Theseus in Google maps

I ate a little piece of chocolate this afternoon and I am holding now with my fingers the small red strip of wrapping paper. There is a little drawing of the ruins of the temple of Poseidon in Sounio, "the most meridian point in Attica".  From up there, up these walls, Theseus' father jumped down the cliffs in terrible agony and killed himself, for he thought his son had perished in the fight against the Minotaur of Crete. E. told me the story today. But Aegeas was mistaken, since his son had been successful over the beast. Only that Theseus had forgotten to pull out the white sails of the battle ship -as it was the agreed signal- when returning victorious from the island. O, sons! What a mess. What an universal mess! The tiny body of the old man, lost in the vast ocean... The magnitude of the tragedy was made justice by re-baptizing -let us use this word at this time- the privileged sea around: Aegeus.

On the other side, the Minotaur, a beast caged in a labyrinth, with horns and all, was one of the many sons of the king Minos of Crete. The pretty Ariadna -one can only imagine her pretty- was also Mino's daughter. Nature is capricious. The relationship between father and son is stated with tons of wisdom and experience by Montaigne, precisely, in the first line of his essay On the Education of Children: "I have never known a father refuse to acknowledge his son however scabby or deformed the boy may be".

A nice story of fathers and sons, no doubt. The next chapter could be written today by any father with any son and the little help of Google maps. How easy it is now! Zooming in and out the narrow strait of sea from the continent to Crete, one can almost feel the fear of the warrior inside those egg-shells, sailing at the mercy of inconstant winds and voluble gods; one can almost see the dark silhouette of the menacing island and hear in the distance, like in the old King-Kong movie, the tam-tams calling upon the horrible creature to soothe its hunger and placate its fury.

Everything makes sense.

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Commoners, rogues and liars

Michel de Montaigne's Essays are turning to be refreshing and revealing. Quite an interesting chap, Montaigne, he would love this blogging thing. He says: "Whether they happened or not, in Paris or in Rome, to John or to Peter, there is always some turn of the human mind about which they give me useful information. I note and draw profit from these anecdotes, whether they are shadowy or substantial". That is, for sure, the most transcendental and interesting feature of his writing. His source of insight and inspiration, to an important extent, comes very well from the common episodes of common people. Montaigne is well rooted, I can see that, in the devoted culture of Aristotle -Seneca and Plutarch, in his case- and the whole Roman tradition, before the revolution. And that's what makes the fact so interesting. The old fathers seem to have done so. Not only his 16th-century writing sounds modern to my ears, much unexpected, but it is also striking that "to vindicate the supreme power of our will", the great St. Agustine "claims to have seen a man who could command his bottom to  break wind as often as he wished". That's what I am talking about: did he really wrote that?! The Philosopher! If St. Agustine had been married at the time, his wife would have shouted at him from the kitchen: "it is the last time, my dear, that I ask you to come downstairs and clean the stable!".

**

Recently, I heard that someone working for a small company got fired and, despite being smooth and soft at the time of departure and farewell, he came back in retaliation with all the fury and sued the company and the chief of personnel. And it comes so handy the juicy story of Montaigne, the first one the reader gets: "King Henry the Seventh of England made an agreement with Don Philip, son of the Emperor Maximilian -or, to give him a higher title, father of the Emperor Charles V- that the said Philip should deliver into his hands his enemy the Duke of Suffolk of the White Rose, who had fled for refuge to the Netherlands, but this on condition that Henry should make no attempt on the life of the said Duke. But when the English king came to die, he commanded his son in his last will to put Suffolk to death immediately after his decease.

Montaigne's stand is as certain as beautiful: "I shall see to it, if I can, that my death makes no statement that my life has not already made".

**

Montaigne makes a claim against his bad memory and puts it in simple words: to be a bad ass and burned brilliantly with ambition, memory is a must. I, like him, have a short memory for the injuries received, which is my perdition. Sometimes, the sun even shines on the prairies of my memories, although I know it is a vile mirage and I know that it was rather a dark and damp moor. "Like Darius", king of Persia, we "should need a prompter (...): Sire, remember the Athenians". Montaigne finds some consolation in the pleasures of unending novelty but, as I said, I don't.

And who has never had this experience?: "(...) At the expense of those who profess to suit their speech only to the advantage of the business in hand" and, perhaps, "to please the great man to whom they are speaking". O, vast truth! Now, take a few, the liars, of short memory. Montaigne puts in words what is a tangible experience of all: "The circumstances to which it is their wish to subordinate their faith and their conscience being subject to various changes, their language has also to change from time to time; and so they call the same thing grey one moment and yellow the next, say one thing to one man, and another to another".

It sounds quite a modern complaint, but it is the same stitching-and-bitching about of the primitive times, the times where good many thousands have already gone through the forests of life, before every new generation, blind-folded and tam quam tabula rasa, call it anew.

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Amidst the smell

O, the smells of the summer's nights... . The bewildered side of hearts only finds repose at sunset, before dusk, and the content one is at peace at night _Mild, tender breeze, and all these smells around. It's like being caressed.

Those are the inexpensive fragrances of these last days of the summer. I could not ask for more. A couple of days ago, an old veteran struck kingly his guitar in the hub of noisy and dinning Covent Garden. Old songs from the good old times, and the old lucky sun setting down above, unnoticeable. A woman past her age was singing quietly along, with a voice pitch close to that of a boiling kettle. Her eye was taken by the nostalgia and the sour warmth of wine. But it was all just so gentle and nice... . It was that time when all poor devils rambling their lives get their truce.

**

Talking about boiling kettles, I happened to watch -again- the 40-year-old Virgin sometime this week. That was an expression in it. At the beginning of the movie, we are told about the life of the main character _whatever his name was, don't remember. It was a sad life of order, dull and tasteless, totally unappealing and with no excitement whatsoever. Lonesome too. But it was a life of order. The house was also cleaned. He sits at a neat table and eats his breakfast. Everything is in order.

It is this well-underlined, pointed-out order and discipline what caught my eye and, probably, kept me watching: it is somehow my own life... I once saw in a magazine a story about the rooms of inmates, with pictures and all. I think I commented about it here. My God! All rooms were tidy and in order, even with taste, undoubtedly. That marks, clearly, a qualitative distinction: discipline, order, cleanliness, tidiness are not strange to the wretched spirits. Montaigne name these behaviors results of habit which "not only can mould us into whatever shape it pleases", and put it in straight words: "I remember having taken children from beggary to serve me, who have almost immediately left my kitchen and abandoned their livery, simply to return to their old lives. And I found one of them afterwards picking up mussels from a garbage pile for his dinner, yet neither by entreaties nor threats could could I make him abandon the relish and charm that he found in indigence. Beggars have their delights and sensual pleasures as well as the rich and, so they say, their dignities and civil precedence as well".

This is so true, so true. I have -I think, everyone has- my own stories about it. In fact, Montaigne is turning out to be quite a pleasant and insightful reading: "In the experience that I have of myself I find enough to make me wise, if I were a good scholar. Anyone who recalls the violence of his past anger, and to what a pitch his excitement carried him, will see its ugliness better than in Aristotle (...); anyone who remembers the ills he has undergone and those that have brought him from one state to another, thereby prepares himself for future changes and for the understanding of his condition".

It is just so. Naturally, not all is this kind of "transcendental" stuff. He gives full details of the smallest things. For example, in order to show the tremendous variety of human behaviors and tendencies, he gives account of the preference of the French for the fireplace, but the disliking for stoves which, by the way, were preferred by the Germans; he then praises the old idea of the Romans, who use to make the fire outside houses and warm them up by conveying the hot gases through pipes buried within the walls. Nice!... And so, so many other examples about almost everything, anyway.

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Basket: London - L.A.

I'm just writing a lot these days, a different kind of writing, somewhere else, and about this time of the night I feel tired, most of the days I fall asleep in front of the T.V., after dinner. But today I'd like to make a quick remembrance. It's been 28 years now since that hot night in the blossom of summer, where a bunch of kids entreated until 4 am to watch the Olympic Final of basketball USA - Spain. Those who did not wait and went to bed until the time, did not have the stamina to wake up nor their parents let them make the sacrifice. I was among those.

Spain was silver. The USA rolled over us, but at that time, playing against USA was like visiting Mars. It did not count. During the next year, boys at school stop playing football a little and turned to basket. Stores across schools made profits with those small balls that kids -their parents- bought like crazy. We all used to play in the football goals, between stick and stick, to get the ball inside a gap there was there. Those basket players were heroes, or at least that is how I remember them. Now Internet lets you watch those days and, somehow, wipes off the stardust of the fairy tale.... . There is something that has not changed, though, real as tough stone: the proverbial complex of inferiority of Spanish commentators.

Today Spain won silver again in London 2012, after losing against the USA, 107 - 100,  with the best generation of players that never was. Much, much less attention, unfortunately, these players have received for, not 1, but the last 6 years. Some of them -some were not even born in 1984- play now in the NBA and are successful. And all of them has shaken off the fastidious, ever-lasting inferiority complex. They never give up, did not today; 40 seconds before the end, while the USA players already celebrated, they kept playing. Up in the bleachers, the Queen, Her Son and Her Daughter in Law did come along, doing what they have to do. The Queen's sister, Irene -although younger, much worn out-, born in South Africa and Princess of Greece and Denmark, resident in London, smiled and cheered like she were recognized in Spain.

I don't know what to say. It's just a game... But everything seemed to me genuine and clean. The Spain I believe in and that has been stolen.

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Gibbs's fundamental

I'd like to make a quick remark, before I forget, about the fundamental equation proposed by J. Willard Gibbs. Far from being pleased with intuitive concepts alone -to which we are too keen to sometimes-, I still get the thrill any time an equation takes me into the mysteries of a natural concept. The math language -when lights up a connection in any dark corner of my brain- adds that poetic touch that "a romantic" mind needs to booze in the unknown. Quite an orgasmic feeling. Or better. Feels like love indeed. Half-way to heaven.


The fundamental equation of Gibbs is so simple and so profound at the same time, that one regains hope in the millenary yearn to have the essence of the Universe caged in a little glass ball _A sort of complete source of knowledge in which all is contained and which pundits can caress in their hands, like a witch would do, feeling invincible. 


The beauty of the equation is to highlight a fundamental concept, much, much used and much elusive: the concept of energy. The state of energy of any system can be changed in many different ways, dE:

dE=TdS-pdV+μdn+φdQ+u dp +ψdm+⋯

Each term of the RHS of the equation is formed by an intensive property (i.e. not dependent of the mass of the system), such as T, temperature; p, pressure; μ, chemical potential, φ, electrical potential, ψ, gravitational potential; u, velocity, a vector magnitude, etc; and by the change of an extensive property (i.e. dependent of the mass): S, entropy; V, volume; n, quantity or moles conforming the system; Q, electric charge; m, mass; p, linear momentum, etc. The larger the change of any of this properties, the larger the change of energy. However, each change is modulated by the intensive property, which acts as a sort of coefficient.


Don't know about you, but this sounds music to me. Lots of scattered pieces of knowledge, somehow disparaged, fell into place. Once again, re-discovering the Thames is the most ambitious and adventurous trip!


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Tupperware

I am not paying much attention to it, but I heard some controversial story regarding the convenience of installing micro-waves and fridges in schools in Spain, so kids can bring their meals from home in "tupperwares". The measure implies cutting contracts and agreements with companies providing this food service, I guess. There is a little fuss about it. Some politicians dislike the idea, God knows why, and are planning to charge 3 euros per day for the use of the micro-wave...

To some extent, in that part of the planet, tupper assimilates to shortage and sad suffering, and opposes the mythological life, to which everyone is called for, of abundance and careless squandering. I kind of remember a Spanish movie a few years back -not very good, I would say- about the story of a couple of prostitutes. In my mind is one of the most emotional parts of the film, when one of whores is sitting on the curb of the street where she works, with two long helpless legs emerging from a quite short leather skirt, and her slim body leaned over them. In the rough surface created by her two skinny knees, splinters in every corner, she holds a tupperware from which the disgraceful woman eats.

As far as I can see, and diametrically opposed to those views, the culture of tupperware is a high one. It should be highly praised. It is tender and lovely. Stunned at first when I saw it in the States every day -in the States!-, now I am happy to say that I enjoy my food much more than any of the hundreds of sandwiches and stuff of Tottenham Court Road. Besides, nobody treats me better. And kids considered, the path to the tupper seems to be the first stroll in teaching them how to take care of themselves. The second lesson is this: time has a price.

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Articulation

Blessed he who can figure out the pattern out of scattered pieces of experience, he who can articulate the various bits in a harmonic mosaic. In any case or in any issue, for any industry or for any field.

This morning I experienced such case of articulation. "If you are eager for adventure, come to the books", we are said, "come and you will see". But, occasionally, a great deal of people will come closer to the books -the books which are supposed to give you the thrill- and nothing will happen: no adventure, no thrill, no nothing. This morning a solid piece of wisdom articulated itself and reveal to me while the kettle was doing its job with daily abnegation: "the miracle of books is to get you look at the Thames again, but with new eyes", I process, I translate, I reckon. A few books among the mute and the tasteless majority. How many times, how many!, one is out looking for life in the stars and, unexpectedly, the wonder comes in from the old sidewalks of everyday. For those of us who know as little as we do of books, who have not look at the Thames enough, the adventure of reading is a search for new names, for new stuff and to hope for the miracle. A title and a drawing will do a lot for us -kindles, i-pads, slates won't. The search is like the adventure of the photographer or the camera-man or the beggar, who is roaming the gray streets until he finds the corner from which life looks like the paradise he always dreamed of, in the sleeplessness of the night or the yearnings of his heart. "This is so, this is so", he would say, "that's what I mean, what I feel, what I want to hear". It goes down like a balsam down the pipe, warm and soothing. All the stars above the firmament seem to get in the line once in a while.... Once in a long while, sometimes.

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