CSS9

residenceStack.pop();

CSS8

residenceStack.push(CHAMBERSBURG);

CSS7

residenceStack.pop();

Holy Hypothesis

Holy = Wholly

Almost Wisconsin

Today my cellphone battery died, and with it my map+GPS, and I had to find my way 60 miles back home as in the olden days - looking at the sky and reading reflective white paint off aluminum signs beside the road. A misplaced sign and an incorrect reflex decision made me head towards the tollway 94W, heading north towards Wisconsin, instead of 94E back to Chicago. I drove on that road for a few miles, anxious to find an exit to turn around on before I hit the toll booth. I found no such exit, and I had to pay $1.50 just to be able to take an exit 2 miles later and turn back, where I would have to again pay $1.50 to get back to the side of the toll booth I was originally on.

As I drove towards the exit, I noticed a pair of blinkers on the freeway shoulder. Two shadows, barely visible except for their obfuscation of the blinkers behind them, waved their arms to the passing cars, mine included. I stopped a few meters in front of the blinking car. A woman came to my window and told me something about a flat tire. I turned on my parking lights, walked out of the car and asked more details about the matter. As I walked to them, I noticed the two shadows I saw earlier were women, and that there were 4 children in their back seat, all of them girls. They had a flat tire indeed, and though they had all the theory right about how to change it, they were having trouble loosening up 2 of the 5 screws, so they needed some extra torque to get the flat tire out.

"To the rescue!", I declared, as I put my hands on my waist and looked up to the moonlit sky, so they would know that help was here. I scoped out the tools they had, concluded they were enough, and I put my hands to the task. I put the jack under the car, grabbed the metal rod that attaches to it to make it rotate, and lifted the car up. They then told me that I was supposed to loosen the screws before I lifted the car, so a little embarrassed, I put it down again, and tried to loosen up the tire screws.

MAN were they HARD! Even though my shoulder is still in recovery, I can garnish pretty much all the strength I used to have in my arms, and MAN were those screws HARD. The whole car heaved back and forth as I pressed and pulled on both sides of the cross un-screwer thingy, but the screws just remained as tight as ever. So then I put most of my weight on one side of the cross while the woman and I pulled on the other side really hard, and then it finally turned a little bit. Ahh, what a relief. A few more pulls, and the screw slid off, soft as butter. The next screw was tougher. I stepped on it several times, each time very strongly, until suddenly I heard a very loud CLANG!! and the cross thingy turned, seeming very loosened, almost too loose. At first I was afraid I had broken it, but a few turns later, I realized that it was working fine, and the last screw was also coming out.

Then the routine flat tire procedure went through - lift the car, take out the flat, put on the spare, re-screw the tire on, lower the tire, done. As we worked, I found out the women were Macedonian, and I told them I was Guatemalan. The woman knew Spanish, and I remember this one thing she said:

"God Bless You! Qué bueno que paró! No que estos americanos pendejos no paran para ayudarlo a uno, por nada!! Y yo aquí que tengo a mis hijas adentro del carro!!"

I laughed at the comment, and then bid them good night. I went into my own car, turned on the engine, and drove away. A mile later, I turned back onto 94-E towards Chicago, then crossed the toll booth, having to pay $1.50 again, and then a few miles later, I was back where we started.

Funny thing was - I felt really good. I'd lost my way. I'd lost like 30-45 minutes of my time. I'd lost an unnecessary $3.00 at toll booths I didn't intend or need to go through. I'd spent a significant amount of expensive gasoline while doing all this. A moderately OCD person like me would be irked at that. I would've been, under other circumstances. But I wasn't bothered at all, not in the slightest. I was really happy I got lost and ended up there, actually, because I was able to make a positive difference in someone else's life. I feel I paid $3, time, and gasoline to be able to help someone, and it seems to me I got a great deal.

So yeah, $3 isn't really much money. It's less than what a Coke cost at Six Flags today. And an hour isn't that much time either. But I don't think it's about the amount. It's just that the positiveness of the helping seems to override everything else. There's something important to be learned here, and I'm figuring out exactly what it is.

CSS6

residenceStack.pop();

Granada

Sharing a lagoon sunrise over the Monkey Hut

Loving one another in each other's arms

Sharing ice cream on the central park's gazebo

Hugging you in the dark around the corner beside the house

Kayaking for hours in the lagoon until it was dark

Dancing naked on the bed

CSS5

residenceStack.pop();

Patterns of Life and Love

Karma can be so fast and precise.

I love the serendipity of Life. When it delivers, it DELIVERS.

Exploration

(Date is approximate)

I don't feel like getting to know new people.
I don't feel like taking pictures.
I don't feel like recording my trip much.
That's because I'm traveling to explore not the places, but my heart.
~Jul 2011

CSS4

residenceStack.push(GRANADA);

Justifying risk

It is said that people should learn from the mistakes of others.

It is also said that one should be brave and take risks, because life is made out of experiences.

What is the criteria then, that one should exercise to decide whether one should or should not attempt a risky but tempting action?

"It is almost always a mistake to order a second bottle." If we believed this to be true from others' experience, should we then refrain from ever ordering a second bottle? Should we take their words for granted, and abandon all urge and curiosity to ever order that proverbial bottle?

It is sheepish to always obey it, and it is reckless to always defy it. Where does the criteria come from, then?

From the intensity of the risk and the temptation, says I. Risk translates to fear in our system, and temptation translates into attraction. Which is strongest in you? How do you feel about the option at hand? Is your attraction genuine? Genuine attraction - I think Rumi calls it love in his works. Love. What drives us. Feelings drive us. Is Love the core of all feelings? Some says it is the core of everything.

It is almost always a mistake to order a second bottle.

"En Comala comprendí que al lugar donde has sido feliz no debieras tratar de volver."

Update: I'm glad I learned otherwise.

It is almost always a mistake to order a second bottle. I knew it. But I wanted to try.

'Then let's have a plain Bordeaux. Medoc or St Julien or something,' said Ravelston.

'I adore St Julien,' said Rosemary, who thought she remembered that St Julien was always the cheapest wine on the list.

Inwardly, Gordon damned their eyes. There you are, you see! They were in league against him already. They were trying to prevent him from spending his money. There was going to be that deadly, hateful atmosphere of 'You can't afford it' hanging over everything. It made him all the more anxious to be extravagant. A moment ago he would have compromised on Burgundy. Now he decided that they must have something really expensive--something fizzy, something with a kick in it. Champagne? No, they'd never let him have champagne. Ah!

'Have you got any Asti?' he said to the waiter.

The waiter suddenly beamed, thinking of his corkage. He had grasped now that Gordon and not Ravelston was the host. He answered in the peculiar mixture of French and English which he affected.

'Asti, sir? Yes, sir. Very nice Asti! Asti Spumanti. Tres fin! Tres vif!'

Ravelston's worried eye sought Gordon's across the table. You can't afford it! his eye pleaded.

'Is that one of those fizzy wines?' said Rosemary.

'Very fizzy, madame. Very lively wine. Tres vif! Pop!' His fat hands made a gesture, picturing cascades of foam.

'Asti,' said Gordon, before Rosemary could stop him.

Ravelston looked miserable. He knew that Asti would cost Gordon ten or fifteen shillings a bottle. Gordon pretended not to notice. He began talking about Stendhal--association with Duchesse de Sanseverina and her 'force vin d'Asti'. Along came the Asti in a pail of ice--a mistake, that, as Ravelston could have told Gordon. Out came the cork. Pop! The wild wine foamed into the wide flat glasses. Mysteriously the atmosphere of the table changed. Something had happened to all three of them. Even before it was drunk the wine had worked its magic. Rosemary had lost her nervousness, Ravelston his worried preoccupation with the expense, Gordon his defiant resolve to be extravagant. They were eating anchovies and bread and butter, fried sole, roast pheasant with bread sauce and chipped potatoes; but principally they were drinking and talking. And how brilliantly they were talking--or so it seemed to them, anyway! They talked about the bloodiness of modern life and the bloodiness of modern books. What else is there to talk about nowadays? As usual (but, oh! how differently, now that there was money in his pocket and he didn't really believe what he was saying) Gordon descanted on the deadness, the dreadfulness of the age we live in. French letters and machine-guns! The movies and the Daily Mail! It was a bone-deep truth when he walked the streets with a couple of coppers in his pocket; but it was a joke at this moment. It was great fun--it IS fun when you have good food and good wine inside you--to demonstrate that we live in a dead and rotting world. He was being witty at the expense of the modern literature; they were all being witty. With the fine scorn of the unpublished Gordon knocked down reputation after reputation. Shaw, Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Huxley, Lewis, Hemingway--each with a careless phrase or two was shovelled into the dustbin. What fun it all was, if only it could last! And of course, at this particular moment, Gordon believed that it COULD last. Of the first bottle of Asti, Gordon drank three glasses, Ravelston two, and Rosemary one. Gordon became aware that a girl at the table opposite was watching him. A tall elegant girl with a shell-pink skin and wonderful, almond-shaped eyes. Rich, obviously; one of the moneyed intelligentsia. She thought him interesting--was wondering who he was. Gordon found himself manufacturing special witticisms for her benefit. And he WAS being witty, there was no doubt about that. That too was money. Money greasing the wheels--wheels of thought as well as wheels of taxis.

But somehow the second bottle of Asti was not such a success as the first. To begin with there was uncomfortableness over its ordering. Gordon beckoned to the waiter.

'Have you got another bottle of this?'

The waiter beamed fatly. 'Yes, sir! Mais certainement, monsieur!'

Rosemary frowned and tapped Gordon's foot under the table. 'No, Gordon, NO! You're not to.'

'Not to what?'

'Order another bottle. We don't want it.'

'Oh, bosh! Get another bottle, waiter.'

'Yes, sir.'

Ravelston rubbed his nose. With eyes too guilty to meet Gordon's he looked at his wine glass. 'Look here, Gordon. Let ME stand this bottle. I'd like to.'

'Bosh!' repeated Gordon.

'Get half a bottle, then,' said Rosemary.

'A whole bottle, waiter,' said Gordon.

After that nothing was the same. They still talked, laughed, argued, but things were not the same. The elegant girl at the table opposite had ceased watching Gordon. Somehow, Gordon wasn't being witty any longer. It is almost always a mistake to order a second bottle. It is like bathing for a second time on a summer day. However warm the day is, however much you have enjoyed your first bathe, you are always sorry for it if you go in a second time. The magic had departed from the wine. It seemed to foam and sparkle less, it was merely a clogging sourish liquid which you gulped down half in disgust and half in hopes of getting drunk quicker. Gordon was now definitely though secretly drunk. One half of him was drunk and the other half sober. He was beginning to have that peculiar blurred feeling, as though your features had swollen and your fingers grown thicker, which you have in the second stage of drunkenness. But the sober half of him was still in command to outward appearance, anyway. The conversation grew more and more tedious. Gordon and Ravelston talked in the detached uncomfortable manner of people who have had a little scene and are not going to admit it. They talked about Shakespeare. The conversation tailed off into a long discussion about the meaning of Hamlet. It was very dull. Rosemary stifled a yawn. While Gordon's sober half talked, his drunken half stood aside and listened. Drunken half was very angry. They'd spoiled his evening, damn them! with their arguing about that second bottle. All he wanted now was to be properly drunk and have done with it. Of the six glasses in the second bottle he drank four--for Rosemary refused more wine. But you couldn't do much on this weak stuff. Drunken half clamoured for more drink, and more, and more. Beer by the quart and the bucket! A real good rousing drink! And by God! he was going to have it later on. He thought of the five pound note stowed away in his inner pocket. He still had that to blow, anyway.

Heart

Hurt. Hurt. hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt so hurt I can barely think. My chest feels like it has a hole inside, my mind gives in to any thought and any whim, I seem to have lost almost all will and effort to accomplish anything at all. Along with my sleepless state and tired demeanor, I seem to sway, driven completely by the inertia of my body, and whatever's left of my mind - my spirit seems to have gone on sleep mode or worse.

I'm beginning to distinguish the patterns of heartache as it spawns and develops. Mental understanding, mental justification, and then assimilation starts. As this assimilation starts, I begin to feel something different inside of me, a little tickle in my chest, a tiny churning in my stomach, but everything's fine, I tell myself. It's just that, it happened, I knew this could've happened, so I shouldn't distress at the situation. It's fine.

And then, the tickle in my chest extends to my stomach, and the thoughts of her begin to invade my mind. A little at first, and I portray dismissal to myself, avoiding the subject as something to be evaded, better left alone. But despite the dismissal, despite the genuine intended nonchalance, more thoughts of her seep in. More and more, and it becomes harder and harder to dismiss them, having less thought cycles to work with as she becomes the inevitable subject of my focus.

As her thoughts invade my mind, I realize each of them hits that aching hole in my chest with relentless stings, and without my permission, my mind has become a torture chamber for my heart.

Then my head starts to tickle too, or more precisely to feel shaky, feverish, though it's hard to discern other feelings besides the hits on my chest - stinging, dull, empty, incessant like the beats of my heart, which are now much more frequent and obvious than before.

And as all my focus and energy is desperately, uselessly bent towards you, my body becomes all but utterly useless to accomplish tasks that commonly would require the slightest conscious effort. But all consciousness is now bent unto you, and my body is left in a standby/survival mode, obeying habit and reflex to at least move around and keep breathing, while my mind compulsively plays and rewinds my love and my hurt for you, in simultaneous torturous dissonance. It plays the sharpest and most horrid shreak of emotion, and my heart tears to its beat over and over and over and over without escape, without a chance to patch or alleviate itself. That is how my heart aches.

And the outlet I manage to direct my pain towards is this right here: this text, these words, these letters, this typing on my tiny keyboard. I yank my emotions from the deepest region of myself my mind has access to, and I spit it out, blotch by painful blotch, out onto this digital pile of emotional junk, trying to empty myself of this painful confusion. I feel moderately successful so far.

G yddp pgvd rpdahglu tsf ks odvglhpd tsfo yddpglu; yso mde G am ;kgpp kjd ;amd rdo;slw kjd sld tsf ydpp gl ps.d ,gkj alh kjak ydpp gl ps.d ,gkj tsfe Kjd ;amd rdo;slw kjd ;amd yddpglu; G jsph yso tsfw kjd jarrt alh iaodyodd uft tsf mdk sl kjd ;koddk; sy :al Cs;d g; kjd ;amd rpdahgluw dlamsodhw apndgk lsk'a;'mt;kdogsf;'altmsod uft kjak ls, ;dlh; tsf jg; lavdh ;dpy a; nd;k jd ial malaud gl jg; glcfodh ;kakde Odmdmndo sfo maugiap msmdlk; ksudkjdow pdkq; iodakd msod sy kjdm ksudkjdo!

Nfk G hslqk ;dd js, rpdahglu ,sfph ,sov ' yddpglu; aod lsk isdoidhw oakjdo kjdt yps, ,jdod.do kjd og.do rfpp; kjdm kse G ialqk ndu tsf ks od.do;d tsfo ;kodamw G ialqk mavd tsfo rssp; sy kjd rod;dlk yapp naiv fr kjosfuj kjd ,akdoyappe Nfk G ndu tsf ks kavd md a; tsfo ismralgsl gl tsfo frismglu yps,;e Gl kjd;d mdod k,s ,ddv; aykdo ,d raokdh ,d ja.d nskj ijaludhw alh G ,alk ks ;dd tsfo ijaludh ;dpy gy tsf aod ,gppglu ks ;dd mglde Kdpp md ,jak tsf yddpe