Rainy days

Today was raining again. I do love rain. One of my happiest moments was in Maldives when I was on the beach and rain started to pour down from the sky. The drops were hot and they just run over my body just as a multitude of warmth small touches giving a feeling of been part of all that beauty.

I end up diving into the bay and as I floated on the sea, rain drops messing my hair, I looked back into the beach and saw the palm trees dancing with the wind following the sound of raining falling. It is still one of those moments to where I can escape when I feel down.

Rain has this ability, we call it rain but in fact it is not a single entity. Rain is a multitude of water drops which will touch one in single manner. It is the adding of each single touch that will induce your feelings towards the Rain itself, and will make it Good, Bad or Indifferent about it. Kind of the same of what happens in a Relationship which strangely enough also starts with “R”.

My love towards rain started when I was young. My mother would not let me go outside to play if it was raining. So I would go to a window and wait for it to stop. At the beginning I just thought “Stupid rain, stop, come on strop!” But as it never stops when we ask, I just sulked and end up with the “this is not fair” sentence.

One day however instead of sulking I just look to it throw a window. It was then when I fall in love by the Rain. The drops of water hitting the glass and going each one their one way, some would get together, others would follow their on their path, others would mingle together before falling, some would stand and wait for a friend before falling… It was an entire world that was unveiling itself to me, much of the time things happened so fast that if I was not paying attention those worlds would just vanished for not be seeing again.

It is the same as a Relationship.  We call it as it was one entity, but the truth is that it consists of a multitude of things, touches, words, actions… Any one of them will touch you on a single manner, but it is their global action which will make your feelings of Love, Hate, Indifference towards the Relationship a part of you and a part of what you are. As in the rain drops and the glass, sometimes you need to get a different perspective before you simply notice that those things are there. And in the same way if you do not pay enough attention, it will just disappear in front of you and fall down to earth.

That is why I do love Rain!

Trees and Oceans

Today I saw a plane on the sky.
Planes are funny things. We look at then and we know they can not fly. However we trust that they will in the end, mainly because most of the time they do not fall into earth.
However flight is done on a transparent environment, which, unless there is a storm, is un-noticeable.
Colors are a very important thing. I spend the entire week asking people why trees are green and oceans are blue.
I did receive a lot of answers stating that trees are green because of the chlorophyll and oceans do not have a color of their one. Basically they get their colors either from algae, from the sky or from other environmental subjects.
Of course they are not right. Tress are green because they hope either not to eaten or they all want to move to England, where their lost long roots can be turned into a place of the house of the Lords.
Some of their ancestors are here since ages and most can trace then to the original tree. This is like Nobility.
I believe that most of the trees have a room inside their trunks, where they have all the pictures of their ancestors.
Grand-grand-grandpapa Joe, right next to the axmen of the king.
Cousin Fred who was eaten by a cow.
Auntie Louise who was used to burn some heretic.
The house of the Lords is a good place to be for a tree. Most of its members do not go there, and rest just stand there and drink some kind of brown liquid served in glass or flask.
Oceans are blue because they are free spirits and go everywhere. So in order to blend in they just use any color at that particular spot.
So, my opinion is that it is in fact their different positions in life that makes trees green and oceans bluish.
Trees are always green because they can not be free spirits. When they try, as during storms, and they pop out of their holes, they just fall down a couple of meters away. <In order to be fair I most admit that some of then do an extra effort. These normally go throw windows and end up next to the TV where they try to see the rest of the world or at least get some glimpse of England. The most successful ones of these overachievers end up getting into cars and trucks.
Unfortunately in both cases they find out very quickly that they can not turn TV on and most definitely that they can not drive cars. Therefore those achievements have a sour sweet flavor.
Oceans by the other end can not keep steady at one place.
For instances in they get into the House of Lords, they would drawn the entire house including the porters. Without porters the doors will not get shut and therefore the ocean can not stay inside.
It would end up doing the gutters and been thrown into a river.
This is not good as rivers are a distance relative of oceans to whom they have some very old grievance.
Oceans and rivers have a common ancestor as man and apes.
In the case of Man and Ape, when their ancestor died, he splinted the heritage by the 2. However, when the Oceans and Rivers ancestor died, he gave Oceans all the salt and for the rivers it left basically the mud.
Because of that all Rivers have to work, either producing electricity in dams or cooling nuclear power plants. Oceans on the other hand can go to Maldives. Mauritius, Thailand and spend months there and basically do nothing. This at the price of having something called boats which sometimes produce a lot of fun and can be jog away and throw up like some kind of sticks. Boats have however some draw backs. If played for long they sunk and sometimes they have garbage on board, which also goes under and takes years to disappear.
Most of the times like trees and oceans most rational explanations do not show the entire picture. This is even truer when people are involved.
Most of the times we do tend to analyze and explain behavior as a straight walk. However the truth is that in most occasions what it is seen is only part of the total equation.
As trees people tend to think that their place is somewhere else.
As rivers, that someone took something very important from then.
Finally as oceans people believe they are almighty and miss the simple fact that sometimes their actions have a profound effect on their surroundings.
However and in spite of all the above facts people, must of the time, do seem to manage all this in a logical fashion.
It is like the planes.
We look at people and we know that they can not work together. But everyday we do try and, most of the time, amazingly it works.

Loneliness

Loneliness is hard. Everyone knows that. No human likes to live alone.
The question is why?
I have seen relationships that simple were not working.
I have seen relationships working by fear alone.
I have seen relationships based on violence.
I have seen relationships dependent of material goods.
In al cases if you ask why they keep together the most common answer is because I can not live alone.
Loneliness is the worst punishment possible for a human being. The solitary confinement on prisons is an example.
People left on solitary for a long period will get mentally and physically ill over time.
Is it because people need people?
Well not exactly. Some people turns out to pets from whatever type, color and shape in order to cope with loneliness.
In this case they turn their pets into their companions.
They talk to then, they tend their needs, they hold then tight and call then sweet names.
Well basically they love then.
So can Love be the answer? Can Love be what people in the end need? The ability of been able to love and to be loved back.
People will stand everything if they love and fell loved for someone.
I had a friend that had a bad relationship with her boyfriend. He really mistreated her, not physically at that point, but by all other ways.
She has nice and beautiful and I several times asked her why she persisted to have that relationship that simply was tearing her apart. Why simply not move on.
Her answer was adamant:
-Because I love him, and I know that he also does in the deep of his heart!
I tried to point out that his love should be very deeply hidden indeed.
At this point she got mad and told me that I could not understand it, because I never had been that in love so I could not know.
At the end she did stop talking to me as, by her words, I was not interested in her happiness.
I really believe that it is Love that drives most of our actions.
Not Love as in sexually motivated, but the basic feel of belonging and to belong, of, in the end, a sense of completion. Humans do need to feel that they matter to someone and that someone matters to then.
At solitary confinement what breaks you in the end is the lack of interaction with others. But as long as you know that in the end you will get back to your group where they will manifest their support. If you do not have anyone to return to that the breakdown will be certain.
Because then you are lonely. Life becomes a succession of days and nights, and in the end a total emptiness will fill you as a person.
It is the same for people that for one reason or the other have their personal solitary confinements. Worst in their cases they feel more and more by each passing day that only death will put an end on it. At least prison solitary will have an end date.

Loneliness will empty you inside out.
Love, by the other end will feed you of those moments when you are holding hands with someone and the world simply vanishes and there is nothing then simply 2 people just in love by each other. Moments when everything makes sense, and you fell that your life is full and makes all the sense.
 It is the search to have then back again that motivates people to avoid loneliness throw bad relationships where most of the times those moments are gone for good.

The Game

Today I am kind of empty.
I already started 6 stories none of which was particular good. I am been dropping then altogether.
So up until now, I have been sitting at my computer listening to online radio and letting my mind just fly.
The fact is that I am felling a bit down. Not for any particular reason, or at least one that I can pinpoint. One that would allow me to point my finger at it and say:
-There you are, you rascal! Just stop bugging me, let me enjoy my music!
These downers are not new to me! Moments where everything seems so empty, seems so pointless.
On the old days I used to call then, my Vodka Eristoff moments, Black Label of course.
Once, in one of these moments, a friend of mine tried to get me drunk.
He tokes out a chess table, a bottle of Eristoff, a couple of glasses the size of the ones used for bourbon, and we went on a nice game of chess. The deal was to get a glass of Eristoff Black label per play. The Vodka was to be drunk in one shot.
So we started.
Pawn e2-e4 - Glass of vodka
Pawn c7-c6 - Glass of vodka
Horse g1-f3 - Glass of vodka
You get the drill....
For those of you, who do not play, I can say that, to open a chess game, meaning preparing pieces for attacking the opponent, it is necessary to do around 7-8 moves. These times 2 players, represents 14-16 glasses of vodka.
Also, chess openings are more or less standard, the moves are defined and do not require a lot of thinking. Therefore you can do a full opening in less then 15 minutes.
As we had to fill up the glasses, in 20 minutes we had 14 bourbon shots of Vodka.
It was a very interesting game.
The bottle did not survive the half of the game. I truly do not remember how much time the game took but and because as at a certain point, planning more then 2 moves ahead has quite difficult, I am sure that it was less then 90 minutes.
I do remember some parts of the game. One is my friend, at one point, just moved the queen onto my King and called "Check-mate". When I just toke his piece, he started to explain that I couldn't do that because the queen was protected by a bishop. When I asked him which bishop he realized that he had lost that piece 3 moves before.
I also remember one of the discussions regarding a new rule. If we promote a pawn to a pawn and get it back safe to our side, we should be able to promote it to King. At that moment it made perfect sense. It is hard to get a pawn to the opponent side safe. If with that we could promote it to a Queen, bringing it back should be rewarded with a King.
We never finished the game.
But for me this was the chess game I have had more fun with.
Sometimes now, I look back and I can not avoid feeling some sort of envy for that guy. Not because of the Vodka, or because of the game, just because he could do things just for the fun of doing then.

Bathtub and hairdryer

Today I watched "The Family Man" a 2000 film with Nicolas Cage and Tea Leone. It's a light comedy based on choices in life and on the "What if?" question.
What if I had opted by the other choice?
It is not a good theme for a light comedy as, unless you are thinking about it, as you are looking at a lion’s mouth 3 seconds before it closes.
This because, you can not go back to that precise moment in time. It is gone.
In the case you are 3 seconds away of getting eaten, the only reason to do the exercise is, to at least, distract your mind from the big whitish fangs that now you see.
Real choices in life happen seldom. Life is mostly driven by the add-up of small decisions which sometimes are taken long before the time they real matter. For instances if you break your leg when skiing, the major decision is not when you decide to start the descend, unless it is your first time.  The major decision was taken when you decided I want to learn Skiing. Since then you already did some slopes and unless you have broken a leg each time, today's decision was a minor one.
Minor decisions are related on how you live your life. Normally they do not need major thoughts behind then. That does not mean that they can not have a great impact on your life. These impacts are what we call accidents. For instance plug in a hair drier as you are still in bath will most of the times, be a shocking high impact decision. But will never be a major one. You do not spend several hours thinking on it. If you did, by the time you finally decide to make something, your hair would be long dry, so no point of plugging it.
Minor decisions can also provide valuable lessons to be use next time you are in the same spot. If you plug the hair dryer and survive, you will never do it again.
Major decisions are related on how you want your future to be. Normally you need to think about then, get more information, balance pros and cons.
In the above case, if you survive the shock, then you can decide either on not using a hairdryer or not having bath again.
Major decisions have impact not only on us but also in people around us. The level of impact can vary from high to low.
For instances, having a bad hair will surely have less impact then not having bath for a month.
Major decisions can not be reverted as you can not go back to that point in time. Also value of lessons learned is low.
If you decide not take another bath, you can not go back to the 1^st day you need one. The learning you will get after a couple weeks will be not related with the decision itself, but how others will react to you.
Mostly you will get more space on most public transportations, which is good, but you will also have to deal with the lack of sex, which is bad.
Major Bad decisions also will help in decide which kind of a person you are.
Good decisions will not as you do not get any lessons from then.
Major Bad decisions will definitely provide some inputs.
The way you will deal with then defines you as a person.
If you use public transportation a lot then not taking a bath will be a GOOD decision. Therefore input is No bath à more space.
However, if you do like sex, not taking bath is a BAD decision.

Inputs now are No bath à no people interaction à no sex. I need to think on other people needs, not in my fears. I will face my fears and become a better person in the end. And finally I will have sex again.

The way as you deal with the results of your decisions will define you as a person, and will define the way others see you also as a person.
More important then thinking the “What if?” is really to deal with “What now?” and to plan the “What Next?”.

Growing up

It has been raining all day.
Rain always brings me to when I was a kid. It brings me to the waiting behind a glass window for the rain to stop. And for the fun of running outside on the middle of the pools of water looking for any excuse just to step on one casually, just to see the water splatter all around. After the casual dropping, which comes as an excuse to mum, then it was Ok to drop on then all, until eventually I got called home, where the casual excuse could or not get accepted.
From those days I kept the looking to the glass window, mainly because it’s hard to explain when you are at the office why your trousers are all wet and still you have that happy grin at your face.
I get the sense that growing up is basically that. We loose touch with simple things, mostly because Grown-up persons are not supposed to do then, and in exchange we get to do more complex things just to get the same fun. As a kid we run over rain pools and when you get old you get a jeep, or a motorbike and finally a water bike to do exactly the same. We start to have a FM battery operated radio to end up with a 52'' TV, with HDMI and surround sound.
It is the same for the girls, by the way. They start to have a shoe box to keep their dolls and end up with a T4 condo. Or the start with a plain dress to end up with dresses made by Lagerfeld, Dolce&Gabbana or Donna Karan.
So is it growing up only about size of things? Regarding fun and pleasure after a moment in time I think yes.
But that is not the only thing about growing up. Growing up is mainly about the way we relate to others. How we interact with our friends, with our family, with our partners and with ourselves. Those are the pains of growing up. Those are the things that put us laying in bed staring t the ceiling, felling depressed when outside the sun is shinning. Those days which can add years of waste are the heaviest price people need to pay for growing up.
Maybe the best thing was to have growing up in pills. There should be:
The best friend betrayal pill
The "girl/boy I want does not know I exist" pill
The my family does not understand me pill (well for this we could have 4)
The world is against me pill (also 2 of these)
The Teacher is after me pill
The "I got pimples" pill
The "I do not what but something is wrong" pill (10 of these just to cover anything else).
These pills put on a nice Black/purple box should be supplied to every kid after he turns out 15 (13 for the girls). Then he/she should enter a spa and take then daily. He/she should go to a dark/purple room and lay in bed staring at the ceiling for the entire duration.
After he/she could go on with their life, all the fuzz with the growing-up business dealt with.

Insecurities

Yesterday I was passing at the living room. As I was passing my eyes felt to the TV set. It was showing a film "The Break-up" with Jennifer Aniston. At that precise moment, she was peeping into the living room, made a naughty smile and just dropped the towel and went into the kitchen, naked. Camera followed her way back, showing her full body from behind. There was a guy playing some video game, in a couch, by the kitchen. 2 day beard, squared cotton shirt, jeans and a T-shirt. He caught a glimpse of Jennifer continues to play the game, then he starts to loose, and as she returns to the bedroom, camera again focusing Jennifer way back, he finally looks at her, with a "what's going on" look and as Jennifer went to the room, his game finally crashes and we heard a " Game Over" voice in the background. It was a very intense scene, or in fact that was the original intent of the Director.
The scene itself did not make any sense. A girl walking around naked in house with a guy, that she knows it is there means only one thing. No girl would do that if not with that meaning. If she was just going to the kitchen she would at least put some underwear. If she was just teasing she would do the "slipping towel" trick. Same for the guy, as every guy over 17 will know that a naked walking girl in a house, where she knows, you are there, means. Maybe will not mean a definitely lay, but it means that you can talk about it. The guy just stood there at the couch. He did not call her, go after her, do a remark, nothing just stood there looking Dumb, opening his mouth as a fish out of water and listening to "Game Over" again and again. Every girl after 25, if she had walked by naked and the guy just kept playing video game and not did anything would know at that moment the guy was an idiot and he chances of even talking about sex would get close to nil.
So why do the scene. No really added value to the story, the "slipping towel" would be more effective. Not so obvious and providing with a safe route out. So the only reason to have the scene was to show Jennifer body, which is a good reason by itself. Then why did she agree on it?
Then I suddenly understand! Jennifer was in that point of life where she was ending the relation with Brad Pitt. O basically this scene was only for her to show the world that there was nothing wrong with her. She has as pretty and desirable as Angeline.
People insecurities never cease to amaze me. They basically drive us to do stupid things just to prove a point. And to see that someone beautiful, rich, famous, with a career as fulfilling as hers, has at the same time a so strong need to prove herself, makes me fell somehow that if she can so can I. Not of course walking naked around the house. Somehow I feel that I would not have the same effect.

Lessons of Life

Sometimes I think on much unfair life can be. Mainly this applies to what is called the big lessons in life. My father always told me that the "Lessons in Life" were the most important ones.
Well, today as in those days i do find that statement quite over praised. My real oppinion is that the major lesson on life can not really be reused and that what it is learned on then has always a bitter sour taste.
YouTube has a lot of examples. One of the best examples is the guy that normal does not check his parachute in the ground. He goes up, says bye bye to the camera, swings around in midair for a bit, then pulls the cord, he starts loosing his smile, pulls out the 2nd cord and at that moment he gets a big " Lesson of Life".
He has about 3 minutes to flavour it, to get amazed by the bright light of the big "Lesson of Life". But then I do not think that 3 minutes will not be enough to really use it in any reasonable way. In fact in about 3 minutes that big " Lesson of Life" will be gone to oblivion forever.
So I am a bit sceptical about " Lessons of Life". I do understand their value but it is really unfair that their use is most of the times very limited.