There was a girl...

Named Blanca (it means white). She was the youngest daughter of my parents' best friends, a long time ago. She was two years younger than me, and we moved away when I was seven, so I only have a vague memory of a blond girl, crying. Her older sister, four years my senior, lived in another world. Her two brothers, one my senior of a few months, the other my junior again of one year, were the ones that I wanted to be friends with.

We had a limited, just in holidays contact, but despite our parents' closeness we never were close, my brother and me, with their self sufficient quartet. Maybe our parents competing through their children's feats made it too difficult to become friends... Anyway we never really clicked in.

When I was thirteen I spent the summer in a language study camp. It was the alternative for those parents that wanted their kids to learn a language without sending them abroad. At the time English was just a pastime fo me, another subject I was good at without much effort. My father was quite aware that it would become a must in the future, but my mother thought I was too young to go abroad. So there I was, an extremely shy boy, with no good clothes nor any social skills, in what was functionally a posh full board school with minimal learning requirements. Her parents sent Blanca too, while her brothers tried the real thing.

I confess I almost keep no memories of that month. We were in the path of the falling Skylab. I became briefly a bully in my attempts to integrate myself with my companions. And I helped her when I could because she was the only person I trusted. Looking back and talking with her family, it seems she had a crush on me at the time, but it just could not be, as I did not see her as something else than the sister of the competition.

Then we stopped seeing each other, this time because it was her family who moved, really far away. Next time we met it was my parents' silver anniversary, so I was 24 (very proper, born ten months after the marriage) and she was 22. Impossible not to notice her this time round. Big, blond, beautiful... And so cosmopolitan, from running all around the world, that despite all my improvements I felt almost as alien as those first days at the camp. And yet that gorgeous creature really wanted to spend time with me. And not only aweing me with tales of Colombian bodyguards and failed kidnappings in Brazil, but also listening with something like envy about rail trips through the shattered Berlin wall and my budding doctoral ambitions.

Once again it was fated we would not get to know each other. She got a job as a translator (her ambition was to work at UN) at the EU, Bruxelles. We even exchanged some letters but potentiality does not help much with correspondence.

When I moved to France, we made plans to meet, as we were closer. However I soon got distracted, and time flew by. When I finally went to Bruxelles, for personal reasons tied to those distractions, she had moved to Strasbourg. The distractions proved to be just that, distractions, and when I was alone, with an approaching deadline to return to a home that no longer felt like mine, she got a job at Fontainebleau, near Paris. So I finally went to visit her (I was the one with a car), and we spent a long week end driving around the Loire, visiting chateaux and enjoying life.

Once again we wrote letters for a while. But it did not last, once again. No real reason but that we both had something else to do.

We met a couple of times when she returned back to Spain, to help her elder sister (with mental troubles) and her mother. She did not come to my marriage, and that marked some kind of before and after.

I missed her health problems, which ended with brain damage, causing epilepsy. And just when a new treatment seemed to let her return to a normal life, a few days ago she died on her sleep.

I was travelling, so I missed her funeral. Missing her one last time.

It is a terrible thing when someone you know dies. When she is younger than you, it fills you with such a feeling of waste. There is a terrible feeling of lost opportunities, missed chances and fated happenings. Anger at what could have happened better than it actually did. Memories of shared moments, bittersweet. That feeling of crossing ships in the fog, that does not do anything to reduce the pain.

The feeling of loss fades quickly. The memories, however, persist longer. This is my tribute to what could have been, and what was, that slice of shared life, and to her love of life, even if, looking back, I barely knew her.  ¶ 12:01 AM

  Bibendum revisited

I have to add a short entry to say that in the previous post, Bibendum, I was wrong about a few things bib'-wise.

In my last visit, this week, some things were different. I found out the Michelin souvenir store, which has Bibendums of all ages (from the mummy-like to the current space-suity incarnation), materials, sizes and subjects. So you can find Bibendum in Clermont Ferrand.

This time the meeting was commercial rather than technical, so instead of the Technological center we went to the corporate headquarters. So there I went, striding confidently into a huge reception, with two nice hostesses and a not-nice security guard, paneled in tropical hardwoods and local volcanic rock. Just think this all took place in French.

"I have a meeting with Mr. X at 2 pm and I wondered if I could get my car inside as there is no place to park around here..."

"No, no, sir, inside parking is only for Michelin personnel."

"Top Michelin personnel" (that would explain the thousands of cars parked haphazardly around the HQ) muttered her companion, probably one of those parking outside.

"Can you tell me what company you belong to?"

After checking that neither my name nor my company appeared in the short five name list they had they started to get anxious.

"But you are not on the list. Are you sure of the time and the date?"

"Who are you meeting?"

"Wait, isn't him in Purchasing?" I confirm that my Japanese host is indeed in Purchasing. General relief follows.

"Oh well, they never come here. They are... outside."

Follow instructions on how to get to a building with its own small parking area, lying on the surrounding wall but outside it. I suppose it is because they receive hundreds of outside visitors every day...

After a relaxed discussion with the security personnel (outsourced rather than Michelin like those at the main entrance) I just meet my host and we get to the meeting room. The window had a big sign in English and French:

"This window is outside the enclosed Michelin perimeter. Therefore close the blinds before using this room."

Bravely my host said that he preferred to hold the meeting in French. As he has been in France only a few months we had to switch to English to avoid misunderstandings. But standard policy is to hold meetings, if possible, in French. Even if you are Japanese with only six months of French study.

At the end of the meeting he cleaned up all notes, waste paper and possible information sources, leaving a spotless room.

As I commented that I had been trying to contact him to confirm the meeting time and place, he mentioned that mobile phones did not work in the building... Electronic security. I felt as if the Spook Country had come to visit me.

Plenty of Bibendums also in the exile building of the purchase department, by the way, but no gifts for suppliers.

This time I slept at Millau itself, and checked the road the viaduct has replaced, and it certainly was a criminal road, as the road hugs a 500 meter cliff drop before rising up again. Beautiful and relaxed, however, going down at 40 kph...  ¶ 2:47 PM

  The Imp of the Perverse

The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow, and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the principle. To-morrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable, craving for delay. (Poe, The Imp of the Perverse)

Now, Bob, who'd been observing Jack carefully for many years, had observed that when these moments arrived, Jack was almost invariably possessed by something that Bob had heard about in Church called the Imp of the Perverse. Bob was convinced that the Imp of the Perverse rode invisibly on Jack's shoulder whispering bad ideas into his ear, and that the only counterbalance was Bob himself, standing alongsides counseling good sense, prudence, caution, and other Puritan virtues. (Stephenson, Quicksilver)

I suppose we all have felt that sudden impulse to do something foolish, or even worse, outright damaging, without any clear benefit. Something that also is the contrary of what you would normally do, rather tha something you would like to but do not dare? That cannot be a sign of rational behavior. However it does not seem like an instinctive remnant either. So, where does it come from? What is the point of losing control so totally at certain moments?

There are, I think, good reasons for it. In a way it is a bet against the odds, just to make sure that change and individuality remain in the human mix. Or rather, than the conscious is an after-the-fact veneer over what is a roiling mass of desires, instincts and logic.

That is not to say that we cannot control our subconscious. There are serious differences between killing your neighbour without any aparent reason (rather than to take up his land, for instance) and eating an extra hamburger or making a pass to your Maths teacher, that you do not really like.

These impulses are, for me, those actions that our conscious is unable to justify afterwards, which is it most demanding work, keeping the illusion of a continuous self in control of our life. In a way, these are the moments where the illusion fails and we notice the continuous me that we believe in is more of a passenger than a driver. No, that is unfair to most people who make an effort to live a good life. The self is like the Prime Minister with a crowd of rebellious commons deciding the actions. Most of the time the PM gets what she wants, and even when she loses, she can influence things. But some times the crowd just pulls a surprise majority and blindside the PM. Who then has to explain what happened then, without confessing that for a while she was powerless.

Keeping this metaphor that I am liking more and more (I am sure we all know people whose self is so tight controlled as Ms. Thatcher, while others lose it as Mr. Heath), people can just send the PM away for a while, through the use of many recreative substances, and let the commons decide freely. But they are the same commons as every day, so they would not differ much either from what they could do.

Because the imp is not about doing something you want to but would not dare, it is about something that totally goes against what you want, or think you want. It is not about trying to kiss the woman you have a crush on, but telling her you are busy when she finally invites you to her house for coffee. To be perverse, it has to be unexplainable to the conscious you. The first is an impulse, the second a perverse imp-ulse.

Although the subconscious notices far many things than the conscious, I would hesitate before considering the imp-ulse (apophenia; impulse comes from Latin and imp from Old German) may be found to be the right choice, later on. We have basic instincts and unresolved anger, fear or envy shouting from the sides, so yes, sometimes it will come off for the better. Most often it will not, as it is not an unresolved desire, it is deliberate sabotage of yourself.

So, I appreciate them as a show of humanity's complex nature, yet I accept that seldom anything good comes out of them. When I was younger I would have loved to eradicate them from my life and become a nice, predictable machine. Now I see them as a source of change, of introspection about what is going in, and even what areas should be worked in the subconscious to change a bit. Embrace the fallibility of the mechanism, because it proves you are something besides a mechanism. And realise that you are your own enemy, and that you need to understand and fight yourself to become something else, or even to keep just being you.  ¶ 10:33 AM

  Blindness

(A slice of my everyday work, focusing of course in the danger and romance of it)

My work requires frequent contact with dangerous chemicals, and not only in a lab, where the amounts are quite small, but also on the plant, when you can have a few hundred tons of corrosive material under your feet or a container with a few hundred kilograms of toxic material hanging over your head. I know it is foolish, and I have an old draft hanging around here about the imp of the perverse, but when you get at that level, the basic protection equipment (safety glasses, gloves...) just do not feel adequate. So I seldom wear them when I am out on the plant. We do have, and I have sometimes used, full body protection suits with facial masks (and optional breather), but you just cannot wear that for a long period. The risk from falling down the stairs or suffering heatstroke would be higher than any protection you would get.

So, from the title I suppose you have rightly deduced that an accident happened and somehow it involves my eyes. And you are right. I was checking a pump that I suspect was adding water to a certain chemical as the pump was being used to unload silo trucks of the stuff. Of that I was sure, but the amount of dillution was too high, 600 liters per silo truck, or 5 liters per minute of pump operation. The water is used to make a perfect seal on the pump and to ensure the chemical, quite mild as these products go but a well known steel (even stainless) corrosive, did not eat up the pump. 1 liter per minute was considered acceptable, when we first discussed the set-up, and that is what the production foreman told me that was going in. So the mistery was where those extra 480 liters were coming from. My own hypothesis was that even with the pump disconnected the sealing water was still going into the tank, and that is why I was inside a security enclosure poking a pump.

Everything was off, valves on both sides isolated the pump, so my hypothesis seemed consigned to the idea graveyard. I disconnected the inlet water tube to see if the rate was close to the promised 1 liter per minute or higher. I had a one liter plastic bottle for that same purpose. High tech, as you can see. However, rather than the subdued flow I expected while the seal and the pump drained of water, I was hit by a high pressure fan of liquid, from my left leg to my face. My glasses, the normal ones, flew away with the pressure, and while I was still there, being soaked with a mild but not so harmless chemical, I was almost paralyzed. Part of me screamed "The shower!". After all that is what all the safety drills teach you. But the shower is quite far away, outside the security enclosure. The second part of me thought, "Plug the hole!". After what seemed a long time but probably was less than a second (judging by the size of the pool) I simply blocked the hole with my right thumb. There was some pressure and some liquid squeezed through, but it was no more a geyser. By then I had unconsciously tasted the product in my mouth (protocol demands a faceplate inside a security enclosure) and found it to be salty slightly acidic water rather than the tangy strongly acidic taste of the concerned chemical. A bit dangerous but chemists have for a long time identified chemicals by smell and taste, and it is a hard to put down custom. As well, my eyes felt as if I had just taken a swim in the sea, rather than melting and burning (no I do not have a direct experience of that, just a vivid imagination). So, I could not run for the shower without unplugging the hole, and by then I was starting to get an idea of what was happening, which meant the outlet valve was not closing properly, allowing water to flow up the pipe to the tank, but that also meant I could syphon the whole 300 tons content into the floor. So I had to put the water inlet tube back in, or we would have a pretty chemical lagoon by the time someone had suited up and gone inside to plug it. It is not that easy to put a flexible tube in a hole when there is a strong pressure coming from the other way (the pressure from the tube itself was easy, just bend it closed). Like having sex with a limp instrument. And I was starting to feel my eyes were a bit more concerned than a simple sea bath.

In what again seemed like a very long time but probably were a few seconds I recovered my glasses (both for protection from stray drops and to see a bit more clearly what I was doing). The vision field was narrowing and things were glowing softly, which is again a phenomenon I had already experienced after a long day bathing at the beach without goggles. Its familiarity probably kept me from running away. Then a few seconds more and I got it in. Now to push against the pressure till it held, which took two tries. And then, finally, walking fast (never run in an area full of slippery liquid with wet safety shoes. And yes, at least I was wearing safety shoes) to the shower. Since we first installed it I have wondered how it would be to use it fully clothed. After all the time already wasted, on the way to the shower I left my phone, probably the only item that would not enjoy the water. It was a good thing temperature inside the plant was close to 30ºC. I took off my white coat, which had absorbed an unholy amount of chemicals, as it could do more harm than good for the clothes underneath. And I spent five minutes under the water and ten minutes more under the eyewashers. Clock time, as it is easy to get bored and stop early the washing. By then others had seen me so a car was readied to take me to the industrial area medical center, and some dry clothes and towels were waiting for me. I also explained what had happened including the faulty valve that had allowed the pipe to fill up with water with a very small amount of chemical X, dilluted from above. So probably the first 100 liters were almost water, while afterwards it would have been undilluted chemicals and rather than showering I would be on my way straight to the hospital.

The only significant damage, as expected, was to my eyes, as the chemical was so dilluted not to even irritate the skin. The irritated red eyes looked great but hurt quite a bit, and the halo glow around everything was getting so bad I had trouble seeing. A thorough washing with saline solution, three different kinds of drops and back home to stay in the dark with eyes closed, to see how I felt after one night sleep.

It changes things, laying in the dark with closed eyes and an i-pod, compared to the urgent thinking of the previous hours. In the morning we would see if the irritation was all, or if there was permanent damage, and when you are not focused in the here and now, blindness is a very serious reflection matter. Just like not so long ago, with the high fever, I had made a bet that I would come out all right, that I knew what I was doing. And the stake was sight. Maybe the fact that I have worn glasses my whole life makes me aware that you can live perfectly well with imperfect vision, but cornea damage still sounds ominous.

I am an odds man, and fortunately the odds were clearly in my favour, so I managed to sleep, while every few hours putting drops in and taking out the salts leaching out, and feel almost normal in the morning.

But some hours thinking about how it would be to read no more, even to cook no more have clearly not changed me as yesterday I was in the same area again, to check the repairs, with the same eye protection, that is, none.

Blindness at least does not frighten my subconscious. And my conscious goes with the flow.  ¶ 11:51 AM

  Dreaming

Two unrelated ideas, brought together by the common thread of dreams. Maybe sleeping in a strange bed shapes strange dreams as well.

I dreamed two days ago what I would call a "Gibsonian" dream. And it was a very vivid, realistic dream, which would make it also Gibsonian in a literary sense.

While moving around in a big city, I accidentally spotted a couple of individuals shooting VW New Beetles. But the projectiles were GPS tracking transmitters, very small size, and an adhesive head. The men were tracking the New Beetles as if they were an endangered species (which I suppose they are). When spotted, the hunters made a spiel about tracking traffic conditions, path use and detecting the topological constraints of modern cities. Most New Beetle users fell for this ploy, and many volunteered to be "ringed", getting a permanent GPS position marker. Even one who called the police got nowhere as the police indicated that this study was supported by them. Indeed, my new friends confided that it was Law Enforcement was behind the study and that once the procedure was perfected they would start hunting harder and more popular prey, such as Ferraris or Mustangs. The idea was to finally track and even get a good predictive behaviour model for all the cars in the USA (it was right then, with the Mustang and seeing a big overhead map, that I realized where I was). Extending the tracking to other "car species". It left me a bit worried, actually.

The second idea of dreaming comes from a Poetess, María Zambrano, whom I have been reading by chance. For her, and now also for me, so impressed I was, Waking is a rebirth, but also dreaming a dream that is always on, made of the dreams of the other waken people, out of the pure desert of oblivion, remembering first our body, fitting in its quirks with the naturality of long use, then our soul, with its memories, and our life, with its constraints.

And it is true that for me waking up is a three step process. First recovering my body, then the memories, whether the last things I was thinking about before sleep, or whatever dream I was having, and then, only after I make sure this is my body and I am who I think I am, does the pressure of obligation and duty, the limitations we labour under, the constraints that limit our freedom but also make easy the choice of what I do next, fall on me like a ton of bricks and remind me what I have to do...  ¶ 2:42 PM

 



  ¶ 9:08 AM

  Fever

These notes were taken in London while feverish, at some point between 38 and 39ºC, and completed the following day, around 37.5ºC. Some corrections while under the effect of a lot of paracetamol and caffeine. And tons of black sweet licorice. The sugar kept me mobile. Some of the notes were taken on the Stansted Radisson SAS, or on the way back from the airport Boots, after buying the mentioned paracetamol and an electronic thermometer. And yes, many of my notes are in English. Or French. Or Spanish. Often a mix of the three. This time round I had been speaking English non-stop for three days, so English it was. As you can see I can babble in writing.

"Golden Square. I need to sit down a while. I wonder if Gibson was thrown out of here yesterday. Should I mention it is the one with the statue of the Roman emperor? The Starbuck's should nail it. Maybe Milgrim was here too (mobile phone photo). Fever rising, haze increasing. Buy that last gift, recover the luggage."

"How rude those bouncers can be. Rude and polite at the same time. I must look terrible, seeing how the assistant manager reacted. At least he is yelling at them. I love it when you take notes in a small black notebook and people squirm watching you. Nothing better to do while they look for my trolley but to seem mysterious. Or just sick."

"What a lucky break it was to meet ... at the bus. Time flew, so I must have babbled. I hate it when that happens. And now just a little push and I can crash and burn. Burn indeed."

"Two hours sweating and ten sleeping will get me up as good as new. Pity. Free internet. Nice view. But the best will be used. High thread count cotton sheets (should I mention they can cause sheetburn?). A bed big as a room. Will room service find me, dead on that big bed? What if I am wrong and this is terribly contagious and lethal? Later. I need to shut down now."

"When riding the fever nothing hurt, it felt as if a giant hand held and sheltered me. Even the trolley had no weight in the tube. Yet I was tired to the bone. This morning I hurt all over, the trolley is a dead weight, and yet I have enough energy to push it up. Check in overcome, I still keep my overweight hand luggage. Hijacker Zen. Go through customs with an overweight bag slightly larger than the allowed size (all those books...). Fever hangover."

"Success. Probably it was carrying Spook Country on my right hand. Or the state of careless contemplation. The same fuzzy worldview that allowed me contemplate my death without anxiety lets me face down the security control. Fortunately I have left behind yesterday's world of overwhelming warmth and dulled sounds (and ideas). Looks of envy towards my trolley. Sweet victory."

"Good thing I was right with the diagnosis. Going home, now."  ¶ 10:17 AM

  Moleskine, revisited



Checking after the web address change, to see if anonymity really worked, I found out that the former incarnation of these rants had been linked by a blog of moleskine fanatics. To find it just google the former name and moleskine together...

The entry quoted mentioned the loss of my moleskine notebook in a bus at Bergamo, in October 2005. Unfortunately nobody claimed the 10 € reward, so it has to be considered lost. Two weeks later my wife presented me with a new pocket, plain notebook. So far I have managed not to lose or seriously damage this one, even though it travels a lot in restricted or constricting places. Last August the ribbon bookmark parted, but the rest of the book is in quite good shape. Some 100 pages remain, as I am quite sparse in my note taking. Probably the next two posts will come from notes taken in London recently, as I used quite a few pages then.

I also have a 2007 Diary, a friend's gift, but just seeing it saddens me, as unlike the plain notebook it has a restricted, foreordained lifetime. As well I seldom take it on trips, using it instead as a bedtable planner and recorder. So they are like Indiana Jones, out on adventures, and Marcus Brody, staying at home, cataloguing and referencing information.

An advantage of going out, of course, is that you can meet interesting people, as can be seen in the title image.

I always write with a small mechanical pencil, using 0.6 mm leads. Pencil gives me the reassurance that editing is possible, even if I never erase anything, and the small pencil is portable with a greater writing endurance than any small pen, and without the risk of suffering staining mishaps. Fine pencil, small notebook and crabby writing make my notes hard to decypher, something I do not really mind much as I do not refer to them that much. It is the act of writing rather than the notes themselves what fixes ideas or events in my memory.

The Diary is also written with pencil, this time my dual purpose, ball pen/pencil Faber Castell writing implement, which most of the time shares the bed table with it. I do allow others to write on my moleskines with indelible markers, as can be seen again above, but also to note some address or number, but I cannot push myself to do so. Some psychological barrier.

No drawings, ever. My drawing ability goes beyond the negative into the realm of imaginary numbers. I stick with words, which are a good enough tool for my purposes.  ¶ 6:05 PM

  Bibendum

Due to a current development, one that has been my main activity at work for six years, I have been involved with some people at Groupe Michelin, which includes visiting the main technological center in Clermont Ferrand.

Michelin is the most secretive of companies in a secretive business, tyres, where most technicians acknowledge skill goes beyong Science into Art and even Black Magic. And then they say little else. They harrumph a lot, too, and make very short powerpoint presentations, which at least is honest.

Companies spend fortunes in computer models and ab-initio calculations, but in the end, the only way to know how a compound or new design will behave is to build a set of tyres and make them roll for many kilometers, and see how they cope. And the subjective experience of the driver can be almost as important as how deep the grooves are after 100.000 Km. Or how it felt when they spread pine needles or artificial snow on the track.

That makes homologation quite a patience game. We give a sample, have a meeting (at the special "meeting building", outside the site, so you do not get to set foot inside R&D), in two months time we get a green (or red) light from the laboratory, and then comes the driving test. It takes some time to drive 100000 Km. Normally, seeing how long we have to wait for the next set of reports, four months, which is 800 Km a day, but when there is pressure from above they can put more than one driver shift on the case, so results can be had in a couple months. The last one muct have interested someone, as we got the results in three months (and then had to wait two months to arrange a good date for all the people that were going to attend the meeting).

Outside the corporate headquarters and some tourist souvenir shops, it is difficult to spot Bibendum in Bibendum city. Some marketing consultant must have thought he is not cool enough. I wonder if that happened in 2003. However you still see him everywhere in France, except at Clermont-Ferrand.

Another example of the degree of secrecy involved. If a production machine has troubles and they have to get a technician from the manufacturer, they make a way with screens from the entry point to the machine, that is isolated and surrounded by tall drapes, and then the way out through all the same screens. While the mechanic is there all activities on that building stop. If a computer is necessary, it is a freshly formatted one, with just the required software (usually a bit less than the necessary ones).

Another difference is that it is the only big tyre manufacturer where you can meet people with international responsibilities that do not speak English. Speaking French is a big plus in getting favours. Although as they are forbidden both inviting you or accepting any invitation (unless they are either in Sales or Purchasing, who are tainted by the Devil already so they can wallow in temptation) there are not many favors you can get. And all the memorabilia (including several varieties of Bibendum) is reserved for customers, not suppliers. We are the ones supposed to be providing memorabilia of our own.

Which probably explains why my only Bibendum is on a "Bib' test", a plastic piece to check if your tyre grooves are in good shape, but also could serve to check how high you are in the Cayce Pollard susceptibility scale.

The food is good there, so I may have got some rolls of fat from the Michelin man as well. Souvenir de Clermont Ferrand!  ¶ 7:17 PM 0 comments

  Psychophant

The origins of the name are too obscure for normal people. A chemical company I deal with named Degussa made a mascot for their silica business named Silefant, making an elephant out of SiO2, the chemical formula for silica (S is the trunk, i the eye and a tusk, O the round body, 2 the short tail). I have always had a peculiar weakness for that weirdly geeky mascot. But it would say probably too much about myself, and be too obscure for general use if I used either the name of the image. By the way, I will not post any links. Google it yourself if you are interested enough.

Then, when the time came to create a mask for myself in the web, that felt appropiate enough for someone who would not be me, but someone related to myself. Outright stealing did not feel right, so I planned to modify the name. Very quickly I had found too many alternate meanings I liked, sycophant (a servile self-seeking flatterer), which felt the opposite of myself, the contraction of Psycho elephant, as I was still thinking of using an elephant avatar. And of course the crowd’s favorite, Psychopath. So was Psychophant’s name born. The personality came quickly behind, as I noticed that unless with an elephant avatar nobody would make the elephant connection but it felt like a Psycho Fan. Therefore he/I became a stalker, a vocal fan, a psychotic (rather than psychopathic) poster, and a fanatic supporter of my friends. I used an old pixelated ram as an avatar because it was close to but totally different from the inspirational elephant.

Googling the name, we can see that with enough people originality is lost, so there are a few hundreds of people who reached the same noun, from different starting places. This just presents my own personal way to Psychophanthood.  ¶ 5:07 PM

  Shock

In the same way that anger made me stop my short lived blogging revival, anger makes me start again. The reason why this anger makes me start writing again to what should be by now an empty auditorium is because while last time anger was directed clearly towards the blogger people, this time round the anger is directed to myself, so this is in some way an attempt to deal with that anger in a non-destructive way.

To complicate matters I cannot say why I am angry, because it is not my secret, even if I feel like headbanging a wall right now. In fitting with the restart I have adjusted the blog closer with my internet persona, and less with my real persona. I would blame William Gibson for that. Rather than blending my virtual and physical personas, which was the original intention of my London trip (with the excuse of hearing him talk and getting his signature), they have become two deliberately separate entities. Because the worlds are getting closer in terms of scope but the rules are becoming more and more different. So to really fit in the virtual requires a totally different set that the real. The closer they are, clearer it is that they do not follow the same rules. And rather than being comfortable in one and ill-fitting in the other, I will try to fit everywhere.

Another consequence of these reflections is that, at least for a while, I will lay low in my usual internet haunts. E-mail still works, so I wonder who, besides the Usual Suspects, will e-mail me. A time for reevaluation, desintoxication and simple mental rest. With a non-accidental open window, so I can deceive myself that rather than talking to myself, I am talking with somebody else.  ¶ 5:05 PM