The unfortunate days

The Art of Living on Someone Else's Effort - Chapter 1 (Draft translation)

I had sore feet. I was heading home after a hard day at work. Not hard work itself, but hard in the way the day had gone through. It was one of those days when nothing seems to go right and that every small step is slowed with dozens of small obstacles on the way. I started the morning full of energy and got over the first obstacles with momentum, as if to ignore that they would come across, repeatedly, throughout the entire schedule. The following setbacks began to undermine my patience and for lunch time I thought I had got out of the wrong side of the bed. By mid-afternoon I started wondering about what had I done to deserve so many stoppers. Finally I went home with a foul mood and feeling like having wasted all day unproductively.


Funny there were so many such days, when everything slowed down and I seemed to never reach the end of tasks. However, from time to time, things were solved out by magic, almost as if all the pieces were fitting together the right way and at the right time: your boss smiled, your colleagues collaborated around and even the coffee tasted like never before. I used to think that both the happy days at work, as well as the unfortunate ones, were part of a whole. They were the result of constant effort and dedication, only that this result did not appear gradually, minute by minute or hour by hour, but stumblingly: success did not show up yesterday, but does today, tomorrow will not, the day after tomorrow will show up again, and so on. The fruits of good practice seemed to emerge unpredictably and capriciously. I believed that it was this average that mattered and told myself I should be evaluating my performance at longer periods of time instead of trying to make every day a perfect one. Still, when a day like that was so frustrating I could not help my mood to resent, and specially with those stubborn new shoes causing me so much pain.

Transmeme XXXV

I can only have an opinion when I ignore the true facts.

The World Theatre XII – Degrees of Approach

People are very surprised when I tell them I do not like to travel, I never liked it. I guess what gives travel me is not worth the discomfort that going to a faraway place provides. Especially for someone with bad orientation, little sense of adventure, with flat feet and who hates walking.

When I ask instead to people why they like to travel, they say 'oh, it's nice to see new cultures and lifestyles.’ So the act of traveling is exposed as a means of personal enrichment. That's when provincial easygoing people like me must defend us. To do this I developed my own theory, which allows me to counteract that injury. It is a theory which shows that, in my way, I am a traveler too.

    

 Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Transmeme XXXIV

Smart women are extremely sexy.

Odious comparisons XII - The minority of well-being

Image: Foto Gratis

One day I noted a fact that caused me some irritation, namely, that if only the very wealthy continue to enjoy the natural scenery and outdoor sports, there would not be problems of sustainability in natural areas, nor resource predation, nor wear, contamination or uncontrolled erosion.

This statement is somewhat disturbing and undemocratic, I know, but I am sorry to admit that it is true. Let me explain: Originally, there were few true mountaineers, hikers, climbers, skiers, very few. Most people had very little available leisure time and fewer resources for which, at the time, were real adventures. Only a small group of vocational and nature lovers made the effort to enjoy grateful natural resorts. Then there were the minority of well-being. Those had more leisure time, and amenities and were the first to practice leisure tourism and discover that the beaches were good for something more than fishing, and the skis could be used not only to get from one town to another on the mountain.

Fortunately, years of progress have facilitated the emergence of a middle class with more money and some free time. Thus the leisure industry in the landscape emerged and everything else, including the environmental impact. The apartments populated coast lines, the mountains were invaded, mussels disappeared from beaches and trash piled in the roadsides. So regulations became necessary, the laws of coastline, preserves and closures (until public-spiritedness once finally comes out). All this was not necessary when a few privileged enjoyed it. It's the democratization that brings progress, luckily for all.

It is not a question of classes; it is a matter of numbers.

Transmeme XXXIII

Those who enlighten me are those who make me laugh too!

Answered Questions XI - Concurrent Creativity

Chaos theory or industrial espionage. I do not know what the cause, but the truth is that I have been watching for years many cases of artistic productions (call it so), apparently about the same, which occur simultaneously. I think some of them are the result of an esoteric phenomenon I call Concurrent Creativity.

Perhaps the most striking cases are those of the films. Do you remember the launch about the same year of two films about illusionists? Do you remember two animated films featuring a fish? Or an ant? The same thing happens with books. Perhaps you can recall some examples; it would be nice to have a list.   

Transmeme XXXII

Mainstream culture is average poor, but sets an ecosystem for interesting artists to take advantage of.

The World Theatre XI - The harshness of air

In many sixteenth and seventeenth centuries treatises of alchemy there is a nourished description of the work of nature in the generation of metals. Reading them is very inspiring, full of devout and poetic images. It is a reading that I recommend to those interested in less academic literature of the period, but equally spiritual and deep.

 

Those treatises, describe how nature cooks in her uterus, in the cavernous depths of the earth, that primal substance, that shapeless mineral from which all metals are born. From that deep darkness minerals emerge gradually, rocked by the wise hand of the mother, which provides the point of temperature, humidity, cooking, and pressure to mutate them in their scale of perfection. For all metals, in their creation, have the ability to be perfect, that is, to turn into gold.

Transmeme XXXI

Drugs are more of a social problem when not properly embedded in traditions and cutural rituals.

Odious Comparisons XI - Bread is bread and wine, wine

I have an image etched in my memory. I remember a great jar of aluminum with two large blades that slowly, were removing a colored liquid halfway between cream and white bone.

I also have an odor in the memory, but I can not describe it, unlike the images, but if I were to have it in front of me now I would recognize it: the smell of fresh milk. I remember the warm heat emanating from the vessel, that I, as a child, perched on tiptoe, and I noticed in the air with my lips and nose. That was when I accompanied my mother in summer at a farm for milk.

And then ceased to be milk, bread ceased to be bread, and eggs were no longer eggs but become shells with yolks full of nutrients inside.

Remember that time? Those who are very young may not. But it's not my case. I recall with anger that day my mother said we could not boil the milk at home, we had to buy it in plastic bags instead (yes, great industrial design error) or later, tetra-bricks. Milk was no longer milk and entered into a process of dehumanization. Under the guise of the ultra-pasteurization (the only method to make it drinkable, apparently), a gradual decomposition of the rich liquid in its many components began, removing all until it was little more than a serum. Have you seen how translucent is skimmed milk? Yes, at the same price, or greater than before. Meanwhile, in parallel, dozens of products arose stealing part of its flavor, cheeses, creams, cottage cheese, etc. The process was so cruel that this same milk, without a soul, at one point so lean and naked, has gradually been re-enriched with who knows what concoctions: acids, vitamins, vegetables or fish protein.

Transmeme XXX

People usually want to know your opinions on things to match themselves against you

Answered Questions X – Ora et labora

Pray and Work. Working dignifies your spirit. Or so they say. It is not bad as a mantra, but a review of this postulate does not seem inappropriate. If I ask, What do you work for? "For the money, of course” Many will say. Others, more fortunate ones, will add: “for personal fulfillment, to be useful to society, by vocation, to contribute to progress and so and so”. Well, let's take a look at the guts of such claims.

If we understand that contribution to progress, society, researching vocations, teaching, studying, are things that in any case you could do equally and without any further obligation, for free, then the only reason left to work for is necessarily... for the money. Let's be honest. It should be no shame. True, if you are also rewarded in other ways the better, more interesting and enriching will the hours you invest. But those who say they do their work only by their willingness to serve (like many politicians), what foolishness! So is everyone else, in our work, we have no desire to give service? Some serve a community, others to a company and its shareholders and customers, but we all do it at the end of the day for a fee. The difference in any case is who we choose to serve. Of course, willingly to do it well.

Transmeme XXIX

The most practiced moral rule, since there is moral is: "I do it because I can".

Answered Questions IX - Without words

I wanted to use for this post the example of the many ways that the Eskimos have to refer to snow, but it seems that it would not be true. Still, I think it is right to say that people use to have greater wealth of words for what they are most familiar with. For example, there will be far fewer words for sea conditions in those countries without coast line, and even fewer words for pork products in countries with Muslim tradition.

This brings us to the wonderful world of metaphor. If it appears that we have never had a sophisticated sense of taste (perhaps because our history is characterized mainly by the great famines), when we go to value the infinite nuances of a wine aroma, we have to use terms such as "notes", "velvet" "almond", "honey," "moss" and many more, although the wine does not have an inch of them. This is how we communicate on the new or the unknown: by analogy.

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Transmeme XXVIII

Funny: a small city with the most thoughtful people would have the same flaws and problems as the ones you're in.

Answered Questions VIII - The formula for happiness is a differential equation

Hey, crispy news! I found the (true) formula for happiness!

What, don’t you believe me? Let's see, if Eduardo Punset can propose a formula, why can I not? I know that to compare myself with him is pretentious at least, (hence my respects to so enjoyed thinker and communicator). Let me instead mimic those studies from some universities that do not want to give up any of the funds that have been granted, and make up the strangest questions to keep their places of research. So, if someone can answer why people who walk 1.3 miles a day and eat chocolate have a 50% higher probability of skipping a traffic light in their life, I can give myself the true formula for happiness. This much for the heading. Well, now in print:

I must say that I have not really invented the formula, but I've improved it.

Transmeme XXVII

Don't be pessimistic: it's only that politics/legislation/democracy/moral/religion do not progress so fast as technology.

Odious Comparisons X – Dubbed version

Sometimes I find myself in the circumstance of having to choose between going to the cinema to watch a movie in original version, and another dubbed film. My choice is easy. The dubbed version. Always.
It seems not to be chic, or more trendy not wanting to see the movie in its original soundtrack, hearing the actors with their real voices. However I want to relax in the movies. I do not pay a ticket to work. To me it is a completely unnecessary focus effort. I can not watch what the actors say (do not misunderstand me, I speak English, but still an effort for me that prevents me from enjoying the film), if there are subtitles. I'm inevitably looking at them (and often I have little time to read) and I miss the images, gestures. It's almost like reading a script.

Some will say then, that the version I see is not genuine. I deny it categorically. Fortunately, we have in this country some superb translators (although criticized in a previous post) and dubbing actors and actresses, in my view, that do not let the final product miss a touch of drama. It is different, you claim? Well, different from what? Different from the version that the director had in mind? The editor’s version? Or maybe the Studios final version? Perhaps the dubbing changes it somehow, but I see no harm to the result, which ultimately is the result of a large group of people with creative talents.

From here my emphatic salute to the dubbing actors and actresses in the country and their wonderful work.

Transmeme XXVI

Many times I'm tempted to use other's quotes.