Anger, revisited

Although I usually do not show it, I get angry very often. Indeed, I am so used to displacing it, that I seldom notice it till it builds up in excess.

The problem is that usually I get angry when I did, or am doing, or will do something stupid, that I can blame on someone or something else. In a way anger is a mask to hide my own inability. Sometimes someone really makes me angry for something they do, but more often it is something they did that I knew would happen, or should have known would happen, or just are in the wrong place at the right moment.

So, I get angry at myself, but that being inefficient (I like myself too much), I displace that to any suitable scapegoat, and then displace that again to do something I do not want to do, meanwhile smoldering at low heat.

So, an example. I get angry for my important contribution to the problems in our relationship, specially my lack of action now that the primary causes are identified. But as I cannot get angry with her (more angry, actually) as I am trying to avoid that, and I cannot get angry with myself, at least at emotional levels. So any suitable target, the first opportunity to cross the free fire zone, will be targeted. But as I try to be polite and civilized, I use that anger to force myself to do something I hate, such as visit my political family, dismount the windows and clean them, or to finish one damned report.

But the problem is that all displacing does not work perfectly, or in a way, that lying to yourself is just stupid. So the end result is that you spend days in a black mood, snapping at people, and in general unhappy in hell.

Once in a while I would like to just explode in a classic way, just let the anger flow and, very important, go away. Not this system of dams and reservoirs, that just make sure I am generally angry, and it is never clear what I am angry about, whether it is something I did, something I did not do, something someone did, or did not do, or just the pointlessness of so many things.

I had been hoping to help drain a bit this way. It works with melancholia, but it does not seem to work with anger. Or maybe all that I lost quickly comes back as anger to my stupid language mistakes, how I cannot make my point clear, how the comments I get are the ones I do not like, or how stupid do you have to be to exhibit yourself this way.

But in a way it helps, because it shows how this really depends on me. Anger comes from inside, and goes back inside. It is like a dependency. You just have to stop.

It is all part of my fumbling way to enlightenment (personally known as the purging of the animal brains). Anger has to be the first step. Many more to come. I wonder who will notice.
  ¶ 11:31 PM 0 comments

  Envy

I am really verbose these last days. I do not know if it is the silence of the previous days, or that work really turns me down, but I feel this urge, like lancing a boil.

The catalyst for this explosion, and the reason why it has been directed both towards desire and life satisfaction, is a simple meeting yesterday.

We met a younger couple, who are getting married in three weeks and wished to give us the invitation by hand.

Before he went to work to Barcelone, I could have said he was my best friend, and I hope he would have said the same. That wordless complicity still remains, but distance and heavy workloads have made harder to keep in touch as often as we liked. And, as expected, his priorities have changed quite a bit.

We were joined there by another couple, who got married in June, and had just returned from a combined honeymoon/holidays.

Surrounded by so much love and happyness, with all those endearments and small tics of the newlyweds (or soon-to-be-weds), I felt torn between joy (for them), a burning envy, and the urge to ask for an insulin dose.

Talk of course turned around weddings, dresses, houses, honeymoons... And believe me, nothing makes you more aware of your problems than this comparison, not with them, who had no fault, but with the us that were like them, not so long ago. And one thought of the past quickly brings, like an avalanche, all those other moments, that tangle of choices, circumstances and actions that builds up to the present.

So that small push sent me crashing down through that slope that we call life. But just assigning names seems to help to put things into perspective. As well as nothing like seeing how ridiculous you sound.

Nevertheless, that does not help finding an answer we don't know, or to enjoy more what I do have got.
  ¶ 6:11 PM 0 comments

  Editing the past

This is an argument I have had with a friend. Is it right, or convenient, to edit the past? To change the records, erase files, destroy letters, burn photographs?

I suspect the difference lies in the emphasis on internal against external memory. And probably the ability to convince the self once you have convinced the others.

Internet opens new possibilities, as only the edited version generally remains, while what it was before the edit only remains in the memory of the original viewers, and of course, the author.
This came to mind while rereading the past posts. I was thinking of correcting some errata, a few of the semantic or syntactic errors that plague my writing, and maybe clean up some posts a bit. I ended doing nothing of that kind.

These posts are written in one go, which explains their rambling structure and frequent lack of point. The title is written the first, and that represents the basic idea that drove me first to write. But on writing ideas change, evolve, sometimes becoming clearer, often more obscure. And when I feel I have no more I need to say, I stop. Then I read the piece, correct any glaring errors or key slippages, and depending on how I feel about the rant, I publish it, save it for later, or delete it. Most of the saved ones are those I would have deleted but was not able to do so, because of the time and energy spent, or the nature of the subject. What I do not do is rewrite. Even those saved ones (although the language with rereading becomes more polished) will not be rewritten. If I feel that way, I just delete and start again with clearer ideas. But this continuous stream style is the way I feel I have to use, to make these rants, instead of essays or pontifications.

So, after all this, who am I to change it afterwards? Yes, there are errors, but that is inherent to the form, and I cannot recreate the mental state that brought me to it. If I was choking with rage, or a finger just slipped, or my brain jumped a gear. As well, I was considering deleting posts. But once you post, it is as if you had said it. You can apologize, offer reparations, or elaborate, but you cannot unsay what was said. However I have deleted things on the internet before. There are two possible reasons. The most common one is because someone else asks me to. If that person has some valid reason, I will do so. I prefer people to my words, so I have no problem with them. In a way, being asked to delete something shows that someone takes interest and feels for something I have done, a satisfying idea. The second one, complete deletion, is just a way to burn bridges. When leaving a community, that crime will ensure I will never come back.

I am too proud, so I need to see my mistakes to keep me humble enough. If I erase them, I would become unbearable.
  ¶ 3:03 PM 0 comments

  Fate

I feel quite angry today, so I am pouring all of it here. In a way, that lets me strike back to the real cause of the anger, that I will not address here.

I suppose it is one of the components of the middle age crisis, that I have been mixing with a series of personal problems these last years. The feeling that Fate has cheated, that even if you got what you wanted, those twenty years ago, it is not what you wanted then, and it certainly is not what you want now. That your life, after all, does not look like yours, and that some other people have even more control over your life than you do.

And that, unless you do something about it, things will only become worse as time passes. The entanglements that keep your life in that course will become bindings, and what little freedom remains, will disappear.

All of it is rubbish, if you think about it. We are never really free. When it is not the family, it is the debts, or the simple lack of something what limits your freedom, and specially ourselves, as we do what we have to, instead of what we want.

But this time the feeling is that you can break away. A good part of the life is lost already, now you can afford to do many things, and there is that urging whisper in the back of the brain "now or never". Never mind that when you could do that, at the right moment, ten years ago, you just said, "never". And the urge to wreck that carefully constructed life, exchanging years of pain for a minute of exhilaration.

And it feels worth it, to exchange years when you were not really alive, for a few moments of real, unadulterated life, freedom, uncertainty, without restraint or worry about tomorrow.

Who can say? I still savour certain minutes as jewels, kept polished in the drawers of Memory, and that memory alone seems worthy of any suffering, before or after. I fear this is my body betraying my mind, but who can say who should I listen to?

So here I walk the line, with restraint and reason keeping me on the edge, even if my feet hurt and bleed, and sometimes each step is a torture. While the urge to step out, and see what lies in the chasm or if I can really fly when forced to.

Now, if I knew some way to get a parachute...

Is it a human's fate, to strive not only against need, but against desire, so that no matter what you have, you always want something else? Or does just mean that the World outside has too much of a claim on you, so that no matter how big the piece you have, there is always more to be had?

Or may we solve the problem, not by annihilating the self, but embracing it, so that the self can keep the world where it belongs, out, and getting of it just what the self requires.

Salvation through selfishness. To tread the solipsistic path again, a lonely but quiet road.
  ¶ 10:55 PM 0 comments

  Desire

I would really like to rant against the arbitraryness of desire. What makes me (remembering my solipsistic roots) desire one pen or not other, one woman and not all of them? I wonder if I will pull it off in a way I will not delete it.

As a matter of fact, taking sexual desire as a general marker, both the objects of desire have changed with time, they are becoming less and less frequent. Even as I rant against it, I feel it is mostly tame now.

I still remember those roaring teenage years where, even if I did nothing else than blush scarlet, I desired all of the girls in my class, my friends' sisters, and most of their mothers too.

Then, maybe through years of abstinence and meditation (totally involuntary, of course), I started to discriminate. Some traits were guaranteed to bring still a cortex shutdown, but they were less widespread. In general I tend to follow less a "body part" approach, and usually fall for other aspects, such as height (ideally, to touch heads while walking, or kissing without effort while standing), hair (long and black, in an ideal world) or voice (grave and low). Only one of the serious relationships in my life did fit that standards, and some did not fit any of them. That only guarantees a desire at first sight result. Just smiling convincingly has my heart melting, and that still works now. I am just harder to convince now.

With time, I find more and more attractive signs of age, such as smile wrinkles, calloused hands, or make up. And I disregard many classic desirable signs.

The biggest difference, however, is the lowering of the intensity. When twenty years ago I could have overcome my crippling shyness to say a compliment, now that the shyness is almost totally under control, I just do not feel motivated enough to compliment. I hope no reader is offended, but all compliments I say now, when meeting, are politeness, not desire. As well, when I see the sacrifices I did then, just to exchange a phrase, I feel ashamed of my foolishness, and envy of my passion.

Fortunately, with the decrease of the primary desire, there is a strengthening of the secondary desire (or more rational control over irrational body responses). Probably my checquered and complex sex troubles have helped to suppress the primary responses (in a way, a return to abstinence and meditation). However, now I find I desire people I know (which is a serious problem all of its own, as at my age and environment, practically everyone is partnered already, including myself), and with a small component of the physical aspects in the attraction. It was to be expected, as it is mostly a cerebral desire, generally without perspective of fulfilling the desire physically, than physical aspects would become secondary. I like the body because I like the person, and in a self-feeding loop I find myself attracted to people with similar physical traits to the object of my affections. While it lasts, as desire is also a fickle emotion, and the desire-image is very fragile. Being mostly a figment of my mind, generally a forceful real contact is enough to shatter it. That ties very well with the internet relationship, as those internet built images are the easiest to shatter, as they are generally too distant from the real person.

All is not lost. If the formerly desired person still talks to me, and I still like her (you can build a false image, or can receive false data) a new desire image can be built up, stronger now that it is anchored more in reality.

Desire lasts longer when it is unfulfilled, but it will not last indefinitely. But if you slowly update that image, it can last for a long time.

And yes, I think we can desire many people, as we can desire many objects. Nothing wrong with it. What you actually do, now, that is where you can do wrong.

Suppression of want, suppression of desire... maybe I am turning into a Buddhist. There are worse fates, although the supression of self looks still very unlikely.
  ¶ 10:05 PM 0 comments

  Blogger

I know it is bad form to complain of free services, but I just spent a few minutes trying to recall what little I knew of html, a long time ago, and trying to change very slightly the look of the blog.

I chose this minimalist appeareance, at start, because this is a minimalist approach to blogs. I did not intend to add links, images, comments, furry animals, or even colours or nice bouncing balls. Black on white, with some details or clickables in standard blue.

I had no intention to do anything with the adbot. I actually liked the thing. Then arrived the NavBar. Well, the blue reminded me of past times, so it did not affect me. As I usually see the blog in the Edit form, I normally did not see it.

And then, when I was checking the previous post, oh horror, where is the title? It is not a great title, and probably I will change it as soon as there are less rants and more of something else. But it is mine, and any new title will be hidden too.

So here I was opening for the second time the templates label. After some head scratching, however, I think I have succeeded. No change, but a lower title.

So, why am I so proud of myself that I thought this merited a post?
  ¶ 9:13 PM 0 comments

  Getting old, or getting safe

As I wrote recently, I have never been an active person. But I remember when I was a teenager, somehow I managed to break my glasses at least once a season. I did not have old glasses. When they were beyond redemption, I got new ones. Which, with my record, meant heavy plastic ones with crystal lenses. How I hated those glasses. That now I suspect helped to make their life so short.

Something similar happened with watches. My first real watch, a Seiko automatic, died in a water resistance failure, although it was almost unreadable by then, with all those scratches on the glass. After some cheap plastic digital watches, (one with red LEDs, who only lighted when you pressed the button. This one managed to last enough to die of battery failure three months later) that suffered terrible fates (melted with heat or acetone, shortcircuited, fall from a sixth floor...), I got a really great gift from my grandfather, his old Radiant Chronometer, that he could no longer read. Every night the ritual of winding the watch. I was as careful as I could. Six months later it stopped, so rusted inside to be a soldered mass. Then came a series of what my family called year watches, as they usually broke down or were murdered by me just in time to get a new one for Christmas.

I still cannot say what did I do wrong. Water certainly was a risk, but that could happen to anyone. Although the two more resistant ones died of it. I did like water when I was younger, both showers and swimming, sea or pool.

However, just at the time I started going to the University, it all changed. I had managed to convince my parents I was mature enough to wear wire rim glasses (wire could be soldered, which was a blessing in disguise), but after they were almost unrecognizable, I bought for myself some black metal glasses, with the then new surface hardening on the lenses. And there they were, till last year, when I donated them to MsF. Some worse to the wear, but having survived the whole University, several basketball matches and many hiking sessions in the mountains. The following sets of glasses were more a matter of image, and getting lighter and lighter ones, and there were four sets of glasses in the collection box for Northern Africa. All with the same prescription, as if now that I did not break glasses I should not spend also replacing them.

I also got at the time a cheap Spanish metal case quartz watch, a Festina, and somehow it also survived the whole five years, and it is still ticking in one drawer, with some acid burns and scratches, but nothing terminal. I had a relapse when a Seiko sports watch died, but it was found to be a factory defect. That watch never really marched well, and at last I tired of taking it to the official service, so it is stopped, in the same drawer, with some small bags of official replacement pieces, to no avail. That brought the Festina for some time out of exile, till I got a watch as bride's gift, and here it is, in quite a good state. No more watery deaths for watches either...

I did not disassemble items, as my brother did, they just tended to break. Until suddenly, they stopped doing that. Now I feel things work the opposite way. All my computers are functional (even the 1994 Toshiba laptop I still use for some gaming), my stereo is still the first Sony minichain with CD reader that appeared here in 1990 (I think), and most items last so much. Then, why did I crash and burn three tape decks in 1981-1985?

What happened when I turned 18? Are teenagers inherently dangerous to equipment and unanimate objects? I have to say that yes, that is what I believe. I fumble more than I did then, I have less reflexes, I am unable to build the plastic kits I did then, and even less to paint HO soldiers. Yet, almost all those tanks and planes suffered terrible losses, and I cannot really say where those bags full of painted soldiers did end up.

Now, when I drop a mobile phone, it works (I still have the three old ones, just in case). When I drop a pen, it works better. When I did that then, it was bound to break the point.

Or maybe I did suffer so much in my teenage years this is one of the ways I manifest that suffering.
  ¶ 7:42 PM 0 comments

  Order and Chaos

Most people that do not really know me, or who do not work with me assume I must be an order freak. Scientist, compulsive buyer of shelving space, list freak, going everywhere with a notebook, and enjoying books and classical music. Fortunately, just a look to the worktable, or my office, or even my computer dispels the illusion.

In my doctoral thesis I started with this phrase from Paul Claudel:

"L'ordre est le plaisir de la raison; mais le désordre est le delice de l'imagination."

Order is reason's pleasure; but disorder is imagination's delight.

All my coworkers laughed out loud, as that justified how delightful my working space was, not to mention that the strange magnetic properties in the compounds I had worked in, arose mainly from their disorder.

I do like order, as an abstract concept. I like to arrange books systematically, to file mail, to arrange schedules.

And then, when the schedule fails, I improvise. When I finish a book, I usually just leave it somewhere outside its rightful place. The in-tray seldom empties. And the table becomes hidden under the "in process" paperwork. Search tools are very needed to navigate my computers. And when I finally finish ordering the last shelf, the first has no resemblance to its ideal state.

I like to think that it is not lazyness or carelessness. It is just that order is incompatible with use. So, in a variant of the Uncertainty principle, anything whose position is known exactly, cannot be used. And the more an item is used, the more uncertainty about its position.

That would explain why it is the well loved books who disappear. Or why the good screwdriver is never around.
  ¶ 11:25 PM 0 comments

  Rant? Why? It is too hot.

One week without writing anything here, and I start feeling guilty. So I should criticise this exhibitionist streak that makes me churn new material constantly. And then, lightbulb. Of course! One week of holidays, warmth, and doing nothing but copying ISBN numbers by hand and reading too many books instead of databasing them.

It is worrysome that this is almost as good as visiting Prague, or that I am so braindead to start with Access when I have Filemaker Pro sitting on the iBook, but no sparks fly, no thunder and lightning, no fire and brimstone. It is too warm to raise up anger. And without fuel, no movement.

At least till I get the blog equivalent of solar power, also known as job. So far no anger yet, as we are all telling tales of our holidays, changing screensavers and wallpapers with the new photos, and just trying to remember what we were supposed to do. But when you are incredibly bored writing a report that should have been sent the 1st of July, you start getting ideas. And believe me, any idea seems bright when trying to restart a dead corpse like that.

So I will experiment with other subjects, other styles besides polite rant and foam at the mouth rant (the second ones are deleted before being sent out...), and maybe, just maybe, some colour use or images or (shudder) links.

I suspect that after I meet the big boss twice more, I will have something to say about inbreeding and mental devolution in the high middle class, but for now, this just marks I am still around.

  ¶ 10:58 PM 0 comments

  Action and reaction

I consider myself mostly a reactive person. That would mean that I accept a division in active and reactive people, although that is a continuum spread, not a dichotomy. So, properly speaking, I am more reactive than proactive, more willing to wait and see things evolve than making them evolve. Maybe I am just slow to act.

This tendency makes me patient (too much, usually), lazy and at the same time very curious. Instead of doing, I watch (or read, or listen...). If you are going to react, you better know what you are reacting to. That is aso why I work better under pressure, as that gives me a good reason to act.

That also means that at the same time I am attracted and appalled by active people. I admire their ability to just go and do things without prodding (or reason), but their apparent lack of reasons (or the weakness of those reasons) for some of their actions also make me uneasy. Of course, those people are great when I have to do something quickly or thoroughly, as we enter an action-reaction cycle that may make me seem hyperactive.

Then, without stimuli, I can spend a week without stepping out of the house, reading and surfing the internet.

Even my work is mostly reactive/perceptive. Plan an experiment, do it, check the results, that will give us the conditions for a next experiment. When the boss asks: "Is the product ready?" "Well, we have one that looks Ok, but I would prefer to do more tests..." "Nonsense. When can we do an industrial scale test?" "Tomorrow."

But I cannot understand active people, as I suppose they cannot understand me. What makes them rise and start doing all those things? Why bother?

Me, given enough books and food, could be happy in a desert island.


  ¶ 3:45 PM 0 comments

  Pages, how many pages I need?

I have been using the holidays, among other things to start the long delayed database of books at home. It is a long undertaking, not only because I have probably chosen too many fields, but because often I have to start reading a book as soon as I unearth it from the depths of a shelf.

One of the fields I added, as an alternative to width, was page count. And I am starting to see a tendency. Most books I read in the early eighties, written in the sixties and seventies, have page counts around 200. An afternoon or evening reading, without stretching. There are exceptions, but those exceptions were infamous just for it (things like The Lord of the Rings, for instance, or the Neverending story, at a whooping 400 pages). But books like Leiber's The Big Time, Dick's Do androids dream of electric sheep?, or all books by Raymond Chandler, clock under 200. Earthsea was trilogy, with individual books under 200.

Now, there are many books over the 500 mark, both literature and bestsellers, and trilogies where each individual volume is bigger than the Lord of the Rings.

Is there a good reason for this extra consumption of paper? I am not sure. I really like some of these bloated books, and there are writers that seem unable to write short books, but more and more I am feeling that a bit of editorial scissoring might be convenient. Specially because there are ideas that last for two hours, but if you stretch them for six hours and you start seeing the weak points. You get to sleep on the book, you have time to check other sources, and unless it is very good, it will fail somewhere.

The tendency can be easily seen in Harry Potter's books. The first one has 312 pages, but wide space and big interlinings. Each succeeding book has been bigger, with the latest at a horrifying 766 at standard type.

And I blame it on Editors, or on Editors not being able to impose their will on authors. I suppose it is hard for an author to downsize its work. I have that problem and it is just a blog! But the writer is just one reader, and not an objective one. So that is where a ruthless editor becomes a need.

I find this phenomenon mostly limited to US books, as most British, French, Spanish... books are still standard sizes.

I do not mind too much, as I am a compulsive reader and that beats reading the advertising mail or the appliances' instructions. But it saddens me to see a good 600 page novel that could have been a 300 page masterpiece.

  ¶ 6:02 PM 0 comments

  Tourists

Something that makes me wonder is why tourists dress differently that they do at home. That goes mostly for the older kind, where I suddenly felt myself belonging. Young people dress more or less the same, with a smaller or bigger backpack depending on how far they are from home.

But for the rest, I do not really know what is so bad about long, fresh linen or cotton pants, instead of those shorts that make you look ridiculous (specially combined with long white socks and sandals, ah the horror) unless you are minimally fit. As well, do they really need to carry so many things to require a couple of rucksacks? Unless carrying a camera, if I handle with pockets at home, I could handle abroad. The only extra equipment I carry is a map, and I do not have to carry any keys, so the end result is more comfortable.

Is it that clothing makes you feel you are really on holidays? I could buy it if was party attire, or good looking flower shirts, but it just makes you think: "I am an outsider. So behave appropiately." I actually like when people confuse me with a native, that means that I am dressing appropiately for the place and the weather.

Refusing to join the "tourist brand" only has advantages, in my opinion. Yes, tourists do have some preferential treatment in certain places and some services, but I only have to speak to confirm my foreigner origin. And dress makes you also a target for the many "predators" who live out of tourism, from taxi drivers to pick pockets, from con artists to kidnappers.

That said, my main objection is esthetic. Why can you wear things you would not want anyone you know see you on? It may help to get into the holiday spirit, but in that case I am not sure you will enjoy holidays anyway.

I suppose there must be a simple reason, and I just cannot see it, but I will keep on wearing long trousers and shoes, and reserve the hiking boots for when I go hiking, and the shorts for tropical weather or hiking in summer.
  ¶ 11:50 PM 0 comments

  My kind of place

When I visit an interesting city, one where I will be spending some time, but short, I like to have a literary reference to that same city. It helps to picture the inhabitants, to know what places matter, besides the art or history, and inversely, it enhances the enjoyment of the book when you know what places they are talking of.

Sometimes I take the book with me, such as "Midnight in the garden of good and evil" when visiting Savannah, others I find the book there (Irving's "Tales of the Alhambra") and some cities take different books, depending on the time and my own disposition (London, Paris...). And a few times a book makes me wish to visit a city, sometimes succesfully, sometimes not.

But it is not of books I wanted to write today, but of bookshops. In most "interesting" cities there is one bookshop, specialized in long term expatriates, usually English speaking, but I have also found a Spanish one in New York or a French one in Edingurgh.

I generally love these places. The people usually like talking with foreigners, there are second hand books at a good price, you are expected to browse, sometimes while having something to drink, and there is a good collection of books about what to do in the city. Not to mention the hints and suggestions you can pick up there.

The book for Prague was Hasek's "The good soldier Svejk", the bookshop, The Globe (www.globebookstore.cz), that has evolved from a tea parlour to a coffee shop and internet cafe, as well as a book trading house. Some books have passed through more that five hands, as the partially erased pencil notes and lowering price indicate.

The coffee was too British for my liking, but the scones were real scones. And the armchair was old but comfortable. So besides reading the news, and getting Svejk, I also got a couple more books. Paul Auster's City of Illusions, because a friend liked it, and I have to read more of him, and the "Leadership secrets of Attila the Hun", because it was cheap and there.

  ¶ 10:29 AM 0 comments

  Photography

Recently, talking with a friend and exchanging photos, I became aware of how few photographs I have, either of myself or of people who have really mattered in my life. I suddenly was both overwhelmed by the richness of some of those photographs I was being shown, and by how limited was my choice of photographs to show back. And those few I have, they have been gifts, given usually by the one who made the photograph, not the choice ones (with a few exceptions).

Most of my life I have justified this lack of interest in photography indicating that I do not wish to have my memories shaped by a photo. That also meant that I preferred my own memories to souvenirs showing a place. Just as long as you can communicate using words perfectly, or you just do not share your life's events with anyone else, that is no big trouble. I know my memory is not perfect, but it is good enough, and some things are better forgotten anyway.

However, as in many things, the internet is changing this. Suddenly I am communicating with people who do not share many of the images I take for granted. And as the common ground diminishes, the importance of images as bridges increase. All my friends know most landmarks in town, and most are familiar also with Madrid and Barcelone. But how can you discuss Gaudi without images, if you lack also the memory image?

Add working with a foreign language, with foreign standards also on the understanding side, and the value of images improve even more. And they are also important for me as communication of other's ideas and experiences, so a simple simmetry makes me value their possible usefulness from my side.

So more and more I feel the urge to get a camera, something I haven't done since 1984. Using my wife's work as a crutch, or using her camera at times can solve the problem at times, but it is not a good solution.

So in a way, you, my readers, are the reason I may bring a lot of images from Prague, and even get in the near future a camera. Not as a memory aid, but as a communication aid. A sharing tool.

  ¶ 11:07 PM 0 comments

  Playing on your own

I have been a rolegamer for more than twenty years. In that time, as it is bounf to happen, there have been many periods where I did not have people to play with. That also happened because, once you stop being a teenager, you realise most gamers you deal with are not people you would share drinks with. So you also start being selective with the kind of people you share your time with, invite home, feed, and normally confide mediated personas of yourself.

That meant that I preferred to keep track of my old buddies, or even stop playing, instead of playing with unknown people. It requires quite a lot of trust, and I do not feel the urge as strong as that.

In the meanwhile I continued to buy games, and specially game modules. In all games I read, I always created a character (a few times several of them), and then just took them adventuring.

It is a very masturbatory practice, but also in between the show your own adventure book and adapting a book to a script. You use a setting and conditions created by the writer(s), add characters, dialogue, roleplaying the characters, some die rolling (not always) and a resolution.

In a way, it is also an exercise in multiple personality, filling many roles at the same time, and knowing that the referee's favorites will usually have nothing to fear.

That is why I prefer to add some die rolling, to keep myself somehow honest. Also the adventure must fit the characters, and only a few adventures are well written enough to be used as such and to require minimal mind jumping.

The end result is like a personal screening of a movie with your favorite characters as the stars. Some characters are used only in an adventure, some are recurring characters. Some of those evolve as the years pass by (and I change myself), usually becoming world weary and showing interest in some things beyond the hard cash that motivated them in their youth.

Sometimes I wonder on that stable of people, living in my head, getting out more and more rarely (as I dedicate less time to games and more to other interests). Sometimes I revisit their exploits, specially those that really moved me (and there have been a few, spread through several days, where I managed to really break the third wall and feel the adventure). Just like seeing again a movie you loved. Or those Roleplaying games you loved.

Which is why the masturbation comparison is apt. It is safe, and almost always guaranteed to be fun, but playing with others you get to meet people.


  ¶ 1:27 PM 0 comments

  Baggage

Yes, how do you prepare your baggage for a trip? How much you carry?

At home we have a serious problem, in that we have totally opposed philosophies concerning baggage. My wife already is planning what to wear, has been putting clothes all around the place, has been testing combinations, checking weather predictions and made me get her three different pieces of luggage to carry all she plans on taking.

Meanwhile, I am just worrying I will have enough clean underwear for a daily change, and would pack my bag one hour before leaving if she would not get so nervous that she will make me have it ready the evening before. She has already gone shopping for food and items for the trip twice, while I had to wait till today to make sure the mobile phone will work on Prague.

I am not saying any of the approaches is better than the other, but at least mine is less stressful, as I just worry one day, instead of one week. I have lost count of how many clothes have passed through our house, intended for travelling, and then have gone back to the store, having failed in some respect.

But who will be wearing new shoes, in a trip where we plan on walking eight hours a day?
  ¶ 7:02 PM 0 comments

  "Dolce far niente"

That is what holidays should have for me, at least in small doses. The sweet doing nothing. Starting the day with the only worry if I will cook or eat out, or even get the food delivered home. No time to get up, or to go to asleep. Discuss the day ahead with an espresso while my wife suns herself in the balcony. Discuss any activities we will be doing together, knowing that a phone call can arrange things easily in a different way.

The only obligations I have imposed myself this week is to cook at least a meal a day, trying to do something I have never tried before, and to walk a couple of hours every day, as training for Prague. For the rest, I read, look for books, look for libraries, wash my brother's dishes (he broke an arm in a bad bike fall), listen to music, play computer games, and start a book database now that we probably will have enough shelving space for a year.

In a way, I may be doing more useful things that many normal days. And I still sleep only 7-8 hours a day. But the lack of pressure is the real pleasure. Knowing that I can really do nothing, and it will not matter. All the things that had to be done were finished during the week-end.

It is surprising how pleasant it is to be downtown, with no urge, no pressure, no need. Just a pleasant tiredness in the legs, and the doubt of whether to sit on a bench, or go to a café.

Satori must be feeling like that the whole time.   ¶ 3:58 PM 0 comments

  Synchronicity

I do have a tendency to feel synchronous with other people. Part is accidental. If you think a lot, and talk/write a lot, that increases enormously the possiblities for coincidence. But when you start to get a much higher hit/noise ratio with certain people than with others, there is some kind of connection.

The internet also helps a lot, as that speeds up communication while leaving also a trace that can be verified. That is important to see a true synchrony is on, instead of simple prediction of thought patterns on one side.

As I mentioned, it happens to me quite often. In a way, I suspect it is related to my lack of empathy. This lack of empathy makes me think in terms of models and patterns, and it makes it possible to try to think in the way of someone I admire. Because that is also a common trait, in those people I get synchronous with, are people whose ideas I like, or even I identify with (obvious, if we are going to think the same at the same time) before the synchrony manifests.

Sometimes the synchrony is limited to a certain subject, as happened with a coworker at the lab, where we could predict each other ideas and conclusions, and even plan each other experiments', but it did not extend to personal matters.

Other times it starts small and spreads, as both the knowledge of the person and the subjects we cover broadens. It sometimes reaches the level where most communication leaves the verbal realm, and it just requires a few markers, to confirm that the thought trains are on the same track. It is an uncanny feeling, to share entire concepts and difficult situations with a few interjections and three words. And sometimes again, when we are already at that level, an idea gets out of track, without noticing, with humorous or tragic results.

I seem to connect better with women than with men, at least on a statistical level. Or at least I seem to need more things in common with men to get to the synchrony level. However, I seldom get synchronous with people who share my life. Then I can easily predict ideas or thoughts, but this reaching the same place independently happens more with people I talk or meet often, but not too often. I wonder if it is deliberately disconnected in cases of living together, to keep some feeling of intimacy or independence?

I like seeing all the angles, and understanding all positions, and there are only a few items where I have a definite, fixed opinion. I suspect this flexibility is also behind this synchrony, as generally the people I synchronize with are people I also consider flexible and inquisitive. In that way, we influence each other, till we get to the telepathy level. Those that require less cues are ones I inmediately feel close to. Some kind of intimacy with strangers, as what can be more intimate than knowing how they think? Which again begs the question, why did I feel this only with one of the women I have loved, and the one I shared less time with?

I suspect it is a protective measure, to keep the relation fresh, to keep the other unique. Or maybe I just did not choose the right partners those times...
  ¶ 12:12 AM 0 comments