The troubles of a wannabbe writer

He saw again the white space in front of him. A blank page. There he was, a veteran of myriads of personal conflagrations, survivor of uncountable encounters with fate, a citizen of nowhere and everywhere. Lots of tales to tell others, lots of stories to share. He hoped he could jump the gap between idleness and motion. He stared at an empty piece of paper the same way a pet dog looks its food bowl empty of chow. Indeed nobody was supposed to fill the void for him, but being immersed in the absurd scenario of an absolute lack of ideas to work with rendered him a most perplex creature. He stands up, walks in straight line towards... something. And there he sees it, a mirror. The prize he gets for this utmost stroll into the jungle of his own bedroom is the sight of his alter ego. He wants to say something in loud voice, but refrains himself afraid of his reflection reacting with a violent demand of shutting up. This thought is overwhelming, for he's ceased to be his sole friend on earth. Dizzy, he loses balance, and stretches his hand towards the wall. What color is the wall, anyway? Didn't it use to be pale yellow? Why does it look beige now? The sun rays are also yellow. Even if no timepiece was there to help show the precise time of the day at that moment, one could tell that the afternoon was almost over...

The Life You Chose

Originally posted on 6/4/10

Life has some hard moments, and that is a fact known by everybody. Hard times lie there in a potential form, ready to manifest when least expected. Pop! There it is: one has been just laid off. Now, a pause, for we need some seconds to assimilate this.

...

Yeah, it's likely we now have to deal with the problem of finding a source of money to finance life expenses. That's just going to be rich. The thing is, that it really doesn't matter what do we do right now, for there will be a way to drive things to a balance at a given moment, and a timely one. So why not enjoy some time doing something useful: thinking. Of course, writing is the best way to think. So, here we go.

The times in which we feel like hit by a rock in the head make us think about everything that had been done in a wrong way. And, certainly we weren't ready to prevent the hit, and probably, for the same reason we consider it a hit, we feel like finding a solution will be, to say the least, difficult. So, we believe that we are to blame, for two reasons:

1) The way we earn our money, the way we spend it and, in general, the way we build relationships and we live our life have led us to the very point in which we are now, the have driven us to a situation considered by us a problem.

2) Lack of planning. A problem is more "problematic" in direct proportion to the size of the efforts that need to be performed in order to solve it. Some problems shall be regarded as unsolvable, and this needs to be discussed in detail.

An unsolvable problem implies that there exists no actions available to solve it. Classifying a problem as unsolvable follows to the acknowledgment of the presence of a problem all the known solutions of which are impracticable.

If instead of facing unsolvable problems, we prefer to face solvable ones, then the resources available are key. Resources take the form of money. This implies spending less (adjusting our lifestyle to do so, and thus saving more money) or creating more sources of income.

While spending less creates some new funds for the future, the potential total amount of these funds is constrained by the size of our income. On the other side, expanding our sources of income allows us to keep our lifestyle untouched, while creating resources to solve future problems and even to fund projects that may interest us.

A Scene

I hear my mother talking to my dad. It's about a note somebody left for me, and the words I am able to listen , all of them my mother's, are "Well, I don't know if he really needs to see this note", I heard. "Does it make sense? Well, not to me, it just says 'I love you. You know who I am.' Who can write a note like that? A girl, I would say, and a young one, for that matter. Perhaps is just part of a prank, you know he has all this weird acquaintances, I don't know why he calls them friends, some of them having strange ways and an a sense of humor that I don't understand. Seriously, do you think we need to hand him this note?" My father's reply was quick, and issued in such a low voice that I didn't perceive a word of it. The reply didn't really quench my mother's eagerness to debate about the note and how it had no stamps from the post office. Was is a scam? She wanted to spare me any possible annoyance. I decide to make my move. So I get up and slowly drag my slippers reaching my bedroom's door. Just at the moment I was passing by my parents' room's door, I hear her words again, this time it was: "He's awake. You should try and ask him if he knows this girl. I'm just amazed, I don't know what to think, doesn't really seem to be serious, does it?"

What is (or should be) a writer?

Fairly enough, writing is a career that have depended most of these modern times upon two factors: a) the ability to tell stories, and b) the access to a massive market, in order to sell them. The second factor deserves special consideration, because it doesn't really deal with the quality of the book produced, but mainly instead with advertising and networking. This allows books of inferior quality to be sold as hot cakes, for the quality missing in them is replaced with powerful marketing raids.

The "fairly enough" included in my first sentence intends to emnphasize that "anybody can be a writer". If you are able to write a couple of lines every now and then, why not offer your stories to the world? Fortunately, it is not that simple. Yes, people want to read whatever they catch in their hands, but they prefer to do it for free. Selling a book, even if it was only one copy (this makes sense to me, and probably to lots of new writers, while seems unthinkable to publishers) is like passing a quality test. Better if this assessment depends only on the judgment of your reader, than on the unbelievably hypnotical abilities of your marketing team.

A Time to Leave

I admired both of them sisters, but felt in love with only one. Alas, fate didn't seem to be on the side of this fanciful love. Like a dream, I was there, shaking hands with everyone in the family. Aunt Gretchen, magnificent as always, no doubt the most important meber of the Millers, shook my hand. It was her thing to take care of all family affairs. And I became, God only knows how, one of them. That one being my very last day in town, I felt like my world was being shattered. Pieces of hopes and dreams scattered all over the place. Would I seen her again? Would I really come back after one year, or two, to visit this dear place, to enjoy the simple pleasures of a simple life? A part of me said "Yes, we need to come back one day, and it needs to be soon". But deep in my soul I knew that it was my duty to postpone this rendez-vous as much as I could. Deep, very deep there I knew that I was not coming back. And I knew that I was losing her for good.

Creating the World for a Second Time

Ockham stated that the simplest answer is usually the best one. Of course, I am simplifying a lot his methodology, but what really makes me think is that there seems to be something really compelling in that view. It is something so powerful that I just feel it, more than understanding, or acknowledging its validity. Taking that into account and probably in a flash of supreme inspiration, I happened to have arrived to this new idea: that science is not a matter of finding unbreakable laws, but of proposing and testing laws of limited applicability. The world seems to be a very large pot full of infinity of different elements, these ones arranged according to an utterly chaotic disposition.

If my ultimate interpretation of Ockham's statement is right, then there is not a sole definite "purpose" in the existence of man, or the Universe. But I just see weak sparks of the truth, and thus I find that this is not the moment to post any conclusion.

For now, and skipping any scientific rigor, let me risk a very colorful proposition:that Earth is some sort of a Petri dish for really intelligent beings native from distant worlds. Notice that I am not saying "planets", they might have come from another time, or universe.

Since the very start of my "hypothesis", I need to wipe out from its premises the validity of religion. This is easy. Religion is taught to kids, and therefore is accepted without any analysis. Later in life, lots of events seem to threaten the value of religion, but then again it carries all the time a secret weapon, called "faith". Faith means to accept something without a discussion. If I am taught that oranges, or apples, or cows, or sheep are sacred, and if I am conditioned to have faith in this idea, then my whole life I will respect those things and will disregard using them in a way that violates the principles of my religion. So when somebody calls "faith" to the discussion of reality, everything arrives to an insurmountable dead end.

Again, I feel like in a labyrinth, for I really like faith! But faith needs to be taken into our lives only according to some rules. The first rule: faith never challenges science. The second rule: faith needs to be very private. Each person understands their world in a different way, so faith will cover for him, and only for him, the gray to completely dark area that his science and knowledge won't allow him to see with clarity. The third rule: use your chronic faith for supporting you in the everyday labors. The fourth rule: use your instant action faith for supporting you during a really terrible day. I don't believe in mixing my instant action faith (faith in that I will get off a serious eventual entanglement) with my chronic-type faith (faith in that I won't be subject of a tragedy today, and that my day will end up fine, when measured in net terms.) I don't believe that your faith is my faith. Because there's no need to mix both our faiths up! No need for me, and no need for you. But then, there might be somebody out there finding a use in mixing and merging two or more faiths. The faith authority, that is! The sum of thousands and millions of faiths generate a power field for those who know how to arrange them and direct them.

I see what I just wrote, and I am myself amazed. Now I tend to think about fashion, exactly the same way I have been thinking about faith. If every young person in a city is driven to use a certain garment or dress, then some companies will be able to produce, brand and label and then sell these garments to a large market. And if every one preferred to have their own style, then the huge market would be broken, and people would go back to the private tailor system. Likewise, if everybody is driven to watch the same movies or read the same novels, or buy and listen the same music at a given time, then large corporations will make ridiculously high profits as a result of this. But if people decided to pick their own movies from a large selection, covering perhaps the whole history of cinematography and the whole wide world, if people preferred to pick their own books covering not less than three thousand years of writing, if people chose their music from hundreds of years ago and thousands of different cultures, then the corporations will just disappear. But the pleasure of watching a good movie, reading a good book or listening to good music will be enhanced.

A huge stride away from that last comment, and I feel able to discuss, again, about religion. Churches are like corporations, and they try to offer the best way to contact God. But for some people God doesn't exist, for other people, God is merciful, for others, God is resentful and vengeful. For others, God lives in the body of an infant.For others, in the body of an animal. There would be some saying that God pushes them to fight holy battles and wars. There would be some saying that God gives them powers to heal the body and the soul. For some religions, we come back again and again to this world. for others, we become spirits who will guard the surviving loved ones and other good people from any harm. Some religions would also state that killing oneself and others considered as enemies will bring your soul to a paradise of sensual pleasure. Some people believe that God will punish them by hosting them forever in a fiery pit. The human brain is so creative. I believe in my own contact with God, and I grant myself the liberty of considering him God, and Entity, the Supreme Order, or not considering him at all. For, if God exists, he gave me this liberty at the moment of my creation. And, if he doesn't exist, then who cares whatever we think about him?

The Most Precious Secret of Them All

There was, not very long ago, a man who was considered to be the most successful millionaire of his time. Here, the word "millionaire" is used in its most extensive meaning, the guy managed to earn and hold billions. The word was that this man was raised by a philosopher, likely his father or an uncle, but little more was know about his childhood or origins. His father, for from now on we will refer to this person as such, taught about two things: poverty and meditation. Such knowledge came from a distant community, most likely situated in an Eastern country. Awareness comes from meditation, and happiness comes from frugality, those were the life principles the kid and millionaire to be was taught. In reality, son and father were different, just as the Sun and the Moon are. But after 20 years of lessons, he, by the time a young man, was encouraged to travel and learn new meditation techniques. In his farewell, the father and philosopher reminded him that frugality was to be kept his most sacred principle. The young man wandered for months, until he found himself already crossing the borders of a neighboring country. A stranger in the land, he managed to learn a new language and customs and to earn his living by doing all sorts of jobs. But he was decided to be frugal, following what he'd been taught. Time passed and he traveled again. And again. His whole life become one of wandering between different places. He discovered that frugality was not going to lead him to a fulfilled life, for he saw many different things that enriched his soul, but most of them which also happened to cost money. He questioned his father's rules, he felt he learned from life that frugality constraints man to a minimum amount of stimuli, and he needed to gain access to new knowledge and perceptions. He started his own quest for philosophical truth, a set of principles which would allow him to make lots of money. Because, he also learned, the money that matters is not the one accumulated, but the one that flows in to our hands and then smoothly flows out from them, being replaced by goods and services we can use. Money itself is nothing but a concept, and certainly nothing more than an agreement. Each bit of knowledge was written by him in paper, and later engraved in sheets of silver, placed into a chest that he always carried with him in his travels. Frugality, he discovered, was a great way to cope with lack of resources. And meditation, the second half of his original set of principles, worked just right when people controlled their impulse to acquire goods, due to financial constraint. But once removed the constraint, meditation will still be possible, albeit usually not perceived as necessary.
Little remained of the philosopher's pupil, for this man had changed a lot. He craved fine goods and good books, and neither of those were free to get. He learned new trades, some of which he didn't really like, at least in the beginning, but despite that, he worked. But money flowed away from him all the time. he realized his interests were offsetting his budget. It was like the ultimate law, and then he believed he will be constrained to never gather a greater amount of money, the one which could allow him to buy the finest goods, cover all his needs, and keep some currency saved for future expenses. He was confused, and frustrated. He even thought that his life was nothing but the pursue of sunset, a task seemingly easy but impossible to be accomplished. So, in what should be considered the second most important day in his life, he took some of his belongings with him and ran to the mountains. And stayed there. He waived to his cravings of goods and culture, he decided to live alone for a long while. In the neighboring cities and towns that had seen him before, the word was that he had become a hermit. He avoided human contact, and so little was known about his life there. Before the eyes of the folk, he turned into a legend. A man with the highest potential to be rich, now the most frugal man on earth. Nobody could be really sure that he was alive, because when someone claimed to have seen him, people considered that a hoax, and so the man to be rich vanished like a ship after sailing from a foggy harbor.