I do wish all of you a peaceful and regenerating holiday season.

It is the holiday season. in most parts of the world, people lay down work and celebrate something about the birth of a modern day idol. Wrong! Most people go on a consumption binge, eat too much, drink even more, and quarrel with their relatives. Funeral parlors are appealing at this time of the year. The bit with the modern day idol, is the excuse. That is, I just relegated the Bible to the category of boulevard press.

The birth that took place some two millennia back and is invoked as cause here also inspired all sorts of narrative that, in turn, has led to war and bloodshed again and again. I will never get over the stupidity of the Crusades. When is war justified? When are acts of aggression justified? Give me one good example of when war is justified, just one. And if you give me that one example, I will still argue with you. Every year, at this time of the year, as this season returns, I return to this theme. I return to what sense does religion make, and I do wonder why families must quarrel. I think the time has returned for me to head back to the desert, the sands, the oasis, without electricity, with paper and pencil, a blanket and a compass.

(In Islam, the modern day idol Jesus is considered a prophet. Do the math, remember that the Hindus and Buddhists are pluralists, and that there are thousands of religions in our globe, what makes you think that only one of them has the claim to the truth?)

Why am I so negative, you ask. I am not the least bit negative, my mood has not been this good for a while; life works. Life works even when you call it failure. I have been reading a lot of Paul Feyerabend and Ludwig Fleck. Another book that I got to read over the break has the cute title of Chasing Reality. It is the kind of book that has a title like a glossy pretty picture; I could not resist.

I am off the grid for the next few weeks, those who need to know, know. It has always been that way: I am shy, love seclusion, and remain unapproachable.

Allow me to quote from Feyerabend’s autobiography Killing Time as in the last chapter he writes about marriage and retirement.

And when speaking of love I do not mean abstract commitment such as “love of truth” or a “love of humanity,” which, taken by themselves, have often encouraged narrow-mindedness and cruelty. Nor do I mean emotional fireworks that soon exhaust themselves. I can’t really say what I mean, for that would delimit a phenomenon that is a constantly changing mixture of concern and illumination. Love lures people out of their limited “individuality,” it expands horizons, and it changes every object in their way. Yet there is no merit in this kind of love. It is subjected neither to the intellect nor to the will; it is the result of a fortunate constellation of circumstances. It is a gift, not an achievement.

photo, originally uploaded by trafal.

http://www.reitschule.ch/reitschule/index.shtml

For the Love of G, originally uploaded by firstsecondbooks.

For the juice details…

I love letters. I love money. I love cars. Now, you have it, you know all about me!

Actually I have a long claim to this letter that is as old as I am.

Was there. Seen it, touched it, lived to write about it.

updated: 4.12.2009

Last night. It is easy to misconstrue information and interpret whatever is blurted out in a way that makes sense to the one interpreting, but no sense in the presumed context of the communication. Social media is a great source of confusion as it often generates tons of information on a shifting and hidden context.

Last night I had a longer conversation with Marc. We do this periodically, and when we need to deal with life’s little or big crisis, we call on each other. I had a storm in a glass of water last night, I sought the conversation and exchange with him. After that, my son popped out of invisibility in google chat, and we exchanged a few lines about the family thanksgiving dinner, or how it was to do thanksgiving on the vegetarian plan. Supposedly it was really good and I am not surprised; the cook used my kitchen this summer, and it was delightful! Of course, we exchanged our common quips on social behaviour, or as the saying goes, the apple does not fall far from the tree. Whatever…

But! There is always a but. What does the world care about me? It does not, deal with it. What I preached to the social scientists a week ago, it is good advice for me too; the onus is on you to make yourself relevant to society.

Does anybody really care? They will care that they did not care when accompanying you on your death bed. That is the one aspect of death that scares everybody; seeing somebody die reminds us all how very selfish we can be, and it were not for that, it does make us feel helpless and uncared for if we imagine that we too will die. Relief exists in the fact that not all of us, not all the time, are we so very self-centered that we do not care about the others; sometimes we care. We are – as a species – a bit odd and off-kilter for the most part. Evolution meant well with us, it intended absolutely nothing, it just happened and it gave us complexity, but it left us to our devices to navigate through the very complexity. We are solution seeking automatons to problems that we can barely define because we never know what the frame of reference is.

So, last night, Marc and I we continued our in-depth conversation. He put the finger on something that I do not quite want to accept because it makes me uncomfortable to deal with it. The issue is how to deal with other’s aggressive behaviour. I immediately burst out that that is another element of the economics of the hidden. We are all bursting with aggression and pettiness. Are we? All? Let’s say many.

But! Is it discomfort what I feel when I deal with aggression? What is it that I feel when my words cut like the sharpest of all katanas? Easy!

tell, i will tell.

i like it. you are learning.

Dear Mom,

yeah, I am fine. Let me tell you about last night. You know me well, better even than I would like you to know me, so it will not come as a surprise to learn that I was in the theatre last night at the Botanical Gardens to see a play by Dominique Caillat, Darwin’s confession. As usual, you do not get much of an idea of what I am babbling about, this does define our relationship, the so-called mother-daughter relationship; but let us not go into that one now, and let us never go into that one.

Last night I decided to leave my monk’s nocturnals and joined society for a few hours. We, a bunch of philosophers, social scientists, and other illuminati, joined at a round table in one of the worst joints near the university. But you know, bier is bier, and the place no longer stinks of smoke because smoking is now prohibited in all restaurants in the canton of Bern

The play is worthy of further study and consideration, that is, I did not quite get it all. I was challenged by my brilliant idea that a Canadian colleague was sitting between Machiel and me so that we could take turns in translating. After the play we went to get a bite to eat, and then although the restaurant has been nicely refurbished and the food is decent, the so-called service left just more than a tad to be desired. That said, I have had worse service, and if you are ever in town, that is not the worst place to land at. Clearly, I am in a positive mood. Well; let’s not go into that.

Yesterday I read a paper that I am satisfied with, but it is clearly work-in-progress. I experiment these days with reading papers, instead of giving presentations with audio, visual and graphical media to assist me. I am experimenting with writing and giving speeches. It is a totally different discipline, or art, to write speeches over that of presenting or doing interactive workshops. When reading a paper, there is this fine art of keeping eye contact with the audience; having been trained in managing large room workshops interactively, this ends up being discovery; adding constraints, removing degrees of freedom. I like to see how people take diligent notes when I speak, and I do wonder what they will make of it. Giving that what I am exploring right now is the relationship to narrative and the use of language, it is quite refreshing to add a few constraints in the way that I am using both in verbal expression.

There was an interesting moment last night when Manuela asked me a question that I did not want to answer. Not that I have anything to hide, but there are certain constraints that I need in order to function, or coerce myself to function, in the way that I want. At that moment when in public faced with the question, I had to think on my feet, and it became clear that it was a need that I have. Left to my devices, how would I be? But these are my devices! I use coercion to modulate my behaviour, and sometimes I think that it is greed that drives me to do it.

Don’t worry, be happy, or so the song goes. It is just that the word “happy” annoys me more than anything else annoys me; lots of things annoy me. Annoyance is a good thing, I need to be annoyed on a regular basis. It is the pearl effect; out of an irritation, a pearl is born. I like pearls, there is no secret here. I said yesterday that public is not the opposite of private, and indeed you may be very private and personal right out on the open. As a matter of fact, that is about as viable a mode of existence as there is, it encompasses authenticity and integrity.

I suspect that the times that I liked to write about myself are gone. These days I do find “myself” to be a most boring subject, but I am quite fascinated by some of the characters that I have been working on and for whom I have constructed whole identities. The exercise is giving me good insights in the function of identity. It could be that once more, I will lose myself in the depths of fiction. I just wonder whose fiction that will be.

I think.

Istanbul, Turkey

I have destroyed a lot of my digital photo archives otherwise I would upload some of my own pictures of this city.

My good buddy and partner in celestial crimes, Rudolf von Steiger, and his buddies Daniel Schümperli and Lukas Frey are giving a concert tomorrow at the Natural History Museum in Bern at 19:30. For reservations call +41 31 350 71 11.

It will be a geeky concert. What the trio does is to take atmospheric data collected for scientific purposes and improvise music to the cosmic bits. It is sort of hard to describe, but it will be worthwhile to go and listen for the experience of turning the factual into the sensual.

NB: Rudi is a director at the International Space Science Instiute at the University of Bern. Daniel is s molecular biologist, and I heard rumours that he is molecular himself even while playing the clarinet, while Lukas is a geographer having an affair with a contrabass.

At present there is an initiative up for votation this month that wants to forbid the construction of minarets in the country. I read a rather good column on Der Bund paper version today written by Rudolf Strahm that sketches the history of the moslem migration to Switzerland. Yes, it is called migration. Yes private sector interests were involved, and these were fueled by greed. Go read the column, get some facts straight, and then think.

This reminds me of a story that a friend of mine once told me when we were either in Salt, Jordan or some other place a few kilometers from there. Anyhow, the place has both christian and moslem worship places, and the story went that one demonstration of power was to see who had the highest tower, the christians or the moslems. Then I think of all the towers scattered through Bologna or Venice, and my perverted imagination tells me that once more we are discussing phallic symbols. Umberto Eco would undoubtedly agree with me, but really, the whole thing is ridiculous.

What is this minaret initiative about? Discrimination, religious discrimination. This is evil, this is bad, this initiative is to be fought and defeated. This is how it starts, and the process is not pretty. Hate symbols are created and propagated, then dehumanization, mobs, polarization. When things get really ugly then the mobs start death lists and then extermination is planned. It lands in genocide.

For those who need a refresher here is the Universal Human Rights Declaration of 1948. If that was not enough, go to the European Convention on Human Rights that you can read in German (French, Italian also available). It might not hurt to have a look at the Swiss Constitution while you are at it.

Use your right to vote to make a positive contribution. I think a few minarets and a few modern mosques might be a very positive contribution to the architectural landscape of the country. Discrimination is the unjust and unequal treatment of diversity.

I do not know about you, but I have the fondest memories of exploring Venice with my son when he was just a little boy and climbing one tower after the other. Actually we worked a compromise, for each tower he wanted to climb, we got to go to a museum that I wanted to go to . This way he discovered Mondrian before he could read, and I the joys of stair climbing. Still, I think that this bit of the phallic symbols is a good contest to have!

I am extending to you an invitation that my friend Marianne de Pury has sent for an upcoming exposition and sale event of silk and wool accessories made by craftswomen in the Himalayas. The events will take place both in Geneva and Bern, on October 31, November 1 and November 7-8 respectively. For more details click on the link above.

I will skip the lecture on the relevance of trade in humanitarian aid and economic development.

PS: Marianne de Pury is a composer and theater director. Her son Julian Thompson, a painter living in Neuchâtel, has an upcoming exhibition “Mises en Scènes” from the 21st of October to the 22 of November at the Théâtre du passage gallerie and chez max et meuron restaurant in Neuchâtel.

Update: I confess to having done massive editing to this post and done it in a rush… And as a consequence the first publishing of it, some sentences made absolutely no sense… (I wish I could attribute this lapse to being drunk… but it was not the case).

Some of us over forty and sort of needing maintenance more often, sometimes chemical, sometimes mechanical may be grateful to the gods of science, technology and medicine. We all worship them somehow, some of the time. I am beyond worship at this point, although I had what could be considered by my standards a very religious day today.

By the way, Nietzsche, and I do love him, but he was wrong on a whole lot of issues. My love is going more and more towards dead men these days, but I am keeping a close eye on the younger ones still kicking and producing. Entertainment is a branch that I do follow, especially the film industry.

I do wonder how many contemporaries of Nietzsche considered him vulgar. I had an interesting little interlude of a conversation this week with an esteemed scholar and we ended up discussing Quentin Tarantino’s newest flick. This person was not into Tarantino, and I can get that. I have fallen asleep several times trying to watch Pulp Fiction. Two lessons here: one is that there are still a few films for me to make an effort to watch, and that comfort in academics is not always a good guiding principle. Actually, I often have to go through material that the best sentiment that I can develop about it is indifference, and that is really good.

Back to Tarantino. This scholar mentioned the word vulgar in our discussion, and I offered that indeed he creates works that can be considered vulgar, but not offensive. I thought that was a strange thing on my side to say. Vulgar, yes; offensive, no. So what is it that I consider vulgar? What is it that I consider vulgar about Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds?

If you are in my media criticism class, you just got your assignment. Find instances of vulgarity in Tarantino’s work that are not offensive.

If you think that the two positions are untenable in parallel, do reason your conclusion and provide sufficient evidence with specific examples to ground your argument.

Just pulling your leg, am I?

…

Push notifications kept me informed, and the information that I got is that I am going to turn off push notifications as they are too much of an intrusion in my monk’s cell. Or, it could be that I am starting to understand why some monks do take a pledge of silence. The more I play with that state of affairs the better I like it.

However it is a delight to learn that the folks in Bern rejected the initiative about a planning study to get the cars out of the Bahnhofplatz. Actually the train station plaza is a mess, it is just a prettier mess than it used to be before the renovation that was concluded last year, but it is still a mess and it has the ugliest pavement that I have ever seen. But then I like cobble stones, and even if they need frequent repair, but the asphalt is not for ever either. But the folks are smart, and they knew that the traffic would have to go somewhere. After all that midnight action between Philippe and I where we went distributing flyers may have helped. Anyhow, it is always fun roaming the streets with Philippe Müller around midnight! Actually a lot of us that were against the initiative put in a fair amount of leg work in distributing flyers.

The Bahnhofplatz in Bern is a mess for bikes, and it would not get much better if cars were not allowed to circulate. Why is it so bad? Because there is no bike path that does not cross the public transportation paths, and those trolley buses and trams are no contest against a bike. I really do not understand why there was no better planning for the place to begin with. So this one is not off the table! Gloria alleluia!

632, originally uploaded by Carlos Noboro.

It is true. One long story that I have been writing for the past three years has seen it’s last chapter written, editing is coming up within the next weeks . The more editing I do, the more I enjoy it.

In my kamikaze approach to film watching, not long ago I ended up watching “The Sound of Insects“. I kept on falling asleep during the long and drab narrative; nothing in the film disturbed or touched me. It is based on a novel by Shimada Masahiko who in turn based his story on a real life story… I think I finally got a taste of the challenge that some of my narrative provides!

Maybe that I am forgetting too quickly. Actually during the projection I kept on thinking about a story that I shelved a while back, and wondering whether that is ready to be completed. So, perhaps something touched me about the film, or have I turned to stone already?

Do note that drab is not bad, not at all!

My apologies, those who must, know. In the Bernese parliament, or more quaintly, the city council, we are at present sitting through the debate on the 2010 budget. I am personally very interested in how many of the parliamentarians can actually competently read the budget (a huge table that you can download) and which the fellow sitting right in front of me can give a glimpse of. Said poll would be worthy of a poll, perhaps even a master’s thesis! But, this is politics, there is no necessity to know anything about the subject matter, what is important is to say something, possibly a lot, many words, inflamed sentences, puss-filled paragraphs: rhetoric! Pardon me, I meant polemic.

Alright, so I am not in a good mood. There is is debate going on and one of the parties has put in over 100 requests for changes to the budget because they claim that they want to save. Needless to say, in the same breath they request more money for the police – not that that in itself would not make sense – but in my logic it does not rhyme with their logic of wanting to save. Credibility is not something that this party is particularly good at building, but they are excellent in public relations… That is, they are very good in manipulating the media, or say, the media dedicates space and copy to anybody who screams loud enough, what they actually say, or the substance of the message, all irrelevant. It is either them, or the media, or the lack of the ability from the side of the public to think critically. Bottom line in my view is a lack of education; our schools do not teach the fundamental critical skills needed to develop democracy. I think that there is a problem in that department…

Going a little further I find that what I am witnessing now in this very Rathaus parliament chamber is a form of violence. A group of individuals that box through over 100 requests and then take the maximum time allotment at the speaker’s podium when such an action has no other effect than to waste a lot of time and undermine the democratic process, are doing nothing less than using brute force. I dare say, this is violence. Verbal, but violence; verbal violence is also violence. It is a bit strange, this is also the same party that uses said speaking time and goes way off the subject of debate into how very violent the streets of Bern have become. Violence begets violence. It is a bit of a vicious circle, isn’t it?

I do wonder how long this charade will go on tonight. Will we finish the budget before the Fall recess that is due to start next week, or will we return to this sorry state of affairs after the break and then finish the budget tirade?

update: we concluded after 3 a.m.

Dear Mom…

Nope, that is not my latest boyfriend or whatever you want to call the dude who massages my feet. You did not know about the foot fetish, did you? It is an old thing with me. I promise to not reveal too many embarrassing details of my private fetishes here. The thing with the feet is all your fault, it started with ballet classes. But it is true, I love my feet, and I am faithful to my old shoes. It has always been this way. Remember Nick? Well, he dared to throw away one of my shoes because they were too flat and unattractive. With that move, he placed himself on the launch pad of ex-boyfriends. Next time you do bump into him, and I know you do, well… there is nothing that I wish or do not wish him; indifference. I know you like him, he was all right, but somewhere along the line I went to Napa Valley and got my head screwed back on.

That fellow in the pic above is actually a pleasant down to earth person who is not afraid of saying what he thinks. So, he and I have this standing date on Thursday evenings in the Bernese Rathaus; they call it something else, but it is something like the city council. We argue a lot – it is called debating – I stutter a lot at the podium because I am still not comfortable with holding speeches in German. Right now we are in the middle of cleaning up the city’s budget. Mind you, this budget has been prepared by city functionaries who actually know what the hell they are doing, but we – the elected members of the city council – take this as our chance to look for hairs in the soup. It gets messy, very polemic, and pretty real although as far as the bottom line on the budget goes, it does not make much difference.

Politics is a funny thing; it is a mixture of rational thought and irrational behaviour sprinkled with all sorts of more or less emotional rhetoric, inflamed words and one heck of a lot of egocentric exhibitionists. I am working on becoming an egocentric exhibitionist, and although I have some good role models to study on Thursday evenings, I am not quite sure that I am up to speed for such a role… May need to go back to acting school after all.

Yeah, stretched and squeezed. About one year ago or so I told a good friend of mine that perhaps in about ten years I could talk about what I am doing now; right now it looks like it might be already in about five or six years when I can lift the veil. Meanwhile I am loving the game!

… in a dash of folly, I mean, last minute folly, last night I went to see Tarantino’s newest flick “Inglourious Basterds.” The movie theatre was packed, and I got one of the last seats; here the folly, I like private screenings without the popcorn chewing crowds.

Pure genius, and my opinion is never humble. I mean, Tarantino is pure genius.

Let’s get things in perspective. I am badly missing home, and home is LA whether I like it or not, it is home, that is where my family lives, that is where my heart resides – in Tinseltown. I miss Paramount and Universal, DreamWorks and all the incredibly flaky, superficial and damn competitive air that one breathes in LA, smog and all. Each time that I land at LAX, the way it smells always hits me like… (no good analogy comes to mind, but home is close by). You draw your conclusion; I like disorder, rot, stink and all that makes humans such comedians.

You are either an admirer of Tarantino’s storytelling or you are not. Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and all the others are icons in the cinematographic nephrology. Nephrology – remember that the kidneys do filter body fluids, and in the grand anatomy of things have vital systemic functions. Cinematographic nephrology is about – obviously – the anthological selection of what few strips or bits you do want to watch. Not having seen Tarantino is a bit like not having read Shakespeare, that is, pretty dismal. Inglourious Basterds is a must see, and yes it might make you uncomfortable and yes some Jewish film critics are not going to like it, others will. I thought that LA Times blogger Patrick Goldstein (note this one is a journalist turned blogger) wrote a pretty decent commentary on the divide of opinions among Jewish critics.

Just the title of the movie ought to warn you that deprived of a sense of humour, you will suffer ingloriously in this visual narrative; neither of the two words are in the dictionary, yet we all get the twist. Something is off, there is a meta message; you may be required to think. It is not a movie for the simple minded, it is an approach to modernisation of history which appeals to my own very twisted logic. It is a twisted movie, and it is the first piece that I see that pierces through the armoured wall of political correctness when it comes to addressing issues that somewhere along the line get the label “Jewish.”

In case you were not aware of it, conspiracy theories are the subject of scholarly work not only among social scientists, but also within the medical community. While backing up the whole of my hard-drive with triple redundancy, I had a chat with a chap over on the West Coast of the good ol’ US of A. Our conversation did not end there, we then went and shared notes on Shakespeare, in particular this one little tidbit:

My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief: your noble son is mad:
Mad call I it; for, to define true madness,
What is’t but to be nothing else but mad?

The whole thing started because we read this paper: Sharp. Advances in conspiracy theory. Lancet (2008) vol. 372 (9647) pp. 1371-2

this kind of dialogue does make my day… and below the fold, the conspiracy unfolds:

O’Pumpkin: as one of the 3%, i welcome our dinosaur overlords

me: me too

we are not mid gaussian, are we?

O’Pumpkin: Brontosaurus Obama will carry us over well into the paleolithic era

He has the kind of vision necessary to embrace new technologies. We’re moving on to newer, slightly less dull rocks now

me: it seems you had read one single good medical research article for a while

O’Pumpkin: have or haven’t?

me: hadn’t

O’Pumpkin: i was actually reading mostly healthcare reform stuff

I need to really wrap my head around what’s where

I’m not that big a fan of politics, but you do watcha gotta do

me: ah… what is your view on that one, since you actually have something to compare to and you know how it works over there

O’Pumpkin: the big crux is the fanatic belief in the capitalist system

me: that is not new

O’Pumpkin: the idea that incentivization somehow makes us efficient and better

which unfortunately is not true

me: if it were that easy… there would be no problems at all, life would be dull

O’Pumpkin: it’s made us speciality-heavy and with a huge overhead dedicated to cherrypicking incentivized scenarios for insurers

me: considering you have had intro econ, you do well in looking at this stuff…

O’Pumpkin: haha econ

I might as well have had intro to tarot

me: ah, then there is a book i can recommend…

O’Pumpkin: “some people buy stuff, others sell it, okay now lets make it up as we go along”

me: “machine dreams” by Philip Mirowski

O’Pumpkin: what’s it about?

me: i just started it, it starts with the cyborg scenario and it starts on the approach of demystifying humans but it is aimed at taking a fresh look at economics, so i am really curious, but i have so much other reading to do that i do not know when i’ll be able to get it read. it was recommended to me by a colleague – economist – now with the asian development bank.

… (and it goes on)

From AirMe

Oh… just wait until Achilles and the Tortoise return: they will tell you how the mindless monkey has returned and is keeping me not just busy, but well… content.

Caught myself telling a colleague that I was taking off one week this month, realized that the month is almost half over. I am missing all  those good souls who organized my life and made it all so easy. Today at lunch also caught myself confessing to Luca that I had left retirement, after all, retirement is not good for old people. Retirement is for the young and able. I could not have gotten myself into the adventures I got myself into if I had waited for the pension plan, arthritis and dentures before embracing the quest of counting the grains of sand in Arabia!

I like the stories around SCM; it seems that I always need an area of new endeavour where at every turn I encounter my own ignorance.

By the way, the new black is nero! Nero vero!

Eliza applet

>> Hello.

How do you do. Please state your problem.

>> it it is nice and warm out

I’m not sure I understand you fully.

>> i am inside the building

Is it because you are inside the building that you came to me ?

>> yes

You seem to be quite positive.

>> i am positive!

How long have you been positive ?

>> all my life

Your life ?

>> mine

But your life .

>> yes… what else?

You are sure.

>> i am sure

Do you believe it is normal to be sure ?

>> i do not believe, i know

You say you do not believe ?

>> belief is for the weak, the help, women and children, not for me

Please go on.

>> you must be kidding!

We were discussing you — not me.

>> that is an illusion

What does that suggest to you ?

>> that somebody here is running on set tracks

Do you feel strongly about discussing such things ?

>> very strongly

I’m not sure I understand you fully.

>> i would be surprised if you understood anything at all

Do you think its likely that I understood anything at all ?

>> no

Are you saying no just to be negative?

>> no, my no is very positive. i am positive about my no

You are being a bit negative.

>> you are funny

What makes you think I am funny ?

>> because i am laughing

Is that the real reason ?

>> what else?

Why do you ask ?

>> because you asked

Don’t any other reasons come to mind ?

>> no

Why not ?

>> who cares?

Please go on.

>> no

Why ‘no’ ?

>> because i am finished with my break. this session is over.

Why do you say your break ?

>> bye

Goodbye. Thank you for talking to me.

Summer & Summer: Beach Optional

Just passing through.

It is an intense week, however I can safely make that claim on most weeks. This week is a bit different in that I have been busy with both family and work, neither of which I can live without. Last night I went up to my neighbour, a retired botanist who has given paleoecology (1) quite a lot of time and research attention, and she gave me a lecture on the Carbon-cycle; it was a much needed lecture. This latter preoccupation with climate change was prompted by a rather open discussion yesterday with a visiting law scholar involved in issues of climate change. Our discussions evidently pointed out to me that I was much too ignorant on the subject and that I ought to seek professional help so to say. In this case professional help meant asking all the dumb questions to somebody who actually has worked in climate change issues within disciplines that dovetail into my own knowledge bank. All I can say is that it is good to air out one’s own ignorance and talk openly about it; there is great value in asking all the dumb questions in the presence of an expert. When the expert is as knowledgeable and a talented teacher as is my neighbour, then I am in heaven!

However this morning I looked into my schedule and realized that there is no way that I will make it to the Aikido summer camp this month at the Gen Nei Kan as my schedule just cleared last week and that week of the summer camp – 18 to 24 of July – is already booked otherwise. I thought of writing Joël an open letter, however what is on my mind are two books that I am reading, one by Paul Feyerabend Against Method, and the other by Hugh G Gauch, Jr Scientific Method in Practice. It turns out that I easily get bothered by the use of the word scientific, especially when it is coming out of the mouth of sociologists, statisticians or lawyers. Of course reconciling Feyerabend and Gauch is not an easy task, however given the fact that at this point I am having a serious intellectual wrestling match with research methods, there is no way to avoid this. I do love action research!

(1)  The branch of ecology that deals with extinct and fossil plants and animals. (OED)

The last few weeks have however been totally out of this world, and I have been enjoying myself immensely both dealing and avoiding daily life’s challenges. I am an adventurer, and my life tends to turn to the worse the minute that I forget that I am an adventurer and go into other directions mimicking adaptation to a world where I remain above all, foreign. The foreign storyteller is an adventurer; I am foreign to this world.

I was born in the dark ages in a country run by a dictator. This is one way to start the story if I am to tell it as distorted as I have experienced it. When I went to school they forgot to tell us that there were other people called Uzbeks, Turkmen, Tatars, Kazakhs, Azeris, Blochis, Kyrgiz, Taliks. Uyghurs… but we all knew about Germans, Russians, Americans and the damned French. Meanwhile the people of Bangladesh were fodder to the news, and India was a far away place that I could not really imagine in spite of all the history that bound my family name to that subcontinent. I remember listening to the radio, hearing about Bangladesh and not understanding a word of what the news announcer was reading. Last week one of the students introduced a few of us to her honey (1) who gave me his business card. On this business card the place read Bishkek and we spoke about something that to me that seemed surreal: the development of a nation and economy that has gained sovereignty not so long ago. (need to put Achiles and Tortoise back online)

On Friday evening I spent an odd hour at the bedside of somebody whom all claim is dying. For me this is unfathomable, we are all dying, not just this person. For the most part we held hands; the moribund slept the tiredness that morphine brings. At one point the moribund shortly opened its eyes and said “I am still here” while I could only respond “we are still here.” For the most part the three of us were there in silence: just presence.

On Wednesday and Thursday I returned to the home base around midnight. On Friday afternoon the wind went out of my sails, and I crashed for an hour on the tatami before class. I have been sleeping and napping ever since; it is the exhaustion of battle that has me. I have been remembering my dreams again. There are recollections of adventure.

On Wednesday two of the most adored men in my life had lunch together and met for the first time, of all places in Paris. It is a small, small world, full of diversity. I have never liked traveling much; it is quite a bother if one is to pack clothes and whatever one considers indispensable and either have to be subjugated to some transportation’ schedule or having to make a decision when to start and turn on the ignition key. The adventurer likes to travel light, this one does, and that means that it is far easier to close my eyes and imagine it all. Alas, the minute that I close my eyes I find the imagination too limited and then wake up wanting to pack my bags and breaking out towards new horizons.

Yesterday I was at a cocktail party and to my own surprise changed my mind about my plans for the rest of the evening. I had hit my saturation point of being with people, engaging with people, listening to people, and responding to questions. I picked myself up and went to see “Coco avant Chanel” and somehow the very subtle social criticism buried deep in that narrative could not escape me. I am still in love with narrative, and above all I remain in love with my own stories and foreign in this world.

(1) Just to set the record straight, the student was introducing me to her husband who has for the past year been managing both his business and the family’s household including two daughters while she – the wife and mother – pursued graduate work in Switzerland.