Choices

If there's anything one comes to realise over time it's how tough it can be to be a creature whose one core characteristic is the ability to make choices, to such an extent at times that the choices we have the ability to make can even transcend the natural order.

Religion calls is 'free will', others call it simply 'choice'. I was never good at making choices, perhaps because I grew up getting used to having others making choices for me and expecting those choices made for me to be good ones. In my early 20s, I realised that more often than not, if I didn't make the choice for myself the best I could hope for was to end up with a decision by default - that's not always so good, is it, when you dither so much that in the end you're forced into the only choice left.

At the same time, it would be true to say that today's world has never been more saturated with choices, or at least the illusion of a lot of choices out there. Of course, with a closer look at what seems like a multitude of choices, one often comes to realise that the ramifications departing from each choice actually lead to a swift narrowing down of said choices.

Not all choices are the same in terms of importance, or perhaps I should say in terms of repercussions for the future chain of events that will depart from that choice. Choosing what to have for lunch pales in comparison to, say, a life-changing decision to move countries. Deciding not to choose is another choice in itself, yet its repercussion can be far worse than actually choosing to make a choice for the simple fact that we are choosing to be passive or in denial in the face of having to choose, in a way.

I've once again reached a stage where major decision must be made. The last time I decided to make a choice of that magnitude, it ended in disaster - so of course there is that little voice at the back of my mind scaring me away from trying that again. But then I know that if I don't actively make a choice, this time I will regret it.

This could change everything. And maybe that's why I'm so scared and have spent the whole week trying to bury my head in the sand.

It's not so much about choosing, but more about having the guts to try. I know that if I don't try, I'll regret it. Strangely enough, the knowledge that I'll regret not even trying to go for an active choice in my life is the only thing I feel certain about for the first time in my life.

Allergy to Modern Times

There are days like today when I really wish I'd stayed in bed. It all started a bit odd from the moment I stepped out of the house, if you ask me. I made my way to the tube station as I invariably do each day and went to the ticket counter to get my travelcard renewed. The man behind the glass screen beamed at me at my approach, and as he proceeded to renew my travelcard, he started telling me about how he'd just come back from Dubai and how he'd loved it. I was still half-asleep but I managed a polite smile, which then prompted him to randomly say: "You should go there, you know." I laughed, and replied: "Yeah, in my dreams."

"No, really, you look like you need to go to a nice, sunny place," he insisted.

"Ah, don't tempt me... I have to go to work..." I sighed, and off I went down the hole that would lead me to my train platform.

As it happens, I didn't really have 'work' today as I had to attend one of those workshops that are supposed to make you better at your job. This one was about teaching us how to write better web-friendly content. I slumped on a chair at the back of the room, switched on the computer and listened to the droning voice explaining how people's attention span is now so low that we had to adapt our writing to it.

It was all about 'short' sentences, and God forbid you even think about writing paragraphs longer than 25 words. Sentences should be as short and to the point as possible, the man said, otherwise it became too complex for people's brains and they'd just leave your page.

I looked around me at that point, thinking surely I couldn't be the only one to find that absolutely shocking and laughable. But as I glanced around, everyone was just nodding their head approvingly. I wanted to say: "Why should we have to lower standards of writing to adapt to people's degenerative brains? Surely if the media kept a higher standard in the first place, it wouldn't have added to the trend of shorter attention span." But for some reason as soon as I opened my mouth, the man just ignored me and moved on from the subject at once before I could even utter a word.

Everything about today's 'teaching' was about adapting to mass stupidity. By the end of the day I felt so depressed and frustrated I just wanted to go home and cry my eyes out.

I just find it incredible that mainstream's logic could be so backward and actually quite inflexible. Its logic is reactive, not pre-emptive at all. Does anyone - anyone at all in this big universe - know what I mean, here? Reactive logic is that of following the following train of thoughts:

"Everyone is getting dumber, let's just dumb our own stuff down to meet their dumbness."

Pre-emptive logic, if followed from the beginning, would never need to rectify anything. But even if things go wrong at some point, pre-emptive logic would require sticking to the standards and expect the degenerative brains to move their asses and start making efforts again.

Of course, a profit-driven society could follow nothing but the former example - that of dumbing yourself down to meet the mass degeneration. Why? because profit is all about what you can achieve now, what you can earn the most right now. And so it is that we find ourselves immersed in an environment dumbing itself down for profit, because taking any other course of action would at first take a loss.

I sat there all day, having to listen to the man telling me how to write 'better' content, and all I could think of was how depressing it was. Unsurprisingly, he had the pleasure to let me know that my attempts at an exercise he gave us was the worst one. But if the aim was to write in the most dumb-friendly way, then I suppose that coming out as the worst performer in that instance should actually tell me something far more positive in the end.

I have nothing against dumbness itself. I just can't stand having to sit there and watch dumbness be heralded as the next step in human intelligence.

I will not change my style, and I will not accommodate anyone because they have a 'short attention span'.

Mirrors

I emerged from the train station tonight looking around me as though I had suddenly been caught in a daze. King's Cross was standing tall in the night, its red brick gown detached from the night sky unfolding behind it. I blinked, uncertain. Had I really been anywhere at all? It was only yesterday that I was standing at right about the same spot, with the same red brick façade greeting me. So yes, for a split second I wondered: had I really been anywhere at all?

Old feelings and thoughts continued their stirring inside me, untamed waves crashing against my head and heart over and over again. In spite of my best efforts, I had been dragged back into the past through no fault of my own... or was it? It's hard to say. I remember feeling sad in the wake of my silent cousin's departure, and then I remember the sadness morphing into nostalgia, and before I knew it I found myself frantically looking for old journals and diaries. The next thing I remember doing is sit at my desk to read these relics of mine written so many years ago. Shortly after I started reading, I found myself throwing them away from me, feeling deeply unsettled.

Who was this girl whose thoughts I was reading? What scared me wasn't a feeling of detachment from who I was back then - in many ways I wish it were the case, that what spooked me was not being able to relate anymore... but that wasn't the case at all, on the contrary. Reading myself back felt like... staring at unfolding patterns that remain with me to this very day... making me who I am today.

I had received a text from an old friend who has moved away from London a long time ago. We met when I had just turned 21 and she had just turned 19. She had just started her first year at university and I was finishing my last year, but we hadn't met at university. We'd met on a forum for people who suffered from various mental afflictions, from depression to food issues to wanting to commit suicide. On that forum were people from all ages, although teenagers and young adults seemed to form a majority, as did the female ratio versus male. What we all liked about it was the freedom to express as much of our dark thoughts as we felt the need to, and no one was going to judge or lecture you. We were all 'in the same boat', so to speak, and we could relate. Beyond the differing circumstances, ages and stories lay the same common afflictions. And one day this girl and I decided to meet. We both lived in the same city, so we met up in a Starbucks near her halls and we just instantly 'clicked'.

It wasn't long before she got worse and had to leave the city, though, and I remember feeling that same old, painful twitch in the heart when she announced she had to leave - why did people I met in life and allowed myself to care about, always had to leave prematurely? It was always Distance. They always had to 'move'. I've lost count of how many people have entered my life and disappeared out of it the moment I started caring.

Anyway... we met up again this weekend, and it was as though we'd never left each other's side. I wondered some more about why it was that people I cared about were invariably taken away from me by distance, and I felt like concluding that maybe, just maybe, it was better that way - even if it rarely feels better.

Is there such a thing as only being able to be friends with people from a distance? Is there such a thing as better preservation of friendship, perhaps even love, so long as it is kept away from us for the most part?

I couldn't say.

I spent last night sitting on her bed listening to her singing as she played the guitar and then I asked her to play the violin for me. She got up, picked up the violin case, opened it before me and spent some time tuning it. And then she started playing... giggling and wincing every time she missed the odd note. We'd been sipping wine and we'd also been smoking. She then reverted back to playing the guitar and singing... and there I was, nodding my head in rhythm with the wonderful acoustic sound, wishing so much it would never stop.

Later on, her boyfriend came home and I discovered that he was a painter. They showed me pictures of his paintings and I was struck by how talented the man was... I'd never cared about abstract painting before, but suddenly the fusion of colours, the odd patterns and forms drowning in pools of colours... all of it was speaking to me now. At that point I wasn't sure if it was the smoking that had affected me as I could have sworn I didn't feel any 'different'.

But then, as we sat at the table eating dinner and I was trying out vegan curry for the first time, we somehow ended up on the topic of 'mirrors', asking one another whether we'd noticed how our reflection never seems to look quite the same as our person 'seen' in real life. And suddenly the thought that we never actually get to see ourselves but only a mirror image or reflection at best struck me... or perhaps what really struck me was the fact that we ultimately get to see others better than we could ever see our own self...

When we stare at our own reflection - the only way we have to 'see' ourselves even through pictures - what we're really staring at is a distorted version of ourselves, leaving only other people with the ability to see the original version, if you like. And so it is that we probably have more of a shot at making sense of others rather than our own selves.

Nothing seems to matter anymore, nothing has a point, all is futile. The sky is dark and dull even at its bluest. The wind is harsh, cold, venimous, even when scarse. Time is bloody, rutheless, even when ignored. Food is poison, evil, even when avoided. People are hurtful savages, even when caring and trying to be kind. Dreams are torture even though I chase after them relentlessly. (18/09/2006)

Work has been more draining than usual in the past couple of weeks, and then the other day as I sat at my desk wishing so much for the hours to tick by faster, I remembered that the one good thing about that job is that we're allowed to use earphones all the time... and so I started listening to what I can only call settling music to my ears... People around me were chatting, bothering me with questions, trying to distract me, but I was losing myself in Beethoven over and over again. What a blissful escape from the almost constant dreariness of the modern workplace.

Without music, truly Life would be a mistake.

Traveling down the river Styx, hopeless shadow of what I once was, I remember a little girl who would have been good. I remember the one that should have been and stare at the fraud that took her place, reflected in the dark waters of Nowhere.

(18/08/2006)

Jotted down so many years ago, but I'm moving away from it now. Well, that's the aim. Breaking (old) patterns seems like the next logical step.

Glimpses

My cousin left yesterday afternoon, and since then I've had the time to fully experience this strange and eerie 'empty' atmosphere left after someone's departure from a place. Everything always has to end at some point.

Every part of life seems to belong to a cycle of some sort - even mere moments are like short cycles bound to end at some point. I won’t miss the stranger that lived in our flat for about 6 months, the silent stranger who never spoke to me beyond the ‘hi’ word. It’s just that as always, the disappearance of a ‘presence’ can be felt strongly. The room next door will be once again empty, hollowed out from a human presence. After a few days, the strange ‘emptiness’ will fade away, of course, but still, the present moment to be experienced is that of this strange disappearance of human presence no matter how silent that presence was.

It must have something to do with energy, surely. We humans have an energy about us that travels around with our body, wherever we go, and when we leave, that energy or ‘presence’ leaves with us. The same must be true with death to a far larger extent because with death, the body is simply left behind while that energy vanishes at once and for good.

Right now, I find myself stopping in my tracks often to stare at the room's closed door. He was always keeping the door closed, so I find myself imagining that he could still be in there, watching TV or whatever else it was that he would spend his time doing. Last night, as I found myself stopping in my tracks in the corridor to stare at the closed door, I could see that there was no more light filtering through from underneath the door. I felt this strange pinch in the heart and I wondered how it was possible to feel such deep sadness for a silent stranger who got on my nerves more often than not while he was here.

I guess my sorrow has a lot to do with being too sensitive. No matter how strange he could be, I knew that he'd had a very tough life. His inability to cope with daily life - to be responsible - and the reason why he was so lost and unable to even try to help himself while he was here was directly linked to a terrible childhood filled mostly with abuse. I got a glimpse of someone whose life had been so devoid of love and care that it left him deeply handicapped. I realise that whatever we end up being as adults, it all depends mostly on childhood, and since we don't get to choose where we're born, it pretty much leaves a lot of who we become up to chance.

And maybe the reason I feel so sorrowful right now is because that silent stranger was showing me this all along. Or maybe the way I feel is merely a reflection of my inability to accept change without feeling pain.

Fractal attraction

To love or not to love,

To feel or not to feel...

In my many attempts at diving into the heart of all things - any thing, really - I grew more aware of certain recurring themes that seemed to apply not just to my person, but to the world at large... sometimes it felt like staring at something close to fractals - fragmented geometric shapes that can be split into parts, each of which being a reduced-size copy of the whole over and over again as you zoom in closer and closer. Some call it 'self-similarity', but one only needs to have a look around and start zooming in on a mere leaf fallen from a tree to see it. And we, as people, seem no different from that 'norm'. Even logical thought, that very capacity to think rationally, is an echo of that notion of fractals. The more one thinks about a particular thing, the more they find they can derive not just many roots shooting up from the base, but also repetitive patterns that could simply be juxtaposed and where the only difference remains 'size'. Individual versus whole, basically - same exact patterns in essence repeating themselves in the exact same way whether one looks at the individual level or from a 'bird's eye view'.

And so here's the world. The whole of this world at its most basic. My whole person or being is but a fractal-like embodiment or manifestation of the whole universe at once - in a fractal sense. We just get distracted by the seemingly random elements of the environment, which end up shaping our 'differences'. That distraction is at the core of the reality-based illusion of difference.

What drives the human world? Repetition, it seems - through competition. Everything about living screams replication... through competition, meaning 'the best' in a very basic way rather than a sophisticated one as the human intellect would love to portray. Of course, over the centuries we managed to dress that basic notion driving our very existence into something fancier. We dressed up something basically 'ugly' to have it look more... palatable to the more sophisticated mind.

Women do it all the time. They wake up in the morning and then dart into the bathroom to apply a mask of make-up to conceal flaws. Here again comes the notion of fractals, for the only reason they conceal flaws is part of the same way the world of humans at large tries hard to sugar-coat reality all the time. Building sand castles everywhere. Over, and over, and over again. Trying so hard to conceal the true nature of Reality by applying layers upon layers of mind make-up - through the use of imagination.

Everything we can look at now is a direct result of competition - through, again, replication - of some sort. Every single second of my life is defined by a competition of some sort. Even my mere breathing is dictated by one component fighting against another to make it. We die because, ultimately, we lose out against some other component(s). Medicine is just a field that aims to fight such components harder.

Social entanglements are as much part of the competitive, replicative 'norms' as any. They repeat themselves over and over again, and though they might appear random to the undiscerning mind, the ones that get to be repeated over time are the ones that win over others in the constant competition battle. One only needs to look at how the world is built on opposites... nothing seems to exist on a stand-alone basis. If something is, then its opposite is surely there, too. Male and female, spring and winter, thin and large, black and white, hot and cold, dry and wet, etc, etc... What are opposites but the embodiment of competition at its apex? Opposites are like the perfect middle ground of the 'balance' of competition, and everything in between is forever torn in a tug of war as they all compete to make it over all others, from the tiniest atom to the biggest elements.

Nature is so 'perfect' because it makes everything rest on chains of events - on top of the replicative competition process. There is that element to be taken into account, too. The fact that from the very beginning everything that unfolded was the equivalent of a game of replicative dominoes falling one after the other according to how they were placed along the way. And I would bet my socks off that even as the last domino drops dead on the floor, it will happen to contain the fractal-like similarities of the whole universe - space/time - at once.

The blue skies that graced our island these past few days have had a strange effect on me... in fact, it seems to occur every year around the same time as winter begins its slow retreat and the first glimpses of spring emerge. And I know that strange feeling is going to worsen to reach a peak around April/May.

There is something about the soft, mild warmth of early spring, its clear sunshine and diluted blue skie , that just seems to transport me back in time whether I like it or not. Suddenly, as I glance up towards the bright horizon, I see myself as a teenager, sitting in the sun outside school with friends. I can almost smell the air of then. I can close my eyes and be there all over again. The contrast between what the mind's eye can still see and the reality of now can be overwhelming. It's like Time itself is slapping you in the face, in a way.

When I'm not caught up reminiscing my teenage years, I find myself remembering last year... How things can change in the space of a year - but I should know better, really, for I saw first hand how everything can change overnight. It's hard for me to believe now that around the same time last year I was spending almost all my free time with a guy who would end up disappearing out of my life as abruptly as he'd entered it. What a contrast it is between spending most of your sunny days in someone's arms and being completely alone a year later as the sunny days return.

I guess they call it 'nostalgia'.

My diary writing has trickled down to an almost non-existent state these days. It's not like the constant thinking and musing have stopped, it's just that the weight of disillusionment in general feels like a massive boulder that has fallen on them... crushing them to a pulp, forcing them in rather than out, like a blocked drain, or a river whose flow has been cut short by an avalanche of rocks disrupting its bed.

The source of that disillusionment can be found right here. Ever since I started this Blog, I've been growing more and more disillusioned, and I just can't dismiss the fact that my 'thoughts' have ended up attracting the wrong people over and over again. In fact, that Blog has brought me only trouble from the moment it went 'live'... And I know now that when I finally leave it behind, the only regret I'll be left with is of ever starting it in the first place because, truly, if I could go back in time to the moment when I naively thought of 'writing a blog' I would have slapped myself in the face and moved on from the idea.

I just can't get away from the fact that my own thoughts have only served to connect me to all the wrong people in the end. Why do people always have to interfere? The internet is even worse in that respect, because you often don't even know these strangers who end up tempering with your perceptions or influencing your thoughts.

I always liked getting comments now and then, but I now realise how much I hate that some people should have had the need to contact me - deluding themselves that we had anything in common whatsoever or anything to share in the slightest beyond the words I felt the need to express here.

I guess the joke is on me.