Beat the «chuño»

I have been accompanying a group of European tourists to some faraway places from what we normally call civilization, and I was behind on the knowledge of the events taking place in the world.

This prompted me to make my first mistake, that is, I was just alone in my room and waiting for the start of the next assignation, so I turned on the television.

Five minutes later, wrapped in a deep bitterness, turned off the horrifying images, closing the terrible reviews that accompanied them at the same time.

So great was the grief that caused me the gloomy reality that almost could not stop making my second mistake: to put into words, almost aloud, the feelings that seized me:

-Poor People!

In my conscious I encompassed both, the people who suffer, and the journalists covering the events described.

I had barely finished saying the last exclamation point when I started to pay for my carelessness:

-Fear not, -Elf 's voice said from the door of my mind, which made me think he was hiding behind the door to intervene as soon as possible. The dwarf knows me so well that he can predict my actions well in advance. I do not know whether to thank him or hate his guts for his support!

-Evil is so degenerate that takes self-destruction in its nature, -he added with a conviction that upset me at once, as if I had been insulted.

-Maybe you're right! -I said fiercely, -but meanwhile it destroys everything, and innocents pay for the...  for the ... -I found not the right word.

-extravagances of evil ... -Elf helped .

-Those were not the words I was looking for, but you can use them, -I said still angry.

-You're right, - he replied with a tinge of sadness. It is part of the distortion imposed by evil in the real world. Some humans like the euphemism "Collateral damage." to identify this terrible outcome. 

-Unfortunately, went on the sprite, when humanity agreed to be governed by those laws, also accepted all the collateral damages that accompany them.


Governed by those laws? What was this little scarecrow talking about?

-I did not agree to abide any evil! -I went into a rage again, sensing an accusation I judged was unfair.

-All right,  -Elf answered me softly. -It is not worth to discuss a reality you can see every day. But again, except for the injustices that evil brings, which will be handle presently, it will fall under its own evil, it is for sure. Like cancer, while killing its victim (which is unfair ), kills itself.

-Where did you get all this nonsense. -My question originated more in my bewilderment at the security Elf showed than to qualify his words, I was trying to unbalance his autonomy.

-Look, I will tell you an example , -Elf continued imperturbably, - few years ago a talented writer named Will Cuppy wrote a book entitled «Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950)». In this little work, hard to humanity, he took the subject with a grain of salt to moderate the impact of reality, he re-writes the biography of famous people in history and posits his thesis: "To be remembered as a hero, it is needed to be responsible for 100,000 deaths or more.

-This makes winners of that dubious honor, among other people, such individuals as William the Conqueror, Alexander the Great, and Richard the Lionheart. I can not quote you the work, even if it is not very long, but I can mention as an example, what he wrote about Henry VIII Tudor:

-«We are unfair to the monarch, we call him a murderer, and in truth he is solely responsible for the death of 33% of his wives, and  we forget that he is the father of the peerless Elizabeth I, who can be in these biographies by her own right.»

-You see, evil is untouchable important in all history.

As usual, I had no words to argue, the dwarf had won his postulation.

For the first time in our discussions I was able to take the lead, and I chose to ignore him by opening a book, and pretending to read.


A few seconds later I felt his steps going back to the entrance hallway to my mind and I could see him returning to the Archive, shaking his head from side to side muttering something like:

-It's going to be difficult to complete this mission.

I did not know what to think .



Out of context epilogue I recently learned a very common expression, so I was told by the local people, used by the inhabitants of Santa Fe in the Argentine Northeast: «Beat the chuño.»

When I asked what it meant, they explained that there is a special potato flour, named "chuño" [tʃuɲo], that can be whipped into a very thick and nourishing cream. Beating it with extreme care because if done wrong the pasta tends to clump, lose consistency and taste.

By using the similarity the «Beat the chuño» expression is like "thinking" because if a person loses the habit of reasoning the brain develops lumps and loses the ability to create .

Hence the title of this story .


The music is "Danse Macabre" by Camille Saint Saënz, and flows along with the dance humanity share with Evil.

© 2014 Od Liam.

The red-haired man

The storm stretched its first thunder and lightning near the ninth hour.

The redhead man, desperate, ran between the stones that seemed to move by their own volition .

He crossed the wide entrance of the sacred building and terrified by the fragility that seemed to come from the columns that supported the broad roof, approached the group of holy men, and as none of them paid any attention to him, decided to put in the hands of a servant the goatskin bag he carried in his belt.

He retraced his steps, and ran, soaked in seconds by the terrible downpour, came to the potter's land where a lone olive tree with gnarled and almost dead branches rose.

Anxiety gripped his throat tighter than the rustic rope, he was a 'qanaim', jealous for the rights of the Perpetual Being .

His fall into Eternity was an infinite second, but from the very poor view of time, did not last long.

The thoughts of human beings, restricted by all the flaws that they boast, created a direct journey to the realm of shadows but ...

Who can really know? Who can be aware of the infinite length of a rope in the no-time ?

There might have been room for repentance and forgiveness. They say that Wisdom is also exceedingly Merciful.

Or, maybe we did not understand the plot.

Meanwhile, in the holy place, while some columns collapsed to the strike of the quake, and the long veil covering the Mystery was torn from the top, the astonished eyes of a servant watched with amazement the thirty pieces of silver in the goatskin bag left by the mysterious red-haired man.


The music is a fragment of "Storm" by Antonio Vivaldi.

© 2014 Od Liam.

Heritage

Dawn awaked slowly, as if sunlight was stretching out the nightly laziness before starting its daily routine to bring life to the rock that revolved around the bright star.

The high forest trees made pergolas reaching out anxious to be the first to receive the caress of the warm rays coming down from the sky.

Far below on the loose dust around the feet of the giants of wood and leaves, an infinite world of life began changing from nocturnal creatures for daytime ones.

Giant lizards also showed signs of life, some of them seeking sustenance in the juicy leaves of large ferns and other scanning the air in the perennial search for prey, their early breakfast.

Further below, in hidden caves, and millions of tunnels, still in their last nap, mammals swarmed the tiny hollows beneath the surface of the earth.

They were young, full of life and with a special quality. Without developing a sense of personal and external perception, they had the first glimmer of understanding when developing ideas. They could not yet link two ideas produced in series, their recognition of reality was as if facts were illuminated by a stroboscopic light with intermittent flashes, and any conceptual sense was born, reached a maximum meaning, and then ebbed out of the mind leaving place to the next thought.

This apparent 'cacophony' of lights and shadows seemed unproductive, but it was not so; as the outcome of these fixed feelings gave them the possibility of developing a tight and successful community.

Among the large presence of them was a copy, a little male, who for reasons that would have pleased to discover to any paleantropologist, this little male had achieved a position that could be called of a leader, but such idea was too well advanced to have roots in the existing clans.

This little leader, whom for convenience we can call Primi, was in the process of convincing Llambi, a little lady in their environment, it was convenient to have offspring to continue to keep the species on the ground, or rather underground.

Given the stubborn nature of Primi, all signs pointed to a success in his mission to get a family.

At the time we found him trying to put all his qualities in a head wide awake, fleeting instinctive thoughts indicated the need to get some groceries for himself, and for Llambi, so as to show his devotion for her.


If, at this time, it had been possible to fly above the planet's atmosphere, it could have been seen a picture of terrifying proportions. A huge chunk of cosmic rock approaching at high speed on a collision course with the world inhabited by our heroes.

Within minutes, the well-known landscape vanished in a cloud of debris and waste torn down by the impact and a wide black cloud covered all corners of the world bringing death and destruction to all things that dwelt on the earth's surface.

In an incredible display of levity, Nature, let the small mammals covered by the caves to survive, and in time, to repopulate the planet.

.................................................. .........................


The Coronation of Sucolbitl, lord of all the land you can see, was culminated with a party that lasted for many days but before the celebrations, the sovereign commissioned the elders scholars of the kingdom to find Sucolbitl lineage to the first parent, and so prove to the eyes of the world his nobility.

The sages devoted to working following all lines of heraldry that found in the libraries of the realm, but could not pass the sixteenth ancestor records for lack of more information of those so distant times.

What they could not know is that if many centuries before there had been the possibility to know the DNA, and the background of its processing, with extreme surprise had they discovered that at some point after the cataclysm that changed the owners of the planet, Primi and Llambi were Sucolbitl earliest ancestors, an important man on earth now, who had inherited genes from that emerging leader that lived in our simple Primi.


The music is a fragment of "Primeval Tribute" by Heart of Darkness.

© 2014 Od Liam.

Brain, mind you!

For once in a blue moon I looked for Elf instead of avoiding his presence.

The reason was easy enough, I was preparing a job about the interaction of brain and mind. I was trying to test my ideas with another being, and I felt reluctant to talk about this pseudo-scientific subject with other human beings since it was probable that they considered me as a freak.

When I told all this to Elf, his expected answer was, of course:

- Which you are!

I let the remark go unanswered, I was asking advice not trying to start a skirmish.

Seeing I was serious about the topic, he hide a smile and asked with perfect composure:

- What have you in your mind?

-Not in my mind, mind you, I said trying to show him I am as good a punster as he is, - but in my brain

And I started to explain to him the theory that "the mind" is a kind of effluence of the active processes which start in the brain and are determined by many variables, such as experience, health, feelings, et al.

Where I envisioned a difficult task, it was not so. Elf posed as a royal guy, listened to my explanations with a look of attentive stance on him.

I explained the modern theory of mind from brain, developing a good defence of the ideas sustained by important scientific men as Robert J. Sternberg,  Roger Penrose, Stuart Hameroff, and other eminent men in the study of this theme.

As I progressed in my lecture, and seeing the gnome was not interrupting me as is his whim, I grew in confidence and talked about the experiments that proved the way the ontological mind emerged from the brain (all with those spiky words as "ontological" which I was not too sure I understood its meaning, designed to impress the imp).

When I finished my serious speech, Elf turned on his heel, and without a word lost himself into the Archive.

I was stunned, I didn't know if he was showing his contempt for my work, or if he felt insulted, or what...!

I was just starting to walk out of my mind, and look for another audience when he came back from the Archive with a piece of paper in one hand, and a dark blue crayon in the other.

Still baffled, I asked him:

- Why a dark blue crayon? I was almost sure there was a dark reason to use that color

He looked at me with that expression of commiseration he uses for all my questions, and shaking his head answered slowly as if he were doubtful of my understanding capacity, he said:

- Because, as incredible as it may be, this was the ONLY crayon that I could find in the box!

Looking at me askance, he started to draw, after a while he looked his work putting the paper far from his head, added a point, or a line, here and there, and then show it to me asking:

-Do you know what is this? I looked at him first trying to find if he was ironic, but could not find any trace of irony in his voice.

Then I looked at the paper:

- Yes, I was laconic, not knowing where he was going.

The picture was of a human arm with a hammer in attitude of hitting an iron nail into a wooden block.

When he was satisfied I have seen the drawing fully, he asked:

- Where is, as per your understanding, the will to hit the nail? In the arm? or in the hammer? Just forget about the rest of the human body for a while.

Still confused, I tried to answer my best option:

- In the arm , it was a guess, of course, but the arm was at least human, while the hammer was not! So it stood to reason that he arm could handle a "will", and the hammer did not.

- Right, answered the sprite to my relief. And then added, destroying my relief, -Partially

- Now, which one is the brain, and which other is the mind? asked my Nemesis, adding bewilderment to trepidation.

- I... I... it seems as if the mind is the hammer, and the brain is the arm. I was so perplexed as an African camel in a fog! I tried to associate the arm to the brain since both are in the same body, so I was left with the discomfort to pair the mind to the hammer.

- Exactly wrong, Elf said this with a smile so it does not looked as an insult! But, I was not sure!

- Look, the idea came to the mind, the brain accepted it, and they both hit the nail... But, and mind this big, big BUT, if the brain is damaged, the mind will still want to hit the nail (you can see this in handicapped persons wanting to do something but prevented for the lack of instrumental body), so which one is the master and which one is the instrument?

- If... if you put it like that... I was so much flummoxed, I could not but speak hesitantly.

- There you are, now, where are those "brainy" ideas of so famous scientist about the mind being exuded by the brain? What they forget is René Descartes simple postulate: I think, then I exist.

This is a simple way to say I am the mind, then I can use my brain (the instrument, or the hammer in my drawing) to express my mind needs and desires in this reality.

Did you understand this little puzzle?

Before I could collect my scattered brain cell to express my mind ideas, he went again into the Archive, and I could hear him mumbling something about "this poor humans, always taking reality by the tail".

I promise I could not understand his whispers, but his voice was full of pity.


The music is a fragment of "Mindfulness" by Hans Enrik Bay.


© 2013 Od Liam.

Foreboding

Darkness surrounded the isolated house, high trees mixed their lower boughs with the low shrubs that covered most of the place. Silence was ominous, not even the doleful hooting of owls, so common on the isle, were heard.

My heart beating at an inconceivable rhythm seemed near to collapse, my mind working overtime was very clear, dread spreading over my soul gripping it in its talons and bringing it to the feeling of being high on a promontory and ready to jump to emptiness.

There was no promontory, only this desolate piece of land with a horrid cabin in the middle of a hideous forest.

Why I felt this strange sense of high rocks? It was so vivid I almost faint of fright!

The owls' hoots? Common on the island? How do I know there are owls, and that I am on an island?

Preposterous thoughts vied to gain access to my awareness, I seem to remember...

No, I do not remember how I reached here, I was in a blank state and then the fetid breath of the island soil reached me without warning.

There must be a rational explanation, always there is a rational explanation, but at the moment it eluded me. I could only experiment the abominable, the obnoxious, and awful felling of being pushed into the snout of evil.




I approached the cabin, my quivering hand reached by its own volition the rusted clasp that was used to lock it, the atmosphere was charged with small sparks apparently coming from my own body.



I do not want to enter there!

What pushes me into it?

What weird force urges all my being into an action so revolting I would die if let my body performs it?

How can I stop this... this terrible compulsion heaving my viscera, and making my heart hit my throat in desperation?

The door turned with a high shriek of rusty and decayed hinges, but the noise was attenuated by the thick silence of the woods.

To my harried senses appeared a point of light over the wooden table that was  miraculously held erect by a lonely leg.

The tiny light grew quickly, and scathingly into a high pitch howl that slowly changed from the Banshee Cry it was performing into the... clock alarm.


The music is a fragment of "It's Alive" from Oldboy movie Sdtrk.

© 2013 Od Liam.

Faith, that jolting experience (II)

When you find a person who believes the deity is a constant and real presence, you find a rare phenomenon in the soul of this person (yes, supposing the soul exists; if you feel awkward with this notion you can call it whatever you want since there is no doubt that an intangible “something” lives inside our heart, skull, or mind that we call “I”).

The first surprising fact you find when you look close to the beliefs “owned” by this religious person is that those beliefs are a certainty, the person “knows” God exists, “knows” He is in charge and “knows” that despite the unsecured sight we have of the world at large, there is a Plan, a Design to be followed up to a Happy End, childish as this seems.

This surprising fact is the basal stone which has maintained religious Faith alive through so many years since the first of us opened the eyes to the wonderful sense of being aware of the difference between the rest of the world and that sentience called “I”! This “knowing” fills up the vacuum in our soul so aplenty that life takes a new and wonderful meaning.

The mystics, who have experienced the sense of the divine, are so strongly attached to the anchor of belief that it is a certainty. And, wonder of wonder, those whose experience were not mystic develop a strange certainty almost as strong as that of the mystics.

What makes all this possible? How can a person “create” something so incredibly wonderful? Theologians’ explanation is that no person create it since it is too big a notion as to be thought by a human being, so what?, well, as incredible as it may seem, the explanation states that it was revealed by the owner of every space in the Universe, included souls, God Himself. Agnostics sustain it is a psychological reaction. Choose the one you like more.

The simple fact that every one of the creatures are so tightly bonded to the Creator can develop a strong and secure sense as to close the gates to insecurity and vulnerability.

Be this true or not, this Faith moves mountains and makes people better in their own ways since it removes the need to be defensive and guarded against the imponderable.

Compared to desacralized Faith this is Ambrosia, this is the Golden Fleece, this is the Shangri-la every one of us dreams about!

Unfortunately, these different “Faiths” have, as anything else in the universe, a dark side we know too well. Three mistakes named:

Fanaticism, fundamentalism, bigotry.

Deeply seated in those insecure feelings we develop in life facing uncertainties is the need to keep safe our beliefs; those beliefs that give us a harbour for our fears, when our Faith is not based on something as strong as a God, or if you prefer as good as a psychological reaction, we feel threatened and anything that menace those beliefs are a menace to us, personally.

We “must” fight all and everything departing our paths. This fight is a distortion of real Faith. This gives birth to those three mistakes mentioned above and through them a myriad of errors, cruel actions, and dreadful attitudes.

Starting from this narrow lane of thought humankind had divided into factions, each faction had created new concepts to keep its needs addressed and, of course, as those concepts are not the same since the veneer of knowledge, intelligence, and culture are different, even those factions near enough to share some beliefs are far enough to dissent on basic things and ways of thoughts.

This is true in both situations. Scientific and religious beliefs have its divisions, and each one of them its followers, developing, by the way, many different manners of defining the same thing and a rejection, sometimes brutal rejection, of any definition not agreeable to theirs.

This is the well known, not written, principle that states we must destroy everything we do not understand or see different to us and our ways.

Difference is not wrong, WE are different in the manner of puzzle pieces are, if we just take the place we are designed for, the image appears clear and beautiful. But that is not the case, we think the image MUST be as we imagine it is, following our principles and beliefs (aka, tainted Faith, since it is tainted by our own ideas, or those inherited), so if we find a different piece in our puzzle, we try to cut and warp it to conform our idea of the whole, destroying that “different” piece in the process and thinking we did it a good turn.

We prefer to kill, since it guaranty there would be no remonstrance from that quarter, instead of trying to understand each other and be very much alive, as it was meant since we are born.

There is a long way to walk yet for humankind to accept differences, and with it faith as a reality as concrete as to produce actual facts, my guess is we will reach that stage but it would take many, many individual casualties to make humankind shine in its own glow.


The music is a fragment of Beethoven "3rd Symphony" by Jansoms BRSO.

© 2013 Od Liam.

Faith, that jolting experience. (I)

WARNING

This essay is the product of a feverish mind, so if you are not in the mood of delving into unnecessary pseudo-psychological thoughts, which would be the normal human state, my advice would be to skip it, make a good sandwich, get a nice glass or cup of your most liked beverage, and skip this with grace and easiness.

Faith as a scientific interaction

We live in an agnostic world in the best case, or in a nihilistic one in the worst.

This seems the current definition of our western society nowadays, but it is far from the truth.

We cannot deny there is a strong tendency to create a concrete world, based on science (whatever this means) and where everybody who do not toe the line to these beliefs is considered crazy, simpleton or moron and must be left behind with no one glance back, a kind of ostracism if you do not “equal” the herd model. This is effective with teenagers and some adults in need of a self-esteem booster.

This culture tries its best to keep humankind with the feet on solid earth, I am sure its followers are absolutely convinced they are right and performing a good deed. The question here is about what difference they make on reality.

When you make an exhaustive analysis of this phenomenon you find in a surprising way that, despite the efforts realized to keep everything accounted for, we are dealing with a huge slice of that thing most dreaded by unbelievers: Faith.

From long ago in the western religious fields Faith is one of the three theological virtues: Faith - Hope - Charity. The order was not aleatory. Faith opens the way to mystic environment where, based in Hope, will find the final Charity (Absolute Love). This seems to be an unacceptable way to achieve things and knowledge in this world without faith, but…

What is the path to achieve knowledge in the actual world?

Premise - Test - Evidence.

These are the three virtues of science; as a complement of this path, anyone can walk it and repeat exactly the same situations and conclusions.

Now, few of us can follow this path since we have not the training to do so. So what are we really doing? We believe the scientists are saying the truth, we have, hrrmm… sorry, faith in their work.

Here you go! The world is based on faith, or it will not work, it is impossible for us, all of us, to test and prove everything and anything.

If we do not develop an open mind we restrain ourselves to narrow paths and clearly set close boundaries to our learning.

Something cannot be proved by a set of concrete rules? Well, maybe it does not exist or maybe it does but cannot be proven by a set of concrete rules! This open-minded feeling should be the gist of agnosticism, not the “not believe until proven” which is the demanding action of these days.

We must remember that if this “open-minded” business is good in itself, it is subjective.

You have never seen a ghost… they do not exist for you.

Right! I agree.

You live in a haunted house… and ghosts go bumping in the night, they are very real to you.

Right! I agree.

Listening to many agnostics, one would imagine that this appeal to authority as a criterion is unscientific, though perhaps nowhere is authority appealed to so unscientifically as by modern scientists and modern critics.

Now, can you tell me why should I accept “scientific” faith and not “religious” faith?
I can hear your answer: “Because whatever a scientist said can be proved… (I add) by another scientist!”. What about me; I am no scientist, so I must believe whatever scientists say.

Cool! I agree.

Now again, whatever any mystic says can be proved… by another mystic! What about me; I am not mystic, so I must believe whatever mystics say!

Cool! I agree.

Despite my thought may seem “unscientific” I think we are attaching too much belief to science and too little to religion. And it is not just coincidence but causality. Since the famous (often misquoted) statement from Marx about the “opium of the people”, we are riding a crusade backward, doing the same thing crusaders did against those infidels but now against those faithful.

And we must not forget that for each agnostic abusing a faithful there is a faithful abusing an agnostic, fundamentalism does not help in any field!

From a psychiatric point of view, human beings are very much as a vacuum box, this vacuum is the outcome of the poor control we have over ourselves and our environment.

Notwithstanding all the efforts we have exerted since we become aware of being alive we cannot predict a small event in the next seconds of our time with absolute certitude. Oh yes, we can, with a grade of exactitude written in the unreliable laws of statistics, say what is going to happen but there always is a number, sometime a large one, of variables that must be left out of our equation since we cannot, even with a computer, manage them all.

And yes, maybe in the future we will be able to do so, but not now, which is the time I am interested in since I am not sure (there we go about predictions) if I will be alive the next five seconds.

We can see we cannot master our person or our environment so we feel: insecure.

We know we are in the maelstrom of events that can change our life in seconds; this is the essence of our feeling insecure, unsafe, and vulnerable. This condition is what creates the vacuum in our core; this vacuum is a strong need to find a safe harbour, a place where everything is accounted for and make us feel sure of ourselves and our environment.

This vacuum attracts anything that can promise, not even give the certainty, but only the promise of that certitude, of that safe feeling of being secure. Hence the need to believe in something, anything, so we start to take Nature (capital N), Science, People, Anything, Nothing as the fulcrum of our beliefs, and use the lever to assert our insecurities.

In recapitulation, we have two paths in our secular Faith: we believe what we want to believe, or we believe nothing at all!

So much for desacralized Faith!

Now, just for the sake of balance let’s review the opposite, sacralized Faith, this somewhat discredited path, but let's make a separate room for it.

(to be continued)



The music is a fragment of "4th Symphony" by Ludwig van Beethoven, performed by Jansons BRSO

© 2013 Od Liam.