Good times...

"If I ever feel better, remind me to spend some good time with you..." Thomas Mars

Pranging out

It is fairly obvious that the main purpose of life is to "have a good time", to distract ourselves until the moment of our death. It is as simple a concept as can get, however, ironically, it is one of the most difficult theory to put into practice. Why is it that, even in the middle of a celebration, the moment we find tremendous enjoyment is, simultaneously, the moment we experience the greatest sadness? What is it that spoils the fun? Why is the killjoy forever louder than the cheerleaders?

Our lives are full of distractions: from TV to the internet, from family to friends, from work to leisure, from excursions to travels. The more we move in space, the slower time goes and, consequently, the less conscious we become of our own existence. Such is the magic of relativity. And even though we would like to believe that we are saddened by the passage of time, in fact, we are happy to have been able to fill our lives with as many memorable moments as possible. 

In wonderland 

The first times are among the most colourful dots on the timeline of our lives. The first time you crawled, the first time you talked, the first time you walked, the first time you went to school, etc. And even when we have no memory of these events, we are happy to rely on others, close ones, to remember these for us, times and times again. That is what parents are for... until we become parents ourselves and start collecting memories for our offspring. We hang onto these to define our identity, who we are and who we want to become.

More often that not, memories are, in fact, an unsurmountable burden. We remember good times when they are gone, we hold on to memorabilia to avoid facing the daunting future, we dream of changing the past to experience something else. Some people are on a mission to keep the status quo when everything else pushes for evolution, most want to bring back the golden ages without regards for the buzzing present, others run away from what was before in an attempt to seize the future before everyone else. 

In this battle of perspectives on time, it is a real challenge to have a good time. The pressure is on everyone to have the "best" moment of all their lives. And we play the game by upping our expectations of our own lives... to our own loss. First we want good grades, then we want shiny goods, later on we crave for stylish partners, we despair to get perfect children, before reverting to striving for good deeds. Topsy turvy twisted dreams that we discard as soon as they come to life, or don't.

Disorientation

So, in the end, none of this really matters. The good times, the bad times, the old and the sad, they are often as forgotten as we go on living. In reality, we would like to stop time and exist in a sort of permanent oblivious state to what surround us. When we distract ourselves, we don't do so exclusively to forget that we have to build a living, we mostly aim to reach social unconsciousness.
Forgetting that we have an identity, forgetting that we have families, forgetting that we have duties, forgetting that we are as common as humans can be. 

Good times are all about embracing the vacuity and vanity that defines our time on Earth...for better or worse.

Gone...missing?

"Just because I'm losing... doesn't mean I'm lost... doesn't mean I'll stop [...]" Chris Martin (Coldplay).

Traveling is very much akin to losing. Losing your inhibitions, your expectations, your apprehensions. Without a doubt, those who have a taste for shifting spaces and shifting places must have lost something in themselves that they are trying to recover through traveling. 

On the road

It is very easy to lose yourself in anticipation of what elsewhere will be like. It's not about the grass being "greener", more so the grass being different, alluring and promising. There is always a sense of adventure in going for what has never been experienced before. In this globalised world, we see, hear, smell new places day-in day-out, whether or not we want to. Most of us enjoy the comfort of knowing that the new exists while appreciating that the new will never be part of our routine. That is what "different" means in reality: something foreign, useful to compare our own lives to, helping us grow and break the mould of our collective experience.

But different also means something else. It is what fascinates and scares. It is what reminds us that despite being humans, we can never be the same. It is what, any time and any place, causes us to stop and step back and become observers of our lives. What succession of events dots my lifeline? What is my trajectory on the geodesics of this world? How relative is my world in the light of multiple frames of reference? Are we coexisting or do we belong to individual spacetime continui? 

Spaced out

There is much turmoil in realising that our existences are not uniform and that there is no truth in this world. What some decide to yearn for means nothing to others. What certain people believe with all their might is derided by other people. What drives me to move forward is what pushes others to fall back. So when each of these worlds intersect, a re-evalution becomes necessary to avoid misunderstandings, collisions and hurts. It is necessary to become the observer of the other person's timeline, not just as a way to attest his/her existence, but also to learn from it.

Often, we wait onto inspiration from role-models, famous figures and other examples established in our communities. But this is not satisfying, because who is closest to us quickly becomes invisible to our eyes, heart and mind. In fact, what inspires us is what creates magic in front of us: the mystical, the puzzling. What else could it be, if not what is strange, unusual and...different? Inspiration is therefore nothing but that moment we realise that our lives can shift to another timeline, that there are multiples possibilities ahead of us and that we have the option of veering in any direction.

Losing yourself

Sure, this has the effect of making us dizzy, anxious, prostrated after a while, but inspiration often assaults us for a brief moment. The process of traveling is always the same: deciding, organising, moving, discovering, adapting. Herein lies the challenge. This is why, although most of us can be inspired to go, only a set of happy fews head away. And those who have remained start to question their traveling mates. Where are you now? What time is it there? When are you coming back? What people who remain never realise is that those who are gone are never missing. They have shifted their individual lives to the universal scale. They are busy writing their stories for others to read...

A thread to countdown

"If life had a direction, we would take the other."


This was said to me 10 years ago, during a late night jamming session with twin amateurs guitarists and their band. At the time, they were in the peak of their rebellious and anti-establishment selves, and they were so...right.

Multi-directional

Life is universally pictured as a thread: it starts with the umbilical cord, moving gradually to lengthen our spine, later on it follows our throat line to the intestines, and, for some, it continues its cycle through the reproduction of another umbilical cord. And so life goes on for most.

But it seems that more and more, lately, there is the realisation that we live on borrowed time. We collect as many experiences as possible, we experience as many stories as we can, we write multiple destinies for ourselves in a rush, we race through the world to create memories, we recycle these memories to educate, until we need to break the cycle and take a break. The thread might run a thousand miles long or stretch itself five yards, but it remains essentially the same.

There is clearly no thread that is more remarkable than the other: it might be made of gold, made of dreams, made of medals, made of fantasies, made of laurels, made of greenbacks, it is still a borrowed thread and there will certainly come a day for payback. Some times, we think that we can switch from one thread to another or disguise our existence into a line that, if we throw as far as possible, will hook the most hidden treasures. This illusion certainly pushes some of us beyond the boundaries of normalcy, out of the reach of understanding, into the realm of iconoclasm. 

Existential questioning

There is no doubt that rebellion is necessary in our day and age. When our threads are pulled together and tied up in the hands of a few on top of a system that regulates the world like a puppet show, the no pasaran! becomes the essential ingredient, if not the reason of our lives. Hence the growing numbers of doorslams, defections, disappearances and "hermits" among the current 30-somethings. 

My former twin friends would now be in their early 30s and, by now, they would have pondered the following set of Q&As. 
1. Rise to management positions: what for, since I work better when I follow my own agenda?
2. Settle down and marry: what for, since the welfare state can take better care of my wife and children?
3. Save money for a retirement fund: what for, given that I can borrow money at any given time?

Life, reinvented

That is the new order of the 21st century and its enduring social-liberalism, its absence of hard-boiled heroes, its fabrication of collective dreams. 

The more we attempt to own the thread that is lent to us for a certain time, the more we fail. Why follow blindly as if this was the promise made to us by Ariadne?  Why keep on pulling when there is no end to the task? Really, why not walk back in the other direction? After all, what has been seen and experienced before is the guarantee of what is possible, achievable, and real.

So make no mistake: we are all bound to come back to our teenage years and the spirit of rebellion in us, one day or another. The crux of our lives lies in KNOWING when to look back, so that we have enough life and enthusiasm left in us to make the most of this time-travel venture, back to our own genesis. 

The yin and the yang

"I...I...would like to put my fingers on you." Corinne BAILEY-RAE.

There is no greater mystery in this world than the circle of life and the seemingly perfection of the cycle of Nature. Time goes from Midnight to Midnight, Earth goes round and round, Space is finite by our knowledge but infinite per se. People we meet are people we leave, challenges we reach set us on the road to further challenges, what we eat and think become who we are.

Fearing the known

There is this constant opposition and immersion of Nature and Nurture in every being. What we were in our younger years surprises us with a come-back later on in our mature life. The saying that what comes naturally cannot be hindered (perfectly summarised in the French language by "Chassez le naturel et il revient au galop") should alert us to what the purpose of our existence is. 

However, "modernity" (i.e MODERN publicITY) expects us to fight our natural instincts, deconstruct our innate principles, dismiss our individual expectations. At the same time, it incites us to run after man-made "ideals" that, although they seem in tune with who we are at a given moment, do not soothe our aspirations for long-lasting (comm)union. 

I would like to think that I can nail down who everyone is by repeated observations, discussions and socialisation. I also would like to seize the full nature of myself, my identity, my personality. But these aspirations are impossible to satisfy. 

Who are you?

We, as humans, are as fluid as our environments and our circumstances. My yin is someone's yang only for some time. My vision can find resonance among certain people, but only for some time. All relationships naturally unfold into dissolution. This is by far the harshest truth: to realise that our mortality is not linked to our physical death, but to our death in the minds and thoughts of others, even after decades of shared experiences. 

The good news is that the longer we live, the more we realise that this is also a fact of Nature and that accepting it MAKES SENSE in the long run. So many rejections, heartbreaks, break-ups, separations, divorces on the one hand. Yet, many more crushes, infatuations, friendships, mating games, partnerships and marriages. 

"During any chemical reaction no particles are created or destroyed: the atoms are simply rearranged from the reactants to the products." It seems to me that the Conservation of mass is the ultimate ruling principle that overrules individual customs, traditions, religious and spiritual beliefs.

Nature is the sole and only truth in this world: learning the ways of nature is therefore the sole requirement for a meaningful human existence.

Atemporal lingering

Flutter, trigger, relish: that is what comes to play in defining lingering.
When recollections pop out of nowhere consistently and unexpectedly remind you of a person and a place and undefined moments, you know you feel the pull of time passed.
 

Where is my mind?

It is said that our unconscious is the biggest bank of data in the human brain. Working memory, short-term memory, long-term recalls could not even beat its capacity, no matter how aggregated. It's like you have been somewhere and done something that did not really "matter" at the time it was done, and suddenly your mind reminds you that this fact/experience is there, willing to come out and show you a different take on reality.

Reality kick

How many times do we travel and wander around tasting, touching, feeling things without being aware of these? For example, on the road during a road trip, do we pay attention to all that is visible or we just want a sense of the place? The food that we sample at our new destination, how come it always seem to taste "better" than what we usually have? It can be the same spices, the same recipe, the same chain of restaurant, but why the different taste?

Marcel Proust is most famously described the reality of lingering in a 3-pages long description of his "Madeleine". Throughout the journey of our lives, the places we see and we've been to, people's voices, characters, deeds... all are passively encapsulated in our beings. Every moment is carved into our bodies, every emotion glued into our minds. We then live life fighting to stay "present" and awake, striving to keep up with the happenings of the world and struggling to remain in tune with our inner rythm. But the lingering is there, and it only takes an unplanned break in the space/time of our existence to trigger the recollection of our life story.


I believe that the human brain is the most powerful creator of algorithms, computing all facts into alternate scenarii and realities. The chemical processes at stakes could not even be reproduced in lab, and, despite the legend of Dr Frankenstein's creature, it is highly likely they never will be.

 

 So, really, who needs Jules Verne's time-machine when our minds can take us places beyond the past, present and future?

Space to think...

"Is it even worth to try?
Worth to try to escape?
Well, it is our right
to reach out for space."

This was the chorus of a song that I wrote more than 10 years ago, as I was beginning my travels around the world.  To this day, I recall these lines as the key to finding meaning and individuality in life.

Roaming

Traveling releases you in the universe, like some useless particle of stardust. It can be a mind-shattering and life-threatening experience, but it is a necessary re-birth you give yourself, as opposed to the initial birth given by your genitors. Now that you are out there, only you can go the light years and constellate your existence with bright and renewed experiments.

Space, after time, is the second unit of measure of our lives. Where have you been? What have you seen? What was it like for you? Because time is immaterial and intangible, setting ourselves on the space continuum through trips, holidays, gap years and backpacking adventures ticks and crosses important moments spent across the globe throughout our time on earth. Otherwise, why would we bother gathering "souvenirs" of places where we have been?

Outer world

I've always thought that the word "space" strangely rhymes, with "escape", thanks to those twisted electrical currents in my brain. Thinking about it again, the whole thing does make sense. All these men and women who are stuck in situations and find relief in "looking at the stars". All these children and teenagers who "lose track of time" when they are too busy reading/watching/thinking about places in their imaginations. Or even people in relationships who desperately need "space" to reclaim their lives...

Space is this unique entity that gets us to experience our lives for real: we can all cross one land a thousand times, but our internal map of the place will not be identical. With a lot of space we can build or lose our sense of place. The immigrant who had roamed around different countries can easily forget about where he/she came from in the first place. However, many people also wander in search of their very own "place". This is the prime reason why the dynamics of migrations will never be controlled nor contained, despite what some politicians and elements of closed-up societies proclaim.


"When is it that I will find
a suitable place?
I got lost around from
wandering in space..."

This was the conclusion of my very teenage song. I can say that, after crossing the world South to North and West to East, I have found my own place in a land as remote and primal as the "cradle of mankind".

Who said time is counted?

In 2008, Luke Pritchard from The Kooks was "wishing, hoping [he] can write [an imaginary girl] a rhyme, that might stop the tick of time". 

I used to be mystified by his words.
What is time? What makes it tick? Can it be stopped? Even so, for which reasons?
The more I think about it, the more I realise that, more than money, Time is the only real currency we have in this life.

Cash play

Money gets devalued, inflated, deflated. It is just created and destroyed in a series of algorithms that anyone can play around with. The recession of 2008 very much stems from this number game: lower interest rates, alter Consummer Price Index, hike oil prices conveniently, cut down production costs... Our economies are all about juggling figures, trends, data and other man-made business tools. All costs are temporary and artificially made, but some things are free and naturally remain.

I often wonder at the life of my own electrical devices.
I bought a phone back in 2014, barely used it, barely had it out of my bag, barely exposed it to any sort of "hazards" (water, heat, fire, fidgety hands, etc.), barely charging it at all. But 2 years later on, it is giving me the itch. Its screen freezes as soon as my finger touches it, its battery sinks without warning, and suddenly it can't seem to find the network that was here two days before. What is this magic? It's time to change my phone, I'm led to believe. TIME.

Spending time

Has time even got anything to do with it? Afterall, there is no major difference between yesterday and today. I still get my alarm to ring, I still go to work, use my wristwatch to double check the time, because I don't trust my phone anymore. I've seen it stuck on 3.50pm so many times, when the correct digits should have been 5.43pm or even 8.21pm.
So that could be the measure of time. The differential between what I believed some time ago (that my phone was a spot-on accurate clock) and what I think now (that my phone is reaching the end of its manufactured life).

Similarly, Time is precious because it is the measure of our growth and emancipation from our old selves to our current selves. What I was when I lived on these other continents 5, 10, 20 years ago, and what I am now (or what I have become) have a lifetime stuck in-between. The structurally adjusted economies, the Schengen area, the live massacre at the Twin Towers, the Great Financial Crisis, Obama's presidency, etc., these events chunk out what is a past that I wouldn't (and couldn't for the life of me!) remember otherwise.

But Time is also precious because my use of my time defines who I am. Do I mainly sit behind my computer? Do I take action to plan for my wishful future? Should I hang out longer at this party or is it better to go for a walk by the ocean? Am I going to order a take-away or try out this recipe in my new cooking book? Decisions are made with time in mind.

Catching up

But when you have been across many places and you have experienced many people's ways of life, thoughts, problems, customs and cultures, it makes it even more confusing to get a sense of time. Sure, it takes me one minute to boil water for my tea in my kettle, but if I were in xxx I would have to get the wood going and the fire burning before I can even put the water pot on top. Yes, talking to my friends is easy: I just log on to Whatsapp and drop them a message and catch them online. But suppose I lived in xxx, no way I could do that without walking to an internet cafe and paying a fee for a log-in. Getting that holiday house in xxx would be so quick: I pay cash and get the papers straight on, while here I need to open a loan account, show my payslips/bills/account statements, etc.

I've come to the conclusion that time only has the value we stick on it. If I'm willing to take the time to discuss with you, you mean a lot to me. If I'm spending time thinking a problem through, its solution is important to me. If I'm happy to use 57 minutes and 23 seconds to type and illustrate this post, then, yes, writing this blog brings value to my life.


And if you are reading this, then, somehow, we are sharing the same views on life, across the time-space continuum.