So i have travelled to Slovakia again, for a weekend this time.
I have been painting window frames. Since i have a new iPod (4G nano, black, yummy), i could also listen to music (Tristania, In Flames, Kamelot). The last time, it was somewhat of a patience exercise, but this time… I guess i got better at painting and maybe i have become more patient, too :). It was pretty enjoyable, more than i would have thought a work like that could be. And i am sure the music helps, too.
(The next day)
And to continue the last blog… There, i have concluded that hardship was important factor in becoming better:
And apart from hardship… Problem is, hardship alone, if it stays the same, is not enough to make people change. It is the change from contentment to unhappiness, that drives people forward. Because in that change, one starts to change, and hardship together with dynamics helps a lot. Static, unchanging hardship will only do little to change a person. One can get used to it, like to anything else. Like to contentment. So an initial change can start a cascade. Like for me, breakup caused a domino effect. The change alone brought a lot of hardship with it, and i had to change to accomodate to it. And the change in me provoked more changes and so on. I have learned many new things, or, things i have learned before but went unnoticed took my notice. And in light of such things, i had to change again, because i knew i couldn’t be happy any other way.
A human being is as good as dead, when captured in a period of stagnation, in an unchanging moment that lasts. Only through change, through dynamics of life, we are alive. A man that does not change is a statue, a dead piece of matter, only useful as a memento. And that was what i have become, and now the statue is again starting to move, to breathe, to live. Because there is just no perfection that one could capture in a moment. No matter how perfect a moment, if frozen, the perfection decays, the little cracks are noticed. That is why trying to freeze time is futile, trying to preserve. One cannot enter the same stream twice. Life is a constant change, and this constant change is its only manifestation. Take the change away and you take the life away.
The past is important. The past is what resulted into present, and present is what makes future. Every moment, in a succession of moments, is important. But without the moment before and the moment after, the moment does not mean anything. The moment is void, without predecessor and successor. We move in time, and the motion is what becomes important, not the points we moved through. They are only important in the relation to our trajectory, not in isolation. And so is the direction which we take, the vector of our motion, and the shifts in direction.
There is no eternity, only the eternity of its own absence. Immortality and death are the same, the very same notion. Because every time we change, there is a little death and a little birth. And immortality is only possible in staticness. Immortality is a point in time, without motion. And without motion, there is no life to be.
And same goes for relationships. Make a relationship immortal and you make it die. Relationship needs a possibility of death to live. Like humans, like every living being. Without death, there is no life. The transition from being into non-being is essential, because it is the precondition to change. As i have already described, every change is a death followed by rebirth, but the entity reborn is not the one that has died. And therefore, without the ability to die, there is no ability to change. And death, the conventional death, as we know it, is just a death without rebirth. Something dies, and there is nothing more to take its place. But… The death makes others change. And therefore, the one who dies definitively, is again reborn, as part of those others that have died, but haven’t died, but are reborn. And the one definitely dead enters those new, reborn creatures, as a little fraction of them. And the cycle of life is closed, and the change can perpetuate itself.
Every day, i die a thousand times. But there are deaths that are important and deaths that go unnoticed. And most of the important ones are only noticed in retrospect, by a being that resulted, after many hours, or days, or weeks or even longer. And many more deaths. We only exist through our succession, because only what is born from us remembers what we were. And the very moment we are born, we die again, and a new being remembers. The memory lives on, but the beings are already dead. And the memory changes as well, because memory itself does not mean anything, only the being possesing it can give it meaning. And every successive being that we become gives it a slightly different meaning.
And so the delicate, complex dynamics of individual life are established. Not only the living being changes itself, but the memories of the previous beings change. There is certain gravity toward stagnation, because often the changes are only very slight, and the being remembers his predecessors that were fairly happy and tries to remain so. Because the bigger the change, the bigger risk. And therefore all beings are susceptible to stagnation, to the stasis cell of past success. Because past success is one’s own enemy, even if it is something that is a precondition to one’s own being. So we need to learn to live with our past success, but to not try to revive it. The effort to bring back past is a wasted, contraproductive effort. It seems so, it is almost natural, that if there was happiness in the past, restoring the same past will bring the same happiness. But there, that is not true, in the light of previous paragraphs. The trap is so obvious, that description is probably redundant, but let me do it once again anyway, maybe because i have fallen in it so many times already. Yes, the trap is in the stagnation, in absence of new things. Because even if one cannot restore the original condition no matter how much he tries, one can, and that is for sure, replicate it very closely. And that way lies a trap, a temporary (or even permanent) thermal death of stagnation.
(Later that day, outside, on a nearby hill)
And now, like before, there’s nothing more to stand between me and myself. I sit in the grass, alone. My being alone complements me, in a way. There are waves in the grass, as air moves. Music is playing, apart from the few houses i can see downhill, my only connection with the rest of people. And this what belongs to me, this paper, this pen. This book by Italo Calvino that Enrico Zini has given me. If on a winter’s night a traveller. But it is late summer. I can see vineyard in distance, on a slope different from mine. I call this slope mine because i am the one sitting there. And the time to collect the grapes is close. And here, next to me, an apple tree, with red apples on it.
And a white butterfly in the distance, beating the air with its light, small wings. And i blow away a tiny spider who has lost its way on my trousers. I feel being part of all this around me, and still so foreign. And the butterfly appears again, but it may be a different one.
The sun shines behind my back, alhtough i sit in shade of a tree. And neither the sun nor the tree are my enemies, or my friends. But still, i feel sympathy for both of them, one gives me light and warmth and the other shields me from too much of it. And the setting, the scenery soothes my senses, my mind, my feelings. Here, i am close to the loving mother of us, living beings, the nature. Here she is tender and forgiving and caresses my hair and it feels good.
And these feelings, i would love to pass on, to other people, so they, too, could feel well. But i see that this is not quite possible. Although these lines will hopefully give something to someone, they probably can’t carry what i feel. And i would bring someone with myself here, so they could feel it with me. But presence of other person would spoil it, it would be something else then. Maybe beautiful in a way, different from this one, maybe very pleasant. I love people, and when i see them happy, it fills me with gladness.
(And in the evening, on a train…)
And here i am, moving with speed, from one place to another. The speed, sound of loud music in my ears, the landscape drifting away. I could say i was happy, happy in the sense of change, everything changing around me, sun setting behind distant horizon, the train moving through the country. The semaphore lights. In the headphones, heavy guitar riffs competing with the roaring of the train. Cold air blowing in my face, flowing in my hair.
And now in another train, sitting in a compartment with stranger, a girl, trying to guess who she could be, from her dress, from what she is reading, from cues. Who she could become. What she means to me, a passing stranger on the path of life. I have been reading the Calvino book till now, but i thought i could write down my thoughts before they perish, like they do. It is fairly silent now here, even while we are on a train. The engine and the outside are muffled, the window and the door are closed. We are in a strange kind of privacy with this girl, neither knowing anything about the other. I, writing this text here, she reading some sort of magazine. Looking up from what we do at occasions. The train is accelerating now, and the sounds are more intense. It is a bit shaky, too. My hearing is still lightly impaired from the loud music from the previous train.
We arrived to a station. Short stop, then another long motion. Always toward Brno, toward my flat, toward the night and tomorrow. The girl is reading a horse races program. Here, i intrude her privacy and write that here. I hope she wouldn’t mind. I don’t have a name other than “the girl” for her, since all the words we exchanged was me asking whether i can sit down in the compartment and her answer. And i suppose i won’t say anything and she won’t, neither. Maybe a goodbye.
And now, we share a sort of almost intimacy. Two lone people in a compartment, tired and waiting to arrive somewhere. An invisible bond between us, doesn’t mean anything, just that element at random brought us there together, for a short moment. Chances are, we won’t ever meet again. And still, she is almost falling asleep, with her feet up, like if i were a trustworthy friend of old. And i feel sympathy for that, i feel honoured by a trust given by a complete stranger. She seems comfortable, feeling safe. And it feels good to have that trust, it feels important. It nearly gives warm fuzzies.
(To be continued, further…)