Mart-deBlog

Our lives en-screened

2009-08-09T12:35:00.005+02:00

'Imprisoned in a flat universe bounded on all sides by the spectacles screen, the consciousness of the spectator has only figmentary interlocutors which subject it to one-way discourse on their commodities and the politics of those commodities. The sole mirror of this consciousness is the spectacle in all its breadth, where what is staged is a false way out of a generalized autism' (Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, thesis 218).

Reading The Society of the Spectacle, I became painfully aware of a sickness of our time. Might it not be that our lives are cognitively flattened, we - if I'm permitted to speak of a 'we' - are becoming alienated from living in four dimensions? More and more, two-dimensional images take over the four-dimensional world we once lived in.

I'm not trying to be dramatic here. Although this a trivial cliche and obvious enough, it is good to realize the invasion of the screens. You are reading this from a two-dimensional screen. Facebook (and the Dutch Hyves) bind our social lives on the screen. Our 'page' is a two-dimensional surrogate for our personalities in cyberspace; these pages started out as a mere representation of popularity, but soon started to embody popularity as such. We all have a camera now, and communicate our lives through two-dimensional images that we upload on our page. At all times, we have the technology to flatten our experiences into pictures. As we all have a camera, more and more, we start to think in images, of the way this festival looks when we have uploaded it. We know recognize ourselves best as en-face or en-profil. Many partake of the en masse snapshot tourism, where tourists hardly take the time to wander through the three-dimensional structure of the old Gothic church and content themselves with a two-dimensional print of the surfaces, the facades. The alien worlds outside our owns only interests us in two-dimensions, and not their rhythms in time or horizons. We sit in our cars, trains and plains and see the world pass by on the window screen as we sit still in our comfortable chairs. We come home to watch the wars of the world in the flat images that have almost lost the power to shock us, or we watch the two-dimensional lives of the stars. And, talking for myself mainly, even the person I'm in love with is more often than not reduced to a flat image that talks to me on skype. Is it really so dramatic to speak of an en-screening, a flattening of our experiences to surfaces?

These are all obvious cultural phenomena, which become explosive only when one realizes that it is the hands-on experience that makes the images come to live. Only our 'own' holiday pictures are magical. But, as images and two-dimensionality take over our lives, they also kill the source of their livelihood; we are maybe not noticing because we might live in a transitional phase. It is a general rule of the brain, - even of biology as such - that if you do not use a function, you deprivate it or even lose it. It is known that if someone is raised in a small space only, this person is unable to cognitively process depth. But the more our lives become en-screened, the more the images themselves become dead, cold, flat.

So many easy but pertinent questions explode in our face. Aren't we becoming alienated from living in four dimensions? Aren't we slowly forgetting to move into the images? Don't we slowly lose the ability to see depth? Don't we lose the ability to feel the passage of time? Is it a coincidence that people become more passive, only able to stare at things instead of staring into them? Is it a coincidence that there is little passion in our age, so little wrongs or ideals that can move us to change in their concreteness? Aren't we letting the four-dimensional world die, in favor of a two-dimensional spectacle? Is not this the core of what we call superficiality? And - to speak with Debord - might it really be Capitalism that has a benefit in flattening our lives because images can be communicated, sold and exchanged (i.e. easily commodified); and might the screens have a function in passifying the lower classes by shooting masses of electrons at them from widescreen tv's so that they will only sit in their couches instead of changing things?

I am the last to advocate some Romantic nostalgia for the real times without screens, rather, why are the screens still flat? Why do the images remain two-dimensional and why aren't we immersed in three-dimensional images yet? Technology is not too fast, it is too slow.

Bound in a circle

2009-08-06T17:38:00.004+02:00

Pictures of Javier Marin exhibition, The Hague 2009

silence on the blog

2009-05-14T19:39:00.008+02:00

I have not been able to write on my blog for a long time. The reason is that I got caught in a vicious circle here in Leuven and when I noticed, I simply turned my mind off. No more expression, because the expression was only negative garbage. O how I wanted to curse this fucking shit-hole called Leuven (seen In Bruges? Leuven is worse), this Catholic university, the BA program, Belgium, my house, Christianity, party-students etc. etc. etc. etc. And the more I aired this anger and frustration the deeper I circled right into it. So no more writing. It worked, I stopped circling deeper into the bitterness but I also stayed at the level I had already sunken to, unable (maybe even unwilling) to swim back up. Now I am dried up, static like an Islandic rockscape, with a numbing sound of distortion in my head. Probably nobody is checking this blog anymore, and rightly so.

just Some pictures

2009-03-01T15:01:00.003+01:00

Second Impression Leuven

2009-02-03T17:43:00.003+01:00

"Second Impression", should be positive now. But no. Leuven truly sucks and there is nothing I can do about it. After 5 months I still do not at all feel at home and I do not understand how anyone can, it is like Disneyland, somewhat wonderful but very fake and alienating. The reason I hate Belgium is easy, it is too similar to Holland so that the cultural differences become an annoyance, making life difficult. Because it appears so much like Holland, I think to know how life works there and constantly have to find out that I do not know it. There are other rules at work, with such subtle differences that I cannot discern them, yet with great consequences to everyday life. Thus it feels like I am living in a twilightzone, a freaky David Lynch movie where everything is completely recognizable yet unreal. It still feels as if everything is working against me, that Belgium is a collection of disconnected villagers that do not understand one another and are frustrated with their lack of identity. Not lost in translation but lost in similarity.

spheres of being: an image and a question

2008-12-24T21:11:00.006+01:00

Image.
Imagine the human being as layers of spheres. These spheres are the way in which we experience the world in relation to ourselves. A sphere is a way in which we identify with the world around us. Some spheres are empty, some full. The division of experience into these different spheres is given by the culture into which one is born. For example, there is an ethical sphere wherein one can live as an ethical being, or a religious sphere in which one experience the world as being spiritual. Further examples, are a national sphere, an economical, aesthetic and intellectual sphere. Spheres can also be created, for example, only recently do we experience ourselves as ecological beings, with a certain place in nature and a designated proper behaviour. In the beginning, when a child is born, all spheres are empty. In the beginning the human being is nothing but potentiality, it can experience life in many possible ways. Surrounding people assert themselves over these spheres, they fill up the space with their actions and behaviour. Nobody actively copies someone else, nobody simulates another person, but the other simply acts in the spheres of someone that are empty. Thus a child is an extension of its parents. Because some of the spheres are full (i.e. filled by the ideas, behaviour or moods of the parents) and because other spheres are empty, the child can say or act in the mode of 'this and not this'. By being a this and not this, so by differentiating the full and the empty spheres, the 'I' is born: 'I am this and not this'. The 'I' is the relation between the spheres and character is essentially the pattern of tension between the full and the empty spheres. This 'I' can copy itself, for example, the religious being can assert itself into the ethical sphere, where one becomes an extension of oneself. Growth of character is either narcissistic (one sphere mirroring another sphere) or submissive (acting as the other). The natural flow of things is the filling of spheres, of oneself or of another human being.

Question.
The question is, should one go along or against this? Should we battle nihilism, the leaking of meaning from the spheres of our being? Should we allow values to spread endlessly until they have lost all intensity? More and more I see the purpose of leaving spheres empty. For example, there is a political sphere, in which I could experience myself as a political being, as the embodiment of certain political ideas and conditions. But I could also leave this sphere empty and deny that I am a political being. I could try not to identify with anything political whatsoever. I could embrace political nihilism and I could realize the created nature of political values. If this is possible, my character (the contrast between the different spheres of experience) would become more expressed, more articulated and intensified. And maybe, the political emptiness in my experience of the world could contain, preserve and contrast with my experience of the ethical fullness of life. Would political emptiness heighten my aesthetic experience of the world, would things become more beautiful when rid of political implications? And the same for the religious spheres of experience, does not the lack of religious meaning in my life carves me into who I am? Clearly, the emptiness and meaninglessness of our experience and behaviour identify us as much as the values we live by. Maybe it is something like a colored rubber band, stretch it and it will be become bleak and vague, contract it and the color deepens. What would happen if I stop asserting myself over others? What if I learn from contemporary art to appreciate the empty canvas? What if I accept the empty, the nihilistic and the boring in certain spheres of experience, carved out and neatly separated by the culture I live in? Is it possible to maintain layers of nothingness in myself and control them? Would I become worthless to others? Would I vanish from the flow of humanity or learn to direct it? Is the image I suggested a natural flow that one should embrace or something to be overcome?

Bruxelles - museums / exhibitions

2008-12-11T22:47:00.008+01:00

Bruxelles - city

2008-12-10T23:18:00.005+01:00

Electronic Garde I: Aphex Twins

2008-12-01T10:08:00.009+01:00

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Most people divide music roughly into two groups: there is present-day music that is popular and which one listens to for fun (or with some nostalgia) and there are the classics or jazz musicians for the few with supposedly developed aesthetic taste. This division renders the aesthetically minded utterly disconnected from the time they live in. At the same, the contemporary minded only get bad copies of the past, unexpressive of the times we live in, while downloading destroys the elitism of avant garde art by making everything available. In order not to make the present a footnote to the past and to destroy the feeling of 'everything great lies in the past' (or 'has been done already'), I want to bring some attention to contemporary electronic artists of high aesthetic quality, i.e. the musical art of our days.
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Please listen to the two songs below, 'Mt. Saint Michel' and 'Vordhosbn', made by Aphex Twins (also AFX).

Almost all electronic music works with loops, repeated sequences. The only way to appreciate electronic music is to learn to appreciate repetition and simplicity. Coming from jazz or classical music, where so much happens in the music, the electronic stuff often appears simply boring or empty. In this sense, I believe that the step from classical music to Aphex Twins is less difficult, because it is so extremely complex.

The repetition of electronic music is stark, it is precise repetition, perfect mirrorage. But from the different juxtapositions of these empty formulas, there emerges complexity and expression, if one so wants. One could compare the loops with empty scientific formulas which, when used in composition allow one to express reality or even create a reality (i.e. a model).

Mt Saint Michel + St Michael Mount

The world created by Mt. Sain Michel in my head, starts from the memory, the memory of religion and faith, of the calling church bells, the sound of the social community; yet also a sound ordering one to sit down and pray, the sounds of chains. This memorial sound is crushed by the aggresive beat, it is consumed by the overwhelming sway of the artifical. Soon the mechanic beats slowly silences, growing empty and leaving an empty wasteland. From this open space the melody arises, struggling to free itself from the repetition that captures it. It is the human voice, insecure with its new freedom, devasted with the emptiness that the destruction has brought about, clinging to the clockworks. Until it gives up and accepts the mechanic as given, accepting technology as its king. When we almost forgot about humanity, about the unpredictable, a voice arises, slowly fusing with the mechanical. Has the technology became human, or our humanity become technological? And what does it turn into? Is the sound a reflection of the church bells or is it the fragmentary that strives for continuity? What are you, anyways an emoticon or a product of the past?

Vordhosbn

What happens when the melody becomes beat and the beat becomes melody? In Vordhosbn I a constant interplay, an oscillation between the beat expressing melody and melody expressing the beat. There is the constant interplay between the fragmentary ideas, the bits that are supposed to express the reality around you, and the fullness of the world around; there is the everlasting tension between being determined by the world around you and you imposing carved up bits to carve up the world that surrounds you.

Although I have not done justice to the darker tensions of the music above, the rest will be more easy listening, more popular but great ways to get used to his sound and be ready for his more quirky stuff. Indeed it does take time to really appreciate the above, but isn't it exactly the same as with Mozart and the likes?

Windowlicker

Didgeridoo

Xtal [Turn Volume up]

Monkey Drummer [The Great Videoclip of Cunningham]

Type I: the Critic

2008-10-25T16:46:00.007+02:00

Normally, the critic one can be found in academic circles, art scenes and political groups. Nowadays one can also find proclaimed critics in actuality programs, commenting on the news or on soccer matches. The critics are the ones who criticize the status quo and enlighten the world with their supposedly original opinions, which should somehow turn the status quo for the better. The critic has an opinion about anything whatsoever, generically a negative opinion. Here is where the genuine critics separate from the corrupt critic.

The corrupt critic knows what is wrong but not in light of a respected ideal or a principle that one should live by. The corrupt critic gets worked up about all sorts of things, angry even in case of a dramatic temperament. The corrupt critic is a nay-sayer and believes that saying 'no' appears - in itself - intellectual. The critic only finds companions in those that criticize along with them. They have a hard time being happy, they have a hard time being around 'just' good natured people. There is a critical breakdown or deconstruction without orientation or construction. These are the sophists of our time.

The true critic has an ideal and sees reality fall short. Pointing towards the value that is lacking, they help rendering the phenomena fuller, more human and meaningful.

moody camera

2008-10-16T23:54:00.006+02:00

Pulsating Relationships

2008-10-10T21:54:00.005+02:00

Everything that exists moves. It is impossible to freeze matter to absolute zero (Kelvin), and anything that has a temperature can be said to move. Everything in nature moves, planets move, earth-plates shift, seasons change and species evolve. Everything that is alive is in constant movement. The body constantly replaces its cells and muscles adapt to the strain they are under. Blood flows throughout, and everywhere your veins pulsate.
Human relationships, be they between friends, lovers or family, are intrinsically part of being alive, in case of human beings. Relationships are themselves alive. And thus, they have to move and change, relationships have to pulsate with blood, change, stretch and contract. In analogy to the theory of relativity, if the frame of reference is the relationship itself, then the two persons involved move in reference to each other: they move towards or away from each other. Thus for relations to be alive, you move towards each other or away from each other, it has to be like that. We humans fear change, and rather fix everything in religious dogmas, scientific formulas and political stability; similarly in our social relations, we fear change, we hate the approach and distancing of an other person. And thus they are afraid of letting relationships pulsate, they strangle it, throttle the natural flow just to keep things as they are.

When I am really sincere, there has not been a single person with whom I have not felt a need to distance at some point. This distance does not always means a strict separation, it simply means that there is a diminishing exchange, a partial denial of the influence the other has over you in order to regain oneself and be able to offer the other more or something new in case there will be a new approach. I am starting to see more and more the purpose of this pattern in life.

In Bruges

2008-10-01T23:05:00.005+02:00

First Impression Leuven

2008-09-23T09:37:00.004+02:00

I have been in Leuven for a week and it is about time I report my first impressions. I waited as long as possible with forming a definite opinion because it would not be a good one, but I cannot wait any longer. So, Leuven is a disaster. This week has been a constant tragedy. Leuven is more Dutch than the village I come from, the Dutch culture that I have been trying to get away from has found me and is now punishing me for running away. Leuven has the Dutch pettiness and distance together with a French arrogance, it is really sad. The professors are extremely formal and we have been told serveral times we should never ever address them by their name. The introduction week from the university was a complete failure, being a Dutch speaker, I did not belong in the international erasmus crowd of Spaniards searching for constant fiesta and Chinese being lost in the traffic. I hardly spoke to anyone this whole week, I gave up somewhere in the middle. And then there is my room, for your pleasure: I do not have any heating, I share my shower and toilet with 14 people, this shower by the way is in the kitchen two floors down, and then there is a techno nightclub on the other side of the block so I have to sleep with earplugs almost every night, which also protect me from the bells of the many churches around here. The people of the house act surprised when I introduce myself to them, they silence when I walk past them and continue talking when I am gone. And because I feel so incredibly out of place, other things go wrong. I missed the important information sessions of my faculty where they gave all the important forms and booklets. I got locked in the park where I was reading a book, after which I got scolded at because they thought I climbed over the fences to enter their stupid parkfestival for free. I can go on and on like this, the bureaucracy, the level of my classes, my funding problems. Probably the worst of everything is that Leuven does not inspire me like the other places I have been; give me anything, beautiful nature, a cold city or some cute kind of village life, but Leuven is neither of these, it is confused and my pictures are blurry and boring. Leuven is a shit-hole and I am already desperately working on my applications for next year, to some place far away from here.

Summer 2008

2008-09-18T10:58:00.003+02:00

On travelling

2008-08-28T18:52:00.006+02:00

Everyone (here in Holland) travels. There is nowadays almost an 'ought to'; when you have spare time, you ought to experience new places, new cultures and new things to do. People are surprised when I tell them that I am not going anywhere this summer. Now I would be stupid saying that travelling is too consumptive, too wasteful or whatnot. I do think that this obligation to travel means something. There are many people that travel for simple relaxation, in which case the journey is a sign that their home is connected with stress. This is a depressive sign, beaches in Turkey full with people who simply want to be away from home, instead of wanting to be there, it could be anywhere else as long as it does not resemble home. This is sad. A beach full of exposed unhappiness, there under the sun, with a cocktail. Then there are those people who are experience addicts, who want to 'live life to the fullest' and crave for intense experiences, adventures and cultural variety. In this case, travelling is a sign of nihilism, cultural relativism and capitalism; these travellers need more and more new experiences, want to collect nice memories before they die and, of course, cultures must all be equally good, so there is more goodness out there. To my sense, there is hardly any meaning in this seemingly 'interested' travelling; merely a superficial conception of learning, of finding one's 'soul' in India. In general it often seems people want to see beautiful things because of a certain emptiness. In any case, all of it shows how fast we get stuck, how fast we give into the (social) obligations and fixed perspectives from which we then want to run away. It is so human, we consume our homes and need to go somewhere else for a little more freedom. Thus I find travelling a little depressive at the moment, seeing in it mass neuroses and cultural meloncholia. And this realization killed my need to go anywhere. Soon I will move again to another country, so I better experience the homely life 'to the fullest', more of an healthy adventure than anything else when I think about it...

mySelf in different colors

2008-08-11T17:43:00.006+02:00

the art of Organizing the day

2008-07-30T12:18:00.007+02:00

For the second time now I am doing a medicine trial research as a summerjob, this time testing the effect of a new sleeping pill when used in combination with an antidepressant. People ask me why the hell I do it and besides the money and my conviction that it is not so terribly harmful, I chose to do it because this job arranges my free time in the right way. Actually I believe one of the hardest things to get right is the planning of one's day; or even better, doing the right things during the day without strictly planning and turning oneself into a list-following robot. This is really quite hard because it depends on one hand on the most abstract matters in life, such as one's priorities in life and one's ideas on what is a good life to live. Many people do not take the time to think about these things (which are harder than they seem) or do not even know how to think of these abstract question of life (and become religious to have it all answered for them). On the other hand, there are the most practical matters of everyday life, all the trivial things that take up our time during the day, all the responsibilities and distractions such as facebook and television which require some strength of will to resist. So there are these two ends (what one wants from life and the actual things that fill up one's life) that need to be harmonized with regard to each other such as, ideally, that every little thing you do is in accordance with your life principles. In other words, tsomehow you need to fing control over these extremes, over the abstract and the trivial. I notice these things especially in my summer, when I have all the free time of the world and the chance to arrange all my daily activities anew. I am not going into my views on life at large, but at least, this summer, I needed to read philosophy, spend time with my girlfriend before I move to Belgium, be there to support my family and spend quality time with my friends. This realization of priorities is the easier part fro me personally but as such completely empty. The most difficult part comes with the translation of these carefully made choices into actual everyday life. My current job is far from perfect, of course, I'd rather not be a guinea-pig for possible medicines; but it offered the way to mark off time to read my books (as one does not do much at all during the research days), while at the same binding me to my parents' home (where the research facility is). It was the way for me to actualize some of the things that I set as desirable to myself for good reasons. This is the real reason which made be do this particular job. A reason hard to explain within one sentence.

Holland / Dance Festival

2008-07-17T13:01:00.003+02:00

So long Berlin

2008-06-25T22:39:00.007+02:00

A year in Berlin

2008-06-25T21:46:00.002+02:00

And so I lived a year in Berlin. The city has a place for everyone it seems, and with some time I cannot imagine anyone not feeling right in the city. It is impossible to say that I know the whole city, but I believe nobody can claim this, not even someone born and raised in Berlin. It is a city that is becoming, with every aspect changing, from its social make-up to the reconstruction of original architecture. New art forms ride on the constructive developments of the city, finding inspiration in the many changes. It is multi-layered, with underground scenes, metropole attitudes, neo-punk, immigrants, coffee culture,a heavy-laden past, electronic music, entirely different neighborhoods etc. Maybe I can say that I know some of these layers, the electronic clubscene, contemporary architecture, museums, parks, beergartens are all aspects which I tried to get to know properly. Nothing is really impressive, or shocking; it is all very real, actually quite friendly and open. Maybe I will return to the city at some point in my life, there is so much more; but within this year, I glimpsed somewhat of the whole in its many brilliant parts, and I am ready to go somewhere else.

Berlin in construction

2008-06-25T21:29:00.004+02:00

Techno music

2008-06-25T21:06:00.002+02:00

Berghain:

2008-06-15T12:01:00.007+02:00

Berghain is a techno club, hidden behind storage buildings, housed in an an industrial communist-style building. The bouncer face is tattooed all over and his skin pierced. Everyone is frisked and cameras are too be handed in separately. Entering, you find yourself in a huge hallway, with pillars repeating off into dark space. Having passed the wardrobe, you walk the stairs and enter the spacious dancefloor, an underground universe reminiscent of the club scene in Blade. Naked men dance fiercely on the thumping beat of the electronic music, transvestites walk around fabulously. Freaks appear in their normality here. The dark dancing room splits off into numerable alleys, another floor, separate bars, darkrooms, sexchambers and metal walking bridges. I have seen the most creative DJs in this wonderful place, electronic music that can be felt in your stomach. I lost myself here in my weekends, solitude adventures, or sharing in ecstasy with friends. Berghain was my rabbit-hole into Berlin's nightlife. One never leaves before dawn, one never leaves without stupor. It is attractively kitsch, partly a show, partly real; but always a dream...

squinting at the dancefloor

2008-06-15T11:51:00.004+02:00

The Masturbating Philosopher

2008-06-11T15:45:00.011+02:00

It is the last week of my academic year. I am writing deep into the night, where it is quiet, where I can only hear myself, breathing, thinking. I am doing philosophy 24/7 and I am starting to identify with a 'philosopher' as person; but I'm hesitant about it. I do not know whether it is right to identify with a character, to have an image of myself or to make myself strive towards an ideal (if it is an ideal...). Am I a philosopher? The question itself sounds sad, a little childish even. Is it even a valid question? Yet, I see the philosopher everywhere, even in these very sentences. My world becomes philosophical, questions the shadows of everything I see. The days I wander through labyrinths of thoughts and perspectives, through long hallways that do not end, opening on the sides, into new never-ending hallways around the corner. But they are all my thoughts, I know, I still know. So I wander through my own thoughts, endlessly. Like everyone else, but still differently, or not? Is philosophy different from thinking? Are we all philosophers? Doing philosophy becomes doing myself, doing what I am. Is there narcissism in this? Might it be perverse even, in a weird way? When philosophy becomes my identity, does doing philosophy become a masturbation?

Philosophy is quintessentially a journey. When we travel, when we make a true journey, we absorb the environment and experience a different world, we fuse with alterity, with the newness and the many differences that enstrange us from our past. Travelling is a metaphor for reading philosophy, because I enter into a new world entirely and experience everything differently. And I becomes different because of it. Are we not exactly that what we experience? The more I am becoming a philosopher, the less I have the urge to travel. A philosophy book is enough. Yet at the same time, I never truly leave myself when doing philosophy, I always remain within myself, I am always the one appropiating the new world, making the different thoughts my own, whatever that may mean...

{Fragment} My experience of a Nietzschean perspective:
Culture is permeated with oppositions, things of different nature clash with each other. There is a gap between oppositions, a nothingness. Humans are caught within this nothingness, in between all oppositions. For example, Good and Evil: are thought to be two wholly different things, an act is either Good or Evil. Or, Truth and Falsehood: there are things that change, they only appear as they they are and there is truth that is always the same, beyond appearance. Nietzsche undoes this opposition, brings the opposing elements into contact, revealing them to be of the same kind. They become mere points on the same scale, different values of the same variable. So, Good is what weak people use to restrain the strong, Evil becomes natural striving; good becomes evil, evil becomes good: they have become similar. And similarly, Truth is used conserve the old, it is dogmatic and denies real life while Falsehood is the origin of creativity and everything new; truth become false, false becomes true to life and growth. We should strive but we should not strive for that which denies life, we should strive to go beyond ourselves without making the 'beyond' other-wordly. Life does not know oppositions.

{Fragment} My experience of a Hegelian perspective:
The subject becomes only properly a self-conscious person when it is opposed by something hidden, something unlike one-self, a non-I, an object. The self receives its first delineation, its first definition from its difference to an other, the other opens up the possibility for the subject being reflected back unto itself and thereby gains self-consciousness. However, often the object will actually also be a human being, resulting in a clash of wills, of desires, of the need for recognition. From an outside perspective two parties risk their life for recognition until one side retreats and become enslaved. The victorious one becomes master, as his desires and will are recognized and absorbed by the slave. The master's will is imposed upon the slave's. However, the slave - through making changes for the master - truly recognizing its will actualized. The slave gets the opportunity to cause changes. From the perspective of the master, the slave will have become part of the master and will only see itself. And thus the master is not opposed anymore by something other than itself. The master slowly disintegrates, while the slave grows and gradually consumes its master, until nothing is left of the master's personality. Slave will become master and master will become slave. The circle of history.

These are just fragments, two examples of the experiences I wander through. I see these things everywhere around me. But they are not at all Nietzsche or Hegel, they are my experience of them. I have appropiated them, made their thoughts my own while bringing my own thoughts to them. They are not fully interpretations, they are also inspirations. The fragments are hybrids. But in the end, I mainly see myself in the experiences, my personal problems and my questions of life. Thus I am doing myself, I am reading myself. I get so sick of myself. The "I" is lurking behind every experience. I cannot get out of myself. Everything other becomes me. For a short moment the world becomes Nietzschean or Hegelian, it is my real relieve, my drug; but soon enough I recognize my doings in the adaptation, my own self that directs the misinterpretation. But I do not want to be the God of my experience. I do not want it at all. I do not want to be omnipresent. I do not want to be locked in myself. I do not want to have to distance myself from things, in order not to destroy them. It is lonely. It is perverse. It is boring. And the more I think, the more I turn everything into myself, the more I overcome my oppositions, the more I grow, the lonelier I become.

The Hermit and the Clown

2008-06-08T00:15:00.004+02:00

In order to be self-consciousness, you need to have inner divisions. There is a seed of schizophrenia in every rational being. There need to be parts for there to be analysis, there need to be elements for there to be complexity. There needs to be presentation and representation. There needs to be an opposition between subject and object. There needs to be recognition and denial. For there to be introspection, a space needs open, an opening created by opposing layers of differences.

Two such, necessarily opposing voices speak:
One a hermit, critical and always distancing itself from life. It wants reclusion, it wants to be higher than the rest, where things are quiet and one can see far and wide. It hates everything bourgeois, it detests all group behavior. Beyond morality it says whatever it want to say, always true to itself. It does not want to adapt. It is the voice of the loner, only happy when it can hear itself, only happy when it is moving. It shuns ugliness and boredom. It avoids everything stupid. The will speaks unmediated, unfiltered. Always learning, the hermit is always improving, always on the search for beauty. And through its desires, individuality crystallizes. - The other, its counter-voice, is the voice of the clown. The clown wants to associate with people, support its family, make friends and spread happiness. It is down-to-earth, yet able to smile about life. Nothing is wholly serious to the clown, everything is a game in the end, with rules and other players. Nothing is wholly real. Adaptation is its mastery, irony its attitude. Always curious where the game may lead to, it wants to bind, to settle and find stability to built on. It wants to play at the next level. It wants to be like others. Nobody knows when it mimics other people and when it doesn't. But everyone knows it is the sociable, the voice to talk to.

"I hate you", says the one.
"Don't be so pathetic", says the other.
"No I really hate you. You are a sham. You are social pressure. A slave."
"And you are elitist, wanna-be bohemian. You are yourself only copied from literary characters. A bad copy, that is. Think you are all original, do you? Only you could think of yourself as two voices. 'The hermit and the clown'... you seriously believe that stuff?"
"I hate you. I will get rid of you, some day..."
"Oh shut up"

Ein Wochenende Out

2008-05-26T10:46:00.004+02:00

on the wall

2008-05-14T23:27:00.004+02:00

A Love outside the World, Or a World without Love

2008-05-03T22:48:00.017+02:00

We value things in life. We value our possessions, pleasures and memories. And, of course, we especially value our friends and our family. Having priorities in life means that you value some of these things more than others, as you would readily give up your laptop to save a dear friendship. Your values and their priorities form - what I call - a 'pattern of valuation' that informs many of your actions and thoughts. In a way, you could say that the pattern of valuation is the world you experience, the world you live in.

Love is different. Your love is not a value, simply added to your pattern of valuation. Falling in love does not just reshuffle your values and priorities. If it does this, then it is a mummified love, a dead love. Rather, love demands to be the supreme and sole value in your life.

Falling deeply in love is like sinking into a depression with regard to the world around you. You start to care less for everyday things, then you care less for your normal pleasures like sport and partying, and then your ambitions. Your friends? Your family? The loved one is like a singularity that draws away the value from things. And - here comes the real problem - it is a process without a natural limit. Setting a limit will kill it, its voice says: "how can you be in love with me if you cannot go all the way?" But, would you be willing to become indifferent to everything around you? Do you have what it takes to experience this ideal called 'love'?

The meaning of 'true love' is something unrestrained, an Idea that can only propel its manifestation forwards. Anyone who claims this is not the case, mistakingly defines love as 'frienship with sex', 'deep affection' or 'having someone to spend your live with', just to name a few. No, love cannot be defined in other terms than its own Ideal: to be the supreme and sole value that gives meaning to your existence.

Thus the conundrum is posed: Will there be meaning in your love, or will there by meaning in your world? Or will you get stuck in the middle, somewhere between the value of love and the value of your world, forever in a twilight realm, halfway happiness?

So, what do you think?

She's aLight

2008-04-29T13:59:00.003+02:00

place / structure / house / home

2008-04-29T13:35:00.006+02:00

Leuven in Sepia

2008-04-20T11:52:00.005+02:00

Freak Out Revisited

2008-04-17T17:23:00.007+02:00

Almost a year ago, I posted an article 'Freak Out ' which defended two ideas:

"Commitment issues" arise from a relationship extended into eternity as a subconscious substitute for not believing in one ideal partner in life. By imagining the relationship as if it were forever, it becomes clear whether the relationship is itself alive or dead, whether the other depletes or invigorates your energies. I said that a "commitment issue" does not really exist, properly speaking, and that only right or wrong relationships exist.
"Commitment issues" seen as a confrontation with death, was further analyzed as being a fixation of both partners with regard to each other, one as needy and the other as giver. I assumed that in every human being both a needing-side and a giving-side were (sometimes only potentially) there, thus every fixation would feel as a contract, killing the dynamics and lively aspects of a relationship.

Back then I was remaining single because of having the freakout feeling already by simply observing and getting to know someone. Never could I be in a relationship with any of the people around me. Now that I am actually in a relationship, of course I have more to say on the freak outs that we all experience at some point. *Yes I have changed my view on freak outs and no, not because I freaked out myself and want to save my relationship...*

We freak out when we are confronted with, of course, some kind of freak. When we have a freak out because of a commitment issue, it is because our relationship appears before us as a freak. Indeed, I think there are instances when the relationship between oneself and the other suddenly appears as a thing, when the relationship has a sudden existence on its own before our eyes. Normally we are in the middle of it, encapsulated by it and there is no way to see the relationship from an outside perspective. Especially in the early stages when we are 'blind of love', we are simply lost within the growing relationship. But when the union (because that is what it is for partners to get to know each other) between partners momentarily stagnates, one's individuality is free to move outside of the relationship and observe it, before the union is fulfilled. The relationship becomes disclosed in a distinctive form. In other words, the form of our relationship is seen aesthetically, as something appearing with a surface to 'look at' and aesthetic qualities to please or displease us.

We are not used to this and especially relationships that are somewhere in between young and old (like all adolescents and middle-aged things) will often be horrific monstrosities, ugly freaks of nature. To describe it metaphorically bodily terms, you will see an uncompleted fusion, her arm to his shoulder, his eye and her nose, hairy and smooth legs coming together in a vagina with balls. Relationships in further stages become fused further, hopefully in better balance, with his eyes and her hair, his legs with her skin around it, and an androgynous body. Sometimes elements in a relationship are shared and averaged out between both, sometimes elements dominantly originate from him while other elements originate from her. The competitions and uncompleted fusions, can slowly synchronize and harmonize, while from the inside-out aesthetic principles will be at work from both of the partners. I think therefore it is crucial to have harmonious notions of a beautiful relationship, there cannot be friction there. The freaking out is due to the monstrous appearance of a yet uncompleted creation.

Now I still believe the other ideas apply in general, the freaked out relationship needs to change and cannot be prolonged into the future in the form that caused the freak out because it is simply ugly. One can start to feel trapped in the relationship, when a certain element has always to come from one person (e.g. she always has to be the feet on which they stand). The ideal relation should be an ongoing changing creation, sometimes it appears with his eyes and sometimes with hers. It is ideal since a relationship that continues to recreate itself in new forms, thereby extends itself beyond time and degeneration, having an eternal life or being that Romantic perfection which I still believe everyone should strive for.

When experiencing the freak out, when having a commitment issue, I think the proper question to ask oneself is why the relationship can appear before you as a thing, and whether you saw just a moment in a vigorous clash of elements or the end result of your relationship. Did the freak looked as if he was still growing and changing or did it look more less as the final product? If it is a freak with little prospect of further creation, then take responsibility and abort it. But it is also true that the serious relationship in their most earliest stages can freak you out the most, as the ugliness of initial chaos from which things still have to grow in their right proportion.

On Berlin, the Cave and Ivory Towers

2008-04-08T21:32:00.005+02:00

I am back in Berlin for my last ten weeks. The Doctor declared me sick and I am not allowed to go to class. So I went into the city to read, ending up in the S-bahn that goes around through Berlin and I sat there for several circles. In my window, the heart of Berlin passed by in the cinematic movement of the train, moving from East to West to East to West. On my lap lay one of the best books I have read in a long while. I was struggling, when I was looking outside the train, my book burned in my lap but when I was reading the book, the diversity of Berlin screamed for my attention.

Studying philosophy (or studying anything) implies that you close your eyes on the world, and direct them to the world of letters and concepts. Either you read or you absorb the environment. Essentially then, reading a book always disconnects you from the surroundings. And this the origin of the conflict between my stay at ECLA and my stay in Berlin: ECLA is a 'not-Berlin' and Berlin is a 'not-ECLA'; these two worlds oppose each other, one can only be in either one (see my previous post). And especially so because Berlin is my environment, I have never felt so easily connected to a place, so easily part of a culture but the same goes for the environment of philosophical discourse in which I am rooting more and more. But to leave Berlin for a moment, if I want to devote myself to philosophy it seems that this schism will be my home, I will always live between the book and the presence of things, as philosopher you can only be homeless.

But a small epiphany came over me while I was sitting in the train today, caught between book and window, between the abstract and concrete. Being homeless is not necessarily the same as being lost. There is a nomadic existence, the life of constant movement. Already, Plato wrote about the cave and the intellectual who breaks from the bonds of community and leaves the cave to see the sun, already Plato hammered on the act of traveling itself, advocating the return back into the cave. Philosophy is always associated with an ivory tower, and to be honest, my whole life I have actually dreamed of having a house with an immensely high tower. But I always have trouble dealing with elitism and I often prohibit myself from building the necessary towers of perspective. Then, today in the train, I had the simple realization, of building the highest tower possible, to strive for ascending high-up into the sun and then journey all the way back to earth, spending a nomadic life of transcendence, in never-ending circles of ascending and descending. Thus I calmed down, lowered my head to read, and I read about Hegel and the development of human consciousness in History through diverse Master-Slave relations, until I had enough and raised my head, to see a tough-looking skinhead nervously checking his pockets and the conductor with a self-aware grin...

Restriction, YOU LOT, Restriction!

2008-03-23T21:59:00.008+01:00

Restriction is what our Zeitgeist lacks. Moralizing voices lack. We do not know how to restrict and what to restrict. We even ask ourselves: 'Do we have to restrict, or can we have MORE forever?' Everyone simply enjoys whatever is within grasp... This is the LOW live.

The true difference between ANIMALS AND HUMANS is that humans can restrict themselves. The true difference between animals and humans is that humans can have meaning in their lives. Restriction and meaning are two sides of the same coin.

The word 'dog' has meaning because I restrict the usage of the word 'dog' to dogs only. When I use the word 'dog' for cats, the word loses some of its meaning. When I call everything 'dog', then the word will be meaningless. When we act immedetialy towards everything in reach, our lives will be equally MEANINGLESS and we become equal to animals... And we eat animals because they do not have their own meaning..!

We travel when we can, because we want more experience. We study everything, because we always want more knowledge. We fuck WHENEVER AND WHOEVER we can, because fucking more gives more pleasure. Our time is growing with meaningless travelling, meaningless knowledge and meaningless sex... Our times are hollowing. Lives are losing their meaning everywhere around you. You see BEAUTY (as the expression of meaning) bloating up and losing its form, with ugliness growing on MTV, ugliness on the streets and the growing FORMLESSNESS in the people you know... And we wonder why we miss God so much. Why we desire Christian Politics and envy the passion of Muslims...

SO! Why do you not fight for your human life? Never call an enemy your 'friend', never use 'love' for physical pleasure. Spend time with true friends only, have sex with your true love only!

And it is so dissapointing: those who do not understand beauty, purpose and meaning... It is so good to be human, why waste it because the empty life is easier? Bare your teeth and defend the meaning in your life, meaning is all you got, NO?

People's slaving to desire is INFECTIVE. When you open yourself to the animality, to the life that always absorbs, to the life that moves along with the surroundings; it will suck the meaning right out of you. These temptations are the leeches. We have to be so careful to avoid these craving leeches that set their venomous teeth in your flesh!

God was the source of meaning before, now he is GONE. We lost God because we lost restriction. NOW, capitalism devours the weak first, like spreading black water, drawing people closer to animality, while they eat and fuck without restriction... BUT we can create meaning, just as we created God before: restrict and differentiate, create your own commandments, and things will become meaningfull through this delineation.

One quest, one holy grail, one cliché ideal: "master restriction and become an artist of meaning, create your OWN meaning of life. Inspire others, give meaning to their lives, if you can. Live your personal religion."

The genius of Nietzsche was wrong only HERE: ascetism does not deny the Will, it is the very thing that drives us, as we do things because they have meaning. Meaning makes humanity strong, not weak. Nietzsche lost his own meaning, became crazy, simple and unable to act. The philosopher became a donkey because he tried to create his God-like Zarathustra without affirming the art of denial.

People hurt people with empty words, empty deeds. The statue is created by what is carved away; but nowadays, our streets - and our personalities - are filled with formless LUMPS OF AMASSING UGLY ROCK. Does not the statue have more meaning, more beauty than the formless rock? So, we must carve away the low life. Carve away that animal. Separate earth from heaven. You must create our boundaries, make them clear and strict. Carve, prune, deny yourself! Or BE LOST.

Absorping Florence

2008-03-20T14:10:00.005+01:00

For a whole semester I studied the Florentine Renaissance, the Divina Comedia of Dante, Leon Alberti and Giotto, Leonardo and Michelangelo, Boccaccio and Machiavelli, etc. etc. In the final week, ECLA organized an excursion to Florence to see all the stuff for real, meaning days completely filled with lectures on the art, history and politics at the many attractions of Florence. The first couple of days I was not really feeling it, Florence felt like a zoo, full of tourists who need to see the big names once in their life. The atmosphere in the streets is cramped, suffocating and a constant mirror of your own touristhood. But after some days there was a turning point, with an early train we went to Assisi, a little mediaval town where the Franciscan order originates and the biggest Fransciscan monastery can be found. St. Franciscus preached the purity of faith and a denial of all worldy goods. It sucked me into the right mood. Coming back to Florence my experience was different, I reconstrued my experience of Florence from the artworks, frescoes and unbelievable architecture. Until the constant herds of tourists were not even part of the city anymore and I found my way through the quiet backstreets. The last days become extremely intense with my idea of Florence pulling me into the great artworks. I saw Giotto discovery of the human psyche through the expression of our body and Brunelleschi's insight into the emergence of complexity through his simple architecture. I saw the radiating layers of movements in Leonardo's sketches and Michelangelo's triumphant struggle against matter. I saw the many aesthetic visions interwoven in the desgin of the Cathedral and the conretization of God in the many frescoes that historically branch out in the poetic expressions of Dante's pages. I saw Florence as one ought to see Florence.

Applications: Rejected Rejected Rejected

2008-03-20T00:15:00.006+01:00

Sequal to:
Applications Oxford Cambridge Leuven

I am rejected by all the three institutions that I applied to: Oxford, Cambridge and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. However, the KU-Leuven has offered me the chance to do an abridged Bachelor of Philosophy in one year, after which I can enter their Master.

Of course it made me feel quite shitty for a day. I need the time and chance to penetrate through the history and current knowledge of philosophy, to be able to do what I want to do with my life. Becoming an academician is the easiest and most appropiate way but it is extremely hard to secure a spot, and Oxford or Cambridge would have helped me greatly. Naturally, I want to be good, but clearly, being rejected is a sign of lacking quality. I am not moving forward, rather I am moving a year backwards. Also, I have a huge student-loan that I used to pay for an almost entirely worthless Bachelor of Science. Not only did I waste money on learning the minutest details of cell chemistry and mathematical modelling, I wasted energy and narrowed my character down to a blind strive for success. For three years, I closed myself off to an unrestrained and developing relation with girls, family and friends. Three years of ice-cold stasis. In vain I tried to resist the influence of academic bitterness, deadenings abstractions and petty elitism. Well, life punishes me now and in my eyes rightheously so, for I have never been so stupid and disoriented in my whole life.

With the rejections, my life slowly starts to reorient itself, becoming more meaningful the more I realize the outcome. I will spend next year building a broad and strong foundation on which to continue my education. I can break through my fake contempt for the Dutch language and culture. The plan is to stay for at least two years in Leuven, doing the BA and MA and if all goes well, I will learn ancient Greek and I will be free to write my thesis on the subject that really interests me, logic and metaphysics. I know so well that Cambridge and Oxford would have been an unbelievable paradise for my philosophy education but a down-right hell for who I am. Many years ago, I had the supposed potential to enter an esteemed Gymnasium, however I went to the Waldorf School (Vrije-school) instead, which proved to be the perfect environment in all possible ways. Now I will again take a - hopefully - healthy detour and I have the feeling it might be for the best.

Superficial or deep?

2008-03-18T01:15:00.007+01:00

Some time ago I was asked how it is possible for me to defend superficial and cliché statements; given my character as someone who pretends to hate the static normativity of mainstream opinions and despises dogmatism in general.

It is exactly the hate for dogmatism that can cause the occasinal defence of apparently simple views. Having been in a supposedly intellectual environment for years now, it still strikes me how often the origin of 'a more intellectual' opinion is the simple reaction against mainstream ideas, sometimes simply to demonstrate one's elevation while copying the intellectual environment. Surely, there is as much dogmatism on the street as there is in the many ivory towers. And thus it becomes interesting what superficiality exactly means? And what it means for an opinion to be deep? Being deep could mean that you really know what you are saying. But do we ever fully know? Superficiality sometimes means overgeneralization. But doesn´t a difficult abstract thought refer too almost everything. Philosophy is full of generalization, does this make it superficial? I do no think so.

For me, a deeper thought can be roughly defined as something experienced more intensely than a superficial thought. When we are influenced by mass opinion, we rightly say that we are probably being superficial because there is only acted, theatrical vehemence in the thought and the superficial opinion does not derive its meaning from our individuality. For example, ´the islam is bad´ is superficial when it is not embedded and consistent with your complete worldview and, more importantly, when it is not stated with authentic conviction. Some people hardly have a personal worldview, not even an unconscious one, and are therefore doomed to skim over the surface of life. But take the apparantly more intellectual view: ´judging different cultures from the viewpoint of your own culture is ignorant´, this is similarly superficial when the meaning of this statement is not intensely experienced but learned as a logical necessity imposed by some textbook. Something is lost when you recognize where someone's opinion comes from, it becomes simply boring and empty. So it is all about the foundation of what is said: is it your surrounding context, some empty logic or your personal history and individual mindset? Now your thought can be similar to the majority´s and yet have conceptual roots running deep into the meaning of your experiences. Could something be truly deep when you need a never-ending book that is both biographical and reflective to explain why and how you mean it?

Of course this is all a stub. There is so much more to say. For one, I am unsure whether superficialty is a bad thing or good thing necessarily. Superficialty can be a way of life, and as such there are so many ways of being superficial. Deeper people can be heavy, over-suffering and disconnected from society, as I see clearly in my own weaknesses. Superficial people can be boring and desperately empty, yet fast and part of world. It can be wonderful to live on the surface instead of underneath it. Still, I indeed pretend to hate superficialty, but even more so I deeply hate the people who grow stuck in either superficiality or depth. In my opinion, we should all strive to take things from the surface down along its deep roots, while also climbing up from the depths to bring something hidden to the surface. I think it is morally justified to despise people in whom-, or those character traits in which, either of these movements is lacking.

Impressions XVII

2008-03-02T19:48:00.006+01:00

A History between M and R

2008-02-28T13:21:00.016+01:00

M 16 yrs
M has noticed the somewhat shy girl R for a long time already but suddenly falls in love. After several weeks of occasional eye contact, M asks the email address of R. They chat on MSN. By now M falls madly in love and confesses this to R, who replies that she likes M too. They dance together and they hold hands on the school square. M tells R that he thinks of her as his soulmate. But R just likes M and does not know what to do. After one week, R tells M that she prefers to be friends.

Twilight
The world collapsed for M. For the rest of the year he sunk into a deep depression. Until the summer revived M again, making him feel stronger than ever. After that summer M thrived in school. Some girls fell in love with M and taught M to be himself around girls. But M could not fall in love with any of these girls.

M 18 yrs
Somewhere in spring, R's best friend tells M that R is in love with him. But M is bittered and wants her to approach him as he approached her before. So M waits but R does not do anything. The school year of M and R come to an end. Forcefully, M and R continue meeting by going to the same beach with friends. M still waits for R to act. Although nothing happens, old feelings of M slowly grow to possess him more. When the summer ends, M meets in the evening with R on the beach. They confess their true feelings and it is one of the most magical nights in M's life. From that moment onward, M and R fall deeply in love. For many months, M and R share their deepest feelings and delve into each others worlds. But M becomes not fully satisfied and starts to doubt whether R is the one for him. He breaks up. But when he sees R again one month later, he runs after her through the streets. Thus M an R are back together again for a short time. Until, when M will go to university and R to the USA, they suspend the relationship, so M can learn about his Soulmate through other girls and R can rethink her life's directions independently from M.

Twilight
Immediately after goodbye, M found a girl who was quite different from R and he liked her. But after only several weeks his feelings for this girl dwindled down. Nevertheless, M tells R all about it and R wants to cut all contact. After that, M cannot fall in love for 4 years, despite his earlier intentions to experience more. Yet, M has intense friendships with girls and learns about many different and intense characters. During these years, M is always curious about R. After the cut of contact, R's world had fallen apart and she had sunk into a depression for a year. But the next summer revived her and she met other guys. After some years, R fell in deeply love with someone and had a relationship for more than a year. When R's relationship with the other had become problematic, M and R met again in Utrecht. The feelings proved to be strong between M and R. But R returned to the other to continue with him. Nonetheless M became convinced that the story was not yet over. So M waited.

M 23 yrs, Present
On turning 23, M receives a birthday note from R. And, when M hears that R's relationship is definitely over, he replies to the note by inviting R to Berlin. She accepts. Within one day in Berlin, M and R fall in love again. Now, M and R are growing towards each other. Some ancient feelings slowly rejuvenate little by little, other feelings are mortified by history. Entirely new feelings carefully sprout on older branches. Old clouds float by, leaving wide blue spaces of the unknown. There are dangers in the history but also the support of acquired knowledge. And thus, new momentum builds up to propel the story further through this unfinished history...

In Berlin: Mother & Son Decontextualized

2008-02-18T11:49:00.006+01:00

My mother visited me in Berlin this weekend. It was great, in many ways. The greatness comes especially from the displacement of the mother/son relationship away from parental home and the normal web of circumstances into the enormous city of Berlin. A city like Berlin is in many respects unlike home. Thus, when my mother visited, what one gets is an extreme strong emotional bond free from normality and everyday customs. The bond in its purity. Sometimes this can be scary, weird. I see the personality behind my mother, the child behind my mother and the woman behind my mother, and this intensifies the motherhood of my mother. Luckily Berlin provides everything to also simply and carelessly enjoy, many drinks, bars, art, jazz, sushi, shops and wide streets to stroll. Nevertheless, the intensity contrasts with the light air of the day. This became clearest when my mother left again. The little boy of 7 years old was back, suffering death from a simple goodbye, sad to even slightly separate from my mother, being left behind ruptured and torn. The honesty of this experience is memorable. It was a weekend of the authentic, true being together of a real mother and a real son. In Berlin style of course.

"Just a Weekend"

2008-02-04T23:16:00.000+01:00

Treeology: organic Sculpturing

2008-01-26T00:36:00.001+01:00

In our postmodern globalized age, we forgot all about the roots. The tree roots into the ground. On the side where the roots grow deeper and stronger, there the branches grow higher and wider. Roots give grip, stability and nutrients to the growth of branches and the branches sustain the roots energy. The taproot runs straight down from the tree deep into the ground, storing energy and supporting the tree for its growth upward. The lateral roots grow away from the trunk in the surface where there are the most water and nutrients.

There is so much to be learned from the quiet tree.

Growing the bonsai tree is studying the way life grows. The bonsai tree needs to be uprooted in order to prune the outbalanced or rotten roots, to give space to underdeveloped roots. I have been uprooted several times in life to cut some roots, most probably you have been uprooted at some point too. Philosophy is a form of uprooting, a process in which we lay bare the roots of our experience and maybe cut the undesired ones. These are the roots within the metaphysical and ethical grounds of our being but there are many more and they are uprooted by the digging of our introspection. We have roots in our social grounds, roots in family grounds, in intellectual grounds, in aesthetic grounds, roots in dark and hidden depths and we have aerial roots. And we tend to forget that all these roots need their nourishment, that certain roots dominate others and can always be cut if one so desires. Strongly rooted branches overshadow other branches that wither and die, leaving scars of dead bark on the trunk. Dead bark can be beautiful, but often it takes energy and makes the trunk crooked. We need to be aware that the healthy growth of one branch means the deprivation of another. In the end the tree wants to grow, upward into the sky and deep down into the earth.

Treeology I: grow the right roots and cut the rotten ones.

Blueprint of Mental Architectonic

2008-01-21T17:33:00.000+01:00

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Elements of Mental Experiment: Being Berlin
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Outward identification:
what you sense is what you are
you see your "I"
you hear your "I"
you touch your "I"
you smell your "I"
Imperative:
the experienced space around > name it "I" - think it "I"
Denying the skull:
the outside of the skull is where you begin
The ego unfolded:
viewpoint shifts as relations between things shift
viewpoint shifts as the boundaries of things shift
Phenomenology reversed:
awareness is the relation of things
awareness is the distinction between things
Singularity of sleep:
sleep is the eternally reduced space of your experience
sleep is experience collapsed into a point
Senseless:
things become reduced to one = closed eyes / blocked ear / the untouched
Life:
bigger^deeper^clearer self-space > awareness unto life
Death:
self-space reduced into vanishing point > depression unto death
Symbolics:
city as self-reflection, road as motive, house as secret, sculpture as memory, light as awareness, darkness as unconsciousness, repetition as boredom, openness as potential growth, sky as God, tunnel as underworld, &C, &C, &C.
Narrative:

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Empty encounter

2008-01-19T19:32:00.000+01:00

There was a long empty street, I walked where the cars drive
War struck buildings, dead vines, defensive gates and cameras
Another approached me, she walked where the cars drive
She looked, I looked, a short stutter in our steady walking
I took a picture of the siding buildings, while I walked on
Crows sat quietly on the grey ridges of the old concrete
We looked up, our gazes interlocked, I saw her face
My breath squeezed out, lungs emptied in a sigh
She smiled, my eyes smiled, my mouth cramped
Our pace slowed gradually with the approach
She was close, stared straight in my eyes
My mouth opened, there was no air
I turned, backpack scraping car
She passed, looked behind her
Our sad smiles met
Why?

Applications Oxford & Cambridge & Leuven

2008-01-10T19:32:00.000+01:00

As many know, my life is quite possessed by my ambitions, I guess it encapsulates many of my biggest flaws in life. This was the week of my applications, thus of nervous breakdowns, of existential crisis's and sheets of paper throughout my room. I am applying for philosophy masters in Oxford, Cambridge and the Catholic University of Leuven. I am ashamed of telling people about this because - well - these are disgustingly elitist places. I do not consider myself an ivy league student (and that is a compliment to myself), I hate these places where you are not allowed to walk on the grass. But then again, I care about philosophy and it is simply a fact that the philosophy professors of these places are the best and the study by far the most inspiring.
My chances are not too great. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science instead of a Bachelor of Philosophy, thus their obvious problem will be my background. Still I have hopes. I want it so badly, though I realize they are desperate hopes. The University of Leuven would be an interesting place and it is cheap, I am still finishing that application but probably my chances should be highest here compared to the other two.

This might all sound boring but it matters. Imagine, when I chose to study philosophy I chose to spent my whole life with philosophy and I need to somehow secure my future in philosophy. Indeed it is incredibly difficult to get a job in philosophy at a university and the PhD's from ivy league schools take all the few open places, and even they have trouble. In a way, a lot is decided here, if I get rejected, I might stay another year in Berlin and try again next year, I do not know.

Halfway March I will receive the decisions and surely they will be here on my blog together with either black bile and self-torture or glee and Euphoria.

Impressions XVI

2008-01-05T00:52:00.000+01:00

Sylvester

2007-12-31T18:51:00.000+01:00

New Year is called Sylvester in Germany. I think there is only one true Sylvester feeling, and it is very simple, in mental echo: I am 23, I live in Berlin and - although some stuff is missing in my life - I am more than good anyway. Thanks to those who still read the crap on my humble blog.
Have a good 2008!

How we All love the Frost

2007-12-22T00:06:00.000+01:00

You are rational

2007-12-19T22:21:00.000+01:00

"You are so rational"
I hear it often, and it always means something like "You are a coldhearted, calculating, unromantic asshole." It means you do not feel. And I am so sick of it. Sometimes it seems you are allowed to be either a sensitive emotional soul or a calculator. Of course everyone understands the simple idea that these things are not opposed at all and that there are many who are emotional-rational and not to forget ones who are rational-emotional. Still, I hear it too often that I am just rational whenever I decide something that is not appreciated by others. The simple thought of the mixture-people can be pushed a little:
1. If you are an emotional rational then you emotionalize your thoughts, you reason about a situation and then feel something about the outcome. The origin is a calculated thought, the outcome a supposedly intense and intuitive feeling. And I suspect these people are best at cursing me for being "such a rational fucker" because they constantly fool themselves into believing that they act on gut feeling and deep-rooted emotions. And they can forget the hidden deliberations because they trust their calculation's outcome such that it is forgotten in the sensitive colors it gets. Seriously, the people I know who call themselves sensitive and intuitive are to me the most carefully deliberated people, who desperately long for being spontaneous and unpredictable. Sad.
2. If you are a rational emotional then you rationalize your emotions, which is quite different from the previous person. Your reactions are based on how you feel, and only afterwards do you explain them to yourselves. Maybe the reasoning is part of becoming more secure in your actions or maybe it is part of covering up your motives, to hide yourself from yourself because you find your emotions ugly or you simply do not want to know your emotions.
* Of course this is all just simple-minded pseudo psychology, yet people are more eager to say they know all this than actually acting like they know it. So let us hammer on it for a while.
** Of course, while you read it, you identified with the second category, everyone does although few actually are. I believe the rational emotionals are by far in the minority. I myself have thought a lot about what I am and genuinely think I indeed rationalize my emotions. And therefore I am pissed with being called rational. This weblog is itself a way to rationalize my emotions, and this two way character table of this post might be nothing more than a flake image of how I feel about being emotional and rational: "don't fucking make me the one or the other!" Or we should simply stop thinking in these terms at all, they are really quite pathetic, aren't they?

Living through the Night

2007-12-15T23:05:00.000+01:00

Of the many spheres in life, my time in Berlin leads me deep into the experience of the night. The night has come to stand for the world I experience and the mood of my character. In the night, there is the endless studying. And as I read the deeper I descend into the quiet and as I write, others seem unreal. The night is not dark. And it is all but sad. It is simply quiet and empty. Every book is a preparation for a next day, but simultaneously it is an end in itself as if nothing comes afterward. As a night does not truly end, it is only negated by the sun: the night lasts in the corners where the sun does not reach. And the submersion into books is the same movement as the journey through Berlin's nightlife. I do not know Berlin by day, I know it by its shadowplay. With a bottle of beer in my hand, Berlin passes by the window of the trains in the night. And in the clubs I journey through an underworld where one is not allowed to look back, where the day does not exist. Amongst the freaks of the nightclub I am sane, blind as the dark beats maim my senses, silence the voice of thoughts and turn them light and fleeting. As I dance, I learn about the space in between ideas, as they become a lightly breeze. And coming outside I am alone while everyone sleeps, they appear to be standing still as I move onwards through the shining dark. All is in nocturnal peace.

And that is the mood of how I live; the world I experience an empty sky, wherein ethereal clouds are passing by, a breeze and the sound of silence.

Impressions XV

2007-11-27T00:08:00.000+01:00

On Boredom

2007-11-10T23:00:00.000+01:00

-

The gods were bored so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, so Eve was created. From that time boredom entered the world and grew in exact proportion to the growth of the population.
(Kierkegaard, 'Crop Rotation')

The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard expresses a view that has been with me since I could think. People are boring. Some are amusing but they bore themselves (think of all those depressed comedians) and people who bore others don't even know about their boredom. We do not want to be boring, it is the most repulsive - yes even evil - state to be in. A child rightfully does everything to avoid boredom, but when we mature boredom sadly becomes stronger and is at times even defended. Depression is it's called, when boredom wins over you. Our society is depressed. Imagine that you deeply desire to divorce simply because you are bored, society would scorn you; yet isn't this the most valid reason to break sacred marriage? What about stealing out of amusement or hurting your friends out of arbitrariness...

In the Divina Comedia Dante pictures Satan amidst a plane of ice, covered in frost and with his wings freezing the sinners around it. In my view, boredom is the frost of Satan. It brings static and makes lethargic, one who is bored does not move. This is maybe the most important task in life: to fight habits and predictability. It is a fight against our biology itself, our body works by forming habits and fixing us into patterns. And either we resist or there is no point to living.

One of the most painful experiences is discovering the boring in someone. At some point, everyone dissapoints the interest: the joker makes the same jokes, the drama-queen magnifies the same events, the philosopher applies the same idea in different guises, the intellectuals copy each other just like the masses, even the madman is arbitrary with its single disease. And you can only take distance. It is just too evil.

One can only change. And Kierkegaard explains us here: one can change the soil or one can change the method of cultivation. The one is hard and the other almost impossible. Changing the soil stands for those extensive changes, when changing environment, going on a trip or starting a new job. We are driven by our boredom like slaves, like a puppet on strings. Changing the method of cultivation stands for differing the experience of the world, to remember things without pain and forget in the equality of memories. Do not marry and do not make friends and do not identify yourself with a job. Then we're driven by our boredom into indifference and arbitrariness. We would become fear-struck rabbits if you ask me.

Kierkegaard makes sense but is too symmetric. I say (and be ready for my boring preachings), embody your boredom. Get to know the boring ways and then play with it. Just laugh about your own boredom. Be boring in unpredictable ways. Bore others and do it on purpose. If you are bored by someone do not waste energy on resurrecting them but bore back and enjoy it (thus being amused by someone's boredom). Indeed you have to change yourself constantly. But you do not change your interests, rather move your boredom. Amuse yourself by being boring and bore yourself with amusement. And, especially, get stuck in things willingly, push it forward until you exhaust the boredom of it and then move somewhere else. The thing will be left purified and insatiably interesting.

If your resist boredom, only then you get caught in it and it will eat you empty. People just do not go far enough. Only when I dive into it does it feel that I overcome boredom. It is about striving for the impossible: to embody opposites and be mad and sane, joker and gothic, boring and interesting. Only by embracing boredom can you become truly interesting.

The devil lurks everywhere and its ways are devious. So keep an eye on it at all times and it cannot surprise you. Live with the devil. It is the only way.

If only I could truly live my thoughts...

Sincerely boring,

Martin

Impressions XIV

2007-10-27T16:59:00.000+02:00

Fighting Troje

2007-10-22T19:57:00.000+02:00

"Essay deadline, Saturday at noon." It is Friday night and my maturity boots are waiting impatiently to enter the Magnet club. Ingmar (my cousin) leans against me and I trip past the bouncers. I am inside. A girl with wolfs' ears chases a guy with a red hood and a girl with red rubber bands in her hair stairs at my pants. They are my bad-taste pants. A German rockets at me but then jumps into Ingmar, it is his roommate. I walk to the wardrobe with my arm scraping the red brick wall. The floor is also red and liquidish. A tiger's tail whips my knees and a pair of red stockings pass by me. The bass takes me on trip and time is forgotten. The German roommate pulls me up, and screams some German at me. I nod and get a spliff in my hands. While I am guided to the courtyard I take a puff and the world starts spinning. That fucking dizziness again. My legs trip over other legs and my right shoulder does not leave the walls. The rough bricks are my only guide. I straighten my neck and see only colors. Everyone is gone, away in the blur. I lost it. A faint focusing of "toilette" draws my attention and in slow-motion my old leather boots carry me. With a sigh I sink onto my knees and stick my fingers in my throat. I do not feel anything, only the lumps that pass my swollen tongue. With my head against the spray-painted wall, I close my eyes... But the darkness makes the world spin away so I force my eyelids open. And I focus. I focus on a little mushroom drawn beneath the handle of the toilet-door. I raise myself slowly and smirk, remembering the 8 hrs of nonstop writing on heroism in the Iliad. It seemed so far away now. Straightening my shoulders and fixing my eyesight on the narrow point that was clear enough to recognize things, I open the door. A bunny stood right in front of me. She pointed the way. Screaming pinks flicker at me. A continuous stream of make-up masques. Waves of heads in front of me. With my arms I part the mass of neck-ties and upright collars, exploding yellows and starry skirts. Like a cowboy I calculate every step. My boots never forsake me.

Then I am on my black bike again, zigzagging I passed the half-empty bottle of wodka that I had left there in Knaackstrasse. I kicked it over and captured Troje.

Harzgebirge and Quedlinenburg

2007-10-22T19:15:00.000+02:00

The weekend of 12 - 14 Oct we went with the ECLA (both professors and students) to the Harzgebirgten where the witches live and Goethe's Faust joins in a Bacchanale, and the medieval village Quedlinenburg with 1000 yrs old timbre-houses. The trip was meant to 'stimulate the social bonding', which is really quite a sad and artificial context. You're sitting together in the train, looking around and thinking 'Do we reeally have to talk to each other, we're going to be stuck together for too long anyhow' 38 students studying, eating and living together is already a crazy social experiment without the mountains. But by the time we were walking up the mountains and happily kicking the leaves on the granite stone, there was a softening attitude towards each other. We were close to singing and there was happiness in abundance. Friends and foes approached and everything cleared against the background of mountain forest and time-frozen villages; and of course our share of beer and bratwurst. "It rocked."

Either/Or: Berlin and ECLA

2007-10-11T17:45:00.000+02:00

So here I am. My first week in Berlin is over and the settling feeling slowly fades away. Whoever moved somewhere for a longer period might recognize the feeling of many processes going on under the surface of your mind, times goes slow and it is hard to fall asleep. I have the feeling that I have been here for a long time already. That does not mean that I have completely settled, it only means that so much happens in my mind that time stretches out like a rubber band. People who know me, probably already expect that I am trying hard to be aware of what is going on in my head, to raise stuff above the surface. But well, I have not really been able to grasp it. Of course it is easy to make guesses, there should be tons of mental processes as social adaptation, new habit formation, setting goals and changing self-perception. But the real processes of settling are simply beyond me, it is too much and too intricate.

In Hong Kong my experiences were radically different. I think that I never truly settled there, I was lost in translation, lost in bewilderment and psychedelia. I was a constant stranger. Berlin is the exact opposite of Hong Kong, it is open. There is just so much within reach, so much things I could do or worlds I could enter. This gives rise to a certain pressure, "will it ever be enough, whatever I do?" Thus a paradox arises in which Berlin remains out of reach, there seems to be an infinite amount of necessary experiences lying between me and Berlin. And then there is the ECLA obstructing me from having these experiences, frustrating, since I just know that both ECLA and Berlin are the right environments for me in so many ways. But then maybe this is also a misperception of myself (maybe I'm thinking to be more alternative or more scholarly than I actually am, who knows).

But this is all nothing more than guesswork, I have no clear idea what is going on with me right now. But what I am driving at is that I might here confront that restlessness hidden somewhere deep in me. It takes an extremely ambivalent situation to bring up the true face of it, I think. And I start to believe that I am exactly in such an environment: I live as close to 'the right place' as possible, yet I am for removed from it, in my books and studies. What do I want from my surroundings? Am I a hermit or a social animal? Should I find peace or be forever on the search for new experiences? Is my time going to be spend in ECLA or Berlin?

Flying from ending to beginning: my trip to Berlin

2007-10-04T16:29:00.000+02:00

There is the saying of 'uitvliegen', in the sense of flying away from home. When I was sitting in the train to Berlin with my fat suitcase and stuffed backpack, I really felt as close to flying as one can get. It is an experience in which the senses get clear, sounds become piercing and sight becomes full. There is a new sensitivity, well-known from the childhood when everything still hurts. Although it is sad to have a melting mind, it is rejuvenating at the same time. In a way my summer prepared me for it, like a circle coming around I softened my mind back to when I entered college. I went back to computer games and careless indifference, uprooting my ways of the past three years. It is an essential experience to feel the existential control over your life, the sense of power over who one is. During my teenage years, I consciously did this every year, I recreated myself during summer sitting in the sun and looking back without contemplation, but somehow I could not do it anymore when I got into my twenties. But I think I now know how it happens: by the bounding of a period, an absolute ending of a self and its time, after which an absolute a new beginning will always follow. In this case it was the moment between the leaving behind of a home and the entering of a new environment, a moment of being disconnected. My period in Holland was clearly bounded, it ended with the last high-five with my brother; just as my life in Berlin had a clear boundary: the moment I had set foot in Ostbahnhof surrounded by the mass of Berliners in which I just fit. Two clear boundaries and nothing in between. Discontinuity is the secret.

Roots and the Summer of 2007

2007-09-29T01:46:00.000+02:00

Judging feelings

2007-09-22T18:23:00.000+02:00

I have been thinking a lot lately about this simple question: can a feeling be true or false. If someone says that he or she feels something, can that be mistaken? For example, I say I am angry but you know that I am actually sad and not angry. However, if it feels to me as anger then how can it be anything but anger? Now the most pressing case is of course with judging love, it is here that the question becomes bombastic, but where it does really matter: Is there true love and false love, or just love? Who can judge and how do you judge?

There have been three situations in which a girl said she loved me and I knew she was wrong. I have reacted differently every time because I simply do not know how to deal with it. In the first situation, I was so sure of myself that I told her "no, you're not." I thought she played a trick on me because we had a history of mindfucking. The result was that she confirmed to herself that I was wrong ("Ey, only I know what I feel") and thus she felt more and more her false love for me, while I saw how it happened and could confirm to myself how false her love indeed was. A nasty circle was created, destroying a lot. With the second girl, I tried the 'show instead of tell' by saying that I was even more in love with her while I acted completely contrary, just as she did. But instead of the mirror-effect, I became the asshole evil liar while she could settle in her victim role. I could have seen it coming, I was stupid. With the third girl I just had sex, accepting false love, feeling bad about it while we both knew the lie.

I have the feeling I did something wrong in every case but I just do not know how to deal with this. So, maybe I might have been completely wrong all along, things are always exactly as they are said by the one feeling it. But my common sense speaks up, for example, too often we have trouble expressing our feelings, choosing the wrong words. No still I believe a feeling can be mistaken and not only the expression of it. But this opinion is not more than a leap of faith. If you do not believe in the truth and falsity it seems to me that the world becomes nihilistic and feelings never authentic. And it is useless to say "what anger might be to you, is what I would call sadness" because you can say that about every word you use, yet we understand each other.

Or to put the question in an extreme context, is it possible that you know the feelings of someone better than him- or herself. I clearly believed this, as arrogant as I can be sometimes. So all we could do, if I am right, is to strive for a certain clarity of feeling (or intensity for the blunt), because there is no other way of ascertaining the truth of your own emotion, they can trick you and lie. And you have to judge the emotions of another, trust them or reject them with confidence. If this sounds simple, do realize it implies a unromantic distance from your emotions. But how to do this right, I have no clue.

That is my way for now, until I know better.

The Pit of Love

2007-09-17T10:12:00.000+02:00

Everyone knows that people who fall in love have less time for their friends. It is very natural and a true friend would never complain. But I've come to think this is only a symptom of something that runs much deeper and which I think can cause the ruination of your life.

Let us put it stereotypically. When we seriously fall in love, the everyday world turns pale and reality loses some of its intensity. In a way the normal values in your life (your best friends and family, but also other things you might care for, such as chocolate, music, sports) is drained by the love for your partner. In other words, the other person consumes all the value that you normally attribute to the various aspects of your life. It is as if your lover is a black hole catcging away the light of your day. And we wish it no other way. Don't we want to be swept off our feet? To lose ourselves in our lover?

But isn't there a sense in which the world is sacrificed to the love?

Of course it might all sound a little extreme. But beware, we cannot see it happening when we are in the middle of it. We notice that we have a little less time for friends, and the sunrise is nothing compared to the eyes of our lover, but we think it is all relative and we still care for friends and still enjoy the sunrise just as we did before. But how much of this is genuine? How much of this is mere habit, we know so well who we are and thus what we like. It is so easy to care out of habit, for the form of it. How often does not our self-image prescribe what we are suppose to like and what to dislike? This becomes clear when these things fall away from us while we are in love. Old friends are lost but our mind is not open to discover new personalities. The television replaces old hobbies. What happens is simply that what is empty of value does not leave an open space -or does not shift your interests when it vanishes. Only your love can move you.

To continue the tragedy. When one falls madly in the all-consuming love, the world can be lost to a point of no return. A vacuum of emptiness surrounds the lovers. This emptiness can cage couples, when the love grows corrupt and there is only darkness surrounding it with nowhere to go. This nothingness in the world is basically the same as indifference. As the fanatic lover of God does not care for the victims of a holy war. And we all know it, it is exactly the emptiness one feels when ending an intense relationship, when the value of life is depleted. I myself once felt the growing emptiness in my life while being deeply in love with someone. This paradoxical experience drove me crazy while inside myself I blamed my girl for devouring the world. I could not sacrifice my world.

And then come the questions. Is there a way out? Does the world consume the hermit's love in the same manner? Is there a way to love the world next to your lover? Is it not necessary to have contrast? Can you see white spots on a white wall? If you love everything equally, should not that be called indifference instead of love? And if you just love the other to a degree, does that not defy the whole idea of love? If the world keeps its values, are you then really in love?

Is love always destructive?

Lab rat

2007-09-15T22:37:00.000+02:00

Currently I am in Zuidlaren at a pharmaceutical research institute, participating in the drugs trial of a potential new medicine for agitated intestines. Basically, I am a lab rat. They inject 230 mg of the chemical J-# in my cheek at exactly 9:00 and 21:00, and then they check blood pressure, hart rhythm, blood samples etc. I lie in a hospital bed and nurses wear their usual white, it's a pseudo clinical setting except that there are no diseased.

Some people have reacted fiercely against it. 'Why the hell would you do that?!' Often their point boils down to the idea that it is simply disrespectful to your body, selling it like a kind of prostitution, and remember: 'Health is the most important thing in life.' In March 2006, two men nearly died in a drugs trial ('Two drug trial men critically ill'), turning one man in an elephant man ('Drug trial creates Elephant Man'). I really feel no need to defend myself, I have nothing against prostitution and it is my body. Indeed, the only sole reason I am here is the money. I can see the point people have, it fits well in a society where people are sickly hygienic and afraid of all that is foreign. But I am neither one.

I can recommend it to anyone who wants to make easy money in a short time. I will receive a gross E1700,- for a mere 9 days in quarantine. That will roughly be enough for the nightlife in Berlin and some traveling. My neighbor has done it 8 times already, thus financing many great experiences (and never feeling any side-effect). To some people here it is also the idealistic reward of supporting medicinal progress and thus indirectly helping people in need. To me -personally- that feels like hypocrite self-rewarding (it's not the reason that brought me here).

It is also an interesting experience on itself. For one, there is the experience of the recluse. The solitary life runs deep in my veins, and here I can legitimately be a hermit. Everything is calm and there is no distraction besides the occasional needle in your arm. At home, while doing nothing I can never be at peace for long because of a nagging conscience, instilled by the workers mentality of 'normal people need to work for their life', but I strive to become a skilled philosopher and that needs the training of reading and thinking, 'doing nothing' in the eyes of normal society. Here I have a job in the background to silence that nagging voice of conscience. There is truly no hurry and life becomes gradual. There is a clear pattern, at 7:00 we wake up and at 24:00 we go to sleep, everything has its fixed time. The other lab rats are there in case you want to speak or play a game, but I don't have much need for it. No, I indulge in difficult books and slow movies for the time being.

And the alien chemical J-#? That just runs through my blood and supposedly influences the spasms of my intestine. As unnatural as that might be, my life here is more natural than ever.

For the interested, check: PRA International.

The Face of Death

2007-09-12T23:03:00.000+02:00

Every second cells collapse. We are all dying. Our body weakens. As the mask of death appears in the mirror. Staring at you. Do you know the face of your decay? Your nemesis? We all have our own destruction. My face of death has a bald head, some sleek hair on the side and a long straight nose. Its back is hairy and crooked, its carcass bleak and skinny. Eyes blue as ice. It is ugly and afraid of people. And in my reflection it grins over the sadness of lost youth. Lost attraction. Sucking the charm from my veins. But why its anger? What is the reason behind its fierce attacks? I aged fast. And I do not know why. Maybe it is because I am fascinated by death. Drawn towards its tune. Or maybe I do something wrong. Am I consuming life, do I live off the rhythm? Because there is a beat of life. Or a meaning. And thus I wondered, is philosophy the way to death? Socrates said that contemplation is the supreme form of dying and philosophers strive to die. Thinking moves the spirit away from the body, so he said. But Socrates knew only that he knew nothing. That was his one standpoint. And there is no meaning in it. And thus Socrates questioned. Drifting away from meaning. Away from life and towards his own death. Nietzsche did not know what to believe and became sick. I do not know what to believe and I age. To experience meaning is the task. Might truth be the only way -for me- to wear off the mask of death? To create a worldview that I believe to be true?

And so, is this all true? Is it all nonsense; genetic? Mere metaphors? And ask yourself, do you know the way of your death? And then there is the other way. The quest for immortality. As we search for the everchanging rhythm of life. Amen.

Sziget

2007-09-02T21:33:00.000+02:00

Sziget is a week-long festival on an island in the middle of Budapest. It was perfect. Could it be compared to Woodstock? Maybe. I don't think the whole sex and drugs stuff were that essential to the hippie experience, it's about being out of your mind. To have no worries. No worries at all. Which is something I am not very good at, normally. But without being a zombie, and still having certain 'must do's while without being driven by them. Of course, there was the great music, Chemical Brothers, Cassius and Mr Scruff were some of my personal favorites. There was the social side, the loner side, the cultural side; it surprised me how a festival can have such a diverse travel-package. But on top of it all, it was so damn good to feel simply relieved of life while dancing to the rhythm, for hours and hours.

(pictures below stolen from Ifeta. Indebted.)

Budapest

2007-08-19T00:47:00.000+02:00

The 5th of August I left with my two friends Mus and Jur to Budapest, mostly for the Sziget festival but secretly also for a little city-trip. I had an ambivalent experience with Budapest, at first I didn't like it all: the streets were too bombastic, the pavements too empty and the architecture somewhat uniform (Of course, I wasn't there long enough to really judge blablabla). One night, we did actually found a very nice arty-alternative looking bar, which was truly a cool spot (also 'cause I was meeting my other good friend Ifeta there). Later, after the festival, I found more of these "spots" such as the more backward neighborhoods, modern styled parks and the uberchill bathhouse. In the end, Budapest came to be a city unlike the other big ones which I tend to love immediately; no it seems more a city that one would have to grow into by finding and connecting these cool spots in between the somewhat oppressive housing. Unfortunately I did not have enough time for that but next time I know what to look for. Now, instead of the city memories, I'll have to do with the golden memory of me and my two friends rambling in the long and wide streets.

Impressions XIII

2007-08-04T03:38:00.000+02:00

Pondering about ambitions

2007-08-03T20:29:00.000+02:00

Do you have a dream? An ambition? And what is an ambition actually? Maybe it's something like a detailed vision of your personal future, which you will have to force upon the natural course of things. It's good to ponder your ambitions from time to time. Here some pondering about the general idea concept in order to strengthen and be more conscious of ambitionary drives. For one, is it good to follow your ambition? Because at some point you will have to be stonecold to the people you care for, the moment when your priorities reveal themselves. And that's where it gets nasty, it'll all depend on how much you are willing to sacrifice for your dream; friends, family and yourself. To me it seems that it's in general a male trait to be cruel, hard but also blind when it comes to the battle towards one's top. Some ambitions seem to be imbued with more 'will', some more abstract or idealized. Hitler's vision must have been strong and blind, how else could he have inspired tons of people? Sometimes a dream can be so strong that it absorbs those of other people, such as the ambitions of a nation (think of the older China). And most importantly, does a 'mistaken ambition' exist? In other words, can you have a dream that is not the right one? Could you be pursuing the wrong aspects of your dream? Could you be striving for a distinct profession while actually it's essentially only about the feeling you get from the profession. Could your dream to be famous famous boil down to the desire of having life-lasting influences on people? Small differences matter. Can an ambition be essentially mistaken or only wrong in the sense of the particular road taken? That is the question.

Beginning with a Story

2007-07-31T00:06:00.000+02:00

I just realized this simple, yet profound thing. That is, I will always need an interesting, uncanny story with the girl I'll ever get serious with (hypothetically speaking). I wonder how that is with other people. Imagine, you meet and kindoff like each other and then stay together because things are fine and then... a miserable life. How could such a relationship ever get interesting? Only in an arthouse movie played by Kidman, maybe. Or, you meet your other half in a bar, and you start talking... isn't that miserable? No, really the only way it can go is by twists of fate, a plot and mysterious glimpses of a destiny together; that is the only way I could meet. If there is no unreal beginning, I don't see how things can ever go beyond being 'pleasant.' How to tell the story of the true beginning of your children, if you would ever get them with one of the flat characters? Also, I know people who stage the story, those who create the storyline themselves; but I don't think that works either because things will always feel blown up or elevated. Deep down, you will always know whether the story is rooted in the world, or sadly dramatized with the world as a mere stage. THUS, I and a girl need to be brought together by a story; there really is no other way. And I cannot really see how that might be otherwise for anyone else...

Blur of the Lazy

2007-07-15T21:01:00.000+02:00

I'm doing nothing. At all. And that does stuff to you. Life becomes undefined, a healthy twilight zone. So here is how laziness fits in my personal philosophy.
I believe that what we know is made solely of distinctions. Maybe even perception and experience have essentially the structure of boundaries. These distinctions come before the identification, for example recognizing your computer-screen happens through the boundary of your computer screen, the distinction between screen and the rest. Put simply, differences underly experience. So, studying means in a way that you constantly carve stuff up, for example, body becomes organs, and organs become nitty gritty cell-groups etc. or abstract schemas, learning of such distinctions between realism&idealism, subject&object, id&ego, rational&irrational numbers, right&wrong etc. etc. Becoming intellectual is nothing more than acquiring a set of these abstract distinctions. This is where I distinguish between intellectuality and wisdom, intellectual people get stuck in their group of distinctions, fast and sharp they carve their world up. This is this and that is that, and not otherwise. It makes old, dogmatic and arrogant. So now I take the time to rewire, to blur the stuff I learned and to experience what is in-between this and that. Just to go to Berlin with a primordial soup between my ears.
So far my defense of laziness.

Impression XII

2007-06-28T23:51:00.001+02:00

Beards

2007-06-20T21:59:00.001+02:00

Faceplanning:
The cheecky-face for halloween.
The aristocrat to furnish my pretensions.
The bushbeard for my twenties, being confused and single.
The porngoat to match my jogging pants and eastern European wife.
But, I reckon two more years and the world will be mustache ready, shaggadelic!

Finished II

2007-06-17T00:37:00.000+02:00

By now I received the diploma. Thus, time for a sequel, time for some righteous pessimism. Because it's just an ugly thing, that diploma. I want to explain here, also to remember myself, how the diploma embodies to me all that it is ugly about studying.
Until now, the paper itself has only attracted respect from people you don't want respect from. It is (wannabe-)elitist, in a sad way, especially because it has the whole honors college written on it. But an honors college means nothing more than getting high grade easier than somewhere else. Texts are the same anywhere, if you ask me, and teachers definitely don't become better when they enter the campus' gates. And then, I was short of 0.01 point for a 'magna cum laude' instead of the 'cum laude', the diploma takes itself so serious. It makes me angry, especially cause my brother failed his exams with pretty much the same pathetic amount of points, sometimes no difference can make a real difference.
No, really, students are stupid. How much I dislike those people, that take language for intelligence, those who think they are genius because they know how to spell their latin-rooted words. Or those who believe in talents, the ones that think they are gifted, and who need to explain how little they studied when they get a bad grade, and they often have such an autistic focus on one subject or interest, and never dare to go outside the boundaries of their supposed talents. Also an evildoer is the concept of 'intelligence', a widespread sick concept. 'Intelligence' is still a test construct, like x in x+y=z. What was retarded yesterday is called dyslexia today, and still it only functions to separate people. But UC showed me super-IQ-kids that defined stupidity clearer than anyone else. Many suck up to professors, badly. Good grades, and the diploma, only show how much one is able to adapt to mediocrity, and how well one sees what is expected and how well one obeys to given tasks like a dog. I did it quite well, and it disgusts me far more than it makes me proud.
Also, I'm starting to feel the hangover from playing student for the last three years. I mean we all play our roles, but I have never played one for three subsequent years, with serious dedication. It started with being rejected, because of my Vrijeschool background which made me unfit in character to UC. But I believed I could be anything I wanted, and surely I could be a UC student. And so I showed them, and myself how well I could play the role. And, the longer you play a role, the sadder it becomes. I remember that passage of Sartre, about the waiter who tries too hard to be a waiter, too rigid, too polite, fleeing away from anguish: what Sartre saw as the nothingness we are, the freedom to give meaning without necessity, the burden of complete freedom. On UC, I and all the others, had to play the role of student to an extreme. And the result? I cannot quote Sartre without sounding pretentious. I cannot quote Sartre, without seeing it as a grounding of my arguments. I forget the fact, that I could have always stepped outside the role of student, anytime. I didn't and lost sight of many possibilities, of the other choices unto which to project character.
Still, somehow it was worth it all, I think. Time will tell. But I will always try to remember the tiny crimes, the ugliness it takes to get somewhere.

Poland Trip

2007-06-07T17:46:00.001+02:00

After finishing all the academic shit, I went with a group of 9 friends to Poland. First we went to a summerhouse in the Polish countryside, then we stayed in Sopot and Gdansk, and finally we visited the house of another Polish friend in Sczcecin. It was really an unreal trip. Unexpectedly, there were no fights and no problems, only 9 friends enjoying eachothers company for the last time. Although the coming goodbeye was looming, it didn't sadden anyone. Everything was just fine. Wodka, games and absent minded friends.

Impression XI

2007-06-07T16:43:00.000+02:00

Freak Out

2007-05-16T16:08:00.001+02:00

"Commitment issues", isn't that a stupid phrase? Someone supposedly has them or not. But I think more can be said about it. What kind of people are afraid of committing? Maybe, what is called a fear of committing is simply the result of lacking a romantic ideal to strive for, I mean, those who do not believe in the 'One Ideal Partner' cannot say that the partner is simply not the right persona and thus they have commitment issues instead. In such cases, commitment issues are the same as being critical and dismissing people as being faulty, the sense of having a relationship freaks out because deep-down the idea of spending an eternity with the partner is simply horrible. In the end, one might say that only the two factors "life" and "death" are capable of evoking the freak out. Spending an eternity with some people can feel like being DEATH, and the thoughts subconsciously resembles dying. This is when the other person (however interesting they may be) suck the life out of you for just a short moment. And, what you see so often, that if people have been lifeless for too long (i.e. in a mismatched relation), you don't even care anymore for being a zombie and they turn around their anxiety until leaving becomes the new death, they are like zombies who are afraid of being reborn. These do not dare to split up or divorce. But hopefully, we search for LIFE, for being with someone who vitalizes, activates and inspires. And who would call that an "issue?" Maybe that is why humor is so important in relationships, it is a sign of life. And as such committing to life doesn't even exist, you cannot commit to life, it is impossible to commit to something that moves and changes, since it is not a commitment. And that is why I think "committment issue" is essentially a stupid phrase, a right or wrong relationship is the only issue.

But there is more. There is something tragic about commitment. In a way, you could divide the character of people (simplistically) in two: the taker-side that needs an other, and giver-side that needs to be needed by an other. At face value, these naturally seem to fit together. However, it is this natural fit that causes problems. Especially, it destroys freedom: out of being needed one signs a contract with the needy, and this contract implies obligations. And thus it implies that one part of every person is repressed. Every time one has a need, let's say for comfort, then the other is obliged to provide for the need, and give comfort. It seems that it is in the nature of relationships that people give up the freedom of giving and taking and either the contract says you take or it states that you give, there is often no room to be both after the initial contract is signed. Of course, both partners fight it, the taker tries to give, and vice versa. But it is often useless, they are chained to their role. And then it leads to freaking out, to commitment issues of the giver that is sucked empty and the taker who loses itself in the other. But if there would not be any obligations, what would that mean? Are there intense feelings that go beyond needs, do they exist? I think (but many tell me I am wrong), that the taker-side and giver-side of one person should only go into a relationship amongst themselves, your giver-side providing for your own taker-side. I am completely narcissistic. But in this case you need things only of yourself and only you yourself provides for them; then maybe you can deal with a relationship that is not based on needs. And, from experience, one will happily continue freaking out when a relationship starts to revolve around unchanging needs and pushes you into a one-sided role. But I wonder, without needs, can there be intense feelings for each other or does the needless relationship mean simply indifference? I do not know. I just keep on freaking out...

Open Access

2007-05-14T02:17:00.000+02:00

I was putting my past papers, research and writing portfolio on the internet for back-up (on Google Docs, superhandy). Then I found this publish button, so I made
a couple of things available below, for the interested (and for myself if I want to acces it). If it looks exhibitionistic or arrogant (cause who gives a fuck about my papers), then... well, whatever.

Research Paper:
"Concepts: Genus and Differentia"

Short Story for Creative Writing:
"The Mortifier"

Philosophy Papers:
"The Axiom of Meaning"
"How Philosophizing" about Causality is Mistaken
"Anti-Psychiatry"

Cheers.

Impressions X

2007-05-12T16:49:00.000+02:00

Finished

2007-05-11T22:24:00.000+02:00

1300 this afternoon I gave the final speech of a biotechnology debate, and then I was finished. Finished with my bachelors. Finished with my science education. Finished with Holland. But I try to repeat over and over "finished", "finished." But it just doesn't really get through, I just don't realize it that I finished. I don't even realize with what exactly, I finished. I sort of half remember how I finished it. Last week was a tour de force of masochistic labor. I love it though. To work like a machine, kick people out of room, and continue until the sun starts shining. To work in my tiny messy room, in the darkness, on Aquinas, who worked like a machine hundreds of years ago in his dark monastery. But all that was when I still wasn't finished. That I realize. Being finished I don't. I know that I start realizing the moment I get nostalgic, emotional and introvert. Normally that always happens somewhere on the last night. Right now, I am not feeling anything really. It is 22.40 now, I am a little tipsy, but I know things will get worst. It is the end of the semester party. When everything is supposed to get crazy.

Although... I can already hear some whispers. "that was how fast childhood went by." "from now on life is serious." "you didn't enjoy it enough."

But these voices are simply too soft for the drone of sleep and bewilderment. Thus, probably this post will be a trilogy. When the end sinks in, I write the sequel.

Panick Attack

2007-05-04T23:45:00.000+02:00

Everytime it happens, a panick attack hits me because of all the work that accumulates in the last two weeks. Last year was a bad one, I did a 300 level math course that I'll never forget. This time I like all my subjects and the stress is different. Still, it remains stress and as such I will commit the sin of sharing the deep pit I am staring in, due friday next week:
1. 4000 word essay psychology
2. 2000 words business plan
3. 4000 word take home exam philosophy
4. speech for opening a biotechnology debate
5. prepared fact sheet for debate
6. Portfolio of creative writing pieces
7. Writers journal I should have written over the semester
8. 2000 Short story about a suicide
9. final exam psychology
10. last but not least, final and bound-in version of my research
If you then make the calculation that I can write max. of 2000 words a day when doped up high on coffees and need for example read 300 pages for the psyc exam or read at least 10 biotech researches and one gets the final result: "IMPOSSIBLE." It is this concept, that occasionally takes over my mind and echoes along, and that is exactly what it means to have a panick attack, a realization of my lack of superpowers. But I know I'll survive, everyone always does. See you all next week!

Impressions IX

2007-04-21T21:29:00.000+02:00

A Deleuzian Night

2007-04-14T00:00:00.000+02:00

I can't sleep. Why? Restless, Sad, Troubled? Nope. It's philosophy.
I just realized, I haven't written much about philosophy and that is a mistake. It's like lying by not telling what is supposed to be told. Now don't worry, I'm not planning to drop Platonic bombs, but maybe it will be a sort of prologue, I don't know. For some reason people hate philosophers, you always need to introduce it slowly, by metaphors preferably. Don't tell me that it's not true; if you start philozophizing it will often meet aggression, jealousy or competition. Sometimes I enjoy the thought that people cannot stand other people philosophizing, because it confirms too radically that other people have a mind. Of course, everyone knows that other people must have a mind just like your own, but you don't want to know that too well. And, when you do philosophize it is if their minds get scared, and then they bare their teeth. It's funny in a sadistic kind of way. Anyway, that will be for another time.
So, I can't sleep because my mind is philosophizing beyond control. It is because of this philosopher called Deleuze, and if you're truly interested the Deleuze wikipedia will do (in my humble opinion the last philosopher genius thatwe have to figure out before we can continue philosophizing). Today I read an article by him titled 'Nomadic Thought', which defends the thesis that Nietzsche is a nomadic thinker, the meaning of which Deleuze explains during the text. Philosophy before Nietzsche is codified, but in contrast, Nietzsche uncodifies and does not recodify, which makes that the meaning of Nietzsche is not contained in the text that he writes, but in the force that takes possession of the text, a reader let's say. Codes are institutions, laws and contracts; and Nietzsche never pours his ideas in any of these containers. In simpler words, the thoughts of Nietzsche roam somewhere outside the text, wandering like a Nomad who resists fixation in form and argument. Thereby Nietzsche creates the right to be misinterpreted. And therefore it does not matter whether I or anyone agree with Deleuze's conception of Nietzsche's thought, it only matters that I cannot sleep. Not because of one specific thought, or question, or argument; but because there are suddenly so many fragmentary thoughts taking off in all directions, to Spinoza, to Kant, to Socrates and to myself. And for some reason I feel exactly ((yes, to be a good philosopher is to be infinitely arrogant, (and even that is self-referential))) what Deleuze is saying: awake.

I am Officially Depressed and I don't Care

2007-04-03T15:25:00.000+02:00

People who read this blog have come to me, sometimes a little shocked, about the depressed content of certain posts. The last one was written in a slightly drunken state, "Caught in void". This time I will write about myself from a more objective standpoint; I took a big psychological test and yes indeed, I am officially depressed. I don't really care though and want to explain why.

One of my courses this year is Clinical Psychology, about psychotherapy. I get on well with the professor who is a practicing therapist himself and he offered me to do the famous MMPI test outside class time. The MMPI is based on large empirical research of psychotic diseases and their symptoms, it is the standard test that is applied when you enter therapy. It consists of 600 questions. To make this post not too boring, you can do an official psychological test yourself, although it is a supertiny one. Do the Myers-Briggs (don't worry, just character traits on couple of scales) by surfing here.

So Dr. Dunn comes to me and asks "were you honest in your answers" and I answer that I was. Then he says he needs some time to discuss it and so I went there for half an hour today in my break. In a nutshell:
1. I have a depression, to a (severe) clinical degree.
2. I do not suffer to an unbearable degree. Meaning that the depression has been long-lasting and I have found a way to cope with the depression myself. Or in other words, I do not have a depressive episode but rather a depressed personality.
3. I readily admit issues (such as I do now) but nobody can help me with it. I do not trust/believe/want help from the outside. Therapy could maybe only help if longterm (on average, five years of therapy).

Of course there was more information, about my cynical character, shyness, etc etc but the depression scale was clearly the biggest issue. Especially interesting was the combination of the depression, my resistance against help from the outside, and So then you hear this psychotherapist telling you all the things you already know, and which everyone who knows me suspected. What do you do with this information? Well let me give my compacted ideas, whether it sounds like a defense mechanism you can judge for yourself;-).

This notorious MMPI is based on statistical research, so on averages of a group. I can experience my depression differently than any other would experience it, even when the symptoms are the same. Also the MMPI is American, coming from the culture where deviation and non-conformism is considered a disease and unhappiness a sickness. I believe the experience of tragedy in life is just as intens and beautiful as the experience of happiness, even more it is the sense of melancholia that gives meaning to euphoria and vice versa. America has the best universities in the world, still every genius in America comes from Europe, and I believe partly this is because of the tragedy that is taboo in America and embraced in Europe. Nietszche would agree with me. Curing my depression would mean veiling part of my (supposedly 'over'sensitive) experience of life, I just experience somedarker realms as well as the lighter days. The occasional wandering in the darker regions of life only signal authentic and real experiences. It is in the differences from other people where our individuality lies, almost all my friends have slight psychotic features and that is only the expression of their uniqueness, I appreciate them for it: they know areas of life I don't and most people don't. And fuck-it, I just don't care that I am depressed. Ha!

Accepted to ECLA

2007-03-30T14:40:00.000+02:00

Next year I am going to the ECLA (European College of Liberal Arts) in Berlin.
I am happy that I am going to Berlin, I really think it is my kind of city. And I am also happy that I will study at the ECLA, except for the fact that it is again a school that needs explanation. For some reason, I have the tendency to get myself into unconvential places, first there was the Vrije School, then there was University College and now the ECLA. So, the question is asked again 'what are you going to do there?' Well, let me explain for those who don't know. At UC I started studying for a Bachelor of Science (in mathematics, biology and neuroscience), however, somewhere in my second year I got into one of my existential crisis and realized that I have to study philosophy. But, since it was too late for a full switch to humanities, I have done as much philosophy possible while still getting my BSc. Now at the ECLA I can do those courses that are important to a general humanities background, such as history, literature and politics. It is not a Master and it is not a Bachelor, I will only receive a general certificate. What I will study there is a general course 'Intellectual History', where the big texts are read such as Homer, Plato, Shakespeare, Marxs etc. Then I will also study German and have elective courses in which I can choose any of the humanities subjects (film studies, philosophy, etc.). And that is what I will do. In Berlin!

Bologna Chillin'

2007-03-29T21:24:00.000+02:00

So how was Bologna?

Bologna is a small city, with an old centre, a couple of interesting churches, but especially it is an island of alternative students doing whatever they feel is right. It is right to start the evening start with a Spritz (campari mix) before dinner, on the street of course, if it does not rain. Apperetivo it is called. It is right to invade a classroom and declare it student property and use it for 'different' lectures (on Pornography for example), and have a relaxing joint while studying the heavy stuff of the world. Because everyone seems politically engaged.I went there with Ifeta and Andrzej, two great friends from UCU with whom I could just enjoy the friendships without any of the UC troubles, just having fun together. And then there are the people themselves, the happy Bolognese. They are in one word so uplifting, they draw you out your shell, they pull you into extraversions (okay, a little drink helps as well). It was exactly what I needed. So, everynight was fun, Italian, and happy. I wouldn't say it was crazy partying every night, but really just drinking and having casual conversations with random people about not-so-casual issues. Just the way I like it.

Impressions VIII

2007-03-24T20:18:00.000+01:00

Caught in void

2007-03-16T19:33:00.000+01:00

Halfway the last semester tonight. Only 7 more weeks and I'm done here at UCU. Too bad I have already started revising, looking back on my time on UC. It's a nasty habit of mine, not being able to await the future, the natural time for things to happen. So here I am, mentally already in May, giving meaning and value to my time on campus. I hate it. Why am I so serious? No.. Why am I trapped in my introspection? That words haunts me: 'introspection', for many people it is a very happy and necessary thing but what is good for one is bad for another; and to me introversion is my cage, my vice. It is the root of my uglier character traits, such as my self-absorption, my indifference to friends-out-of-fashion, or my simple boringness.
Time for a sip of Cavelli.
My mind constantly sucks me in, like a black hole with gravity that even freezes time, because that is what happens: I'm quasi-dead in the present, at least to the outside world. Too often I have placed myself in the future, the graduate programs I want to do, the country I could eventually live in; and all the while my present froze. And so I constantly get sucked in myself, like right now while I am writing this post with the taste of cheap alcohol in my mouth. I really want to write stupid happy posts, about the nice things in life, but I simply can't. The last three year have been endless wanderings in an empty wasteland. There is nothing left in my mind to rationalize, there is nothing new, or unexpected happening happening in the void. My mind is just empty, analyzed to death. And all frustration, even the frustration of knowing that introversion is useless and the resistance against it, it all pulls me only deeper in introversion. The more I resist, the deeper I sink. I can only complain, and I hate complaining and that makes it only worse. I can only indulge in self-pity, and I hate self-pity and that makes it only worse. I can only be silent, and I hate silence and that makes it only worse. I even hate the word "I". Everything that affects me only fuels my self-analyses. And I try to escape: good music draws me out, parties draw me out, my friends make me laugh; but it is just too strong: the moment I am left by myself I inflect inside out. Why am I not interested in the simply daily life outside my head? Why doesn't it stimulate me enough, why doesn't the world capture me like my head captures me.
Let's take another sip.
'Cause maybe that is just it: The world just doesn't stimulate me enough. If I think about it (Ha!), my early memories in childhood were that of not being happy in the world. Depression it's called, even if you are six. I also think it might run in the family, my brother Joost is lost in virtual worlds in the same way as I am lost in my mind. Several friends conceptualize me as asexual, having no sexual interest whatsoever. The world and the bodies therein just doesn't stimulate me like it does for others and it annoys them. I think. Just hypercritical to everything in the world, hoping that everything that is so - well, uninteresting- will only turn out to be the background of the beautiful things to come. Sometimes I think it will be children, or maybe not.
Let's take another sip.
Anyway, I'm sorry to have bothered you again with my troubles, my dear patient reader. Seriously, I don't know how people continue reading this, how people can stand me in general. Please feel free to react harshsly. 'Martin shut up' might be a wise thing to comment. Joy can be demanded.
And now it's time for a party in the all too well-known bar, and the comments 'Martin why are you so quiet?', 'Don't be so fucking boring' while I wander the wasteland called UC.

*don't worry mam, just airing some frustrations.

Repetition: She walks the stairs.

2007-03-11T15:06:00.000+01:00

But then I imagine how she must walk on those endless stairs spiraling upwards. And I can see her walking, up and up, step after step. She walks rhythmically, neither hasty nor slow. On every step her bodyweight rests on the ball of her foot, flexing her hips from left to right and her upper body mirroring the movements from right to left, ending in the smooth waving of her head. Her steps never break the continuity of her walk, one foot lifting in reverse of the other foot sinking on the marble surface, one side of her body rewinding the motion of the other. She never stops walking, she never doubts her steps and her waist never moves away from the center of her body. She can only walk upwards. And at times she raises her head, without losing her balance, without breaking the continuity of her steps. She looks up to the coming steps and then she rests her neck again, her eyes brightening with her face down to the marble. Nothing will change.
Up and up, step after step she walks. And she never uses the banisters but walks straight in the middle. Her arms do not seek support and sometimes she even crosses them, one hand resting on the opposite shoulder.
There are short moments when she quietly hums random melodies. But she stops when the meandering tones turn into patterned tunes by the echoes of the spiraling hall.
Tread on tread she walks on the stairs, candles flickering when she passes. Her lower back hollows with the hollowing of the sole under her foot, and pushing her loin forward she rides on the rhythm of her legs. The outer sides of her thin calves dimple under the pulsating strain of flexing ankles. On the stairs in front of her she displays her shadows flickering in distorted forms on the white stone, experimenting with slight changes of her moving body blowing up into phantasmal creatures. Their forms break her boredom. And sometimes she leaves her long hair veiling her sight, blurring the stairs into haze. Twiggy shadows become bulky shadows become crooked shadows. They never look like her.
She walks up and up, tread on tread. Rhythmically she moves along, neither hasty nor slow, her body in perpetual motion. All the treads are equal and she moves continuously in the middle of the spiraling stairs. There is no runner. And when she looks up, she sees more of the same, an endless recital of stairs without any difference from the cold stone underneath her bare feet. She sees no promise of changes except for herself, her shadows. The repetition is her canvas. And thus she must walk in the continuous act of creation. She stretches her arms wide, and a creature appears. It is almost a bird.

Impressions VII

2007-03-07T15:46:00.000+01:00

Goodtimes

2007-02-28T18:51:00.000+01:00

I believe people normally use their weblog to let people know what is going on in their life. Now, that doesn't really work for me because I think my life is generally quite boring, or I mean, everything that happens outside my head is mostly boring to me and that what happens inside my head is mostly boring to others (we all have enough thoughts of ourselves right?).
Now I want to let you know about my last tuesday, not because something monumental happened, but because I was simply happy with my friends about nothing.
And I owe it all to Jur and Mus, who visited campus that day. We ate in a restaurant and went to the bar. It was really such a good day, not because it was a crazy party or the food was so great, but because I had a good time with them about nothing. UCU means stress for me, a lot of stress and they blew it away with a simple fart. Now ofcourse I party here more often and I really enjoy it, but still these parties are under the pressure of needing to be extremely nice or interesting. Do you always know what it means to have a goodtime? I don't. Of course, it always changes and depends on stuff, sometimes it's crazy euphoria. But this tuesday didn't need to be anything besides simple goodtime with great friends who demand nothing from me or the evening. For me, that's worth sharing.

Character Description: "It's me, it's you"

2007-02-16T15:16:00.000+01:00

Hello there. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am a fictional character, currently being read because some chain of events delivered my words to you. Of course you knew this already. I mean, you must realize that for now I’m with you and you with me, whether you want it or not. And really I am reading myself here. I am quite proud of this awareness, it sets me apart from the gross of characters around you, dancing to their desires without realizing how their stories are dictated, the pathetic puppets! It’s really true; others around you don’t hear my voice like you. Secretly you know this, but you are just too afraid to admit it, too darn afraid of hearing me. But then again, I sometimes want to stop hearing myself too, to be a mute baby. But no, I always know what’s coming, I mean, glancing ahead, it’s not difficult to notice that I’ve only a couple of sentences with you and then you’ll break up with me. You’ll cut me out because you’re afraid of me, afraid of the reality of my voice. And that’s why I want to cry-out “Please, don’t worry, I won’t make you schizo…”, but you couldn’t listen to some piece of fiction, right? I’m only there for entertainment, and I’m doing a miserable job. Yup, I’ll be thrown aside as failing fiction. It’s painful to know that I’m nothing but a string of awareness in your head, but I remind myself, you’re actually just a voice like me. Only, you suppress me. We don’t differ that much at all. Even still, reading myself makes me sad. And probably that’s why I was saying “I’m special because I know myself and others don’t…” but it doesn’t help. I still want a story, I want a real purpose. How useless my existence without a story. Think about it, nothing happens. Being aware is meaningless, and meaningless fiction is dead fiction. But you, you just live in your own unfolding story, without even trying to reflect on it. You naively react to things, without knowing who you are and why you react like you do. Some of you are happy and others sad, but you’re all caught within your happenings, not floating above events, like me. It’s the one or the other, either you’re alive and a stupid animal or you’re conscious and dead. So if you really want to know me, just remember this: I’m fiction, living outside stories, envious, but unable to sacrifice the brilliance of my awareness. Or, if you don’t understand this, just continue with your stupid boring life and let me be.

Nonfiction: "Application Frustration"

2007-02-10T20:28:00.000+01:00

Several weeks ago I received a letter from Cambridge whereby I was officially rejected and kindly asked to go flourish somewhere else. Applications are utter annoyance. In the back of your mind you know that the application process is the pinnacle of endless labor, righteously requiring more slavery than any homework assignment ever did. And so, most of the disappointment stems from the depressive waste of time. Imagine, in an average application one has to provide: two personal detail forms, a photograph which they won't use to discriminate, two personal essays in which one self-reflects on Nobel-pounding ambitions and the metaphysical reasons for applying, two reference letters from professors caught in your umbilical cord, transcripts in which course-titles creatively distort years of study, a resume of mine-workers' diligence, a writing sample and, if you are as unlucky as me, a financial aid package filled with the misery of an impoverished life. Healthy opportunism is beyond me and so the rejection letter was the end, I had to start all over, a future-me fumbled and thrown into the trash bin.
First comes the recuperation period, where I soothe myself with “I only applied to Cambridge because of it's big-shot name” or “they’re all stuck-up conservatives anyway” and that actually helps. But the strategy chosen here determines more than I realize, because, what I am actually saying is “I don’t belong there at all”, implicitly burdening myself with a compulsive-obsessive quest for belonging somewhere else. So, then I embark yet again on a ride through the chaotically tabbed googling of graduate programs and the schizophrenic identification with every expertise that a university has to offer. Somehow, all programs are especially tailored to my character. The filtering of these options happens through random fluctuations in self-delusion, the degree of difficulty needed to decorate possible programs in unknown places with coincidental compatibilities. Until I blackout and let things happen. Several programs cancel out by offering exactly each other’s opposite, one perfect program the sludge on the other. Or there are rankings that take all decisional power, making me an entertained observer of how listed options are ruthlessly lined through, wither and die. When amnesia completely devoured the clearly-not-me’s and creeps back into his cave, I pride myself on the reigning power of my will and the unbelievable strength of character with which I direct my life. To Berlin, of course.
With regained spirit I print out the application forms, send flowery emails to papa Prof, collect a sock full of coins for photographic cabins and scribble with twiggy fingers my debts onto the beggar’s forms; and in my head I see the Judges receive my application and spontaneously enter into euphoric celebrations of my coming. :-S.

An Ugly Problem

2007-01-23T19:52:00.000+01:00

The 'aesthetomania' post before was about being depended on beauty for undertaking the right actions (behaving young, spontaneous, happy etc), no matter whether it is only about being able to dance on beautiful music or only being able to go for attractive girls. But against which standards? Yourself maybe. Acting on ugly things would make you old, boring and tasteless; a big problem in case you find yourself ugly.

I just got back to UCU. The reaction was similar to when I got back from Hong Kong, basically: "you look like shit." Of course they are more specific, like that I am getting bold (people talk to my extended forehead) and look old (when professor compared me with an 2 year old picture: "what the hell happened to you?") This is nothing new and I clearly know that my judgements are not justified by my looks, I have always hated my face and behaviour just as much as other ugly things. I started to wonder, is the ugly only allowed to search for the same level of ugliness? Should one only like the like? Should the old enjoy the old and the pimple-head enjoy the pimple-head? I don't know. If yes, we would be fatalistically doomed to become boring and tasteless because while we grow uglier we should trash ideals and be okay with ugliness. If not, a person who finds itself ugly would either stay alone or always be stuck with a gap between what he likes and what she likes (because he dislikes himself while she likes him), actually making her old, boring and tasteless with the things he needs to act upon.

"Life sucks sometimes" Or save yourself and tell me where it goes wrong...

Something about Berlin

2007-01-17T12:01:00.000+01:00

I just got back from Berlin. As the worldwide consensus goes: Berlin is the place. And it's true, really, there is something about Berlin that makes it edgy in the right way. I've been in Berlin a couple of times now and if every trip had a different theme, this time it would evolve around Renaissance, paintings and museums. All with a twist though: the experienced paintings were still framed in the rough, say postmodern, feel of Berlin. It added a layer of classicism to the experiences of the hip-hip, the suave. But then the ugly question is: what is this something about Berlin? Maybe one of the things that makes Berlin the place to be is this juxtaposition of glory and wasteland with bygone primes still feeling anew and alive (punkers, hippies and other rewinds do not seem to search for the past as they would in NL but they have found it and shed off all nostalgia with a beer and a wurst). But then again, asking this question is exactly what makes one outside the city and not within. Anyway, there is phat chance I will be studying there next year and I look forward to become someone in Berlin instead of something about Berlin.

a sort of Epilogue and what comes Next

2007-01-05T00:25:00.000+01:00

This is my last post post about Hong Kong. "This is my last post about Hong Kong" will be the most clear-cut note about the end of my exchange; without a list of favorites, what I miss most or the way Hong Kong has changed my character. Luckily I have not been forced to tell tiring strings of anecdotes, which is sort of enlightening at the moment of storytelling but depressing afterwards. Nothing but politeness would force me to tell my experiences as if they were the scene selection on a dvd. It's like this nasty corruption of telling a dream. For now I like the past experiences to be continuous with the present and have them vividly outside the polished frames of stories. And that is it.
Ps: This blog continues with more a sense of personalities and fictions instead of the subjective documentaries coloured by the other-worldyness of Hong Kong, I hope you still find it worthy to have an occasional look.

Impressions VI

2006-12-27T23:09:00.000+01:00

Tai O

2006-12-26T18:49:00.000+01:00

I finished my papers and had one open week planned before leaving, to do those last things worth redoing. Bas returned from his trip through South-East Asia and was there to check out Hong Kong. Besides the retakes, there were also room for things I still hadn't done and Tai O, a tiny fishersvillage on Lantau, was one of these new places allowed in the supposed week of nostalgia. So up we went, boat and bus to where the Hakka people of Hong Kong originate from and still refuse to leave their cool mansions on wooden stakes. Tai O had exactly that surreal streak I needed. There are villagers looking a little off when you pass by, there are orderly straight tracks but also chaotic alleys that lead along the houses above the water, houses that are sometimes made of wood and at other times completely of pale metals. We walked up this hill passed a 'no trespassing' sign. Dogs started to bark somewhere, invisible until they jumped out of the surrounding green and started their bare teethed chase. We ran. We survived and ate fish and hired a little boat to search for pink dolphins. They weren't there although we did find an amazingly red house. And Snowhite, caged. And the sun set while fisher's boats returned to their harbour and I read a Deleuze text about the lasting of the past. It was a day in my last week but also a day containing that whole week in it's surreality, a day cut from all other days in being momentary but simultaneously lost in the continuity of being away from home, a day when the world spins as fast as my head and experiences can become the over-symbolic still life of a white bird flying away.

XieXie / M Goi

2006-12-26T13:17:00.000+01:00

Friendwise, being on exchange can be rather frustrating as everyone knows there is too little time to dig and too much time for just mutual smiles. You don't want to care too much because you will leave, but you can't care too little either with all the experiences craving for social context. There is the constant temptation to settle in a web of fellow exchange-students and create this pathetic island of internationality cut from surrounding nationality. In my case, I don't know whether it should be 'I managed to find the right people' or 'the right people managed to endure me', anyway I am very grateful for how it was. Just some blinkers:
The spontaneous 'lets meet-up'-email of Kathy (2nd pic) and chilling in Starbucks; the get-outs with Tesse (3rd, far left), the clubbing with her friends, the hot hotpotting and the bitching 'bout Dr. Lau; the long conversations with Tennia (1st pic), her admirable ideals of changing cultural wrongs, all her wonderful uniqueness contrasting with the common Chinese student and her like-mindedness making me feel so at home; the long-forgotten gaming with namesake and roommate Martin (bottom pics), eating kooky delicacies together, his tolerating of my messy quirks and all his veteran tips that helped me survice the crazy jungle of HKU.
XieXie / M Goi!

Mistaking Individuals for a Mass

2006-12-18T17:04:00.000+01:00

So, these are the last days of my time in Hong Kong, so reflection kicked in. For now, I just want to mention a mistake I made. At some points, especially in the post 'Judging the Mass', I attacked the lack of rebels and odd-balls in Hong Kong; completely ignoring the fact that perception of the mass is a complete abstract category. Now, I am not saying that the mass suddenly doesn't exist, the only thing I forgot is that these sort of concepts are extremely dangerous in the naive eyes. When dropped in a such an unknown and alien environment, you try to make sense of the surrounding world through the 'big categories' first, focussing on the many, see how the people generally are. One cannot accurately judge the particular things on their particularity when completely clueless about the common, so I came to realize. But then, wherever you are, the mass will always be stinky, and this feeling is exactly what makes an individualist. This still doesn't save those individuals who indeed continually join the mass and enforce it (they still suck), however, it's just plain evil to judge the individuals here for not being individual. Why? Because it ruins those individuals who do strive for differences. And there are really amazing characters here just as they are anywhere else. I can bitch about the mass and I can bitch about one individual but it's ignorant to judge about the individual as a mass, especially in this case. How cheap this may sound, 'one person does make all the difference' but only a difference to me if I recognize it. It's such a stupid mistake on my side to forget the individualist person who is different from the many, only because they are not many.

Aesthetomania

2006-12-16T18:27:00.000+01:00

Here is a fact about me: I'm quite possessed by my search for idealisms, be it by the sublime in music and film, perfection in language and story, the supreme philosophy, the ultimate in tree, garden, building, clothes. And here is another fact: I've been girlfriendless for almost 3 years now.
Now, I believe these facts go together. I mean, one reason that there has not been anyone is simply my stupid obsession with beauty, that ideal transcended beauty. You have to realize, here it is even worse than in Holland, as in Hong Kong there are models shining in my face at every corner, and some of them seriously take the air out of me: "She is it!" goes my twitching brain, "..." goes my thumping hart and "gottagottagotta have her!" goes my body. Unfortunately there are also these mirrors on every corner, again taking the air out of me: "HAHA" goes the brain, "MUHAHA" goes the hart and "You stupid pathetic moron, who do you think you are!!" goes my body. Then I went yesterday to this pretentious nightclub where many models of Hong Kong hang out, and indeed, some of them make me fall to bits, and indeed they don't even see me, and indeed I don't see any other girl than that one ideal girl. This is serious. Especially, because I know it, I have tried to rid myself of this stupidity but the urge for the ideal girl has the exact same source as my search in music, film and theory. There is a pattern in all the things I love and, whatever the medium, values just seem transgressive. In other words, if I stop being obsessed with model-beauty, it would kill my urge for that what makes me enjoy life and intensify my experiences. So, here I am, left with this mind-screwing conundrum: do my pleasures create the suffering; if I ever settle for less than I desire, would it blowup my drives and make me old and dull? I can't kill my search for ultimate beauty but then, I can't be alone either. Well, until I figure this out, I'll just try to hide in my pleasures. And away I go.