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. 

The Drought in New Mexico

    I arrived here... what? 5 weeks ago already? This is above 7000 feet high, meaning 2000 meters. The lands around Santa Fe are arid. There is this huge rocky canyon northwest from here that I went visit with my mate Max and I swear you can feel the last molecules of water evaporating off the river, off your breath. Off the no-river: it's dry. The vegetation forms patches in the sand, a sand I don't believe anything can root in. Animals are rattlesnakes, black bears, coyotes... I never get to see a coyote alive. I saw many death by the road when I drove down to El Paso and I came back all thirsty.

    The first week I got kind of sick. The altitude, they say. I went mad with maths and physics and didn't really sleep. I drank a lot. The second week I didn't drink that much, so my skin got flaky. I would scratch my hand and leave white traces on the table. Then things got worst. One morning my knuckles broke up bleeding as tiny, stretched red flowers. It didn't hurt much, though. I got myself a moisturizing cream I use often, but those flowers ran round my fingers and colonized my palms: I can see them bleeding right underneath my skin, itching like hell I'd love to rip them off sometime. They erode my flesh, call my nail on a suicide scrape, and wrinkle my hands.

    Then I met all these people. Then my mind got blown up. This pack coming from all over the world to think about complex systems, whatever this is. They brought these ideas along, their discussions and their few, well chosen silences. I still try to get this thing off my hands at night, I can't help it. Also off my feet: it's itchy there as well. It's itchy as nothing I've known of before. It is, I guess, the closest I'll ever get to yielding new life, so it must hurt in a way. Also my dried lips. And these girls and guys around, so marvelous I just wish to cry out to the world that they exist, that an another Earth might just happen if we give them voice. And I turn to my hands darkened by the sun, my squeezed skin, and see Them growing and I understand. Now these new lines that weren't there before, shaping a new destiny that could not have happened otherwise. Those mates crossing my life, those new shapes for a future that is to come, all those things that--now--will happen.

Trees have roots, men have legs.

    When I first went to Germany in 2006 I didn't pack very much besides my clothes. I had a notebook where I wrote some loose impressions... it's lost now; I had exactly a pair of books that changed my mind for ever; and few things more. I can remember that I didn't pack anything like shampoo, shower gel, or toothpaste. The first night I used my flat mate's and on the second day I bought those fancy products that I had never heard of: Antischuppen Schauma, blend-a-med for my teeth (although old good Colgate existed as well), whatever. Damn, I loved Germany so much by that time!! A country I didn't know and that I was so eager to discover! Missing my usual toilet stuff was part of it, of letting me go into that strangeness. Why should I carry along such a piece of a homeland?
 
    Now I see with wonder some Erasmus students coming to Barcelona. Many of them (everyone I've met) bring along their creams and brews; hair lotions with odd names, unspeakable languages. I saw this same thing with many foreigners coming to Granada when I was living there. This seems to me like an aseptic travel abroad, don't you break that umbilical cord, don't you blur out into that expanding universe of ours... I know this is not really about that, but it's an impression that I get with such little details. Say I'm silly.
 
    However, I'm not completely rootless as yet. I didn't fucking lost my origins, they call me in the night and they still make me suffer for fucking nothing. For fucking anywhere shall be the same. I still have got some background to fucking give up. That's why I won't pack any shower stuff this time either. As I collect my clothes next Mai, as I jump into that plane. That's why I won't have a drop of nothing to clean my teeth when I arrive to the USA for the first time, and I shall rely on passersby anew. And I shall take those sands from the ground and rub them on my skin if necessary, but I don't fucking want anything from this desperately self centered culture to chase me there. I wanna breath, or discover there isn't any air worth breathing if that turns out to be.

There I go: http://www.santafe.edu/

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 heat in Granada

I saw ourselves as from a camera zooming from deep beneath our feet; from down on the boulevard with boiling, living people; smoke from the bars; a gleaming haze of yellow light which rises just over the first and a half floor; and the camera zooms out so close to the edge of the building as a sudden vertigo, and a further twisted life can be intuited in the corner of the sight where an also-gleaming darkness trembles in the aMazed streets fueling up the night. And so the zoom buzzes as it passes by, a shiver of our ears and the sky stays still just above our heads and Granada, so warm, so almost summer. So with short pants and t-shits and our browny skins so willing to touch themselves. So your eyes so your nice the blue behind. Each one a can of beer, alone in the terrace where I'll always love you. The heat is to sway our heads pleased and forever; long enough for the camera to stop, hold and fall, and make us shake this time with the violence of the ephemeral. And a sudden burden on my heart pulls hard from me and drags me down the terrace into a nightmare of mere night, of concrete vertigo of building edge when zooming my head down into the drugged hardness of the city paving.

I'll miss you so much Granada, your very essence.

The right paradigm?

To create jobs is seen as a great thing. People cheer about the idea that more jobs available would help us out of the financial crisis we're in. We humans have worked since the beginning of the history, usually because we had to. If we look back, little changed about this point. We need to work to have a life according to our times. We voluntarily become slaves of a system which will provide us with a house; heath insurance; safety against anarchy, radical islamism and other similar threats; a good school for our children so they are competitive enough to cope with their own lives and become slaves themselves.

Each time I read in the newspapers that someone created that much of new jobs... I can't see this as good news anymore.

Why is life like that? If we had actually achieved some progress we shouldn't need to become slaves of a sick system involved in wars and other forms of killing. I'm sure there's money enough in the world, welfare and resources enough so as to live without working for a few generations. It is again the distribution of these resources which matters to create the enslaving structure we live in.

I seek an ideal state I call the 'idle humanity' in which machines have taken charge of our works, and welfare and resources reach everyone for free. I wouldn't be afraid of this 'idle humanity'. No one works... so what? There's no need to... Even more, I assume higher unknown structures of 'work' would arise, in which enthusiastic humans would get involved voluntarily. No need for every one to participate: others could decide to die on a LSD orgy lasting many decades.

If you like my idea of 'idle humanity', good news are awaiting you! There are many countries in the world which work for such a picture to become real! As an instance, the amazing socialist government of the spanish kingdom has already over 20% unemployment. What an achieve in equality!!! Complementary measures such as not supporting students who just graduated were also implemented. Of course the remaining 80% work without any kind of motivation, just as in the 'idle humanity' model. They accept low (or even no) salaries, because money is not what matters in a society-to-be were everything is for free. The inspiration for work arises in these people in the same way as secondarily needs arose when the primarily ones were satisfied.

And so on, and so forth. This is progress, evolution.

火の鳥

火の鳥; or Phoenix, the fire bird, is a manga series by Osamu Tezuka, who is also known in Japan as the God of Manga. I know this manga since I was 15 or 16, but only few years later I have gotten two volumes of the series which formed the very basis of my philosophy of life.

I found these two books in a second-hand store. The books were hidden under a pile of other mangas and I remember they were kind of chip. When I bought them, I was already 20. Few weeks after that, I went to Germany for my first time (meaning also that I left Spain for my first time). I read the two books in only one afternoon and they impressed me deeply... I couldn't say how... It's rater a book that you read and operates a change in your engines... I can't explain it even today.

I kept on revisiting the books which, as a fire bird, rebirth over and over again each time I read them. They impress me further and always in new ways as if they were infinite. I always regretted that the work were unfinished (it seems like it was hard for Osamu Tezuka to write this comic, and also to release it). Even though, that two volumes work quite fine as a complete piece.

Yesterday, my very best friend Luchi gave me an unexpected and overwhelming birthday present. She went to Japan few months ago and brought for me two volumes of 火の鳥 in Japanese. I can't understand Japanese, but I don't care... the books are such a jewel!! She also said that there were two more volumes waiting in the store, so I should go back to Japan some day and get them myself. This puzzled me, since in the Spanish issue of the manga there are only two books. We resolved that maybe the Japanese edition had the same story within more books... not big deal.

Later on, I entered internet to check which differences existed among the issues of 火の鳥 in different languages, and there I saw it: Phoenix, the fire birth, in a never ending rebirth... It happens to have 12 volumes covering stories from a remote time (around 250 AD) up to a far future (2000 to 3000 AD)!!! I shut off the wikipedia and searched again for the book... only to find the same information. Again. For years, the two books which impressed me that deeply have had 10 more volumes awaiting for me to discover them!!!!!!! As I can't explain how these books influenced me, I can't explain either what a delight it is for me to find such a new never ending, never ended world!!!

On the road!

A post from the road: Budapest, a great city :D! Next destinations: Zagreb and Plivitce!

Luíño 2.0

I'm uploading my CV in the web: http://lf-seoane.wikidot.com/

This is gonna be fun :D

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.

A match to dream!!!!!!

Today is the day!

Since the Football/Soccer World Cup is played with the actual setup, Spain has never before entered a final phase. Today we're in, among the 4 best teams of the world. This is the most important match ever for the Spanish national selection.

We are playing against Germany and I'm watching the match in the capital of German, maybe 500 Km far away from the Berlin Wall.

I'm so excited I can't work today...

Understanding religions...

...and so I decided it's not good to be sad and I though a good idea to remove almost any kind of sadness would be to think up a ritual. From now on, I perform this ritual and almost any kind of worries will be swept away :D

The ritual includes posting something in my blog (see yesterday's entry); leaving the place where I am, so that the place can be freshened from any bad vibration it could remain; and listening to some meaningful song... and once the song is over (though I might need to listen it twice...) I am happy again for a long long time!! I believed this would work... and it did!!

And so, this is how I came to understand ancient religions a little bit better. When, I guess, any belief or ritual had a reason to be and a reason to be shared. Autosuggestion of an individual extrapolated to a whole community. And latter the ritual itself would have an own entity, different from the former purpose. And latter on the ritual master would inherit the power of the original ritual and the religion would become a mean to gain more power... and so on... but this is only a guess...

Meanwhile, I'm happy again :D

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!

Jardines de Kensington

Jardines de Kensington (Kensington Gardens) is a book from Rodrigo Fresán, a guy from Argentina who writes amazingly good. Woow I'm not quite sure how this post is going to look like because I feel like having a lot of lost pieces to bring together... and I just began the reading so I guess there are also some pieces missing.

First, on the writer: I just surprisingly realized that this guy has a very poor entry on wikipedia, which I don't understand. In there it's said Jardines de Kensington has only recently been translated into english: that might be a good reason for the short entry. So, this writer is from Argentina and seems to be a friend of Roberto Bolaño's, which is a cornerstone in this story. I now see Bolaño has a larger text on wikipedia.

Second, on Jardines de Kensington: This is the book I'm reading right now. The story happens in London and has tons of references to Peter Pan and to the literary world build upon it --I mean Peter Pan's creator and all the not-growing story--. I find this book so terrificly good and metaphor-blown-up (?) that I think there won't be anything left to be written after it... so: good riddance to the never-concluded dream of mine of me becoming a writer :D for there's nothing left to be written.

I was describing the book to a friend few minutes ago and came up with a fine metaphor --which I surely made up by linearly combining the ones I've read on Jardines de Kensington so far--. This book is the closest thing to minimal techno music I've ever heard. Like being always excited, alway about to get to somewhere, but you don't get to it. I don't know exactly how much I do like this feeling. By now I love it :D!

Third, on how I got to this book: and here we have to go back to the ever-present 2666, in which, I think; it's been written everything else which was not in Jardines de Kensington; included my whole life. Thus if one book took away from me the idea of being a writer, the other one stole my free-will and sentenced me to have a fate from which I can't scape... fine, this is another story I might tell at another time.

Back to the topic, it seems to exist a strange passage in 2666 where some characters happen to be in Kensington gardens at the same time as some other characters from Jardines de Kensington do. At least those from 2666 see the others, and I'd be amazed if the same thing happened in the opposite way!! A friend of mine who I love found the relationship and just showed up with Jardines de Kensington for me.

I couldn't wait to be sinked into the reading and I hope I can write a little bit more another day... It's enough for today!

2666

I'm quite shocked at the moment, though I finished the book kind of 5 hours ago, and can't put into words all this storm of feelings... This is one of the best books I've ever read!!!!! Just wanted to share with everyone my joy!! I'll try to write more on this other day!

Today I had one of the best moments of my life when Nano walked out the plane.

Licentiate

Today I became Licentiate on Physics :D!!!!

I feel really happy and I look forward to starting working hard, researching and all this stuff :) We've been given the greatest puzzle ever to be solved and now I have the means to deal with it!!

Nature: there I go!!! :)

Mein Berlin!!

Schön!! Ich habe's geschafft!! Ich habe 'nen Platz auf 'nem Studentenwohnheim gekriegt, also ich muss mich keine Sorge mehr machen! Ich habe irgendwo zum schlafen, als ich nach Berlin ankomme --nächster September!!!

Immer noch, das Wohnheim ist ganz im Zentrum meines lieblingten Bezirkes Berlins! Der heißt Friedrichschain! Dort gibt's so viele tolle sache! Auf dieser Karte habe ich hingestellt die Sodersache die ich schon kenne, und auch mein neues Haus! Hier wird es neue Sache geben sobald ich neue Erlebnise erfahre :P!


Mein Berlin! auf einer größeren Karte anzeigen


Cool, man! I got it!!! I've gotten a place at a Students Residence, so I don't need to worry anymore!! I've got somewhere to sleep when I arrive to Berlin --next September!!!

Even better!! The residence is placed in the middle of my favorite district of Berlin! This is Friedrichschain!! There are so many fantastic things in there!! At this map I've set the many wonderful places I do already know, and also my new Haus! There will be new stands as soon as I got there and new adventures happen to me :P!!

A Fish within my Hands

This is the place where I spent most of the summers of my life! Here I knew my very best shefriend Luchi, with whom I do still hung around when we both meet at the same city. I also had my sexual awakening, though I didn't know it was such thing...

I shared the summer time with my family: uncles & aunts, cousins, my mother, my grandparents...

We do still meet there. I don't go as often as before, now just some weekends; but much of my family does. Today it was a great day: we met almost everyone. I ate, slept a siesta, woke up, read the newspaper, went to the beach, laid down on the sand, talked a while with my cousins, made some postmodernist sand castles...

I swam along the shore. I love to do it naked, but today I didn't. Stopped swimming to talk to my cousin, who was approaching the water. In that moment a fish came and talked to me. I know he was talking to me, he had something to say. Swam all straight and touched my trunks, over and over again.
-Hey! There a fish in here --my cousin didn't want to come into the water.
I closed my hands around the fish. The fish came and kissed my hands. I moved all the way to the shore with the fish dancing within my hands. I knew the fish was from Torre del Mar and had come for me to dace a little bit with him. I showed it to my cousin, who wanted me to bring the fish home with me; but I released him. He swam up to the floor and faded away. I knew he'd returned to Torre del Mar, and I danced to wave goodbye into the sea.