Nomad's Land

I grew up reading fiction, writers of the literary generation known as the Latin American Boom. Love of literature was accidental, in my case, as is the nature of all ills befallen under the noun love. It’s not for lack of empathy that I denounce it as somewhat maddening, a self-serving need dwelling deep inside each and every last one of us. 

And so it was with the world of books in the early nineties, Grover Cleveland High School; shelves full of them, in a small room adjacent to the Language Dept. office where my A.P. Spanish Italian teacher had made me stay to put in alphabetical order the mess of books that would never to make it to the classroom. The best books of humankind either burned or lie hidden somewhere in a secret compartment, never to see the light of day. 

Literature happened the day I wanted to impress my Italian A.P. Spanish teacher in high school. Back then, I made it as far as a class below A.P. (Advanced Placements) in the English Language, even though I doctored in a couple of times helping others in the language department. It was that office at the end of the hall where linguistic teachers would convene to grade papers, drink coffee, eat their lunch and gossip about the other teachers in school. I was there to assist them, since the principal wanted my head on a platter for being a troublemaker, an English teacher interceded and proposed I spend time helping out. 

Why would I submit to child labor? I asked. 

My wit has never known how to shut its mouth in times like this. I knew damn well why the kid I was back then was sent there, even then. Even the Social Studies teacher, who had sent me to detention once, interceded and said I should be given a second chance. Mr Margulies was an Argentinian teacher, favorite among the students because of how receptive to humor he was and how he spoke his mind. He treated us like adults without forgetting that we were, at heart, kids. And that we will, some more than others, remain kids for the remaining part of our lives. It’s the kid that rules at heart and in a moment of anger, Mr. Margulies could have used his faculty clout to simply dismiss another squarelsome kid. We adopt male role models, father figures, that we keep fine-tuning for future utility. We ingest our experiences raw subconsciously and filtered memories repress the awe and vexation of those turbulent years that turn the boy into a man.

The kid in us never goes away, it stays in a dormant state if you nurture upscale habits of self-control, but you can only hold it back for so long. Kids deserve to be treated with more dignity and openness, and as parents we ought to embody the person we want out of them on a situation. If we talk to them in an austere tone, we’re sort of like a bad boss who works things out throughout his ego. So, if we want kids to listen to us, we must listen to them. If we want discipline, we ought to impart it and be disciplined ourselves. What’s more, if our methods are harsh in tonality due to stressors outside our good-will nature, the kid is going to form a different picture of the episode in his/her mind. The kid will associate discipline with pain. Either, it will turn the kid neurotic or depressed overtime. The tonality we use to talk to our kids should be the one we expect of others, even strangers; it should and, in my case is, filled with compassion towards this tinier versions of ourselves we’re raising. We can raise them or we can raise hell. If we think of our kids as daredevils, then that’s what they’ll be. Look, I know children can be difficult but so can we, at times, be so. And we aren’t children. Yet, when we reprimand our mini-me, we can be such kids. We lose control and we want to get it back shouting? We want them to respect them but who respects a boss who has no respect? You can fear your master and develop all this psychosis around those in charge, or you can be in charge of yourself. When you take charges, others have no option but to follow suit. Everyone loves leadership and in any high animal hierarchy setting, the most alpha isn’t the strongest but it is his strongest; the alpha isn’t the wisest, but it is wise. The alpha is not even the man in a position of power. Or the richest. Or the most spiritual.

All you need to do is look at a pack and in that crowd you’ll see that there are few, just a handful of alphas. As to which is more alpha among them, is hard to say. It’s not easy being the alpha, just as is not easy being boss.

The Italian teacher entered the class and her first words were: “By the end of this school year, I will get to know you more than your parents ever did or will.”

There was utter silence.

“That’s not so much” I jokingly interjected: “Considering that they don’t really know me much at all.”

The teacher walked near me and asked my name. She wrote it down and that was that. I ended in detention.

So, you see. My mouth and my wit have this sadistic interaction that oftentimes superseded my otherwise objective judgment.

“It’s either that or you’ll end up being spelled or transfer to another high school” one of the teachers said. They were five in total, but no more than three at a time were were to coexist  there. Astoundingly, they got along with one another and there was an aura of diligence and serenity that you felt as you entered the room.

I got along with them well. I reorganized the bookshelf, cleared and dusted their tables, took out the garbage, water the plants, made sure there was a fresh po

Not bad for a boy who had

A more organic, vibrant definition of the fair sex comes way of the German great Schopenhauer’s On Women. Not so long ago, in a land that seems far, far away, a land that is still very much tactile, unravelling in the ever-fleeting presence, bounded by all that was and is as it will always be. Time that was and is, and ever was and will be, exists all at once. We awake to the realization that life is lived in a progressive past tense. The presence is an illusion as is the past, all that ever was and that will ever be taking place simultaneously: you're literally staring into the abyss of timelessness when you look upon the celestial bodies disseminated across the night sky.. The way things were millions of years ago. It is not just with stars that time has stretched out and left us behind light-eons away.

We’re ruled by illusions all throughout. Our senses are deceptive sensors of heat, smell, touch and taste, the primitive sensors nature endowed us with are, quite frankly, inept.

A stick submerged halfway into a calm water lake, ancient philosophers observed, looked bent. Yet, it is not. Our eyes must be deceiving us. Little did we know then that light on the submerged part of the stick is retracted when it goes from air to liquid and therefore the stick looks bent. As light passes, it bends away from the norm. It's what happens similarly when you decide to swim in water rather than walk on earth.

We tend to think of matter as congruent and solid. The comedian David Chappelle once joked about how he marveled at the awesomeness of his son and to think that he had come from his penis. We all did, but only partly so. And only at one stage of the evolution. Nether the ovum nor the sperm hold the key to the kingdom of a given organism. Some of that jazz you can pretty much paraphrase your way out of the selfish nature of our genes,. (Nothing more than allusion to Richard Dawkins’ Selfish Gene). We could very well be working in the gene's favor and not the other way around. We're ruled by both inner and outer forces, and if consider for a moment that there's nothing out there

It is of importance because we may think that we are running the show when we’re just running through the notions.. Or, at times, just running,

Imagine buffalos in stampede chased away by a few weaklings sapiens on the savanna: why not just turn around and face their aggressor. It's only then that you meet your destiny. Just like the scared away buffaloes, we’re stronger than told.  We run like the buffalo because we find ourselves on autopilot most of the time. This life form, always on in the background, runs the show that is our lives. We have little saying into the way things are. Just like the buffalo.

Of course, it's not the same predicament for the hunter. Be more like the hunter instead. An ethical predator that eats only that which is alive. The hunter had to catch big game first before the feast. It's not as coward an act to hunt them as it is to raise them in slaughterhouses for mass consumption. It's not the same animal meat either. Hence the word “process”.

You have strength and  power over others, use it wisely. You do not want to hurt any living creature for as small as it appears.

We do the same. We run. We hide of an opportunity that will only make us grow. But growth takes pain. Aren't we built to avoid pain? Yes, but one thing is pain that takes your hand off the stove and another thing is laziness taking mind off the issue. If you focus too intently, your target will notice and flight along with the rest of the herd. You can see a parallel instance in a crowded public place when there's a loud noise or a sign of distress. If suddenly a few run in panic, soon all others will follow suit, like pigeons.

In case you haven't already heard, real isn't really real. Reality it's a byproduct of the culture, or age, it is strictly a subjective experience and conceivable only in the collective mind. It may seem real enough to find ourselves here and now in an embryonic yoga position in order to facilitate sleep.  It brings us back to the comfort of our uterine sack, skin deep a womb that belongs to a female human for the next nine months. Maybe we can replicate this effect on a massive level and disseminate humanoid emissaries on a voyage mission all over the universe squeezed like organic toothpaste in a nutrient-rich mushy uterus-like spacecraft large enough to one-dimensional-size fits all. Who wouldn't like to drift off through the vacuum of space sealed off in an organic sack Matrix-style? Isn't sex, from the evolutionary standpoint, just a vain attempt to thrust our way back into the maternal cavern, just a handful of inches deep? What is that preposition compared to the prodigious interstellar space adventure that it'd be rumbling thru the celestial bodies in the sky with no fixed destination in mind?

Why hold such rigidity ourselves when the very fabric of all that surrounding us is cosmic vacancy. There's nothing solid about matter. So, whatever matters can wait.

Let us proceed steadfastly towards the most magnetic goals.

In my mid teens, I was a scrawny, rowdy, undisciplined, introvert, reckless student I once was, was in for a rude awakening. Is there any other kind? A boy who hadn’t spent much time at the gym, slacking off as the last among the track runners. No bully could ever catch up to me, but I wasn’t competing, just sort of loved running as fast as only I could. How did I get such strong legs? The lower part of my body had been the only mom gave me permission to train hard. I attempted to work out my upper body, but mother stopped me from doing so, arguing that lifting weights would stunt my growth. Since mother lived in constant fear of the outdoors, she’d keep us mostly inside, so squats, kicks and jumping rope and running errands outside made me stronger from the waist down. All legs and a slender torso, no upper body, that was all there to make me faster than most. Not nearly as fast as I could’ve been. Thanks, mom.

I had wanted to be an astronaut in my early formation. Mother wouldn’t hear of it, the fearful creature she was, her  overly nurturing ways had turned me into a more reclusive, introspect fellow who had the least of ideas just how much the presence of a father matters. You get to pick up your manhood in bits, like all the boys, but you put up with a lot if you grow up sheltered from it by a pampering mother.

In its way, blocking growth, is the irrational fear with which mother loved us, passing her dysfunctionality down to us. Of course, mother is not to blame, she’s but a statistical footnote in the countless encyclopedias of primitive cousins and ancient relatives that once inhabited and coexisted within our reach. Do you think I speak of Sapiens, the evolution of the species and so forth? No, of course. I speak instead of immediate family who were around just a few decades ago, but it feels like eons and their backwardness is not a model suitable for imitation. I feel like I am an evolved being, leaving behind my past animal selves and all the circus that followed it in the name of the father, but not my sons. My boys are sacred to me, that for which I work for ever since having them. I enjoy seeing them take after me as they evolve into something other everyday.  My priorities changed from a despondent way of life to a more structured and concerted effort.

It probably has something to do with nature ensuring the survival of some part of me into the next generation, it is not accidental to love. Look, I’m not one to embellish, of all things, love. Everywhere you’ll see either side of two extremes: denial or attachment.

We do so operate with simultaneous forces all around. Take, for instance, when you love blindly or when you’d rather play the cynic and play cool. In youth, we probably loved more impulsively than in our later days, and for obvious reasons. We learn, as we grow, and we know that Santa Clause does not exist. But still we believe in things like God, a sort of Santa for adults.

And so, we tackle the most pernicious sources of suffering. In reducing the things that make us miserable, we make time for contemplation and relaxation. Pain is relieved so long as the basics are covered: a balanced diet, a fitness regimen, a renewed commitment to be better, knowing that it takes less effort to love than to hate, we all talk of doing but few of us ever do. It’s not difficult once it becomes a part of your routine, you don’t see people struggling at the gym; you see people struggle outside of it.

Before we knew words, long ago when there was no recorded history, then and there was love. Animals’ way of loving their young, the sacrifices made, the struggle endured, specially when it comes to mammals. Loving your offspring isn’t a choice; it’s encoded deep within your genetic make-up. When science argues that nature did not have in mind our happiness, and was there to just ensure our survival, those of us who have been involved in childbearing know a thing or two about masochism. Undoubtedly, we love our children vehemently, without knowing if our love is corresponded, if we are as much a part of their lives as they’re of ours. We’re intuned, you could say almost addicted when it comes to our siblings. Why bring that up here and now? Well, because it has everything to do with the subject discussed. If only we were inclined to care for and appreciate our partners and lovers half as much as we do our very own flesh and bone, what then would be the result? Half as much may be too much, really: we’d do just fine with one tenth of the effort involved in raising a semi-functional kid nowadays. We’re all damaged somehow, but the good news is that there are ways to go about reversing wrongs by not engaging the torments of the past. What worries you is really the enemy, pre-occupation. It’s what you do before taking care of business. We stress unimportant things. Say you’re traveling underground and experience a delay, understandably, you’ll feel a bit discomfort; but if it’s something you experience daily, more or less in a similar manner, shouldn’t it be filed under categorical routine? It’s not so much the hardship and wrongs life bestows upon that baffle us, it’s the lack of resolve to withstand the storm and press forward. We give in way too easily, and that’s not an option with our little ones. Sure, lovers aren’t “little” people, but when in dealing with love it is best to understand: we’re all children.

As to how we fall to such condition, well…

It’s accidental the way it happens sometimes. Accidents can be quantified, measured and studied in order to be understood. We may then anticipate their volatility, enact damage control protocols, assist the injured as best suited. Except love can be tricky because it deals with the individual, and if one is to be understood, then one must first explain: we do not love others per say. We’re utterly and hopelessly infatuated with ourselves. The trick is to rid of the “hopelessly” part, and start building from there. Look, just because love is downright inwardly obtuse and unnecessarily complicated, it doesn’t make it any less “hopeless.” We gotta be tougher than that.

Some of us may get the wrong idea about toughness. A tough lover is not aggressive, as aggression plays no part in dominance. Aggression is a response we need to counter a credible and imminent danger before us: you don’t reason with aggressors, like thieves sneaking into your property. There, and only then, you need to make good use of aggression. You can’t fight off a killer with kind words.

So, there are situations in life that demand an aggressive response. Fortunately, the majority of the experiences lived daily will not require such effort. We overreact to things, and that’s a sign of weakness. We think it’s strength to go all out; on the contrary, strength is built in temperance, centeredness, restraint. Dominant animals do not overreact, running for the hills; part of the problem, according to the author of the book Sapiens, Professor Harari, this anxiety towards life, this easily shaken nature of ours, has its evolutionary roots in the fact that we weren’t meant to used to finding ourselves as top predators. We react sheepishly to any affront, and we’re far more dangerous because we’re not used to being at the top of the food chain. We’re sheep with nuclear weapons, and it’d be preferable, according to Mr. Harari, if we were ruled by a wise wolf or leopard. These magnificent beasts really know how not to buckle under the pressure.

We die everyday, in indeleble ways, the minute we shy away, the moment we give in, over that project that did not come to fruition or the death staring at us from the mirror as the reflection we see ourselves in, momentarily, the ever-present now vanishes before our eyes.

We’ll never attain immortality, not in the way we may conceive of it: as in a flux, sort of like jumping rope, you await the right nanosecond fraction of the moment in which the rope swings away and hop in as the rope hits the floor.  Not a moment later or before, or else you'll hit the rope and miss the empty target in time.

We ought to consider that our brains operate similarly. We may miss an attempt because we failed to make that bold leap of faith, shattering for good the ambivalent agony of uncertainty. We all enjoy a little mystery and it's not like they say that uncertainty causes stress. Life is stressful but more so for those who don't work out. Strength makes life outside the gym a walk in the park. Suddenly, the urge to take on the world and come up on top materializes. We seize the moment because after putting ourselves through a workout sessions, experiences that would normally vex us do not faze us.

Part of it is owed to the level of confidence that strength brings to the equation, and that only hitting the gym hard and often brings. People often claim not having time. Who are these people? Who doesn't have time thirty minutes or so a day to function optimally? To experience an enhanced version of yourself, any takers?

Not only will it make us look and feel good but it'll also give us a decisive edge over our bummed-out, couch-potato self. Exercise should be as essential as hygiene; fit people tend to be well-groomed. They tend to be healthier in other aspects of their lives. They lead indeed a more exciting life than they would, say, without it. You only need to look at yourself in the mirror and see if you're one step closer to the best version of yourself.

Upgrade.

What  we should be grateful for is the because we’re never a whole, a complete set, a unique entity… we’re transient beings in the way we live, the way we are wired, organically. Within us, everything is in flux, nothing is fixed, immigrants on this transcendental journey. When A.I. finally maps out all the neural intricacies, all the chemical compounds’ mix and misses that make us who we are at any given moment, then A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) will have a rendition of the person we were just a moment ago, never of the person that we are now. If, somehow, the person we are gets mapped out completely, replicating the whole genome in the machine may differ vastly from the genetic whims exhibited in said organism. We can be sure that we may find a machine vastly similar to the way in which we function, but once the mapping out ends all similarities soon fade and you can see the futility of sequencing that which is not only random but intractable such as the mind. In that the mind can be replicated but not produce therefore the same input/output. We can find a mind very much like ours, the closest assimilation ever, and the minute we drift apart from the replica, these two like-minded organs of creation will go about their separate ways.

But love isn’t statistical, or static. We can’t quantify emotions… yet. As in happiness, it’s not that love is beyond our grasp; few things, if you consider, are… if only for the time being. Solving the problem of love is not then beyond the realm of probabilities. And it needn’t be as harsh as it is often portrayed. It’s so simple that no honest man would derive much pride over it.

When it comes to literature, it truly is love. If that’s not love, then I don’t know what is.

That I had been thrown out of class and one day in public threatened by the very principal, the most feared man within the premises of Grover Cleveland high school, who praised my work in some classes but warned me about the mayhem I had laid upon other curriculum: “Next time I hear anything bad about you, I’ll walk you outside this school myself.”

I knew I had to change, not so much so that the principal would approve. Just enough to keep him off my sight for the duration of high school. And so, I did.

We get to pick the ones that serve us best only if we’re any good at detecting being part of it. Not just the silly stories we hear about others’ stupidities, or ours. We’re prone to make mistakes. But what if they’re not really mistakes but only a failed attempt. You’ll fail miserably only when you learn to give up.

It’s been a while since I’ve written. I started other blogs and kept piling up material for an ebook later on this year and thought of many releasing mini-books of no more than a hundred pages. I’d have

Thought I’d dive right into the chain of events that led me here.

Let’s not forget it was a celibate monk who wrote the Kamasutra. It’s unusual to think of things as taking place all at once. This causes our collective mind to act like that of a hive mind.

As to what kind of manuscript this present book applies to, it’s a fictionalized and downright untrue, embellished and upgraded overtime. Why wouldn’t I add, omit, fictionalize or even rename each path undertaken? Aren’t we such capable fablers, toiling day in and out in the realm of imagination, simply because it takes far too long for things in real life to materialize? What to do with ourselves, in the meantime, as we await for the imagined to take the real world hostage and run with it into the proverbial sunset?

We polish our nails, but still pay attention to other fashionable: clothes that fit, not too tight or loose.

Eat well, that is: stay from animal protein; sleep between six and eight hours, and keep active all throughout, go to the gym and hit it hard for approximately an hour, three to five times a week. Think of fitness as taking a shower: you may get away skipping the shower a day or two before you start to stink. Same is true of exercise: you get so much more from it than just looking good naked. You get to be the very best version of yourself. Who doesn’t have time for that? When someone argues not having enough time to work out, you can inwardly argue who doesn’t have time to feel great? Most of us -provided that we’re healthy enough individuals- come out of a fitness regimen not just looking and feeling better in a relatively short span of time, but also more capable, alive, cheerful, dynamic, energized, upbeat. We’re ready to take on the world… and why wouldn’t we be able to deal with things more efficiently than we’d normally so? Contrast the feeling you get when the discipline to excel takes you first stop in the morning to the gym. What comes out of there isn’t the same grumpy, restless, wicked soul that went in. What comes out is someone who has mastered himself to the point that the very act of going to the gym first off is not just a priority; it’s on, autopilot. It’s not even a question and it’s not like you’d go there to show off or to make unbelievable demands of your body in order to smooth out other shortcomings popping in and out of the rear view mirroring of a self-reflected voice. Whatever it is you do, you can and must do so in part because of pride. The pride you take in your craft, your dedication, the patience to see it unravel, the strength to push forth. It’s not through an enlightened path through which we make our way. We make it through darkness in the bitterest of winters with sunny steps, fluorescent hops, bright insights, incandescent anecdotes.

When the focus widens, guts vicerate, eyes brighten.

Who doesn’t have forty minutes five a day to feel like you’re on top of the world. The contrast between the same you that skips the gym and the one that decides to go for it can be compared to that of a standard definition to a higher standard of definition. We simply are and operate so much better when we hit the gym first thing in the morning. Nonsense, to say there ain’t time to do so; every moment is an opportunity welcoming us to do so. We can decide right here and now to become more active and realize that in order to achieve that, all you need to do is move.

How About the Experiences described in this book?

Again, every piece of paper ever written is a form of fiction. There’s always another side to each story. But instead of omitting grotesque content, let’s tell the story from the truest form daoism.

Of course, it’d still be fiction to depict events in full detail, even if I were to use real names, no matter how realistic, matter-of-fact a story is, if language is used to convey meaning, it means it’s an illusion. Being an illusion doesn’t make it any less real.

So long as I use language, any idiom would simply be categorized as a work of fiction. Even when it comes to greater, far-reaching issues such as galaxies exceedingly accelerated away from us, words are of little, if any, symbolic use. One may argue that the universe is vast and mostly empty, but it doesn’t begin to illustrate everything that goes on in there at any given moment and for as long as it has been or ever was and all that it will. It turns out past, present and future are all happening all at once: when you look at a starry night, what you see is not what is but rather what those stars were hundreds of millions of years ago. You’re literally staring at the cosmological past of a swarm of stellar bodies hanging out suspended a moment in time, again: an illusion. Consider this: the speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second in a vacuum. The fact that it took the actual projection of those celestial bodies of gas to travel here millions of years should serve as a testament of just how far and stretched out the universe is and if we will ever win at this game of catch-up.

As a specie, we devised methods of studying in depth more complex phenomenon. Mathematics evolved into still more advanced ways of equating, yet quantum physics has yielded a subatomic world at odds with ours. We live in a delusion (as in being within the illusion, no way to look out); whatever theories others might prophesize misses the proverbial bullseye: truth is an elusive target, not a fixed one. As a species, we come close to the ultimate truth but the minute that we get there, it’ll mutate into untold and mystifying proportions. Looking for the “truth” is a lot like finding out the marital status of a constellation. As humans, we understand very little because our brains are ill-equipped for higher mathematical problems. Overtime the genetic mutations that prompted the dawning of an era in which there really is nothing that is out of cognitive reach. If suddenly the fish in bowl would stare at you and wink, it’ll prompt you to recognize its extraordinary ability at self-recognition. This foreign creature has no way of communicating just how precious its life is, but the mere fact that it still ruminates back and forth and oftentimes in suspended animation to stare back at the observer from  within the confines of a three-dimensional water-packed crystal ball-like sphere.  

Since little, I familiarized with this notion that all we see is nothing more than an illusion. Except now I may add, “Being an illusion doesn’t make it any less real.” It is that eccentricity

Some devised the metrics, others the sweat; we’re moral beings. So, we want to abide by an ethical guideline along the way, choose the path that fits best the codes and designs of our surroundings. Blend in, get inside and from within bring the whole system down? Once you enter this system, you become part of it. No point in trying to take on the biggest guy in the room: see where the evolutionary chips would fall and pick every tantalizing bit so that you can reconstruct the mess in your mind. Except this very tool with which we analyze data is intrinsically linked to all that is. A puzzle is solved one piece in the right spot at a time, but seeing how every last one of us is an integral part of the puzzle, it is best to start by solving ourselves first.

Just do as good as possible with what you got, devise your own mechanisms of survival overtime and prosper gradually. What good is it to decipher the mechanics of an ethereal cage in which one finds itself trapped and worse still, deteriorating conditions that will not improve? Slowly decaying, bit by bit entropy makes its way in.

There comes a time in fight or a workout session in which we give up. Everyone gives in. Ironically, it is the opponent that throws such a ferocious blow it immediately demands of the referee to intervene. and stop the fight. It's the rival that crushes us with much more vigor and stamina, the one that promotes us to grow. At the gym, you may have given your all up to that last rep and it bear you good; ironically that's the rep that makes all the difference. It's also the rival that defeated you the one that exposes your weakness and now you have something to improve. It is the lover that never was the one that stays in your mind. Winning is oftentimes circumstantial. But that we take it always so personally says a lot about our own fragile ego. By the same token, you learn little from coming out

It need not be a physical fight which rarely happens; it's everything, everywhere and everyone, a psychological dogfight. The skills at your disposal will determine the outcome. Here's a few social cues that will enhance your experience.

Listen.

Look others in the eye.

Use compassion and empathy.

Science consists of making out the composition of a fleeting cloud in the horizon through the bars of the prison that lacks our collective mind inside, as some of those men around cling to the angel or devil behind that mass of condensed water in the sky.

You never fucked with the likes of.me.

It’s a success to have all the time in the world to dedicate ourselves to the trades that most reward our nature. What that may very well be depends on your natural constitution and proclivity.

In my case, it’s simple, really. It’s not just one thing, but it could be: acquiring the know-how to getting what I want out of life. And, I found, that in order to get what you want, invariably you need to transcend yourself. Self-improvement? No, because more than improvement, I sought out mastery of emotions: that most elusive condition of all, tranquility. Women came much more later, by accident, and when I thought I had already found nirvana.

I moved into an rv, rode until I found a small piece of land in the middle of nowhere and there, next to a lake, I found solace. That was all I needed initially.

I found it long ago, I’ve read as many books as I’ve seen movies, but it’s not so much the quantity, but the selectiveness in subjects to be explored. Neuroscience, technology, quantum physics, but the thing that initially obsessed me the most was women.

I found more perplexing than science, more fascinating than knowledge, more enigmatic than life itself. What I find more of a mystery than women is men’s unwillingness to become more curious as to how it is that the mind of that which obsess them throughout most of their lives, first  as our mothers and sisters, then distant relatives and among strangers, staring at us from a distance and having us figured out before we even said a word.

Girls were always a different kind of menacing. They weren’t strong like us, but we were somehow held back from hitting them. It’s been part of who we are or how we’re raised, but hitting girls is a no-no. What’s no so much of a no-no is all the discreet humiliations suffered at their hands throughout all our lives.

We all remember dealing with our mothers. Our fathers? Not so much, or at least not as negatively. If there was any downside to dad’s behavior, it was only when it was out of the extraordinary in their ruthlessness. A degree of madness, we’ve all been exposed to in life. We’ve been subjected to our good share of evil and it resides now within. It’s part of the voices we’ve followed that led us here, and it’s not going anywhere. We’re capable of it.

I mean, what kind of awful things most of us would be willing to do to spare our life or the life of someone us. And I speak of no crime, either. Let’s not call it prostitution, for instance, but mom used to sleep around and bluntly ask for men to help her out. She’d initially go for boys she’d like until these boys gossiped about her and then there were other men at her doorstep or in the shop who’d ask her if she would go with them that they’d pay her. She did not go with the ones that weren’t her type, she’d say. And her type was always a generous kind. If they called her demeaning names in bed, they didn’t find her out on the streets and there were kids sleeping in the same room. She was really doing it to have the best time being a single, having her fun and providing for her kids.