join a meditation course. I'm just back from a 2 months trip to India, over there I was thinking about the nadaist principles, and I found amazing the way some folks, (I mean common people, not gurus or mystic yoga touts), could describe thought and mind and obsessions and the subconscious having no background on western psychology. They told me that meditation is the silence of the mind, just like that, and there's no divine implications. So I guess I'll try to join a course, even if it is a bit of a contradiction to the principles, since it would be an achievement to learn to meditate; however I hope you excuse me - meditation seems to be the perfect nadaist activity. Anyway I assure you I will quit as soon as I can.

Nadaism

Definition of nadaism: the principles, exercises, the contract.

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