Forces of attraction; and the breaking of bonds.

On May 30, 2007, In Inspired Moment, By Andy

In so many ways our lives are governed by the same forces that binds the universe together at its most basic level. Forces of attraction hold together subatomic particles that make up the substance of the physical world; of reality. Electrons spin around protons, held together by invisible bonds, which makes it very difficult for them to break free. But they can, usually when they achieve some state of high energy, and then the bonds will break in a very violent and destructive way.

Humanity is very much the same! As people we tend to group together, we find others who attract us, and we begin circling them, creating bonds of invisible force that hold us together. Over time these bonds can become very strong, and can be very hard to break. But it’s not impossible to break these bonds between people, but to do requires so much emotional energy that in the end, when someone is able to pull away – it is always with a tearing ripping explosion that is destructive to all who were caught up in it.

The law of attraction is a universal constant. We may try to deny ourselves on some intellectual level that this isn’t so, that we control who we are attracted to, and that we will control its power. However this is only the rational mind not wanting to accept that there are forces outside its own conscious control. But then there is so little that the rational mind can truly understand, because so much of our universe acts in a way that can’t be understood; both at a physical level, and also an emotional one. To try to understand – even a small amount of everything – only results in frustration.

I sometimes like to think of us – individuals – as being particles that are forever grouping together and flying apart through the emotional energy we apply to each other. Each time we are subjected to an emotional explosion we are sent spinning away from the person (or persons) we grouped with, and hurl through space for a while until we lose the high energy state we had, and we find someone else with whom a bond can be made, and the universal law of attraction begins again.

What I’d like to know, is if there is any purpose in the way this happens?

Padwanna!

 
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The long weekend was productive after all

On May 28, 2007, In General Rant, By Andy

Well those of us living in the lovely sin capital of The Netherlands have been enjoying a public holiday today called Pinksterdag, or as it’s known in Catholic circles, Ascension day. Maybe 200 years ago it was a day meant to be spent in proper respect to the Lord doing repentant God fearing activities like virgin flogging, and getting bowl shaped haircuts. But now it’s just an excuse to take a day off work and instead going out and getting absolutely shitfaced drunk. Honestly I don’t know why Catholicism is on the decline when they have such fun days as today. Not that I did any drinking but I really did appreciate the day off work, this is the sort of thing they should publicise globally to get their attendance numbers up.

At any rate, over the weekend, I was mighty productive, so much so my mum would be proud of me I think. I finalised the move of my old blogger into my wordpress one that you’re here reading right now. And most exciting of all – for me at least – I sat down and got Amsterdamage’s first story written (again for the second time). This for me signifies the start of the new literary site that I have been talking and dreaming about for years, and don’t I feel over the moon enthusiastic about it too! Oh yes, let me tell you kiddies, I’m excited (as big Kev back home would have said on TV: god rest his large boned soul)! All the big plans are coming back now, and I am just chock full of ideas of where to take it over the next few months. Dare I say I am hoping this is my start into the publishing world. Well let’s not get ahead of ourselves, but take it one step at a time. For now though, I’ve got the site up again, and it will quickly get content and a better look over the weeks to come.

For the less easily offended among you, please stop by and have a read and let me know what you think. You can find it with the Amsterdamage link over on the sidebar.

Gosh it’s nice to feel excited about something again! :)

Padwanna!

 
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The lamb and the homunculus

On May 27, 2007, In Story, By Andy

A lamb and homunculus sat across from each other in a room that contained nothing but themselves and a door. The homunculus looked at his own form and then looked for a long time at the lamb, and said, “Please tell me, what does it feel like to be alive”?

The lamb looked at the well crafted limbs of the little man and replied back, “Like nothing you could ever understand, and like nothing I could ever explain to one such as you who does not know what life is”.

The homunculus thought about this for moment. As he did so he looked at his little hands with warped little fingers and flexed them into a fist, and relaxed them again. It felt real enough, which made him think that perhaps being alive was more than tactile sensation. So he asked the lamb another question. “Please tell me, what is your purpose in being alive”?

The lamb turned his head backwards and forwards slowly. That was a difficult question, one he had never thought about it before. “My purpose is to eat grass, and grow wool, and walk where my master leads”.

There was a small silence as neither of them spoke.

“And that is all”? Asked the homunculus.

“What more needs there be, aren’t these things enough”? Said the lamb.

“But does not being alive encompasses more than mere day to day existence”? Spoke the homunculus. He felt incredulous that so complex a being who had a heart and mind and soul thought nothing of his own nature and place outside of the room.

“Why does there need to be more to life than living happy day to day? What then is your purpose, if these things do not satisfy you”?

“I was created in an image of my creator, I was imbued with purpose from that moment. But I do not know what my purpose is for they did not tell me. I was placed here and told to wait, and then nothing further. I did not even have time to ask him if I had a soul, for they just left. Can that which is artificial have a soul”? Once again the homunculus clasped his hands into a fist and marveled at the interplay of muscle on bone, and tissue on muscle. Would his creator make him so perfect in his body, and yet forget to give him a soul? He did not know the answer to this, and it saddened him.

“You ask questions that do not need to be answered. Be satisfied with what you are, and exist your existence as you are meant to, for in this way you shall be happy”. The lamb told him, with an authority born from conviction that his way of thinking was the only way.

“No, that I cannot do. For the question burns inside of me, and I must have an answer”. And so saying, the homunculus stood up and walked over to the door, opened it and walked through. The lamb watched as the door closed behind him, and he wondered whether he should follow the little artificial man, looking for his answer. No, the lamb thought, there is happiness in grass, and being led by the master. And that’s exactly what he thought about: grass.

Five minutes later the lamb forgot the humonculus ever existed.

Padwanna!

 
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A small moment with a big impact.

On May 23, 2007, In Inspired Moment, By Andy

Isn’t it funny how it’s the little things that always serve to remind us what matters most in our lives. I suppose that’s because the little things are always more subtle than big events in our lives, which have a tendency to overwhelm us and make us more disoriented at the time, rather than impart some wisdom. That tends to come later, after we’ve had time to digest the whole, and absorb the true meaning behind the events that we were caught up in. Very small moments, I’ve seen once again, can have as profound effect on us as anything large and overwhelming, we need only to keep our mind in the present to be sure that we don’t miss them.

I had one such moment this afternoon, well more like early evening, it was around 6.00pm and I was finishing up some work and most everybody else was leaving the office to start their personal lives again. One of the eastern european guys can by my area, sat down at the desk opposite me, and started some small chitchat. He told me that he was off to Luxembourg this weekend with his girlfriend because they were going celebrate being five years together. I told him how I was envious because I found Luxembourg to be a beautiful city, and I wasn’t doing anything quite so exotic. I asked him if his relationship was five years in a row, or was there some time off in the middle with breaks or split-ups. He answered that it was five years straight through, no time off. I found that pretty admirable, I’ve been five years with a woman as my longest relationship, but then there was 2 years apart throughout that period, which doesn’t really make it a proper five years. And then he said to me, you know, the biggest problem with going out with one person is that you’ll never get to have sex with someone else, all because of your conscience. Even though he’d like to, he said he couldn’t be with another woman because his fucking conscience would kick his ass, and that’s why he hated it. I thought about it, and chuckled, and had to agree with him. Conscience is a funny thing, because it’s totally a product of our environment, not anything else.

It was then that I started on a bit of a monologue, saying that most people only get to live in a very small environment because they never go beyond their own culture or place of upbringing, which means that their world view is very limited. That’s one of the intangible benefits of travelling, I continued, when you take yourself out of your own culture, your own home, away from your family and friends, you open yourself up to possibilities and experiences that you could never hope to have otherwise. In turn this broadens your world view and causes you to challenge everything that you know or think you know, and you become a better person for it. In the end, the only thing we take with us when it’s our turn to move to the next existence is the sum of our experiences. All our material possessions and money stay here, so the only thing of any true value is the experiences which we live.

As I finished my little rant, he sat there and didn’t say anything in reply, he simply was looking a little off to the side, and nodding his head. In the brief moment of silence between us, my own words resonated a chord within me, and I remembered what it was that made me want to leave my home and friends and family, and come to a place far far away, where everything was different, and every day would hold something new. This year in August will see me being a full 10 years away from home. It’s a long time, and over the last six months I have been questioning what I was doing here, because I had become very disoriented with the way my life had been going. But I see now that I wanted to be here doing this because every day is a new experience; an experience that I could never have had back home. I realise that I have grown a lot as a person, and that I am more than I could ever have been had I never had made the journey.

For the first time in a long time, I felt comforted, because I knew why I was here, and not somewhere else. It’s a nice feeling not to feel lost.

Padwanna!

 
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Poker; a micro simulation of life!

On May 22, 2007, In General Rant, By Andy

For a couple of months now I’ve been a casual player of Texas Hold’em Poker with a group of guys I met through one of our work crowd. I’m not all that good at poker, I’m never in the big money at the end of the night, but I’m not the beer bitch either, which is some consolation. I never used to be a gambling man, I still don’t really consider myself to be a gambling man, because the money we put in to play is pretty small, and if you look at it over a whole night for the cost of entertainment, it’s cheaper than friday night out with friends in some bar. After my first couple of sessions I got on the internet to find some play guides to help me out. I was pretty lucky not to get arse raped by the regulars there and so I figured anything to give me more of a playing advantage had to be time well spent.

The one thing that has seriously piqued my interest though, is not so much the game itself, but the intrinsic meaning behind the game. Many students of poker that I’ve read insist that it’s more than just a game of statistics and luck, it’s about the evaluation of where you are in the game, based on who’s around you, and what you’ve got at the time, and trying to get to the top against all odds. It’s as much an emotional game as it is a logical one, and the real trick is to balance your luck with your skill while trying to get better with every hand. To me, that sounds a lot like my day to day life.

I can see a lot of simalarities between poker and life. I’ve even started thinking of poker as a microsimulation of life in a lot of ways. Much like Tsun Tzu’s, The Art of War has been adopted by many business and lifestyle gurus as being a manual on many more facets of life other than actual military tactics, so too do guides of poker teach much more than just the card game. They impart a subtle blend of knowledge that is part human psychology, part scientific rigour, and part luck you just don’t question. Those who come to understand these principles will inevitably be players of skill who will consistently win against players who have no skill.

If only life had the option of a re-buy. Things would be much sweeter!

Padwanna!

 
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How to tell if you’re living in a virtual world.

On May 20, 2007, In General Rant, By Andy

I’ve been spending a lot more time just recently in virtual worlds, mainly World of Warcraft, and Lord of the Rings Online, with the occassional jaunt in City of Heroes for a bit of light entertainment. I was quite addicted to WoW at one stage of my life, but seeing as I have an obsessive personality (disorder), this isn’t really surprising, and so I did actually lose a fair chunk of real life. These days it’s not so much giving up on real life, as it is a place to hang out with mates having a laugh, while killing – virtually – whatever you can lay a weapon on (so to speak). I often wonder if these games are training the next generation of psychopath because you pretty much just kill anything that looks at you funny, all for the fun of it. [Disclaimer - I am totally joking, and aware that there is no link between being a psychopathic killer and computer games... except for GTA3, because I saw an episode of CSI Miami where these kids were killing people because they thought they were in a computer game. Because it's an American TV drama, it must be true!]

With this in mind, I thought I would take it upon myself to help out those reality challenged individuals who didn’t know if they living in a virtual or real world, by compiling a guideline I thought I would call… drum roll…

10 things to help you work out if you’re living in a virtual world.

-1- When you die you don’t go to heaven, but just go transparent for a while, and everybody ignores you when you walk past.

-2- It only takes 15 seconds to make anything, regardless of how complicated it is, or how many parts go into it.

-3- You can run forever without getting tired.

-4- For no good reason, complete strangers will ask you to go get them 30 hides of some creature you’ve never heard of… and you don’t laugh in their face.

-5- You will make friends with people who look decomposing corpses, and you’ll think they’re really cool.

-6- The expression “catching a flight” means getting into the saddle of some animal rather than being seated in airplane.

-7- Friends have a green circle around them, enemies have red. There is no in-between, or grey area, and nobody is just “okay”.

-8- You hardly ever change your clothes, and noone will mind, in fact it will be seen as quite normal.

-9- You willingly put yourself in mortal danger because it’s “fun”.

And lucky number…

-10- It only takes 10 minutes to travel from one side of the world to the other, and that’s considered to be a really long time!

So next time you’re confused which reality you’re in, just use this as a checklist and you’ll be fine.

Padwanna!

 
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Does a road that goes nowhere end up somewhere?

On May 11, 2007, In General Rant, By Andy

I went for a job interview last week, with some new tech startup down in Leiden. It was pretty much the usual kind of thing for a tech interview; I got paraded around from one group of geeks to another, all of them trying to work out how much of a geek I was, and in the end if I rated high enough on the geek scale, they’ll offer me the job. I don’t know yet if I was geek enough for them because they haven’t got back to me yet with a yes or no after the 5 hours I spent trying to convince everyone I was a geek too. Not that I actually consider myself a geek, I just like computers and online games and movies and stuff that’s fun. Geeks on the other hand take this online computer stuff wayyyyy more seriously, with the hardcore ones getting into religious debates over which editor is better, vim or emacs. (If you don’t know, don’t ask… trust me on this). Really that’s not me, I’m just in it for the money because I have to pay bills at the end of every month like everyone else. It’s not something that I do because it fulfils a dream.

But then again, what does? Dreams are tricky things because we all have them, but so few people actually seem to turn them into reality. When I was 32 I said that if I was still working in IT jobs by the time I was 35 then I went wrong somewhere. Well now I’m 38 and still working IT jobs and I feel like I’m definitely on a road to nowhere. I mean, where does it go from here? I wonder if this is what they call a mid-life crisis? I’ve always been fascinated by what people mean by a ‘mid-life crisis’. Is it just a general term for finding out that life in your late 30’s, and early 40’s kinda sucks compared to when you were 25, and there’s no going back?! I dunno, I wish I did, because then I could work out if I was going through one or not. My life actually doesn’t suck compared to when I was 25. I could drink more, that’s for sure. But I tend to be able to do more drugs now than I could back then, so I guess it evens out. I think maybe a mid-life crisis is realising that the road that your on is one that goes nowhere, but you don’t have room to turn around to be able to go back to somewhere that was somewhere and go again.

Where does a road that is going nowhere go though? It’s got to go somewhere. I’m pretty sure it does, since everywhere goes somewhere, but if it’s going nowhere to start with, does that mean it doesn’t move or it goes to some place you really don’t want to be? Heavy questions for the wee hours of Saturday morning, and I’m not even intoxicated. Maybe I should be!

A Turkish friend I had from a couple of jobs ago once told me an old Turkish saying - no man (or woman I would add for the sake of political correctness) ever travels down a wrong road that he (or she) can’t turn back. I suppose the mid-life crisis answer to that little gem of wisdom would be to say, that that man probably only had a donkey and couple of bags of carrots as his sum total of wordly possessions. I doubt he had a mortgage and a mobile phone account, and a bunch of other luxury things that Western Europeans all take for granted but have to pay for at the end of every month. If it’s just you and a donkey and some vegetables, it’s real damn easy to just decide to do something completely different at the drop of a hat. What the hell is the donkey going to care!

I do honestly wonder if there isn’t some cruel irony at work in the world, because the dreams that keep you going are like mirages, you never actually achieve them they way you see them, there is always a gritty reality that doesn’t have the shine of the shimmering promise that is always just out of reach. More often than not, just when you get to somewhere where you saw your dream, it has all but faded, and there is nothing left but the thirst which cannot be quenched.

Padwanna!

 
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