Amor, ordem e progresso

A couple of days ago it was summer and I was in love with everything that caught my eye. I thought it was impossible to be awestruck as an adult but I was proven wrong. The magnificent nature breaths unimaginable exotic fruits and aromatic coffees with its tropical ecological diversity. This richness has invited immigrants from every corner of the world creating the most hospitable and generous men and the most beautiful and diversified of women that dance nonstop to any tune hinting to samba music from an audible distance. My good friend Deivison and I had witnessed and framed (see ALAgrApHY for daily pics) fabulous sunsets and beautiful people between Ipanema (with Marjory Lulu Julia ...) Copa Cabana Itacoatiara Saquarema São Pedro da Aldeia Arraial do Cabo Cabo Frio and finally in Búzios where we met Alfredo's family in a paradise that is in a paradise... There is much more and many more people to thank for making this trip memorable but much is owed to traveling with an open mind and a huge heart that Deivison and I had from the very beginning -- perhaps Portuguese is a must. We have found bliss even in the poorest of neighborhoods, in the most chaotic of places Lapa where some carnival rehearsals took place, in a scientific conversation and a future collaboration in data mining on the ipanema beach, in the sinful yet indulging self-service buffets....I am home sick where home is Brazil. I am a Carioca citizen of the world where Carioca is a state of mind.

Agora fico com muita saudade do que vi e do que nem tive tempo para descobrir, e para matar esta saudade, gente, se ter uma festinha de samba, uma capirinha com o 51, um acai o um suco da manga com laranja o maracuja, gente em paris, por favor, tou cheio de saudade! 

 — in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Happy Love Day Every Day

Being loved is one hell of a rich experience that no money, status or power can buy, no Chinese market can imitate or trade and no future or artificial intelligence can fake. I have been extremely lucky to have grown up in a loving environment of family and friends, with unconditional love and patience. In turn, this has made me a victim of excessive and overwhelming free love that has inexorably fueled my expressive artistic projects and quixotic search for like-minded people to love and support in their meaningful journeys and dreams.

Coming from a scientific background in a highly-on-demand and focused field of study, people question my decision of not having pursued a well-established 6-to-7-figure career (that I have been offered on a couple of occasions) and my answer follows: If I were to regret anything in my 50's or 60's, it would be that of not having loved or been loved profoundly, that is including all the bells and whistles of exploring the world with others and disputing with lovers. And I bet you agree with me, also considering the alternative of disputing with your own dying self for not having done what you really wanted. So why let fear yuck your yum and kill your time? Why not turn your cant's into cans and your dreams into plans?

I am having a fabulous day, today, and I am grateful to all the wonderful people sharing their vibes and love. They know who they are and how much they mean to me.

For the occasion, I am sharing this old experimental photograph, entitled with a literal sense "love is in the air" and painted with a remote control and an infrared filter with an SLR camera. This picture has been viewed 13000 times, downloaded 8800 times, and liked 860 times on deviantART.com while listed in at least 26 blogs and sites since Nov 2010. On the other hand, my most popular scientific article has been accessed 4500 times and cited 28 times since Sep 2008. I am grateful and fulfilled to have known both communities of artists and scientists and even contributed to both. Therefore, I am taking this leap of faith, that many have silenced with a big NO NO, to pursue an interdisciplinary career in arts and science, even if I will have to be the first.

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves -- V. Hugo

Much love to all,
Al  



Love is in the Air by alahay on deviantART
pic url: http://alahay.deviantart.com/art/Love-is-in-the-Air-187377870

txt url: http://28-ish.blogspot.fr/2014/02/happy-love-day-every-day.html

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves -- V. Hugo

Le NeoSpleen de Paris

I have yet to meet a person who has not suffered a major/minor depression after having lived two years in Paris! Paris, the city of love, promises to many way more than it can offer sometimes creating in individuals a delusional acute state known as the  Paris Syndrome. Japanese tourists, dreamers, cinephiles, wanderers are only few amongst many susceptible to the Paris Syndrome. However, people that are destined to Paris for more than a couple of years experience the city and its people differently. At the beginning, Paris' inhabitants may experience an overwhelming child-like appreciation of the beauty of every street, cafe, or park, sometimes to the point of experiencing a Stendhal Syndrome. With time, however, this beauty fades as we cement our images of Paris,  even of the Paris we have not explored. We assume many places are reincarnations of others and we are so convinced that our perception is biased to prove our intuition right regardless of what new places might offer. This slowly leads to anhedonia, the loss of pleasure, and perhaps existentially and morally towards nihilism.  And based on our genetic and environmental predisposition to depression, this eventually leads to mild and long depressions, such as dysthima or major acute depressions that are all vicious and bottomless circles that are only curable with enough will power and support from family and friends. I shall call this last phase "le mal de Paris" which hints to Baudelair's "fleurs de mal" and almost every poet's and artist's "mal de vivre" althought perhaps I could just update Baudelair's "Spleen de Paris" by calling it  "le NeoSpleen de Paris" such that it accommodates a century of human progress or regress.

Le NeoSpleen de Paris, is contagious! You might get it in the metro when nobody is smiling, not even musicians as they play or kids as they don't. You might get it on the streets whether from the homeless beggars or from fellow inhabitants that have so much convinced themselves of being busy to avoid the void, or you might as well get it in restaurants when your waiter does not expect to be tipped or rewarded and has been already suffering that NeoSpleen for years!

It is only after the second year that you become aware of the NeoSpleen epidemic and the options to cure it are expensive and limited:

- You are suddenly convincing yourself that alcohol/drugs are inevitable to calm you and many of your alcoholic/drug-addict "friends".
- Your friends have talked you into medication for depression or seeing a shrink
- You decide that Paris is not for you and pack your bags and try to settle elsewhere
- You spend the money you would have spent on alcohol, drugs, medication, or shrinks, traveling back and forth to always see Paris as a child sees candy, and I am talking about forbidden and rare candy!

I am guessing you have already made up your mind. If you happen to have chosen the last one, I might see you tomorrow in RIO de JANEIRO!

 

Volatile memory extension nostalgic excitement and freedom price inflation

Yesterday, I had a skype call with a good friend, who is reading this today. He mentioned me citing a quote in this blog, but having forgotten about it, I came back looking for it and checking the context in which it was placed. It is not surprising that I have forgotten all about it since I write to forget. In fact, writing is analogous to freeing your volatile memory since you can always refer to an extended memory to chase down your fleeting ideas and develop them at later stages. But it happens that the extended memory at hand is an ephemeral blog of volatile properties and decentralized servers in unknown locations. The only alternative of quasi-ancient pen-and-paper writing techniques require tremendous amounts of indexing and localization that are costly and can only be stored in our volatile biological memory which beats the purpose. One of the fleeting ideas I could vaguely remember from yesterday's volatile conversation can be exampled by the following observation:

I have very much enjoyed my skype conversation yesterday which makes me wonder why was it not something I desired or demanded? Why is it not something I have anticipated with huge joy and high expectations knowing it is with a good friend I have not chatted for a while? How much must I have been betrayed by my expectations and my fluctuating mood that I have given up on anticipation, looking forward and projection? Is the very awareness of these factors a curse or the absence of unknown factors a blessing? Have I reached a certain point of involuntarily suppressing excitement fearing it will be followed by disappointment? Similarly, I have a wonderful thanksgiving dinner last week which brought back great memories from my past 8 years in the USA. I even dared highering my expectations and anticipating that thanksgiving dinner even though I did not know the host or most of the invitees. I then wondered whether I should seek more expats to revive the good old days.


Another fleeting idea concerns freedom that often comes at a high price, not only the price for owning it but also for maintaining it. When free one is paradoxically more a slave of whatever fears he has of loosing this freedom. The price for freedom has been inflated such that all can access it even if for a flavour of freedom or a mere sense of fake freedom. The market is overwhelmed with a myriad of freedom products that are all demanded and consumed. Many live in the deception of freedom often symbolized by a big mansion, life insurance... but rarely are the conditions of mortgage or the quality of life questioned.   Is freedom of fear the ultimate of all freedoms? How can one master it? Is the fear of freedom the very opposite of freedom?

quand manger et avec qui

Je me sens coupable car j'ai l'habitude de manger tot ou tard pour eviter la queue (aux rythmes gausiennes) en sachant qu'en attendant et respirant l'odeur de la bouffe mes glandes secretent un acide tres fort qui me brule secretement pendant l'atteinte, en outre, la retroaction de telle conscience s'aggrave au point de l'envie de l'ignorance des autres ou ma solitude.

50 people, one question: What is your biggest regret?

Most people regret not having lived their life to the fullest or so they think. They might as well think so even if they lived an extra inch further, but how could they tell if this never happened in the first place? As for those with no regrets or funny answers, are they just running away from life and its meaning? Are they fully convinced? That's a very personal question and it's hard to tell if what is being said is heartfelt, acted or even staged.

What is your biggest regret?

Suicidal Rythms of Life

I have been "homeless" for the past 23 days while awaiting to move into my apartment desperately, tormentingly and most aptly, adventurously considering the couches of undetermined owners I often shared with unknown people and the sleepless hostel nights spent calculating the weight of the stranger above me and the consequences of his fall on me, my family and the insurance company... day after day, phone call after phone call, signature after signature, until I was home YESSSSSSterday! As soon as I settled, a myriad of projects on hold suddenly resumed and I thought to myself:

We are always getting ready to live but never living. - Ralph Waldo

probriqueza

O paradoxo do rico/pobre manifesta-se outra vez duma riqueza evolvente. A ultima vez foi quando com um bilhete de 500 euros fiquei com fome. O que pode ser mais evolvido do comprar uma casa e ficar sem casa? Mais esquisito e ter todas as camas da paris como possibilidades nocturnas com toda a gente que pode ficar na mesma casa, curato, cama ad nauseam.  Fui numa festa com um amigo e outra gente que nunca conheci, fiquei ate as 6 da manha ate o fim da festa para "dormir" na sofá com um desconhecido e a patrona da casa que conheci na festa porque a sua cama já estava cheia dos invitados estimados que nem pediram a permissão da invasão... Hoje soube-me pouco.

The reason behind my dis-contempt

I woke up early this morning feeling a certain emptiness that neither friends nor family can fill. I looked around my studio and thought of the mediocrity of its spaciousness. I thought I should either move into a bigger space which can accommodate and entertain a larger potential or trim down the space and in turn my expectations therefrom. On a similar note, I questioned the extramural city size and concluded similarly. I should either keep striving for a quixotic stability in Paris or accept to dull my life elsewhere. In a previous post, I had compared people to places, hence, analogously, I can keep striving for Mrs. Right++ quixotically or give in to a Mrs. Smith (or Madame Dupont) and settle accordingly. The dis-contempt arises neither from choice A nor from choice B but from the very indecision and tentative instability.  

 

Introspective physiology

I have observed that my life can be reduced into long and empty intervals of time separating heart breaks. I have equally observed that during those heart breaks, my body can be reduced to a few organs, namely a nose, a larynx and a heart that Biology must have always confused with lungs.

I am vaguely aware of anything besides the air entering my nose and flowing to my lungs or heart through the larynx as I breath my present existence. More precisely, I sense an infinitely thin thread puncturing my larynx all the way to my heart. More than a piercing in my heart, I feel an entanglement possibly by the very thread therein.

An invisible weight hibernates at the bottom end of my heart as if chained with and suspended from the thread entering my larynx. No matter how hard I inhale or how much air I try to fill my lungs with, I feel a lack of oxygen as if there was a hole in my lungs (or heart). While the hole hypothesis is ridiculed by science, I adopt the alternative hypothesis claiming that my lungs must be filled with tiny men breathing my oxygen into their own lungs, that are perhaps filled fractally and recursively with tinier men and so on and so forth (see below). The lack of oxygen induces an inner pressure that is often unbearable and analogous to an ever-going implosion.

Heart breaks are not only the product of  personal relationships but a myriad of existential events and encounters such as personal, professional, and intra-personal achievements, disappointments and life-decisions. Personally and professionally, I have put my heart on the (thin) line separating arts from science and that very life-decision, with all its bells and whistles, exhibitions and conferences, ups and downs, breaks my heart chronically.

But how much worse are those long and empty time intervals with pointless invisible walls and no notions of time and space? When not heart broken my perception is perhaps more pathetic as my self is extended and contained in all that I see. I become all I see with my eyes and imagine in my third eye that is including the people, animals, places..etc around me and those not around me. The latter might defy the laws of physics, however, it is known to science and to most men that we are all made of atoms and more universally even sung with a twist of wording towards us coming from stardust. All this empty wholeness makes me feel as if my heart was floating in liquids of unknown substances and unpredictable properties. This puts me under more pressure and makes me anxious to the point of desiring what is to eventually break my heart, over and over...