Thursday, December 23, 2004

12 days. Wow. If I am trying to kill this blog, then it looks like I am succedding.

To be fair, I have had a rather full plate this last week-and-a-half:
  • I finished my discrete math exam, and I think I did pretty well. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high though, mainly because I am one of those that has never been able to go home after a test and look up answers to the questions that were on it. When I'm done, I'm done. Nothing to be done about it anyway, right?
  • Secondly, I have been adding a room to our house. Well, sort of. I intend to post some pictures of it here soon.
  • And thirdly, I managed to finish a sizeable, two-part work project I had pending before Christmas. Yippee...
And the little blog-related energy I have had extra, I have been using in comment boxes all over the Net. As an example, I was reading a looong and depressing comment-thread about the chimperor sporting an iPod in his recent Time profile, and just had to respond. Not only did I want the people in the comment-thread, who were writing that muck, to hear me. More to the point, I think I am finally on a way out of this depressing rut I have been stuck in since America voted this clown into office last November. So I wrote this:
I started to read this apparently endless thread and, almost as a reflex, stopped again as soon as I saw what was really festering in it.

But then I realized that by averting my eyes from this pestulance, I am condoning it. So I made myself read the whole thing.

This is that time of year when I normally am able to get a little mid-winter break, and enjoy the festival of lights that this nation excels at producing in late December. Some religions have a name for it, others do not. But this has still been that time of year when people smile a little more genuinely to each other, and actually look other people in the eye. We are reminded that we co-exist in this country, this world, and therefore have a need to respect each other. There is no place else to go to. And it simply does not bring you anything but misery, if you spend your relatively short time on this Earth, fretting about the fact that we are not all of the same opinion.

So you can now see how reading this drivel made me sad. Truly sad. I feel like I am witnessing the beginning of the breakdown of this society. The disrespective, hate-filled, spiteful projectiles that almost all of you hurl at each other are so pointless, so far removed from any sense of intelligent discussion, that it borders on depressive. And it dampens ones hopes for the future of this country. You can see that it does not matter who would have won this presidential election, the situation would be the same: Two ever-growing factions of people that have less and less understanding of, and respect for, the human beings that belong to the "other" faction. This leaves the rest of America either disgusted with both of these hateful sects, or disinterested in the apparently failed political system, as a whole. Why do you think that fewer and fewer of our children are participating in the democratic process, even taking into the account the spike in turn-out for this last presidential election? "It's the hate, stupid", to paraphrase a common quote. You can not tell me, earnestly, that this is still a meaningful debate. It has long since lost any relevance. Or meaning. It is nothing but a pityful shouting contest, designed to denigrade, embarrass, and belittle other people, and their beliefs.

I am not going to fall into the trap of telling you to stop, to "see the light", or whatever one should be urging you to do. Because I do not belief you would listen. Nor am I going to let myself be pushed to a cynical disposition by this, declaring myself better than you, and passing judgement on you as being some sort of bad people.

But I refuse to read this vile and just turn quietly to another page. This needed to be said. At least I needed to.

I felt better as soon as I had written it. It did not matter that I could not publish it, due to an apparent 100 post maximum per news item.

I just genuinely feel a little better.

Which is good.

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Temptations...

So what happens when I finally manage to sit down and try to salvage what can be salvaged of my preparation for my discrete mathematics exam?

A huge crate lands on my porch:

Temptations...

This was not to be delivered until after the fifteenth. Now how am I supposed to be able to concentrate on my math, when there is a whole case full of power tools sitting by my door?

Wednesday, December 8, 2004

How much more embarrassing can this act get?



Or maybe this is just exactly the image this nation is going for now. Like a frightened kid who has taken a beating from the school bully, squealing at the whole world:

Fuck you! Fuck you all!

Monday, November 29, 2004

toddler.jpg

Unrelenting, straight shooting, unapologetic, striving, determined, demanding, forgiving, stubborn, charming, graceful, pure, strong, smart, yearning, limitless, driven, loving. Magical.

Witness my daughter, the toddler.

toddler.jpg

Thursday, November 25, 2004

I am a simple creature. It doesn't take much to cheer me up.

Or take my mind, at least for a minute, off things that I am slowly realizing that I will probably never be able to change.

*Sigh*

Monday, November 22, 2004

And just as I published that post, Last.fm starts playing Depeche Mode's Somebody.

Seriously, how are you supposed to be able to keep your heart intact, and safe from just shriveling up into a small, ugly, dead knot?
Ok, now you tell me how not to become depressed when this (it's a pdf, by the way) is the world we live in, and nothing we do seems to make any difference about it?

None. Nil. Nix. Zero. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Nichts. Null.

One. Hundred. Thousand. Living. Human. Beings. Like. You. And. Me.

Say it with me.

"One. Hundred. Thousand. Living. Human. Beings. Like. You. And. Me."

"Like. You. And. Me."

THat solves that question. Now we know what their purpose in life was.

Being slaughtered.
Free men bear arms, anyone?

Oh no, of course this isn't representative. No, gun-toting is not just sane and natural, it's actually a necessity. To ward of all the real loonies walking around, carrying guns.

Or just to exterminate those that would actually walk onto my property. It's mine, after all. Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine!

And damn everything else to hell.

Fuck.

Thursday, November 18, 2004

This is cool and this is way, way cool!

My friends have been listening to me droning on for almost a decade about the coming of the personalization. TV's that learn what you like and what you don't. Video rentals that suggest what to rent, based on what you liked of your previous rentals. Radio stations that only play music that rock you.

And now, it's all here.

The only difference is that even if I always believed this change was coming, I still dreaded it. Desperately. I was afraid that it would narrow our already clostrophobic universe. The TV would block any "uncomfortable" news, the radio would never play us anything new, and we wouldn't even know that movies were being made that did not fit our profile.

So far, I have thankfully been dead wrong. last.fm has played me more new music in an hour than I have heard in a month. Probably because it is music that I like, but I didn't know it. I mean, who the hell is Serge Gainsbourg anyway? And you should just see my Netflix queue! All those movies I've been passing at the video rental place for years, just because the cover didn't really move me. The damn cover, for Pete's sake!

This is in some ways like having a new friend. Or, actually, an old friend. Somebody. Who knows what you really like. And doesn't hesitate to expose you to stuff you would never have the imagination to go for yourself. Feels good.

Of course I am probably just being overly optimistic, but I think that if this profiling trend will have any marked effect at all, it might actually be to widen our view, not close it more.

OK, I'm putting my headphones back on now. Listening to some Alec Empire. Amazing. Bye...

"Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds!"

Probably not a good sign...

Uh-oh...this does not look good...

Probably not a good sign...

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

It is almost funny how the following facts, which I used to find hilarious, really are not that funny anymore, now that my daughter is getting to this age:
  1. A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2000 square foot house 4 inches deep.
  2. If you spray hair spray on dust bunnies and run over them with roller blades, they can ignite.
  3. A 3 year old child's voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.
  4. If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42 pound boy wearing Batman underwear and a Superman cape.
  5. If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan and tie it to a paint can, it does spread paint on all four walls of a 20x20 room.
  6. You should not throw baseballs up when the ceiling fan is on.
  7. When using a ceiling fan as a bat, you have to throw the ball up a few times before you get a hit.
  8. A ceiling fan can hit a baseball a long way.
  9. The glass in windows (including double pane windows) doesn't stop a baseball hit by a ceiling fan.
  10. When you hear the toilet flush along with the words "uh oh," it's already too late.
  11. Brake fluid mixed with Clorox makes smoke (and lots of it).
  12. A six-year old can start a fire with a flint rock even though a 36 year old man says they can only do it in the movies.
  13. Certain Lego blocks will pass through the digestive tract of a 4 year old.
  14. Play-Doh and microwave should not be used in the same sentence.
  15. Super glue is forever.
  16. No matter how much Jell-O you put in a swimming pool, you still can't walk on water.
  17. Pool filters do not like Jell-O.
  18. VCRs do not eject sandwiches, even though TV commercials show they do.
  19. Garbage bags do not make good parachutes.
  20. Marbles in gas tanks make lots of noise when driving.You probably don't want to know what that smell is.
  21. Always look in the oven before you turn it on.
  22. Plastic toys do not like ovens.
  23. The fire department in my town has a 5 minute response time.
  24. The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earthworms dizzy.
  25. The spin cycle on the washing machine does make cats dizzy, however.
  26. Cats throw up twice their body weight when dizzy.

Luckily, we do not have a waterbed, a pool, a cat, or a VCR. Well, it's something, I guess.

Oh, and by the way:
  1. 60% of men who read this will try mixing the Clorox and brake fluid. The women seem to be smarter.

Sunday, November 14, 2004

This time around, a third of the voting population cast their votes using electronic voting machines. The majority of which produced no records of the votes cast, seperate from the tally constructed by the machines themselves. This sweeping change in the election procedure was deemed an overwhelming success. Why? Well, the machines are very user friendly. And they produced a total number of votes cast that pretty much matched the total numbers of voters that showed up to vote. And almost none of them broke down. Ergo, a success.

Of course, this has to be put in perspective. We live in the 'Information Age' now. Which basically means that we have had to start trusting in machines. Believing in that they will do shat we want them to do. That our cars are actually going 65 mph when the speedometer says so. That we actually owe 1,234 dollars in income tax if our tax software says we do. There is usually no practical way for us to actually check if the machine is actually running correctly. We generally do not have access to information on how the machines actually do their thing to check if these methods are flawed or not. Nor would we have time, let alone the inclination, to do it, even if someone would give us the data. Sure, we might get pulled over for going 85, when we were sure the speedometer read 65, but who is to say that the cop's radar could not be just as faulty as the speedometer? Besides, it must have been we, reading it wrong, because the machines do not make mistakes.

So to get by, in a world embedded with machines that do their magic in a way that is mostly opaque to us, we assume, and trust, and believe. And we also develop our instincts, to use to indicate when the machines might actually have gone awry after all: The blue screen of death, the 'freeze', the 'service needed'. And we have a set of universal tools to deal with these symptoms: The 'quit', the 'reset', the 'reboot'. Taking it in for service. But generally, if it doesn't complain, or show any symptoms, it must be fine.

That's why the electronic voting excercise was such an unabashed success.

And this is one of those rare occasions where my day-time job intersects with another one of my obsessions, politics.

You see, it really is not enough to note that most of the tens of thousands of voting machines did not crash, and that the systems spewed out a final tally roughly equal to the total number of votes cast. No, the real measure of success is how accurately the systems reported how the votes were cast. And it is there that we run into problems.

Surely, there is an independent way to determine this? To seperately verify the results? Nope, not really. Granted, a few states, e.g. Nevada and New Hampshire, adopted a process which produces a paper ballot, seperate of the vote cast electronically. But even there we really do not know if the electronic method worked correctly, because the paper ballots would only have been used if the electronic system had given a close results. See the problem here? Besides, most of the third of the country, that suddenly went electronic this year, did not marry a seperate system with the electronic one. They just have to believe.

I can almost hear you say 'But these must be heavily scrutinized and audited systems'. Sure. Yes. Well, sort of. They are 'certified', for sure. But only by a handful of companies. Contracted by the very makers of the machines themselves. And there is no way for academics, security experts, the public, to do their own verification of the veracity of the machines and their proces. Why? Because the system and its software are secret! A third of the votes cast in the election was cast using a system that is closed to public scrutiny. I kid you not.

And what happened to the aphorism "justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done", usually attributed to Lord Hewart? Well, to quote The President himself, The People just are "not that concerned" about it.

There is some hope, though. For example, a number of people working in the field of information security have voiced their concern. One of them actually worked as an election judge, both in the Super Tuesday primary last March, and now in the general election. He blogged his thoughts about it. Here is a snippet from the March entry:
My biggest fear is that super Tuesday will be viewed as a big success. By all accounts, everyone at my precinct felt that way. The more e-voting is viewed as successful, the more it will be adopted, and the greater the risk when someone decides to actually exploit the weaknesses of these systems.
Maybe the general population will come to its senses. However, judging from the election results, I'm not holding my breath.

Saturday, November 13, 2004

another_idiot.jpg

The horror is not simply in the fact that after he made a terrible mistake, by invading a sovereign country that posed no threat to the American people and killed tens of thousands of their citizens, Americans still voted this person as their president.

The chilling fact is that the election was not even close. There is no "won the popular vote but lost to an arcane election system". There were no "few hundred hanging and pregnant chads" to sic lawyers on in Florida this time.

No, it is unequivocally, undeniably clear that the majority of the people in this country feel like this person:

Big Carl.jpg

Or this one:

another_idiot.jpg

The thing is, how is democracy supposed to solve the problem of two people trying to make joint decisions on so many things in their lives, and they agree on fewer and fewer things, by the day?

What are you supposed to do when you are one of these people, and the other one starts to break into other people's houses and kill them in cold blood, indiscriminately, on behalf of the two of you? How well are you absolved from responsibility for his actions?

Is it enough for people to say that they voted for the other guy, and that they just wash their hands of this, and of all that will follow?

Thursday, November 11, 2004

My wife asked me yesterday if I thought I was depressed. And I said no. Almost as a reflex.

But you know what? Maybe I am depressed. Granted, not severely. But maybe somewhat. It would explain why I've stopped going to the gym. Stopped waking up with my wife at five, instead sleeping in with my daughter till past seven. Even though we still go to sleep at around nine pm. I'm obsessed with the fact that this rich, seemingly educated nation has (re)elected a dangerous idiot for a president. I've started eating candy and sweets again. And I've been procrastinating for days on this really easy, straight-forward, almost tiny job that I need to get done.

I've also stopped blogging. I know, that's not a first, but this time it's been different. I feel...hollow. Somehow. Like I have no effect on the tragic turn that this world is taking. I know that shouldn't upset me. I should just go back to my seemingly completely inconsequential busying with reading and writing legal papers about something that interests and amuses me, but doesn't really change anything of consequence, in the big scheme of things. Noone's life is especially better because of my work. Really. It's the old "You never hear anybody standing up in a plane or in a crowd yelling 'Oh my god! Quickly, is there a lawyer in here?!'?".

Which brings me to one of these really good, long conversations I had with my wife recently. Really, having someone with whom you can intelligently discuss anything and everything on your mind ought to be a human right. Anyways. I was lamenting the lack of any purpose that my work has, except to amuse and intrigue me, and to make money. I went on about how great it would be if I had the inclination to be a doctor. I mean, nothing could beat going to work each day and actually save someone's life. I knew my wife would agree with me, at least up to a point. But I was interested in seeing this from her perspective. Seeing more angles. Her work has been getting more and more hectic in these last few months, and working as a trauma surgeon brought a renewed emphasis, in this little chat of ours, to a couple of recurring themes in our somewhat regular existential discussions: One, this stuff actually cuts both ways. And two, being a doctor can become little more than a job, just like anything else.

On the first point: As you start working in a situation where you can possibly save lives, there are times when you can't. And those can weigh heavily on you. Watching people die, especially if your job is to prevent that, can eat away at you. My wife's Achilles heel is young people. Kids and teenagers. She feels that kids dying, parents surviving their children, etc., is wrong. Not just sad, but wrong. Like a natural law being violated in some way. That it is against that which should be. We've discussed this a number of times through the years, and this feeling of hers only seems to be getting stronger. Which is one of the prime reasons we want to move to Africa to work with underprivileged kids, after she is done with her eventual fellowship. But that's another story. I think the underlying reason for her feeling this way, is her profound belief that everybody should have an equal opportunity. When it became clear to us, oh maybe fifteen years ago, that we shared a political philosophy, the common ground was that we believed that everyone should have an equal start, not an equal finish. For example, everyone should have the opportunity to work hard and show that they are the best person for a job, regardless of anything else. It would be unacceptable that someone got that job just because he was white. Or black. Or male. Or female. The outcome shouldn't be pre-determined. No prejudice should be left unchallenged. And neither should you fight wrong with wrong. Like affirmative action. Or gender quotas. Everybody should get a fair shot. Equal opportunities. One of our favourite quotes is from Addams Family, the movie: "The human spirit is a hard thing to kill. Even with a chain saw." You should allow it to soar, because it is the best potential this species has. And kids hold the greatest promise of all. Their path should be cleared. They should get a solid, fundamental education. All of them. They should not be exposed to cruelty. Or abuse. Or poverty. Or drugs. Their health should be well cared for. And when they become men and women, when they are able to stand on their own two feet in this world, they should be free. Free to explore. Or Create. Or charge into the competitive corporate world. Or whatever. Freedom truly is a wonderful concept. Despite the way leeches and thugs try to use it to cast a favourable light on their own, despicable actions. But it is from this fundamental vision that my wife's heartache stems. It is in the unrealized potential. The vulnerability of these small human beings. These hopes. And their loss. So that is one dark flipside of going to work each morning to 'save lives'.

Another one is the humdrum banality that creeps in with any job. This feeling of the wonder of your work slowly slipping away, because of repetitiveness. Or routine. Or lack of novelty. Or something. You clock in to your work at a hospital, just as you would to any other work. It is a job. And it can become just that. Which brings me to another way to lose the feelings you experience in your work: Callousness. Detachment. Apathy. That incremental deafening. Slowly growing numb to the things that make your heart beat faster. Which is, in my view, not a big deal if your job is to, for example, interpret the same set of corporate tax code clauses all day, every day. But it is profoundly sad when those that work with people's lives in their hands each day grow apathetic to their jobs. And the saddest thing about it is how many actually succumb to this, become depleted and burnt-out, but still stay on in these jobs.

So the bottom-line is perhaps that we all have existential dilemmas to deal with. And they are ongoing. And ever-prevalent. Maybe trying to find the purpose of your life in your job is folly. Maybe one should look for it in a more obvious place: In our people. Our children, our spouses, our friends.

Of course that sounds corny. Many truths do.

Thursday, November 4, 2004

This one says it all:

Wednesday, November 3, 2004

I just love this guy.

Jon Stewart, on C-SPAN!

What more can I say?

Actually, then check out his Hitler/Larry King scetch, if you haven't seen it / read it already.
America, you have failed. You have given your mandate to the village idiot.

What will be the next acquisition for the Empire? Probably Iran.

Depressing. Utterly and completely.

Tuesday, November 2, 2004

The test has begun.

And if this idiot gets re-elected, there will be no more excuses. Not that you need it, America, because you are an empire now. You are no longer a reality-based community. It is outdated to ask for permission, or listen to other opinions. You should act decisively, without hesitation. You must be guided by an unwavering conviction, whether or not it happens to be grounded in any reason, truth, or facts. Firmness over thought, toughness over sanity. Almost makes you want to say 'Arbeit macht frei'. Absolute power really does corrupt absolutely.

Oh, and for you nincompoops who have been yapping about how the newest videotape by that deranged madman, bin Laden, shows that we need Bush, the strong Commander-in-Chief, hunting him down, let me refresh your selective memory a bit.

So vote. If you can, and haven't already. Take the test.

And don't flunk it.

Monday, October 25, 2004

Is there a better way to start the week than to read about justices trying to determine if a cow is a motor vehicle?

I think not.

Saturday, October 23, 2004

Unbelievably good, and just unbelievable. I mean, just the volume of it. And they're all quotes!

*shudder*

Come on America, wake up!

Friday, October 22, 2004

hair6.jpg

I just could not bring myself to cutting my little girl's hair for the first time in her life.

Which was kind of creating a problem.

hair1.jpg

Her hair has taken to growing pretty fast now...

hair2.jpg

...and she could hardly see anything anymore.

hair3.jpg

"So when are you going to do something about it?"

Well, a few tears (mine) and few snips later...

hair4.jpg

...a new girl! The bangers are a little wavy, but hey, she was moving a lot while I was doing this, and this was my first time. So there!

hair5.jpg

"Hmmm...where can I find a musical instrument to express my joy with in celebration of getting my eyesigt again?"

hair6.jpg

Toot-ti-toot-ti-tooooooot.

Playing on a comb. Fun.

Thursday, October 21, 2004

The words of the Idiot-in-Chief qualify as 'mundane enough', I think.

Just found this amazing quote on a blog that I just stumbled upon, and like:

"See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction."

And that is a direct quote. Really. It is from a speech he gave not even three weeks ago. Just see for yourself: From the horses mouth.

This guy has a flair for irony. Probably without having the slightest idea that he does. And this nation is about to elect him.

Unbelievable.

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

VRSCA.jpg

VRSCA.jpg

Next summer ... if all goes well.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

OK. Enough is enough. I'm back from this self-inflicted excile.

After sitting down, the weekend before last, and actually reading some of the stuff I've been blogging for the last couple of months, I realized I needed a break. This was getting waay to melodramatic. And I'm not a melodramatic guy. Not extremely, anyway. Or maybe I am. Anyway, I don't want to be. It isn't something I aspire to. And that's what matters.

So I made a promise to myself: The next time you've written another piece of whining, wuzzy zap and are about to hit that 'Publish post' button, take a minute to read it over. If it's whiny, or pretentious, or one more post about putting the trees to sleep for the winter, or if it's something that is libel to hurt someone, or needlessly mess with their peace, don't post it.

And that's what I have been doing for ten days. Writing and throwing away, writing and throwing away. Because I've slowly come to realize something: Whatever you do, has consequences. Sometimes the consequences you aimed for. Sometimes not. Even when you have the noblest intentions, and are the purest at heart, the consequences can be quite the opposite.

I'll tell you what prompted this.

On that weekend, ten days ago, we had a sudden downpour. My daughter and I were playing here at home, and I thought 'Wouldn't it be fun if we went out and danced ini the rain?' We don't have rain like this were I come from, you see. Not this pouring-down-like-a-water-from-a-faucet kind of rain. Plus, here the rain is warm. Usually. And that was actually the thing. It turns out it is October already. And nobody told me. So it isn't that warm anymore. Now, that did not really register with me as I danced around in the rain with my daughter. She didn't complain, either. Well, she almost never does, anyway. But as I was taking her back inside, quite a while later, I suddenly realized that she was cold. Really, really cold. Still laughing. But cold. So I took her inside, we took of the drenched clothes, dried off and changed into something dry. But she was still cold. Even shivering. Then she sneezed. And then it hit me.

Here I had been doing something for my daughter that I knew she would like. It felt comletely innocent, and good. But it wasn't good for her. I know that sounds naïve. And of course I know I shouldn't allow her to do everything she wants to. And I don't. Which is actually the whole point. I am not like this, generally. I am usually the responible one. The solid-as-a-rock one. Dependable. Granted, I am impulsive, and passionate, and spontaneous, and I live in the now. But I have subdued those impulses to the point where 'reckless' really is not a description of me.

She got sick, developed a cold. I know that you don't get a cold from being cold, per se, but I felt miserable all the same. And I started to think that I needed to pay more attention to what I was doing. You don't just go off and do something reckless with people you love, even if it feels good and right, if you should know that it isn't good for them. No matter how short life is. Right?

Anyway. I promised myself that I wouldn't blog until I found something really mundane to blog about. Something to get my feet back on the ground. And now I have. What I found, is a real-life red-neck who actually has something to say. Isn't that remarkable? Here is a guy, on the red-neck radio program "Imus in the morning", waxing on about his parents living in this trailer and yada-yada yodely-yoo, when all of a sudden he actually starts to make sense. And it turns out that he really is not half-stupid. In fact, he's quite intelligent, and amusing, and well-read!

I just had to tell you. I found the only non-stupid red-neck in existence. And his name is Craig Crawford.

Saturday, October 9, 2004

We went to The City today. More or less on a whim. Our friend was flying in, and taking the bus, but we decided to surporise her and pick her up instead.

And my daughter is formally the calmest and most wonderful almost-one-and-a-half-year-old in history. She took in stride the 2 x 2 hour drive, plus our wandering between public gardens and Thai restaurants, the non-stop talking and driving all over the city, reminiscing about the time when we all, except her of course, met there exactly ten years ago.

On the way back, they all fell asleep. Which was nice. Me driving. They sleeping. Nice.

Friday, October 8, 2004

It is warm today. But I have a serious case of goosebumps.

There are almost four thousand songs on my iPod now. It's on shuffle, presenting my music in a way that really keeps my attention.

Maybe that is why I felt chills up my spine – really, butterflies in my stomach and all – just now, when Elvis Costello started singing

She
May be the face I can't forget.
The trace of pleasure or regret
May be my treasure or the price I have to pay
She
May be the song that summer sings
May be the chill that autumn brings
May be a hundred different things
Within the measure of a day

She
May be the beauty or the beast
May be the famine or the feast
May turn each day into a heaven or a hell
She may be the mirror of my dreams
The smile reflected in a stream
She may not be what she may seem
Inside her shell

She
Who always seems so happy in a crowd
Whose eyes can be so private and so proud
No one's allowed to see them when they cry
She
May be the love that cannot hope to last
May come to me from shadows of the past
That I'll remember till the day I die


How can music have such a grip on your very soul, shaking it to its core?

Thursday, October 7, 2004

dinernomore.jpg

I can't believe that butt-ugly diner burned down! And all by itself. Just can't believe it.

Literally.

Now, the first thing I did, when I saw that smoke rising, was to call my wife. Her utter disdain for that place and now just starting her period makes for a truly lethal combination. In an otherwise really calm woman.

After she had laughed heartily at my demands that she tell me where she was, she said she thought my worries were sweet, but she had been in the OR all afternoon, and was still stuck at the hospital.

I could finally relax.

And enjoy the view. Even took my daughter there, and snapped this photo for the rest of you:

dinernomore.jpg

I guess I should, as a respectable member of the Historic Preservation Commission, say something blah-di-blah and heartwarming about the tragedy of that old heap of junk burning down. But you know what?

Good riddens.

Wednesday, October 6, 2004

I know I'm not overly responsive to your e-mail, though I do read it all. But this one was just to good to pass up.

From a reader: Bushwhacked

:)
The change in Kerry's presidential campaign comes as a pleasant surprise. The vague and cryptic seems to be finally making way for the clear and succinct. Bytesize, though sad in itself, seems to be the maximum message volume this populii is able to digest.

Their TV ads are also getting less boring. A couple of them are actually a bit witty. Cheaky, even. Now, how would I know that, the TV-less hick that I have become? Well, they're all on the Net now. Check 'em out. Though most of them are still dull fluff, some are worth watching: This one actually said what needed to be said, this one is to the point, and this one is hard-hitting.

Now, this one may not be verbose or well-reasoned. But it's funny. Hilarious, actually. I recommend it.

Tuesday, October 5, 2004

Why oh why have I not gone to bed yet?

Can somebody pleasae tell me why I am baking brownies? At midnight. When my daughter will be waking up in seven hours. Could it be because I can't bring myself to going up to that empty bedroom? Or because I'm too restless to sleep? Maybe it's just that I like baking brownies.

Actually, the last time I made these brownies, they proved utterly and sinfully irrresistable. To anyone who came within aroma distance of them.

So maybe it's that. Right?

Monday, October 4, 2004

It has begun.

The quiet, cool blaze is burning its way through here. The tall trees, lusciously green just a few weeks ago, are falling prey to this silent inferno. The red and the yellow and orange flames lick the bodies of these giants. Gently undressing them, letting their cloaks slide to the ground. Leaving them bare. Somber. Ready for their winter coat.

As I was climbing the hills yesterday, the bike moving slowly enough for me to actually notice what was happening around me, it suddenly felt like this woodland was letting out its last sigh of summer. The sizzle is gone from the sunny beams, and the fire in the leaves foretell the inevitable arrival of winter.

It is becoming quiet. Again. A moment's pause, while Nature prepares to change the setting. She carefully rolls up the green carpets of the meadows. Bottles the red from the roses. Puts the singing of the birds, and the chirping of the crickets, in a cardboard box. And while she busies herself with those autumn chores, everything else sits patiently by.

Watching the seasons turn.

Thursday, September 30, 2004

I really, really was not going to follow this debate. We don't even have a TV. But then I thought "OK, I'll listen on the radio. Just to the first few minutes."

Yeah, right.

After listening to 90 minutes of exchanges between an obviously intelligent, curteous, and three-dimensional person, and a clumsy, inarticulate, and apparently not-to-bright individual.

And the irritating thing is that it is going to be the clumsy one, the one that kept repeating the overly-simplistic and childish slogans over and over again, that is going to win.

You know what? It really is not an election between these two men. It is not a test of them. This is a test of this nation. Of the electorate of the United States of America. The people living here will be tested on November second. Like never before. The dust of these two towers have settled. There are no more excuses. The cold, hard truth of the situation is apparent. The alleged connections. The proposed threat. What needs be done. What must not happen.

And it saddens me immensely to say this, but I fear that the nation is about to fail that test. And the blame will not just sit with a single Texan anymore, but the nation that will have blessed his deeds.

Sunday, September 26, 2004

We actually ended up seeing Garden State. Which was pretty good.

Just going out was good. Meeting my wife. Having a friend babysit.

Nice. Just, nice.
I may not be much of a chick flick type of guy, but I want to see Before Sunset. Even if I've heard so little about it, I think I am going to like it.

Friday, September 24, 2004

So...

...what's a guy to do, on a Friday night, after he's picked up his girl from daycare, played with her, gone grocery shopping, played some more, fed her dinner, played peek-a-boo and hide-and-seek, read a bunch of wacky books with big pictures, given her milk and a cookie, brushed a bunch of teeth, and put her to bed?

I mean, now she is asleep and I am alone. Feels strange.

Guess I'll read a book and go to sleep...

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Two down – one to go.

Getting a little tired right now. But it's getting there.

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Monday, September 20, 2004

I know. I know.

I watch awfully many movies. Go on book binges. Listen to a lot of lot of music.

For some reason, CocoRosie's Terrible Angels has been playing in my head all day. It's from la maison de mon rêve. It's not the pig squeeling that keeps me. It's that duo. Voices dancing non-chalantly around each other.

Some things are simply mesmerizing.

Damn, this disc is good. Damn. Damn. Damn.

Put it on the iPod. The song will be on repeat in my ears through my bike ride.

Which I am going on.

Right, now.

Sunday, September 19, 2004

My rear view mirror

The view from my rear view mirror:

One year ago ...

My rear view mirror

... and today.

Saturday, September 18, 2004

Friday, September 17, 2004

It really is a small place. A shack, really. The ceiling is low, and the floor is kind of warped. I had not noticed it before. Probably because I usually enter purposefully. Even automatically. Going to rent a movie is a routine, which you do without having all your senses turned on.

But not tonight.

It is getting darker more rapidly now. When I got there, it was already pitch black. It is raining non-stop now, but the air is still heavy and warm. Walking in it is being in the Night's embrace, feeling its warm breath on your cheeks as it holds you tight. As I walked in, the fluorescent lights dispelled some of that feeling. There were about a dozen people looking for their escapes on the outside of little plastic boxes.

It was strangelly quiet. It almost felt as if I had walked into the middle of a sensitive conversation. And then I saw the reason. On small, beat-up TVs in the corners of a shop, a man began to speak. I knew that voice. And I had heard it say those words before. I felt a wave of déjà vu wash over me. And I realized what I had been feeling. It was restlessness.

A long time ago, many many years before I started to consider moving here, I travelled all over this country. I had seen a large part of Europe, which was great, but those trips lacked the 'frontier' feeling of travelling in America. Twenty years ago, it felt thrilling to move through places where inhibitions were low. Opportunities seemed boundless. Where freedom reigned. Places where you felt you should be on your toes. Where people carried guns. And staked claims. And drank bourbon. In bars. I was also desperate for something new. Something bigger. Something bigger. America.

So I travelled. Coast to coast. After five trips and six years I had seen some things and gone some places. I had been to roughly 15 states in the Union. Never saw a gun on somebody's person, though. Well, except for all those guns hanging from police officers. I talked to people that were in a mindset completely alien to me. I saw a whole different way in which people can live. I sat on their chairs. Ate their food. Listened to their music. Which brings me back to that voice.

I can't for the life of me remeber wher I listened to those words. I know it was just this one time, and I know it was when I was alone. Roaming. On the radio in a rental car. The TV in a hotel room. Somewhere. But the same thing had happened then as now. This man, standing on a stage, talking more to himself than his audience, was thinking back to when he wrote the song he was about to sing. He had been 24, he said. And each time he sings the song, he is surprised at how clearly he had managed then to frame, in a song, the questions he has been trying to answer ever since. This got to me then. And it got to me tonight. Standing among these people in the dingy little video shop.

You see, my eyes saw a lot of stuff when I was getting to know this country. My fascination with it dissipated. you may say predictably. I would say that I believed that I had calmed down. Quenched the thirst.

But I would be wrong.

It wasn't the need to see this country. It wasn't that I had specific places I needed to go to. I needed to wander. To fly. To move. I have a restless streak. And that has not changed.

As I walked back out into the Night, I saw a beat-up, old motorcycle parked in front of the gas station next door. It had out-of-state plates, stuffed saddlebags, and two helmets clipped to the side of it. I felt this piercing urge to mount it and drive off.

After a minute or so, a small, fat guy came walking out of the gas station, sat on the bike and started to put on one of the helmets. I snapped out of it. I had somewhere to be. I felt my restlessness fall back to its place in my soul. My life was patiently waiting for me to come back. Which I always do. Not just because I do not fail. Or let down. But because that is who I am.

Still, as I drove away, I could still hear Springsteen's voice in my head:
"I'll love you with all the madness in my soul
Someday girl I don't know when,
we're gonna get to that place.
Where we really want to go,
and we'll walk in the sun.
But till then tramps like us,
baby we were born to run."
One down – two to go. Seventy-five pages cast in stone. So to speak.

I am working on final reports for three of the projects I was working on during my trip the other day. Just finished one of them and have sent it out for proofing.

It's a good feeling, when you will yourself to finish a project, with no regard for the time of day. Testing your mettle. Besides, with my wife working like crazy, I have had no choice but to work nights as well. But man, am I exhausted!

I shutter at the thought of getting up in three hours, working a full day, and of finishing two more of these by Monday.

Thursday, September 16, 2004

dinner.jpg

We had a welcome but all to seldom seen guest show up for dinner: My wife, the overworked.

To mark the occasion, we treated her to a feast of avocado soup with fresh cilantro and tuscan bread, and home-made Spaghetti Bolognese:

dinner.jpg

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

There are strange, bright-red, birds singing outside my window. Most probably on their way south.

Even though it is warm, I know that fall will be coming soon. I can feel Nature, heavy with her burgeoning fruits and unfolded flowers, slowing down her frenzied run through the summer. Pausing to catch her breath. Her pulse slowing. The fever subsiding.

Preparing for days of darkness and slumber.

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

I woke up this morning, thinking how fortunate I am. Which is intersting in itself, because my last thought as I was falling asleep last night was how miserable I felt during the weekend while trying, with little effect, to ease the suffering of my sick, little girl.

I used to have this little List of things I would check in my mind, when I felt really down. It has been quite a while, probably years, since I saw fit to do The List the last time, but there have been dark times in my past when I needed to do it daily, even many times a day. The List changes obviously, as life goes by, but currently goes something like this:
- I was born into as normal a family as any,
- in a peaceful country with few crimes and no wars,
- was brought up in a sane and non-abusive manner,
- have never gone without food or love for any length of time,
- have found my partner for life,
- am blessed with true friends,
- am healthy and wish others well,
- have so far achieved the education that I have sought,
- am successful in the work that I have chosen to do,
- do not have too much money or things, but enough, and
- have been entrusted with the most precious little girl in the World.

Sometimes I can't check some of the things on The List. I may not have had any money. At all. Or seemed to be about to flunk out of school. Or something. But the big things have always been there. Family, friends, love.

I may not have had any special reason to do The List this morning. But it was good to remember it. One shouldn't just pray when things are bad.

Monday, September 13, 2004

Man, that was one tough weekend.

Not that I had any lack of respect for people with young kids, especially single parents. But holding your little girl in your arms for a weekend, while she sobs and cries from feeling just miserable, and not being able to do much about it, that just amplifies the awe I am in of those that have more than one toddler to take care of, let alone for those that are doing this by themselves.

This is probably the best job on Earth. But it's a tough one, too.

Saturday, September 11, 2004

Being useful is calming. When you need to become the pillar of strenght, it just seems to happen naturally.

It has almost been a week since I came back home. Being away for three weeks was too long, and its effects were apparent. My wife, a tough cookie herself, was completely exhausted from trying to balance a heavy workload with taking care of our little girl. She just started a new rotation, which means that she is up at 5 am and out the door, and is seldom seen back home until after 7 pm. And she is also taking calls again. For example today, she was off to work at 7 am, and won't be back until noon tomorrow. Having probably gotten no sleep at all.

I can admit to having been a bit sleep-deprived myself when I came home last Sunday night, but it is interesting how you can suddenly gain extra strength just from seeing that your force is in demand. So I have spent the week waking up with my wife and seeing her off, getting a couple of hours worth of work done before my daughter wakes up, feeding/dressing/brushing her teeth and driving her to the daycare, paying bills, haggling with oil people/phone people/repair people, getting the cars maintained, studying, stocking the fridge/pantry, working some more, fetching my little girl and playing with her, buying flowers/wine/other distractions for my wife, making dinner, feeding and nourishing my wife, bathing my girls and putting them to bed, and maybe getting a little more work done.

And I've done it. Calmly and completely. Because I am wanted. And needed. By a couple of people that live in my heart. One of them moved there a decade ago. The other one just appeared there last summer. Yesterday, I was struggling with the question 'Can you miss something you've never actually had?' Today I realized that of course you can. If you realize that it is something you have wanted for longer than you have known. My little girl, for example. Being apart from her for a few days soon after she was born made me miss her like crazy. Even if we only just met. Missing her was also missing the opportunity to get to know her better. To verify what I felt she was like. Or maybe learning something completely different about her. This was the challenge of being away from her, these last few weeks. It is the loss of time. Seeing it disappearing without being there to spend it with her.

But now I am back. And I am making good things happen. My daughter greeted me as if I had been away for only a few minutes, and I hope she didn't feel this sting in her heart that comes from missing dearly. But I secretly also want to believe that she missed me, a bit. Just a little. Isn't that the essence of human relations? You do not just want to enjoy the company of other people. You also want to know that it is reciprocated. That there is balance. That you are not just feeding on others, but that they are getting good things in return from you.

This may be my single, greatest dread about my little girl growing up, besides her becoming a 'socially conservative' Repulican. It is that she will not derive the same pleasure from my company as I do from hers. Which actually is pretty likely, eventually, I guess, even inevitable. I even want her to outgrow me, and us, her parents. But I know it is going to break my heart when she starts trying to break free.

Oh, listen to me! How silly. Worrying about her moving out, when she has barely moved in. As I am writing this, she is sound asleep after a challenging night and morning. Late last night, she woke up and started crying. Something she practically never does during the night. When I checked on her, she was miserable. Eyes red and puffed, nasty cough, and what a runny nose! How can such a little thing produce so much snot?

She woke up a few more times in the night, and each time I put her right back to sleep. My wife took her with her downstairs for breakfast before she left, but the little critter hardly ate anything. She spent most of the morning whimpering pathetically in my arms, eating and drinking a little from time to time, finally collapsing into exhaustion on my shoulder. I know it is a terrible thing to say, but there is something so endearing about her when she is this feeble. Probably because that is when all she really wants is to be carried around and cuddled.

Which gives my a reason to be comforting. An excuse to be strong.
This is the hour, at which the World changed. I saw it happen. We all did.

Friday, September 10, 2004

I had a lot on my mind when I picked up my daughter yesterday afternoon. Since she is currently experimenting with switching from two naps during the day to just one, she tends to be much more serene when I pick her up than when I drive her in the mornings. So she is content with just gazing at the trees and houses, as they hurry along past our car.

My thoughts were bobbing around in my head, rascally. Brushing aside my every plea for them to fall in line and allow me to think them through one at a time, in an orderly fashion. Suddenly, I was roused by a voice. It was my daughter. Talking. She told me not to worry so much. The rain had stopped, she said, and the sun was wrestling with the clouds. She pointed to a hill that we drive by every day. Take me there, dad, she said. Take me to the top of the hill.

So we drove up the hill. Funny how you can drive by a place for years without really noticing it. Until one day, when someone opens your eyes and there it is. While we were driving up the winding road, my little girl told me of the adventures that had taken place on that hill. The bravery, the heartaches, and the happy everafters. Once we had parked the car, she took me by the hand and led me to the peak of the little hill. See, dad, she said. From here you can see to the end of the world. Over there, you have the strange mountains, where the trolls and goblins live. And over there, she pointed, is where the elves and fairies dance around in the fields all night long. And oh! Look at that. A straw! She proceeded to taste this irresistible delicacy, sucking the nectar from its thin body. I sat down. And looked around. You really could see the whole world from up here. If you just opened your eyes.

After a while, my little girl looked back up at me. "Dah!", she said enthusiastically and smiled. I smiled back and patted her on the head. "Dah?", she said again, more slowly. Her smile faded. My brief moment of understanding her language had passed. She sighed. The labors of educating parents. Two steps forward. One step back.

Thursday, September 9, 2004

It has been raining non-stop since yesterday afternoon. I even heard the wind blowing when I woke up in the middle of the night. And the wind hardly ever visits this place. Rain and wind and darkness. It reminded me of home.

I sat down by the window and stared out into the darkness. The light from the street lamps reflected in small puddles of water, scattered around on the road. Even though I knew it was mild outside, the sound of the wind made it feel so cold. Mostly because this time of year, I am usually heading back home to take part in the yearly driving of the sheep, down from their summer grazing on the mountains.

This is the time of big, waxed parkas. Of thick wool-sweaters. Creaky saddles. Old riding boots. Bad-tasting cigarettes. Mending bridles. Getting re-acquainting with the horses.

You drive up there from the city. An hour and a half. It used to be two to three hours. Half a day. Now it's all asphalt, and new, shorter roads. Kind of takes a bit of the charm out of the trip. But then, it has all lost its shine in so many ways. There are no thousand sheep to be found there. No thirty good horses to choose from. The houses are not fresh and all-white anymore. Bustling with people. So many have grown up or grown old and died, and not that many have replaced them.

I spent my summers up there. Eight until fourteen. Actually, the first year I only stayed a week, I think. But what a week. You see, I grew up surrounded by women. Older sisters. Aunts. My mother and grandmother. So I was leading a pretty sheltered life. And then I got sent to this place. I didn't want to go, naturally. Everything was big. And scary. Rough characters and pretty tough work, for a kid. When the farmer's nephew drove me up there, the summer I turned ten, he stopped by the side of the road as soon as he was out of the jurisdiction of the city police, and mixed a flask of moonshine and coca-cola to sip on. Made him drive the rest of the way a hell of a lot faster. He also used to wake up the working hands – that would be me and a handful of other boys – by standing in the stairs below our bedroom and yelling "Rise, hookers, ship!" You get the picture.

But I quickly became fond of the place. Sure you got banged up a bit. Some tumbles, cuts and bruises. Most of them to your ego. But it built character. It really did. Because you could feel that, despite their roughness, the people there still did give a damn. And they were larger than life. The farmer was a seven-foot tall giant of a man, especially in the eyes of a scragly boy. He always wore these strange, thick denim pants, made by his sister. Designing clothes was not her strongpoint. The pants only augmented the farmer's uneven image. But then this was contrasted by how well read he was. The farm had a fairly-sized library. As was common on a farm of this size. Roughly 5-7000 titles. Many of them were cheap thrillers. And sappy love stories. But a large portion of it were real books. And the range was impressive. Mill, Faulkner, Kierkegaard, Joyce, Steinbeck, Ibsen, Shakespeare, Lagerlöf, Twain, Eliot, Blixen, Dostoyevsky, and Laxness. Lots of Laxness. And the farmer seemed to have read them all. You could be standing on a rocky hill, trying to hold a fence post straight in the everblowing wind, while he pounded it into the ground with an over-sized, two handed hammer. If it didn't go fast enough, he would maybe mumble a few obscene curses, and then break into a poem by Byron. Impressive. Then he was libel to follow it up with some foul and often badly-constructed limericks of his own. Not as impressive. He was a chronic asthma patient, but still persisted in running a large farm, spending most of his summers gasping for breath while haying. So he was a true contradiction in terms. An enigma.

After leaving for school in the fall, we would always return for a day in late September for the sheep roundup. A group of men would have set off, a few days earlier, into the mountains on horses for a two-day journey, to gather the sheep that had been grazing there over the summer. They would drive them down to the valley, to a large common area. There, each farmer would have his group of kids to draw his sheep from the sea of animals. It was always quite a sight, seeing the mostly white droves pouring down the sides of the mountains. And it could be hard work, drawing these stubborn sheep, more than half your size, by their horns or heads.

After my last summer there, when I turned fourteen, I was finally invited to join the men, as they set off for the mountains. It was as undramatic as anything connected with the place. I was just told, as I left for the summer, that I would need to show up three days earlier for the roundup since I would be joining the men that fall. That was it.

There were four of us heading up from the farm I had worked on. Each one had a pair of well-rested horses, and a saddlebag with a few sandwiches, a thick slice of blood sausage, and a bottle of milk. We started our ascend at first light, about six o'clock. This early, even the wind is not awake yet. We floated lazily up the neck of the mountain, along the canyon, where the river tirelessly pushed itself down one waterfall after the other. As we reached the shoulder, the wind had picked up, and it began to rain. After reaching the middle of the moor, around mid-day, we ate quietly, and then split up. As we parted, one of the other men reached over and stuffed a package of cigarettes and a box of matches into my coat pocket. "You'll need it", he said, and rode away.

And then there were just the four of us. Me, the two horses, and this pack of cigarettes. In a hall of mountains, with nothing but the plateau between you and the blue ridges on the horizon, you quickly realize your solitude. Your independence. Your responsibility. And then it gets really, really cold. That's where the cigarettes come in. I had practically never smoked before. Except for the requisite odd one behind school during recess, just to see what it tasted like. So I spent the first part of this journey green in the face. But there was something so fitting in inhaling these toxic fumes, right there where everything is pure and unspoilt. I was like this little locomotion, chugging through the swamps and over the hills, spewing smoke and yelling at the sheep that crossed my path. And it became a part of it. Each year since, I began my trip by searching out a Russian troller, docked in the city harbor. By then, I was working there during the summers anyway, so, like everybody else there, I became adept at avoiding the customs officers. The sailors were always stocked with cheap vodka and bad tobacco. They would exchange a few packets of these horrid, strange cigarettes for a single-use, plastic lighter. Not only was the tobacco foul-tasting, but most of the cigarette was comprised of a narrow, cardboard-like cylinder. Therefore, each cigarette didn't even contain that much tobacco. This suited me fine, because I could feel that I would easily start smoking for real, if I started to like the taste, and I didn't want to do that. I just wanted a way to have my smoke while on these sheep rounding journeys. Sadly, after Russia started to crawl to its feet economically, fewer and fewer of their trollers would show up. And when they did, their vodka wasn't cheap anymore and they brought no more Russian cigarettes to sell. So I turned to filterless Camels. It wasn't the same, but it was rough enough, and tasted almost as bad.

The rounding is in ten days. Which means that they will probably head up a week from now. I know that I will not hear from them. Just as certainly as I know that if I were to show up there, they would have found two horses for me to ride.

Wednesday, September 8, 2004

It is an adjustment, being back here. Instead of no time and an overload of human contact, busily scurrying through days filled with meetings and conferences, I am suddenly in a vacuum of ample time and minimal company during the day.

I did get a ray of sunshine on my doorstep this morning. Two songbirds unexpectedly appeared from their new habitat up in Canada. Welcome back! I can only infer that they missed me so much that they dashed southwards as soon as I came home. Well, that's my theory anyway.

But the working alone and not being buried in slipping deadlines has meant that I have been drowning my friends in e-mails and phonecalls. I realized that this morning, and am consciously taking a step back.

Besides, what is the point of having a lot of time for yourself if you don't use it for yourself?

And with that, he went out biking again. Having blissfully forgotten the aches and pains that he experienced after yesterday's biking expedition.
I have discovered that my quadriceps are a few numbers too big. Not only does my circulation have a big problem pumping enough blood into them when I am working out, but when they really take off, the rest of my body can't keep up.

After blogging my Deep Thought Of The Day (or Month) earlier today, my mind was racing. So I decided to go out and bike it off. Big mistake. Overenthusistic biking after more than a month's hiatus yielded disastrous results. I came back an hour later somewhat dizzy, my back aching, face sunburnt, knees fuming and hands trembling. Only the blessed quadriceps said "Come on! Whatsamatterwithya! Keep going, you lazy gits!" Understandably, my thighs are now the least popular among my body parts.

The toes still reign supreme: Always calm and composed, neatly laid out, keeping the rest of the body in balance.

OK, I need to go to bed.

Tuesday, September 7, 2004

While on my trip, I got a call from an old colleague of mine. He wanted to "do lunch".

I had almost forgotten how attorneys "do lunch". I haven't practiced law in almost five years, and the mellow world of consulting had dulled the memory of it.

First of all, you show up late.
Secondly, you arrive talking on your cell phone. Throughout the meal, the phone should ring constantly. A sidenote on the phone etiquette: Answer each call with snyde remarks or ironfisted arguments, delivered with malevolence. Every call must end in a "victory", preferably leaving someone maimed, somewhere.
Thirdly, strive to show how much better you are doing in the rat race than your lunch company is. Talk about the length of your new boat. Your newest SUV. Your big summer house.
And finally: Just, whatever you do, do not talk about how you are feeling. I mean really feeling. No talking about your dreams, your anxieties or, God forbid, your love. Don't mention your children, except in passing, and never, ever admit that you would really like to spend more time with them.

In short, be the cold, heartless bastard that people expect a trial lawyer to be. Because how else can you protect yourself from those that are out to get you?

Yes, how indeed.

First off, it has to be said that there are many fields of the law where practicing does not require abandoning your humanity. You have these more tranquil spaces where court battles resemble tea parties. At least compared to where the stakes are routinely high.

This colleague of mine commented that I seemed to have lost my ruthlessness. I don't think he meant that as a complement. The remark was delivered in a sad tone, almost with remorse. I kind of shrugged it off at the time, but it got me thinking.

And I have been thinking about it.

Maybe I have changed. At least I would like it if it meant that fewer people think I am a cold-hearted bastard. Yes, I have done things in the past, especially professionally, which I probably would do differently today. But why?

I didn't have time until now to figure this out. This morning when I woke up, with a slight touch of hangover, it dawned on me, I think.

I have, probably mostly unconsciously, stopped bothering with people that are bad. Yes, I know. No-one is all-bad. And I totally believe that (note that I did not believe that a few years ago). I need to believe that. But I mean 'bad' as in 'having seriously bad intentions' or 'wanting to hurt someone'. The world is full of people that choose to live that way, and I simply do not have time in my short life to spend on them. Which would explain some drastic career moves a few years ago. And my choice of friends. Cold people do not interest me. At least not anymore. I am stuck on good people. Those of beautiful hearts. And especially those that try to hide that beauty with a rough presence, boorishly brushing you away, desperatly trying to keep from getting exposed, hurt. They may be quiet, they may be loud, but they do not tell you things they do not mean. This kind I am drawn to. Hopelessly. It is their charm that leaves me defenseless. Maybe because after getting past the defense mechanism, I feel I get a truer, more honest response. Or maybe because their trust is unconditional, once earned. And that honors me.

Now you may ask: But can you divide between the wicked and the guarded? The bad and the badly behaved? Aren't we all the same? No! We are not. There are corrupt people in this world, people that want to do bad. They want to hurt. They enjoy inflicting pain. Revel in the misery they cause to others. I have to believe they still have the potential to be otherwise, but that side of them has more often than not been silenced a long time ago. So they thrive on dominating other people, in some form or another. And that is evil, pure and simple.

On the other hand, you have the rough ones. The attitute ones. The 'I don't give a flying ... what you think' ones. Why are they so defiant? It is simple, really. For the most part, they crave justice. And freedom. For all. They loathe pretense. And stupidity. And flashiness. And kow-towing to the norm, just because others do it. Anything that sounds like 'that's not proper' does not fly with them. In short, anything without a heart turns them off. So they react. And that puts them in a dilemma. And here is the fundamental difference: They care. They really do not want to hurt. They derive no pleasure from inflicting pain. But they still have this defence mechanism, which can catch people off-guard, even stun them. And they may have longings, dreams, desires which clash with the life they are leading. The corrupt would not give it a second though. But the pure of heart would. They desperately do not want to hurt. Hence the dilemma.

I guess hindsight is always 20/20. Looking back, I think I see myself slowly turning from a professionally banausic existence towards adopting a truly libertarian disposition, shouldering my responsibility as a human being to change this world for the better, instead of expecting other people, or the government, or just anybody else to do it for me. My contribution may be small, but my heart is true. And to take this journey with me, I have chosen the best people. The good. The righteous. The kind.

Monday, September 6, 2004

I just made the best damn risotto I've ever made. At least according to those who ate it. The recipe has been demanded, and so I deliver.

There is just one caveat: It has to be made con mucho amore. Just sprinkle that stuff liberally all over and all through the cooking. You will consequently need to start the enterprise with your heart filled with love. Otherwise it won't become magical. The more love, the better the results. So fill up your hearts, and start cooking:
  • Boil a liter of chicken stock and then lower to a simmer. The good stuff, if you have it, otherwise the cubes (e.g. Knorr).
  • Finely chop a large onion (white or red) and a few cloves of garlic. Don't press the garlic, mince it.
  • Heat in a pan a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and a few of butter.
  • Slowly heat the onion and garlic in the butter/oil till they are soft, but don't allow them to turn yellow/brown.
  • Pour in a large cup of arborio rice and turn up the heat. Stir from time to time, but not constantly.
  • In a minute the rice will turn clear.
  • Pour in a couple of glasses of cheap, good, white wine
  • Stir a few times, till the wine has all but evaporated/absorbed.
  • Mix in as much prosciutto as you think you can eat/afford.
  • Turn the heat down and pour one ladle of stock at a time over the rice, stirring a bit until almost absorbed and then adding another ladle.
  • Continue until most of the stock is finished, preferably about 15-20 minutes.
  • Stick 10-15 of the biggest scallops you can find, and afford, here and there into the rice.
  • Take pan off heat, smother in finely grated real parmesan and mix lightly together.
  • Put lid on pan and let stand for a couple of minutes.
  • Find prey and release on the risotto, thus turning them into everlasting, obedient slaves.
  • Continue on to world domination.

Sunday, September 5, 2004

I am loved. And it is reciprocated.

And that is a damn good feeling.

Saturday, September 4, 2004

heavenly.jpg

This strange trip is drawing to a close. It has been miserable, sweet, magical , and then really difficult.

This last week was completely too much, though. I shouldn't have added the third week. The work was hard, I hardly got more than 3 and 4 hours a night to sleep, and most of that time I spent tossing and turning in bed.

No rest. Restlessness. That's a word, right? Restlessness. Looks funny on the screen.

The country said goodbye in a kind way though:
heavenly.jpg
I just started reading one of my favorite books again. I haven't picked it up in years, but it somehow got thrusted into my hands now. That seems to be a recurring theme these days. Early on in the book, a inebriated man is introduced somehow like this: His eyes burned wildly and immorally. That's what I feel like right now. Wild, burning, strangely immoral, and also drunk, from lack of sleep.

Maybe my morals are just sedated. I am at the airport, and moving alone through the crowds here, with my iPod blaring in my ears, is somehow really impersonal. Devoid of humanity. I always feel most alone when I am moving through hordes of people by myself. No hand in my hand. No voice in my ear. Nobody by my side.

I may be lost, but still I know where I am going. I am going to a safe place. Somewhere where I will be looked after. Where I am needed. And wanted. Where I can do good. And be good.

Sunday, August 29, 2004

This weekend has meant a venerable rainbow of emotions for me. Paradise gained and lost. Neglible sleep. Warm hellos and heart-wrenching good-byes. And now I am back to work, trying to get my bearings again.

The sun is shining again today. Oblivious to the heartaches of those toiling under her.

Ah, well. If I had to choose between locking my heart up in a secure box somewhere, and keeping the doors open for good people and experiences to nourish it, even at risk of getting hurt, I would have no problem making the right choice.

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

policechoir.jpg

Being here does have its moments. Besides having a huge portion of my old friends to party with, I have a place that is so uniquely ... itself.

Take this for example.

I was walking downtown, on my way to somewhere unimportant. As I passed the downtown police station, what do I see but the police choir, standing on the steps in front of the station, practicing.

policechoir.jpg

As if this wasn't amazing in itself (they are actually not that bad), there was more magic to be made. Suddenly, three sirens appeared out of nowhere.

sirens.jpg

They slowly began to move in unison. A fourth beautiful woman appeared. They began to dance. All the while the police choir thundering in the background.

sundance.jpg

You just don't get this stuff where I live now.

No siree.

And yes, I feel better today.

Tuesday, August 24, 2004

benchpeople.jpg

I am sitting by the window, gazing outside.

It is almost completely dark now. I had been hoping that it would stay light a little bit longer. Silly me. What was I thinking? Of course it's only getting darker.

I'm not feeling all that good right now...

Anyway. Here is a picture for Beth. Thank you for the kind words. They were soothing.

benchpeople.jpg

boyandgirls.jpg

boyandgirls.jpg
I am one of those people who sometimes has a hard time allowing myself to hope that something good, which might happen, will actually come to pass. This is a kind of a defense mechanism. I will see the possibility come to life, and slowly become more and more real, but instead of just immersing myself in the thrill of "What if this will actually come true?", I reign myself in and try to convince myself that it can't be that this good thing is going to happen (to me). That way, I will not be massively disappointed if it does not happen after all, and I will feel the incredible rush of joy and surprise if it does.

Since experiencing this phenomenon yet another time in the last few days, I have begun to question the wisdom of this defense mechanism. Maybe it's because I just read Coelho's Alchemist. Or maybe it's just that I have begun to believe that it just may be that the things that you want to happen have a better chance if you wish them to happen, rather than always thinking to yourself that they are too good to happen to you. Wishing good things well is closer to my nature anyway, since I am an unapologetic believer in the preciousness of the moment. That you should follow your heart. Never have to think 'what if?' after the opportunity has sailed by.

Life really is fleeting. And it goes by so quickly. I have probably used up more than a third of mine already. And those have been good years. Not just because I have been incredibly fortunate. But also because I have used most of them to live to the fullest. Whether that has meant reading a book that demanded that I read it, sitting and watching the sea when that meant missing a bus and having to wait till the morning after for the next one, parachuting out of a perfectly good airplane despite all the apparent dangers, reaching out and hugging someone gravely angry at me and who by all accounts should be my sworn enemy, giving up a safe and lucrative career in order to move to a new country and begin anew, taking a train across the channel to spend an afternoon with someone I needed to be with, going back to school with a bunch of kids half as old and twice as enthusiastic as myself.

So I think I'll give it a try. Allow myself to enjoy thinking that something good will come to pass. That way, even if it doesn't, I will still feel good for a few days until I know that. And if it does happen, I can tell myself that I helped it by wishing it would.

Friday, August 20, 2004

Thursday, August 19, 2004

Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Old habits die hard.

After spending literally every waking hous these last few days studying for my exam, I woke up yesterday morning determined to go to sleep at a decent hour last night. After all, staying up all night the night before an exam is a bad habit and is libel to leave you groggy and tired when showing up to take the test.

Still, the last time I remember sleeping the night before an exam was back in 1995.

But this time I was determined, not to give in. I was going to go to bed at 11 pm. On. The. Dot.

At 5 am this morning, when I happen to glance at my watch and realized that the night had escaped from me, I didn't curse. Or kick myself.

I just smiled. For if you do away with all your bad habits, where will you get your spice in life from?

P.S. I did surprisingly well on the exam, I hope. Grade expected tomorrow...

...keeping my fingers crossed.

Monday, August 16, 2004

I am probably pregnant.

Since leaving on this trip, I have not been able to eat anything except fresh fruit.

I guess morning sickness will be next.

Sunday, August 15, 2004

OK. Enough wallowing.

Heading out.

Back in September.

Hope to blog some while I am there, but if not: Shine on you, crazy diamonds.

Saturday, August 14, 2004

sunny girl

sunny girl
I seriously do not want to go tomorrow.

Yes, I do need to go. I will not get paid unless I show up for work. And then we will starve. Well, maybe not starve, but get a lot of depressing letters from lawyers, and banks.

And I know that once I am there, I will be fine. I won't be alone anymore all day. I will immerse myself in work, and get to meet so many of my good friends. Parties galore. Fun fun fun.

But.

I will be away from two women that truly love me. And that is going to hurt.

Yeah, I know. Boo-hoo.

Friday, August 13, 2004

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Argh!
It worked! Yesssss!

deckeyes.jpg

deckeyes.jpg

Monday, August 9, 2004

I am finally set up to start posting pictures again to this blog. As you may remember, my pictures of my daughter got erased from a previous host. But now they will be coming back, thanks to the super-cool people at flickr.com.

Yes, of course they had to be Canadian!

Flickr

This is a test post from flickr, a fancy photo sharing thing.
Wow, that was quite a hiatus!

Amazing how time can become fleeting. Drift away.

I have no idea why I haven't blogged in weeks. First, I thought it was because I've been busy preparing for my trip. But that hasn't stopped me in the past. In fact, I am one of these people that am best at getting things done when I am insanely busy.

Then, I thought I might be shellshocked from my wife having to have a second surgery last week, on a rather short notice. But it was nothing like last year. Actually, it was just a consequence of that. A "repair", as she called it. And she will need more. All minor.

No, I came to the conclusion that I just don't have anything profound to say. And then I realized that this 'conclusion' is so profoundly wrong that I must find a better one. You see, to stop blogging because I have nothing profound to say implies that this blog had until then been a fountain of profoundity (I know that's not a word, but it looks cool). And it would also imply that that's what blogs are for. Wrong again. After browsing through my favorite blogs today I realized that hardly any of them are profound, or even much more than mundane, in appearence. There are exceptions, like my neighbor's blog, which contains a daily wealth of information and profound thought. I am constantly in awe of the amount of work and heart that that blog is constantly filled to the brim with. But most of the blogs I visit often are my favorite, not because of how profound they are. The reverse is almost true. Some of them are written by people I know nothing of, some by people I hold dear. These are blogs that read like diaries, containing random thoughts and a recount of often mundane chores and events. A snapshot of how that person felt when he or she was writing that text. What is being conveyed is more mood than thought, more sentiment than sensibility.

And that is what appeals to me. That is in my opinion the ultimate power of this medium. It somehow manages to allow us to share thoughts and feelings with practically anyone, near and far, friend or stranger. In this world, each of us is pretty much pigeonholed from the rest of mankind, confined to this job place, that city, this ethnic group, that income bracket, this age, that family, this education, that whatever. Sure, you break across these boundaries, partly because they are there. But then you get sucked back into the same old way of thinking, the same groups of people you talk to, the same way of looking at life. It is simply a miracle to have a tool that actually lets me in on the thoughts of a college professor who, like me, just became a completely clueless dad, or a girl in Denmark, who, like me, has sometimes trouble knowing which way to turn a screw, or this boy in China, who is generally upbeat but sometimes wonders what it is all for, anyway.

So I still do not know why I have shied away from this blog lately. But I am back.

At least for today.

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

A book and a movie!
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
  • Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
I can't wait!

Monday, July 26, 2004

Ladies and gentlemen.

I give you ... William Shatner!

Sunday, July 25, 2004

Roughly half of my closest friends use some sort of Messenger software, mostly MSN. The guys are more often online, but the girls talk more.

A common theme with the guys, who I often talk with late in the evening, is that they will disappear offline as soon as their significant others say the word, throwing a "bye" and not even giving me a chance to reciprocate before the log off. In other words, my guys treat their girls well.

Come to think of it, that is no coincidence. I have always abhorred men who do not treat their women decently. Only one of my friends used to do that. So one day I knocked him cold. Suffice to say, we wouldn't be considered friends today. I just snap when women get mistreated. That's terribly old-fashioned, I know, but I can't help it. I cut women much more of a slack. I think I can somehow feel what a challenge it can be for women to put up with us guys. "After all, he's just a man", and all that jazz.

Despite all my rhetoric, I guess I'm just an old-fashioned fart after all.

Friday, July 23, 2004

I bought my ticket today.

Leaving on August 15. Not coming back until September 4. And flying alone.

*Sigh*

Thursday, July 22, 2004

My daughter and I ended this day by walking around in a park. She would hold onto my thumbs, and I would slowly ease them out of her hands, thus leaving her to walk on her own. She realized that after taking a step or two by herself, and fell onto the grass laughing hysterically.

Then we went for pizza. Broccoli for her, anchovies for me.

Sunday, July 18, 2004

Something woke me up in the middle of the night.

No, it wasn't a loud truck. Not the train. Nor a wild party in the neighborhood. Not the smell of something burning. But it was a smell. A foul, pugnant, offensive, overbearing smell.

It was a skunk!

Somewhere in the village, a skunk had sprayed its overbearing liquid. Possibly in defense when fronted with another animal. Or a car.

But as a result, everything smells like a skunk in here now. Including me. Gee, I can just imagine the looks on my fellow biker's faces when I show up for our 50 mile ride this morning. They'll probably leave me in a ditch enroute.

Hello. I will be your skunk for the day.

Thursday, July 15, 2004

Man, it's raining!

Rain. Rain. Rain.

Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain.

I am going away again in a month. For almost three weeks. *Sigh* If this pathetic on-line airline ticket website service thing doesn't forget to send me my ticket. Again.

What is the deal with these ticketing websites, anyway? I have been doing most of my banking on the Net for years now. With no problems. What so ever. Never has my money just mysteriously disappeared from my account. Never have I had to call the bank and have someone say to me, in a patronizing voice: "Now are you suuuure sir, that you actually transferred this amount into your account? Couldn't it be that you just accidentally did not transfer it, like, at all?" But time after time, year after year, this is what I get from the airlines. All of them. BA, AA, Air France, KLM, SAS, and the rest of them. All of these clowns. "Sorry sir, I have no record of that transaction. Oh, and by the way, that flight is now full." I mean, is it a requirement that if you land a contract, writing a booking engine for an airline website, that it actually should not work? Ever?

Actually, I am not pissed about this. I learned my lesson a while ago. Now, I buy my tickets way in advance, to allow for all the screw-ups, and lost reservations, and tickets to Detroit (I mean, who would go to Detroit, voluntarily, anyway?), and wrong prices, and middle seats, and all the other stuff that you can possibly fuck up when taking someone's reservation for a simple airfare.

You know what though? I am pissed. But not at the airline. It's this whole going away again thing. Alone. For weeks.

And on top of it all, if I have to go somewhere, this really isn't where I want to fly to!

I have a completely different destination in mind.

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

I was right, I was right, I was right!

When I arrived at the daycare, my daughter was sleeping soundly. She woke up as soon as I opened the door to the room where she was sleeping. Grumpy, wrinkled, and hungry. She half-wimpered, half-growled in my shoulder as I carried her to the car. There she did one of her stiff-as-a-board-so-you-can't-put-me-in-that-car-seat-thing. She usually saves those for a rare occasion, like when we're driving guests somewhere or if we think that we are really late going somewhere. But I had already decided what to do. First, I subjected her to my singing. That usually catches her offguard, as it did today.

I sang all the way to the pizza joint across the river. There, I ordered a large slice of chicken/broccoli/tomatos/bacon/onions/ranch dressing accident. Next, I fed her the toppings. She was starving. She had already finished everything I sent with her to the daycare: The double ration of banana-oatmeal, the eggs, the boiled carrots, the orange, the milk/half&half, and a good chunk of the wheat-cheerios-like-thingys. And that was after the breakfast of 6 oz of milk/half&half, banana, puffed wheat, and apricots.

After we jointly destroyed the humongous pizza slice, and I had stopped singing at her, she was already in a better mood. Then we danced around in front of the pizza place, in the rain, and that even brought out a little smile. So then, there was only one thing to do: The Drive-Around Top Ten!

For those of you that are unfamiliar with how this goes, listen carefully: You put one kid in car-seat. Put yourself behind the wheel. Find a winding country road, preferably surrounded on all sides with lots of things to gawk at, like trees, and bulls, and barns, and bikers, and more trees, and babbling brooks, and more trees, and dogs. Did I mention trees? While this is happening, you set your iPod on random. And look for songs that bring forth more smiles. And skip passed those that cause the kid to cry (see later).

I always thought the iPod was meant for me. I mean, my wife had an inscription put on the back: "for the dad..." Turns out that was all wrong. This widget was meant for bringing out smiles on my daughter's face. And boy, does she have a mostly solid, if somewhat unusual taste in music! For a one-year old at least, I think.

So without further adieu, here is the current Drive-Around Top Ten List:
  1. Music Non Stop - Kraftwerk (Album: The Mix)
  2. Mbube - Miriam Makeba (Album: Africa)
  3. Enter Sandman - Metallica
  4. It Had To Be You - Frank Sinatra
  5. Brazil Samba - Michael Kamen (Album: Brazil Soundtrack)
  6. Wishin' And Hopin' - Dionne Warwick
  7. On The Street Where You Live - Quincy Jones (Album: Big Band Bossa Nova)
  8. Sonata in C, K.545 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  9. Born Blind - Sonny Boy Williamson
  10. Summer In The Country - Roger Whittaker (Album: The Last Farewell)
Actually, this is a little skewed, since we only got to listen to about 15 songs. But still, some of them where never going to make the list. Even if we'd made it a Top Fifteen list. For example, my daughter cried when I played her Sting's "If I Ever Lose My Faith". And it wasn't one of those oh-tha-is-so-sweet cries, either. It was basically a please-turn-this-off-right-now cry. Heh-heh-heh.

We made a few stops on the way: On a really interesting parking lot in front of an old supermarket, where my daughter wanted to crawl around, and in a field of brown cattle, where we ate a lot of flowers. By the time we were back home, the smile had reached her eyes, and there was no more grumpiness to be seen.

So this is my advice to girls that say they are feeling grumpy today: Go out in a field and eat some flowers, have a sloppy pizza too, and find your favorite music. I guarantee it will drive that grumpiness away.
There comes a day, once you have stopped blogging, where you start thinking like this: So many more interesting days than today have passed since I last blogged that it would be silly to blog about today.

To fight this, I decided to blog about the most mundane, boring day that would come by. And that day is today.

Since I last blogged, I have had a day where I biked a 100 miles, and survived; a day that I spent in anguish waiting to hear if my mother was OK, after learning that her house got broken into, in broad daylight; a day when my daughter turned one years old; a day when I learned that a sweet, dear friend of mine is pregnant; and a day when I basically had all my professional wishes fulfilled, for a day.

Now lets talk about today. The sky is gray. It is muggy. Even the wind is too lazy to move. I've spent this specimen of a day on equally thrilling projects: Trying (and failing) to wire money to a former Soviet Union country (which explains the failure); looking at different types of stone and gravel for my garden; changing insurance companies for our house/cars; fighting a losing battle with my voice-mail settings; ordering a new set of checks; missing people who I haven't seen in a long, long while; calling someone 17 times (busy signal for the first 16 times), just to hear him say that what I had asked for can not be done; getting a message from my wife that she will not be home until sometime late tonight.

Now what does this all mean, ladies and gentlemen? I will tell you what it means. It means that this day is a challenge! It is testing me. Pushing me. Daring me to give up and let it slip away. To say 'Bleh!' and just hope that tomorrow will be better. But I refuse. I utterly and completely, flatly refuse to give in. This. WILL. Be. A. Good. Day.

And I even know exactly how to do it.

Five minutes from now, I will be driving to pick up my daughter. She can join in with the day, and be irritated, pissy, grumpy, and moody. But I will not be. Because I will be with my little girl. I will just smile to her, sing her a soft song, stroke her cheek. And let the grumpiness dissolve into nothing, evaporate, and go away.

See? Easy, peasy!