Mindscapes #3

The city I live in is quite rural by some standards (mostly teenagers' and city-people's), so when I'm getting close to home, I can see some green plains and a chain of mountains just beyond. Simply put, lots of raw nature, which is an awesome view to be soundtracked with traditional music.

So there was this day, around sunset time, when the sky decided to stop weeping, and the sun wanted dry her tears, so there was some conflict up there. But when sun presented the sky with a beautiful rainbow, she answered with a smiling blue.

And I was on the bus, randomly listening to Otyg, which plays scandinavian folk songs. Misteriously, that viking feeling fused with that landscape. Maybe it was seeing this much green, or this whole aura of "I was sad but I'm getting better now".

But it makes sense to think of this weather condition as valued by scandinavian people. It's even featured on their mythology. The bridge to Valhalla, the Castle of the Slain, had appeared!

Sparkles #3

When winter was first giving signs of its arrival, it was already staining my soul with bitterness, so one day I got home and I fell on bed letting that freezing cold embrace the sour of my heart.

I wasn't quite feeling like pushing up the blankets and sleeping, instead I removed my arms from my jacket and pressed them over my chest, the very instinctive act to hold the heat around my vital organs.

But I didn't feel the usual warmth we desperately try to hold as it dies, but instead my body seemed to produce it in a feroucious way, a burning heat emanating from me. Not really metaphorical, I felt it on my forearms. I don't know if the, huh, acoustic of my jacket allowed me to retain the heat this efficiently, but my body was working like a fueled oven, so I decided to let the burning heat embrace the sour of my heart.

Sparkles #2

There was a night some months ago when I could be found practicing drawing, furiously. I was drowned in all my bitter motivations, fueled by some thrashing metal. I didn't really notice how deeply immersed in all that burning feeling until I felt a little drained and went outside, and watched the moon shining delicately over me.
Suddenly I felt like I had been through the most vicious journey and was now back home, watching that peaceful view.

Funny how it was all in my head. To an outsider I'd look like simply being in my desk for hours and then going out for a few minutes.

Of hurry

I'm such a nerd I've played Shadow of the Colossus to celebrate my undergraduate degree.
Ok, it was more like "it's finally over and  now I can do something I want to". But anyway, it's definitely one of the greatest games I've ever played. And then, as usual when I'm marvelled, I start looking for more material. No, I don't have ICO here. I've stumbled upon this american podcast where they play through certain ammount of the game each week and then discuss about it. It's nice to see the progression of their impressions throughout the game. But I was a little puzzled at how two out of the four members didn't really enjoy the game. It's not that I'm huge fanboy who can't take critics, cause my favorite member (Gerritt, I think) turned out to be one who didn't even finish the game, but, oh man, half of them were not having a good time when playing it.

But then that guy said he probably didn't enjoy the game because they had to get to a certain point of the game to talk about it on the podcast, so that made the experience a little stressful. If he had more time and no pressure to get to the colossi and slay them as soon as he could, he could probably have enjoyed it more. He could have tasted it better. And I think that's the point, Shadow of the Colossus has to be tasted slowly.

It's something I've heard in another podcast, where they have a term for this game-tasting experience. It's a portuguese word, hard to be translated. Anyway, they mean getting immersed in that world, playing as if you're the character. The true role-playing experience. The walking-slowly-button is vital for this kind of experience, they say. I couldn't agree more.
Of course, maybe Wander would actually want to rush to every colossus and slay them as soon as he could, he'd have a reason to do so, I don't think he was crossing that barren world for sight-seeing. In fact, ignoring every passing ruin and bridge just in order to get where I needed gave me a feeling of urgency. But sometimes, when I decided to walk slower through the plains, the whole lack of music and just the sounds of Agro's galloping suddenly filled me with melancholy and a feeling of anguish and loneliness, and I started instrospecting Wander's mind. What a burden. And how selfish this all is, killing these poor giant bastards who sometimes are so indifferent to me. Oh man, there's so much to be said about the experience.

Anyway, that's one nice realization: hurry handicaps tasting. I think I can use that to improve my texts. Going along with the flow, explore it all slowly, no hurry to get it all done. Relaaax, dude.

Mindscapes #2

 I was on the bus, listening to Vezpresmer Klezmer band, that one that plays hungarian-jewish music.

It was sunset time, shadows were stretching out along the world, the day was ending, clouds were being painted with evolving warm clouds. (edit: wtf, how do I do things like this)

Someone started eating an orange. I hate people who eat on the bus omg everything upsets me It felt incredibly right, that cheerful song and that citric smell. Jewish people would eat fruits in their parties, right? Drinking beer and eating traditional jewish food I don't know much about, but fruits felt like a nice idea.

Also, I started thinking of orange. The color, I mean. I never payed too much attention to that poor guy.

Of Soundtracking

Music is amazing to go along reading. Every book I read has to have a soundtrack. And I always try to listen to something that has not being stained with memories already, for the soundtracked experience adds value to both the songs and the books. Reading Silmarillion when listening to Weiland, by Empyrium, brought me the best experience I've ever had with soundtracked reading. I'll never forget the difference it made to the experience, it was made unique. I also read Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles when listening to Neun Welten's Vergessene Pfade, and relistening to the songs fatally reminded me of Derfel's life. Unfortunately, I've listened to that album so many times after the reading that the memories were erased again.

But there's much more to soundtracking than meets the eye. This is an unbelievably rich source of mindscapes, soundtracking my life. They are in everyday's life. Sometimes, by letting music fuse with things I see and smell and think, sometimes they fit together like it's a shocking realization. I feel like being, for a second there, in a new place. These mindscapes are some sort of sparkles, as they last for a few seconds. For some years, I learned to taste the soundtracked mindscapes in that small moment when the world seemed to stop and everything just fit together like it was eerily intended to happen.

I guess that's where the search for nuclearity was born, because I started training to keen my eyes in spotting the elements from the landscape or my thoughts that fused with elements from the song. And as soon as the mindscape appears, I have to have a quick reflex to grab and hold on to the very elements that originated the mindscape, so I have a longer time to taste it.


As I commutte by bus, this is probably the idea I've given the biggest ammount of thoughts, so this grew to be a really complex concept, with a lot of details and variables.

Mindscapes #1

I am completely fascinated by the place I live in. Maybe I could be happy everywhere, but it's where I live now that seems to fulfill me. I love how the weather and period of day seems to change the feeling I get from the whole landscape.

And this night there was a full moon shining through a foggy valley.

It was supposed to be sublime, a dreadful beauty, not just incredibly amazing.

I'm afraid this picture doesn't do it justice, and it's the most faithful one I've got. It feels a little too colorful and not-really-scary. Being there, it was a much more spookier feeling, watching this ominous view and tasting the smell of a smokey night with a pleasant breeze.

It felt eerie as the moon seemed to be really close. Hanged-above-the-valley close. Maybe it was the fog filling up the whole sky that changed our perception of distance, making the light to be perceived as to come from inside the mist, not way beyond it.

Sublime is the word indeed. It's going to be one of them Sublime Mindscapes. But its eeriness also hooked me. And eerie's one of the main words I love tasting, as it represents one of the feelings that have influenced me the most, because it brings me back to my childhood. If I ever write a tale, its feeling is going to be inspired by the the place I grew in.

There'll be no zombies, it'd be too easy.

I may have lied, the place I live now doesn't feel as appealing to me as this one. But I guess it's actually better to leave it be in my memories. It's part of growing up and let things go, I think, despite of how life-changing important they were. Also the fond memories are more magical that way, because when I recall hints of it, my sparkles are fired up like hell.

Of nocturnal discoveries

These might be the last days I have an excuse to visit my university, so I decided to take some pictures of that place. It's a really beautiful place at night, so I was again frustrated at how cameras still don't take good photographs of night environments. But I started exploring the camera's options when I learned I could do something unbelievably amazing with little to no effort at all. It's amazing how fast the quality went from so-lame to better-than-real-life.

The result was so wonderful I felt like sharing my two favorites:

You can('t) view the university from my aunt's apartment. God, how many nights staring at this view.

My house's backyard view, which happens to be the one I tried to describe in that entry about stars.

Best thing yet, this is the "starry skies mode", or so it says in the camera. As I could in fact spot one or two stars on the pictures, I'm thrilled with the prospect of finally photographing the Milky Way, which is something I always dreamed of.

Of Mindscapes

As a Taster, sensory feelings are everything for me. Smells and colors and sounds and flavors and textures are part of what my life is, especially because sometimes the combination of them creates a whole meaningful and memorable scenarios, despite of their usual fugacity.

Those are mindscapes, sensory feelings that combined stick to our memories. We all have lots of mindscapes in all our minds, ranging from all kind of experiences. That sunset hour plus her perfume. The foggy night plus a black metal song. That smell of coffee and plants in grandma's house.

I guess mindscapes are part of the whole personal element study. They can add so much to one's perception that I have this life goal that is to taste as many mindscapes as I can, be it through living my life or tasting other life stories (and clearly this has enormous story-telling potential).

It's weird to think there are people who have experienced mindscapes I could never dream of. It's quite interesting to try thinking of them, to broad my horizons. It's also helpful to realize some of my most influential mindscapes can be completely unknown or uninfluential to others.

I like living in this small city surrounded by nature. Mountains and valleys and forests. Now here's a cold and cloudy day. And I've got a hymn for this mindscape. I mean, there's quite a lot of them. There's so many of these heavy atmospheric, melancholic (sometimes with a hint of anguish)-sounding songs that I had to name them, Sunday Gray (i know, these names embarrass me, but a name is a name). So far the list includes: Alice in Chains' Bleed the Freak, Pearl Jam's Black, Acid Bath's Venus Blue, Metallica's My Friend of Misery, and, currently the most meaningful one, Pantera's Floods (especially that sweet outro, but that's quite because of another mindscape).
This whole mindscape actually reminds me of the city I grew in, which sometimes used to feel this beautifully sad and melancholic in days like this. Hey, umm, all these songs were released in 90s, the decade I lived there. Also, my brother did use to listen to a lot of grunge and thrash metal back then. Probably there's a Nirvana song that'll fit in this list (oh, it's quite frustrating to realize it's just a nostalgia-indulced feeling). So this whole Gray mindscape is indeed one of my strongest ones, and it has even influenced my musical taste. Quite deeply, I'd say, for this mindscape could pretty much even be the reason I love so much baritones vocalists and low-sounding instruments like bass and cello.

Of Unseen Element

I love tasting cities. They're like people, you haven't got two that are really the same. It's what they call Genius Loci (or spirit of place). It goes from obvious things like cultural elements to the the spice of local nature. There's also the set of streets and the arrangements of buildings and stores, which is one of the things that makes moving out to a different city being so exciting, at least for me. There's the learning the ways of the city, getting to know the shortcuts and all logistics that can't possibly be imitated, no matter how much you want to plan everything out before building up the city. It's something about nature throwing its random dices, I guess.

But the true spice that make them stand ultimately unique is something that cannot be seen. Say, geographical location, sense of place. It may be subtle and most of the time we don't even realize it, but we feel a city differently by knowing it's located far down south in the country or near the state's capital city. If there's a big city northwards, that'll interfere with the way you feel this city. It's pretty much a feeling of this being close to that. A city close to a river, close to the sea, close to the mountains. You have that feeling right now in a smaller scale. The room you are in, you unconsciously feel it in relation to the other places. Maybe you live in an apartment and across the street there's a public square with a fountain. The apartment room above yours, up to the whatever store, will be felt differently for it's goddamn higher in relation to the ground.

When thinking of geography, I always think of cardinal directions. They are clear examples of unseen elements. They affect me in subtle ways. It's something about spices, I think. I go east to go to the college in the capital, so if I'm going around sunset time the sun is going down behind me and subtleties like that. It doesn't seem to make much of a difference, but through contrasting we can realize it. When I was a kid, I remember I once kept watching the neighborhood reflected on the window. The mirrored world seemed to feel like a totally different place. The sunset was on the other side of the world, and that alone made it feel just weird, a whole new world to taste.

Anyways, this unseen feeling is sometimes visible. Not hard to find its hints. I really like paying attention to these signs showing the distance to nearby cities. Perhaps that's why I feel they give me some sense of reality. They make the unseen element tangible. It's like when you're gonna be traveling to London, the realization will strike you better when you've got physical proof you're going to England, like the sign in your bagage showing a LON code or something. When I see a palm tree, the feeling I'm near the coast has a reason to be. If I see portuguese language written all over the place, I'm constantly being told I'm in Brazil (eh, could be Portugal). The sun setting in west gives me orientation for the rest of the cardinal directions. I'll call those signs Hints.

This unseen element can be manipulated though, but you have to be free from Hints. If there's daylight pouring in your room, you can't pretend it's night, after all it's not unseen. But if the outside world lies out of your senses, you probably still knows what lies beyond the walls. Yet it's all in your mind, the memories telling you that (no, I won't philosophically question reality here). If you've got reality in your mind, you can twist it to change the perception of the room you're in.

I have several hobbies regarding that. When I have no proof there's the lawn just outside, so there's nothing preventing me from picturing, I don't know, a beach (we're on the internet, we're two clicks away from filling our ears with the sounds of the sea).

I also like twisting cardinal directions in my mind. As the sun is usually a hint of cardinal directions, this is a game that can only be played during midday. Or at night. Or in a room with no hint of the sun. As I said before, a recardinated world feels like a whole new place to taste.

And my favorite one is pretending to be in another place, but this time it's using Hints, not ignoring them. By looking at something in my reality that resembles elements I've seen from Tokyo (while avoiding things that hint me away from that, like pretty much everything), I can elaborate and focus on hints for the feeling of being in the japanese capital city, though that's tough. Hard to have visual hints with enough strength on their own, but they are strengthened with the help of, really, japanese food or japanese music (I'll call these Exportable Hints).
And then one asks the fundamental question "how the hell can you possibly feel places you don't know?". Yeah, I had to have experienced Tokyo to know what are key elements of feeling like being in the japanese capital city, so I'll have to try feeling it with what my perception of Tokyo is, which can really be frustratingly limitating. I have to work with something that end up being quite stereotypical perceptions, but that's what I have. It's not, by really far, a complete experience, but it's a goddamn interesting exercise.

(Part 2 is to follow, regarding time and nature)

Of Sparkles

I always wanted to write stories, and yet I always had extreme difficulty to elaborate them.
Now I still think my skills fail to meet the requirements but at least now ideas are starting to grow on their own. They are suddenly born, develop wings, find strenght to flap them twice and then wither away. I like how lately they've been finding strength to remain alive for longer. I like watching them come and go, these ephemeral moments of pure creativity. And I do let them go with no worries. I like how they refresh the place, like some summer wind bringing that scent of jasmine throughout the room.

I wouldn't like to keep storing every idea I have. I even think that's important, letting the ideas flow, unrestrained, unplanned. I that's a good exercise, as they will help the ideas to find space to develop themselves stronger every time. Also, if there's anything worthwhile, they'll have developed full-fledged wings to fly back to my window sill.

 -

"Mort arched his back and screamed a curse so ancient and virulent that in the strong magical field it actually took on a form, flapped its leathery wings and slunk away. A private thunderstorm crashed around the sand dunes. Mort screamed another curse, which flopped out of the air and tried to bury itself in the sand." Mort (Discworld series)

Of stars

Today the lights went out, so I went out to check the night sky.

I find it incredibly cute the way you stars shy away from our lights. And then, when you display all of your glory when we fade out, making us shrink humbly in amazement, I can only respect you.

I think there's no experience that can drive my thoughts away into the wildest wonderings like watching a starry sky, realizing all the fucking vastness of space. In nights like this we can even see the milky way crossing the sky... and to realize it's made by stars - the same way water molecules form a cloud - wow...

Anyway, there I was watching that magnificent view. It was quite an experience, this whole pitch-black valley with a few patterned golden lights, then low clouds swirling around the mountains, reddened by distant city lights, and slowly above that, as if the line putting earth and sky apart couldn't be defined, a deep blue hugeness filled with all these delicate and magical shiny dots...

Cold thing, the starry sky. Maybe it's the dark and uncaring vastness filled with infinite, white diamond dust. I usually feel that if could reach up and touch the sky, the stars, as sharp as they look, would cut the the point of my fingers. But there they are, looking so tempting, making us yearn towards them, and yet being so irrevocably distant and untouchable.

And there I was tasting the sounds of my guitar when my father came by, and we started a conversation about stars. It was when he was telling me a silly yet funny joke about a king who asked a thief about the number of the stars in the sky while I was trying to scratch a melody out of the guitar that I felt that moment was remarkable. It made me think, hey, fuck technology. I could spend the whole night there, playing music, listening to old stories and watching the stars. Um, I think a modest fire with pulsating embers and crackling sounds could spice up the experience.

Of Spices

Spices are what make things tasty. They help making something stand out as much as it can be add more value to the thing itself, making it look attractive, unique and original.
A good example of spices is when you see a rock band with middle-eastern influences in their sound. That seems to be a nice formula to start with, bringing an element of different genres.

Different countries and cultures and languages can be considered different genres, just like in music. You may have an american story with an italian background, like in Godfather, for example. This is probably the most common use of spicing. Give you character a german or or polish or chinese name, and there you have some little spice already.

I keep thinking that spicing in my theory goes beyond just adding ingredients. It's beyond that. In stories the way the narrative is delivered can be spicy, not only the elements of the story. An unusual song structure can be spicy, not only different musical scales. A strong and expressive pencil or inkwork in a drawing can also make it look more tasty, instead of only colors.

Through analogies, spices can be used in all the different systems. One can use spices in writing, in naming, in drawing, in... well, cooking, obviously. Why couldn't it also be used in simple things as walking? The pace can spice up the experience of walking. And, hell, why shouldn't sex also deserve some spices?

See, again with seeing art as all forms of human expression. It's starting to seem that to me art has only met advantages in bringing spices in. After all, there are no limits to spicing. Again with metalogic, the very lack of taste can also be tasty, if one's to use it wisely. The possibilities are simply endless, and there's the whole fun of it

Of autumn

I'm not that kind of person who's got a set choice to define things I like, but I can't help it:
out of the available seasons, Autumn is by far my favorite one.

It's something in the air. The way it teases my skin with its slightly cold breeze. or maybe it's something about the air itself. The way it does something to all the colors displayed around, making them match everything else so perfectly, and I could go on describing these combinations for hours.
It's like the world just decided to go poetic.

There's something about this season that makes me feel and see the world in a different way. I feel much more sensitive, much more inspired. It's the season I feel most connected to nature. I can't think of autumn without thinking of the trees and the sky. Greens and blues, whites and browns, all shades of sky colors.
Come to think of it, most of my favorite memories are related to autumn. They've probably grown on me because of the city I grew up in which used to be a quite cold city for the country's standards. Autumn reminds me of a magic childhood, of the seas of pine trees, endless blue, melancholic skies and chilly winds.
Mornings and evenings feel different to me in autumn time. I like the smell of oven smoke in a post-sunset purple-like sky. Or the coldness early in the morning, when the lawn is starting to dawn freezed and when you start noticing that steam of vapor flowing from your mouth. Yeah, ok, that's quite winter. I actually like autumn pretty much for it being some sort of a softer winter. And a more sober spring.

It's autumn here, right now. I can feel it.
I keep listening to Mostly Autumn continuously for no end for no other reason. The thing is, I do that pretty much unconsciously. I barely listen to them outside this season, but when it comes over, it's not like a tradition, it just happens naturally. There's a true bond in there. I can't tell of a song by them to become a hymn, because it seems some songs reminds me of a different aspect of autumn. Carpe Diem reminds me of melancholic post-sunset settings. Bitterness Burnt reminds me of hotter autumn days, around midday. The Night Sky reminds of, well, an autumn-ish night sky. No, the band itself is my hymn to autumn.

Of Safe Port

I'm not easily affected by sadness. In fact, I know how to enjoy it. Being sad is always a trip to knowledge. Of course it's risky (and nothing is rewarding without it). Thing is, while I have control of my melancholy, I'm making good of use of it.

However, there are moments when I go too deep and the door behind me is closed with an ominous sound. And I find myself unable to find the way back. I start getting scared. Nightmarish thoughts start lurking over. Thoughts too dangerous I can't possibly make a fight. Just twice I've let myself be haunted by the most terrifying thought I could ever think of.And there was nothing I seemed to do against it, as it gained control over my own will and I was left to stare blankly at the destruction I stupidly allowed to happen.
And then these little things I could cling to suddenly becomes either meaningless or unreachable. You know, like trying to make a climb but find every gripable thing to suddenly having become too loose to be trusted.

I need to find real Safe Ports for these situations, when I'm finding myself too hopeless.
I have some potential candidates for this. Sometimes a good bath does the trick. Sometimes listening to some funny guys talking shit to each other and laughing in some podcast a few clicks away can bring me to a good mood in the blink of an eye. But then again, as the despair gains command of my own will, I don't feel like doing things that'll do me any good. I guess some things are not meaningful or tangible enough to resist the pressure.

But I seem to have found my most precious treasure. I always enjoy listening to this band, Veszprémer Klezmer Band. It's a hungarian band that plays some sort of jewish party music. They've got some of the most cheerful songs I've ever known. Even their most melancholic tunes sound so ... harmless. I've grown to enjoy them so much I can't listen to them without feeling like smiling anymore. There's even this song where you can listen  to people (apparently in a bar), dancing, clapping, laughing. And seeing people being nice, having fun, being happy, hell, just thinking about it right now is making my eyes burn.
I can't listen to them without feeling like being constantly taught to always see the bright side of life. Hell, they're jewish, after all. These guys could be mourning over all the suffering their people went through. How can they make songs this beautiful? I can't help it, this album, Zajt Gezunt, is rapidly becoming my hymn to happiness.
Taking in account a Hymn gains strenght through practice, I'll have to be careful not to contaminate the songs with the hopelessness I'm in when I need to listen to them.
But they seem unable to fail. Here I am, listening to them, just filled with life again.

Damn, I've got tears bursting through.These are some thoughts I have to avoid when I'm on the bus.

Of Tasting

There's one good thing this blog already brought me: to notice a pattern in my thoughts by looking at the posts, which will hopefully increase my thinking process.

For example, I've written about how I like to walk, and to taste the ground I'm walking on, or how I spend hours watching the world through my window. Then I felt like talking about how great it feels to feel the sun touching my skin, or how I love paying attention to the way people deliver their words, with their amusing accents and everything.
From this realization, a name was born: Tasting. It's certainly going to be a very useful name, as I can categorize some thoughts into this definition.

When I think about it, it definitely describes a good part of my identity. I love feeling the world. Tasting everything with all my senses. The temperature in the air, the scents in the wind, the sound of the world, the composition of colors in a landscape, the spices in the food, the taste of the words, the gentle lips of a girl.
I guess increasing my sensory skills makes me me feel like enjoying being alive and experiencing the world better.
It's quite relaxing, even when going to extremes. Really, laying my hand on a car hood in a hot day and seeing how much I can stand the heat (after it reached it's highest point, it becomes easily bearable) or inside a cold body of water early in the morning and see how long it takes for the cold to burn through my flesh and bones is somewhat rewarding. Sometimes I do some sick stuff, like seeing how hunger, revolving my stomach agonizingly, feels, or how the acute pain strikes through my skin when I accidentally hurt myself, but really, there's nothing unworthy of being tasted.


Ok, actually there are, but forget them for the sake of poetry.

Of hands

It fascinates me how our body, something this personal, can carry the results of a whole species.
Sometimes I keep watching my hand, playing with all the moves it can make, with all the possible tools it can become. And then I wonder of all our evolution, the movements our ancestors kept doing to make it slowly become what it is now. I wonder how much effort and time was need for every detail to set down like it is today. I wonder how much times someone had to hold a rounded object to make it perfectly easy for my hand to hold one.

I wonder of the role hands, they all like mine, played throughout History. Whole lives spent holding swords, hoes, writing tools. All the delicacy of the art, the violent strength of the war, all made possible by our hands. Every building built by working, scarred hands. Every building climbed secretly by nervous hands to meet the pale, soft ones. Hands attached together in a moment of passionate intensity. Every building, destroyed by vicious hands. All lives hands slashed, all lives hands healed. Hands used to denounce, hands used to hide. Honest and false handshakes, mostly a political agreement.
Hands that, with an added amount of prideful strength, push up your fallen, shamed body. Stretched out hands claiming for one helping hand. Faithless hands falling down in abandon. Hands lying silent. Hands forever unable to change the world.

Of pleasant people

tThis entry is dedicated to all those people I know whose company refresh my batteries. All those good-humored people out there who lift up my spirit with their amazing capacity of making one always smile and have a hearty laugh.

These are people that, despite of their self-esteem, are able to sport an amusing silliness and unharmfulness that makes you just feel wholly comfortable by their presence. These are easy-going people who are able to always make fun of themselves and their mistakes, and don't spoil great moments with serious business like their ego. Most important of all, you don't have to be afraid of how they may react to every one of your words or actions. You don't have to worry about what they are going to think of you. You don't feel like you have to bother trying to look smart and cool to attend current demands. With those people you are comfortable enough to swear at them unafraid of them ever mistaking the joke as an actual offense. I miss people who can blame me and make fun of my mistakes head on, as we know it's just plain honesty, and I really appreciate that. It's how I know I can trust someone. It's much better than those who think I may be offended by all these silly things, and then grudge things up until everything falls apart out of a sudden.
Except the swearing and blaming, it's not much of a matter of intimacy. Some of these wonderful people I barely know. Some of them are just market attendants and public servants or simply people you stop by to ask for a piece of information.

But they sport these very essential things I need to call them Friends.

Of art and nature

Everything can be art.

It's not really uncommon for us to see things like "art of cooking", "art of driving", "art of seduction", "art of war", "art of politics". Pay attention to it and you'll see every area of human expression can be labeled as art. And that's what I think of what art is, any means of human beings expressing themselves. It's leaving the marks of your existence, of what you are, what you see and what you think of the world.
It's the attempt to silence the fear of being forgotten, of being left in the Unexistence.

And then I started to realize... we don't usually see nature as art. We may spend our lifes enjoying the view of mountainscapes and majestic trees and colorful flowerings, but all we usually see of actual art in nature is in a manner connected to the hands of man. You don't see a forest as art, despite how it moves your feelings when you're walking inside one. However, when you walk through a paved path sided by cypresses, you are seeing humans expressing themselves through nature. Maybe you are reading a poetry describing a vicious sea storm, or watching a painting of a cold, silent lake in a winter night, and the art you are seeing there doesn't have much to do with nature itself as with the artist and the viewer, the human beings touched somehow by that scenario.
So, you ask, if any form of human expression is art, then even youtube commenters are making art? Eh, you're the one to judge. I, for one, don't really like most modern visual arts too.

In my opinion, what makes all these forms of self-expression become art is a matter of mastering them. And that's one thing that no postmodernist questioning is going to change. I don't care if my view is so totally outdated, that's something I can't help. I don't think that playing with words as if they were a perfect extension of one's mind, or taking the simplest musical notes and make them become truly alive, or being able to create believable imagery with the fewest pencil strokes is something that could ever become outdated.


Sure, everybody can be an artist. One can go deeper into the discussion and say that not being able to express yourself properly is a very common display of the human existence as well. And, damn, I can't really say you're wrong (these haunting paradoxal things are chasing me lately, aren't they). I, who still have my sentences meeting frustrating dead-ends, who play musical notes as inexpressive as a scratching nail, who strike the paper with the innacuracy of a drunkard, could call the right to be an artist.
But I praise them true artmasters.