Have a horrible, horrible cold. I haven't felt this crappy in years. Funny thing is, a coupla weeks ago i was a little down, too -- not much, just some stomach upset; could have gone on teaching, but decided not too at the time. According to school law we have a day each year to take off if we simply feel the need to rest, and i did just that. But now, when i'm feeling so crap crap crappy, i feel i can't not show up. That probably means i'm not in such bad shape, after all.
Anyways, seems like half the student body is under the weather, too. Blah!
--------
...'Student body'. The one at this school has 200 heads, 400 arms and 400 legs. A monster no mythology has ever produced.
English IS a funny language!!!
Monday, January 31, 2005
Saturday, January 29, 2005
Communion denied to gay catholics
Just take a look at this article...
http://www.sweenytod.com/rno/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=828
http://www.sweenytod.com/rno/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=828
At the confessional box: a micro-play
-Forgive me father, for i have sinned. No, wait: though you will think i've sinned, father, i don't need you to forgive me.
-[After a few moments of silence] That is for God to decide, my child.
-What is? Whether i have sinned or not, or whether you should forgive me?
-Whether you have sinned or not. I cannot forgive you if you do not wish me to. That would mean you're not repentant.
-Not necessarily. This thing that i want to talk to you about i do not consider a sin, so i'm indeed not repentant for it. But there could conceivably come to you a sinner who's so sorry for his sins, who thinks them so big that she or he cannot believe they should be forgiven. Couldn't that happen?
-Yes, you're right, it could. I'm sorry.
-It's not big deal, father. And thank you. It's cool you're admitting to a mistake. But if you're fallible, how can you have the authority to forgive or not any sin?
-[After a few moments of silence] That is for God to decide, my child.
-What is? Whether i have sinned or not, or whether you should forgive me?
-Whether you have sinned or not. I cannot forgive you if you do not wish me to. That would mean you're not repentant.
-Not necessarily. This thing that i want to talk to you about i do not consider a sin, so i'm indeed not repentant for it. But there could conceivably come to you a sinner who's so sorry for his sins, who thinks them so big that she or he cannot believe they should be forgiven. Couldn't that happen?
-Yes, you're right, it could. I'm sorry.
-It's not big deal, father. And thank you. It's cool you're admitting to a mistake. But if you're fallible, how can you have the authority to forgive or not any sin?
Another article for the school magazine
THE MODEL UNITED NATIONS BANS GAY MARRIAGES WORLDWIDE!!!
MUN finished today. Someone told me that a resolution was passed to make all governments ban homosexual marriages within their territories. This means that, if the M in MUN wasn’t there, i would as of today have to wonder when the next resolution would come. You know, the one that doesn’t allow me to be your teacher, or the one that says that i have to live in special neighborhoods, or wear a sign stitched to my clothing, or be castrated or lobotomized.
Fortunately the M is there, and i can go on teaching… With the peace of mind brought by knowing that there’s a substantial majority among first year students who feels morally empowered to make such decisions affecting my life. Now that’s a relief!
Yes, i do feel a bit threatened, even with the M where it is. But not all that threatened. Seriously. What i am definitely not is offended. On the contrary, i really appreciate the fact that this issue is being discussed openly and i will welcome anyone who wants to talk about it personally. When i was your age, many of my classmates in highschool wouldn’t even touch the topic of homosexuality (other than to insult homosexuals), for fear of being thought homosexual themselves. Heck, even i, being gay, felt that way! So things have changed for the better, in my view.
Of course, there’s still a long way to go. For instance, how many of you feel comfortable about approaching someone who is lesbian, gay or bisexual and asking them what homosexuality is about? Have you ever wondered how someone who is directly affected by these issues views the whole thing? Is it fair to stay with what you read or heard about the topic without having talked about it with someone who supposedly embodies what you heard or read?
Maybe you don’t want to talk about any of this because you can’t understand why people do talk about it. I mean, why does someone have to blabber about her/his sexuality in MY face? Are you trying to recruit me or something? Do you want to make ME gay, too?
Let me make this very clear: NOT AT ALL! But i do have to be in your face, because if i don’t, there are more chances that you’ll go on thinking people like me are evil, sick, sinners, child-molesters, etc.. And i have to scream and shout, so that it’s not so easy for you to give me your version of cure or punishment. And i have to be visible and ask for my rights, so that you won’t try to tell me who i can and cannot love and partner with, what kind of jobs i should and should not have, or whatever (you might still try and do all these things, but at least not without me saying my bit).
If all these words coming and going make you uncomfortable, let me tell you: i myself am not all that thrilled about having to talk publicly or write about my sexuality. I very often find myself wondering how knowledge of my being gay affects the perception others have of me. Puerile as this behavior may be, my mind sometimes concentrates on this issue to the point of impairing my ability to communicate with others (“Is s/he thinking right now that i’m gay? What will s/he think about my saying this in light of my being gay? How do i say this so that it is not misinterpreted and taken to fit this or that gay stereotype?”)
Yes, my shoulders have more chips than any 3000 year old Egyptian statue, yet reason (not always in command) tells me they shouldn’t. After all, if you’re heterosexual, you display your sexuality publicly all the time: you walk hand in hand with your significant other, you introduce them as such to your friends, you comment on how attractive someone is, you watch movies and TV shows where your sexuality is portrayed as natural and supreme, and you have institutions such as marriage that validate your sexuality.
Yet if a couple shares the same gender, all of these behaviors are viewed as surprising, shocking or even criminal by many individuals and societies (in some countries punishable by death). Thus, artificial as it may feel in a society that is not used to it, a space must be created where homosexuality is visible as the kind of normal human behavior it is.
Anyways, going back to the MUN resolution about banning gay marriages on a global scale, i can’t help wondering whether the vote you cast on this issue was meant to reflect your own opinions, or rather those of the country you were representing. Did you research attitudes towards homosexuality in those countries before voting, or did you decide in accordance to your own ideas?
And what do you think: would it be understandable if my own attitude towards you (as individuals and as a group) were to change according to the answer you gave to the previous questions? It really wouldn’t be that difficult to change the way i think about you; i don't need to wait for an answer. In fact, it’s useless to deny it, to a certain extent, it has already changed. But don’t worry, o can guarantee it won’t affect my behavior as your teacher.
A lot of other questions come to mind, too. This is precisely what an exercise such as MUN should do for you. Consider the following, for instance: should there be a global organization trying to impose moral views that supersede those of individual people, cultures or nations? If so, what should its guidelines be? I mean, what are the parameters a certain practice must fit into in order to be declared universally despicable, damaging or violating societies, individuals and/or their rights and interests?
Personally i do believe there should be such an organization, but before it makes any decision, the parameters should be thoroughly discussed… I doubt it would be easy to come to a decision on what those parameters should be, but that same difficulty is an important indicator: issues such as this cannot be taken lightly.
Which, in my opinion, is exactly the opposite of what happened this afternoon.
MUN finished today. Someone told me that a resolution was passed to make all governments ban homosexual marriages within their territories. This means that, if the M in MUN wasn’t there, i would as of today have to wonder when the next resolution would come. You know, the one that doesn’t allow me to be your teacher, or the one that says that i have to live in special neighborhoods, or wear a sign stitched to my clothing, or be castrated or lobotomized.
Fortunately the M is there, and i can go on teaching… With the peace of mind brought by knowing that there’s a substantial majority among first year students who feels morally empowered to make such decisions affecting my life. Now that’s a relief!
Yes, i do feel a bit threatened, even with the M where it is. But not all that threatened. Seriously. What i am definitely not is offended. On the contrary, i really appreciate the fact that this issue is being discussed openly and i will welcome anyone who wants to talk about it personally. When i was your age, many of my classmates in highschool wouldn’t even touch the topic of homosexuality (other than to insult homosexuals), for fear of being thought homosexual themselves. Heck, even i, being gay, felt that way! So things have changed for the better, in my view.
Of course, there’s still a long way to go. For instance, how many of you feel comfortable about approaching someone who is lesbian, gay or bisexual and asking them what homosexuality is about? Have you ever wondered how someone who is directly affected by these issues views the whole thing? Is it fair to stay with what you read or heard about the topic without having talked about it with someone who supposedly embodies what you heard or read?
Maybe you don’t want to talk about any of this because you can’t understand why people do talk about it. I mean, why does someone have to blabber about her/his sexuality in MY face? Are you trying to recruit me or something? Do you want to make ME gay, too?
Let me make this very clear: NOT AT ALL! But i do have to be in your face, because if i don’t, there are more chances that you’ll go on thinking people like me are evil, sick, sinners, child-molesters, etc.. And i have to scream and shout, so that it’s not so easy for you to give me your version of cure or punishment. And i have to be visible and ask for my rights, so that you won’t try to tell me who i can and cannot love and partner with, what kind of jobs i should and should not have, or whatever (you might still try and do all these things, but at least not without me saying my bit).
If all these words coming and going make you uncomfortable, let me tell you: i myself am not all that thrilled about having to talk publicly or write about my sexuality. I very often find myself wondering how knowledge of my being gay affects the perception others have of me. Puerile as this behavior may be, my mind sometimes concentrates on this issue to the point of impairing my ability to communicate with others (“Is s/he thinking right now that i’m gay? What will s/he think about my saying this in light of my being gay? How do i say this so that it is not misinterpreted and taken to fit this or that gay stereotype?”)
Yes, my shoulders have more chips than any 3000 year old Egyptian statue, yet reason (not always in command) tells me they shouldn’t. After all, if you’re heterosexual, you display your sexuality publicly all the time: you walk hand in hand with your significant other, you introduce them as such to your friends, you comment on how attractive someone is, you watch movies and TV shows where your sexuality is portrayed as natural and supreme, and you have institutions such as marriage that validate your sexuality.
Yet if a couple shares the same gender, all of these behaviors are viewed as surprising, shocking or even criminal by many individuals and societies (in some countries punishable by death). Thus, artificial as it may feel in a society that is not used to it, a space must be created where homosexuality is visible as the kind of normal human behavior it is.
Anyways, going back to the MUN resolution about banning gay marriages on a global scale, i can’t help wondering whether the vote you cast on this issue was meant to reflect your own opinions, or rather those of the country you were representing. Did you research attitudes towards homosexuality in those countries before voting, or did you decide in accordance to your own ideas?
And what do you think: would it be understandable if my own attitude towards you (as individuals and as a group) were to change according to the answer you gave to the previous questions? It really wouldn’t be that difficult to change the way i think about you; i don't need to wait for an answer. In fact, it’s useless to deny it, to a certain extent, it has already changed. But don’t worry, o can guarantee it won’t affect my behavior as your teacher.
A lot of other questions come to mind, too. This is precisely what an exercise such as MUN should do for you. Consider the following, for instance: should there be a global organization trying to impose moral views that supersede those of individual people, cultures or nations? If so, what should its guidelines be? I mean, what are the parameters a certain practice must fit into in order to be declared universally despicable, damaging or violating societies, individuals and/or their rights and interests?
Personally i do believe there should be such an organization, but before it makes any decision, the parameters should be thoroughly discussed… I doubt it would be easy to come to a decision on what those parameters should be, but that same difficulty is an important indicator: issues such as this cannot be taken lightly.
Which, in my opinion, is exactly the opposite of what happened this afternoon.
Friday, January 28, 2005
Rashomon and MUN resolution
My favorite Kurosawa movie. Epistemology, a view into the psyche of post WWII Japan, a boost to my faith in humanity.
More interesting than the movie itself was the discussion Johnny, Azzam, Mariteria and me had after the film. Won't transcribe it here 'cause i wanna go to bed, but basically M & A were angry and frustrated at kids for their reactions to the movie (laughed in the wrong places, for instance). I personally thought they were overreacting, but that's that.
Albín told me tonight that at the Model UN today a resolution was passed to ban gay marriages on a global scale.
Goes to show how good at protecting human rights the real UN is.
More interesting than the movie itself was the discussion Johnny, Azzam, Mariteria and me had after the film. Won't transcribe it here 'cause i wanna go to bed, but basically M & A were angry and frustrated at kids for their reactions to the movie (laughed in the wrong places, for instance). I personally thought they were overreacting, but that's that.
Albín told me tonight that at the Model UN today a resolution was passed to ban gay marriages on a global scale.
Goes to show how good at protecting human rights the real UN is.
Protesting nationalism
A good way to undermine nationalism and other divisive ideologies would be to trivialize their symbols.
Wear a Palestinian scarf around your midriff one day, and pretend to be Daryl Hannah in Attack of the 50 foot woman. Next day pick any two flags (largish) and fashion for yourself a toga: one flag in back, one in front. If you chose, for instance, the US flag for the back, you could sit on the stars and stripes; and if you had the israeli flag in front and you're a man, there could be a nice bump at crotch level, poking against the star of David.
The trick lies in alternating opposed symbols, of course. Don't stick to one garment.
If you ever go into the manufacturing world, i think there could also be a market for nationalistic toilet paper. Each roll would be hold all the world's flags, tightly printed in soft, smooth, ass-wiping cellulose (recycled, of course).
The same could be done for religious symbols. Imagine: the ankh, the cross, the half moon, a pagoda... All stringed together in soft pastel colors against a white background. If a certain religion or sect has no symbols, or if it shares symbols with another, then you just print its name... but you have to make sure that when the time to use the paper comes, you don't cut the word in two. Schisms are bad, as well we know.
------ o ------
Incidentally, we arrived from the Spanish-Skiing excursion yesterday evening. Had an excellent time.
Wear a Palestinian scarf around your midriff one day, and pretend to be Daryl Hannah in Attack of the 50 foot woman. Next day pick any two flags (largish) and fashion for yourself a toga: one flag in back, one in front. If you chose, for instance, the US flag for the back, you could sit on the stars and stripes; and if you had the israeli flag in front and you're a man, there could be a nice bump at crotch level, poking against the star of David.
The trick lies in alternating opposed symbols, of course. Don't stick to one garment.
If you ever go into the manufacturing world, i think there could also be a market for nationalistic toilet paper. Each roll would be hold all the world's flags, tightly printed in soft, smooth, ass-wiping cellulose (recycled, of course).
The same could be done for religious symbols. Imagine: the ankh, the cross, the half moon, a pagoda... All stringed together in soft pastel colors against a white background. If a certain religion or sect has no symbols, or if it shares symbols with another, then you just print its name... but you have to make sure that when the time to use the paper comes, you don't cut the word in two. Schisms are bad, as well we know.
------ o ------
Incidentally, we arrived from the Spanish-Skiing excursion yesterday evening. Had an excellent time.
Monday, January 24, 2005
We're off
Beautiful weather. Crisp air, full moon reflected on the fjord, even now! We're loading food and skis onto the bus in 15 minutes, and are off at 9:00. Yay!!!
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Narcissistic.she
I think she is a she, at least. Not that i much care about her gender. I don't see that much narcissistic about what she writes though, but there's this whole entry in her blog about how the end is coming, and people should recognize the bible as the one and only truth, and... Sigh!
She seems to be a pretty young kid. Sixteen, seventeen? The world can be a harsh place to grow up in, and she needs to feel part of the IN crowd, protected. And what better crowd than that of a god all powerful? He never sits down and talks to you, but no matter. The other guys and gals in the group, the ones that have been around longer, tell you they know him better, and that he loves you and grace you with more and more of his favours... If only you do this or that.
This god sounds to me more like one of the popular kids in highschool.
She seems to be a pretty young kid. Sixteen, seventeen? The world can be a harsh place to grow up in, and she needs to feel part of the IN crowd, protected. And what better crowd than that of a god all powerful? He never sits down and talks to you, but no matter. The other guys and gals in the group, the ones that have been around longer, tell you they know him better, and that he loves you and grace you with more and more of his favours... If only you do this or that.
This god sounds to me more like one of the popular kids in highschool.
Judge rules against anti-evolution disclaimers
This is a good step, but... Has anyone taken the care to check these textbooks in more detail? In my opinion, it doesn't much matter if a textbook has no disclaimers saying or implying evolution is just a theory that can very easily be disproved; it should also include evidence demonstrating how difficult it is to disprove evolution. Otherwise, a state can simply make sure to hire teachers with certain religious convictions and leave them to provide the disclaimers.
Skiing
I won't be writing in here for the next few days. Tomorrow i'm leaving for a ski trip with some of my spanish students. We'll be staying in a cabin up in the mountains, with no internet connections and barely any electricity. Should be fun. Besides the skiing we'll be cooking, watching movies, playing games... Everything in spanish.
My face
There's a mirror on the wall, behind my computer's screen. It was lieing around the house, and since i spend so much time at my desk, i just placed it there a few weeks ago.
Thus, when i work, i sense the pale, worn moon that is my face hovering on the background of my vision, as if an embodiment of my conscience. Sometimes i look at it, and see myself as i am now.
The hair is lost in the darkness, but i can tell it's long and uncombed because of a few glimmers of screen light beyond the ears. That same light, coming from below, catches on the skin and draws lines. I see myself at 10, 50, 75. From the sides of the mouth, where the week-old moustache ends, twin lines start and graze the nostrils. They continue up, defining the nose, till they reach the place where the eyes begin. Two more lines are born there. They are splayed out wider than the others, each pointing to the center of the cheeks, but never reaching them.
I try to read a meaning on my face but, as is often the case with faces, i can't penetrate it. It looks at me with curiosity, calculatingly, even. With distrust that tries to pass as nonchalance.
I realize it doesn't know me.
Thus, when i work, i sense the pale, worn moon that is my face hovering on the background of my vision, as if an embodiment of my conscience. Sometimes i look at it, and see myself as i am now.
The hair is lost in the darkness, but i can tell it's long and uncombed because of a few glimmers of screen light beyond the ears. That same light, coming from below, catches on the skin and draws lines. I see myself at 10, 50, 75. From the sides of the mouth, where the week-old moustache ends, twin lines start and graze the nostrils. They continue up, defining the nose, till they reach the place where the eyes begin. Two more lines are born there. They are splayed out wider than the others, each pointing to the center of the cheeks, but never reaching them.
I try to read a meaning on my face but, as is often the case with faces, i can't penetrate it. It looks at me with curiosity, calculatingly, even. With distrust that tries to pass as nonchalance.
I realize it doesn't know me.
Babette's Feast
Truly delightful movie.
And then, just as it started snowing, outside the window in the final scene of the movie, the same happened outside my own window.
And then, just as it started snowing, outside the window in the final scene of the movie, the same happened outside my own window.
Saturday, January 22, 2005
Liliana Paz
Walked to Flakis again this morning, to buy some food. Everything covered in snow, swaths of clouds and clear sky alternating overhead. Hit a couple of flurries going and coming back. Flakes thick, but no wind; they were gently floating, sinking down.
Cindy Lauper's I drove all night blaring into my tympani, i thought of Liliana. Don't know why this music, syphoned off the 80's, stolen from the net, canned into the tiny mp3 in my pocket and yet freshly being fed to my brain, should make me think of her.
Liliana was my italian teacher in highschool. She was from Trieste and, ten years before, had been a student at the same school she was teaching at now. Single, in her early thirties, beautiful, long blond hair. She had that natural-yet-parfumed-up, slightly unkempt quality i have since then encountered in a few other italian women. There was a delicate dawn of transparent hairs above her upper lip. Her classes were fun, and a few of the boys --Jorge, for one-- had the hots for her.
I met her again this summer, at the 10th year reunion of my class. I was coming out of the coffee shop and there she was, walking down Duvin's main street, a huge hungarian sheepdog held tightly on a leash. In her 40's, you could tell lots of things about her now, just by looking at her face, her movements. She loves her dog, is thoroughly dedicated to her. Still single, this is the companion of her days and nights, same as my cat for me. She loves baking in the sun, more than is good for her, the face told me, and she enjoys her cigarettes now and then. That impish smile of hers has also carved its lines: now she's always the accomplice. Whatever expression she assumes, you know she knows what you're talking about, and that she thinks you're naughty, naughty.
We exchanged a few words; not many, as i was with a crowd and we were going somewhere. She patted the dog's head and the sun caught briefly in her etereal moustache and unchanged hairstyle.
She's kin, another loner, like me. It's good to know she's out there.
Cindy Lauper's I drove all night blaring into my tympani, i thought of Liliana. Don't know why this music, syphoned off the 80's, stolen from the net, canned into the tiny mp3 in my pocket and yet freshly being fed to my brain, should make me think of her.
Liliana was my italian teacher in highschool. She was from Trieste and, ten years before, had been a student at the same school she was teaching at now. Single, in her early thirties, beautiful, long blond hair. She had that natural-yet-parfumed-up, slightly unkempt quality i have since then encountered in a few other italian women. There was a delicate dawn of transparent hairs above her upper lip. Her classes were fun, and a few of the boys --Jorge, for one-- had the hots for her.
I met her again this summer, at the 10th year reunion of my class. I was coming out of the coffee shop and there she was, walking down Duvin's main street, a huge hungarian sheepdog held tightly on a leash. In her 40's, you could tell lots of things about her now, just by looking at her face, her movements. She loves her dog, is thoroughly dedicated to her. Still single, this is the companion of her days and nights, same as my cat for me. She loves baking in the sun, more than is good for her, the face told me, and she enjoys her cigarettes now and then. That impish smile of hers has also carved its lines: now she's always the accomplice. Whatever expression she assumes, you know she knows what you're talking about, and that she thinks you're naughty, naughty.
We exchanged a few words; not many, as i was with a crowd and we were going somewhere. She patted the dog's head and the sun caught briefly in her etereal moustache and unchanged hairstyle.
She's kin, another loner, like me. It's good to know she's out there.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Anti-gay
There's an anti-gay MSN group on the net. At least one, I mean. You can find it here:
http://groups.msn.com/anti-gay/home.htm
The views it expresses are actually not that extreme. I could have a respectful discussion with the author, if i came accross him/her one day (not going to look for him; i've had this talk already with myself and others, many times).
Apart from the title, the only other provoking content is a sign on the Pictures section: "All faggots can suck my dick". I don't know how to interpret it, really: if it comes down to a situation where their lives depend on it, anyone with a survival instinct and a mouth CAN suck a dick. Not only us faggots. Maybe this is a grammar mistake, though. If so, i still don't know if the sign is meant to be an invitation, or an insult. If this last, that's a very unimaginative thing to say to a faggot!
The opinions expressed in this site go from anal sex to gay marriage to the origins of homosexuality. As to this last, the writer purports to have the definitive answer to a subject that science hasn't found an answer for, yet. Leaving aside the fact that to look for a single cause and equating homosexuality with one kind of attitude or behavior seems very simplistic to me, i don't consider this attitude too badly. I have gay friends who also try to pinpoint their homosexuality on this or that.
There's also quite a bit of religious syrup poured over everything; most sources the author quotes are linked to Christianity in one way or another. Still, although s/he relies too heavily on "the bible says this" or "the pope did that", s/he has some ideas of his/her own.
What i can't fully comprehend is why someone who says homosexuals should not be persecuted but respected and tolerated, would go to all the trouble of making an anti-gay webpage. From the ideas therein expressed i gather, though s/he is not straightforward about it, that this person thinks homosexuality can and is being spread in society.
What can i say to that? Most probably, none of my arguments would convince anyone who feels this strongly about the issue (i mean, strongly enough to start such a group).
I think that many people feel threatened by the whole gay rights movement. They mistake visibility for publicity and think that sexual minorities are trying to recruit, to "make" more gays, lesbians, bisexuals or transsexuals.
In a way, of course, we are trying to recruit: not people, but supporters. Men and women who will back us up when we say there's no harm with us teaching at schools, that we shouldn't be shunned from public office because of who we feel sexual attracted by.
In the end, we all respond to social issues like this with our... "Hearts", you thought i was going to say? Well, no. We act influenced by what our experiences, upbringing and culture told our hearts to feel... or as a reaction to all that. It is then very easy to look for data, here or there, that will support our feelings.
"A true researcher will look for information in many places before making up their mind", i could say here but, in fact, i don't believe that, either. At least not all the time. I mean, all sources were produced by people with their own views too, right?
Best talk to people. See how the live. Give yourself to knowing them; that is the love Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed and many other guys and girls have talked about. You may not change your mind about the conflict points, but perhaps fear and distrust will be lesser.
http://groups.msn.com/anti-gay/home.htm
The views it expresses are actually not that extreme. I could have a respectful discussion with the author, if i came accross him/her one day (not going to look for him; i've had this talk already with myself and others, many times).
Apart from the title, the only other provoking content is a sign on the Pictures section: "All faggots can suck my dick". I don't know how to interpret it, really: if it comes down to a situation where their lives depend on it, anyone with a survival instinct and a mouth CAN suck a dick. Not only us faggots. Maybe this is a grammar mistake, though. If so, i still don't know if the sign is meant to be an invitation, or an insult. If this last, that's a very unimaginative thing to say to a faggot!
The opinions expressed in this site go from anal sex to gay marriage to the origins of homosexuality. As to this last, the writer purports to have the definitive answer to a subject that science hasn't found an answer for, yet. Leaving aside the fact that to look for a single cause and equating homosexuality with one kind of attitude or behavior seems very simplistic to me, i don't consider this attitude too badly. I have gay friends who also try to pinpoint their homosexuality on this or that.
There's also quite a bit of religious syrup poured over everything; most sources the author quotes are linked to Christianity in one way or another. Still, although s/he relies too heavily on "the bible says this" or "the pope did that", s/he has some ideas of his/her own.
What i can't fully comprehend is why someone who says homosexuals should not be persecuted but respected and tolerated, would go to all the trouble of making an anti-gay webpage. From the ideas therein expressed i gather, though s/he is not straightforward about it, that this person thinks homosexuality can and is being spread in society.
What can i say to that? Most probably, none of my arguments would convince anyone who feels this strongly about the issue (i mean, strongly enough to start such a group).
I think that many people feel threatened by the whole gay rights movement. They mistake visibility for publicity and think that sexual minorities are trying to recruit, to "make" more gays, lesbians, bisexuals or transsexuals.
In a way, of course, we are trying to recruit: not people, but supporters. Men and women who will back us up when we say there's no harm with us teaching at schools, that we shouldn't be shunned from public office because of who we feel sexual attracted by.
In the end, we all respond to social issues like this with our... "Hearts", you thought i was going to say? Well, no. We act influenced by what our experiences, upbringing and culture told our hearts to feel... or as a reaction to all that. It is then very easy to look for data, here or there, that will support our feelings.
"A true researcher will look for information in many places before making up their mind", i could say here but, in fact, i don't believe that, either. At least not all the time. I mean, all sources were produced by people with their own views too, right?
Best talk to people. See how the live. Give yourself to knowing them; that is the love Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed and many other guys and girls have talked about. You may not change your mind about the conflict points, but perhaps fear and distrust will be lesser.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Not a fast thinker
Once upon a time Julio applied for a job as an international salesperson at an Orthodontics company. As per the instructions in the newspaper add, he faxed the requested documents to their Human Resources office. Indeed, he thought it was dehumanizing to be considered a resource, but he had to eat, pay the rent and, most importantly, uphold his visa status with the all seeing and knowing INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service). Thus, he decided to swallow his sociolinguistic pangs like one does certain consonants in some languages and, two days later, was called in for an interview.
After seventeen and a half years of indecision, Julio had finally opted to take a break from institutionalized learning and quit school in the absolute middle of a bland and flavourless master’s course in Phonology. It was October. Like those candy-wraps that when thrown in the waste-bin fall through the mesh and litter the ground around it, he still lived downtown, near his old university; in other words, his lease hadn’t run out yet. This meant that, in order to get to where this life vest of a company was, he had to take a tram to Central Station, ride a train for thirty minutes to a tiny village in the northeast beyond the northeastern-most bit of the city and then walk another thirty minutes through a park (industrial: no trees, no mountains, no fountains). Finally, he would reach a “red-and-green brick compound with a big white-and-pink sign of a denture on the façade, you’ll see”, as the duly female secretarial voice informed him over the phone.
The morning of the interview he was a tad worried. The only things he’d ever sold were cake raffle tickets at his elementary school, and they did not make the amount required to buy the aquarium, anyway. Mrs. Ramirez brought a big transparent salad bowl from her home and the kids kept in it the five goldfish they did manage to buy, but the poor animals died on the first weekend, because of Mrs. Ramirez miscalculation of the time they could survive without their water being changed. When the sniffling started that morning, she joined in for a while, too.
Another point against Julio was, of course, that he knew as much about orthodontics as he did about containment of lipophilic contaminants. What would he say to a customer? “Doctor, would you like to buy some of the tiny metal whatchamacallits you put on your patients’ teeth? You know, the ones you run those wires through to straighten misaligned smiles? We have them in very shiny colors for you!”
No, he reasoned. He had to try and make the interviewer concentrate on his strengths, convince the guy that Julio was a quick study and that the company could use his mastery of Spanish to sell equipment to South American doctors. In spite of economic crises and blights of all kinds, the healthy bites and white dental arches of the masses down there still had to be safeguarded. After all, strong teeth with a good grip were the only thing that kept people from sliding into poverty in Julio’s part of the world, and anyone would be proud to play a role, no matter how small, in such an important endeavor as fighting a crook…ed dentition, right?
Although he thought them, Julio was obviously not going to tell the interviewer those last two sentences, but the previous idea sounded convincing enough for a self-selling attempt. In another attack of lingophilia, he wondered if he wasn’t really starting to have the famous “winner mentality” so sought after in the corporate world, which he was now attempting to join. This whole thing might not be as difficult to chew, after all!
These and other ideas were tumbling in his head as the train took him towards a very orange sun-up. Reflected on the window he could see his blue formal jacket, yellow shirt and even the tiny yellow pentagrams and musical notes printed on the also blue background of his carefully matching tie. Beyond the glass, the train was cutting through old factory territory, a part of the city that had been its industrial hub half a century before. The tracks ran through a corridor at either side of which candidly pornographic graffiti waved at passengers like enthusiasts at a political rally. The back walls of abandoned factories, with their stone-imploded windows and punky barbwire coiffures, lent their structure to support such writings. Some buildings and plots had been rescued by savvy entrepreneurs and turned into ugly but surely profiting scrap metal businesses. These were half buried under tangles of spaghetti-like rods rescued from demolition sites, or invaded by car carcasses piled on top of each other in the mechanical version of a Japanese capsule hotel horribly gone wrong.
Julio’s station was beyond this ring of post-industrial destruction, in the bustling outer layer which the still prosperous companies are always munching their way through. Beyond the railway office there was even a cafe, toting a neon sign, and some apartment buildings; he walked by them before entering the industrial park proper. As he was not in possession of a car, which the urban planners of this area must have assumed is every human being’s natural means of locomotion, Julio had to give up his mulling over interviewing strategies and concentrate on not being run over by pick-up trucks and station wagons.
For two miles his short, pudgy legs walked on non-existent sidewalks, past imposing central offices, secondary branches and manufacturing units of anything the human mind has come up with so far. Because of the risk of becoming road kill, he was very alert and felt that, in a sense, he was making his own way in life. He told himself, once more, that that was the kind of positive mentality he had to hold onto for the interview. The glittering metal and glass structures that flanked his march, boxy and unimaginative as working spaces even in the far far world of Corporearth, lost a little of their intimidating quality.
And then Julio reached Orthotrans Inc., a squat, square building which, with its green and red bricks and the huge plastic smile in front, made him think of a combination giant toad and Jim Carrey in “The Mask”, but with a bad case of measles.
Julio went in through the front door. The aforementioned duly female secretary got up from behind her desk and led him into an adjacent room with a long, dark wooden table, where he was given some forms to fill and a few paragraphs to translate. Again, he considered this to be a positive sign.
Finally, a fifty-something man with blond hair and a strikingly pockmarked face came in and introduced himself as Mr. Burin, Chief of Sales. Julio stood up to greet that other suited human resource.
Julio’s handshake was firm and carefully controlled to transmit the right amount of aggressiveness; his smile was open, but not to misinterpretation, he hoped (an ingrained worry of his). The other man seemed friendly enough, but it was obvious that, although the papers Julio had faxed in seemed promising to Burin, he needed to do a more thorough investigation of his personality. If people’s social interactions were the same as those of dogs, the Chief of Sales would have probably been sniffing between Julio’s legs. As it was, they sat down facing each other, and he asked:
--So, do you have a hero, Mr. Peralta? Who is it?
His mind in overdrive, all of Julio’s carefully constructed scenarios began to crumble like Argentina’s middle class. What was this man asking him? What a childish question! Who needs heroes? Who goes around thinking: “let’s see, who’s my hero?” There are, of course, some people and historical or literary characters whose feats one admires; some of them can even function as role models, as far as it concerns a certain philosophy or way of acting, but even that kind of admiration must be carefully monitored. One should never give up one’s ability to reason and be critical; the kind of hero people look up to unquestioningly, with adoration, is a dangerous entity. Heroes are symbols, and we’re way too good at manipulating them to symbolize exactly what we want or need!
All of this was in Julio’s head, but as he was not a fast thinker, he could not order and expound these thoughts right then and there. On the other hand, he didn’t want to “hmmm” and “let’s see” for too long, either, so it occurred to him that, instead of attempting to explain why he didn’t have any heroes, he should just mention someone with some qualities a sales person could admire. So he said:
--Well, I see my grandmother as a very heroic figure in my life.
Although sometimes it took him a while to know his own ideas, Julio was quite good at reading faces and he could tell right away that this was not quite the appropriate answer. So he added, in a hurry:
--You see, she had to bring up eight children practically on her own. She emigrated from Portugal and worked without stop, yet always kept her independence and cheerfulness.
Still no good, the straight line of Mr. Burin’s mouth said. It occurred to Julio that the images people have of grandmothers are generally too sweet and fragile for them to be convincing in the role of heroes for salesmen with forward-looking, winning attitudes. So, even though his grandma was a mountain of inner strength (and of ass kicking flesh, if necessary), he would have to look somewhere else. Things were not going well!
Just when he was starting to despair, the interviewer continued:
--I see. But what about someone a little more famous?
Julio replied, almost immediately:
--Well, let me see… Jesus Christ?
And by the man’s eyes (a-poppin!) Julio knew he really had messed up now, and had to fix it fast if he wanted to be given a chance at the job.
--You know, I admire him not because of all that “offer the other cheek” stuff, but because he had the guts to say and do what he believed in, even knowing he might get in trouble for it.
Which was, in fact, the truth: Julio did admire Jesus Christ for that.
Burin swallowed the explanation. Either that, or no more resources had made themselves available to the Sales Department. Julio didn’t know, nor cared. They chatted a little more, went over the translation, and the job was his. Julio was to spend the next five years of his life, from 7:30 am to 5:00 pm and sometimes beyond, in the belly of the Jim Carrey measly toad, with a telephone headset hugging his temples and a computer screen staring at him even in his dreams. It was fun, sometimes, specially the part where he got to gossip with his co-workers near the coffee machine.
His boss turned out to be a decent, if unimaginative man who very much believed in persistence and a positive attitude. He monitored his charges’ calls and congratulated them when they won a customer to the competition. He found Julio’s work satisfactory, even though the younger man was convinced he got paid too little for his cares. In this respect, Mr. Burin had put in a couple of good words on Julio’s behalf, so there were no hard feelings between the two. Even though they had different political views, they rarely discussed them, and when they did they always stopped before the conversation became too heated.
Because he considered himself a professional man, the Chief of Sales never discussed Julio’s interview with him. Julio knew his answers had seemed strange to the man and, of course, he himself sensed they had been out of place for the situation. Still, he thought there had been something else to the other’s reaction, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Not that it mattered, really, and as time went by, he thought of this less and less. The job would do until his resident permit came in.
Then, on an April morning, as Julio was parking his new used car on the company’s lot, Mr. Burin and his wife invited him to have Passover dinner at their house. He attended with two other co-workers and met the couple’s children and granddaughter.
The next time he thought of his initial job interview was on an early afternoon, a couple of weeks after that very pleasing evening at the Burins. Suddenly, amid the buzzing telephone conversations and sales pitches, a loud splat was heard in the office. Several heads turned to behold Julio, who had slapped his forehead with his open palm.
He was not a fast thinker.
After seventeen and a half years of indecision, Julio had finally opted to take a break from institutionalized learning and quit school in the absolute middle of a bland and flavourless master’s course in Phonology. It was October. Like those candy-wraps that when thrown in the waste-bin fall through the mesh and litter the ground around it, he still lived downtown, near his old university; in other words, his lease hadn’t run out yet. This meant that, in order to get to where this life vest of a company was, he had to take a tram to Central Station, ride a train for thirty minutes to a tiny village in the northeast beyond the northeastern-most bit of the city and then walk another thirty minutes through a park (industrial: no trees, no mountains, no fountains). Finally, he would reach a “red-and-green brick compound with a big white-and-pink sign of a denture on the façade, you’ll see”, as the duly female secretarial voice informed him over the phone.
The morning of the interview he was a tad worried. The only things he’d ever sold were cake raffle tickets at his elementary school, and they did not make the amount required to buy the aquarium, anyway. Mrs. Ramirez brought a big transparent salad bowl from her home and the kids kept in it the five goldfish they did manage to buy, but the poor animals died on the first weekend, because of Mrs. Ramirez miscalculation of the time they could survive without their water being changed. When the sniffling started that morning, she joined in for a while, too.
Another point against Julio was, of course, that he knew as much about orthodontics as he did about containment of lipophilic contaminants. What would he say to a customer? “Doctor, would you like to buy some of the tiny metal whatchamacallits you put on your patients’ teeth? You know, the ones you run those wires through to straighten misaligned smiles? We have them in very shiny colors for you!”
No, he reasoned. He had to try and make the interviewer concentrate on his strengths, convince the guy that Julio was a quick study and that the company could use his mastery of Spanish to sell equipment to South American doctors. In spite of economic crises and blights of all kinds, the healthy bites and white dental arches of the masses down there still had to be safeguarded. After all, strong teeth with a good grip were the only thing that kept people from sliding into poverty in Julio’s part of the world, and anyone would be proud to play a role, no matter how small, in such an important endeavor as fighting a crook…ed dentition, right?
Although he thought them, Julio was obviously not going to tell the interviewer those last two sentences, but the previous idea sounded convincing enough for a self-selling attempt. In another attack of lingophilia, he wondered if he wasn’t really starting to have the famous “winner mentality” so sought after in the corporate world, which he was now attempting to join. This whole thing might not be as difficult to chew, after all!
These and other ideas were tumbling in his head as the train took him towards a very orange sun-up. Reflected on the window he could see his blue formal jacket, yellow shirt and even the tiny yellow pentagrams and musical notes printed on the also blue background of his carefully matching tie. Beyond the glass, the train was cutting through old factory territory, a part of the city that had been its industrial hub half a century before. The tracks ran through a corridor at either side of which candidly pornographic graffiti waved at passengers like enthusiasts at a political rally. The back walls of abandoned factories, with their stone-imploded windows and punky barbwire coiffures, lent their structure to support such writings. Some buildings and plots had been rescued by savvy entrepreneurs and turned into ugly but surely profiting scrap metal businesses. These were half buried under tangles of spaghetti-like rods rescued from demolition sites, or invaded by car carcasses piled on top of each other in the mechanical version of a Japanese capsule hotel horribly gone wrong.
Julio’s station was beyond this ring of post-industrial destruction, in the bustling outer layer which the still prosperous companies are always munching their way through. Beyond the railway office there was even a cafe, toting a neon sign, and some apartment buildings; he walked by them before entering the industrial park proper. As he was not in possession of a car, which the urban planners of this area must have assumed is every human being’s natural means of locomotion, Julio had to give up his mulling over interviewing strategies and concentrate on not being run over by pick-up trucks and station wagons.
For two miles his short, pudgy legs walked on non-existent sidewalks, past imposing central offices, secondary branches and manufacturing units of anything the human mind has come up with so far. Because of the risk of becoming road kill, he was very alert and felt that, in a sense, he was making his own way in life. He told himself, once more, that that was the kind of positive mentality he had to hold onto for the interview. The glittering metal and glass structures that flanked his march, boxy and unimaginative as working spaces even in the far far world of Corporearth, lost a little of their intimidating quality.
And then Julio reached Orthotrans Inc., a squat, square building which, with its green and red bricks and the huge plastic smile in front, made him think of a combination giant toad and Jim Carrey in “The Mask”, but with a bad case of measles.
Julio went in through the front door. The aforementioned duly female secretary got up from behind her desk and led him into an adjacent room with a long, dark wooden table, where he was given some forms to fill and a few paragraphs to translate. Again, he considered this to be a positive sign.
Finally, a fifty-something man with blond hair and a strikingly pockmarked face came in and introduced himself as Mr. Burin, Chief of Sales. Julio stood up to greet that other suited human resource.
Julio’s handshake was firm and carefully controlled to transmit the right amount of aggressiveness; his smile was open, but not to misinterpretation, he hoped (an ingrained worry of his). The other man seemed friendly enough, but it was obvious that, although the papers Julio had faxed in seemed promising to Burin, he needed to do a more thorough investigation of his personality. If people’s social interactions were the same as those of dogs, the Chief of Sales would have probably been sniffing between Julio’s legs. As it was, they sat down facing each other, and he asked:
--So, do you have a hero, Mr. Peralta? Who is it?
His mind in overdrive, all of Julio’s carefully constructed scenarios began to crumble like Argentina’s middle class. What was this man asking him? What a childish question! Who needs heroes? Who goes around thinking: “let’s see, who’s my hero?” There are, of course, some people and historical or literary characters whose feats one admires; some of them can even function as role models, as far as it concerns a certain philosophy or way of acting, but even that kind of admiration must be carefully monitored. One should never give up one’s ability to reason and be critical; the kind of hero people look up to unquestioningly, with adoration, is a dangerous entity. Heroes are symbols, and we’re way too good at manipulating them to symbolize exactly what we want or need!
All of this was in Julio’s head, but as he was not a fast thinker, he could not order and expound these thoughts right then and there. On the other hand, he didn’t want to “hmmm” and “let’s see” for too long, either, so it occurred to him that, instead of attempting to explain why he didn’t have any heroes, he should just mention someone with some qualities a sales person could admire. So he said:
--Well, I see my grandmother as a very heroic figure in my life.
Although sometimes it took him a while to know his own ideas, Julio was quite good at reading faces and he could tell right away that this was not quite the appropriate answer. So he added, in a hurry:
--You see, she had to bring up eight children practically on her own. She emigrated from Portugal and worked without stop, yet always kept her independence and cheerfulness.
Still no good, the straight line of Mr. Burin’s mouth said. It occurred to Julio that the images people have of grandmothers are generally too sweet and fragile for them to be convincing in the role of heroes for salesmen with forward-looking, winning attitudes. So, even though his grandma was a mountain of inner strength (and of ass kicking flesh, if necessary), he would have to look somewhere else. Things were not going well!
Just when he was starting to despair, the interviewer continued:
--I see. But what about someone a little more famous?
Julio replied, almost immediately:
--Well, let me see… Jesus Christ?
And by the man’s eyes (a-poppin!) Julio knew he really had messed up now, and had to fix it fast if he wanted to be given a chance at the job.
--You know, I admire him not because of all that “offer the other cheek” stuff, but because he had the guts to say and do what he believed in, even knowing he might get in trouble for it.
Which was, in fact, the truth: Julio did admire Jesus Christ for that.
Burin swallowed the explanation. Either that, or no more resources had made themselves available to the Sales Department. Julio didn’t know, nor cared. They chatted a little more, went over the translation, and the job was his. Julio was to spend the next five years of his life, from 7:30 am to 5:00 pm and sometimes beyond, in the belly of the Jim Carrey measly toad, with a telephone headset hugging his temples and a computer screen staring at him even in his dreams. It was fun, sometimes, specially the part where he got to gossip with his co-workers near the coffee machine.
His boss turned out to be a decent, if unimaginative man who very much believed in persistence and a positive attitude. He monitored his charges’ calls and congratulated them when they won a customer to the competition. He found Julio’s work satisfactory, even though the younger man was convinced he got paid too little for his cares. In this respect, Mr. Burin had put in a couple of good words on Julio’s behalf, so there were no hard feelings between the two. Even though they had different political views, they rarely discussed them, and when they did they always stopped before the conversation became too heated.
Because he considered himself a professional man, the Chief of Sales never discussed Julio’s interview with him. Julio knew his answers had seemed strange to the man and, of course, he himself sensed they had been out of place for the situation. Still, he thought there had been something else to the other’s reaction, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Not that it mattered, really, and as time went by, he thought of this less and less. The job would do until his resident permit came in.
Then, on an April morning, as Julio was parking his new used car on the company’s lot, Mr. Burin and his wife invited him to have Passover dinner at their house. He attended with two other co-workers and met the couple’s children and granddaughter.
The next time he thought of his initial job interview was on an early afternoon, a couple of weeks after that very pleasing evening at the Burins. Suddenly, amid the buzzing telephone conversations and sales pitches, a loud splat was heard in the office. Several heads turned to behold Julio, who had slapped his forehead with his open palm.
He was not a fast thinker.
Graffitis on argentinean walls
I've just translated these:
"In Argentina we have the best legislators money can buy"
"We don’t want any more reality. We want promises!"
"We’ll always stand by our government (‘cause if we stand in front of it, it fucks us
and if we stand behind it, it shits on us)"
"The country was on the edge of an abyss, but with Mr. de la Rua we’ve taken a step forward."
"These floods are not a result of rivers overflowing but of the country sinking"
"Power to bitches! (‘cause we didn’t have much luck with their sons)"
... and though there be an external debt, let it not be eternal!
"In Argentina we have the best legislators money can buy"
"We don’t want any more reality. We want promises!"
"We’ll always stand by our government (‘cause if we stand in front of it, it fucks us
and if we stand behind it, it shits on us)"
"The country was on the edge of an abyss, but with Mr. de la Rua we’ve taken a step forward."
"These floods are not a result of rivers overflowing but of the country sinking"
"Power to bitches! (‘cause we didn’t have much luck with their sons)"
... and though there be an external debt, let it not be eternal!
Evolution or simple adaptation?
On my way to Flakis today, red-orange clouds of sunset.
I wondered why we insist on calling Evolution by that name. That word implies development. Is it because we see ourselves as the pinnacle of the process, and our brains can conceive of higher reaches we might still get to? Darwin, revolutionary as he was in his thought, couldn't totally escape his religious upbringing, victorian expansionism, british colonialist ego, etc.. But names can be very misleading, and maybe we should reconsider.
After all, it can be argued that there's only evidence for Adaptation, not Evolution. Organisms change to adapt to new challenges, that's all, but there's no pre-ordained plan that means these adaptations make life "better".
Granted: looking at the history of life, it does seem living beings have become progressively more complex. From unicellular isolated to colonies, to photosynthesis, to single pluricellular organisms, to exoskeletons and endoskeletons, and so on and so forth.
But complexity can be viewed in many different ways. Cancer, for instance, is a complex degenerative disorder, the disorderly multiplication of life.
This idea is not new. I read once an SF story written in the first decades of last century. I suuppose by then astronomers had realized the universe was expanding but the Big Bang theory was either not yet developed or not widely accepted. The author proposed --playfully, i suppose-- that the universe was seen as running away from us because that's what it was in fact doing: escaping from the plague of Earth and its life.
What this story assumes is that life will eventually want to extend itself to other planets, and in fact, we are looking in that direction. The Huygens probe that landed the other day on Titan is our latest achievement in that respect. Poor Titan, bound to our sun by gravity and thus unable to flee.
If life spreads in this fashion (and by the way it's occupied all the nooks and crannies of this planet, it would seem it can indeed adapt to cope with almost anything), then maybe it can be seen as a tool developer.
Our big brain is the tool we credit the most for our own ability to spread and adapt. Thanks to it, of all known lifeforms, we're the one that is capable of inserting itself into the most heterogeneous set of environments. That we can survive in all of them is yet to be proven. If our civilization collapses, the whole species might go with it. Maybe that would mean that our brains were imperfect, a failed experiments. As an owner of a big brain and a lover of our kind of consciousness, i am partial to big brains and hope nature would develop other, better adapted ones. Or perhaps we will, and they will be our successors. After all, as i said before, we can see our imperfections sometimes, and strive to conquer them. Whether our successors were biological or machine, i wouldn't care, as long as they respected each other and nature more. If that's the case, then they will be ourselves, an extension of ourselves.
Personally, though in my darkest moments what i said above is the best i dare to hope for, i still believe we can survive with our present brains as they are. If only we used them to check ourselves, our feelings and their roots. If we remembered that we're part of nature, too. There's nothing unnatural. That's a myth.
I wondered why we insist on calling Evolution by that name. That word implies development. Is it because we see ourselves as the pinnacle of the process, and our brains can conceive of higher reaches we might still get to? Darwin, revolutionary as he was in his thought, couldn't totally escape his religious upbringing, victorian expansionism, british colonialist ego, etc.. But names can be very misleading, and maybe we should reconsider.
After all, it can be argued that there's only evidence for Adaptation, not Evolution. Organisms change to adapt to new challenges, that's all, but there's no pre-ordained plan that means these adaptations make life "better".
Granted: looking at the history of life, it does seem living beings have become progressively more complex. From unicellular isolated to colonies, to photosynthesis, to single pluricellular organisms, to exoskeletons and endoskeletons, and so on and so forth.
But complexity can be viewed in many different ways. Cancer, for instance, is a complex degenerative disorder, the disorderly multiplication of life.
This idea is not new. I read once an SF story written in the first decades of last century. I suuppose by then astronomers had realized the universe was expanding but the Big Bang theory was either not yet developed or not widely accepted. The author proposed --playfully, i suppose-- that the universe was seen as running away from us because that's what it was in fact doing: escaping from the plague of Earth and its life.
What this story assumes is that life will eventually want to extend itself to other planets, and in fact, we are looking in that direction. The Huygens probe that landed the other day on Titan is our latest achievement in that respect. Poor Titan, bound to our sun by gravity and thus unable to flee.
If life spreads in this fashion (and by the way it's occupied all the nooks and crannies of this planet, it would seem it can indeed adapt to cope with almost anything), then maybe it can be seen as a tool developer.
Our big brain is the tool we credit the most for our own ability to spread and adapt. Thanks to it, of all known lifeforms, we're the one that is capable of inserting itself into the most heterogeneous set of environments. That we can survive in all of them is yet to be proven. If our civilization collapses, the whole species might go with it. Maybe that would mean that our brains were imperfect, a failed experiments. As an owner of a big brain and a lover of our kind of consciousness, i am partial to big brains and hope nature would develop other, better adapted ones. Or perhaps we will, and they will be our successors. After all, as i said before, we can see our imperfections sometimes, and strive to conquer them. Whether our successors were biological or machine, i wouldn't care, as long as they respected each other and nature more. If that's the case, then they will be ourselves, an extension of ourselves.
Personally, though in my darkest moments what i said above is the best i dare to hope for, i still believe we can survive with our present brains as they are. If only we used them to check ourselves, our feelings and their roots. If we remembered that we're part of nature, too. There's nothing unnatural. That's a myth.
Beauty and creases
We fold and unfold beauty along a crease created through our own crumpling of perception.
We say it is in the eye of the beholder because all of us beholders tend to use that same line to confine it.
On one side of this crease is content, also known as filling, substance. The Message.
On the other side is form. The wrapper colourful. The shroud. The Elements of Composition.
My brother says flavour's what matters, vitamins and protein. You are socialist. Forget the lilac curls of smoke out of a cigarette: tobacco is full of toxins! The air in the mattress is what holds you up.
But oh, how delicate the shape "4", lost on a page-forest of equations! A vertical line, an elbow intersecting it, then interrupted. Pale grey, the fresh lead that drew it speaks of the gritty texture of the paper. And then, what possible message can there be in a stripped, dry branch from which countless rain droplets are suspended at noon on a November day? These are things that just are, for sometimes shape comes alone.
In such cases, the temptation can be too strong: beauty wants me to create God. No. My need for explanation does, my fear of the perceived. For how can nature be such a superb aesthete, how can there be such combinations of shapes and sensations without a transcendental meaning to validate them?
And yet, why not? I won't succumb to this need. That incredibly red sunset you'll always remember also means pollutants in the atmosphere. Someone else's lung cancer. Or your own.
You run your index finger on furniture that hasn't been polished in a few days, and it comes out with these tiny, barely perceptible motes of dust attached. They just rest there, till you rub them against your thumb and they disappear, crumbling away beyond detection. So what?
Breathe in, breathe out. Just sensing is enough. Deal with it.
---- o ----
But I have also come across contempt of content. Basically, your ideas don't matter until you know how to express them, I've heard. Such arrogance!
The girl sitting in the back of the classroom, always quiet, shy. A world behind her eyes, I know. As behind anyone's. Anything's. Yet she's ignored, considered fallow, for she can't cut the pretty lace of words, the subtle technique of fitting word to thought.
----- o -----
Of course, sometimes form and content are wedded. You don't agree with such institutions? Partnered, then.
In such occasions, ah, perfection is possible.
We've been magnanimous enough to fold beauty. Now we're really looking at something whole, we think.
Such a magnificent orator, such ideas.
Such paintings, this guy did!: social conscience AND a perfect command of composition. What else can one ask for?
But we're fooled, again. This is just the way we've been taught to look, the pattern we've been taught to search for in everything.
‘As is’ is never enough. Not-proven-false won't do for us. We have to call it truth, knowledge. We advertise it that way to ourselves, so that we'll believe it.
---- o -----
Of course, I need to know how to read.
I must be able to make a point effectively, to argue it.
My apple cake must not only taste good, it must also look it!
It's great to know about keratin when I touch soft hair.
When I look at the stars my yearning wouldn't be the same if I hadn't read there are chances other worlds are circling them.
But I can also stare at Arabic script and simply enjoy its curves and flowing grace.
I may from time to time find myself lost, and wonder at the size of things.
I'll just pile up rice, shredded bits of seaweed and raw fish in the right amounts, and then simply sprinkle the whole with a few drops of soy sauce!
For in the end we can't help striving to understand, and that's precisely why we should rejoice all the more in the challenges of mystery, the new, the yet untheorized.
Without our cortex and the creases that crisscross it we wouldn't be able to think, nor evaluate, nor shape our environment to survive. But sometimes beauty slides down the cracks of so much thinking.
We say it is in the eye of the beholder because all of us beholders tend to use that same line to confine it.
On one side of this crease is content, also known as filling, substance. The Message.
On the other side is form. The wrapper colourful. The shroud. The Elements of Composition.
My brother says flavour's what matters, vitamins and protein. You are socialist. Forget the lilac curls of smoke out of a cigarette: tobacco is full of toxins! The air in the mattress is what holds you up.
But oh, how delicate the shape "4", lost on a page-forest of equations! A vertical line, an elbow intersecting it, then interrupted. Pale grey, the fresh lead that drew it speaks of the gritty texture of the paper. And then, what possible message can there be in a stripped, dry branch from which countless rain droplets are suspended at noon on a November day? These are things that just are, for sometimes shape comes alone.
In such cases, the temptation can be too strong: beauty wants me to create God. No. My need for explanation does, my fear of the perceived. For how can nature be such a superb aesthete, how can there be such combinations of shapes and sensations without a transcendental meaning to validate them?
And yet, why not? I won't succumb to this need. That incredibly red sunset you'll always remember also means pollutants in the atmosphere. Someone else's lung cancer. Or your own.
You run your index finger on furniture that hasn't been polished in a few days, and it comes out with these tiny, barely perceptible motes of dust attached. They just rest there, till you rub them against your thumb and they disappear, crumbling away beyond detection. So what?
Breathe in, breathe out. Just sensing is enough. Deal with it.
---- o ----
But I have also come across contempt of content. Basically, your ideas don't matter until you know how to express them, I've heard. Such arrogance!
The girl sitting in the back of the classroom, always quiet, shy. A world behind her eyes, I know. As behind anyone's. Anything's. Yet she's ignored, considered fallow, for she can't cut the pretty lace of words, the subtle technique of fitting word to thought.
----- o -----
Of course, sometimes form and content are wedded. You don't agree with such institutions? Partnered, then.
In such occasions, ah, perfection is possible.
We've been magnanimous enough to fold beauty. Now we're really looking at something whole, we think.
Such a magnificent orator, such ideas.
Such paintings, this guy did!: social conscience AND a perfect command of composition. What else can one ask for?
But we're fooled, again. This is just the way we've been taught to look, the pattern we've been taught to search for in everything.
‘As is’ is never enough. Not-proven-false won't do for us. We have to call it truth, knowledge. We advertise it that way to ourselves, so that we'll believe it.
---- o -----
Of course, I need to know how to read.
I must be able to make a point effectively, to argue it.
My apple cake must not only taste good, it must also look it!
It's great to know about keratin when I touch soft hair.
When I look at the stars my yearning wouldn't be the same if I hadn't read there are chances other worlds are circling them.
But I can also stare at Arabic script and simply enjoy its curves and flowing grace.
I may from time to time find myself lost, and wonder at the size of things.
I'll just pile up rice, shredded bits of seaweed and raw fish in the right amounts, and then simply sprinkle the whole with a few drops of soy sauce!
For in the end we can't help striving to understand, and that's precisely why we should rejoice all the more in the challenges of mystery, the new, the yet untheorized.
Without our cortex and the creases that crisscross it we wouldn't be able to think, nor evaluate, nor shape our environment to survive. But sometimes beauty slides down the cracks of so much thinking.
Oryx and Crake and The Handmaid's Tale and a bunch of stuff
A couple of years ago, Margaret Atwood visited the Göteborg Book and Library Fair and was interviewed about her novel Oryx and Crake.
This story of hers has a few things in common with some of her earlier work. For instance, like The Handmaid's Tale, it is also set in the near future, at a time when Earth has been devastated by some kind of human-created catastrophe -- though this time it is nothing mild like a slump in birthrates, but something much more severe. In any case, although the novel begins with this post-apocalyptic vision, of more interest than the catastrophe itself are the trends and attitudes that have lead to such chaos, retrospectively explored in the rest of the novel.
"Oh, no! The typical SF cautionary tale of the 1984 or Brave New World kind" you're thinking. But hold your horses. First because, although this novel does have something of the cautionary, there are in it many original elements. Second, because she goes beyond issuing warnings, into the land of proposing-questions-without-answer. And third because i didn't like that smug SF comment very much. It shocked me that Margaret Atwood herself, like a lot of other well and not so well read people, has this prejudice against Science Fiction. At the fair she argued that none of her novels "fit into that genre because there are no spaceships anywhere in them". General chuckles followed.
Excuse me! As if SF always contained some deus ex machina to dumbly resolve the plot, or as if character development and depth were not possible in fantastical settings. Of course, BAD SF does these things; maybe you were unlucky enough to read the story of princess Dejah Toris of Mars, kidnapped by the vicious four armed green men of Tark and finally rescued by John Carter, muscle-loaded explorer from Earth, after innumerable fights won by the bravery of his tireless arm. I suffer with you, then. But if I were to judge modern Norwegian fiction based on the work of Kristin Valla alone (never, never and, again, never be tempted to buy Nutmeg), I would have cut my wrist open with a cucumber, already.
If you've had one or more bad experiences with SF, it's probably too much to ask you to give it one more try. If you've never read any but are simply running on grade A prejudice --unleaded-- then give Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood a try, and then tell me about it.
And now don't change the topic anymore, all right? I'm supposed to be telling you why and where Oryx and Crake is different from The Handmaid's Tale. It is true that, as in her earlier work, she creates the reality of her novel by throwing together bits and pieces of actual fact. She draws from historical episodes, recent political or social ideas (marginal and not so marginal), magazine or newspaper articles, etc.. In THT she was contesting a certain type of feminism that asks for protection instead of freedom; she was also issuing a warning against absolutist regimes and that way they have of creeping on us (look at the world today, particularly America). You know, that way we have of looking around us or behind us, back in time, and thinking: "That happens there, or it happened then, but I can't happen here and now". And then, next thing we know, we're looking down and finding we've stepped right on it, all squashy and smelly, precisely as a result of our necks swivelling around so much instead of looking at where we're going and grabbing the reins a little.
By the way, have you noticed how so many political crises in history are caused by really hard working, Zealous Extremists who, because of their zeal, really affect things? The one danger of being tolerant is that tolerance can easily become indolence, an easy opening for Mr. Z.E.
Anyhow. In Oryx and Crake an important part of Atwood's building blocks come from the quarry of the present biological revolution. Throughout the story you find phosphorescent rabbits of a soft green hue, goats that produce spider silk, kangaroo/lamb splices praised as superior cattle because they can produce tastier meat while farting less CO2 into the atmosphere, and pigs ('pigoons', in the novel) that can donate a kidney or even neural tissue to the needy. The wild imagination of this woman! Right?
Wrong! Some of these beings already exist, and they're even patented! Patented like the glowing rabbit produced by researchers in answer to a request from artist Eduardo Kac, from Chicago (they injected jellyfish DNA into the rabbit's embryo). Or like the nanny goats developed by BioSteel, a Canadian company that hopes to extract stronger-than-steel, spider-silk-based fibre from their milk. PPL Therapeutics PLC, the company that cloned Dolly, announced last year that four piglets were born that lack the two genes that cause human rejection of transplanted pig organs. So research on the pigoon front is coming along fine, say researchers! The lamb/kangaroo combination is out there already, too, according to Atwood, but I couldn't find anything about it on the web. In any case, her imagination isn't that wild after all.
The guy who was interviewing her in Göteborg went on and on about how unfair it is for her to portray science under such a negative light and the future in such a pessimistic way. The most annoying bit of it all was that he didn't even say it outright! He kept hinting at it, prodding her, as if he were afraid to openly contradict such an important author. And so the 45 minutes of the seminar went by like that. At one point she said "Are you going to ask me anything about the book?" But he didn't. Bummer.
I don't think genetic manipulation per se is wrong, but it does scare me that whatever work is being done today in that area is being pulled forward by the prospect of making profits. Be that as it may, the point of this novel is ultimately neither about the technology it mentions, nor the future it is set in. Those are just background. The topic of genetics opens the road for one of Atwood's characters to ask the central question of the novel, which is whether we are what we are because of what evolution made us.
And what are we? If her characters are any indication, let's say she means to signify that it's a tad hard for us to be good, decent people. In Oryx and Crake nobody's innocent. Everybody's at least an accomplice to acts of violence. Yet there are acts of kindness, too, and hopeful bittersweet searches, and unrealised yearnings, and loneliness and dejection. We're all of them put together, thankewverymuch says the novel, and what do you propose we do about that?
For her ending, Atwood creates a situation in which she dumps all the weight of decision (but what decision?) on you, her reader. Like I'm doing now, because I'm telling you no more.
This story of hers has a few things in common with some of her earlier work. For instance, like The Handmaid's Tale, it is also set in the near future, at a time when Earth has been devastated by some kind of human-created catastrophe -- though this time it is nothing mild like a slump in birthrates, but something much more severe. In any case, although the novel begins with this post-apocalyptic vision, of more interest than the catastrophe itself are the trends and attitudes that have lead to such chaos, retrospectively explored in the rest of the novel.
"Oh, no! The typical SF cautionary tale of the 1984 or Brave New World kind" you're thinking. But hold your horses. First because, although this novel does have something of the cautionary, there are in it many original elements. Second, because she goes beyond issuing warnings, into the land of proposing-questions-without-answer. And third because i didn't like that smug SF comment very much. It shocked me that Margaret Atwood herself, like a lot of other well and not so well read people, has this prejudice against Science Fiction. At the fair she argued that none of her novels "fit into that genre because there are no spaceships anywhere in them". General chuckles followed.
Excuse me! As if SF always contained some deus ex machina to dumbly resolve the plot, or as if character development and depth were not possible in fantastical settings. Of course, BAD SF does these things; maybe you were unlucky enough to read the story of princess Dejah Toris of Mars, kidnapped by the vicious four armed green men of Tark and finally rescued by John Carter, muscle-loaded explorer from Earth, after innumerable fights won by the bravery of his tireless arm. I suffer with you, then. But if I were to judge modern Norwegian fiction based on the work of Kristin Valla alone (never, never and, again, never be tempted to buy Nutmeg), I would have cut my wrist open with a cucumber, already.
If you've had one or more bad experiences with SF, it's probably too much to ask you to give it one more try. If you've never read any but are simply running on grade A prejudice --unleaded-- then give Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood a try, and then tell me about it.
And now don't change the topic anymore, all right? I'm supposed to be telling you why and where Oryx and Crake is different from The Handmaid's Tale. It is true that, as in her earlier work, she creates the reality of her novel by throwing together bits and pieces of actual fact. She draws from historical episodes, recent political or social ideas (marginal and not so marginal), magazine or newspaper articles, etc.. In THT she was contesting a certain type of feminism that asks for protection instead of freedom; she was also issuing a warning against absolutist regimes and that way they have of creeping on us (look at the world today, particularly America). You know, that way we have of looking around us or behind us, back in time, and thinking: "That happens there, or it happened then, but I can't happen here and now". And then, next thing we know, we're looking down and finding we've stepped right on it, all squashy and smelly, precisely as a result of our necks swivelling around so much instead of looking at where we're going and grabbing the reins a little.
By the way, have you noticed how so many political crises in history are caused by really hard working, Zealous Extremists who, because of their zeal, really affect things? The one danger of being tolerant is that tolerance can easily become indolence, an easy opening for Mr. Z.E.
Anyhow. In Oryx and Crake an important part of Atwood's building blocks come from the quarry of the present biological revolution. Throughout the story you find phosphorescent rabbits of a soft green hue, goats that produce spider silk, kangaroo/lamb splices praised as superior cattle because they can produce tastier meat while farting less CO2 into the atmosphere, and pigs ('pigoons', in the novel) that can donate a kidney or even neural tissue to the needy. The wild imagination of this woman! Right?
Wrong! Some of these beings already exist, and they're even patented! Patented like the glowing rabbit produced by researchers in answer to a request from artist Eduardo Kac, from Chicago (they injected jellyfish DNA into the rabbit's embryo). Or like the nanny goats developed by BioSteel, a Canadian company that hopes to extract stronger-than-steel, spider-silk-based fibre from their milk. PPL Therapeutics PLC, the company that cloned Dolly, announced last year that four piglets were born that lack the two genes that cause human rejection of transplanted pig organs. So research on the pigoon front is coming along fine, say researchers! The lamb/kangaroo combination is out there already, too, according to Atwood, but I couldn't find anything about it on the web. In any case, her imagination isn't that wild after all.
The guy who was interviewing her in Göteborg went on and on about how unfair it is for her to portray science under such a negative light and the future in such a pessimistic way. The most annoying bit of it all was that he didn't even say it outright! He kept hinting at it, prodding her, as if he were afraid to openly contradict such an important author. And so the 45 minutes of the seminar went by like that. At one point she said "Are you going to ask me anything about the book?" But he didn't. Bummer.
I don't think genetic manipulation per se is wrong, but it does scare me that whatever work is being done today in that area is being pulled forward by the prospect of making profits. Be that as it may, the point of this novel is ultimately neither about the technology it mentions, nor the future it is set in. Those are just background. The topic of genetics opens the road for one of Atwood's characters to ask the central question of the novel, which is whether we are what we are because of what evolution made us.
And what are we? If her characters are any indication, let's say she means to signify that it's a tad hard for us to be good, decent people. In Oryx and Crake nobody's innocent. Everybody's at least an accomplice to acts of violence. Yet there are acts of kindness, too, and hopeful bittersweet searches, and unrealised yearnings, and loneliness and dejection. We're all of them put together, thankewverymuch says the novel, and what do you propose we do about that?
For her ending, Atwood creates a situation in which she dumps all the weight of decision (but what decision?) on you, her reader. Like I'm doing now, because I'm telling you no more.
Covenant marriages and homosexual marriages!
Take a look at this:
http://www.divorcereform.org/cov.html
Covenant marriages attempt to give more strength to the idea of marriage, but isn't marriage a covenant already? Or is this a religious-right-inches-its-way-back-in kind of covenant?
I mean, is the idea here to have a "more moral" marriage contract? That's how i've read a covenant marriage described: "social, moral and spiritual contracts rather than legal ones", the aforementioned website says. But then, why codify them into the legal system, like three states have already done?
What such codification implies is that, someone who doesn't get a covenant marriage, is not as social, moral and spiritual as someone who does. It's one more plot of the religious righteous right to divide America into two classes of citizens: real Americans and less real ones.
This is precisely what America does not need. There are already less real Americans, on the wrong side of the economic, ethnic, religious and sexual orientation tracks.
Arkansas, Arizona and Louisiana have already codified such marriages into their legal systems, which is really startling. After all, even though there are still many battles to fight, the general tendency in the US over the past few decades has been the opposite: that is, to take away from the body of law all those bits and pieces that excluded citizens.
Though worrisome, this is not even the most obvious of such signs; the flap-flap-flap of the right wing climbing back up is heard all around. President Bush, for instance, is proposing to change the constitution to make it impervious to homosexual marriage. I imagine the aim behind this is to make all discussions of homosexual marriage pointless from a legal point of view... One could always campaign to get the constitution changed back, i suppose, but it would definitely be a setback.
In any case, these efforts themselves do provide an interesting platform from which to study conservative reasoning. All this obsession with family, with wanting to give more reality to their own version of it, reflects a severely impaired social view; makes me think of very young children, who haven't met the outside world yet and so their families is their only body of identity, apart from themselves. This constant cackling about the sacredness and importance of (their) family signifies a lack of awareness of what lies beyond it, and therefore an unwillingness to even listen to others.
This fits perfectly with Mr. Bush's attempt, who is so bloody certain about the superiority of his views that, rather than have them healthily challenged, he would change the constitution.
http://www.divorcereform.org/cov.html
Covenant marriages attempt to give more strength to the idea of marriage, but isn't marriage a covenant already? Or is this a religious-right-inches-its-way-back-in kind of covenant?
I mean, is the idea here to have a "more moral" marriage contract? That's how i've read a covenant marriage described: "social, moral and spiritual contracts rather than legal ones", the aforementioned website says. But then, why codify them into the legal system, like three states have already done?
What such codification implies is that, someone who doesn't get a covenant marriage, is not as social, moral and spiritual as someone who does. It's one more plot of the religious righteous right to divide America into two classes of citizens: real Americans and less real ones.
This is precisely what America does not need. There are already less real Americans, on the wrong side of the economic, ethnic, religious and sexual orientation tracks.
Arkansas, Arizona and Louisiana have already codified such marriages into their legal systems, which is really startling. After all, even though there are still many battles to fight, the general tendency in the US over the past few decades has been the opposite: that is, to take away from the body of law all those bits and pieces that excluded citizens.
Though worrisome, this is not even the most obvious of such signs; the flap-flap-flap of the right wing climbing back up is heard all around. President Bush, for instance, is proposing to change the constitution to make it impervious to homosexual marriage. I imagine the aim behind this is to make all discussions of homosexual marriage pointless from a legal point of view... One could always campaign to get the constitution changed back, i suppose, but it would definitely be a setback.
In any case, these efforts themselves do provide an interesting platform from which to study conservative reasoning. All this obsession with family, with wanting to give more reality to their own version of it, reflects a severely impaired social view; makes me think of very young children, who haven't met the outside world yet and so their families is their only body of identity, apart from themselves. This constant cackling about the sacredness and importance of (their) family signifies a lack of awareness of what lies beyond it, and therefore an unwillingness to even listen to others.
This fits perfectly with Mr. Bush's attempt, who is so bloody certain about the superiority of his views that, rather than have them healthily challenged, he would change the constitution.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Airbus 380
The giant Airbus 380 just been unveiled in Toulouse, I hear on the BBC.
Which way will the equations go? Here are some possibilities:
a) More passengers on a single aircraft = more people dead at any single accident
(justifiable if economically best option, of course, regardless of anything else)
b) Bigger planes = bigger comfort? Or bigger sardine can?
c) Bigger planes = comparatively more expensive tickets for a while?
(novelty effect must be included in calculation of returns, after all)
d) More bigger planes = Less smaller planes?
(or will this be the new version of "me rich you poor")
Which way will the equations go? Here are some possibilities:
a) More passengers on a single aircraft = more people dead at any single accident
(justifiable if economically best option, of course, regardless of anything else)
b) Bigger planes = bigger comfort? Or bigger sardine can?
c) Bigger planes = comparatively more expensive tickets for a while?
(novelty effect must be included in calculation of returns, after all)
d) More bigger planes = Less smaller planes?
(or will this be the new version of "me rich you poor")
Science and Poetry
Who said Science was divorced from Poetry? Whoever thinks so does not know Science. Poetry is in Science’s flesh.
Did you know that Science says that everything in us is star stuff? Everything. According to the most recent models of the universe proposed by Science, the matter that makes us has not only been inside one star, but at least two, and one of them was bigger than a hundred suns put together.
Our very thoughts were implied potentials then, unexpressed in roiling furnaces, billions of years ago.
When I bask in the light of day or stare at the night sky my eyes meet symphonies of future Mozarts, questions and yearnings that will become bodies ages after this I think me is a cloud of scattered particles.
Science tells me that when I look at the universe I am the universe looking back at itself. I am in you, or was, or will be.
Also, did you know that, according to Science, you can’t touch anything, nor be touched?
Your body is made up of tiny motes, almost insubstantial, each separated from the others by empty spaces many times the motes’ size, Science says.
Everything is held together by mysterious, immaterial forces whose true origin nobody knows. Apart from them, there’s only empty space in this almost uninterrupted void that is you.
Not the tiniest part of yourself touches the tiniest part of yourself. You’re fragmented, more alone and isolated than the loneliest castaway ever thought he was.
When you caress your lover’s cheek your skins don’t touch. You have no skins. You’re holes and holes and holes and barriers that repel contact.
You can’t really step on the ground.
Yet matter attracts, pulls in. Matter yearns to end solitude, to come together.
Were the medieval poets right, perhaps, and the purest love is the one that always yearns and is never satisfied?
Thus true Science is dynamic, always striving, never smug or stagnant. Science is constantly surprised by what it
almost
touches,
like souls and words and Poetry can never
quite
jump from one abyss of individuality to another. Almost, yes, but never quite.
Whoever doesn’t know the idea of Science, the yearning at its core,
does not know Poetry.
Did you know that Science says that everything in us is star stuff? Everything. According to the most recent models of the universe proposed by Science, the matter that makes us has not only been inside one star, but at least two, and one of them was bigger than a hundred suns put together.
Our very thoughts were implied potentials then, unexpressed in roiling furnaces, billions of years ago.
When I bask in the light of day or stare at the night sky my eyes meet symphonies of future Mozarts, questions and yearnings that will become bodies ages after this I think me is a cloud of scattered particles.
Science tells me that when I look at the universe I am the universe looking back at itself. I am in you, or was, or will be.
Also, did you know that, according to Science, you can’t touch anything, nor be touched?
Your body is made up of tiny motes, almost insubstantial, each separated from the others by empty spaces many times the motes’ size, Science says.
Everything is held together by mysterious, immaterial forces whose true origin nobody knows. Apart from them, there’s only empty space in this almost uninterrupted void that is you.
Not the tiniest part of yourself touches the tiniest part of yourself. You’re fragmented, more alone and isolated than the loneliest castaway ever thought he was.
When you caress your lover’s cheek your skins don’t touch. You have no skins. You’re holes and holes and holes and barriers that repel contact.
You can’t really step on the ground.
Yet matter attracts, pulls in. Matter yearns to end solitude, to come together.
Were the medieval poets right, perhaps, and the purest love is the one that always yearns and is never satisfied?
Thus true Science is dynamic, always striving, never smug or stagnant. Science is constantly surprised by what it
almost
touches,
like souls and words and Poetry can never
quite
jump from one abyss of individuality to another. Almost, yes, but never quite.
Whoever doesn’t know the idea of Science, the yearning at its core,
does not know Poetry.
Gay-spray bomb... yeah!
Marko just wrote to tell me about the "gay-spray bomb" someone at the Pentagon thought of building a few years ago. You can read all about it on
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4174519.stm
It all came to light thanks to the The Sunshine Project
( http://www.sunshine-project.org/ ), an activist organization that works against the hostile use of biotechnology. It demanded, under the protection of the american Freedom of Information Act, that a 1994 document produced by the aforementioned military entity be made public.
Anyways, it turns out there is, in this very bellicose and polygonal organization, a division for the planning and development of non-lethal weapons. Some of the brilliant ideas it's considered in the past include: halitosis or fart inducing drugs that would make it difficult for those fighters affected to work together or blend in with the rest of the population; chemicals that would make people's skins extremely light-sensitive, thus effectively preventing them from fighting in daylight; pheromones that would attract insect or rodent pests towards the enemy and attack him... And a long etcetera, i'm sure.
"Hundreds!" i just read one of the Pentagon honchos said. He affirms none of the ideas in that 1994 document have been commissioned, and that in fact the one about the gay bomb was only a proposal that emerged at a brainstorming session.
That changes everything, of course!
I'm thinking of starting a petition. Giving these bonkers the hard time they deserve, you know? I mean, really! Ask yourself: how is it that the one time these military types have a good idea, they don't go ahead and put it into practice? Because of course, if one side were capable of developing a queerness-spraying bomb, surely the other side would also get the recipe, sooner or later... And then there'd be war no more! Just as African spirituals and John Lennon have been telling us we must do all along.
Imagine: Mike and Abdul (since Vladimir is oh! so out of fashion) are shooting at each other. They avoid bullets by hiding behind rocks and tree trunks, but the fire is so intense it chips away at all surfaces, and Abdul and Mike have less and less room in which to hide. Not even Keanu Reeves and that Moss chick would be able to get out of this one if things keep going. But then a plane flies overhead, unnoticed in the chaos, and all of a sudden, M. & A. feel cool, tiny droplets land on their hot, parched skins... and then their blood starts to boil!
In the nick of time, when the rock has become too small to conceal all of Abdul, Mike notices his soulful, dark eyes and wavy hair coming out in ringlets from under his pancake hat; by the time the tree is about to crack in two, Abdul can't take his eyes off Mike's blond, hairy pecs and buns of steel. They're aiming at each other no more. Yet, in a different fashion, we realize they are!
They start slowly walking towards each other, diffidently at first, as if in a strange waltz. Suddenly Mike breaks into a trot, unable to check himself, and Abdul finally allows his heart to believe Mike is not an enemy any longer. This is more than sexual attraction, he realizes; it's real love!
He runs wildly towards Mike -- then unexpectedly stops -- and picks the last surviving daisy off the devastated field before taking flight again, joyously. The curtain on the history of human violence comes down then, the camera panning out to show that the image of Mike and Abdul, falling into each others' arms and kissing passionately, is being repeated endlessly across the plain by thousands and thousands of soldiers... who will now have to change profession.
Some will become hairdressers: as a result of having lived so many years under the tyranny of the crew cut, a sizable part of them will be unable to adapt and end up making a living as male prostitutes and/or peddlers of child pornography; the others, reveling at the sudden freedom, will thrive, move to Paris and dominate henceforth the world of Haute Coiffure.
Sigh! We must always come back to the real world, though. Unfortunately for us all, the people at the Pentagon are smarter than they seem. A few of them might propose a gay bomb at a brainstorming session, but they would never go ahead with it. To them, no more war would mean no more work.
And who would want them as hairdressers?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4174519.stm
It all came to light thanks to the The Sunshine Project
( http://www.sunshine-project.org/ ), an activist organization that works against the hostile use of biotechnology. It demanded, under the protection of the american Freedom of Information Act, that a 1994 document produced by the aforementioned military entity be made public.
Anyways, it turns out there is, in this very bellicose and polygonal organization, a division for the planning and development of non-lethal weapons. Some of the brilliant ideas it's considered in the past include: halitosis or fart inducing drugs that would make it difficult for those fighters affected to work together or blend in with the rest of the population; chemicals that would make people's skins extremely light-sensitive, thus effectively preventing them from fighting in daylight; pheromones that would attract insect or rodent pests towards the enemy and attack him... And a long etcetera, i'm sure.
"Hundreds!" i just read one of the Pentagon honchos said. He affirms none of the ideas in that 1994 document have been commissioned, and that in fact the one about the gay bomb was only a proposal that emerged at a brainstorming session.
That changes everything, of course!
I'm thinking of starting a petition. Giving these bonkers the hard time they deserve, you know? I mean, really! Ask yourself: how is it that the one time these military types have a good idea, they don't go ahead and put it into practice? Because of course, if one side were capable of developing a queerness-spraying bomb, surely the other side would also get the recipe, sooner or later... And then there'd be war no more! Just as African spirituals and John Lennon have been telling us we must do all along.
Imagine: Mike and Abdul (since Vladimir is oh! so out of fashion) are shooting at each other. They avoid bullets by hiding behind rocks and tree trunks, but the fire is so intense it chips away at all surfaces, and Abdul and Mike have less and less room in which to hide. Not even Keanu Reeves and that Moss chick would be able to get out of this one if things keep going. But then a plane flies overhead, unnoticed in the chaos, and all of a sudden, M. & A. feel cool, tiny droplets land on their hot, parched skins... and then their blood starts to boil!
In the nick of time, when the rock has become too small to conceal all of Abdul, Mike notices his soulful, dark eyes and wavy hair coming out in ringlets from under his pancake hat; by the time the tree is about to crack in two, Abdul can't take his eyes off Mike's blond, hairy pecs and buns of steel. They're aiming at each other no more. Yet, in a different fashion, we realize they are!
They start slowly walking towards each other, diffidently at first, as if in a strange waltz. Suddenly Mike breaks into a trot, unable to check himself, and Abdul finally allows his heart to believe Mike is not an enemy any longer. This is more than sexual attraction, he realizes; it's real love!
He runs wildly towards Mike -- then unexpectedly stops -- and picks the last surviving daisy off the devastated field before taking flight again, joyously. The curtain on the history of human violence comes down then, the camera panning out to show that the image of Mike and Abdul, falling into each others' arms and kissing passionately, is being repeated endlessly across the plain by thousands and thousands of soldiers... who will now have to change profession.
Some will become hairdressers: as a result of having lived so many years under the tyranny of the crew cut, a sizable part of them will be unable to adapt and end up making a living as male prostitutes and/or peddlers of child pornography; the others, reveling at the sudden freedom, will thrive, move to Paris and dominate henceforth the world of Haute Coiffure.
Sigh! We must always come back to the real world, though. Unfortunately for us all, the people at the Pentagon are smarter than they seem. A few of them might propose a gay bomb at a brainstorming session, but they would never go ahead with it. To them, no more war would mean no more work.
And who would want them as hairdressers?
Monday, January 17, 2005
Telegraphic regret
Overcast today, again, and raining. Was just walking back home, feeling prickle of rain on face. Remainder of light in grey sky, light-almost-shadow. Regretted for a while not having been more physically active earlier in life. Wondered if i'll regret it more in future. First time really feel regret. Don't feel all that much, often. Still ok physically, can do anything i could before. But didn't do it before.
Like this telegraphic way of writing. No pronouns, few articles. Bridget Jones' style, comes easyly enough. Can only work this way in English; definitely not in romance languages. Reflection of individualism prevailing in society? Reader must and does assume writer talking about his/her own views, not general truths. Positive manifestation of individualism, then?
Like this telegraphic way of writing. No pronouns, few articles. Bridget Jones' style, comes easyly enough. Can only work this way in English; definitely not in romance languages. Reflection of individualism prevailing in society? Reader must and does assume writer talking about his/her own views, not general truths. Positive manifestation of individualism, then?
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Church venting
This summer i read a biography of Galileo. The last chapter spoke of how the church "rehabilitated" him in 1992. The author, Michael Sharratt, notes correctly that, after the way it had treated Galileo and the ignorance it had displayed, the one that needed to be rehabilitated was the church. But, since there is no worldly authority that can rehabilitate it, the church must take the task into its own hands. Indeed, that is precisely what that organization has been attempting to do for the last 40 years, since the Vatican II Council. It wants to revamp itself, to show that it's not an obscurantist organization. Hence, there are no more masses in Latin for the masses, other instruments besides the organ are being allowed in churches, and… well, i’m sure things must have changed a lot more in the 20 years since i stopped going.
Anyway. What John Paul II said at the time of Galileo's rehab is that scientific knowledge and the faith's revelatory knowledge both lead to the truth (yes, those articles bother me, too). They are not opposed, he says, and they have points of contact. In conclusion, since truth is one, science and faith cannot contradict each other.
Really? Where does that leave the multiplicity of religious faiths we have lived with throughout history? Is JP committing the gaffe of saying that the catholic faith is supreme to all others? And what about the jumping stones the scientific method needs to rest on before asking new questions? Questions that lead to new jumping stones that destabilize or invalidate those others from which the questions themselves emerged... Science must contradict itself all the time, if it wants to continue to be science! (when it stops doing so, it will be dogma, too)
What our dear patriarch showed with his words was how little he knows about the topic, or how simple he thinks we, his herd, are. Or how simple we, his herd, are indeed.
So, relating back to what i said in the first paragraph, i do think the church IS obscurantist, by its very nature.
To give an example of what obscurantism means, let's take the case of the church's attitude towards sex, sexuality and contraceptives. How many years will have to pass for the holy fathers (no holy mother, mind you -- except Mary, but she's dead -- i know, only physically, but there is no incorporeal pope, either) to recognize the suffering caused by their policies in this respect? Millions of lives lived in material and mental misery, centuries of traumas, jealousies, selfishness; destroyed self-esteem, suicides...
Did you know that the Holy Inquisition exists, even today? It's not called that anymore, but "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith". Its main function is to carry out inquisitions as to if, and how, any text threatens the church's orthodoxy. I say "inquisitions" rather than "inquiries" purposefully, because this word carries all the interesting connotations the church piled on it during the centuries of reign of its like-named, cute, witch burning appendage. To try to maintain orthodoxy, whether you do it by burning people or telling them what to read, should be a crime.
If one considers immediate effects only, it would appear the church has greatly evolved and been mollified over the centuries (it's had some 20, after all). I mean, burning human flesh is much more severe than badmouthing a piece of writing, right? But what if that continued badmouthing has been equivalent to burning the collective brain of a society, to stopping millions of individuals from achieving the capacity of judging and deciding by themselves what and who is good or evil? Then there is no great difference.
Actually, i retract those last five words.
Has the church ever "rehabilitated" the thousands of purported witches and wizards burnt or tortured, or only famous ones like Leonardo? (he wasn't burnt, but probably it was his notoriety that saved him, too) Did it even keep track of them?
I wouldn't want to minimize their suffering, either, nor the church's debts in their respect. Also, ‘burning bodies’ and ‘burning brains’ are related activities, because those who saw someone burn feared it, and it is fear that delayed for centuries (and still delays) our full humanization, our ability to think and feel, to be willing to put ourselves in someone else’s skin.
Yet, in as much as physically burning people always concerned individuals or small groups, the collective burning of brains seems a much more heinous crime. A full fledged crime against humanity, in my view.
Of course, if i wanted to take someone to court, i wouldn't be able to. I'd take Humanity itself. The church is a manisfestation of ourselves, a wild, irrational fire springing from us all. As long as there is the fuel of human fear, violence, hatred, disrespect of nature, etc., there'll be a church, or its reincarnation. We have tried to take away its oxygen by dampening fear with science and reasoning; this has benefitted a few, i agree, but if left at that it's only a stopgap measure. It will work only for a while and, in fact, things are starting to get hot again. The temporary stalemate will be broken soon, and we might fall back.
The solution lies in empathy. But instead of empathy, the old church is looking for orthodoxy. Many times it extended itself through slaughter (look at what saint Olav did in Norway) and even now it continues to claim that all should hold one belief. It fails to trust people, to accept that we can tailor our own, fully ethical codes of conduct, and derive joy and comfort from living by them.
A code for empathy. A religion for empathy. A dogma for empathy. A rite for empathy. Make empathy into the new church. Leave god out of it. As a being he may be supreme, but as a concept, he's divisive, a wedge among the people. Keep him only to yourself. To the new chuch of empathy, where there's only people you may know or not, bring only your wish to be able to see through someone else's eyes.
Anyway. What John Paul II said at the time of Galileo's rehab is that scientific knowledge and the faith's revelatory knowledge both lead to the truth (yes, those articles bother me, too). They are not opposed, he says, and they have points of contact. In conclusion, since truth is one, science and faith cannot contradict each other.
Really? Where does that leave the multiplicity of religious faiths we have lived with throughout history? Is JP committing the gaffe of saying that the catholic faith is supreme to all others? And what about the jumping stones the scientific method needs to rest on before asking new questions? Questions that lead to new jumping stones that destabilize or invalidate those others from which the questions themselves emerged... Science must contradict itself all the time, if it wants to continue to be science! (when it stops doing so, it will be dogma, too)
What our dear patriarch showed with his words was how little he knows about the topic, or how simple he thinks we, his herd, are. Or how simple we, his herd, are indeed.
So, relating back to what i said in the first paragraph, i do think the church IS obscurantist, by its very nature.
To give an example of what obscurantism means, let's take the case of the church's attitude towards sex, sexuality and contraceptives. How many years will have to pass for the holy fathers (no holy mother, mind you -- except Mary, but she's dead -- i know, only physically, but there is no incorporeal pope, either) to recognize the suffering caused by their policies in this respect? Millions of lives lived in material and mental misery, centuries of traumas, jealousies, selfishness; destroyed self-esteem, suicides...
Did you know that the Holy Inquisition exists, even today? It's not called that anymore, but "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith". Its main function is to carry out inquisitions as to if, and how, any text threatens the church's orthodoxy. I say "inquisitions" rather than "inquiries" purposefully, because this word carries all the interesting connotations the church piled on it during the centuries of reign of its like-named, cute, witch burning appendage. To try to maintain orthodoxy, whether you do it by burning people or telling them what to read, should be a crime.
If one considers immediate effects only, it would appear the church has greatly evolved and been mollified over the centuries (it's had some 20, after all). I mean, burning human flesh is much more severe than badmouthing a piece of writing, right? But what if that continued badmouthing has been equivalent to burning the collective brain of a society, to stopping millions of individuals from achieving the capacity of judging and deciding by themselves what and who is good or evil? Then there is no great difference.
Actually, i retract those last five words.
Has the church ever "rehabilitated" the thousands of purported witches and wizards burnt or tortured, or only famous ones like Leonardo? (he wasn't burnt, but probably it was his notoriety that saved him, too) Did it even keep track of them?
I wouldn't want to minimize their suffering, either, nor the church's debts in their respect. Also, ‘burning bodies’ and ‘burning brains’ are related activities, because those who saw someone burn feared it, and it is fear that delayed for centuries (and still delays) our full humanization, our ability to think and feel, to be willing to put ourselves in someone else’s skin.
Yet, in as much as physically burning people always concerned individuals or small groups, the collective burning of brains seems a much more heinous crime. A full fledged crime against humanity, in my view.
Of course, if i wanted to take someone to court, i wouldn't be able to. I'd take Humanity itself. The church is a manisfestation of ourselves, a wild, irrational fire springing from us all. As long as there is the fuel of human fear, violence, hatred, disrespect of nature, etc., there'll be a church, or its reincarnation. We have tried to take away its oxygen by dampening fear with science and reasoning; this has benefitted a few, i agree, but if left at that it's only a stopgap measure. It will work only for a while and, in fact, things are starting to get hot again. The temporary stalemate will be broken soon, and we might fall back.
The solution lies in empathy. But instead of empathy, the old church is looking for orthodoxy. Many times it extended itself through slaughter (look at what saint Olav did in Norway) and even now it continues to claim that all should hold one belief. It fails to trust people, to accept that we can tailor our own, fully ethical codes of conduct, and derive joy and comfort from living by them.
A code for empathy. A religion for empathy. A dogma for empathy. A rite for empathy. Make empathy into the new church. Leave god out of it. As a being he may be supreme, but as a concept, he's divisive, a wedge among the people. Keep him only to yourself. To the new chuch of empathy, where there's only people you may know or not, bring only your wish to be able to see through someone else's eyes.
Brent
I called Brent in Scarborough, today. His cancer is terminal. I asked him how his treatment was going, and he said it was going well but, you know, the kind i have is terminal, so i'll get worse, they'll treat me and put it off for a while, then i'll get worse again, and so on. Only towards the end will things get bad, but i may have years still, he said.
"It", he called death.
"It", he called death.
Eddy
Where could my friend Eddy Roja be? We met at Mac during my freshman year, in the fall of 95; he was my sophomore. There was this senior girl, Heather Something-or-Other, who kept dropping by while i was at work, and Eddy was usually with her.
Every day, from 7 to 9 pm, i sold tampons, candy, shampoo and stay-awake pills at the campus store in the student union. Eddy and Heather would arrive very soon after me, install themselves on the other side of the counter, start chatting, and not leave till my shift ended. Heather started hitting on me from the first day, so i very casually let it be know, that same day, that i was gay. I even remember how i did it: when the topic of roommates came up, i told them about mine, and this little drinking game i'd played with him and a few other first years on the first day of the term.
Basically, the story went like this: after one of the ice-breaker games for new students, a bunch of 4 or 5 of us boys and one girl found ourselves waiting for dinner with nothing to do. Since by this time everybody knew i was 21 and could therefore buy alcohol, Ben -my roommate- asked me to go to the liquor store and get some beer to play a drinking game. Ben had his own ideas about ice-breaking and, though i didn't have much experience with drinking games, i still remembered the one i'd played with some highschool friends in Uruguay, and heck, that had been fun. Besides, Ben was paying, so I did go to the store and we all ended up at someone's room.
The game was a silly one called "Who has...?". Basically we all sat in a circle and someone asked a question starting with the words "Who has", like "Who has been to New York City?". If you had indeed done what this person asked, you had to drink.
Although the questions started innocent enough, they soon became of a sexual tenor. I personally went for tepid stuff, things i thought might make me one of the guys without offending Zenia. I was really starting to worry about how she'd feel being there; they'd already gotten out of her that she was a virgin. Of course, my idea of what makes you be one of the guys have always been skewed by my gayness, so i spat out, after some frenetic thinking, bull like "who's been in a relationship for over a year?". Of course, the guys just groaned and, once more, only Genia drank.
Finally poor Ben asked "Who has sucked cock?" and Genia and i both drank, to the hilarity of everyone but Ben, who was in shock. It took him a while to get over it... months. Actually, i don't think he ever did. He later told me his distrust of me came from this story his brother had told him, about a gay guy somewhere drugging his roommate every night and fucking his ass. So Ben kept coming back from the showers and getting dressed without taking his towel off.
Anyway, that's another story.
Heather and Eddy laughed a lot at this, but she still kept hitting on me every time, and did most of the talking. Once she told me how most American college students had some savings put away for when they stopped studying and had to start living without their parents support. This scared me. Of course, i had nothing.
Nevertheless, it was with Eddy that we got closer and closer. We started hanging together a lot, going to the movies, having meals and visiting each other in our rooms.
One night he slipped a note under my door. I think i still have it, somewhere. Let me see...
Yes, I was looking through my old paper mail, and here it is (in translation, of course):
"Marino,
I'm half drunk right now, so maybe i'll hate myself for this (besides, it's not the best way to say such a thing, and it's probable i'll regret it later), but i have to say i really like you quite a bit and would like to know what you think about it. Tell me when i see you, or send me e-mail or call me on the phone (x7105) or whatever (i would prefer it to be personally).
So, see you,
Eddy Roja"
By this time I'd also come to care for him more than quite a bit, but my feelings were not romantic. Or, rather, they were not physical (if that's the definition of romance: affection plus physical passion). I didn't feel sexually attracted by Eddy's body. I don't remember how i did it or where we were, but i conveyed the essence of these feelings to him. I know i wounded him, yet the fear was mine, that i would lose our friendship. We didn't, somehow.
We did have our hard times, though; he was in a bad mood sometimes, or tried to put distance between us. I myself was constantly aware of the fine balance i felt i had to keep, between not hurting him further and demonstrating to him how much i really cared.
In any case, we managed to keep going for four years. He graduated and started to work in the Twin Cities, while i stayed at Mac one more year. Then i moved to Pennsylvania, and he to Texas... We kept in touch for a few more years after that, exchanging these long e-mails where we would discuss the minimum details of our day-to-day. I don't know how, but we got into starting our letters with greetings like "Hello, Emailloopoopeddy" and he'd reply "Hi, Martiansiblearhino". But now it's been perhaps a year since i last heard from him.
I've never had another friend i could communicate with like we did. I could tell Eddy anything and everything. I tried phoning him the other day, tried several different numbers, but none is his.
Every day, from 7 to 9 pm, i sold tampons, candy, shampoo and stay-awake pills at the campus store in the student union. Eddy and Heather would arrive very soon after me, install themselves on the other side of the counter, start chatting, and not leave till my shift ended. Heather started hitting on me from the first day, so i very casually let it be know, that same day, that i was gay. I even remember how i did it: when the topic of roommates came up, i told them about mine, and this little drinking game i'd played with him and a few other first years on the first day of the term.
Basically, the story went like this: after one of the ice-breaker games for new students, a bunch of 4 or 5 of us boys and one girl found ourselves waiting for dinner with nothing to do. Since by this time everybody knew i was 21 and could therefore buy alcohol, Ben -my roommate- asked me to go to the liquor store and get some beer to play a drinking game. Ben had his own ideas about ice-breaking and, though i didn't have much experience with drinking games, i still remembered the one i'd played with some highschool friends in Uruguay, and heck, that had been fun. Besides, Ben was paying, so I did go to the store and we all ended up at someone's room.
The game was a silly one called "Who has...?". Basically we all sat in a circle and someone asked a question starting with the words "Who has", like "Who has been to New York City?". If you had indeed done what this person asked, you had to drink.
Although the questions started innocent enough, they soon became of a sexual tenor. I personally went for tepid stuff, things i thought might make me one of the guys without offending Zenia. I was really starting to worry about how she'd feel being there; they'd already gotten out of her that she was a virgin. Of course, my idea of what makes you be one of the guys have always been skewed by my gayness, so i spat out, after some frenetic thinking, bull like "who's been in a relationship for over a year?". Of course, the guys just groaned and, once more, only Genia drank.
Finally poor Ben asked "Who has sucked cock?" and Genia and i both drank, to the hilarity of everyone but Ben, who was in shock. It took him a while to get over it... months. Actually, i don't think he ever did. He later told me his distrust of me came from this story his brother had told him, about a gay guy somewhere drugging his roommate every night and fucking his ass. So Ben kept coming back from the showers and getting dressed without taking his towel off.
Anyway, that's another story.
Heather and Eddy laughed a lot at this, but she still kept hitting on me every time, and did most of the talking. Once she told me how most American college students had some savings put away for when they stopped studying and had to start living without their parents support. This scared me. Of course, i had nothing.
Nevertheless, it was with Eddy that we got closer and closer. We started hanging together a lot, going to the movies, having meals and visiting each other in our rooms.
One night he slipped a note under my door. I think i still have it, somewhere. Let me see...
Yes, I was looking through my old paper mail, and here it is (in translation, of course):
"Marino,
I'm half drunk right now, so maybe i'll hate myself for this (besides, it's not the best way to say such a thing, and it's probable i'll regret it later), but i have to say i really like you quite a bit and would like to know what you think about it. Tell me when i see you, or send me e-mail or call me on the phone (x7105) or whatever (i would prefer it to be personally).
So, see you,
Eddy Roja"
By this time I'd also come to care for him more than quite a bit, but my feelings were not romantic. Or, rather, they were not physical (if that's the definition of romance: affection plus physical passion). I didn't feel sexually attracted by Eddy's body. I don't remember how i did it or where we were, but i conveyed the essence of these feelings to him. I know i wounded him, yet the fear was mine, that i would lose our friendship. We didn't, somehow.
We did have our hard times, though; he was in a bad mood sometimes, or tried to put distance between us. I myself was constantly aware of the fine balance i felt i had to keep, between not hurting him further and demonstrating to him how much i really cared.
In any case, we managed to keep going for four years. He graduated and started to work in the Twin Cities, while i stayed at Mac one more year. Then i moved to Pennsylvania, and he to Texas... We kept in touch for a few more years after that, exchanging these long e-mails where we would discuss the minimum details of our day-to-day. I don't know how, but we got into starting our letters with greetings like "Hello, Emailloopoopeddy" and he'd reply "Hi, Martiansiblearhino". But now it's been perhaps a year since i last heard from him.
I've never had another friend i could communicate with like we did. I could tell Eddy anything and everything. I tried phoning him the other day, tried several different numbers, but none is his.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Hamid
Third time Hamid comes to my house at night and stays drinking & smoking till this late. I join him, of course.
Oh,
i
am
so
sleepy!
Oh,
i
am
so
sleepy!
Monday, January 10, 2005
More on plastination
I've wanted to write the following for the past week, but I haven't made the necessary time for myself before now, so here it goes.
On our way to Fæde last Tuesday, i expressed to Jarmila my doubts about those museums where they show plastinated or otherwise conserved bodies to the general public. I wrote about those places in this blog the day before we took the trip, in fact: my concern is the motivation with which people look at these bodies.
Because we're all so trained to take agreeing/disagreeing positions when we talk, and because I didn't express my ideas well enough, Jarmila was quite rough in trashing my objections... Which again were not objections, but doubts.
She said that our attitudes towards our bodies should be much more open than they are, that we shouldn't view our bodies and bodily fluids and functions as dirty or disgusting. Her argument was that such museums would get people to become more familiar with the naturalness of their own biology, and i said maybe she was right.
But later i realized that "maybe" was a big one, as i wasn't sure at all. Jarmila is right about the attitude we have towards our bodies, but it is precisely because we have such attitudes that these places inspire in us such morbid fascination. It is because the creators of these museums also share the same cultural traits that these places are arranged to emphasize anomalies, like in the Mütter museum, or ignoring the dignity and humanities of the identities those bodies held while they were alive.
They are not geared in the right way; they are not the learning institutions Jarmila proposes.
Anyways, the most fascinating part of the discussion were her opinions on disease. She is a very knowledgeable biologist!
Her case was that small populations, with plenty of resources and nature available, do not get sick. She explained to me that the bacteria present in faeces and in rotting or decaying bodies are not harmful to living tissue per se. Viri and harmful bacteria appeared only when there was some imbalance, and such where usually caused when populations got out of sync with their environment. Her contention is that our present medical views, as well as those of our civilization in general, are more oriented towards finding solutions to the effects of the imbalances, rather than to stopping the imbalances themselves.
I can see all this. So what do we do? What do i do?
On our way to Fæde last Tuesday, i expressed to Jarmila my doubts about those museums where they show plastinated or otherwise conserved bodies to the general public. I wrote about those places in this blog the day before we took the trip, in fact: my concern is the motivation with which people look at these bodies.
Because we're all so trained to take agreeing/disagreeing positions when we talk, and because I didn't express my ideas well enough, Jarmila was quite rough in trashing my objections... Which again were not objections, but doubts.
She said that our attitudes towards our bodies should be much more open than they are, that we shouldn't view our bodies and bodily fluids and functions as dirty or disgusting. Her argument was that such museums would get people to become more familiar with the naturalness of their own biology, and i said maybe she was right.
But later i realized that "maybe" was a big one, as i wasn't sure at all. Jarmila is right about the attitude we have towards our bodies, but it is precisely because we have such attitudes that these places inspire in us such morbid fascination. It is because the creators of these museums also share the same cultural traits that these places are arranged to emphasize anomalies, like in the Mütter museum, or ignoring the dignity and humanities of the identities those bodies held while they were alive.
They are not geared in the right way; they are not the learning institutions Jarmila proposes.
Anyways, the most fascinating part of the discussion were her opinions on disease. She is a very knowledgeable biologist!
Her case was that small populations, with plenty of resources and nature available, do not get sick. She explained to me that the bacteria present in faeces and in rotting or decaying bodies are not harmful to living tissue per se. Viri and harmful bacteria appeared only when there was some imbalance, and such where usually caused when populations got out of sync with their environment. Her contention is that our present medical views, as well as those of our civilization in general, are more oriented towards finding solutions to the effects of the imbalances, rather than to stopping the imbalances themselves.
I can see all this. So what do we do? What do i do?
A delicious dream and epistemology
This morning i had a dream so delicious i could have sunk my teeth into it; such was the pleasure i felt this morning on waking up. All i have left from it now is an image of a round, wooden table seen from above, and of small trees that grew on it, artificial and ornamented, but beautiful nonetheless. I can't relate this to anything, so the pleasure felt is all the more rich and mysterious.
On a different topic, i have just come back from the Epistemology plenary. I'm not involved in teaching this course anymore, but i wanted to hear the first presentation to the new class.
Rodolfo, a student from Guatemala, asked if we can know anything from sure, and so Alan, seeing this as a possible door through which nihilism might slip in, tried to plug the opening by saying that there are certain people who are willing to die for what they believe they know. The implication was that these people must indeed know something.
But such an answer is too simple in many ways, and rather than close anything, it points in many differents directions, leaving the asker unsatisfied... Which, now that i think of it, is a great thing to do, particularly when teaching a class.
But Rodolfo was not attempting to say that in his opinion nothing can be known. On the contrary, i believe it's Alan who's been perched on that abyss at one time or another, and that's why he took the question to imply Rodolfo might be in that danger. Mislead as he may be, it is touching to see a teacher rush to the rescue, pedagogical sword unsheathed and all. Of course, there's some paternalistic patronizing going on, too, but such things are hard to avoid.
In any case, i know Rudy, and i know his question was actually coming out of his deeply rooted religious beliefs, which felt challenged by the relativity suggested by some of the presenter's ideas (which was Assam, not Alan).
Personally, i don't know if absolute knowledge is attainable by beings such as we. Still, we should never give up, and always LOOK for it, even though our own language is so imperfect that, the more we learn, the more difficult it becomes to use it to clearly express this road to knowledge with precision.
Most of what we know we don't, and in fact it really lies on the road to knowledge.
In order to have the will and the tools to travel this road, we convince ourselves of the absoluteness of what we possess, and call it knowledge. This has to be: there is knowledge. But this knowledge can be expanded, always, and in that expansion
process, previous knowledge can be contradicted, sometimes with great difficulty and pain, particularly if a lot of identity has been invested into the known. Thus, if we want to be consistent, we must say there is no knowledge, only the road to knowledge. And hence our paradox.
It isn't really a paradox, though. It's hard to live with doubt, but that we must have, particularly if we want to keep our curiosity, and be like children.
On a different topic, i have just come back from the Epistemology plenary. I'm not involved in teaching this course anymore, but i wanted to hear the first presentation to the new class.
Rodolfo, a student from Guatemala, asked if we can know anything from sure, and so Alan, seeing this as a possible door through which nihilism might slip in, tried to plug the opening by saying that there are certain people who are willing to die for what they believe they know. The implication was that these people must indeed know something.
But such an answer is too simple in many ways, and rather than close anything, it points in many differents directions, leaving the asker unsatisfied... Which, now that i think of it, is a great thing to do, particularly when teaching a class.
But Rodolfo was not attempting to say that in his opinion nothing can be known. On the contrary, i believe it's Alan who's been perched on that abyss at one time or another, and that's why he took the question to imply Rodolfo might be in that danger. Mislead as he may be, it is touching to see a teacher rush to the rescue, pedagogical sword unsheathed and all. Of course, there's some paternalistic patronizing going on, too, but such things are hard to avoid.
In any case, i know Rudy, and i know his question was actually coming out of his deeply rooted religious beliefs, which felt challenged by the relativity suggested by some of the presenter's ideas (which was Assam, not Alan).
Personally, i don't know if absolute knowledge is attainable by beings such as we. Still, we should never give up, and always LOOK for it, even though our own language is so imperfect that, the more we learn, the more difficult it becomes to use it to clearly express this road to knowledge with precision.
Most of what we know we don't, and in fact it really lies on the road to knowledge.
In order to have the will and the tools to travel this road, we convince ourselves of the absoluteness of what we possess, and call it knowledge. This has to be: there is knowledge. But this knowledge can be expanded, always, and in that expansion
process, previous knowledge can be contradicted, sometimes with great difficulty and pain, particularly if a lot of identity has been invested into the known. Thus, if we want to be consistent, we must say there is no knowledge, only the road to knowledge. And hence our paradox.
It isn't really a paradox, though. It's hard to live with doubt, but that we must have, particularly if we want to keep our curiosity, and be like children.
Sunday, January 09, 2005
Drunk
Am utterly drunk. Got Hamid drunk, too. Real hunk from the Czech Republic, visiting the college. Great guy. Has gay manerisms, but mentions his girlfriends all the time. Pity. Sleeping in my guest room now. Must go to bed, too. Night.
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Mar adentro
Tonight i saw Mar Adentro, a film by Alejandro Amenábar, in which Javier Bardem plays a quadraplegic man who wants to die. The story is supposedly based on real facts and the movie is done with great care and sensibility. Bardem's acting is simply amazing.
Maika, Anka, Albo, Alejo, Inken and Marla were here, watching it with me. Our eyes were red and shiny by the time credits started rolling, and Maika was sobbing openly. I love how she really lets go this way, even in public. I somehow can't.
On a different note, i must now report that 32 years ago tonight my parents were getting married. I just phoned them now: my aunt Ignacia (mom's older sister) and my brothers Sandro and Leandro were there with them. My brothers had just come back from ploughing and my aunt reported they were "all red and ruddy". My mom was making her special sandwiches, with roquefort and olives and roasted bell peppers. My dad (67 years old!) was joking about how he and my mom were going to celebrate tonight after visitors left, and we were all laughing...
I wonder, could they have forecasted these 11 minutes speaking over the open mike, 32 years ago? Could they have counted on such shiny moments of unpreposessing bliss?
Maika, Anka, Albo, Alejo, Inken and Marla were here, watching it with me. Our eyes were red and shiny by the time credits started rolling, and Maika was sobbing openly. I love how she really lets go this way, even in public. I somehow can't.
On a different note, i must now report that 32 years ago tonight my parents were getting married. I just phoned them now: my aunt Ignacia (mom's older sister) and my brothers Sandro and Leandro were there with them. My brothers had just come back from ploughing and my aunt reported they were "all red and ruddy". My mom was making her special sandwiches, with roquefort and olives and roasted bell peppers. My dad (67 years old!) was joking about how he and my mom were going to celebrate tonight after visitors left, and we were all laughing...
I wonder, could they have forecasted these 11 minutes speaking over the open mike, 32 years ago? Could they have counted on such shiny moments of unpreposessing bliss?
Mr. Colin Powell on the Asian Tsunami
Mr. Colin Powell, of the fifth Roman Empire, says on his visit to the areas affected by the Asian Tsunami: "damage looks worse than war". Looks but isn't, of course. As far as we can tell nature kills mindlessly, whereas war always has minds (of a sort) propelling it.
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Last day before classes begin
Last day of peace. Students came back today, and it's actually been nice seeing them again. Mostly. Classes start tomorrow, but i only got two 45 minute blocks. Should make it all right, but still got 5 stinkin essays to get through. Problem is i just came to the office and found La mala educación in my mailbox; won't be able to get to work without watching it. Sigh!
Went with Jarmila and Maritercia to Fæde today.
Went with Jarmila and Maritercia to Fæde today.
Monday, January 03, 2005
Education, plastination
Classes start again the day after tomorrow, and i feel as motivated by the idea of going back to teaching as i enjoy sucking on rusted nails. The sad thing is that i miss the kids, their enthusiasm and youth and freshness, but i hate to see how we teachers dampen all that by dumping on their backs the expectations of an educational system and a society that wants not to give them freedom of choice, but a box in which to put it. Of course, i'm bitching here about the system, but i might as well start beating my fist against my chest and chanting mea culpa.
It is impossible not to learn stuff in life, so what is a school good for? Obviously, for someone to tell you what the things that you're supposed to learn are. Instead of schools there should be learning houses, where resources would simply be made available for people. Nothing obligatory, nothing forced.
Sure, there would be some who perhaps wouldn't do anything for a while. I get the feeling it wouldn't be a long while, though. It's very boring not to have anything for the mind to chew on and the self to digest! And even if there were some who decided to never even learn to read and write, their number would be lower than the multitudes of those who, today, get their minds plastinated.
That's a neat word, isn't it? "Plastination". My niece Leandra taught it to me the other day. She went to a museum in Los Angeles and saw all these human bodies and organs preserved by that process. Basically, plastination is achieved by extracting all the water from tissues and then re-infusing them with a transparent polimer that, on curing, makes biological matter impervious to decay. The advantages of this method is that organs and tissues keep almost the same form and color they had when they were alive, with the advantage that you can touch and handle them without getting your hands soaked in gore or other bodily fluids. Yes, life is always messy to handle, so whether it be minds or bodies, plastination is a good idea, particularly if you want to be in control.
Anyway, if you want to take a look at a plastinated body, go to http://www.univie.ac.at/anatomie2/max/max.html and knock yourself out. It's quite fascinating, actually, though also obscene, particularly the idea that there should be museums displaying this kind of artifacts.
At the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia they have on display a collection of anatomical abnormalities, results of illness, genetics or accidents. Some of them date back to the XIXth century, before the days of plastination, so they're either dessicated or kept in some kind of preserving solution. There's the incredibly distended intestine --dessicated and stuffed with straw-- of a man who didn't have a bowel movement for years; there are grotesquely deformed fetuses or infants in huge jars; there are, in a glass cage, the remains of a man who died of chemical burns.
Dwayne took me there one afternoon. I found the exhibition fascinating and repulsive at the same time. I thought we went there because, as a doctor, he thought i'd find it interesting, and i did, indeed. Even more interistingly though, i'm just now reading that this museum is not only a very popular attraction, but also "the most requested museum among young tourists out to test their date's capacity for the unusual (http://www.phillyvisitor.com). Hmmm... I wonder now, was it a test? Did i not pass?
I'm not sure that such places should be open to the general public; i can agree with far too many of the pro and con arguments though, so i can't make up my mind.
It is impossible not to learn stuff in life, so what is a school good for? Obviously, for someone to tell you what the things that you're supposed to learn are. Instead of schools there should be learning houses, where resources would simply be made available for people. Nothing obligatory, nothing forced.
Sure, there would be some who perhaps wouldn't do anything for a while. I get the feeling it wouldn't be a long while, though. It's very boring not to have anything for the mind to chew on and the self to digest! And even if there were some who decided to never even learn to read and write, their number would be lower than the multitudes of those who, today, get their minds plastinated.
That's a neat word, isn't it? "Plastination". My niece Leandra taught it to me the other day. She went to a museum in Los Angeles and saw all these human bodies and organs preserved by that process. Basically, plastination is achieved by extracting all the water from tissues and then re-infusing them with a transparent polimer that, on curing, makes biological matter impervious to decay. The advantages of this method is that organs and tissues keep almost the same form and color they had when they were alive, with the advantage that you can touch and handle them without getting your hands soaked in gore or other bodily fluids. Yes, life is always messy to handle, so whether it be minds or bodies, plastination is a good idea, particularly if you want to be in control.
Anyway, if you want to take a look at a plastinated body, go to http://www.univie.ac.at/anatomie2/max/max.html and knock yourself out. It's quite fascinating, actually, though also obscene, particularly the idea that there should be museums displaying this kind of artifacts.
At the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia they have on display a collection of anatomical abnormalities, results of illness, genetics or accidents. Some of them date back to the XIXth century, before the days of plastination, so they're either dessicated or kept in some kind of preserving solution. There's the incredibly distended intestine --dessicated and stuffed with straw-- of a man who didn't have a bowel movement for years; there are grotesquely deformed fetuses or infants in huge jars; there are, in a glass cage, the remains of a man who died of chemical burns.
Dwayne took me there one afternoon. I found the exhibition fascinating and repulsive at the same time. I thought we went there because, as a doctor, he thought i'd find it interesting, and i did, indeed. Even more interistingly though, i'm just now reading that this museum is not only a very popular attraction, but also "the most requested museum among young tourists out to test their date's capacity for the unusual (http://www.phillyvisitor.com). Hmmm... I wonder now, was it a test? Did i not pass?
I'm not sure that such places should be open to the general public; i can agree with far too many of the pro and con arguments though, so i can't make up my mind.
Fiction?
In a fashion similar to Don Quixote's, my brain has been turned to shit by fiction of the cheap kind. The effect it's had on me has been the opposite, though. Instead of injecting passion, courage and dreams into my everyday, i've become unable to see magic or meaning anywhere but in fiction. Life seems so dull in comparison, most of the time. I've turned into a person who very rarely cries, except in the face of fiction. It has me so well trained that even in the cheesiest, most artificial of moments my eyes water. I cried at Titanic, and the condition has been worsening over the years: tonight I felt like crying even while watching The Return of the King. This is truly, truly pathetic. I hate the movie, the theatricals of it, the cheap, cheap manipulation of images and actions and ideas to move the people, too, in such predictable ways! Moving images to move people. An industry!
Relationships on this side of the screen and the page are never so pure and intense, though. They are mined by insecurities and by the absence of omniscient point of views. Moments and meanings can never be pinned down with the same certainty, and there is no sympathetic audience out there.
But most probably i'm being unfair to these things which, in the end, are merely the materialization of someone else's imagination. I do cherish and admire the power they represent, our unbelievable ability to shape reality out of unreality.
The guilt is all mine, for not having made a life for myself. For having been scared of loving, of getting hurt. For having always chosen the easy way, for having escaped and put barriers, for having taken refuge in fantasy and forgotten how to get back.
Melodramatic, yes, but that's what words do. In fact, it doesn't feel half as bad as these words seem to insinuate. It just feels flat, much of the time. Senseless. And then again, some other times it doesn't, and there's beauty impossible to encompass in full.
Relationships on this side of the screen and the page are never so pure and intense, though. They are mined by insecurities and by the absence of omniscient point of views. Moments and meanings can never be pinned down with the same certainty, and there is no sympathetic audience out there.
But most probably i'm being unfair to these things which, in the end, are merely the materialization of someone else's imagination. I do cherish and admire the power they represent, our unbelievable ability to shape reality out of unreality.
The guilt is all mine, for not having made a life for myself. For having been scared of loving, of getting hurt. For having always chosen the easy way, for having escaped and put barriers, for having taken refuge in fantasy and forgotten how to get back.
Melodramatic, yes, but that's what words do. In fact, it doesn't feel half as bad as these words seem to insinuate. It just feels flat, much of the time. Senseless. And then again, some other times it doesn't, and there's beauty impossible to encompass in full.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
The Birdcage
Dwayne and i went to see The Birdcage once, at a theatre in Philadelphia. I didn't think the message of the play might be inappropriate at the time, but here, take a look at these lyrics:
I am what I am
I am my own
special creation.
So, come take a look,
give me the hook
or the ovation.
It’s my world
that I want to have a little pride in.
My world,
and it’s not a place I have to hide in.
Life’s not worth a damn
till you can say
I am what I am.
I am what I am
I don’t want praise
I don’t want pity.
I bang my own drum.
Some think it’s noise,
I think it’s pretty.
And so
what if I love each sparkle and each bangle
Why not
try to see things from a different angle?
Your life is a sham
till you can shout out
I am what I am.
I am what I am
and what I am
needs no excuses.
I deal my own deck
sometimes the aces,
sometimes the deuces.
It’s one life
and there’s no return and no deposit.
One life
so it’s time to open up your closet.
Life’s not worth a damn
till you can shout out
I am what I am.
Considering that Dwayne still insisted he was bisexual and would marry a woman someday the plays was indeed, if not inappropriate, definitely in-his-face. Of course, that wasn't my intention. I had seen La Cage aux Folles and that American remake of that movie, with Robin Williams, but i didn't think it'd make him uncomfortable. Not that i realized it at the time, but anyway, probably it did.
I do have a knack for creating these situations. Once, in Japan, i was at a karaoke booth with a bunch of friends and, knowing few songs in English, i asked the machine for Go West, and then started coaxing Stuart, one of the guys there, to sing it with me. He looked very embarrassed, but he finally accepted and we started singing it. I didn't realize till we were well into the song that it was a love ballad and that, sung as it was in the second person, it was indeed awkward to be singing it together... But even though i was not out in that crowd, the thing didn't make me nervous... I started making eyes at Stuart and batting my eyelashes and laughing and, somehow, we got through it.
However, because i didn't grow up as an English speaker and back then was still relatively new to the culture, i did not know that the song was a GAY love ballad. Heck, i didn't even know who the Village People were! And to top things off, i later found out Stuart was also gay and, at the time of our little karaoke party, very much in a muddle about it. No wonder he always avoided me after that day.
I am what I am
I am my own
special creation.
So, come take a look,
give me the hook
or the ovation.
It’s my world
that I want to have a little pride in.
My world,
and it’s not a place I have to hide in.
Life’s not worth a damn
till you can say
I am what I am.
I am what I am
I don’t want praise
I don’t want pity.
I bang my own drum.
Some think it’s noise,
I think it’s pretty.
And so
what if I love each sparkle and each bangle
Why not
try to see things from a different angle?
Your life is a sham
till you can shout out
I am what I am.
I am what I am
and what I am
needs no excuses.
I deal my own deck
sometimes the aces,
sometimes the deuces.
It’s one life
and there’s no return and no deposit.
One life
so it’s time to open up your closet.
Life’s not worth a damn
till you can shout out
I am what I am.
Considering that Dwayne still insisted he was bisexual and would marry a woman someday the plays was indeed, if not inappropriate, definitely in-his-face. Of course, that wasn't my intention. I had seen La Cage aux Folles and that American remake of that movie, with Robin Williams, but i didn't think it'd make him uncomfortable. Not that i realized it at the time, but anyway, probably it did.
I do have a knack for creating these situations. Once, in Japan, i was at a karaoke booth with a bunch of friends and, knowing few songs in English, i asked the machine for Go West, and then started coaxing Stuart, one of the guys there, to sing it with me. He looked very embarrassed, but he finally accepted and we started singing it. I didn't realize till we were well into the song that it was a love ballad and that, sung as it was in the second person, it was indeed awkward to be singing it together... But even though i was not out in that crowd, the thing didn't make me nervous... I started making eyes at Stuart and batting my eyelashes and laughing and, somehow, we got through it.
However, because i didn't grow up as an English speaker and back then was still relatively new to the culture, i did not know that the song was a GAY love ballad. Heck, i didn't even know who the Village People were! And to top things off, i later found out Stuart was also gay and, at the time of our little karaoke party, very much in a muddle about it. No wonder he always avoided me after that day.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
My brother's backpack
Something wonderful happened to my brother Sandro the other day. A backpack he had lost while climbing the Aconcagua two years ago was returned to him... and by the Argentinean police!!! This last bit is what astonishes me most, and at the same time gives me hope in the institutions of my country. They delivered it at home and wouldn't even take a couple of bottles of wine he wanted to give them as a thank you gesture! Perhaps i am too pessimistic in my vision of them. Sandro says that the mountain police is entirely different from those patrolling the streets: they take their job seriously and are really principled, he affirmed on the phone. That comment still says a lot about the street patrols, though, the ones people have to live with every day. My family doesn't live close enough to the Aconcagua.
In any case, it was a friend of his who had accidentally dropped the backpack into a ravine. He had been carrying two at a time, because my brother was helping take down the mountain another friend to whom high altitude had given all the symptoms of someone pissed to the gills, an extremely dangerous state to be in at over 6500 meters above sea level. Night was coming, they needed to get to the shelter and they did not have the equipment to climb down and fetch the backpack, so it was left there. It contained 200 euros, some clothes, a stainless steel thermos...
My brother reports this was all returned to him as he had packed it. The only changes were some discoloration on the side of the backpack that had been exposed to the sun and on the clothes on that side, too. The thermos must have bumped hard against some rock when the backpack fell, too, because there was a slight dent on it (although it still works perfectly, my mother was quick to add; your father really missed that thermos, she said).
I was thrilled by this little story of the returned backpack. I know it's just stuff, but Sandro must have felt a thrill, too, having a bit of his past returned to him like this.
I do feel sorry for the lost moment of archaelogical delight someone else might have felt, at some time in the future. What would they have made of these things, even twenty or thirty years from now? What stories might they have come up with and what questions asked? Perhaps the climbers that found my brother's backpack last week felt some of this themselves. Or maybe it was the mountain police who did, and this bit of mystery, this meddling with happenings and their outcome, is part of what keeps their interest on their job, and their integrity.
In any case, it was a friend of his who had accidentally dropped the backpack into a ravine. He had been carrying two at a time, because my brother was helping take down the mountain another friend to whom high altitude had given all the symptoms of someone pissed to the gills, an extremely dangerous state to be in at over 6500 meters above sea level. Night was coming, they needed to get to the shelter and they did not have the equipment to climb down and fetch the backpack, so it was left there. It contained 200 euros, some clothes, a stainless steel thermos...
My brother reports this was all returned to him as he had packed it. The only changes were some discoloration on the side of the backpack that had been exposed to the sun and on the clothes on that side, too. The thermos must have bumped hard against some rock when the backpack fell, too, because there was a slight dent on it (although it still works perfectly, my mother was quick to add; your father really missed that thermos, she said).
I was thrilled by this little story of the returned backpack. I know it's just stuff, but Sandro must have felt a thrill, too, having a bit of his past returned to him like this.
I do feel sorry for the lost moment of archaelogical delight someone else might have felt, at some time in the future. What would they have made of these things, even twenty or thirty years from now? What stories might they have come up with and what questions asked? Perhaps the climbers that found my brother's backpack last week felt some of this themselves. Or maybe it was the mountain police who did, and this bit of mystery, this meddling with happenings and their outcome, is part of what keeps their interest on their job, and their integrity.
Cunningham
Hey out there! Three books to read:
The Hours, A Home at the End of the World and Flesh and Blood, by Michael Cunningham.
I love the way his characters have so much substance; they're almost corporeal. You can see them springing from their own little worlds, the ones we all make for ourselves inside our heads. Yet from there they feel and live, simply, and look at the world outside, and they focus on the tiny details of being that only have meaning for the being living them, and you see the instants and reflections and fleeting sensations that we never share with others, those things that are particular to one individual and that others will never know... The very aspects of humanity that Cunningham lets us explore.
The Hours, A Home at the End of the World and Flesh and Blood, by Michael Cunningham.
I love the way his characters have so much substance; they're almost corporeal. You can see them springing from their own little worlds, the ones we all make for ourselves inside our heads. Yet from there they feel and live, simply, and look at the world outside, and they focus on the tiny details of being that only have meaning for the being living them, and you see the instants and reflections and fleeting sensations that we never share with others, those things that are particular to one individual and that others will never know... The very aspects of humanity that Cunningham lets us explore.
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