Obsession for calm

That's the tittle of my new novel, "La obesión por la calma".

("of my new novel", sounds as if I had published already a couple of them and this new one was on its way... but I'm sure you don't get me wrong)

After 2 years and a half, I'm happy about the results, even if I see problems and I would be quite different if I started it over now.

The three posts "Other way" were actually a kind of synopsis (some of you might have guessed it), were a trial I was making, since these days I'm figuring out how to approach the editors. And then, I've realised there's a few people at the other side of this blog, who somehow were waiting for me to post something -awesome! I'm not going to say that I feel guilty (I do!) but I do tell myself I should never stop writing in this place.

My dream: my dream is to get the novel published, and then somebody I don't know goes to the bookshops, buys it, reads it, enjoys, and of course I don't get to know...

However, now I realize that dream becomes true with the blog! Maybe my dream is not so allegoric as it seems, and the "buying" part is important to me. Well, it's true I'd like to make a living out of it, since in my dreams I've figured I'll enjoy more when I spend my days writing, compared to going to the office.

Please everybody please don't wake me up!

Other way (cont'd 2)

... the words of a sage, yes, but he was in South India, very closed to some tropical beaches, and felt like visiting.

He stays in Mysore for 10 days, doing nothing, not visiting even any of the touristic attractions of the city. He meets the recepcionist of his hotel, a humble and consistent Muslim who had studied with some sufi guru in the past, and recommends him to go to visit his master in a village in the middle of nowhere. The place is old and miserable, there's quite a few people waiting, most of them must be neibourghs, but he is not patient enough and leaves.

In a train trip to Bangalore, he meets a PhD on Economics who invites him to his place for lunch; his mum is nosy and offers herself to find a wife for him, also she encourages him to visit her guru. My friend is quite reluctant, but at the end he decides to give it a try; the doctor goes with him and shows him an ashram that glows with devotion and goodness, however the guru is not at the place.

On his way back to Europe, staying at a friend's appartment in London, he shares the couch with a masseur from Australia, who somewhat convinces him to visit his guru. He finally puts his question, he's not very convinced with the answer, anyhow heconcludes he has to find his own way.

A while afterwards, he goes back to his native Switzerland, takes a proper job, and pushes himself to figure out what his direction should be...

Other way (cont'd)

My friend found this guy while he was getting drunk in a picnic area for a farewell party, in India.

"Do you believe in astronomy?" the guy asked.

"Do you mean astrology, or astronomy?" my friend wondered.

"I mean astronomy, of course!" the guy said. "You know, planets, stars, the Milky Way... Our world is nothing, you and me we mean nothing, we could disappear at any moment! And it would not matter at all! Let's get drunk!"

...

"I like you European!" the guy kept shouting. "I don't know why you come to India, what are you exactly looking for, but you're alright. Except Germans, Germans and Jews, I would kill them all!"As my friend started complaining, he added "remember, it would not mean anything, life and death mean nothing, your life and my life worth nothing!"

And later, "What are you looking for? You must be looking for something. What's your objective? Mine is to kill myself! Rock and roll!"

This guy brought my friend to one of the biggest pilgrimage centers in India, it took them I don't know how many days to reach that place, after 2 days in a train they climbed I don't know many steps to the top of a mountain, followed a queue for 5 hours to reach the image of the god for a few seconds, and then, my friend realised he had not understood or felt anything.

And then, he decided he would look for the wise words of a sage...

Other way

Today I'd like to talk about a certain guy, but first...

I also write this post to show that I'm not dead, neither the blog -and maybe this way the spam at my last post stops as well. It's funny to see how they are wasting their time in a blog with no posts in the last 6 months and hardly any reader. Although spam does not know, of course, about such a thing as "time wasted".

second...

Funny that I start the post with the statement "Today I'd like to..." if I haven't written for 6 months. And I don't remove the word "Today" but I add this last stament, which is pointless, and instead of removing it, I add this new statement.

Enough.

This guy I know went to an intensive yoga class (3 hours a day starting at sunrise) for six months with an awesome teacher, one of the best in the scene, and he found the classes were very difficult, the teacher a kind of a sage, and yoga somewhat useful.

At the start, he was trying to seduce one of the students: yoga girls are usually so beatiful. He's clumsy with her, and then he turns around to the city and the touristic vibe, full of women he's actually not interested about, as he realises.

Then he joins a Vedanta (hindu scriptures) class. He finds it unintelligible, on one hand, those abstact concepts which are meant to be sensible, and on the other hand, astrology and superstition. He does not find any one-handed teacher, and decides to study on his own; but then any excuse is good to get out and go for a walk.

Finally he stops going to class altogether and meets an indian who takes him to one of the most sacred pilgrimage centers in the country. He's quite amazed with everything he sees, but does not feel there's much spirituality about it.

... I'll carry on tomorrow, about this guy and his "other way"... and don't know when tomorrow is going to be, but I promise it won't be anything closed to six months.

pain, pain, pain

It's been one month since I came back from Rishikesh. People keep connecting to the blog, which is something that I don't quite understand, anyway if I have just one reader I have a debt, and I must keep on writing. Really, just one reader means you are responsible.

I could have written in India, there's Internet over there. Not afterwards, since I've been so busy. Seems I'm not so responsible.

What happenned in my yoga course? I felt pain. Pain, pain pain. Some people get surprised, they expect yoga to be very different, they expect that I would enjoy it and feel calm. But it depends on your body, for some people the streching is enjoyable, for the stiff bodies it's mostly about pain. Why sould I keep on doing it, then? After 80-something posts during more than 3 years in this blog, did I manage to explain it yet? I hate that saying which goes something like "no pain no gain", anyway.

I stayed in Rishikesh the complete month of my trip to India, even if the yoga pain was growing. I was attending the classes and writing, and meeting very nice students at the course. Just for a couple of days I went to the mountains with the teacher (he goes once a month to relax, and invites a few people to go with him): knowing him was interesting and at the same surprising.

When he practices on his own he is perfection. He may go to a posture for 20 min with no effort, while for anybody normal it would very difficult to keep the same position for a few minutes and keep calm at the same time. He knows controls his body in an amazing way.

But...

Maybe it's me, I'm very naive many times, but I was expecting he would be a very different kind of person, very humble and with no ego. I was surprised to see he is so arrogant, and fussy, and he always goes around with a servant. I guess it is indian mentality also, the locals were treating him as a god.

And he talked so much, sooo much. Sometimes plesant, like a grandfather. But other times I got a headache; pain, once again, everything is around pain.

back to Rishikesh

In one week I'm having holidays and I'll go to India for one month; my plan is to go back to Rishikesh to a certain yoga teacher, wake up at sunrise and go to class and then for a swim at the Ganges, and spend the rest of the day writing.

Somebody told me yesterday: "ah, very well! you're back to sacred land and sacred water".

Just to be mean I told her that India is also the land of religious conflict, hindus and muslims don't live quite at ease. I started talking about a muslim friend and she showed her annoyance, until I mentioned by chance that my friend had been studying once with a sufi master, then she was delighted. Why? Just because sufi are meant to be mystics? Is it because they tend to speak about understandable matters, e.g. the essence of being?

For a lot of people here in the West, it seems that the more unbelievable it is, the more trustworthy it becomes. It happens with therapies for example, let's take Reiki distance healing: it's enough to appeal for a certain vague energetic concept. (A reasoning more of less like this, "if there is everything in the universe is energy, why is is you cannot believe that somebody may channel that energy at a distance??").

She was taking me in the car and we were looking for a parking place and then she said: "if we desire it humbly and sincerely, we will find one very quickly". And then around the corner there was a free place. She didn't say anything, didn't mention any energetic implications, neither did I.

Why, again? The more unexplainable, the best proven.

Assuming that most those writers claiming they have had mystics experiences really have had them, they are talking about something completely subjective we should not understand at all. Why is it we swallow it so easily and start talking about it? Why is it movies like "Star Wars" or "The Matrix" are not only deep and philosophical but also so "energetic"?

I'm sorry for my bad mood this morning. It must be I urgently need my holidays. One week to go!

(pd- By the way, I honestly believe there is a lot you do in the way to face up to life that changes reality, however I've never weighted if it had any effects on free parking places.)

some writers should not write

There's Internet and everybody may write in here and say whatever they feel like, no need to apologize afterwards. That's me, for example. For these, for us, it's not so important if there's anything really to say, and if there is, it does not quite matter if it is understood. It's better when it is, of course, but not mandatory.

Now imagine there's a writer who has something to say, whose knowledge could be essential for somebody else. This writer could be a philosopher, for example, who has been thinking about a subject for so long (for his whole life he's been a thinker), who writes a book and publishes it, and gets it translated, since abroad they've also figured he's saying something crucial... but then, who buys it?, and whomever does buy it and tries to read it, finds out it's so dense and difficult that it is quite impossible to understand. And the message gets lost, even if the writer was a sage.

For example I'm thinking about Sloterdijk, (whom I've quoted here sometimes). Would it be better if the good man, instead of writing the book himself, gets in touch with a novelist, let's say with three of them, and the four spend a month together talking, so that the thinker makes sure the others have understood, and only then the others write the book. Maybe the few scholars that used to read the original would be displeased, but what about the rest.

The other day I went to a lecture called "happiness and philosophy". It was great, however while I was listening I said to myself, why do I have the feeling they're explaining the usual, only with different words? And on my way back at the tube I kept wondering and wondering and finally this is the best conclusion I've got: it is me, who is actually hearing always the same. I only hear what I know already.

Probably that's my problem with Sloterdijk: there's no way to put his words into ideas I already know. I can only guess he's saying basically the same as the others, but I cannot be certain. And it is so distressing not to know.

first communion

Back to my hometown for the first holy communion of my nephew. Yesterday I went to my sisters' place to say hi, he asked me I had any present for him, I reminded him I had already sent some money which was used I was told as a contribution to buy a laptop, and he remembered, he actually knew the exact amount I had given, and showed me in. While the computer was starting up, he made a demonstration of a new karate stroke he had learned, shouting "that's the way christians defend ourselves!"

It took me quite some time to understand who was he referring to; christians of course are we. I did not answer with the retort that came to my mind, nor I tried to provoke him; he had just been to confession and he's supposed to stay clean of bad deeds until tomorrow, so that he may take the host. His mum showed me a photo album they had made, the images of the dressed-up child in such contrived postures that will surely make him blunt when he is grownup. I told my sister she could even consider using them as a blackmailing, "if you don't do as I say I will show around the pictures of your first communion!"

When I did it, myself I was not very happy. I had managed to skip the whole catechesis and only the very last day I went to the priest; he was quite upset with me but at least I was there for the rehearsal, in which we practiced how to go from the corridor to behind the altar and back, all the time forming nice queues ordered by our heights. Height ordering was very important for some reason. The day after, the big day of the performance, I made a mistake and broke the height line, and the priest was so angry. Anyway, I never saw him again.

I asked my sister; height arrangement seems to be still important nowadays. The priest of my nephew had apologized in advance, since he had started the rehearsals one month before and it could be that in the meantime some of the kids had shot up and the height order would not be respected anymore.

For the rest, there are differences as well: they've prepared quite a party after the event, like small scale wedding, including lunch for the family and the friends of the nephew, around 15; even worse, explains my sister, the nephew has been invited to around 15 communions of his friends, and has to bring up a present at each of them, besides everything happens in around one month and thus there are some he cannot assist to because of overlapping.

My mum has been this morning in the garden pickup up some rose petals, and since there were not enough rosebushes, some other flowers as well. Tomorrow first thing is to lay them at the outside of the house for my nephew so that he steps on them when he comes out to join a kind of procession which goes from the town hall to a chapel at the outskirts of the village, and then back to the big church. This is a sort of tradition at the place where my sister lives. Also, a band follows and plays grandiose music.


I don't know if I have to carry on, I hope I have made my point already.


(By the way, I'm relieved: it's been around two months from my last post and the weekly number of visits is slowly going to zero. Very slowly, though, still makes me wonder about the way Internet works.)

people and numbers

It's been about a month I haven't posted anything. It seems, according to a meter I included in the blog, during this time I've received around 10 visits a week, from quite different countries: Norway, Spain, USA, France, Malasya, India and Indonesia in the last 20 visits. I guess I don't know most of these readers, since I haven't even been in half of the countries of the list. On the other hand, I know there's a few people (2 or 3) who read itquite regularly. So I wonder.

I wonder why, assuming those visits happen "at random", from people just surfing around, why it is 10 visits a week, on quite a repetitive average, and not 2, or 350. Why not 1 this week and 20 next week.

And it's been 10 a week for months. It got to maybe 15 a week if I added posts more often: 10 seems to be the bottom even if I don't write (even if the blog was empty?)


I've put similar questions to myself about sports, in the past. Take for instance the 100m race: why the top runners are so closed, say from 9.7 to 10 seconds for the 8 people who take part in the final? Why only 8 people in the world go below 10? And those 8, how is it they are so regular? If one of them runs at 9.8, they usually do it at 9.8, not one month at 10.2 and the other in record time and the next at 10.5.

It's not the same in longer races, but there's strategy in these, it is not just "do it as fast as you can". Even so, it's possible to find regular patterns. For sure is quite similar in ski and swimming for instance. And I wonder why.


There's democracy also. In Spain, the biggest two parties get around 38% of the votes every election. One of them wins for there are small differences for reasons which are not easy to guess (at least most of the times). And it is like that in many other countries. In the US there are only two parties and their support is amazingly closed to 50%. This year Obama won "overwhelmingly" by a global difference of 3%. Democracy in the US is a very mature one, the Spanish one at its side looks like a babyboy. Besides, in most countries, the turnaround is just above 50%.

I guess in a perfect decision system half of the people decide to participate, and if there are 2 valid options, half of them go for each. I'm able to understand that (not that I necessarily think it's good).


Anyway, in this world, with so many people, there seems to be a big rule: probability. Call it luck. That's the reason why anything happens? That's why I don't get fired, or somebody else does, that's why I didn't get married and somebody else did???


And, what are we doing (and we call ourselves seekers) when we look for an explanation? Is there a chance we will understand? I wonder.

the victim under control

An old friend of mine was the victim of an impressive accident when he was riding a moped bike: he was overtaking a big trunk on the right, the trunk did a weird move and my friend fell and got caught by the back wheel of the trunk, and both the moped and himself were dragged on the road for around 15 meters.

On the floor, he was so stuck he could not get out by himself, even if the bike was not so heavy. People around were in doubt to move him because he had lost his helmet; he wanted to should at them to take him out, but he was in bad pain and he could hardly speak. Eventually they released him and while the ambulance was coming he was looking at his leg and wildly wondering if he would be able to move it again.

He would have killed the lorrydriver at that moment, "it was such a big trunk in a not so wide street!, what was he doing there?, and what was the effing manouver he did?"; some days later, the driver went to the hospital to visit and they made peace, although my friend did not like the guy, "not somebody I would get drunk with!". Actually the driver was a member of his club, he had joined that same year, when they had promoted to the spanish 'second B' category. But the diver had not had the chance to watch my friend playing. And he would not anymore.

The recovery was long and painful, the full thing took around a year, and my friend was 17 years old. He wanted to brake the plaster into pieces and start exercising the leg, and afterwards wanted to start walking, then running, and climbing mountains. However there were many things he would not be able to do anymore. "What if the accident had not happened?", he would say, "how far would I have gone in playing football?"

He didnt like studying, or arts; however nobody was going to stop him from getting whatever he wanted to.

And now, so many years later, he puts the icing on the cake of his life with his appointment as the president of his football club, the one he used to play for.



Propositions:
- my friend was overtaking a big trunk on the right in a street which was "not so wide"
- the lorrydriver was "somebody he would not get drunk with"
- when he was 16 years old, he was playing for a 3rd category football team
- the team promoted to "2nd B" and he would not play so often anymore
- ...


My friend is a prick, and the story is silly. Does the victim take control? Does he get anything he wants? And does it mean he is under control? What is "under control"? Is it a feeling, an opinion?

do it now!

There's many people seeking. Some of them struggle to learn how to stand on their heads, or to sit straight and crossed-legged. Others just put on fancy clothes and talk a lot, but most are genuine, why would they not be? And not all of them base themselves on eastern philosophies.

Anyhow, probably all of them would agree in one thing: they are in the process of learning, of improving, of making themselves better so that someday they will obtain what they are looking for. But, why does it have to be in the future, why not now?


As an example, I'll take something completelly unrelated: world hunger. Everybody is more or less concerned about that huge problem. Myself, I give away some money every year to some organizations which are supposed to do something about the subject. Little money it is. And I think about it from time to time, although is not the first thought that crosses my mind every morning.

I guess some people are less concerned, donate no money, they woud think it is not fair that people are starving, but realisticly they've figured there's not much to do about it.

On the other hand, there's a few who devote themselves and their lifes to the problem; what about those? Do those think the solution is at their reach? Probably not, more the contrary. But they don't get depressed, they just try to do everything they can to make a small contribution, to help the people of the area wherever it is they've travelled to. And it is awesome.


It is not only they are morally superior (they are, to me); also they look at a huge problem with no visible solution and they decide they want to do everything they can and they do it now.


From J Krishnamurti:
"Do you actually need time to be free of greed? I am taking that as an example [...] You are used to think you do. When I say I will get over it, that will is time [...] So the mind has become accostumed to the idea of psychological time -tomorrow, or many tomorrows."

And many many paragraphs later, after he brilliantly dismantles the idea of psychological time,
"So where we are? Where are you with regard to what you have heard, what you have learned, what you have seen for yourself? It is just mere words for you to carry? Or is there a deep fundamental change so that you are free of all your problems, free of fear? [...]"
Which applies not only to his lecture, but to everything you have heard, you have learned, you have seen for yourself.

Let's forget for a moment about world hunger and about a world free of greed -no matter I have not done anything about those. Am I just carrying words? Have I done anything?

endarkenment

I was 20 when it happenned, and it was sudden: I got endarkened and I ceased to believe.

It was sudden, but it was the conclusion of a slow process as well. My endarkement came out of the blue one morning when I realised I was living in a big contradiction: none of the stories I had been told about god made sense to me anymore, and at the same time I was relying on them at least to lay the foundations of my answers to some old big questions. But it was also slow, since it started even before my first holy communion; I managed to skip all the catechesis sessions and I went to the priest just one week before the event -he was very upset with me, however he explained me the details on the staging with the rest of the guys (how we should go in a queue to the altar and back, doing as if we were praying).

At the same time I was really a devotee: whenever I got a host into my mouth I used to talk to Jesus as a sincere believer, honestly. My problem came with the church itself, quite deceitful, and my catholic school and teachers, the boring religious studyings, and so on.


There were clear signs of the dark coming:
- Questioning the people who brought up the story to me (the teachers and the priests), not relying on their coherence, integrity or even their common sense
- Calling into doubt the aspects that sound unbelievable or unacceptable (weird explanations on the origin of life, old-fashioned moral doctrines)


Afterwards, getting old and assuming that the dark was not the place to be, I resumed my quest. Very carefully, however: careful with the words themselves (e.g. enlightenment as explained in previous posts), and trying to avoid to get dazzled instead.

But then, wherever I looked for alternative belief systems, I found there were mainly two options:
- or you choose one system that seems the best and accept it as a full pack; (in consequence you don't question their people and you assume the unbelievable part of it)
- or you study very closely every system available and take the small good pieces of each of them; (but those pieces don't necessarily make sense when are taken stand-alone, and the pieces from different origins don't match together either, and there's the huge risk you get puzzled)


Should I had stayed in the dark then? I didn't, and on the road I've met quite some people following the second (including myself, I'm afraid), which is a sure path from endarkenment to endazzlement.

maya

In a hindu myth, a student asks to his master about the meaning of maya; the master says
- Ufff
and asks the student to go to a village nearby to get a glass of water for him; there the guy goes and knocks the door of the first house he finds, he's really in a hurry to know about the maya thing. A beautiful girl opens it and takes him in, she's captivating, her smile and her humble eyes not daring to look up. The family was about to have lunch and the father invites the student to sit down and eat with them; afterwards there's lots of work to do, the young guy cannot refuse and makes a big effort to help them. He stays for dinner, and then he's so tired...

A few days after the father proposes his daughter to marry him (that's usually the way it works in India) and he's already so enchanted and pleased by her that he immediately accepts. The marriage is fast, simple and full of bliss, and for the following years the guy keeps on working very hard in the farm, has three children, takes care of them and the rest of the family, and he feels happier than ever in his life.

In the month of the tenth birthday of his oldest son the monsoon starts, it's early for the rains, which are terrible, the river overflows and there's a terrible flood in which he looses everything: his wife and children die; the house, the animals, crops and all his possessions are swept away. He feels a deep grief and aimlessly he walks into the forest; sitting under a tree he finds his old master and he hardly recognizes him,
- where have you been? I only asked you to fetch some water for me -asks the master
and laughs (somewhat bitterly) and explains the student that over these years he has just experienced what maya is.


Sometimes, when I've talked with some Indians friends about Descartes' method of doubt (not that I mention this so often, but I've always enjoyed this view of the world being run by dwarfs that had constructed my room and everything in it to deceive me, since nothing really exists, and they would quickly build up my kitchen before I notice it wasn't there if I decided to go and get a glass of water, etc) in response my Indian colleagues would relate it to the image to maya. When I have finally read a hindu myth on the subject, instead of philosophical it sounds to me like one of those parables of a fussy and changeable god. And it's silly but I cannot help feeling a bit disillusioned.

what?

C. S. Lewis, a writer and british gentleman, pointed out that a number of the questions we figure out are just nonsense, however we don't notice since we don't know enough; these questions would sound like "how many hours there is in a mile?"

I find the idea very suggestive; maybe half of the questions we ask are nonsense, contradictory in terms? It is well-known that a very clever question usually denotes you reckon half of the answer already. It's not only that "intellectual honesty" is an oxymoron (as in the previous post): "intelligent question" is another.

OK, I'm taking it out of context since Lewis' book is actually a sort of journal he called "a grief observed", which he wrote after his wife's death, while he was seriously in pain, suffering. He blames god for the loss, building up a rational framework to face the anguish, blames the absence, the nonsense, the nature.

Thus, he uses the fundamental questions to escape from his agony, realizing at the same time that most metaphysical questions may sound like "how many hours there is in a mile"; later, I guess, after some months, or years, he recovers, reads again the journal, finds it interesting and hands it out to the editor.


If a fundamental question were so fundamental (e.g. about the meaning of life), once I asked it to myself there would be nothing more important in my mind; I should devote myself to finding the answer. Since it is never the case, nothing seems to be so crucial until the moment, a reasonable alternative is that the question was, indeed, something not too different to how many hours there is in a mile.

oxymorons and dreams

There's a very nice novel by Alessandro Baricco, called "City", in which it is shown that intellectual honesty is an oxymoron. I remember I was reading it many years ago on a bus on my way to the office, and I felt it was something important, even if when I arrived I had to look up the word oxymoron in the dictionary.

The "essay on intellectual honesty" is proposed by one of the characters of the novel. He's a High School teacher. After 15 years of thinking about it, he finally writes it down on a flyer of a sex shop, while he's in the peep-show. It goes in six arguments more or less as follows:
- People have ideas
- People express those ideas. That's the beginning of the problem. Since it is very complex thoughts, when it's time to put them in words it is difficult to explain them clearly
- While expressing their ideas, people end up getting distance with them. The simplification of explanations of the mental process which brought to the conclusion, during the arguing, defending their truth, little by little makes that the real origin of the idea gets lost
- While defending the ideas, and in particular if it is in public, the arguments became weapons
- While using ideas as weapons, the relation with the original thought is completely lost
- Intellectual honesty is an oxymoron

When I read it, I found it funny, witty and indisputable. My colleagues at the office, however, just laughed lightly and did not seem to agree.


Anyway, recently I've realised I don't have a dream. I mean: there's something I would like so much, which implies becoming something different to what I am today (yes, at my age). But if you ask me to describe how exactly will I be when I achieve that new state, I cannot tell you a word - that's why I say I don't have the dream. What is it? I don't believe I can make it? I don't really want to make it? Should I build up my dream, that's all? The answers to those questions are only important for me, but it is amazing how much I've been talking about my no-dream.


Baricco's character goes on saying: "in another life we will be honest; we will be silent". Auurrrg!!

dogs are all clowns

I've just seen one, I was walking back home, the dog was big, black and strong and had a ball or something in its snout, head and neck looking up, moving the tail, challenging its master. They all enjoy playing so much, all the time, and jump and behave like clowns. I really love dogs.

(Well, not so much, probably, since I dont have one at home.)

At my parents' there was always one or two dogs when I was a child. It was painful when they got lost for ever or died, however I was growing up and after I had to miss a few animals I realised there was always another one to come which was essentially the same, and I found at least a sort of comfort on that idea.

Some people have criticised me a lot when I dared to explain, told me I'm a monster and I dont really like dogs at all. One friend suggested with irony I should maybe apply the same concept to people.


Completely unrelated, a question follows: if our life expectancy was let's say five thousand years, would be behave differently? Yes, for sure, but in which way? Difficult one, ah. I'd like to think we would get wiser (after one thousand years or so?) And I guess a lot more people closed to us would die. I mean, nowadays in the west you hardly see people dying, besides unfortunate accidents, serious illness, and your parents, who necessarily will die sooner than you; death is not in our day-by-day worries.

Then, imagine the situation: my life expectancy is five thousand years and I fall in love with somebody five hundred years younger (not so much). I die a natural death and she has five hundred years ahead without me, and she's still ok, she's only four thousand five hundred years old. What is she expected to do? After a ten years mourning, surely she'll find a better clown.

covered by bandages

In political philosophy, there's a very big discusion subject: what's the perfect political system? (the issue is purely theoretical, it's philosophy rather than politics).


One of the possible approaches in order to give an answer sounds like a sort of game: imagine yourself in a hospital bed, you are covered by bandages and you don't remember who you are, you don't recall anything at all, but you do remember enough about the world and society and people. Then they ask you the question, and you are the perfect one to give an answer: you are going to be fair with everybody since in a few days you're going to be outside struggling being whomever you are in the system you've figured out.


I was interested in political philosophy when I was in my twenties, I read a lot and there were many subjects which I found appealing; existentialism in particular, and it was not only about the philophers and writers in the mid XXth century. There's many novels in a similar line, some older than that and others quite new, even pop songs e.g. "there has to be more than this" (Soulwax). Could be a rationalistic expression of the feeling of being in a cage, of a complain which may be expressed like this: "why it had to be me that happenned to be myself".




But then, one could apply the same technique: back at the hospital bed under all the bandages, the existential question does not make sense anymore because you've forgotten who you are; even though you still have no idea if there is more than this, anyway what is that "this"?, is there anything outside?


I guess the point is to realise these two questions (amongst many) are quite difficult ones, but purely theoretical.

Good working day

... although it was actually a local holiday. Funny?

Woke up slowly, without and alarm clock, did some streching, had breakfast, switched on the computer and started working at home. I went out for lunch (I was lazy and wanted to save a bit of time), back I had a tea and then I resumed. I finally stopped around 7pm, prepared a nice dinner, had it, wrote for a while, washed up the dishes (I hardly ever do that during the week lately; well, I hardly ever cook), and here I am, 10:30pm, the remaining of the evening is just leisure! -the same amount of leisure I get in a normal working day. Huge difference: today I'm feeling good, don't have the usual contradiction, on the one hand craving to go to bed, on the other rather doing something nice before the day is over (e.g. writing).

I've remembered those days I was a convinced nadaist... if I could at least work somewhat less. Probably I won't be able to do many more things, I would be still frustrated I don't have enough time, but I would feel better, not so tired all around. (In the weekends, when I have all the time in the day at my disposal, I also feel frustrated, but I get some of the stuff done and it's alright.)


Last Saturday I was complaining to a friend precisely about the long working hours. He warned me to be careful, my ideas being irresponsible (he's possibly right on that); he told me about many people no as lucky as me by far. He put the example of the inmigrants. I said he could have chosen something worse: children in South East Asia working 16 hours a day in a garbage dump.

You can always find somebody doing much worse. One uses that argument and immediatelly stops complaining. What else to do? Not much. Doing anything to improve the situation for those doing so bad? No, that would be too difficult, unrealistic. Doing anything to improve your own situation? Well, no, you just said it, you've stopped complaining. The conversation is over.


It would be ok, if it was actually over, if the fact that lots of people are doing worse really convinced me deeply inside. It doesn't. If it was the case, I would probably had understood what's the meaning of life, I would be happy forever; what else, if there's no reason to complain? Sudden enlightenment.

There's rational arguments (no reason to complain) and there's all the rest in your mind (and the complains amongst it). There's people telling you what to do, criticising you, there's your stomach and your needs, and there's employers, and finally there's good working days, not very often, only sometimes.

Maybe the guy had a point after all

I'm slowly very slowly reading the short book on history of philosophy I was taking about. And although I havent reached Kant yet (already in the XVIIth century, a hundred years and fifty pages to go), I've figured maybe the guy had a point after all.

Let's see, in this little book there's the ancient Greek, the theistic of the Middle Ages, and lots of modern thinkers: Hobbes, Decartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz where I am today. All of them were asking themselves metaphysical questions, were trying to rationalize the real essence of the nature and the world and god if they were believers. And they were giving complete new systems of knowledge, rational explanations backed by hard work of studying and developing. But then, even if it is difficult to criticise any aspect of their sound and so-well-based theories, and there has been long debates about some of their arguments, the truth is that their explanations about the world and everything are pretty different.

Maybe the guy had a point and there's no way to give a rationalistic answer to such questions. At least, for sure there's no way to agree with the answers.

However the questions remain; maybe they just make no sense, and it's better to answer them with myths or parables, or fables or even short stories. If you don't like them you will have to make your own. (Will you reach anywhere if you make up the stories on your own? Well, it's one of the few ways to get there, only try not to go too fast.)

As for others' stories, don't take them too literally, don't make a fuss about every single word in them. Either you understand it or not. You probably will, if they tell you something you already know.

(By the way, maybe I am going too fast; I haven't finished reading the book yet.)

Books nobody has read

There's one of those in a lot of languages: Cervantes' "Don Quijote" in Spanish, Joyce's "Ulyses" in English, Proust's "A la recherche..." in French; in their countries, everybody would claim they are the best books ever written in their long literary traditions, but if you ask who has actually read them, I'd bet there are very few people.

"Don Quijote" is not very difficult, it's quite amusing, clever and funny, but it is long very long, gigantic. So long it is not mandatory at school. Besides it's in movies, at TV, even cartoons, some of the chapters are well-known. Who feels in need of reading it?

"Ulyses" is very hard to read, it's written in a kind of own English with a mixture of French, German and Dutch. Not mandatory at school, how could it be, since it is so demanding and arduous. However, lots of British people have the book at home.

"A la recherche..." is probably marvellous and well written, but somehow pedantic, arrogant and pompous. Also very long, but 100 pages are enough to bore you to death. Who has read it in France, I don't know.


Similarly, there's philosophers hardly anybody has read. Kant has been such an influential thinker in the modern West, after him nobody dares to discuss about metaphisics anymore (that is, from a phylosophical point of view). Wittgenstein wrote his Tractatus, which nobody understands, and nowadays it is mentioned even in a recent movie, a thriller.

Maybe common people like me, more or less educated, are simply not able to grasp such a complex stuff. It would be as if somebody with no technical background wanted to understand let's say how a nuclear bomb is build. And the bomb has changed the world also, the way people think.

Another possibility is that some good ideas overwhelm us, the arguments backing them being so sound and clever, and we can only repeat them and repeat them again. And I guess it's ok. I feel so lost I'm reading a book on history of philosophy these days, as if I was going to find somebody telling me Kant was not right. As if I was going to find somebody say "El Quijote" is not such a good book.