What women want

I’ve recently been involved in the following conversation:

- Normally, the system should automatically send out one mail after the order has been placed.
-          But what I get is three mails actually.
-          Can you show them to me, please?
-          There you go. These are my three mails.
-          Ok, I see. Three - that’s too much. It should be one only. Out of the three, can you tell me which one you prefer?
-          I’ll think about it and will let you know.

I dreamt away. I imagined we were talking about “males”. “The system should automatically send out one male after the order has been placed.” “Out of the three males, which one do you prefer?”

I’m sure many a fe-male would appreciate such an option: get three males sent automatically and choose one of them. What a luxury! Which one would you choose? The most handsome? The one with the nicest figure? Or the one with most charm? The one with the nicest smile or the thickest wallet? Or maybe the one who was genuinely interested and really meant it as a question when he asked “But how are you?, with emphasis on you? Maybe you’d choose the one who’s read the most books? Or the one who hardly ever read any, but enjoyed reading financial statements before going to bed? Or one who was good at grass hockey…

I got a little carried away, imagining that if modern technologies make it possible for systems to automatically send out males and put them at fe-males’ doorsteps, then I’d send three carefully-chosen specimens, gift-wrapped, to a girlfriend in distress. I assume free returns would be part of the service?

But how do you judge? What is this one most important feature that a girl looks for in a male?

The answer is quick. It’s in the name already.

What a girls look for in a male is an E. We like getting e-males.

“E” stands for “enigma”. Fe-males seem to be particularly interested in cryptograms: males that are not easy to decipher, men that carry an air of mystery around them.  Am I right?

The next question is: do men prefer fe-males, Φ-males or fee-males, and what is the difference?

Traffic jam

While the good housewives are in the midst of making various preserves, and I’m not (neither making preserves, nor a good housewife, and at times I’m even wondering if I make a good wife. At least, as to being a house, I’m not even wondering – I’m sure I’m not), and if you forgot the beginning of this sentence, because of this lengthy nonsense interruption, I can repeat it, no problem. It went like this: “while the good housewives are in the midst of making various preserves”, and I’m not making any, it’s time at least for a little something on the topic of end-of-summer preparations.

It’s such a pity that “jam” in “traffic jam” has nothing to do with fruit preserve, but rather with the verb “to jam”, meaning “block, prevent from moving”. Such a great pity! If it was, the phenomenon wouldn’t be such a terrible nuisance. First of all, most people like jams. A traffic one would therefore immediately bring good connotations to all those who are stuck.
Secondly, I’m sure there would come much more variety to the phenomenon: a traffic jelly, a traffic marmalade, maybe even a traffic spread or traffic paste (for those who prefer salty to sweet).

Imagine a Monday morning conversation of the style:

- I’ve been in a terrible traffic jam this morning.
- Was it a jelly or rather marmalade?
- Well, it started as a marmalade and then proceeded to jelly, believe me, I was completely jellified in-between two trucks and couldn’t move to any side for at least twenty minutes.
- Gosh, twenty minutes! Then it was a real paste!
- Yes, but then suddenly it smoothened out, the cars started moving again, and in the end, it was a full-blown spread, and that’s when I hit the van in front of me, whose driver must have fallen asleep during the jelly period.
- What happens next?
- Next, I go out, and yell …

And it would go on and on, if only “jam” were more like “strawberry jam” and not “jamming the entrance”. Instead of a dry notification given by your clever navigation system “traffic jam causing a delay of 45 minutes ahead of you. Calculate an alternative route?” you’d be informed about marmalades and jellies, and you would probably develop sudden appetite for any of those (this is how appetite works if you’re really hungry, and you certainly are, having waited for hours in a slow-moving jam, jelly or marmalade), which might in turn considerably increase the usage of jams and the like. Which, as a result, would be very beneficial for jam-makers. The sales would soar, the economies would recover, as there’s few things available in such abundance (and so amazingly renewable) as traffic jams in modern cities. Soon everyone would be exhilarated rather than annoyed by the obstructions in traffic.

Such a chance wasted! What’s in a name! A traffic marmalade by any other name wouldn’t taste as sweet…

The regrettable fact that “jam” in “traffic jam” doesn’t come from the right word won’t stop me from proposing “Traffic” as a brand name of a new line of jams. Just imagine:

“Traffic. Your favourite jam”.

How many jars of preserve could I have made in the time that it took me to write this entry? Numerous. Now it's official – I’m not a good housewife. I might be a good lunatic though. It’s good to be good in something.

Sunset juice, pasteurized

Ultimate beauty is heartbreaking and unfulfilled. It can’t be reproduced in its totality: a sunset on a picture is lacking the smells, the sounds, the sensations. The smell of muddy water, the chirping of the grasshoppers, the croaking of the frogs, the cracking flames in the nearby fire someone’s put up... The sensation of a warm evening breeze on your face, the touch of a little boy’s warm hand in your hand. The cries of someone on the other shore, the babbling of the water on the pebbles, the swishing of the paddles… The subtle play of the colours on the sky, and their reflection in the water.  All this together makes up a picture of perfection that only lasted a few minutes.

But the beauty of the moment resides in its evanescence: not the sights, the sounds, the smells, the sensations. The knowledge that it will be gone in a moment, the sadness that I’ll be gone in a couple of hours, and will only get another such opportunity in a few months from then – all this was essential.

But back then I ignored it and tried to freeze the moment. I felt the sudden urge to capture the ultimate beauty, and started to take pictures, one after another. None of them was good enough. I put the phone back into my pocket, only to take it out once again, to capture yet another perfect element, yet another perfect perspective, put it all together and make it complete, preserve it for the uglier evenings  awaiting me. Put the beauty in the jar and pasteurize it, as my sister does with raspberries, turning them into raspberry juice.

Raspberries are very fragile. They taste excellent when fresh, but give them one day in their packaging and they will rot away. To prevent that, she mixes them with sugar, allows them a few days to give up and bleed, then sucks up their juice. She then pasteurizes the bottled product so that the taste survives through the winter months without rotting away.

I tried to do the same with my sunset. I took this picture, and that one, and yet another one, and then one more, seen from a different perspective, one more shot once the sun had dropped further, and one more from up the hill, and oh, that boat on the horizon, that adds up, too. So, now I should have it all – I thought, and put the phone back in my pocket for good. This is what my sunset juice tastes like, pasteurized:

But it wasn’t at all like that. Don't believe the picture-postcard sweetness. There were mosquitoes buzzing, the water smelled of mud and I was about to leave. The real experience was like the taste of a fresh raspberry picked up directly from the stem, and not like that of pasteurized juice. 

Rain, again

“Here comes the rain again” sang Eurythmics long ago. I rather liked the song, but never appreciated the coming of the rain, and certainly not when it was “again”. The rain started two days ago. The nauseating, persistent variety, leaving no hope, smelling of no rainbow, just rain.
In Polish we say that kids get bored when it rains… By now I’m behaving like a perfect child – I’m bored but you wouldn’t say. I have an instant remedy – to read.

Reading is a cure for both blazing sun and heavy rain. For chilly mornings and hot evenings. For a busy day and a lazy holiday afternoon.  So I pretend I’m not there, hiding away from the kids who are bored, and don’t see reading as a remedy and insist on testing whether noisy outdoor activities can also be practised inside. To everyone’s regret – it turns out perfectly possible.

I retreat to my sanctuary upstairs and read about dreamers. What a nice word, dreamers, already containing a “rea” in them. I don’t know all the words in English, but I noticed that many of those containing “rea”, except for diarrhea of course, are pleasant.

“Reason” and “dream” might be opposites, but they both contain the charming “rea”. The dreamers invent impossible theories, and the reasonable part in themselves (or other reasonable people) test them, implement them or discard them. All creation is metaphorical, intuitive and necessitates the invention of alternative worlds according to P. Cieśliński (in the article I’m referring to). All three – metaphor, intuition, invention are the domains of the dreamers.

All this rain brought me a very good idea for an invention. A true gap in the market.  Ironic and practical at the same time. If I could paint, I’d certainly put it on canvas, but as I can't, I'll just describe it.  That’s a contraption that would free the people from rainy countries from their addiction to weather forecasts: it’s an umbrella with built-in sun in the inside section. Would you care about the rain, if you had your own, portable, spirit-lifting sun within a hand’s reach?

I don’t have to bother about the (minor) practical issues, such as how to place a sun under an umbrella. I’m the dreamer, not the realist. But I’m sure that the sun exists even if it rains, so it must somehow be possible to bring it to where I need it. As a Frequent Flying Witch I’ve risen above the clouds many times, be it on board an airplane, on my private broomjet or just in my mind. And I’ve seen the sun, shining there, undisturbed, lightning up the cloudy floor.  Just get it down for me, and place it under an umbrella. If you need a network of mirrors to capture the rays and bring them down from up there to down here, then I offer you the space on my jet, free of charge. I’ll stop with giving you practical hints here, as practice is your domain, not mine.

And if you manage to do it, my reasonable and logical friend, I’ll even be happy for a while. I’ll talk like lovers do.  I’ll walk in the open wind, under my new umbrella, dreaming of rain.  

Chasing rainbows

“You can live your life as if nothing was a miracle or as if everything was” according to a well-known saying attributed to Albert Einstein. This leaves me hungry for more explanation: how can a scientist of his caliber live as if everything was a miracle? Or did he mean exactly the opposite? Was nothing a miracle for him, and this is what pushed him to challenge the state of knowledge at his times? I’m not sure.

If you easily take things as miracles, you probably won’t be tempted to discover the reasons why (and kill any interesting conversation directly):

-          Why do leaves fall down in the autumn?
-          I don’t know.  It must be a miracle.
-          Why doesn’t this boat sink?
-          I don’t know, probably a miracle.
-          Why do I get hungry when I don’t eat?
-          Must be a miracle.

Would Einstein really promote such kind of intellectual sluggishness? I don’t think so. The secret is in the timing, I guess: the “it’s a miracle” answer should not come directly after the question has been asked. I’m of the opinion that one should investigate, reflect and go so deep that there is only one answer left: “it’s a miracle”.

Max Planck, too, once confessed “I became a believer because I got to the end of my reasoning and I couldn’t think any further. We all stop thinking too early.”

I’d say many religious people say “It’s a miracle” too quick, while atheists claim they never do. But where do they stop then? What comes after their final “why”? It can’t be the “I don’t know” because then they wouldn’t be called “atheists” but “agnostics”. I would like to once meet a real atheist, not the “I don’t care” or “I just don’t believe” variety; one that really went the whole way, got to the end of his reasoning and stayed there, satisfied.  

 You may know all the technicalities of a rainbow being formed: how those droplets disperse the light and why  they form an arch – but I’m afraid one can never get to the point where the rainbow starts. There’s of course a logical reason for it – with every step towards it you see a different rainbow, a tiny bit further and so it will continue, until the arch disappears. And even if it doesn’t (by “miracle”, “coincidence” or “I don’t know why”) and you just keep walking towards it, you’ll keep seeing a different rainbow with every single step.

 So far as rainbows go, I’m very religious – I say “It’s a miracle” way too quick, and I do it on purpose. I’m a rainbow-hunter, I have no time to lose: I quickly grab my phone and take a photo. Miracles are so ephemeral: the moment is gone, you stop believing it was one. You start to look for a logical explanation:  check the technicalities behind  and  soon you’re sure it was just a meteorological phenomenon. If you’re a hunter, you need to act quick, otherwise you’ll have another Wikipedia article instead of the following picture, miracle caught in the act on the Masurian Lake District on 9aug12:

There’s one more reason I’m particularly attracted to rainbows. It has to do with my address: 42 is “The angle rounded to whole degrees for which a rainbow appears (the critical angle)”, according to Wikipedia. Whatever it means. As far as miracles go, I'm not too critical…

My religion

“I don’t believe in an interventionist God

But I know darling that you do
But if I did I would kneel down and ask him
Not to intervene when it came to you
Not to touch a hair on your head
To leave you as you are
And if he felt he had to direct you
To direct you into my arms.” (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “Into my Arms”)

These are the opening lines of the most touching song about love. It starts with God, or rather – not believing in him. To be more precise – not believing in a certain “variant” of God, widely assumed to be true: a God who intervenes in the world he has created.

To me, this is a troubling idea: a God existing somewhere beyond our world, giving  us the so-called “free will” but deciding to step in and amend/demolish things from time to time. When things have gone wrong, when we have gone too far, when we need to be disciplined or rewarded – or simply, when we have prayed sincerely enough.

I always wondered as a child: does God listen to all my prayers? So if I want someone else to fail, and I pray sincerely, will he actually fail?

-          No child, - a priest would reply – God only listens to the prayers which are in line with his will.

Back then, this reply seemed reasonable enough. But I have my doubts now: if it’s in line with his will, why pray at all? It would have happened anyway. Or would God be quite absent-minded, and not noticing that some things, that are in line with his will, haven’t been looked after yet? Would God have moments like “Oh yes, that little girl, she needs to get all the volumes of “Anne of Green Gables” under the Christmas tree, I totally forgot”!

I never got all the volumes in one go, but getting them one by one (which wasn’t easy, as the times were communist, and the supply of books was limited) was even better. Was that God’s will? Does God care at all about such details? Or was it pure coincidence? The fact is – I did pray.

Now I don’t think prayers work in this way. I’d rather be inclined to think that if you really want something with all your heart, and that thing really is a good thing – it probably will happen. It might have to do with fields or waves that your thoughts might be producing (I’m not sure about how it works in practice, but I have a hunch that physicists will one day discover that). Whether you are a believer or not. Whether you end your thoughts with a solemn “Amen” or not. I believe that good thoughts have very strong executive power, as opposed to some omnipotent God, sitting in a safe place outside of our world and watching us try and fail.

That wouldn’t be a loving God at all. If he watched us, and decided to intervene from time to time, that would mean he didn’t love us enough. A free will, guaranteed from time to time only, isn’t free will at all.

Anyway, I don’t think he is a HE at all. I’m sure all religious beliefs are to be taken more metaphorically than not. I love metaphors, so I have no problems living next to them. But metaphors they remain… they make it easier for some to get closer to understanding the divine, but unfortunately also easier for some Cartesian minds to completely dismiss them as relics of the past.

 
Willigis Jäger, the most inspiring monk and author I ever came across describes it like this: “God manifests himself in a tree as a tree, in an ant – as an ant and in you – as you. But in none of those creatures does he manifest himself completely. He has infinite potential”.  As the world, with all its good and evil, is a manifestation of God, it doesn’t need any intervention from a superior power.  It’s perfect the way it is.

I believe that God’s love is absolute: it lets us err and fail if we choose to, it doesn’t punish us if we do wrong, it and gives us hope and strength to get up. It lets us deny its existence and doesn’t insist on worshipping it.  Not touching a hair on our head, leaving us as we are. Because as we are – this is how we’re supposed to be. Divine.

I’m not sure if this is what Nick Cave had in his mind. Never mind though – this is what gets into mine when I listen to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG0-cncMpt8 , shivers down my spine.