It’s the christmas night and im at my relative’s countryside house, sitting alone at the head of a long table, wearing 2 sweaters and working on my laptop. Yes, seriously working for cash and not for any abstract reward this time, at least in the short term. Outside in the garden is foggy, cold and malencholic. Is it not funny? Just a couple of years ago I imagined myself ending up in a hot place far away from here, with hot chicks, hot pots and talking about hot topics…
Accepting the idea of temporarily re-settling in the very first place that I thought I was going to leave for good, isnt easy at all, but it comes with some benefits as well. I have my own car and im free to drive to any place at any time across the whole european union which is giving me freedom of action. I have splendid networking that gives me protection and injects freedom of choice, I got a place where I can decide who gets in and who gets out, where I can finally play the role of the host and not the guest. A stable lan that allows me to download tons of international movies, stream any live show and talk freely and clearly to any friend around the world without bearing with tedious loading times.
However, I am embracing a solution of truce just because I was way too fed up with 3rd world settings; tired of seeing disorganization, scarce hygiene, uncontrolled birth rate, dirty, dusty and polluted cities but on top of all unlimited ignorance. Threatens to your propriety, your bank account and your person whoes life-value is worth less than a quarter compared to a civilized country.
Thinking about few months ago, while landing at Milan airport, I felt surprisingly happy to be back…for the first time ever.
It’s the early morning and I am about to leave a country, any country; no matter how much I hate a place, I cant help but feeling a vast sense of abandonment mixed to an embittered motion of leaving to the indefinite. The pain of destroying a current set of adaptations and start everything from scratch once again, for the millionth time. Leaving behind repetitive tiny shreds of simplicity and fulfilling meaningless actions, I feel like I once I’ve left, I could never return under the same circumstances and state of mind. So I feel like I’d like to stay forever, despite everything…then a part of me dies inside, wanting to disappear and simply be everywhere at the same time.
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When I cant cope with the bottleneck caused by the difficulty in operating with an intricate multitasking lifestyle, I often strive to have the imminent option of updating my brain’s ram otherwise having a bigger brain or alternatively keep wishing that the day could long enough to handle the multitude of those never ending I/O.
It’s scary to observe how deep the menkind lifestyle change in the last millennium has influenced and physically transformed our brain, to make plausible even radical shifting of values, secondary goals and perception of reality. At today, the gold rush and the information-era have made the earth-day 80% shorter than it was a century ago, however while information and daily tasks grow exponentially, the human body stays too dependent and fragile: just think of how much time we lose to sleep, rest, eat, cook, discharge, freshen up…it’s practically taking at least 50% of our daytime considering also the time spent for its maintenance. What i mean is that only a small fraction of our 24h is really productive.
Of course, unless we want to live like fat-lab-rats, for instance it averagely takes about 2 hours to go to the grocery store, buy food, cook yourself a decent and healthy meal and wash the dishes, while it takes only 10 minutes to eat your sensational creation. And this is only basic maintenance…it takes averagely 1 to 2 hours of physical activity per day just for keeping a normal and healthy shape…so forth…to maintain a car is costly, in terms of time and money, maintain a social activity (friends, lovers and so on) costs time and money too… by the time you get 30 or earlier, you may need to occasionally fix your body because it starts to brake down slowly.
I wanted to put focus on the huge gap between human flesh and technological advances; it can only exists in this precise moment of history in which trillions of information, options, tasks are so much bigger than the human body 1.0. I said in this moment of history because there will be unbalanced ratio until we the day we upgrade our body with bio-mechanical devices that can diminish maintenance and increase productivity. Ha, ha, can you imagine having to defecate once every 15 days instead of so often?
Human body 1.0 of prehistorical age is indeed made for daily and short survival, but it cannot match with human brain 1.5 of today, sorry. And the day it’s too short, time passes too fast, it’s dark too soon, we get tired too fast and we need to rest too long, but the insatiable minds are still hyperactive. For the restless ones, there is one planet in the solar system where the day lasts about 6 earth-days. It’s called Pluto.
alan & david at 00.00
Instead of staying home playing videogames, this new years eve I joined a travellers-comunity dinner which brought me to the pleasant introduction of another brain-fetishist fella. At midnight, I was refining my smoking expertise drawing an imported Cuban cigar while being fully absorbed by the conversation with this misanthropic guy (no wonder why we clicked). We couldn’t even hear the fireworks hitting the sky, people cheering up with cheap drinks, popping new sparkling bottles, celebrating meaningless calendar numbers which are at their best enriching low level perceptual learning. We found sucking whirling topics meantime his dynamic spirit purposely used the lowest and funniest popular tags to define high-end experiences. He knew about life extension, singularity and stuff that no one else at the party was aware of and even if they could grab bits of notions, their minds couldn’t have possibly sailed that far. But he spoke of boredom from an unusual and hidden side, we spoke of flatness in experiencing, when living becomes so easy that you’re watching life as a projection of banality, in spectator mode, repeated, cyclic, even when the evolutionary wheel comes to an end, it big-bangs again and a new evolution begins; and so on, it’s boring. From a swimming photosynthetic cell, to a human 2.0 that can change the physical rules of a certain planet just as today we configure Skype. Being humble can become arrogant when it gets to a sarcastic note.
I’m writing this from my intangible bubble in my melancholic bedroom, the room where I grew up, where I camped for the last 30 years of my life. Nothing revolutionary happend from the inside; the parquet has worn out, the furniture were from time to time patched and the walls re-painted. I imagined placing and hidden camera and shooting a film with a time-lapse of 30 years, later on observing the staticity of some objects and the fast pace of some others. What’s interesting is the depth of how everything is so related to time and how some stuff has exponential advancements while other is firmly fixed. I was expecting something different after 30 years, I thought we would have been using our voices to turn on the lights… but our switches are still the same. Anyway I’ve assisted to the technological evolution of seeing my desktop computer monitor reducing from 0.5 meters thick to a 0.5 centimeters. I’ve got hundred pictures on one side of the wall, mainly pictures of people I met around the world, which are constantly giving me the feeling that there is a huge part of myself that didn’t let go of them… or better, it’s probably still living with them: every photo contains a lucid dream, shining of its own unique light, I often smile at them and I wonder if I’ll ever see them again.
I need a long rest, I feel extremely tired… seven years of both phisical and emotional intense trials have debilitated me quite a bit, counting that I’ve been through the malaria and the h1n1, adapted to strenuous conditions and fought all around the world for my values, self deceived that a single soul can make the difference on this planet.
I finally came back as my family and relatives are getting old, real old, so we are facing major lifestyle changes; indeed some of them will pass away, some others will soon not be able to recognize me anymore… We are about to relocate to a new apartment, a smaller one, more suitable for a reduced census.
I also came back because I had to see a professional cardiologist, since when I was in Taiwan, during a general health check up the doctor found a very early stage of arteriosclerosis. Unfortunately the diagnose was re-confirmed by the italian clinic and although it’s not something that requires any particular therapy or medication at the moment, I was strongly recommended to quit smoking and drinking (nevertheless i just did it socially), engage in a regular aerobic-type physical activity and undergo a cardiovascular check up once or twice every year. After reviewing detailed and extensive blood tests, the specialist narrowed down the main cause of my arteriosclerosis: stress. Consequently he advised to cut down sentimental tension and anxiety to the minimum.
Maybe I’ll be no longer in shape to go back traveling with the same old and rough style; I would better substantially reduce the unhealthy frugality. Does all this mean that I am back for good? Hopefully not, but I sadly realized I could really end up being stuck in here because of some compromising situations and never be able to leave this place again, by all means. I still don’t know how it will be to suddenly undertake another radical change in my soul, being here for long term, seduced by the wisdom of living circumstantial stability but losing the grandeour of the stray spirit, the insatiable errant full of poetry that struggles to fit in the contemporary space.
