Mart-deBlog

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.

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?

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.

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 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.)