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In the words of Paul Lutus, the long-distance sailor

Sometimes when I was at home I would jump out of bed and try to figure out where I was. I would look out the windows, see houses and trees and begin to panic. I would try to find the tiller, turn away from the land. Then I would wake up, standing there, and it would come to me that I wasn’t on the boat. This made me realize I was a lot more afraid of sailing than I admitted, and the fears I was hiding came to the surface in the dark. But I knew, I knew. If I sailed far enough, if I didn’t crash my boat against some rocks, I would put my anchor out in some foreign land. I would climb a hill and meet a goatherd. We would sit under a tree, drink wine and eat goat’s cheese. He wouldn’t have heard of Chernobyl or disposable diapers, and I wouldn’t tell him. He would tell me his story and I would tell him mine. We would look at the hills, the sky. And I would walk down the hill with the fine touch of a natural person, someone who belongs to the earth, to the sea.

Sturdy Lad

This is an extract from Emerson’s Self-Reliance: If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not ‘studying a profession,’ for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. Let a Stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere him, – and that teacher shall restore the life of man to splendor, and make his name dear to all history.

En palabras de Nerdwriter

Not all content consumption is passive. Good books, films, journalism, videos, podcasts, etc., encourage you to think critically. When you’ve finished a book or an album, there should be a period of time for you to reflect on what you’ve experienced. You should have a break to let your mind wander, to examine your response, to write your thoughts down, to discuss them with others. That’s one reason I love seeing movies at the theater. We talk about preserving the communal experience of watching movies, but what about when the movie ends, that ritual of slowly getting up, emerging into the lobby, and waiting until someone finally says, “So what did you think?” The conversation that follows, in the car rider home or over drinks at a bar, is what makes the passive viewing experience active. from Escape Into Meaning, by Evan Puschak

En palabras de Saramago

Aquí va un extracto de El Evangelio Según Jesucristo, de José Saramago: No obstante, la lógica no lo es todo en la vida, y nada raro es que, justamente, lo previsible, que lo es por ser el remate más plausible de una secuencia, o porque, simplemente, ya había sido anunciado antes, no es raro, decíamos, que lo previsible, llevado por razones que sólo él conoce, acabe por elegir, para revelarse al fin, una conclusión, por así decir, aberrante, bien en lo referente al lugar, bien lo que a la circunstancia se refiere. El pasaje sirve como mecanismo de exposición. Se describe la razón por la que el protagonista tomó cierta acción: Jesús decide abandonar a El Pastor (Satán) después de años como su ayudante. Es también un perfecto ejemplo de la prosa de Saramago. En su estilo, una reflexión está enterrada en texto que parece lleno de obstáculos. Una sopa de trama y exposición. Si se ignoran los conectores y las disculpas, lo que el autor quiere expresar es: “La lógica no lo es todo. Puede suceder que alguna circunstancia o lugar, por más previsible que sea, acabe por elegir una conclusión fuera de lo normal” ¿Está justificada la verbosidad del autor?

Writing is conscious

Writing is not, and can never be, something natural. Speaking is natural. We do it unconsciously, most of the times. Words flow out with little reflection. It’s an exposure of habits within us. Writing is not natural. There’s a sense of watching yourself think while you’re doing it. The need to structure thoughts into the finger’s mechanical motions is separate from spoken sentences. A self-consciousness that interrupts the movement of your thoughts. Writing that’s meant to mimic the flow of spoken language is composed of short and rhythmic sentences. Very few multi syllabic words. It means the writer is aware of the reader’s attention and understanding. More than avoiding complex sentences and technical words, what captivates readers is rhythm. The writer’s capacity to inject cadence and grant breathing room.

An ignored burden

Thoughts dwindled in the unsaid. On things I could enable that would help coping with the fight: exotic places, experiences. I thought of the futility of cell-killing chemicals. Those that repair the broken bridge ahead with wood from next one. I thought of depleting emergency funds. Of justified lies for the promise of expense coverage. I even thought of rotten cells dying by glucose starvation. Solutions are task forces, navigating in the vast ocean of the mind. Entertainment, the clouds above them. They are cleared by warm water and solitude, sadly, reactive. Void of forecast or planning. Those which would have been granted by negative visualization. Instead, apathy and a twisted rhetoric is the reality. An ignored burden.

Skull-sized kingdom

We’re granted the freedom to become lords of the realm of our thoughts. Lords of our skull-sized kingdom. There are many types of freedom. Ones focus on winning, achieving and displaying. Others focus on us being the center of the universe. One where there’s no experience, where we’re not the protagonist. The truly important kind is the one which involves attention. Awareness, discipline, caring for others. Thinking. Thinking demands the ability to control focus. The ability to learn. The ability to master thoughts. To exercise control over how and what to think. The mind is an excellent servant but a terrible master. A lifelong objective is to master our thoughts. To avoid the ramblings of the inner voices that plague us. Voices concerned with the future and past. Voices that wander around in the impressions that others have of us. They’re blind to what’s present, to what exists now. They’re fish oblivious to the water they’re swimming in.

Vessel

We traverse the world in a vessel. The vessel is home and has multiple windows. Each window, a view of the world. Each, a unique process and experience. The windows are many, but we control which one is used. No window is a wrong choice. We’re composers of a symphony. Conductors of an orchestra. We’re free to choose from an assortment of instruments. Each with its unique cadence, flavour, texture. Each entering and exiting the symphony at a moment’s request.

Collateral

The rock is emotionless. It’s out there, existing. It doesn’t change because of our feelings or desires. Like the floor beneath the dancer, a blacksmith’s hammer or thermodynamics laws. It won’t change its shape or respond to complaints. It won’t flinch. The changing entities are within our bodies: fingers, shoulders, tendons. With enough repetitions, they become stronger. Mixed with patience, goals are achievable. That’s a good compromise but it’s not the best one. The truly fulfilling skill comes as a realization at a given point in the path of habit. As more of a “Oh OK, I can do this” rather than “Hooray, I just did this.” The best kind of gratification is a realization in the middle of a recurring process. A second-hand effect. A collateral of enjoying an acquired habit.

Art is not a democracy

I saw an interview with George R.R. Martin and learned how art should not be a democracy. He was asked if fans influence his writing at any point. He replied “not so much” but the subtext was “absolutely not.” He explained how it’s frustrating for an artist in Hollywood –a writer, in this case– when audiovisual arts are treated as a product. Scripts need market tests and adaptation so it has traction within a certain audience and market. An artist is not free in this context. It’s impossible to express artistic intuition when external factors are constantly routing your decisions or your finalized work. It’s one of the reasons I’ve stopped trusting awards for any form of art. Their intention may be to project artistry but suffer the consequence of marketing and a profit-driven mindset. Why are these awards given out yearly? Why is an acting category split in gender while a writing or directing category is not? When sold as a product, a piece of art’s quality needs some form of measurement so the public’s uncertainty of invested time and money is predictable. Awards provide this measurement. However, in their pure artistic intention, some films, recordings, paintings and books do not become relevant until they’ve passed the test of time; until they are digested individually and culturally after years.

At one end of the spectrum

I was recently grazing through a Youtube’s video comments section and got caught by one listing a range of emotions displayed in the video. The list is: brokenness, wishful, regret, shattered, demand, anger, hope, reality, disbelief, denial, rage, sadness and emotionless. I like this list. It’s a sum of emotions that I’ve learned are controllable, expectable and manageable when following stoic principles and practices. They are one extreme of the emotional spectrum. The other end is related to feelings such as euphoria, pleasure or involve activities such as daydreaming, or hoping. Stoics aim at the middle. If we practice negative visualization enough we can expect to rarely be impacted by such emotions. Their traits have already been experienced. In particular, I think much less of the act of hoping. The blind hope we’re taught in childhood, by culture or by movies. A hidden lesson of non-control over life. An opium to soothe an incapacity for action and resolve. An antagonist of fortitude and progress. If seen from a certain perspective, it’s a lie to the mind. A habit of hoping encourages the expectation of resolve from external entities. It assigns solutions to, most likely, uncontrollable sources. Hope sabotages the capacity for creative solutions, for finding alternative paths.

En palabras de Eslava Galán

Esto es el parafraseo de algunos pasajes escritos por Juan Eslava Galán en su libro “Historia de España contada para escépticos.” No digo que todos los políticos sean corruptos pero sí todos los partidos tradicionales: PP, PSOE, Ciudadanos, Podemos. Y el político que quiere medrar en ellos fatalmente se acaba convirtiendo en corrupto. Sea por comisión: metiendo la mano en la caja para el partido o en provecho propio, o sea por omisión: cuando conoce prácticas fraudulentas en sus compañeros y no las denuncia. De este mismo pecado de omisión no está limpio el ciudadano que sigue votando a políticos imputados e incluso condenados. En parte del libro se habla del “Antiguo Régimen”, donde la aristocracia explotaba al pueblo. Ahora el pueblo es la clase media y la nueva aristocracia son los partidos corruptos y el funcionariado improductivo que vive los pechos del Estado. El aperreado pueblo, carente de formación política, pero abrumado de impuestos, se desespera y se echa en los brazos de demagogos utópicos (como los de Podemos), quizá no tanto por ese paraíso que prometen como por vengarse de los profesionales de la política a los que consideran una panda de aprovechados, cuando no de corruptos. Lo malo (y lo históricamente normal) es que los que llegan para terminar con la casta se convertirán en casta ellos mismos en cuanto se les dé la ocasión.

At the base of it

.. image:: /images/sunset.png A feeling of burn on exhalation. A long gaze into the infinite. It comes from time to time. Not always there, but not shy of often stopping by. Last time was after watching the news. A murdered celebrity. A media explosion. I knew her name, didn’t pay much attention those days. I only knew she had fame. An innocent ride of a long, bumpy road. A vicious habit of meeting subsistence by harming others. The numb crowd fully domesticated. We had become comformist dystopia. Experts at shrugging away horror and inconvenience. Quick to interpret, digest and forget. Along with details the first drops of gut acid. A creeping burn at the base of it. A familiar road. A murdered mate. A child with a permanent wound and an eternal loss. It’s one slap after the other. How much we have lost by riding on the back of tyrants? How little have we been taught to value life? She said goodbye with kisses and a sunset background. And with that, the acid ball became whole. The burn had moved around like a metastasized tumor. Time turned small, distortion became evident and thoughts of falling to the impune darkness were the only ones left in my mind.