The serpent beneath the flowers

What if everything will always be the same? But things do change, you feel it already, you are tired of what you’re doing! You are tired of the everlasting circle. Inevitably, you will want to change. Eventually, you will have gained the motivation to do so. And isn’t this the whole point of nature? It will always, no matter what, point you towards the right direction. The only thing you have to do is to stop fighting it. You will have what’s yours; you will see what’s out there. You will suffer, if you have to, you will rejoice when you should. And you will know what’s right.

But what is it in nature, which makes me want to fight it so bad? What is the characteristic of nature, which makes everything so complicated? Why don’t I dare, why don’t I trust in my own words and the existence of nature’s powers? Why am I not one with my life and with what is right? How come, that if nature intends humanity to live, to prosper, and to die, I fear all these things so much; all of them? Have I missed something? Have I not received proper education? Was I disadvantaged at some point of my life? Have I had too much of something else? Why is life not perfect? Why do we lie? Why are we not like all the other animals? But, no animal is happy. They are honest, they fight, they make love and they die. There is no reasoning, there is no philosophy, and there are no questions and no answers. Just life.

What’s so special about us? What is it, which makes the suffering worthwhile? There must be happiness, there must be morality, and there must be love and sacrifice. There must also be friendship and trust. We are no wild animals; we don’t compete for mere survival. We compete for all the higher luxuries of life. This is our fight.

..current life controlled by..

several factors:

- HABITS
- physical constraints --> optimization problem?
-> or rather lazyness??
- some kind of depression ?
- curriculum / schedule
- dependency (-cies)
- Family / commitments
- picture of self (within society/community)
- picture of others (within society --> uni/house/friends/internet/family)
- [not free will]


I would like to strip the list down to Animal Instincts (easily confused with male instincts?)

one more

The D story: It's over over over over!! Well, not completely, but I am no longer slave to my imaginations (concerning her). She's pulled me back into reality. We had a talk; I finally told her what's going on inside my mind and... gave her the chance to thrash it all into pieces. That's how painful it felt, the moment she told me she wasn't the person I'd fantazised her to be and that consequently, I must be delusional. But medicine is never sweet. And I'm good. I have been thankful to her ever since, but I do not think we'll see each other again at least for a very long time.

A quote by Kierkegaard, which crossed my mind when I and D talked

How do you do, Mr Xolotl?

No one is more than a function - or part of a total function. Life goes by, and sets paths, which are not traveled in vain. But no one can stop "freely" to play by the wayside, because he will delay or upset the general atomic journey. From this comes discontent From this comes despair and unhappiness. We all would like to be the sum total and not one of the numerical elements. Changes and struggles disconcert us, terrify us because they are con-

stant and certain, we search for calm and "peace" because we forsee the death that we die every second. Opposites unite and nothing new or arhythmetic is discovered. We take refuge in, we take flight into irrationality, magic, abnormality, in fear of the extraordinary beauty of the truth

of matter and dialectics, of whatever is healthy and strong - we like being sick to protect ourselves. Someone - something - always protects us from the truth - Our own ignorance and fear. Fear of everything - fear of knowing that we are no more than vectors direction construction and destruction to be alive, and

to feel the anguish of waiting for the next moment and of taking part in the complex current (of affairs) not knowing that we are headed towards ourselves, through millions of stone beings - of bird beings - of star beings - of microbe beings - of fountain beings toward

ourselves - variety of the one incapable of escaping to the two - to the three - to the usual - to return to the one. Yet not the sum (sometimes called God - sometimes freedom sometimes love - no - we are hatred - love - mother - child - plant - earth - light - ray - as usual - world bringer of worlds - universes and cell universes -

   Enough!

Text and heading taken from "The Diary of Frida Kahlo: an intimate self-portrait" 1995 Abrams, New York, pp. 248-250

Between professionalism and phonyness

Point: Among others I also read blogs which attract a steady amount of commenters. Not only readers but actually people saying something on a regular basis, praising the writer and the writings. The author of the blog then, replies to each individual commenter, however insignificant the message might be. I as many others therefore can be quite sure to get a personal reply (a reward) in return and I found myself actively looking for it after I made a comment. I thought it was nice and I liked it.

Now, let's not just leave it at that. When I read on through some others' comments and the bloggers' answer to them, I gradually got the strange feeling that in all replies there was an unmistakable flavor of the humor that attracted the crowd to this particular blog in the first place. A few assumptions:

1. That's just the bloggers' character. The blog is written by the same person who answers the comments, why should they differ in style or 'flavor'?

2. The blog in itself is deliberately kept in a certain style. It is humorous and the author is doing a good job sticking to that perceived benchmark.

3. (As an extension of point 2.) Deviating from that typical style would be similar to losing professionality. This would alienate readers and may cause them to dislike the blog.

And now I have a question:
Besides the obvious pleasure of receiving positive feedback from an audience for your performance, is there any other reason (should there be any other?) as to why the blogger should keep up this kind of 'professionality', keep up this style?

To what extent can honesty be 'modified' for the sake of the above mentioned? I
guess I'm looking for a balance between the two extremes: Lies and truth.

[H]oly Moly!

I'm pathetic. [Don't let it discourage yourself. You know, you can make it.] What I'm even talking about? I guess, nothing.

In fact, nothingness seems to be a real hot topic amongst higher educated circles nowadays (*lift brow & tilt head*). I've just stumbled upon a nicely written [read: something between rich in content and entertaining, not very in either direction. But nice.] Economist article about why on earth (haha) there is something and not nothing?

PS: two things I wanna say before they fade out of my conscience again:

1. Being of chinese heritage + growing up in middle Europe = the biggest puzzle of my life

2. I have a translation problem: There is a profound asymmetry between what I have in mind and what I turn out saying. It can be intentional, it can be due to indifference, it can be unintentional.

____________________________________________________________

Take this blog. No, this very post. I write as I think. My intention is to display exactly my state of mind and the stages it goes through and the order of those stages. In short, a complete as possible picture of my thought process. As you might have noticed, I try to set my thoughts as few limits as possible, just so that I can let every thought and every hunch and detour of thought come to life and still be able to write it down. Sometimes, it is rhetorically impossible for me to put everything in words.
But what is the idea behind it? Why should I intend to publicly exhibit my mind?

I figured: Because I got trouble with communication (primarily me - me, but also me-others) I subconsciously want to figure out what the hell is wrong with me. In effect ,what I‘m doing is putting the whole mess out there so that I can revisit it myself in another point in time to come and check on that patient from the last blog post. In some way it looks schizophrenic, who knows, maybe it is? But I guess this is the only way of helping myself and understanding my problems.

Let‘s see. A small example is this: A post I named Cater to my needs was written very quickly, in an emotionally satisfying moment. Yet today, when I first read it again, I realise that it conveys nothing of the feelings I‘ve had then. It is simply pathetic and I am surprised to see that what I thought was psychologically and emotionally deep and most of all the truth is really the opposite. How can something I so truly believed was a near perfect display of my character, just seem like.... I don‘t even know what to call it. Could you tell me? So, either way. I fooled myself. And the truth of the matter is, it‘s always so simple, yet never easy: I did not care. I simply didn‘t care whether what I said was accurate or not....

A portrait of reality is always a matter of precise and diligent scientific work (even in the arts!). I was too sloppy with my life right there.

Simple, not easy

It's just that, I'm sort of lonely and also sort of needy and above all rather whiney, that, when I feel the slightest urge for something, I tend to become consumed by it and the accompanying drive to satisfy it. Put in another way, I guess you could say I'm a spoilt brat. The reason I'm telling you this is because I've had enough wine to start doing things that are beneficial solely to my above mentioned "needs" (which are, technically not really any needs, as those refer to things that keep you alive. Not just comfortable..) and also because I've had only so much wine that I could still notice what I was doing.

I'm gonna go to China next year. I have been allocated an exchange spot at the Renmin University in Beijing. I can safely say that I'm just as clueless about what's awaiting me as if I were to go to Mexico, or Dublin... I also chose Paris and Barcelona and Florida. But, surprisingly I got my first choice.

For example. If I were in a 'normal' condition, I would save these few lines as a draft, put my computer aside, go brush my teeth and fall into my bed. I would realise that I'm too tired to produce any useful/interesting text and should safe my time to do it better some other time. I would not skip all this thinking and keep on writing just because I feel the urge to tell you something. I would know that the outcomes of a well prepared, or at least thought-through article (post) would in the end earn me much more personal satisfaction than what I get from following this urge. What I get, infact, is minimal short term relief with a limit approaching minus infinity. As you can see, I am trying to describe weaknesses of the human character. Since I happen to have alot of those I might just as well go ahead and... I'm curious about this topic and about pathological gambling.

Not only did I just indulge in the vain hope of somebody finding me interesting or noteworthy because of my seemingly 'intelectual' interest, I've also just traded valuable time and energy to research on those topics that - as I just mentioned and believed 30 seconds ago, I find so highly interesting - for a display of these 'seemingly intelectual interests.'