The beauty of an interrogation

Yesterday, roughly at 16:30 GMT+1, the Earth completed its 34th full revolution around the Sol star since I was born. Yeah, it was my birthday all right. And it was a good  day too, filled with the predictable comings and goings at work, but also loads of beautiful messages from friends, wishing me all the Best. I really really liked it. Also, I cake at the office, bonus points. So what now? Now you are my friends, and you get to listen to me being really deep, and since my birthday is still fresh, you get to nod in approval; nod lots,  please.

Now with the questions! What is so good about being alive? If one is lucky enough (and I am more than enough) plenty of things make life worth it. I cannot imagine for a second to identify myself with the words from the dark, tormented TV character, usually someone with the  Gothic and vampiresque looks of a damned soul about them: I did not ask God to be alive! Woe! Oh, the burden of being alive! Lo! The futility of toiling for all those years, for nothing! All Dust! 


...Sure...

I see it differently though, and since today it is my birthday, I feel authorized to drop some deep deep thinking upon you innocent bystanders. It is a thought that crosses my mind rather frequently, which might make me edge towards hedonism, I fear. It is a trite thought, perhaps, but one to  which I relate easily: it is the journey that counts, not the destination. It is not the probability of all of this happening, or not happening, of life existing only on Earth or on a million distant suns, just blossoming, next to waning forever, at the pinnacle of progress or in the barbarous Dark Ages. It is just our ability to sense that, and to appreciate the wonderful miracle of conscience. The ultimate purpose of all this, if there is one, escapes me, yet I am also not chasing it all.

Is it hedonism then? The belief that the pursuit of what one derives pleasure from is intrinsically good? I think not. I think it is our ability to sense our own and one another's feelings, to relate and too want to react to them, with kindness, with awareness, with initiative, that should make us proud to be alive. I think it is this beautiful Indian summer that drives me to speak my mind in these terms. It might be the carrot cake that  I tasted today at Sowohalsauch, the walk in Boxhagener Platz I took yesterday, or just the rush of adrenaline that still courses though my veins after the run, but I feel very much alive.

There is this book I just finished: The End of Eternity, by Isaac Asimov. It is a great book, that touches many interesting themes. Social engineering, time travel and the paradoxes that time itself inevitably fixes, making one wonder what is the connection, the fil-rouge that seams all of us and everything else into this huge fabric, this tapestry of Bayeux made of many, infinite, possible realities. It is mind boggling, and could drive one mad, like it  happens to one character in the book. Another character, the protagonist as a matter of fact, Andrew Harlan, has a moment that describes wonderfully that feeling of epiphany that, from time to time, we have all felt, as if in the presence of something great and momentous, yet just beyond our reach.

He had only to move his hand to feel the warmth and softness of her flesh, and he dared not do that, lest he wake her out of whatever dreaming she might have. It was as though she were dreaming for the two of them, dreaming herself and himself and all that had happened, and as though her waking would drive it all from existence. It was a thought that seemed a piece of those other queer, unusual thoughts he had experienced just before. Those had been strange thoughts, coming to him at a moment between sense and nonsense. He tried to recapture them and could not. Yet suddenly it was very important that he recapture them. For although he could not remember the details, he could remember that, for just an instant, he had understood something. He was not certain what that something was, but there had been the unearthly clarity of the half-asleep, when more than mortal eye and mind seems suddenly to come to life.

I think that Andrew Harlan, in feeling that question hovering above his head, the answer just brushing lightly against his forehead, feels finally alive and starts his liberation from the huge machinery that had constrained him until then. It is the miracle of conscience, that unanswered question that enters my mind between sense and nonsense. I hope it remains so, for another 36500 nights!!!

Volkspark thoughts

This should really be the title of the blog, seeing how often I write stuff about this park. A quick update, to share a passing thought. I was jogging there today (again) and I noticed two things.

Number one, the barbecues. You can actually smell them from far away. As you run, your lungs become somewhat more sensitive to smells. Many minutes before I would enter the BBQ area, the smell of "magic cubes" (you know those little white dice used to start a fire) would begin stinging my nose, followed promptly enough by the scent of charcoal and lastly by that a bit more pleasant of roasted meat. The fun part was the smoke though. It was billowing up from dozens of fires; as I passed the dreaded climbing boulder, one shaft of sunlight shone lonely through the treetops. Thanks to that light you could actually see the smoke and get a sense of how thick it was. I thought it was hilarious.

Number two, the slack lines. What is with Berliners and walking the ropes? I am talking about THIS STUFF. There is a whole sector of the park where any two random trees will be connected by one of those lines, some walked by beginners, some by impressively nimble acrobats.

The fun thing is that as you jog you would want to lose yourself in the run, and do all the cheesy stuff that Nike commercials sell you. You know the gist: listen to your heartbeat, breathe in-breathe out, enjoy the adrenaline rush, let go, forget your excel spreadsheets and the office life, tune in with your reptile brain, feel the pump etc... etc... Well, do that in the Volkspark, and chances are you will either end up tripping or being decapitated (some people love their ropes a little higher than others). I thought that would be a little less hilarious.

Twilight Zone

I think this qualifies as "a tad surreal". No introduction this time, let us just go straight at the heart of the matter. I was jogging in the park, a Sunday not long ago. It is a pretty big park, and it is full of winding roads, some paved, some made of dirt, some just paths trodden more often by people who go out for  a barbeque, to walk their dogs, to do outdoors stuff or Berlin stuff (a combination of the above which no language known to man can fully describe).

I never really bothered measuring how big the park really is, but it turns out it is the third biggest park in Berlin: 52 acres. You can fit a lot of stuff in that much space. So, I jog my 40 minutes, following what I thought would be more or less an arc, starting at the Am Friedrichsain bus stop, arching through the park until the north end, and ending roughly behind my house. Wrong.

I get sidetracked some ten times by this or that turn of the road, a corner that looks mysterious, a mossy step behind a fern, a silhouette of a statue at the far end of a pond, and I go on, and on, and on, all the time deluding myself with the notion that, by and large, I was keeping to my "arc". It was more like two letters "Y" joined by the stem, I later found out by drawing my path on a map. And here comes the fun: policrosalus. Yeah, it is just a fancy word for THIS. Boy, I am sucker for that stuff! So here we go, on to the parallel pullup bars, after all in my mind I though I was just stretching a bit the second part of my arc, so let's jump, climb, pull, push, crawl, skip, hop, duck and roll. At this point I am 50 minutes into this fun galore and I am starting to feel sort of winded, but then again, home cannot be far, I run leaving the last obstacle behind me. I run for five more minutes (time +55') and bam! the pull-ups bar appears again. "Ah, Berlin, here you go again, collecting tax revenues from all over the rich and productive rest of Germany so you could instal TWO identical policrosalus(es?)" in the park. Oh, what the heck, let us do this one too..." jump, climb, pull, push, crawl, skip, hop, duck and roll.... "weird, the sequence of games is EXACTLY the same...oh, I must be simply tired" , I thought, as I headed for home. Wrong! (again). We are now close to 75' (I am slowing down) when I see the pullup bars appear again. "Boy that sure feels a bit weird, what are the odds?" I ask myself as I try to pull my weight up. I get to touch the bar once, maybe twice, then my hands go f-off! and spontaneously open. Ok, enough of this, now I am REALLY going home. And then I notice them, the clues....

The climbing boulder, it has been there the whole time. Like those weird renaissance paintings, portraits of autere Saints and church scholars, one hand on a massive tome, one meter to the side, goat-skin and iron bound, the other pointing at you, yes, you! sinner that you are!. They look at you no matter where you are in the church, as you pass by them, by some trick of light, position or paiting technique, they always follow you with their gaze. Like the climbing boulder. I did the lap three or four times, I was tired by then, but I thought: that boulder, it is always there, no matter where I go, whether I emerge from the bushes, or I pass a bend of the road,  it always shows me the same face;  I almost believe I am seeing the same people climbing it, like a tape stuck in a loop. Weirder and weirder. The light is failing at this point, it's dimmer, and also there is not much blood left to oxygenate my brain and power my eyes. It's all in the liver, completely trashed with fatigue toxins. Coming up to 90', boys. Then the kid. Oh, the kid was too much. I could take the boulder, and the copy paste pull-up bar, but the kid playing football by himself was too much. The fact that he looked just about the most innocent creature on Earth only made it weirder. Say, "Steven Spielberg" weird, sort of "children of the corn" weird too. I had a recollection of running by him once, or twice, always in the same spot, always kicking the ball up in the air and talking to himself. Now all I need is to run into some peasant with a pitchfork who will be benevolent and kind and will offer me to drive me to his farm, where I can use his  phone and call the sherriff...TIME TO GO HOME! Ok, I tried them all, but I was clearly stuck in a loop myself. A warped zone. A twilight zone of some kind, no way out. I tried to move away from the path at a 90° angle. No luck, either the kid, or the boulder, or the pull-up bar. It makes no difference whether I try to cleave through the park in a straight line (hoping to hit ONE side, but hey, it is 52 acres, so if I plot this one wrong, it might be hours before I am out) or if I look for landmarks. They are all far and away, and well beneath the tree-line. Trees are massive. The fountain? Disappeared. The bell dedicate to Hiroshima's victims? Like it never existed. The statue of "One mother holding her child?". Three meters of granite, must have imagined it! The sky has a definite indigo hue by now, only streaked with light near the horizon. Berlin's mono-cloud sky males it impossible to say where the West is. It is "sort of that way" on an arc which is easily 60°. That is, pretty useless over a distance of more than one Km. I ask a passer by (they are fewer and fewer, these bots put there by "The Matrix" know their way out, of course) and she utters directions in Ze Tchermanik Lankuaj, YA!? Useless, no, worse, counterproductive. I take no heed, but she says a word "Kniprodestrasse". Man I have heard this one before, I swear. All right, point me the direction. Left. Cool. I go.

Then I see it. I have a tear of joy in my eye as I pull a Theseus, and see the perimeter! It could be on any of the 82 sides of this freaky polygon (you thought Jordan's shape on the map was funny? Think again). The perimeter! Lo! Behold! I can barely make it out, as it is night and the street lights are far, and it is the time of the day when the shadows are the most confusing. I literally cling to it, hug it, never let go, and follow it in a pretty random direction. It is coasted by a path (good for goats, and beagles perhaps) but I make do. Then I see the monument: to the Polish soldiers and German anti-fascists. YES! YES! I HAVE seen you before! You are...10 blocks away from home? Er...ok, whatever, not the time to be picky, I know where I am. Far, but in the right direction after all. It is night by now. Coming up to 2h into the park, and my legs feel like dead marble, if marble could die and be any colder and heavier than living marble. The shambling takes a solid extra 20', but hey, I am home. Time to take a bath. A very long bath. That was surreal...

A bit of Rohan in our daily lives...

Hi all. Must be some six months since I decided to bother writing here. There is a lot of stuff I would like to rant about, it is pretty much my second nature. I am a grump-ball, most of the time. At least, I have been for most of the last 10 years.

I could, for example, describe my sense of Bradburian weird-outness in the growing presence of mp3 players, I-pods, shuffles, nanos, and in general all the portable playing devices that buzz into my ears on public transport or at the gym here in Berlin, from the ears of the 5-10 people, on average, around me. I am sure there are more, but 5-10 are the ones I can actually SEE. Very Fahrenheit 451, trust me.

However, I want to try a different approach this time. I have been particularly grumpy all day, to the point of serious withdrawal. The list is too long to inflict it upon you here, you do not deserve to be so ill treated. So let us do as Hank Green, of the VLOG brothers, suggests. There are two ways to make the world a better place. Decrease the SUCK and increase the AWESOME. They are, obviously, not mutually exclusive.

Hank gives us a very good example of this with the James Webb Space Telescope. I personally find it way up there in the league of awesome, and I am looking forward to 2014, when the Ariadne will gracefully deploy this little jewel in space. You should also totally subscribe to their channel, incidentally.

Hank Green's entry did have a side-effect, and a much beneficial one. It reminded me of the need for that thrill that you learn to feel when you are in your teens. It is when your myths define and settle, and it's hard to change them or shake them off afterwards. But then again, why get rid of them? They are a good part of us, it is the stuff that gives us the goosebumps, that spurs us into action, that brings us tears, that we remember ever so fondly in the years to come. If you think about it, every time you feel that thrill again it is because something is reminding you of one of those long gone moments.

For me, it is pretty straightforward to figure out what works and what does not. I get goose-bumps when I hear "Pirate of the Caribbean". The view of a galleon's prow yawing in the waves, sails and flag flapping, the camera gliding from port to starboard, makes me shiver. Yes, I always liked sea stories, and pirate stories.

When I see the camera pan-in on a disc section of a galaxy-class ship, and hear the arches of the orchestra accompanying, everything seems possible. It is just another ship, really. Did I mention I like ships?

The best one, however, was today's re-discovery. Back in '89 I was reading the Lord of the Rings for the first time. I was so into it, and still am. I was 12, and Minas Tirith was about to fall. The Witch King and the orcs of Mordor were swarming the streets. It was over, it was so over. Gandalf was there, and the Guard of the Citadel. They had done what they could, and failed.

That is when Tolkien picked up that plot-line he had left some 5 chapters before.

In rode the Lord of the Nazgul, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face. All save one. There waiting, silent and still in the space before the Gate, sat Gandalf upon Shadowfax. Gandalf did not move.

And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the city, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn. And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin's sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last.

The duo Howard Shore and Peter Jackson got this one all right, you cannot deny it. The horns, and then the fiddles. And the scared faces of Eowyn/Dernhelm and Pippin, facing almost certain death, and Théoden king, hitting the spears of his front liners with his blade Herugrim, and the lines before the charge...

Arise, arise Riders of Theoden!

Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter!

Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,

A sword-day,

A red day,

Ere the sun rises!

Ride now, ride now!

Ride for ruin.. and the world’s ending!

Death! Death!

Forth Eorlingas!

It did me some good, as it reminded me of those afternoons of an age past when the clock was not constantly ticking. When a weekend would last a weekend, and not a blink, and one could dedicate to one's passions, without wondering about the reason why. Just for the sake of doing it. If I stop and think about what I miss now of those years, I realize it is exactly what I was then trying to get rid of. In those years, as a student, I spent most of my time preparing, learning, getting in shape before the bout. It is also what most of those heroes would do for me in those books and movies. They would prepare, train and train unceasingly, research, travel the world looking for obscure clues to impossible riddles. The riders of Rohan, the pirates of the Caribbean, the Fianna of Ireland, the great masters of martial arts, and that lanky guy in Sardinia, too. Going through the books, though chemistry, through philosophy, through Latin, and then through the kata, and the kihon, in endless repetition. I sure could have used a bit of application, back then, but I wonder if I have not moved too much in the opposite direction. All I have now is acting acting acting. No, not even that. Re-acting is all there is to it. Things keep happening, at their own pace, which is much faster than mine, and the time for personal growth gets eaten away by nitty-gritty and eventually pretty silly occupations. There is no longer the study, the preparation, the planning. There is bout after bout, and a lot of weariness after it. There is almost a weird sense of guilt when time is taken away from the dozens of tasks that are crammed in my list, to do something rather unproductive line take a walk, or simply read of the last foray of Conan into the rich and corrupt streets of Shadizar the Corrupt.

I have a lot. I am a rich rich person, in the way of personal and meaningful relationships, if not in the way of bank statements, but I would still like to have something back from the 90s. I

think I know what it is. I would want the chance to grow as an individual, to take a break from time to time and take a long, deep, critical look at myself from the outside, to set my own goals and then work towards achieving them, with careful a meticulous preparations. To go there well prepared, confident, and not haphazardly improvising my way through problems (which, in the NGO world, are referred to as "challenges", just FYI).

I would want to explore and learn about new subjects, and watch a one hour long youtube video on why gravity goes down, if I feel like. To practice archery. To learn how to ride. To learn how to sail. To read and write more. To look up all the facts that happen in the day, and go back to my old interests. To look for something that could give me that healing jolt of awe.

Life is what happens instead, most of the time. But at least now I know what it is that I have been missing, and can try to bring it back.