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. 

Fitch doesn't itch

That’s a funny coincidence. A few days after I had a chance to enter a store of Abercrombie & Fitch for the first time, I came across a facebook-campaign encouraging people to boycott this particular brand. A&F openly discriminates against uncool and overweight people, and is proud to do so. A quote from their CEO “We go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive, all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong in our clothes and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely”.

Perhaps because I really disagree, or perhaps just as an exercise, I will disagree. At least they are honest. I know many brands which sell sizes up till 42, but they don’t dare admit they are exclusionary. In my opinion this is just a provocation for marketing purposes. The more naughty they are, the more buzz they create, the more publicity they get.

I much much more prefer this to other companies pretending they care about the environment, at the same time serving their drinks in styrofoam cups and their fatty food on plastic plates. If they followed Abercrombie & Fitch’s way, they should have said “We don’t really care about the environment, we mostly care about profits. We serve our sugary drinks in huge styrofoam cups, with free-refill option, because it makes more of you come and spend money with us. You can namely take them away, as no person can consume 1 liter of Coke within half an hour. As to the plates, it simply would have been more costly and risky to replace the plastic ones with a reusable variant. Additionally, we employ overweight people so that our heavier customers feel at ease. And if they are not overweight yet, they will soon become so, if they continue to eat at our restaurants. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely”.

A carrot, favourite rabbit food, is exclusionary, too. It goes after the people who prefer a healthy diet. Fortunately it’s not a brand, but a common vegetable. Few chances that anyone will start boycotting it. 

Before I knew that I was not the person Abercrombie & Fitch were after, I did enter their store. I was intrigued by the darkness and the smell there, so different than in any other shop. I couldn’t see the clothes that well;) so I can’t judge about their quality (I can tell you after I've washed them, if you're still with me after this post). I couldn’t hear what the shop assistant was telling me either, due to very loud music.
I’m not a cool kid (neither cool nor a kid), I don’t have the right attitude and I don’t have many friends either. Nevertheless, I did buy a few items there, some for myself, some for my kids and some for the few friends I have. The attractive staff did not throw me out, on the contrary - they were very helpful. 

What stayed is the smell, captivating and sexy. It’s for men, but nobody stops me from using it. It fits all, after all. 

Animals on a balanced diet

My first day in the US and I have to admit that the culture shock is the greatest I ever experienced. No Asian country surprised me as much as this one did, and it's only just a beginning. The thing is: when going to the East, I expected things to be very different, so when they turned out different indeed, it came as no surprise. But going to the west, I thought it will be... Western, just as Europe, only bigger.
And now I'm totally flabbergasted. It's not like Europe, only bigger. It's weird. It's completely delirious. It's like all those folks have been waiting for Godot all their lives.
"For your safety the lifeguard will not maintain eye contact when talking to you". "Staff must wash hands" (in the toilet at a restaurant) "The animals in our care are on a well-balanced diet. Thank you for helping us keep them healthy by not sharing food meant for people." Yes, the lifeguard will make sure other swimmers' life is safe, too, even if he's currently scolding you for crossing a line you shouldn't cross, the staff at a restaurant will take care not to infect your food with their bacteria and the animals at an attraction park are on a balanced diet. But you, you can eat yourself slowly to death, drench your body fat in refill coke, all bacteria-free and with a smile on the staff's face for you not to suspect anything. The death will not be immediate, no worries. Nobody will be sued.

The environment around is good, but I got the impression that to the Americans it is not good enough. That's why they perpetually try to make some improvementst: lock the warm, fresh air inside and cool it so much that the unacustommed guests from the old continent grab their sweaters. Eating outside on a warm evening? Have you at all calcated the risks? Uncontrolled bacteria flying around, and straight into your soup, causing sudden death?
They seem to have a preference for the slow variety here. "Fasr food, slow death" would be a good slogan. Just as food, it gives comfort.
Waiting for Godot needs time, too. If you die suddenly, you won't meet him. But if you slowly grow bigger and bigger, you won't even notice the moment when your body stopped fitting into one beach chair, but started flooding the neighbouring ones.
One more coke and a couple of donuts. Another refill. A sundae to cool down. Then a coke. And then it is Godot himself who appears in a revelation of my fat-drenched brain: US is like a room with closed curtains and all lights on on a sunny day. Better avoid the unpredictable and have your own sun the way you want it.
This was my epiphany on the first day in the Sunny State. I have to be excused for jumping to conclusions: Columbus, too, thought what he found was India.

No box of chocolates

Of all the words that express probability in English my absolute favourite is “perhaps”. Certainly “perhaps”. It’s even “perhaps” for sure. “Perhaps” without any doubt. 
That’s because “probably” sounds too bubbly. It makes me think of someone who cannot swim, but has fallen off a boat, and half-drowning, exclaims “Probably, I’ll be dead in a minute”. Possibly in a less composed manner than it looks on paper though. 

“Maybe” is fine, but sounds a little childish, and inevitably brings “Maybe a baby” to my mind, while in my particular case is rather “maybe not”.
“Possibly” sounds too hissing. I don’t trust it, just as I don’t trust snakes. “Plausibly”, in turn, is too upscale. Which non-native speaker would use it in a conversation? “Doubtless”, on the other hand, leaves no doubt. I like to doubt. Lack of doubt smells of superficiality, while I prefer depths, except perhaps those of despair. 

But “perhaps” is so deliciously hesitant. After the initial “pe”, which could almost be a param-pam-pam, if you repeat it, it stops for a fraction of a second, as if preparing a surprise. And then, all of a sudden, there comes the funny “haps”, as if a dog snapped his mouth, or someone clapped a box shut the moment you were about to pick a chocolate. “Perhaps” assures me that life is none. No box of chocolates, I mean, “you never know what you’re gonna get”- as said a certain Forrest with considerable shares in a fruit company. 
It might be this. Or it might be that. Or yet something else. Without doubt.

I love “perhaps” for the surprise, the uncertainty and the playfulness it contains, all in one word. Absolute certitudes lead to failure or cruelty. I value people who don’t claim to have exclusive rights as far as the truth goes. 

And now, perhaps, I’ll be gone for two weeks. Perhaps it will rain, perhaps it won’t. Whatever the weather, I hope our spirits will be bubbly, but not drowning. Probably. Maybe. Plausibly. No snakes, please. 

Cats at Hannover

When things are really bad – celebrate, as they can only get better. If they don’t, and instead of getting better, they get worse - it simply means they weren’t bad enough yet.
The week before I went to Hannover Messe, for an event that seemed like a rest from life. For one whole week, I was doing anything but the things that  belong in mine:

-          Getting up at 6.00 instead of the usual 7.45 just in time to get the kids to school when the bell rings,

-          Standing all day instead of sitting down (by the way, that’s probably the reason why a Stand is called a Stand),

-          Practicing box-carrying and unpacking as the main sports, instead of some other activities inspired by eastern-philosophy, and practised on a thin mat

-          Being nice all day, instead of being the usual leader of the one-person’s Witch Program,

-          Wearing a crisp-ironed, white shirt, instead of the usual black sweater,

-          Forgetting about jeans

-          And many other unusual things, but after all, isn’t holiday about doing things you don’t usually do?

This rest from life made me so exhausted, that I had to take 2 days in life to recover.
This is not how I pictured this. After 7 days on the booth, my feet were in a state of despair. Cats are much better equipped to become booth personnel, they namely have foot cushions. People don’t. It’s a true a gap in the market: an agency hiring cats to do the exhibitions. At least the standing part of them. There’s just one little obstacle, but I guess it can be overcome with proper training: you surely want the cats you hired to stand on your booth, and not go talk to the competitors about the price hike of cat food.

Coming back to where I started: I thought my feet couldn’t get any worse by the moment I smashed my little toe against the bed frame, when back in life. It turned all black and blue (the toe, not the frame), it hurts terribly now and makes me consider flip-flops. Now I can celebrate. Now I know I’ve reached the bottom, in the non-literal sense of the word. It could have been literal though if our STAND was called a SIT.

And the moment I started to celebrate, confident that the bottom has been reached, and nothing worse than feet that is killing and badly bruised can happen to me, I heard that perhaps I'll be fired, for saying "Yes, sir" in a most inappropriate moment. So now I'm trying to imagine what could be worse for a man than hearing "Yes, sir" in a most inappropriate moment and concluded that "Yes, madam" would do the trick. I'll try it next time. 

Between sheets

It’s not a nice, comfy feeling when you feel like shit. It’s not that you feel overwhelmed with joy and peace, or fulfillment and satisfaction. It’s not that you feel on top of the world. Quite  the contrary in fact - if you feel like shit, you feel like you were on the bottom of a dried out lake, cold and shaking, wrapped in rotting leaves, their bad smell enveloping you like an old, stale blanket. 

Shit: “How do you know I feel like that? I don’t even know what a dried out lake is. I do know rotting leaves, but I appreciate their company. And I like their smell, too. Question of taste. 

In fact, I can’t share your judgement about my feelings at all - I feel overwhelming joy and peace for just being me, just being shit. Full of acceptance of my condition, I wouldn’t like to be something else.”

Was it fever? Or was it real? Whatever it was, those words certainly did open my eyes to our anthropocentrism and absolute lack of empathy when we talk about the feelings of shit. You can’t apply the same norms to excrements as you do to humans. What makes us, people, happy, for instance - warm rays of sun on our faces - doesn’t necessarily make shit happy - it makes it thirsty, and dried out, above all. Any browner it doesn’t need to become.

It still is quite likely that I do feel like shit sometimes. Only not in the moments when I claim to feel like it. Don’t be unfair to shit. You know little of its feelings.

Patience

Patience is a virtue. It consists in waiting for something which doesn’t come, showing no sign of irritation, feeling no haste, just waiting, joyfully doing other things in the meantime. Stopping briefly from time to time, to check whether the thing you’ve been waiting for has already arrived only to assert it hasn’t, and peacefully resume the other things you’ve been doing in the meantime.
Waiting implies at least some nuisance to the one who is waiting, some boredom and uneasiness. It implies impatience, in fact.
But true patience is a kind of waiting without really waiting. Being open for whatever comes or does not come. 

When I read the story about the extinction of the dinosaurs, which made it possible for mammals to gain ground, and finally evolve into the very impatient species called humans,  I couldn’t but marvel at the incredible patience of the author of this whole universe. 

If it was dinosaurs he was after, well, then he had been waiting for quite a while. Make sure that the Earth gets created first, and then sit back and relax, watching the different forms of life come to life a billion years later, then enjoy the appearance of the dinosaurs and their dying out, then us... Or was it us he was after finally, and that’s why he let the dinosaurs go? 

I think it’s quite arrogant to claim we were his ultimate goal. That everything before us was meant to happen so that we evolve from the apes, make a mess of our planet and start to question the copyright of the creator. 

I don’t think that particular author cares about his copyrights anyway. Copyright is finally about money, and why would the author of the whole universe need any? 

I think it’s quite likely that we too, just as the dinosaurs, are to die out to leave room for other, perhaps more advanced, perhaps more primitive, species. How could the creator allow it? Let us die out? The exquisite creatures that we are?

But he is not like us. Impatience is not his vice.

It was Einstein who said “The only reason for time so that not everything doesn’t happen at once”. It’s the existence of time that makes us so terribly impatient. If time did not exist we’d have it all, at once. 

And the Creator? He’d waited without needing to wait, for the dinosaurs, the apes, us and whatever is still to come.

A Simple Formality

• - Would you be so kind and empty the trash bin? 
• - No problem, you’ll just need to submit an RFA.
• - Submit a what?
• - An RFA. Request for action. I’ve decided to bring more structure into our household, and I’d like you to fill in and submit this simple form before I proceed to executing your request.
• - But my dear, what’s the point? It’s just a simple thing, to empty the trash bin. It will take longer to fill in the form, than to do what it requests.
• - In the present case, it might be the case. Nevertheless, for a start I opted for an RFA in case any action is required, be it re-painting the whole house, preparing breakfast or emptying the trash bin. An action is, after all, an action, and if you want to measure the efficiency and the workload, you need to record everything. That is why ...
• ... your form contains questions about “estimated duration of the action/event”, “level of skills required for performing the action”, “expected added value for the household” and  approval of the next higher manager? - asked the wife, by now pale with stupefaction. 
• - Yes, indeed. I will need these to prepare my monthly KPI report. 
• - KPI? Pan sobie chyba kpi!
• - No idea what you’re saying. Key Performance Indicator. I’m planning to make a few of them on a monthly basis, they’ll be useful for you, too. “Number of Actions Requested to Husband”, “Number of Actions Requested to Wife”, “Response Time of Husband” (time elapsed between RFA submission and the execution of the task), “Response Time of Wife”, “Task Difficulty Level v.s. Speed of Delivery” - you name it. We’ll meet regularly to discuss our findings, and take the required actions to optimise our household. As a result, we’ll have more time to do the things we like.
• - But at the same time we’ll need more time to fill in all the forms. I don’t know about you, but if there’s one thing I find a total waste of time, it’s form-filling.
• - No problem, I can fill it in for you. But first...
• ... I’ll need to fill in an RFA  to request you to fill in an RFA for emptying the trash bin.
• - You learn quick.
• - You know what, I’ll just do it myself.
• - No, you can’t do that, as you’re not in charge. According to the division of tasks in our household, I’m the one who is responsible for the trash bin, while your domain is, among others, the groceries. For a full list...
• ... you’ll need an RFA?
• - No, for a full list, please see the inside of the kitchen cupboard, third one in the upper row on the left of the sink.
• - Ok, just pass me the form, please. - said the wife, resigned. - I guess I have no choice, but just fill it in for this time. 

Fifteen minutes later the form was ready for submission. 
She handed it in to her husband.

• - Where’s the approval of the next higher manager?
• - Who’s the next higher manager? Can’t I just sign it by myself?
• - No, the form needs to be approved by someone other than you. And in case or our household, it has to be me. There’s nobody else here.
• - You mean, you’re my next higher manager?! You must be kidding!
• - Well, technically, we’re partners. But I’m taller, so in a way, I’m higher.
• - And who’s going to approve the forms you submit?
• - Someone else than me. It will have to be you then.
• - Ok, if that's the case, that’s fair. 
• - You see, I knew I’d convince you. It just takes a little getting used to... In the long run, you’ll see how much it helped us structure and organize our lives, so that we have more time for ...

But she didn’t listen anymore, resigned, studying the full list of tasks and their repartition between the two of them, glued neatly on the inside of the kitchen cupboard, third one in the upper row on the left of the sink. You could see a little smile when she discovered that the nasty task of filling out the tax-refund form was assigned to her husband, and she got the much less unpleasant one of watering the flowers.

There they went, occupying their time by filling in the forms and performing the requested tasks in order to save time for something else. They got so good in it, so efficient, that they even started to take pleasure in the form-filling, reporting, comparing the results with the previous months and taking necessary actions to amend the detected irregularities, such as the contents of the trash bin rotting away while Husband was on a business trip for the whole week, and Wife becoming totally useless in the meantime, missing the RFAs from her next higher manager.  They didn’t care about that something else they were saving time for.

This isn’t my story, obviously. It’s my acquaintances’, Mr. and Mrs. Corp. But I stopped seeing them some two months into their new procedure. They had no time to meet, their schedules packed with efficiency.

(Don't) Con the I

Rituals
Initiation
Exclusive Product Offering
Over-delivery
Myths
Relevant Sensory Oddity
Icons
Tribalism
Endorsement

Continuity

are the seven engines of Conversational Capital, a refreshing and comprehensive marketing approach, whereby the task of marketers is not just to create buzz around the product, but rather, to create a viable story about it and consistently deliver on it on the promise, year in, year out. 
The authors of the book (B. Cesvet, T. Babinski, E. Alper: "Conversational Capital. How to Create Stuff People Love to Talk About") are top people of a unique Montreal- and Amsterdam- based advertising agency, Sid Lee. Yes, their story is very appealing and gave me a lot of food for thought. And my thought has been very hungry. 

They claim that the story about your product is an integral part of the experience, and not just something applied to it, like rabbit ears to a chicken. Surely such claim appeals to a Rabbit, who wouldn’t like his ears to be applied to anyone else, be it a chicken, a fox or even a hare. The latter wouldn’t have appreciated such an exchange anyway, as a hare’s ears are as different from a rabbit’s as Conversational Capital is from conventional approach to marketing. 

The authors talk about a certain triangle and claim that it should be as compact as possible. The three points of that triangle are: who you are, who you say you are and who people say you are. This applies not only to products, but to people and organisations alike. 
They talk about creationist v.s. evolutionist word-of-mouth, the latter one being much more powerful in creating a story which will be talked about. And such talk is the most efficient, yet completely free-of-charge, marketing tool. 
So, if you want your story to sell, think first of who you are and make sure you do communicate who you are, and not something that you are not (but would merely wish to be). You’ll make people believe in what you deliver, and if you deliver it consistently to people’s content - they surely will talk about you. The book is about brand creation, but the authors admit that Conversational Capital applies in many other areas. 

Think of the Church, for instance. This is probably true of most, if not all, of the churches, but let me just refer to the one I know the best - the Catholic Church. The rituals (sure), the initiation (you join it by baptism only), Exclusive Product Offering (the “product” being applied to Salvation, is perhaps an unfortunate term, but however you call it - exclusive it certainly is), over-delivery (that remains to be seen, but I’ve heard of the near-death experience as being something indescribably terrific, so if Heaven is much more, over-delivery it certainly is), myths (sure, though we call them the Truth), Relevant Sensory Oddity (the smell of candles and incense, to name just one example), icons (obviously), tribalism (by joining it, you become “one of us”), endorsement (ever heard of Mother Theresa?), continuity (it has remained largely unchanged for over two thousand years). Coincidentally, a triangle happens to be also one of its symbols, though not necessarily meaning the same thing as the one mentioned in "Conversational Capital". 

So where has it gone wrong? Why is the story of the Catholic Church losing its power? Would the Church be failing to deliver on its promise? 

The problem is - nobody knows, as the promise refers to the afterlife. There might be some happy souls conversing merrily about the story of the Catholic Church in paradise, spreading the word about salvation which is guaranteed for devoted members, but no echos of those conversations have reached us, earthlings, so far.

Therefore whether this Church, any other church or spiritual path deliver on their promise remains a question of belief. 
But believing can make things happen. Therefore, as there are both believers and non-believers among us, I do not exclude the possibility that God both exists and doesn’t. Like a Schroedinger’s cat.

Coming back to Conversational Capital - it worked in my case. Completely for free, I’m spreading the word about the book now. Read it. It’s difficult to get in printed version, so getting hold of it already becomes an initiation: the book started to deliver on its promise even before it promised me anything. Someone was asking 70 euro for a second-hand copy (an e-book is there for you for a mere 16.99 eur, but the array of the things I believe in do not include an e-book. I need that Relevant Sensory Oddity that goes with the touch of paper under your fingers, and the pleasant sound as you open your printed book).

Just a little quote “to get people to say you are smart and funny, you have to be smart and funny in the first place.” This brings me to my favourite song by Daan:

“so don’t try to be an icon
con the I inside of you
that picture you’ve been painting
doesn’t look a thing like you”

This song could have been added to “Conversational Capital” for extra sensory oddity, in fact. With next printed edition, maybe?

The Mystery of the Double "L"

Apart from the “P” and the “H” at the start, which constitutes the key to understanding the difference between Poland and Holland of course, there’s also the “l”.  No need to explain the provenance of the “P” and the “H”, that’s clear as sky (if it isn’t for you, please don’t tell anyone, but see * below). Dus. As the Dutch say, not wasting too many words, (because you shouldn’t absolutely ever waste ANYTHING) when they mean “isn’t that obvious?/I told you I was right, but you wouldn’t listen/I’m going to do it anyway/I don’t care what you think”. Dus.

Therefore we may conclude that Poland and Holland are actually quite similar, except for the P and the H, of course. And that double “l”.

The temperature has just got me on the right path to decipher the mystery of the extra letter. Please read on. The extra “L” unveiled. Your life will never be the same again. 

All seated with the belts fastened? 

It’s January. The thermometer shows 11 degrees Celsius. 

Seven months ago it showed 12 degrees for a change. It was June. This splendid heat wave (1 degree higher than in January!) continued well into July. 

Holland is namely a country where you can expect temperatures around ten all year round. Ten plus/minus ten, the “plus” option only available occasionally, for a limited period and if you’re really lucky.

In Poland, in turn, the winters are cold, and the summers are hot.  Therefore, there’s no risk of mistaking January with its minus fifteen for June with its twenty-five. And people have to live with it. People have to be different, depending on how warm it is. They’d be sad and melancholy in winters, having enough of it towards the end of the cold months (usually stretching until mid- April), revived and energised in spring, happy and outgoing in the summer, slowing down and lazy in autumn. They are Scandinavians and Italians in one. 

But the Dutch are just Dutch. They don’t need to be anyone else, as the way they are: direct, frugal and enterprising - fits all the seasons. It fits zero degrees just as much as it fits plus eighteen (usual temperature in the summer).

They are much more leveLLed. No highs or lows. Always attending the same funny birthday celebrations following a fixed scenario and ending before it's dinner time, whether they are eight or eighty eight. Whether it’s plus eight or plus eighteen outside. 

And when it’s above eighteen? Goodness me, soooo hot?! That’s when Holland becomes Hotland and people put on their summer outfits. 

Hotland sounds dangerously close to Scotland. I’ll level with you:  I’ve just been tempted to develop another groundbreaking theory on the differences between those two... But you might first want to digest the double LL. Beware: the capitals tend to stick in the throat. You’d better take the lower case.

*) P stands for Poland, and H for Holland, of course.