Not an Evergreen

It was while she was taking her morning shower that she noticed a huge bottle standing in the corner, a bottle of something that you certainly should not use while showering. A Very Dangerous Bottle of Chemicals, which make even hair dissolve in a couple of minutes. “What if my feet disappear before I’m done?” - that’s what crossed her mind. To be precise, what terrified her most was not the perspective of her feet disappearing before she was ready, but of her feet disappearing at all. 

Not the most likely scenario, everyone would admit, but then again - a panic attack is not directly proportional to the likelihood of the scenario. Happy are those who don’t understand what I mean. She had cancer every time she googled her symptoms, her house was being broken into each night she was in it alone, fires outburst whenever she was in a busy concert hall, ghost drivers always emerged when she was on the highway too - all those things were nor exactly happening, nor really likely, nevertheless she always  considered them an option. If one misses spatial imagination whatsoever - one must have an overflow of a different type.  In her case it was an extraordinary richness of the doom-scenario-reservoir. 

So there in that shower she imagined her husband had filled the shower tray with the contents of the Very Dangerous Bottle of Chemicals, she had not noticed that and stepped into the highly corrosive bath. Originally the chemicals were poured in there in order to dissolve all the obstructions in the water flow, including her own hair. Especially her own hair. If you’d got so far in this post, you’re probably a very empathetic individual, for which I would like to thank you. You know, it was autumn, the days were short, she missed the sunlight and warmth, and she realised once again that she was no evergreen. In fact she was never-green, which meant she was losing hair all year round, with peaks in autumn and in spring. 

A bottle of Very Dangerous Chemicals can damage your hair, too, but this time they got to her feet. She never went to the extremes of standing on her head in the shower. If she wanted to wash her hair, she simply just placed her head under the streaming water.

She didn’t feel anything at her lower extremities, and could still actually see her feet, which would have reassured anyone. Not her, though, as she possessed just that extra bit of imagination which told her that the chemicals might have had a paralysing effect on her nervous system, and that was the reason she wasn’t feeling anything. “If I had to miss my feet, then, given the choice, I would have preferred not to be able to see them, but still experience their working” - she thought. - ”Of course, that would have deprived me of the extraordinary pleasure of seeing my feet in beautiful new shoes, but all in all that’s a small price to pay for being able to walk as one did before”. She did admit to herself that the whole idea of her feet being dissolved by chemicals at that very moment was quite unlikely, but one must think about something in the shower, especially if one is used to thinking about things all the time. Additionally, the huge bottle in the corner confirmed the suspicion. “There must be a reason it is here. The Very Dangerous Chemicals must have been in contact with the shower tray, and probably are still lingering on in here, if not in liquid then at least in gas form. Even if they are not currently dissolving my feet, they are probably filling my lungs with cancer-to-be” - lacking any spatial direction, here’s the direction that her thoughts were going. 

The whole problem comes from not having any other issues to worry about combined with an excessively theoretical approach to life. All the things that might have happened, plus all the disasters and misfortunes that fall on others, friends or total strangers. Had she had a more practical approach to life, she might have taken that shower quickly, without noticing the looming danger in the corner, then swiftly proceeded to preparing lunch or sweeping the floor, whatever. Unfortunately, that was not an option anymore. The sight of the Very Dangerous Chemicals has already brought about a cascade of immediate disasters, long-term side effects and fatal consequences, including the doubt if God really existed. All that made her feel restless in the shower, unable to proceed to the practicalities of life, such as dressing up, preparing lunch or sweeping the floor. All that became totally meaningless. She just had to find the proofs that her feet, and God, were still there. 

She didn’t see God. Perhaps he got dissolved by Very Dangerous Chemicals at the morning Big Bang. 
“If I had to miss God, then, given the choice, I would have preferred not to be able to see him, but still experience his workings. Just like my feet after their dissolution”.

Suddenly, she lightened up. Things were exactly the way they should. They always were. It’s only the certitude that got dissolved by dangerous chemicals once in a while.   

How to Think More About Sex

What a title! It's not mine, but a book’s. The few friends and kin of Rabbit, who are acquainted with the contents of the groundbreaking study “What Men Think About When They Don’t Think About Sex” will surely be excited to know that there is a sequel.
Technically, not really a sequel - as the author is different, but just look at the title! Even more than ... all the time? The author couldn’t have male audience in mind, obviously, as more is simply not possible in their case.  

And if it is for us, women, then it must be on the topic of time management or something, I thought. How to find time for anything else (for example: thinking about anything) than work, preparing something edible for the kids, feeding the kids, cleaning up the mess they made while eating what we prepared but what they eventually didn’t like, preparing something different, brushing their teeth, putting them to bed, cleaning up the mess they made when eating the "something different", getting them out of bed, bringing them here and there and many other exciting activities related to being mothers. “I could use some time management skills” - I thought, and decided I would use the time gained to think about whatever I want, not necessarily sex. I quickly added the book to my shopping basket, without even reading the reviews. The author, is, after all, Alain de Botton - for me a guarantee of a literary feast. A Swiss-born philosopher living in London and some sort of an atheist spiritual leader - he maintains that the belief in God is largely superfluous, while adhering to a religion is not. Many others claim exactly the contrary. 

It’s quite inspiring to have such a variety of opinions within hands reach. This reminds me of the great Sufi poet Rumi (XIII th century!) who said:

“The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.” If only religious terrorists of all history shared this view...

The piece of truth that Alain de Botton took is quite comforting and cheeky at the same time. He writes:
“to fall in love with someone is to bless him or her with an idea of who he or she should be in our eyes; it is to attempt to incarnate perfection across a limitless range of activities (...) Once we are involved in a relationship, there is no longer any such thing as a minor detail.”  (that reminds me, my dear, that our yearly discussion concerning the optimal temperature in our house during the winter months is approaching).

Alain de Botton is full  of understanding for the challenges any long-term relationship poses: “By overwhelming consensus, our culture locates the primary difficulty of relationships in finding the ‘right’ person rather than in knowing how to love a real - that is, a necessarily rather unright - human being”. He finds it a pity that we do not remember what it takes for the parents to love a child - namely, a great deal of work. The ones from whom we learned to love had to endure the sleepless nights, cope with our weird eating habits or square refusal to open our mouth, survive our tantrums and moderate sibling fights. And still we were loved.
With such a training in affection, we should theoretically be ready to love a partner who’d stop us from sleeping at night by playing loud music and keeping the lights on, who would spit out the food we’d prepared or smash the door violently because he lost that card game we were playing. Let alone a partner who would sleep around. But are we? De Botton maintains that it’s a sign of “immense forbearance and generosity that the two parties are mutually showing in managing not to sleep around (and, for that matter, in refraining from killing each other)” and both should be proud of managing to remain faithful most of the time. 

In our culture we take it for granted that romantic love is a basis of a marital union. But there have been times when love had nothing to do with it, and there are still societies in the modern world where spouses-to-be are not even expected to have seen each other much before, let alone have any feelings for each other.
I once expressed my outrage at the institution of arranged marriage to a Japanese colleague. This really surprised him. 
“Why is that so strange?” he asked.
“You’re telling me that if I pointed to any woman in this restaurant and told you: ‘this will be your wife. Go and love her’ - you would?”
His answer was “I don’t know if I would. But what I’m saying is that it is not impossible. Quite likely, in fact”.
“But how?” - obviously, he didn’t convince me. 
“I’ll think about it, and will tell you tomorrow”.

The next day I reminded him about his promise, because my chunk of truth was telling me that I was right and he, my Japanese colleague, with his whole Japanese culture and all his Japanese norms and theories was wrong. You can’t love a randomly chosen person. You just can’t, because ... well, you just can’t. 
To my surprise, he did think it over: 
“It’s like with children. You don’t choose them either, but you learn to love them more than anyone else. Even if they are not pictures of perfection.”

With those words he shattered my piece of a broken mirror. Alain de Botton and my Japanese colleague together picked another one for me. 

The book is really highly recommendable, even if it doesn’t keep the promise contained in the title nor does any good in the domain of time management for working mothers. It didn’t make me think any more about sex - instead, it made me think more about the  “embodied, chemical and largely insane human life”.  Largely insane. I like this description. It’s ten p.m. and I’m done putting my two loved ones to bed and about to have a glass of wine with the loved one who’s not yet asleep. To celebrate all the moments when we managed not to sleep around. Cheers!

Chubby zeroes

It’s when he was about to leave that he started to appreciate his situation. Things were not annoying anymore, but became interesting. Long days in the office stopped being tedious, but started to get intense. The thought “I’m doing it for the last time” dominated his days. The last meeting. The last visit. The last report. He looked at them all with freshly opened eyes, as if he was a stranger who was visiting someone else’s life for just one week. A few more days and he’ll be doing something that will feel more like being alive.

I looked at him, envious. It’s going to be long before me too, I’ll be given this last week to enjoy everything I didn’t enjoy so far. It’s going to be long before I attend this last meeting, for the first time my thoughts not drifting away, but staying there, in that room full of serious, worried people. I’ll appreciate all the numbers marching orderly in front of me, in a neat row, as if they were ants. For the first time I will not follow them out onto the pavement, the grass field further on, the trees and the clouds, onto which they will soon get if we sign this cloud hosting contract.

I will look at row 7982 of the excel sheet in front of me and will notice the beauty of the formula, the roundness of the eights and the chubbiness of the zeros, I’ll marvel at all the sums adding up and matching other sums in different places. I’ll cherish that moment, because from then on the only checkered sheet I’ll look at will be the table cloth or a tartan skirt.

So why can’t I enjoy row 7982 already now? The eights are just as round, the zeros just as  chubby as they will be in this last week. The sums add up and match their mates in a different column. But I look at them indifferently, to say the least. 

That’s probably because after row 7982 there will come row 7983 and 7984 and 7985 and then, surprisingly 7986 and 7987, followed by row 7988, and in 7999 my mood inevitably goes down and my attention out of the window.

But why do the same things, only done for the last time, suddenly become so clear, so interesting, so much fun?

And why doesn’t Life lived for the last time always taste so good?

Bearings

The Three Magi came to see baby Jesus bearing gifts, right after his mother bore him. Did that event have any bearing on the history of the civilisation? 

Bear with me for a just little longer:

Not to lose our bearings, we need to set a goal, and keep to it, just as the Magi let the star guide them. Of course we’ll be lost and confused sometimes. No worries, if we pause and reflect, our wisdom will inevitably bear fruit and we’ll get our bearings back. From then on, we’ll bear the scars of our experience with pride.
If you trust your GPS as the Magi trusted the star, you’ll be re right following its directions when the sweet voice advises you “bear right”. 

After 12 years of working in a bearing company I bear witness to one obvious fact: bearings truly are of utmost importance to our civilisation. But there’s another one, slightly less obvious: they have more balls than an average male employed to make or sell them.  

I hope the men I know and value will not bear me a grudge.

Just a Surprise, or a little Wonder?

“All my life I've been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.”

I came across this quote from Louis Buñuel when checking my blog statistics (an activity that truly leads to nowhere, but I'm still doing that: if they are bad, I could be better, if they are good - they could be better). But this time, instead of the statistics, what appeared on my screen was someone else’s blog. It started with the above quote, but everything that followed was in Arabic (I think). Some posts have the shape of a poem, very short lines. Occasionally there are some comments and a few short posts in a language I can understand. For instance this one, from April 2009:

“If you want to see a Miracle, be a Miracle”.

The entries end in 2011. Shall I try to decipher the mystery? 

Or perhaps just as I peacefully accept the pages filled with unknown signs, I should also accept that days, months, years of my life, written down in an unknown alphabet, have a meaning, too. They are meaningful with the meaning I will never figure out, and there’s no point in trying “to fill in the blanks”.

I got a great present a few days ago. It’s a book with a white rabbit on the cover. It’s one of the best books I ever read. It goes like this (my own translation from Dutch, so I’m not sure if this is how the original goes):

“I’m small.

I’m too small to blow my nose.

I’m too small to lace up my shoes.

I’m to small to dance on a rope

without almost falling down,

and I’m too small to eat

without being untidy.

But I’m just big enough

to hide

until they find me,

to hide

until they find me,

to hide

until they find me,

and that’s why

I am 

a small

surprise.” 

(Louise Yates “A small surprise” translated into Dutch as “Een klein wonder”, which means, in fact “A little wonder” and is not the same thing as “een kleine verassing”).

That’s all. 32 pages with amazing illustrations. And there’s an extra surprise for me on the inside of the cover: a picture which shows a job ad at a circus, and a small rabbit walking by. The ad says “Jobs available for big animals (not for little ones)” 

I’m big enough to hide until they find me. Hidden in my hole, I enjoy the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.

A wonderful surprise.

Sleep well!

I kicked-off my sneakers to feel the sand underneath. Under the tarmac or pavement are fortunately not the only places where you can find beaches in Holland, even nowadays. Lucky me: beaches can usually be found on - guess what - the beach! Of course, you need to be able to get there, get up really early, or be patient with traffic jams, then find a place to park - but once you’re there, you can kick off your shoes and feel the sand between your toes.

I was grounded. The electrical charges accumulated in my body were unloaded, through the sand, to the water, to Mother Earth. I connected to the Earth’s natural energy. And everything became very vibrant that very instant. At least, it should have.

You don’t believe me? Just check:

http://www.earthing.com

There even exist products, such as bed sheets with silver wiring, or universal pads to use elsewhere, which you connect to the earth of your socket, and there you are - as if on the beach. 

I’m not really skeptical - I just don’t believe it yet. For cost down reasons, I would have preferred someone to tell me getting buckets of rain on your head reconnects you to those energies, because in Holland that luxury is available most of the time and free of charge. Unfortunately, I was told I needed the sheet. With conductive silver threat, starting at 139 dollars. Oops. 

The good thing is, there’s another way of getting connected - just walk on unpaved ground with bare feet. A beach is a good choice. When I’m on holiday, I always walk bare feet on the beach or on the grass - and I have to say it works - because I always feel much better on the beach than in the office. That is convincing, but not enough, as obviously there can be hundreds of other reasons why one feels better on the beach than in the office (for instance the fact that one likes to look at sea stars, and those are really scarce in offices). So I’m still hesitating when it comes to a bed sheet at 139 dollars...  A cheap alternative, walking bare feet all year round in Holland may finally turn out more expensive, as it increases your health care expenses. It does allow you to cut down on, or squarely eliminate, shoe costs, but...

But I like high heels. They make me feel high. 

On the other hand, if you’re on high heels, you’re not connected to Mother Earth’s energies, which could explain why the Sunday beach vibrancy evaporated by Monday noon.

Being earthed when you sleep is supposed to give you great dreams. With time it makes you need less sleep. That sounds like a very good idea for someone who currently needs at least 8. I did sleep veeeery well indeed after that day on the beach, unfortunately a bit long, tired by the sun and the wind. So, however much I wanted to get convinced, I’m still 139 dollars away from believing earthing really works. The benefits are very tempting though, so I'm not completely giving up on this idea...

I know someone who has a sheet like this and says it works miracles. But then again, would you dare ask someone if you could borrow his bed sheet? 

Niels Bohr, a 1922 Nobel Prize winner in physics, is said to have hung a horseshoe above his door, and, when asked if he believed in such superstitions, to reply:
“Of course not... But I’m told it works even if you don’t believe in it.”

I’m afraid a bed sheet at 139 dollar needs really strong faith though. 

Cherish the cheese

It was lunchtime and I was hungry. Hungry people buy whatever edible ingredients they see, not taking any account of the capacity of their stomachs. Therefore, my shopping basket contained: a baguette, a jar of anchovies (a particularly large jar, as I suddenly felt a craving for them), a box of cherry tomatoes, some cheese and an apple. A beautiful day it was, which means the temperature rose above 12 degrees. It wasn’t too hot either, that is: not a grade above 16. Gosh, no, of course, not a 16 and a half, all the canals would have evaporated, and where would I have my picnic then? 

There I sat, on a grass field, enjoying my 40 minutes of freedom, my bottom protected from getting wet by a plastic bag. Always carry a plastic bag with you if you’re in Holland - it comes handy before, during and after the rain. Before - as it gives you the safe feeling “I have a bag with me just in case”. During - you can put it on your head, if your hair is particularly good today, or if you simply refuse to notice that it  rains again (do make sure you leave a little opening for fresh air). After - in case you wanted to have a picnic on the grass. You can also let it dance in the wind, just like in that beautiful scene from “American Beauty” (do pick it up afterwards, not only to protect the environment, but because you’ll need it again any moment soon).

Safe and comfortable with a dry bottom I filled the first fragment of my baguette with anchovies. They tasted great. Incredibly intense. I added a few more, as they were delicious. Three bites further I stopped liking that intensity. Four bites later I thought I might  save them for later. One more bite and they ended up in a paper bag. “Good, it's time for cheese now” I thought. True Dutch cheese, one of the few real delights in the low lands. The first slice came with a surprise - one of the holes in it, the main cheese-hole, was heart-shaped. Of course, you could see it as a plain, irregularly shaped hole, too. Whatever dawns on you.

A baguette with cheese it was, for a change, accompanied by cherry tomatoes, some of them tasting incredibly sweet, some others quite bland, or sour, watery, uninteresting. 
I wondered how that was possible, the tomatoes coming from the same branch, same box,   with such different tastes. But that was the way they were. Not all of them sweet. And if it’s sweet tomatoes you fancy, you could of course add some sugar to them. At least, if you insisted on getting sweet tomatoes in the 40 minutes of your freedom. Even then, the tomatoes themselves wouldn’t have got any sweeter - that would have been the sugar’s job, but you could have fooled your senses. 

It’s all in the thought. It creates reality, just like sugar creates sweet tomatoes. “Thought is the best special effects department” as says Jamie Smart in a very smart book entitled “Clarity”. As I continued reading, some pieces of my baguette got in between the pages. It was then that the clarity and peace of mind, the default settings of every human being, came to the surface.  The shape of the heart in that slice of cheese was telling me everything will be fine. Telling me everything already is fine, in fact, because it all belongs there, in the same basket, on the same branch: sweet and sour tomatoes, delicious anchovies, disgusting after I overdosed, cold air and warm rays of sun, my dry bottom and the wet grass underneath.