Polish express - autoroute vers le soleil

I started my official ¨vacation¨ (read: unemployment) by dropping T off in Barcelona for her flight to NY. By thumbing it.

Original plan was to go through the Elzas, stay there for the night, and make in to Barcelona the next day.

The result:

*** The Dutch

• One guy I talked to close to Braunschweig said he would ask his wife if he could take us. One minute later he was speeding away. Guess the answer was not too friendly.* I asked another Dutch man close to Utrecht if he would take us to the border. After negotiation with his wife, he apologized to us that they didn’t want to socialize and wanted to listen to some music. 5 minutes later, he came to look for me and ask edme why  I wasn’t getting into his car. Apparently, I misunderstood, and after a smooth ride with Roxette he took a 10 minute detour to drop me off at the station of Rosendaal.*** The Congolese …“explained” me about Christian Evengalism during 2 hours. I learned that the relationship between a MAN and ONE WOMAN is very special, and stronger and more natural than all the other alternatives. Unfortunately, he had been recently seperated from his wife.

*** The Polish BE : Are you going south towards Frankfurt? PL : No BE : Where are you going? PL : Amsterdam BE : Mmmm. Want to take us? PL : Sure ………. 550 kilometers later BE : Why did you take us? PL : Because you asked

So all went well. It’s 27 degrees here in Barcelona, and tomorrow I’m hitching to Marseille.

Stockholm

Went to Stockholm for a couple of days.

Spend 3 days in a community in the middle of protected green area. An old hospital for TBC patients has been converted to 30 appartments, with over a 100 people living there. They’re only allowed to be there because their toilets use no water. People from all over the world come by busloads to see this. They make money by giving a tour of the place. Highlights were the sauna, forest, horseback riding and boar on the open fire. The community has pretty much te same problems as ours, but the symptoms are different, it plays out differently. The leve of commitment has nothing to do with age, experience, or time living in the place. The most interesting for me was the experience of being a guest in a place like this/that. My first reaction was amazement. I started projecting my expectations (talking to everyone). This led to a confrontation that had nothing to do with me ( I made a situation change for a stressed person), which ended with me feeling very insulted. Other people there overcompensated by making us feel extremely appreciated and welcome., and giving us friendship shirts. All in 24 hours.

The city itself looked superficially like Prague with more water. I think it’s too expensive to be worth it. If you really want to go to Sweden, I suggest you look to the north or the south. Or to Norway.

Sweden has 9 million rocks on the coast. That’s enough for every Swede to be alone and look at the reflection of the sun.

Every single country is full of friendly people, but being friendly means something different in every country.

Going to the Persian

Went to a concert of the magnificent [Mohammad Reza Shajarian](Mohammad Reza Shajarian).  Me and Clayton where in an ethnic minority in the concert hall, and as soon as he took the stage an ear deafening applause came from the crowd. I’ve never heard so much enthusiasm before a concert. He’s kind of a big deal.

The concert itself was excellent. About 14 musicians, with traditional instruments (and a couple of MRS’s own design). Excellent composition. Dueling lutes and percussion. Vocal calligraphy. I’m going east next summer.

He’s coming to Paris and Amsterdam next week, so you can if you want. Check the link at the start.

You can find all things in Europe related to Persian culture here.

The blues

I love the blues. So does Scorsese. Together with 6 other directors, he create 7 full length documentaries on different aspects of blues. Everything from Mississippi delta blues to Chicago style, over an episode exclusively dedicated to piano blues.

The first contact I had with the blues was a stray album of Blind Willie Johnson lying in my mother’s cupboard. From the first time I heard the opening to “I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole”, along the stangely uplifting “If I Had My Way I’d Tear The Building Down” (which, acoording to legend, got him arrested after beforming it in front of the New Orleans courthouse) to the absolutely great duet “Thanks God I’m Satisfisfied”.

As you might have guessed, his full name would be the Reverend Blind Willie Johnson. And no, he didn’t became blind due to an eye infection after obtaining parasites. Blind Willie’s parent had a huge fight after his father caught his mother two-timi’n. And she decided to spite him by throwing lye in his only son’s eyes.

Next up: Mississippi Delta

Learning

Many people I meet in our community are convinced the true value and pleasure in life is learning. Indeed, a large part of the people would label it a “learning community”

At a superficial level, I totally agree. With total consideration for the cliche , I strongly believe the world today is changing faster and more profoundly than ever before (with possibly the exception of countries undergoing revolutions). Technology is changing (yes son, we didn’t have email back them), and as a direct consequence the availability of information has increased several orders of magnitude. So sure, you need to learn constantly, and it’s a very valuable skill to have. It’ll help you through life.

“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again"An Essay on Criticism

Origami

Of all the traditional Japanese artforms, the careful folding of paper is probably the least worthy of your time.

On identity

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced there are two main ways people form, or project their identity.

The main way we encounter every day is defining it in relationship to another identity. This can happen in both a positive and a negative way. Negative will often take forms like this:

Berlin is once again full of political slogans and ugly mugs. A large percentile of the slogans tells us the person will “attack and solve the problems”. Implied in this statement, we don’t believe the other people in power (often from the same party!) are doing their jobs right. You should vote for us, because we are not like the people who make policy right now.

Flemish nationalism is often fed on the fact that the people are not Walloons,Dutch, or German.

Positive identity relationships often takes the form of sub-cultures, pigeon-holing and dogma:

I’m a person that doesn’t eat pig meat. So do you, so you will probably gain a good idea of my identity.

We’re from the same country, so we must be more probable to share some part of our identity. We grew up with the same books, tv-shows,….

While it seems natural to try and convey and identity in this manner, it is also limiting. To be able to convey an identity by relationship to another one, you automatically assume the other person has the same opinions, and views on the other identity. Call it a shared vocabulary. In any case, you are dragging along a whole lot of presuppositions. This is the problem of Dadaism: it occurs outside of “reason and logic”, but it cannot exist without it. Especially in case of negative association, the results are quite ironic: how can you claim something is not part of your identity, if you define your identity in terms of it?

Where is this all going? Don’t know. I guess it’s good to associate positively with some “shared identities”. I think “negatively defined” identities are bad ways to create understanding. Maybe it’s just important to be aware of the process, and not worry too much. Follow your heart, I guess.

If you’re offended by my take on Dadaism, please enlighten me, I am quite ignorant.

Milestone

There comes a time in every man’s life where he has to help his woman discard clothes….

I estimate 75 percent of my public (50 percent of the men, all of the woman) know what I’m trying to say.

Irony

So, in the biggest news for now: I quit my job.

I’ve felt unenthusiastic about it for months, and maybe even worse, unproductive and unattached to the work I was doing. While I contemplated taking a sabbatical month for a while,  I felt it would be an unsustainable solution in any case, and I felt I was up for something new. In any case, I won’t be getting up at 7.30 from 24 op September onwards.

So, I’m pretty much faced with another choice in my path of life, and plenty of time to think about it. Possibilities include:

• Contractor* Open source developer* Doctoral student* Something that is not so damaging for my eyes and backAthos island. Make no mistake about it, I will go there before I die.

So one way the cards for this one could fall: me and T pass by Belgium, she leaves to New York while I stay there, and then we hook up in Barcelona. Afterwards, we go to some crazy country I have prejudices about. Which is pretty much the same story I told on my very first post. Maybe just in reverse.

EDIT: wow, I’ve been complaining about motivation for over 100 days, according to this blog. Sounds like I did the right  thing.

Synergy

It’s a myth synergy can’t be bad. It very much depends on the final goal both people are heading to. Synergy doesn’t have to explicit, and it’s the implicit ones that are the devil. It’s a myth synergy is always better than the sum of it’s parts. With people, even the action of synergy changes the state of the parts. It’s tricky to know the final outcome. But then again, reality was never so clear-cut as we would like.

Last week, I had a guest who’se entire world view could not account for love. I didn’t even have to point this out to him, he brought it up himself.

In short, it’s been another experiencefull month dealing with people. Next year I’m either going into politics, or becoming a programmer/hermit.

The shoulder/back is ok, it’ll hold out till Octobre.