pink Mai one

    You can even harvest it from the floor at dawn. That harsh Asphalt Flower. When the streets are not so dead and the people not so gone, there's that little plastic breath that someone has forgotten or let drop out of weariness. You can get it anywhere else before, of course. Don't need to hide that much. Guess a pocket or a hand, bet a price. Lick, dip, drink. The noon gets fueled up as you become field and crowd. And at some point you get back to your flat, with your jaw knocked out, a sense of boredom perhaps, your arms weight and your feet weight as well, you let yourself fall into the bed and gesticulate the air with your tired arm until you reach for your worn-out blanket that some hustle last week has burned with a cigarette. He didn't intent to, he just didn't mind the ashes and that's how... And do you ever think about delivering children to this world or to that city or that bitch? Did you know there are snipers on the roofs outside with their only eye wide open spilling out fire? Have you read about the girl, they kicked her head like a rugby ball with their heavy boots, heavy like a heartless cyborg they are planning to build in the near future or past? You will read about that tomorrow anyway, when you wake up with your tongue so dried as sandpaper, your arms still tired, your heart just pumping enough for you to reach to the internet device. You will learn that she had tattooed pink Mai one in her tongue and that she was showing them her tongue with smile and happy, with a rose still attached to its long stem between her boobs and down her trousers, with each hype on the street quietly exciting her clitoris. And what about back home? When you go there to your sadness and you learn about the thefts and the prostitution around you, the prostitution where it is not wanted and where it was never necessary but indolence made it necessary. You remember those family trees you used to draw on the streets with a white chalk, and you learn the fathers and the uncles and the big cousins are also drawing their long white lines up the trunk down to the leaves playing so free in the nearby square. Every night some walk back home. You can guess a dark shadow on that dark dark night. A night made of hands you know. If you are not stepping on the floor it looks like you can beat your shadow. That's why I jump up the stairs to my house back home, and then I shut the heavy door and not in my house but usually a jesus christ sign or something blesses you so there isn't any more night anymore.

Knowledge is a fractal, just-percolating path between nihilism and totalitarianism

This is a tale of finding complexity and coming to terms with the world, partially. Better said, coming to terms with a little role of ours in the world, and how hard playing that role will inevitably be.

I recall my early times in Berlin when my motto was 'everything is a lie'. Even now from time to time I can't help that sentence slipping out my tongue. I was coming from a media delusion, a politics delusion, and I was confronting a University-scale scam and (once again) delusion; so I used to get drunk with friends, howl at the full moon -- which in Berlin is a bare tree laden with snow amid a desert parking lot, and repeat all over again 'this is a lie, my self is a lie, the rotting lungs of the city are a lie'. And I would doze off on a freezing concrete street until that yellow vodka would carry me home. I once lived on a 13th floor and I have memories of flying in through the window. I had abandoned myself to a hopeless nihilism.

The other extreme is being blindly sure of a truth impossible to grasp and is the essence of fascism, I have no doubt. How totalitarian this sentence was!

My little revelation was that neither position is true. It might seem small, but all of a sudden loads of dilemmas appear clear to me:

• (Wo)men is born neither evil nor good: it is a complex thing in between. 
• Evil (or good) in (wo)men is neither born nor fostered: it is a complex thing in between. 
• Media do neither lie nor tell the truth: it is a very complex thing in between. 
• There is definitively some truth and use in politics, as obvious as it is that all politicians lie. We must wring them out and out as a wet cloth to extract some of that use to the world. 
• Things are neither relative nor have they got an absolute existence of their own. Relativism is relative and difficult to size. Things exist just on a glimpse, always there and always about to vanish as if the world were quantum in nature. 

Summing up: things are complex, very complex!! And I largely recognize the defeat against this Nature in the younger, more frustrated drunkard playing chess with the shadows of the Berlin wall. A fawn hidden in the woods, its heart a nest for a dove flapping with fear. So easy to abandon ourselves to either nihilism or totalitarianism. But acknowledging that the world is complex paves a tiny, little way in front of us. The reality is complex and we must work hard to extract truth and knowledge, to make serve our work. Reality is not pointless, it is very difficult to grasp. 

Three nazi tales: I, Oranienburgerstraße.

At the corner Friedrichstraße with Oranienburgerstraße there was a pizza restaurant. I didn't use to go there: too expensive for me. But it was near the place I study and could see it everyday. Two weeks ago I walked by with two friends who were visiting me.

The place isn't a restaurant anymore. It was closed. The inside was dusty and the furniture removed out of its place, chopped into splinters. At each and every one of the wide windows someone had painted gross jewish crosses from the bottom to the top. I double checked the calendar: it was 2011. I double checked the place: it was Berlin-Mitte.

We left the place towards Brandenburger Tor. A shade of sadness. We slipped through a bunch of Syrian people demonstrating for the current president of their country who has been recently accused of crimes against the humanity by Amnesty International. "We'll blast you all", one could read on their shirts, or see the smiling face of president al-asad. "We'll blast you all", my sorrow sang.

Berlin, Warschauerstraße

The walk between Warschauerstraße and my room at a student's residence at Ostbahnhof was like playing a ramshackle piano on the dislocated tiled floor. That, whenever I walked the tiled floor. There was also this trip down the stairs from the high bridge at Warschauerstraße, where you could fuck around the dirt underneath, fuck up a lad or a chick who wouldn't complain about the sour smell; then walk the narrow vanishing path while any short of tick could get attached as it jumped out of the weeds which now and ever tried to erase the walkway; pass the tumbledown cottage, once --if ever-- a kind of train relay station; already near to the student's residence the huge Berghain disco stands, over and over again chosen the best one in the world, whoever decides it. The companion as good: any drunkard who got so far; a couple, an orgy shook the bushes, laughed the waxing waning moon which slipped roundly at either side; some children playing dirty vodka or rum sat on the curb of a road driving nowhere.

For a last time: back to the stairs descending from the high high bridge over the train rails, the bridge itself being Warschauerstraße. And the stairs hanging held by an armless night, with all the majesty of a suicide drop. And this was my preferred way back home.

For a last time, I say, cause they aren't there anymore. Now only a wailing of wind rocks the bridge, the soul. And my drunk steps, and this void. And I must walk back playing the quivering tiles, which soon won't quiver anymore. And as I pass by I see the old path changed into a neat BMX rink. The relay station is now being build into a railway museum or whatever. Yeah, the disco is still there. You can get ice cream inside. And whoever it chooses, s/he'll choose it again as the best one in the world. But people like me, the beaten downs, are not allowed in anymore. Instead, mama kids pretending to be whores but who wouldn't fuck --even suck a shit-- when sunk on the bitter night.

So this is what it means the fall of the Berlin wall. Capitalism as a busy beaver working back and fort, to and fro; fixing up whatever soviet disruption remains. Like a come of age of the whole city, mature enough that it doesn't need me anymore.

Democracy 2.0

There is a #SpanishRevolution going on!!! Of course, it is directly inspired in the icelandic movement, but I'd say that the closest inspiration are the arab ones. Key feature --which I didn't find so important in the icelandic case-- are web 2.0: facebook and twitter. They brought together a bunch of very different people just because they we are upset with our corrupted politicians and the system they support.

A main claim against this movement is that the politicians say we don't know what we want. We organized independently of any political party or syndicate. We discovered that we don't need any underlying structure to express our claims. The politician power fears this enlightenment. The easiest thing is to say we don't know what we want.

I do know exactly what I want: I want a public social network over which I can interact with another people discussing initiatives which will democratically rise or fall. A public social network over which I can configure my vote about the many different issues of importance to my country, in real time, without the corrupt sense of delegating my will each 4 years in a party working for international enterprises. A public social network which would allow me to link my vote to a determined party or think tank or person if I desired to do so because I consider that I am not an expert on a topic, or because I considered that the topic is not so important to me, or because I just don't want to review the color of my opinion each and every minute and I trust enough a certain party or think tank or person. But also, if the people on which I delegate plans some dirty move, I want a public social network to remove my endorsement at the moment I desired, on real time and not just each 4 years.

This I call it a real (or at least more real) democracy.

A foreseeable claim against this is that we are not prepared for such a thing, or that the thing couldn't be kept under control... Just wait until you hear that. Doesn't this remind you of a fellow Mubarak talking to the Egyptian folks? O a gay --yeah, this one is on purpose-- called Franco preparing Spain for over 40 years for the simulacrum of a democracy? Don't let them play any tricks on us when they are scared and try to spread their fear. We have the technology to implement it, now we only need the will.

So up to here my point. I do know exactly what I want: not only regarding the 'how', but also have some thoughs on the 'what later'. And better on: each girl and boy, and elder and middle aged and whoever you can find tonight camping on the Spanish's squares does know what they want. Maybe they don't want the same as me, but they do know what. And we shall speak out loud and frighten the night.

Meeting on Tuesday the 19, at 15:30 in front of the Spanish embassy. Further meetings for Friday and Saturday! Keep looking at the hashtags:

#SpanishRevolution
#acampadasol
#acampadaberlin
#nolesvotes
#notenemosmiedo
#yeswecamp

The value of a work

A piece of work is an abstract concept which we handle with more or less expertise. It's kind of driven by the supply and demand law, as any other object (concrete or abstract), and speculation might have a turn in its value as well. So, how do you appraise it??

Well before I graduated as a physicist, I had a casual chat with a friend and colleague at the University of Santiago de Compostela. The talk was on mathematical models for locust scourges and I digressed up to raise and fall apart of languages. This chat became, one and a half years latter, my thesis degree on the coexistence and competition among languages in a same region. Great!!

The price of a work is mainly crap and must be strongly renormalized before someone loses its head. Like a stone in go game, its value depends on the coordinates in which the stone is played, both spatial and temporal.

I was pretty proud of my thesis. It was not only the scientific job, but I'd also learnt a lot together with my mentor about how many random circumstances could devaluate a work well done (not necessarily talking about mine). Together with my thesis they followed: a participation in an international conference, prizes... a lot of stuff. I was never sure that I deserved what it was told about me, nor about my work. None of the recognitions. I went to Berlin with the idea of further researching, trying out my fitness to science and I found emptiness. Though (still do) about withdrawing from research.

Now, back in Galicia for vacation, I visited my former mentor and felt again what I enjoyed that much: the scientific chat about new problems, the maths puzzling me on the train joining the cities of Compostela and Coruña. The origins!! And when I came back home and checked on my single paper up to date, I discovered the greatest reward I could ever dream of!! I felt for first time in a while fulfilled (scientifically). Someone, without any further references to us, just by a daily reading of papers from arXiv, decided that ours was one of the bests new ideas and decided to post it in a blog. It also happens that the blog is held by people from MIT, how unexpected!!!

So I don't know yet what value a research might be worth. I worked into this project so many years ago and as a graduate student and I still get benefits from it. On the other hand, I rot in Berlin solving pointless arithmetical exercises and well far away from any real research project. Although I would devote my time to it, I don't have the feeling that this has any worth at all... Just as in Go game: each and every minute or stone so alike; played at a single space-time coordinate each of them becomes, one by one, the whole or the void.

Urge for Sex!! (Pulsión de Sexo!!)

And this is it!! Spain is, at once!!, Champion of the World!!!

I think it doesn't make any sense to describe the feelings or anything... each one has to experiment this and for each one it will be something different...

But something I'd like to describe was the Urge for Sex after the game. Everything began soon after the match against Germany, last Wednesday (it's incredible that only one week has gone by and that so many things happened!!). After that match, I said, there was party everywhere, even though I'm living in Berlin right now. German people were very proud of their team, but very polite and respectful, as far as it concerns me. Many of them joined the party held on the streets mainly by Spanish people. And then everything began, so suddenly: everyone was nasty, we wanted to get closer, touch each other. Women with women, men with men, women and men... any combination in any amount. The whole street was a sole heart and the wet pulsation would expand without limit if the fences of the dawn wouldn't reveal the madness... Before that, small crowds left the holy mass to become holy themselves through orgiastic performances in any corner of the nature.

...and the party went on, cause Spain became World Champion this Sunday and the streets and the throngs were unleashed again to the mouth of the Night, which would swallow each and all of them, one by one or all at a time, into its beat, horny guts with neon lights. And so on and so forth...

Then a waking up somewhere. Somewhere you know, somewhere you might not know so much... somewhere anyway. And a way back home, if necessary. The feeling that Holland people weren't so polite as the German ones, as far as it concerns me. I'd say, they weren't polite at all. But it doesn't matter: we are the Champions of the World.

Fake and Queer

To lie under the sun while you wonder who you are, while you abandon yourself to the just-being. To act as a response to the tip of your cock. Just play around with yourself, never with any other... yet. Watch World Cup matches. Get happy for an identity you don't know yet if you have... Get happy, indeed, for two identities you are not sure that you have. Remain politely not-so-happy as you wanted. Be about to cry, don't to cry, to cry. To get drunk by the remains of Berlin's Wall...

To wake up sad. Without any identity yet, but with labels you always feared. To feel misread and alone. Looking back, not so much changed... but everything's changed...

Guests

My mother is coming to visit me in Berlin during two weeks :D :D

Eventually I was able to bring her out of Galiza :P!

Kurihara Takuya

Maybe it was my mood, gray as the day and thus prone to little nirvanas of sadness. Anyway, today I found this painter, Kurihara Takuya, resident in Tacheles House, Berlin. His work, I've found it so amazing I almost cried in front of him. I'd like I'd talked to him, but at the moment I felt deeply shy and withdrew myself from there after staring his paintings for half an hour while he was working.