Pekenio Mundo

Imagine a small house on a mountain ladder built with the effort of a dreamer’s hands. Nail after nail, brick after brick, inch after inch the house was erected and his dream fulfilled. Strong foundations arduously prepared rest unperturbed withstanding the immensity of his ambition. Rough muddy walls stand still, supporting the heavy roof covered with thick straws impermeabled with the transpiration of his forehead. A rustic wooden door heads towards the east, welcoming the morning sun rays. A big ample window faces the north, contemplating the vast and infinite ocean extending all the way towards the horizon. The house is small but spacious, enough to shelter his family and his few possessions. The lack of furniture is not a problem for him; he just possesses the indispensable: a simple hand crafted table with five chairs to share meals altogether, a rudimentary carbon stove, and a kerosene fridge. No more he needs and more he pretends. He has a paramount ambition, yet he wishes few material things; and those few things he wishes, he wishes them little.

Imagine yourself in such a house, built with the intention of living glorious years in solitude, away from the cities, away from wandering and repetitive lives in superficial, materialistic, and corrupted societies; away from any source of acoustic contamination that would disturb and interfere with his longing for harmony with nature. A house built by someone who understands the true values of things in life and what is to live fully enjoying the gifts of nature, pleasures that can’t be found anywhere near an urban conglomerate, and can’t be compared to any of the so called pleasures defined by the mediocre majority.

Countless dreams drawn to perfection. The house was not the result of improvisation but the fruit of years of deliberate planning, for he did not want to leave anything to the caprice of destiny: he was determined to succeed. Time after time his plans were polished every time he would walk by the forest a few miles away from the house, where hundreds of logs were spread in the ground among the fallen leaves. Logs ignored by travelers and passer bys, apparent useless logs with no other possible use but to keep warm during the winter. But for the visionary, these logs contained a dormant home, a dream, and his axe vigorously fought against their oppressive prision. The result was nothing less than his own little world: his Home.

An enviable home. A bubble in some sense, but no more of a bubble than societies themselves. Societies, inventions of men, are bubbles. How could this man live in a bubble, being in harmony with nature, enjoying what God has offered him for free, being closer and more connected to the stars that illuminate his path than what people in the cities might be to a light bulb a short distance above their heads? How could this be a bubble? Who is being more isolated from his own nature: this man from men, or men from nature?

His family lives in it. A family that does not complain for the lack of comforts found in the city and that understands his yearning for isolation, his desire to move away from human stupidity. A family that does not complain for having to walk long distances to get to the nearest town. Children who do not complain for lacking a television, and who at an early age begin to understand and appreciate his father’s dreams.

The place is a paradise for him. Animals, trees, his family, all have found their balance with nature and coexist peacefully respecting each other. Listen! Listen to a distant waterfall feeding an insatiable river running down the mountain. Listen to the wind gently knocking at the door. Can you hear the songs of birds singing at a distance? Contemplate the immensity of the sky! Watch at the clouds tirelessly and persistently coming from the ocean towards the mainland, discharging some of their burden on the mountain ladder, and continuing their journey around the world. Watch to the sky again! Eagles climbing freely to the heights, resting in mountain peaks, and dominating the clouds. So does this man longs to fly high. His soul is thirsty of stars.

The house is small in comparison to the world, but nonetheless is a world of its own. All range of emotions have their place in it, and all kinds of gestures and expressions visit the family. There is no need for hundreds of people to create such an incredible diversity of feelings; only a handful of souls can represent them in their total magnitude.

Happiness. True happiness. Happy and joyful souls with profound emotions. Honest and meaningful smiles of happiness showing the dreamers old wasted teeth, yellowed by time, some fallen, gone forever, others still standing, as strong as their owner’s conviction.

Tears. Rarely, but surely, tears slide down the wrinkled cheeks mistreated by the severe mountain weather. Tears of joy! Tears of accomplishment! Tears of fulfillment!

Sadness. Indeed, he does feel sad from time to time, and nostalgia for those he loved and left behind.

Compassion. Compassion for those who do not understand him. For the highest he rises, the smallest he appears to the eyes of the envious. Many laugh at him. Others would like to follow his steps and strive arduously to imitate him, but always in vain. When they strive the hardest to elevate themselves to the heights and to clarity, the deeper they succumb to the shadows and mediocrity.

He does envy from time to time the comfortable lifestyles that people in the cities take for granted, and a fleeting jealousy emerges from his heart. It is not easy to live in a direct relationship with the drastic and capricious mountain climate, and with the ferocious wind that sometimes violently threatens the structure of the building. When these feelings arise, however, he puts things in perspective, he remembers the reasons for his life elections, and his paramount will in overcoming the hard obstacles that the mountain and its invisible sculptor present him with triumphs over the difficulties, and these ephemerous feelings go away.

Anger. Enmity with the authorities of a nearby town who have decided to expand a railway passing nearby. Uncertainty, anxiety, and fear for the possible spread of the human plague to peaceful and still harmonious places. Hostility against this threatening virulent invasion. Hostility from even the trees that shout with tears in their eyes to go away, to leave them alone, to not bother them, to look for another place! Nature does not welcome them.

And Love. Love for his family. Love for the mountain. Love for Nature. Love for Freedom. For the greatest quality of the dreamer is his heart. And as in many their heart is what ages the first, in others is their spirit, many others are already old in their youth, and there are those who were recently born and already start to die, his heart is strong and full of life to continue beating for many years to come.

A vision of a world. His world.

Bidets!

Thanksgiving day in the US. Families gather together to give thanks and to eat one of the millions of huge turkeys slaughtered for this time of the year. This got me thinking. Festivities imply lots of food, lots of eating, and necessarily, a significant increase in toilet flushes. ...and, oh yeah! BIDETS!! where are they?

I have probably seen one or two since I got to the US, and that is almost 6 years ago. I am therefore inclined to believe that, in general, people in the US have their xxxxx dirty (no disrespect intended) :P

Do they know of their existence?

Nothing Is Guaranteed

Do I have goals in life? I do. And very ambitious ones. How am I going to fulfill them? Well, I have some ideas and I will go shaping my plans as I live life to the fullest and consider the circumstances that destiny and/or God present me with. God? Destiny? Or are they random circumstances? Do we have any control over them? This is precisely my inspiration for this month's post. Nothing is guaranteed. We can dedicate long hours and put all our energy towards achieving that so longed objective, but it doesn't fully depend on us. Our determination plays a huge part in overcoming obstacles and succeeding in our endeavors, but there's also a luck factor, a randomness factor, destiny, God's will, or whatever you may want to call it, that plays an important part in the fulfillment or failure of our plans. Nothing is guaranteed. Nothing. And I have experienced this in a number of ways in the last 1 or 2 weeks.

Nothing is guaranteed. I have been working in an IT company since June 2007. I really didn't like what I was doing but the pay was good and it was helping me pay for school, so I had to swallow the bad-tasting work experience in order to continue studying. After a year of working for the company, and right after I got back from New York 2 weeks ago, I got home and checked my emails and learned that my contract would not be renewed. The reason? I don't know. No one talked to me. Maybe they realized I didn't like the job and I would not continue working for them after I graduate. Maybe I was no longer useful for them. Maybe it was too much of a complication since my job was business oriented and as for an IIT requirement my job had to be technical and related to my field of study, so every time I renewed the contract I had to lie and describe in the IIT paperwork that I was working in something I was actually not. There's a new CEO in the company and he probably didn't like this... anyway, they did me a favor. Sooner or later I had to leave the company... but to be honest, I was planning on this job to pay for this semester's tuition. How am I going to pay for school this semester? I don't know. I have no idea. But this is not the first time. Since I got to the US, many times I did not know how I would pay for that semester's tuition, even 1 or 2 weeks before the semester would begin, and somehow I have always been able to pay for it. This time will not be an exception. Nothing is guaranteed, though.

Is financial need going to continue conditioning my life choices as it has done all my life? I promise myself it will not. Not after I graduate.

Nothing is guaranteed. After 5 years living in a small apartment with part of my family, my parents have recently bought a house and we have spent all last week moving our stuff to the new place. It's an old house, pretty ugly I must say, but the price was low and it is in a really nice area, so the idea of my parents is to invest in the lot, construct a new house, and then sell it for a juicy profit.

Last Friday we were all in the Dodge Caravan of my dad going back to the apartment cause the new place still didn't have gas nor hot water, and suddenly a 16 year old girl, who apparently had just learned to drive and had a new and shiny driver license, turned into the street we were driving in and hit us on the front passenger side. It was not a big accident, but the van was rendered undriveable and my mom was injured in the head and sent to the hospital. Fortunately it was just a minor injury, nothing serious – see pics :) - but... think about it. Nothing is guaranteed. Nothing. You could be driving with your family and a drunk driver hits your car killing your parents and ruining your family forever. Anything could happen. Nothing is guaranteed. Nothing. We can have fantastic and ambitious plans, but suddenly something like this could happen and all your dreams would be shattered into pieces, maybe even destroyed forever.

How vulnerable we are. How insignificant we are. How arrogant we are to think that we control our lives. How stupid we are wasting our time in inconsequential and superficial activities that do nothing but just distract us from much more valued and generally neglected things. Things that we learn to value once gone, once we don't have them anymore. This could be your last day, enjoy it :) and do not regret anything that you do.

It sounds pretty alarmist and tragic, but...

Nothing Is Guaranteed.

U.S. Road Trip II ~ Chicago --> Tennessee - Florida

Description: Dec 25th, 2007 ~ Jan 4th, 2008. I've already described the trip on my previous note "Simple things". Fantastic trip!

Vanity of vanities

Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

What do people gain from all the labor

At which they labor under the sun?

A generation goes, and a generation comes,

But the earth remains forever.

The sun rises and the sun goes down,

And hurries to the place where it rises.

The wind blows to the south, and goes around to the north;

Round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns.

All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full.

To the place where the streams flow, there they continue to flow.

All things are wearisome; more than one can express.

The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor is the ear filled with hearing.

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”?

It has already been in the ages before us.

There is no remembrance of former things;

Neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come

With those that shall come after.

Ecclesiastes 1:1-11

Simple things

Since my dad came to the US about 6 years ago (I came one year later) he – we, but mainly he – had never taken any vacations, so now that my mom was in Chicago for a few weeks, he decided to go somewhere warm to relax and spend some time with his wife. Nobody can reason nor explain why, but probably due to some bizarre combination of the stars or some inexplicable whim of destiny, mercy started flowing through his veins and he felt kind of pity for leaving us in the bitter cold of Chicago, so after a few days of laborious persuasion he finally agreed to take us with them =) joking… no persuasion was necessary, gracias Pa!

On December 25^th, after a long night of celebration with family and friends, we left Chicago at around 10am and started the road trip. Anyone who knows me a little surely knows that I love traveling, and this trip was no exception :) I totally loved and enjoyed every minute of it. We passed through Indiana, Kentucky (got a ticket there on the way back... bleh...), Tennessee – we rented a cabin and spent a few days in Lookout Mountain – Chattanooga – I almost go hang gliding there but for some reason the company is closed on Wednesdays (????) and the next day it rained pretty heavily, so I couldn’t do it and I’ll have to postpone it until some other time – we drove through Georgia, and finally got to Florida. We spent two days in Sarasota, then drove to Miami for New Year’s Eve (partied and danced all night in the streets of Miami – pretty sweet!) and on our last day we went to the Florida Keys, which are… beautiful…

This post is not about the trip however, but about a lady that we met in Sarasota, and the simple things around us that oftentimes we fail to perceive. After a long day at the beach, Kevin and I were walking around the downtown area and we came across this wonderful lady singing along with her guitar. She had an unbelievably honest, simple, and radiant smile and such a fantastic sweet voice that anyone with an open heart and/or an open mind would have stopped walking to listen to her. This was not the case though... Most of the tourists passing by would just look at her for a fraction of a second and immediately divert the direction of their eyes towards the ‘empty’ show windows, completely oblivious to her music and blatantly ignoring her presence.

Simple beauty is just too good to pass up, so we took a few moments to listen until she finished the song. After a small contribution in the basket she asked us where we were from, and she mentioned that she was originally from Israel and had come to the US when she was very young. From Israel? Oh! I know a song in Spanish from Israel! So I started singing it… I honestly knew it, but at the moment I completely forgot, that the song is actually a cover of the Israelite national anthem with some Bible verses in Spanish. No offense in that though... she actually liked it and we sang it together :)

It was interesting to see the reaction of some tourists passing by. At first, most were indifferent to the lady and wouldn’t even look in her direction, but now they would look at us with surprise and with an unequivocal expression in their faces, they would convey their astonishment and wonder of what the heck were we doing, or an ‘I would never do that’…

But why did we stop to listen to her while most didn’t? This got me thinking. Oftentimes we fail to notice simple but nonetheless amazingly beautiful things due to the fast pace we live our lives in. I am not saying that these tourists didn’t notice her because they were walking fast, because in fact they did notice her and deliberately ignored her, probably due to their superficiality and stupid arrogance. I’m not saying also that we should stop and listen to every person performing in the street, because some are simply terrible, and some stink a lot. But this lady was different. She was poor and her garments were poorly manufactured, but her poverty was noble, and her clothes were clean.

I think I quoted the following phrase before, but I’ll do it again: “Life is what happens while we are busy making other plans”. It’s good to have goals, to strive for ideals, but after we have spent years and years of abnegation, working and sacrificing valuable time to finally attain that yearned goal, then what? To be fair, it does depend on the nature of our goal, but would all these years have been worth it? It is hard to find time to sit back and appreciate the little things in life that mean the most to us. For me at least it is. I always feel like I have so much to do that I just can’t take some time to enjoy these things.

Sometimes I feel that time is an endangered species at the verge of extinction; that those that have it are the lucky ones, but for those of us that don’t, it’s kind of a feeling that time is ferociously consuming our minds… people running back and forth from their homes to their workplace, back to their homes, sleep a few hours, restore some energies, and back to the workplace… people worried about trivial problems… what are their plans for their future? Do they have any? We were born in this society, we were raised watching others play the same game, should we have any? Do we know of any other ways for living our lives? Is there any other way? Think about it. What’s important in life?

We need to learn to appreciate the small and invaluable things that surround us, be around people worth being around, appreciate those that appreciate you, ignore those that don’t – there are millions of people to interact with, why care about those that don’t like you? – enjoy the smell of freshly fallen pine needles, an early-afternoon siesta to recharge depleted batteries, a day where time doesn’t matter, enjoy the sunset as the day draws to a close, admire all animals and insects, and their complexity and equilibrium in nature... these simple things in life are by far the most rewarding and worth our time.

We need to take each day one at a time and enjoy the simple things in life, they should mean the most to us. I am not saying that we should take everything simple and be lazy and unproductive bums. Equilibrium is the rule. But life can be expensive and cause so much strife... these things are free, these simple things are there for us all.