Los hijos secretos de...

Rome, whose melodic intensity on Flowers from Exile goes far beyond anything that can be classified as "martial industrial" music, whose lead singer is out somewhere lost on a journey of self-discovery and whose official website contains nothing more than a succinct "WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IS GONE FOR GOOD" (a prize quotable, by the way) - well, they have a song called "The Secret Sons of Europe". Along with "To Die Among Strangers", it took my breath away and put it in a box. The concept of the album borrows heavily from the story of the Spanish Republicans banished from their homeland after the Spanish Civil War, and the flamenco guitars and claps reinforce that sentiment. The sentiment expressed here is nostalgia (processed though it is), and the secret sons of Europe are those who drifted in a life of shame and virtual inexistence as the Franco regime encroached on what was once not a land of fascisizing nuts. I'm not a fan of making martyrs out of anyone, and the civil war was about much more than the good freedom fighters vs. the dark, ominous colossus of merciless military might. But the fact is every time a shameful, tyrannical time comes along for a country, the generation borne by it and bred in it is later a lost generation. The losers are silenced, smothered and obliterated. But to have been part of the great tyrannical machine and later subsist following its dismantling - that is also being a loser and having to slither and creep under rocks, hiding from the sunlight and the scornful faces of those around you. Because the loser always has to slump his arms and bow his head. Think of the simplest examples: the former people of Nazi Germany in 1945, still at least partly faithful to the criminal regime Germany spawned; die-hard Stalinists from the Russian countryside in 1956, whose Great Patron's face suddenly crumbled and fell apart like an old collage of facial feature cutouts glued together long ago and falling to pieces as the glue dries; Japan's post-war society of complete disillusionment with the free-fall of imperial authority; Poland's ex-communists -with Jaruzelski as their epitome - tainted by the (perceived) wrongdoings of their time. They lived, to some extent, between the cracks, in a hard shell of shame.

Here's a poem randomly lifted from this blog ("Noctívagos") that expresses more of the same:

---

Soy el hijo secreto de Lee Harvey Oswald
Soy el hijo secreto de Unabomber
Soy el hijo secreto de un Pantera Negra
el hijo secreto de América...

Soy el hijo secreto de Franco
Soy el hijo secreto de Olof Palme
Soy el hijo secreto de Adolf Hitler
el hijo secreto de Europa.

Soy el hijo secreto de Hiro-Hito
Soy el hijo secreto de Mishima
Soy el hijo secreto de Pol-Pot
el hijo secreto de Asia.

¡Dónde están las televisiones públicas y privadas
para publicitar mi enajenada vida, mi propio horror!

Soy el hijo secreto del Primer Mundo
mis cinco minutos de fama ¿dónde están?

---

I don't even want to begin elaborating on those, but interestingly enough, the references to Olof Palme and, to some extent, Mishima , seem a bit out of tune with the rest. Nice criticism of today's "First World" though - the secret sons of today's powers can float up to the surface riding the currents of cheap scandals and shock value.

Maybe subconsciously I'm posting this because I'm about to become a secret son of Europe myself - this being my last week in Poland before I go bumping into a Belgian afternoon. But hey - nothing new there. I've always felt a bit detached or excluded from the concept of nationality. I'm Polish by birth, by passport, by language - but not by spirit. And since I'm getting a bit too muddly and convoluted, I'll finish this up by saying that I hope I make it, hell, I believe I'll make it. 7 months in a foreign land alone is more than I've ever done. The challenges of the MA will come in a total package with the comings and the goings on the other side of the classroom. And an important relationship to maintain, to keep well watered and evergreen, and all that jazz. A big test it's up to me to pass. And last but not least, part of being a son of the world is moving around it, absorbing it as much as possible. After all, the road is the destination.



Titotazqueh.

All in a Day's Work, or: Proto-socialist Rants and the Poor in HD

(Part of this was written before)

Gotta love a day when what should be the most exciting line in the agenda actually turns out to be the most blah. So, I'll refrain from commenting on the Spain - Portugal match other than that it was about as exciting as a boxful of doilies. The World Cup is a no-no for me here - why comment on something you'll joyously forget the next day? Just a shame some class teams - and if class is what we're after, Cameroon, Germany, Argentina and Slovakia probably showed the bulk of it when at their best - went tally-ho and buh-bye, off to another ball game. The instant-replay/ultrasensitive-camera/homing-device-in-ball/laser-implant-into-eye-of-referee controversy is not even worth touching on. So, that's about it for the World Cup. I mean, North Korea's out (coming to a "training camp" near you, comrades!), so why get too excited? The rightful champion is disgracefully gone and the capitalist horde of the ever-cursed Pig-Lord of the Fifty Stars has been named the winner even before the kickoff to game one. I'm tellin' ya, these bourgeois dogs will stop at nothing.

Warsaw, where I stopped by a few days ago, gave me a lil' internship in the Embassy of Venezuela, a remote chance of being accepted into the Yucatan program in Mexico, and above all, a chance to meet up with a friend of mine who I'd never talked to before quite so freely. "Intellectually inspirational," said she as I walked her to the train, missing my last bus and not giving a damn. "Right back at you," said I. "Thank you," said she. Until I see some results and set about inspiring myself and others to ACTION, not to thinking, I ain't convinced. But I have come a long way from the bumbling blob of hypersensitive thick tar I was a year and a half ago. Still, I need change, and not only change in my life, but to enforce change where it needs enforcing, be one of those in the front line. Not the guy who puffs his chest out to pin the medal on better (vanity destroys, and baseless vanity is pitiful), but the guy who actually works in a team to take someone out of the dark hole he's in.

But where's my practice? I have no practice. I've never saved a life, never pulled someone out of the gaping maw they were falling into, never changed anyone's walk of life. It's just talk, and chattering, and bullshit. And talking about acting. And talking about talking about acting. How about a "DO", huh? How about a "DO"? It ain't gonna come floating down river for you to collect. The friend I met up with in Warsaw had been to the favelas in Rio, and she said the poverty here and the poverty there are worlds apart. Here, we lack programs that could really make a difference, take people off the streets permanently, give them just enough cheese to want more but just enough hurdles to know that it ain't gonna be easy to get from the bench back to real life. There, the favelados do what they can, but try as they might, the putrid system puts the hurdles there itself - stay inside, poor bastards, we don't want you peons moving. Maybe.

One thing is for sure - the dirt-splattered, weathered and beaten-down dregs everyone in Poland sometimes comes across (the older generation, not the current human wastes of are that go around robbing people at will) rarely elicit a second glance, or a bit of attention. Do they deserve it? I don't know. To each his own answer: would you grace a half-naked, old and broken drunkard with more than a fleeting glance? The last time I did - a few days ago - I stopped and took a few minutes to talk to a man with drooping skin and dirt smeared all around hands and fingernails, a man claiming to have been a sailor who did 24 years of jail time for beating up his bosun and a couple of others - which the faded Bruce Lee tats seemed to at least partially confirm. Toothless, he told me his plight: 65 gr for a beer, and starting from the 5th (which is when he gets his pension), he's off to rehab. Said it with real tears in his eyes, too, as he did when telling of his sons - two out of three supposedly dead. On the rehab front, no chance. I have no naivete to abuse there, he's not going anywhere voluntarily. Might have lied about the rest too. But who knows?

I gave him 70 gr.

Wrong? Right? Either way, it won't change a thing. And my talking to him doesn't make me any better than countless others who wouldn't even spare a second. It doesn't make me any better, because it's really just a formality. Nothing comes of it, like tossing a beggar a dime just to quash and quell your pricked guilty conscience and tickle your sense of righteousness - when in reality it changes nothing and you'll see the same beggar reeking just as bad and needing just as bad the next day until the day he dies or someone shakes him and takes him off the street. And someday I'd like to be able to say that when I'm stopped and talked to by a person of the category of the Anonymous Seaman - lower than low - something might come of it.

Parting thought: take a look at the teenage plastic princesses that abound on these streets and others. Or better yet - since this is a backwards town and always will be - imagine yourself in NY, LA, Boston, London, Paris, or the metropolis of your choice. And the slick suits that stride through the streets with confidence oozing corporate success. Would they want to admit the existence of a world unlike their own, a world of dirt and drugs and destitution? And starvation and wife-beating and hitting the bottle time and again? Would they acknowledge any ugliness in this world? Or is it easier to dig a trench in your pristine bubble and pretend it doesn't concern you?

Yeah, trench wins.

In Warsaw, at the station, I saw my first methhead. Up close, the bruises and open wounds on her face were grotesquely covered by a thick layer of correction fluid. Her eyes were dead, she was a shuffling zombie, asking for money with hand cupped, head down and gait somnambulant, despite a surprisingly (apparently) unravaged body - a meth trainee, perhaps. Now the question is - does she exist? Can she be helped? Or is she just a transparent ghost sleepwalking through a train station that's full and vibrant by day, but horrendously empty by night, the eternal night that never gives way to day in her little life of horrors?

We Are Headless

And there's really not much more to say, so I'll keep this short. I've never been particularly involved in politics and have always disliked frivolous and loose opinions from people who don't have a full picture of a political sitation. Recently I read an essay entitled "Keep Your Identity Small" (linked for the sake of completeness), where the author noted religion and politics are two areas that always spark flame wars online and off due to the fact that there is no universal, objective truth, and either no one's right, or no one can be sure. That - and my not entirely well-defined political views - have up to now prevented me from taking an active part in political life. Regardless of the party they belonged to and the views they had, the top brass of Polish politicians, intellectuals, freedom fighters and army chiefs, are dead. Something so bizarre, sudden and deconstructing that it's unfathomable, like reality gone topsy-turvy.

The fact that nothing of the sort has ever happened in the history of the world doesn't make it any better. Macedonia (Boris Trajkovsky), Rwanda and Burundi (Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira), Pakistan (Muhammad Zia-ul-Huq), Mozambique (Samora Machel), Panama (Omar Torrijos, frankly the only one I had heard of previously) and Ecuador (Jaime Roldós Aguilera) have all gone through something similar, the difference being that scores of other important people went down with the Polish plane.

A few comments. First, I'm impressed by the rapid reaction of politicians (it looks like there was no chaos in carrying out the constitutional procedures) and news sources alike. The journalists over at TVN did a formidable job, practically unwavering, professional, factual, without the great pathos and pointless hope associated with the pope's death way back when.

Second, it will be interesting to see the presidential campaign in this context. Been a long time since I've really understood Polish politics, but seeing as some of the campaign would decidedly involve judgments on Kaczyński's presidency, any mention of his successes and failures would now be considered a no-no, a faux pas, a taboo. So will this be the first truly respectful campaign in the history of Poland? Doubtful, but it will impact the results severely. Not that that's the most important thing ATM.

One more thing on a smaller scale. My sister's year at university was planning to throw a huge prepaid party in the evening. For some two hours or so and based on an grotesquely inappropriate forum post from one of the girls who organized the thing, it seemed like it was not only going to take place, but also include a minute of silence (to precede some merry binge-drinking) and all the showings of a grand, rippin' and roarin' party. Additionally, all of the guests would "join the rest of the mourners in grief following the party". Real smooth. Get back up the rabbit hole, Alice. Wonderland ain't doin' you well.

I'm no patriot, but the repercussions of this are bound to echo far and wide and we should all be conscious of the fact that this will redefine Poland completely. Though I like words and words seem to like me, like in most cases on April 10, words have failed me.

On the Bridge, in the Rain

Tap to trickle
Trickle to torrent
The shower camouflages her tears as she stands in a puddle-filled pothole
Straight white painted centerline
Deteriorated fuzzy with age
Cuts between her feet and disappears into the misty distance
Of the mile-long bridge.
Just one mile? Is that good? Bad?
She pleads no contest, can't decide.

She could be anywhere
Literally anywhere
Tossing sponge rocks into the stream on a warm summer evening
On a short rickety bridge made of beat-up floorboards
Teetering on the edge of rope in lush green hopelessness
On a curved rickety bridge stretched and gutted cross-canyon
Taking shallow breaths of wonder in the Old World's sinking city
Under the age-old arch of stone and bathed in twilight.

She could be anywhere
Literally anywhere
But she has this
Pitiful gentle giant of a bridge
Deserted by the good people of the empty city behind her
A heaving bulk of great mass
Swaying, groaning, chipping, rusting
Rain pushing it inexorably toward the rapids
And she steps
On the bridge
In the rain
And she's back
THERE

As two eyes peer at her with fleeting sadness
And perhaps a flash of pity.

The Awakening, the Vigil, the Dream

Nightfall
The dreams form a linear pattern like the coils of a rattlesnake
Each flowing into the next
Seamlessly

So seamlessly

I await the dénouement
Passive, powerless, pondering
But the secret unravels when it so fancies
And promptly sinks back into its lucid wakeful obscurity
The oneiric detective wakes and shakes his fists in frustration
The damned solution has slipped his grasp once again

Ain't that just always the case

Pathetically he rises and stares at the moon
His accusatory glare is understandably ignored
The moon and the night must have bigger fish to fry
Tending to insomniacs and whores and dark alley dwellers
Handing out gifts of poetic inspiration and pneumonia

Usually not upon request

The City
Is what he always dreamed of
Seventy stories of nothing separate him from the ground
Jagged spikes protrude from the earth and scrape the clouds
And inside their metallic shells the last workaholics of the day drag themselves away

To families that don't exist.

High up the wind swirls and rocks the tower

The pillar of modernity

But his vision is that of old yellowed photographs and noir classics
And melancholic nighttime diners and fedoras and shots of whisky
And soft saxophones and pianos

And creases in the face

Unable to solve the mystery that haunts him
He revisits old dreams
And the glass is his accomplice
His listener his consolation his silent obedient counselor

His partner in crime

As the City

Looms.

16/02/2010

Bahram Alivandi

Simorgh (The Conference of Birds)



Ferdowsi and His Mythos

Boris Dubrov

9.02.2010: Why Felines, Lactose and Faucets Are the Same Thing

The 9th is a perfect way to commemorate the 7th, because after all, it’s its 2/365th anniversary. Sadly, I seem to have permanent and terminal memory loss in all things related to the 7th, which was essentially a day spent at home trying to figure out how express myself in a way that, in view of coherence being an unreachable ideal, would at least get some kind of message across. With varying results: the idiot savant within me came up with the Farsi equivalent for “We don’t have lions in Poland,” which incidentally is said and written exactly the same as “We don’t have milk in Poland”, as well as “We don’t have taps in Poland” (Maa dar Lehistan shihr-ha na daarim). I hasten to add that we do indeed have milk in Poland, and the only taps we don’t have are the ones that are likely to play at the next American colonel’s funeral.

Just to fill in the massive wave of passionate readers, in Faro, I’m staying at a friend’s mother’s house, and the only line of communication can be established in Farsi, a language in whose case the entirety of my previous knowledge could be brought down to “one, two, three” and the five expressions Javid hastily wrote down on a piece of paper.

No doubt about it, though: the core, the marrow of the day was definitely the dinner, attended by quite a few people, namely Behrooz’s mom, his brother Mohammad, Nina, Somayeh, Atefeh, Javid, Mosab and a girl from Turkey named Tuba who I hadn’t known before, quite possibly because she arrived two weeks ago. Aside from bits and pieces of my brilliance that shone through such complicated phrases I learned as I am 20 years old, I was notable for being that kid on the sidelines who can but cast furlong glances while everyone else speaks Farsi and Turkish.



Seeing as part of my lifestyle transformation program is paying attention to culture and cuisine, this is also the time to discourage or encourage readers by naming some of the foodstuffs present. Unfortunately, I can name just one: āsh, a thickish soup typical of Iranian cuisine whose main ingredients are almost entirely composed of vegetables and herbs (Aunt Wiki speaks of legumes, onions, meat, parsley, spinach, dill and a host of other delicacies). Another curio was what seems to be called nargesi esfanaaj – fried spinach with eggs and onions. Since Iranian cuisine is heavily based on rice and pasta, both of them were in abundance of course.



But cultural enrichment didn’t stop there, and as Tuba made the Turkish coffee, I learned that Turkish coffee is a method, not a variety, and since a step-by-step guide to the method is readily available everywhere on the Web, I’ll spare myself the anguish of trying to explain. I was the odd man out when Tuba did some tasseography; Javid, Somayeh, Ati and Mosab had their fortunes told instead. I believe some more of my inglorious attempts at Farsi followed, but that with that, the evening concluded. Next time I see Tuba, I’ll ask her to do a quick reading; hopefully the dregs will read “JUMPSTART”. Preferrably in Farsi.

7.02.2010: A Crash Course in Farsi and Other Pleasures

7.02.2010

Sleep deprivation for three days has an immediate effect on your karma. Comes around faster than anything. I won’t even begin to try to calculate the hours I have and haven’t slept; in any case, aside from the 12-hour morphean marathon last night, I don’t think it was more than, say, eight. Within the space of three days. I’m so overwhelmed with yesterday in particular that this entry is not gonna be much more than a string of sentences lest I forget. I draw inspiration from Kerouac and his “automated writing”, “spontaneous prose”, “free-association technique”, whatever floats your boat. The difference being that Kerouac was a writer and I’m far from it. And, as far as I can see, he didn’t spontaneously go off on a tangent like I’m about to do right now.



I’ve always envied fast readers. Trudging through a book’s introduction during a three-and-a-half-hour train ride and not getting any farther is a pain in the ass, especially when you get the feeling that it harmonically complements a general slowness of the mind. This last one I still feel sometimes (the worst days are thankfully over), especially when I’m in an unfamiliar or embarrassing situation, or in a new place. I’d sell my soul an my abundant collection of useless trinkets to Lucifer if it meant an increased ability to adapt. Mine’s not the worst, but at times I still feel it is. Regardless, an additional 14 or so hours nodding off and nodding on at the airport – and in flight – produced a whopping 94 pages of On the Road. Hard to get immersed in a book if you keep going back to how slow you’re doing it. Rereading whole sentences and passages drives me up the wall precisely because I do it constantly, and I do it constantly for two reasons. On one pale horse rideth Concentration (or rather, He doth not ride since he’s left the building) and on the other rideth Imagination (who once again also dismounts and gets the hell out of Dodge a lot). I make conscious efforts to imagine what I’m reading, with results varying wildly. The most difficult part being geographical locations, spatial projections, descriptions of places. Seems my spatial intelligence is sub-zero. Another thing about On the Road is that the journey encompasses cities I know nothing about, and in some cases never heard of. And the narration isn’t the sort of disorganized mess I expected. No free-form stream of consciousness here, like chaotic thoughts in Stephen King. In any case, I’ll finish it before I leave.

Here’s my attempt at chronology. In the wee hours of the 5th, I left for Poznań to meet up with Maurycy, who greeted me after I arrived at the station and took me around town to see some of the important things. Quite an inspiring city, I must say, now that I tend to compare anything and everything with Lublin. At his place (in a suburban neighborhood) I met and ate dinner with his mom, his dad and his sister, and had the pleasure of meeting his dog, Heban. As great a guy as ever (Maurycy, not his dog, though he takes after his master, no doubt). Maurycy drove me over to the airport and off I went, I in the sky. Additional mission to carry out: buy tremoço for Maurycy and stuff it into my coat pocket. Stansted was its old admirable self, though strangely enough, the hordes sleeping on the floor were much smaller than usually. Between perusing On the Road and intermittently dozing off, I chugged down half a liter of energy drink and promptly fell asleep once again.

Faro. Lo and behold, I had to wait over an hour for the bus, which also seemed to perplex an Asian girl that was there with me. The long and heavenly wait interrupted by the coming of the bus, I got out near the bus station and gave Nina and Behrooz a call each from the Jardim da Alagoa. An hour or so later, my feet felt like oversized chicks in eggs of rubber as I dragged on in search of Nina’s place, which turned out to be some 30 steps away from where I first called her. Once there, I met an Iranian couple working at a store in town for the last 20-odd years and pumped myself full of pastéis de nata. The couple seemed extremely knowledgeable in diverse areas, and showed me such wonders of nature as sugar cubes made from beetroot (brought from Iran) and a spice they said was called cardomman, whose spelling I have to check and which was used in the tea Nina made. Overstaying my welcome, I watched Nina cut Atefeh’s hair, Ati being a girl living here with Javid, and met Rita and Gui, respectively an Italian Economics intern and a Portuguese guy living with Nina and Rita. My welcome was additionally overstayed by dinner (including vinegar-drenched lemon) and I made a prompt exit to get to Behrooz’s mom’s place. A wonderful lady. Javid had written several basic phrases for me beforehand and I’ve never lived with someone I can’t possibly communicate with, but I foresee situations of exceeding hilarity to come of this. It’s a unique feeling, really: I feel like a newborn, complete with all the innocent and helpless naïveté that is an integral part of learning a new language. So, secondary objective: learn some Farsi, even some basic conversational stuff. It ain’t gonna be easy. But in the night, on my way back from Behrooz’s place and with a sleeping bag and sheet under my arm, it occurred to me that was exactly what I loved when I took up Spanish and Portuguese: the newness, the freshness and the amazing realization that I no longer have the linguistic and communicational aptitude of a macaque.

Last-minute reflection: Javid told me how he’s working with a couple of people on a project connecting engineering with medicine, and the purpose is developing a ultrasonographic system similar to the scanning methods used during pregnancy, but this time for purposes like identifying and treating cancer, obliterating the x-ray and other techniques of ambiguous usefulness and win-some-lose-some properties. I see that as revolutionary. I see that as something that makes a change and makes a difference. However you spin it, it’s a difference I’m not making as of today and which I’d like to make as of tomorrow.

Of Carnivals and Libraries: A 10-Day Memoir

Throughout the next few days I'll transfer some of what I jotted down in Faro to Quixotica. Sadly enough, the captain's-log routine of picturing each day eventually provoked a cease-and-desist action on my part, but I have the essence imprinted in my memory like a branding iron in the hide. It's not Faro I'll miss for the next days and weeks and months; on the last night, I used every trick in the book to stay at Nina's place and avoid saying the last khoda hafez. My parting words (not counting the ones uttered mere minutes later when I hurried back for my forgotten notebook) were "Piroozi baraaye enghelabe sabz ("Victory for the Green Revolution") and I indeed hope for it. What it would be to contribute to a milestone like that. Beats the hell out of the blah of everyday life, which, however you spin it, is generally mundane. Your hectic life on three majors means nothing if you end up leaving no mark on the world around you. Howgh!

Here we go, without further ado, it is absolutely essential that we hand the mic over to this past half of February.

Ensaio Time: As Eurecas dos Anos Zero

Inspirado pelo Exmo. Senhor LM, reproduzo cá em baixo um ensaio escrito com fins educativos e dedicado a todos os zero leitores que acumulei até agora.

***

E assim despedimo-nos, à grande e à francesa, dos primeiros anos do milénio. Agora é que está na hora, com os ecos da farra ainda a retumbarem nos ouvidos, de reflectir sobre todos os bens que as divindades e o incansável progresso humano nos conferiram durante os últimos 3650 dias (ignorando por preguiça os anos bissextos). Alguns dos nossos desventurados leitores até precisam de um bocado de animação para tornar mais alegre a aplicação de emplastros e terapias intravenosas nos olhos e mãos perdidos por um foguete na passagem de ano. A vida sem um órgão ou extremidade essencial é uma maçada, mas não desesperem! Os avanços da ciência e da medicina já permitem toda a classe de milagres, como bem podem afirmar as mulheres de silicone que não deixam de ter muita procura no mundinho da moda. Mas como são raros os leitores que estejam à procura da melhor forma de recuperar os apêndices e ao mesmo tempo de aumentar o tamanho dos seios, deixemo-nos já destas coisas tristes e passemos ao que é o tema deste pequeno comentário: a inovação no nosso século XXI.



Eu digo: os primeiros anos do século foram uma bênção para o mundo no que às novas tecnologias diz respeito. Mas as imagens do mundo via satélite, as compras na Internet com entrega ao domicílio de tudo desde os móveis da casa até à galinha para o caldo (morta já, pois a gente orgulhosa da cidade não vai sujar a mãozinha com esta porcaria de degolar o seu jantar), o primeiro coração artificial que funciona e os implantes de retina que tornam a vista possível para os cegos, o mapeamento do genoma humano, epá, todos eles não passam de pequenezes de segunda quando comparados com o que realmente revolucionou o dia-a-dia no século XXI. Talvez não conseguíssemos obliterar a fome no mundo ou achar uma terapia efectiva no combate ao SIDA (além de ter o bom senso de confraternizar com a camisinha). Mas com o fim de resgatar esta década da infâmia, eu cá proponho a seguinte amostra dos objectos e conceitos que mudaram o mundo em que vivemos.



Começamos sem grande estardalhaço, com algo que agrada a todos, aquela mais descarada perda de tempo de sempre que se chama o videojogo. Ressalto que o futuro pertence às crianças de hoje, preparadas com esmero para aturarem qualquer desgosto na vida real, que não lhes há-de parecer tão temível depois de ter aguentado corajosamente o banho de sangue no seu First-Person Shooter ultra-realista. Sim senhor. É também nesta década que floresceram algumas das ideias mais geniais no campo dos videojogos: é notável esta revolução ter começado com uma simulação completa da vida, desde o nascimento até à morte. Aquele jogo, The Sims, deixou inútil a grande chatice da vida não-digital e acabou por ser uma válvula de escape para os que não tinham sido agraciados com o prazer de possuir uma personalidade. Mas isto grande novidade não é. Os miúdos de hoje em dia têm mais hipóteses para se entreter. Graças ao Wii, a consola que esmagou os concorrentes, podem fingir praticar desporto fazendo trejeitos epilépticos com o telecomando na mão. Ou até podem fingir tocar a guitarra como uma estrela de rock, sem sequer sair de casa, com um daqueles guitarrões de plástico com teclas em vez de cordas. Reverenciam aqueles aparelhos por serem muito propícios para o seu look de rebeldes. A tecnologia permitiu-lhes serem os senhores do porão de papá, onde tocam gozando com a sua irreverência, quebrada só às vezes para devorar o jantarzinho trazido por mamã.



Grandes progressos fizeram-se também no transporte público. Eu lembro-me da euforia doida que me suscitaram os primeiros – e únicos – patins em linha de nova geração que me presentearam os meus pais. Na verdade eram uns ténis com solas que pesavam uma tonelada porque havia umas rodas lá dentro. O efeito era semelhante ao que devem sentir os mafiosos quando Dom Fulano Corleone decide que sobram e manda-os tomar um banho ao pé do cais com dois blocos de cimento a segurar as pernas. Mas no momento de armar aquele trem de aterragem, apesar dos desconfortos, tudo valia o olhar invejoso dos gajos do bairro. Ora, estes mesmos gajos do bairro cresceram, saíram da asa da galinha e foram dos primeiros snobes que correram em debandada quando apareceu o Segway. Conhecem o Segway? Não conhecem, aposto. Se não conhecem, será pela mesma razão que não conhecem os ténis com rodas: aquilo dá vergonha. A ideia era de vender milhões destes veículos de mobilidade urbana que em 2001 haviam de fazer tremer o mercado dos automóveis tradicionais. Predizia-se uma venda aos milhões. Venderam-se 30,000. É capaz de ser porque um senhor a deslocar-se numa destas maravilhas se parece muito com Papa-Léguas. E pior ainda se vai de gravata, fato e casacão a agitar-se no vento. Pelo jeito, ninguém gostava de ser Batman.

Ninguém duvida, porém, que o Segway foi um grande passo adiante no meio dos polícias, que deslizam silenciosos pelos espaços abertos dos supermercados a plantar as sementes do terror nos corações dos ladrões. Mas a máquina só acertou num nicho bastante reduzido. Uma outra novidade que sim desencadeou uma revolução social do caramba: as sandalias Crocs. A sua inovação consiste, por ordem de importância, em serem tamancos de plástico, em ferirem os olhos do espectador que os contempla, em causarem hilaridade durante qualquer evento público, em parecerem (pelo que dizem, que eu não o vejo) dentes de crocodilo e em os originais custarem um dinheirão. Mas eu até pagava um dinheirão para ficar com um bom cacareco de plástico, e ainda mais se se trata duma das grandes invenções do século, conquanto fosse um dos poucos a desafiarem a moda. Mas nos pés de milhões de pessoas, os Crocs terminam por ressaltar um importante problema social: revela a extraordinária estupidez das massas.



Mas enfim, esta pequena amostra é só a ponta do icebergue. A abundância das inovações úteis concebidas nos últimos anos parece não ter fim: é inquestionável a utilidade do capacete de protecção com bandejinhas laterais para encaixar duas latas com palhinhas para sorver um bocado de refrigerante enquanto se faz outra coisa. São igualmente incontestáveis os benefícios sanitários do taco de golfe propositadamente oco para servir de latrina de emergência quando um golfista tem a súbita necessidade de fazer xixi. Aliás, foi também só neste século que se inventou o sanduíche de 1,500 calorias capaz de dar um infarto relâmpago a quem o contemplar, o que pode ser de grande utilidade para controlar a população mundial. Enfim, é verdade que esta importante tradição de excelência que se criou nos anos zero promete-nos mundos e fundos. Mas considerado este deslumbrante progresso em que nos encontramos, é certo que vai dar para ir muito longe.

Meanderings & Motivation

Penelope Trunk wrote in the Brazen Careerist that maintaining a blog is hard work. Takes dedication and more than a little motivation to send duck calls that no one is likely to read out into the world. And I'm not sure if the purpose of a blog is to have as many people following you as possible. Apart from a one-post domain of blackness I started and set aside while depressed in Portugal, I'm new to this game. But since I'm not a brazen careerist and do not consider this to be a popularity contest, I'll go the traditional way for the time being and look at it as an online notebook. Some time ago a self-confident former academic gave the quirky UMCS university crowd a lecture on various things, most notably his life. Though his self-confessed proficiency in Portuguese (gained through - invaluable tip - total immersion) is highly doubtful, he did mention the value of writing down thoughts every day. And dammit, that's what we do. Your blog is your diary. Your blog is your resume. Your blog is your escapist fantasy. It's whatever you want it to be. The only condition, to my eyes, is that you be sincere. Once you're a famed blogger, you can start thinking about lying to your masses or throwing publicity stunts. But on a small scale, this is an exercise in self-discovery.

And it's probably a more useful waste of time than Facebook.

And so there are some things about me I want to say to me.

The primary concern in my life is leaving this city. It doesn't help that my university studies fail to give me the kick of inspiration that certainly comes when you know that you're gaining access to priceless knowledge. The languages I study interest me insofar as they are practical, but I am neither decided on what I will choose them to be practical for nor am I in the least bit inclined to get down on my knees and accept the fate of a godforsaken linguist the higher-ups are forcing you to take. They slap you around and think they can mold you like hot wax. Not likely. If I do fall into the disillusioned student category, it's because there's much to be disillusioned by.

But I digress.

A necessary evil. That's what it is. It has to be swallowed down to make room for bigger and better things. Sometimes my natural impatience gets the better of me. Sometimes I feel paranoid because the whole combination of factors in the last few years left much to be desired, and in the long run led to a little slimming-down to bone level, not to mention those exciting meetings with Portuguese psychologists and those equally exciting antidepressants that inexplicably failed to trigger much of an effect. Tuneluz, they were called. Fluoxetine. Other problems and much hilarity ensued. One such problem was - I believe - a sort of lexical anhedonia (don't worry, no one else has ever heard of it either) which made most reading feel like a relaxing day on the torture rack, with thoughts running the gamut from the inability to concentrate on a sentence to feeling unable to extract deeper meaning, and to reaching the conclusion that the world in all its simplicity and complexity is way too complicated for me to understand the way things run. Plus there was the nagging feeling that I'm not able to grasp or remember the totality of what I'm reading. That and the inability to make it known to those who wouldn't understand drove me further into it. Shall I leave unanswered the question of whether I used my scholarship in Portugal to the fullest?

Other neat psychological distortions are to be described in another joyous post.

One final thought, and it's about love. Two days ago, I was given a rotund all-around slap-around when I found out out of the blue that a close friend of mine had started to have feelings for me. This came out in a confrontation that I was expecting to be a series of complaints on how irresponsible I am as a friend who takes ages to answer a simple message and makes empty promises. Instead, I got a slice of another cake. I never did feel more than a strong bond of friendship between us, and never picked up on the waves she said she was sending. My waves she misinterpreted. This was the first situation of the kind in years, and I don't remember myself ever being the actual rejector. I didn't go through it like a smooth-talking Hugh Grant in another ho-hum rom-com. More like a one-eyed rhino stumbling in a drunken stupor through a corridor gallery of priceless china. But it did end positively, as I knew it would, and I don't expect any particular awkward situations in the future. Didn't help me being puzzled by my indifference and lack of any strong emotional reaction following the encounter. On the one hand, that could point towards a disconcerting lack of emotion. But since I'm no longer suicidal, I prefer to attribute it to something entirely different: adulthood.

Good or bad, it's a fact of life.