An avenue for the mind

Amizade

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posted by shaikai @ 7:04 PM 0 comments

Delusional, transient, finite, elusive. (Romantic) love. First you feel you need it, you desire it, you crave for it, you fight for it. You spend your time searching, socializing, thinking what to do, thinking you should not do anything for it (because "it will come suddenly one day, for sure"). Times passes by: days, weeks, months, even years. A lot happens, but not what you wanted, not what you craved for, not what you fought for.

That love, the object of your hope, might not ever come. You could keep waiting while you waste your life. If it comes, it might no be what you expected: the joy of a day, a week, or a month, of a short time. Until it reveals his dark side, leaving you alone, weeping beyond consolation.

If your love comes and it is stable, time goes on, turning ecstasy into routine. You both start to realize how common you are, he was not a price, he was a mere human being. A mere human being, defective, mad, unsatisfying. You have to get used to it. It takes almost your whole and gives less than that. Or even worse, paradise becomes hell, sometimes all of a sudden, like a nigthmare at noon: the sun in the sky, brighting intensely above the realm of suffering. Everything is ruined and you are left alone again, as you were before it all had started.

You can believe I am the worst of pessimists. But that is not my view. You can believe I have lost all hope in love. But that is not my view. You can think I arrived to these conclusions out of a hedious rage against life. But, trust me, that is far from being my view. I love life, may be more than anyone. And that is just why I arrived to these conclusions. I am one among the army of the hopeful, those who always feel the need of (romantic) love who never gets entirely satisfied. I do not deny it. But I can't ignore how I find all this delusional, transient, finite, elusive. All incomplete and doomed to failure. How could it be another way? How could we fix what is essentially ruin?

The sages say happiness and suffering are the same thing. Once you realize it, only endless joy can follow. And I sincerely think that is the only way out. How to learn to live in a world like this? That is the real question. There was a truth in saying that you should not fight to find love: what for? It is all the same. It might come, it might not come. But true love does not need to wait for a special person. Love finds its own way, even in doom, and sometimes especially in doom. True love finds in every sentient creature an opportunity to develop. And the special one? He might come, he might not come.

I can't stick fully to my own words. That is why I feel the need to spell them out. Somebody could listen and smile at me. And I will smile back.

Labels: personal

posted by shaikai @ 12:36 PM 0 comments

Love again

I surely know what it is like having somebody close to me, close in that particular sense... close in such a way that I feel safe, extremely calm, extremely glad. I deeply wish I could experience the same again, soon. But, am I in the mood for going after love? I guess not. Some people have told me that's not something you look for, but something you surprisingly run across. I know they might be right, but I still doubt it.

What to do about it is far from clear for me. Though today, more than any other single day recently, I have felt the need to taste that safeness, that calmness, that gladness.

Labels: personal

posted by shaikai @ 8:41 PM 0 comments

Love

Some people yearn for love, hoping someday that special one will finally come and brighten their lives, all of a sudden, as an all-time expected surprise (ironically speaking). Somehow I recognize that kind of guy in myself, somehow I am a romantic man, but I can't help feeling skeptical as well. Skeptical not of that special one coming someday to my life, but even worse, of my ability to fall in love with somebody at all. I say to myself that I might be too worried, and that probably that suspicion is just the result of having experienced the possibility of truly liking someone without being in love. It might be that, or it might be that I have grown old for romance. In that case, I wouldn't consider it necessarily catastrophic, I could even find in it an opportunity to focus on other issues and love without grasping; but at least I'd feel such a melancholy, as if saying goodbye to a past life and welcome another in which I can't expect things to be the same anymore, like abandoning my land never to go back. Should I wait? I wish I could pack right now.

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posted by shaikai @ 10:14 PM 0 comments

Resolutions for 2008

1. To be a better Buddhist.
2. To keep on constantly reflecting and writing about my philosophical interests.
3. To keep on learning languages without stopping. Priorities: Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese.
4. To prepare my next trip abroad. The farther, the better. Better if I go to study.
5. To start living alone.
6. To start working out frequently.

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posted by shaikai @ 11:51 AM 2 comments

A Happy New Year for everybody around.

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posted by shaikai @ 5:13 PM 0 comments

Thus a god has spoken

Un gran día señor
Este día que lo he visto
Rozagante y hermoso
Como siempre, señor.

Un gran día señor
En que me ha deleitado
En que me ha embrujado
Como nunca, señor.

Pero, oh triste dolor
Necio mal corrosivo
Que me borra la risa
Por faltarme su amor.

Mas el mío no le falta
Esté usted convencido
Aunque nada nos sirve
Que lo ame, señor.

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posted by shaikai @ 6:46 PM 0 comments

Off!

Finally, I've got some days off work. I was really needing them to do something different, to write and think, walk. Nice, but on the other hand, how am I supposed to get money this month?

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posted by shaikai @ 5:59 PM 0 comments

Mouth-playing

Labels: language, personal

posted by shaikai @ 6:03 PM 0 comments

Hard work

Well, I've been a little busy this month, but I also need some time for myself. I'm taking two jobs. One of them is part-time, teaching in an English School in the evening during the week (M-F), and in the morning on Friday and Saturday. I had to spend a lot of hours in training for that, so I just started last Saturday. I thought it was going to get really hard for me, but I've been having fun. Most of the students are somehow shy, but all them are nice.

When I was in the training days, I got another job opportunity. The Office of the United Nations Development Fund in Bogota needed someone to review Colombian press from 2003 to 2005 (not all the media, just the most outstanding newspapers and magazines) in search of news and qualified opinions about human development in the city. It's been a dream for me to do something to help UN, so I accepted without hesitation. I'm not linked with the Organization, what I'm doing for them is just a private service. But it's great anyway.

So I've got two jobs and my thesis work is not finished yet. I don't know exactly what to do to get all this done in time, apart from working hard all day everyday. It's obvious I have to, but it's not obvious how to do it. But I'll find the way anyway. It's a matter of patience, time and being just a little smart.

Labels: personal

posted by shaikai @ 6:49 AM 1 comments

Mysterium tremendum

These days (February-March) I've been doing some things that have forced me to walk a step back and see the soil down my feet. And what I'd been seeing was a void, the very void I've been anounced in some of my favorite readings. I don't want to talk about all these stories at once, it's better for me to take my time and tell one story at a time.

By now, it's enough to say that I was feeling the same fear I felt when I was a child, the fear to the unknown things under the bed or in the middle of darkness. If you think in child fear, the whole matter may seem unproblematic, "those things have passed and now you're big", you can say. But I've learned a lot from this fear, feeling the same these days. And it's about that learning that I want to talk.

Next time I'm going to tell you what I experienced watching Brokeback Mountain (I'd not watched it till this year in February). A strange turn of events, eh? What relation is between the childish fear to darkness and two cowboy men who fell in love with each other? I hope I can make it clear soon...

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posted by shaikai @ 8:07 AM 2 comments

Music

This is one of the best songs I have ever had the bliss to hear:

"Set The Fire To The Third Bar"
(Snow Patrol feat. Martha Wainwright)

I find the map and draw a straight line
Over rivers, farms, and state lines
The distance from here to where you'd be
It's only finger-lengths that I see
I touch the place where I'd find your face
My finger in creases of distant dark places

I hang my coat up in the first bar
There is no peace that I've found so far
The laughter penetrates my silence
As drunken men find flaws in science

Their words mostly noises
Ghosts with just voices
Your words in my memory
Are like music to me

I'm miles from where you are,
I lay down on the cold ground
I, I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms

After I have travelled so far
We'd set the fire to the third bar
We'd share each other like an island
Until exhausted, close our eyelids
And dreaming, pick up from
The last place we left off
Your soft skin is weeping
A joy you can't keep in

I'm miles from where you are,
I lay down on the cold ground
And I, I pray that something picks me up
and sets me down in your warm arms

And miles from where you are,
I lay down on the cold ground
and I, I pray that something picks me up
and sets me down in your warm arms

We can be so intense and passionate, so affectionate, so warm that some situations help strengthen those beautiful qualities and link distant points in space in perfect empathy. Thanks to singers like these we've read above, we can remember that in spite of wars and a lot of other monstrosities commited by people, our deep essence is love and love sustaints humankind. There should be enough to be alive enjoying a life billions couldn't even dreamt of. There is money, possessions, pride, work, commodities and health, but how is all that meaningful if not because of true love?

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posted by shaikai @ 3:10 PM 0 comments

A strange dream

Some days ago I had a curious dream. I dreamt I was in my Chinese class; my teacher and partners were making some criticisms to me (don't remember about what), but they all were speaking in a non-sensic way resembling Mandarin Chinese. I felt a little uneasy, but no so much as to not listen quietly. Then, when it was my turn to say something, a striking idea came to my mind: I realized all of the people I was seeing were my creations, produced by my own imagination. I told them so, this time in (actual) Spanish.

I'm very surprised I've reached such a level of self-consciousness in the middle of a dream. Have you ever had an experience like that? I don't know how can it be possible, or whether this self-awareness is just illusory, a mere copy of an authentic state of self-awareness.

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posted by shaikai @ 7:38 AM 0 comments

In vacations at last

Recently I've delivered my last written exam this semester. Finally I'm in vacations!! Next year I only should make my undergraduate thesis and that's all. It's been a long time since I started to study in university and now it's time for my diploma.

It feels strange to be at this point: it feels good, but scary at the same time. What will I do with my life after my graduation? That's an important matter because it'll be very soon and I'm going to need more money. What I really have in mind is to keep studying philosophy, and that demands money: a postgraduate degree is so expensive that I can't afford it myself alone. It's time to find out ways. It's time to be completely responsible for myself.

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posted by shaikai @ 4:20 PM 0 comments