A country evening

Mr. C. & Mrs A. live in the country. Not exactly the country, but not the suburbs either. Let's say that they are living in a particularly green suburb, or the concrete country, take your pick. I have known them for fifteen years, and while not deep green, they have always had ecological penchants. They were the first to travel the city by bike, day or night, the first to have an hybrid car, and now they have a potager garden and tiny greenhouse that smells good of tomatoes. Of course, their house is a non-smoking area.

Around 0100, Mr. T. and me were smoking and chit-chatting in the dark, close to the greenhouse, when Mrs. A. came by putting a headlamp on her brow and looking into her jumpsuit pockets. She found some tobacco and began to roll a cigarette, fully concentrated on her task.

- Mr T. "What are you up to?"
- Mrs. A., spitting some tobacco "Looking for slugs."
- Mr. T. "What for?"
- Mrs. A., lightning her cigarette "Kill'em."
Mr. T. and me exchanged a blank look.
"Then" went Mrs. A. "I cut'em and leave the pieces around. The fuckers eat each other, so I can come by half an hour later and have some more to kill."

Rinse and repeat ;-)

The empty Room

Once upon a time, in the distant province of a far away land, was a castle with an empty room. In this castle lived, of course, a princess. It so happens that she liked to go hunting. She did not really like to hunt, but she loved the horses and hounds, she liked to have a jolly good time together with the other hunters, and she enjoyed riding along the forest many paths in the shades, among the birds and the trees. Each and every day, she went hunting, came back to her castle late in the afternoon, strolled its halls and towers, before she went to sleep, making sure the spells that kept her castle clean and neat had worked as to ready the castle for the darkness to come. In her dreams, she filled the empty room, often with joy and laughters, or songs and dances, rarely with cries and tears, because she was cheerful even when she dreamt. At sunrise, she would often give a passing thought to her dreams as she was waking up, but soon the hunt was on her mind, and a-hunting she went.

One evening, as she passed by the empty room, she saw a mouse lying right in its dead centre. She looked at it, saw the blood and knew enough about these things to understand that it was freshly killed. Slightly disgusted, she took it by the tail, went to a window and threw it to the moat. As she turned toward the door she discovered a cat next to the doorstep, looking smug and somewhat amused, licking its front paw. She went to the cat, and as she approached it looked up at her, a twinkle in the eyes. She petted it, and went toward her room. As she walked, she looked back and saw the cat following her. The cat was well mannered, so it waited for her to have found her sleeping position, slightly curled on her side, to jump on the covers, scratch a little, purr appreciatively, then snuggle close to her back, radiating warmth and contentment. When she waked up, the cat was no longer at her side. Thinking nothing of it, as it was a very clean cat that left no mess, she went on following her daily routine, already anticipating gossips and chit-chats, expecting to see nice hound work and to take part in a fine chase.
A few days later, the same thing happened: a dead mouse in the empty room, and the same cat sitting there silently, a study in feline smugness. And she did as she already had: threw the mouse away, gave the cat a stroke, allowed it on a cover. And so it went for months, the cat appearing on its feline whim.

Then, one day, the game deserted the forest, victim of an ancient curse, and the hunt was cancelled. The princess took it all in one stride, acknowledged that she was becoming tired of the old hunt anyway and busied herself with preparing for a new one.
On this day, as she entered the empty room which contained still another dead mouse, she turned toward the cat, and, for the first time, addressed it "You know, you shouldn't really be bringing dead mice in here."
- "You talking to me?" said the cat.
- "But... how inordinate! A talking cat!"
- "But... how inordinate! A talking princess!"
- "Oh my, talking and cheeky too. Cats do not talk, I know it: I have had cats before, and none of them talked."
- "Then perhaps am I not a cat."
- "Sure you are: you look like one, you purr, you scratch covers, and you bring me dead mice. For which I thank you by the way."
- "Think nothing of the mice, my pleasure really. Besides, you do not seem to like them anyway."
- "I find them somewhat disgusting to be honest, but I like having a cat around to take care of the live ones, so thank you for that."
- "Thank back to you then, for giving me a warm spot to stay."
- "The least thing I could do really, it is not like I am giving you anything, it is just the way I am."
- "You are in a most gracious way then."
- "Cut the purr will you, and tell me, why are you bringing them to me? It is not like there is any rodent shortage anywhere in the realm."
- "I just told you: you are in a most gracious way. While you are not the only person I bring mice to, I must say that you are my favourite one: you smell good, you look good, you know enough about hunting, you even have a nice voice when you care to talk. There are very few people like you. And you have this empty room."
- "My, this is not really what I expected, coming from you."
- "Then let's just say that you do not roll over in your sleep and that you do not snore too loudly. Cattish enough for you?"
- "Well, I asked for it, so I cannot really complain, can I? And how does this room come into this?"
- "I do not like messes, so it seemed to be a better place than, say, your library or dressing room."
- "Thank you for your attention. However I like this room to be empty."
- "May I ask you why?"
- "You see, it is the last room I visit before I go to sleep, so I can dream of how I may arrange it."
- "Indeed, I see." said the cat knowingly, "Let's furnish it then, so I can learn about furnitures and you may dream other dreams."
- "Not so fast. I do not need you cat to help me 'furnish' my room with dead voles or whatever you may have caught."
- "Well, you said it yourself: cats do not talk. So carefully consider this: perhaps am I not a cat and thus can I find something more suitable, if you would but tell me how you wish this room to be. Consider also that I didn't exactly offered you my help, did I ? I am just like you in a way: I just do what feels natural, it is just the way I am."
- "Cats are cats, talking or not. And I wish this room empty, thank you."
- "Of course, cats are cats as princesses are princesses and as dreams are dreams, how obvious." laughed the cat "And as I cannot guess what you may been dreaming of, I can merely bring you what I already have. I think I should take my leave now. Let me know if you ever need more mice."

So the cat who talked went away, circled the castle three times pensively.
On the first round, he thought that perhaps he should learn to listen more attentively to what is being said to him, and just learn to give up. But felines do not loose easily he told himself, and he was very sure of being right anyway.
On the second one, he thought that it was not always easy to tell people what you had to tell them. And even though you may have a very precise idea of what you mean, tailoring it to suit your audience for your message to be both understood and accepted does not always come naturally.
On the third one, he pondered the virtues of being a cat, wondered whether he should go back to being a wizard, a knight or an owl, or perhaps try something new like travelling merchant, priest or fox. Then he saw a young rabbit, fresh out of its warren, thought "Fast clueless food!" and jumped it.

When a cat comes to your house, bringing mice or birds, let it be: it is but a cat. It is not helpful nor needy, it is just being a happy cat. However, when it starts talking to you, it is a sure sign you should wake up. But you already knew that I am sure ;-)

Bunker Palace Hotel: View from a Kill

Backside

Frontside

Getting vectorized by The Pickle

I have just spent another very pleasant afternoon and evening with The Pickle.

Despite our seemingly irreconcilable outlooks on life, love, politics and almost everything else actually, it seems that we are according the same value to being humane, but probably not for the same reasons. What is nice with someone like her is that you always end up with some insight, not always that easy to see because it is most often lost in contrast. It is getting to the point where I sometimes feel that we have a semantically understandable conversation that we are understanding in very different ways: it is like we are sharing the same language but not its meaning. Weird. Well, "I like weird!", as Mrs R. would say. Anyway, we are both too kind for our own good.

The hardest thing to do is not giving up on your dreams, it is just to understand that you are dreaming. Waking up is easy then. I guess that this goes for both of us.

So, when someone tells you "So, are you giving up?", never, ever, answer "No, I am just giving you the opportunity to give in. Because I truly do not know what else I can do.", just stay silent. Because you haven't given up on your dreams, you are just conceding that while someone might have been wrong, you just do not really know who. Maybe you, maybe not you, maybe both of you, maybe none of you. Of course, this attitude implies that you have no regret whatsoever. And I do not have the slightest one.

I do not feel any different toward her. I do not feel that I am giving up. I just feel empty. Not like I have failed, because failing implies that we where both playing the same game. It is more like one is playing cricket with a mallet and the other polo with a bat, both on the same field, trying to figure out the rules and each one always scoring according to its own standard. Meeting not like trains in the night, but like a horse ad a greyhound pulling up the same cart, so to speak. I'll let you figure out who is who ;-) I just feel that it has all been meaningless and vain, while still being instructive without having exactly grasped what it was all about. Which is a shame really, as I have been the one who initiated the whole thing and kept it going ;-) So I guess that The Pickle and I will stay friends and that time will tell. Most probably not much, as Chronos, by virtue of having three mouths, knows better than anyone that silence is golden ;-)

In a way, were The Pickle to be a sorting algorithm, she would never break the nlogn barrier. Always comparing, never evaluating to an external scale (TM someone, fuzzy reminiscence). But, then again, efficiency is not always the name of the game, and is heavily dependant on context anyway.

All in all, when all is said and done, what is left? Am I hurt? No. Do I bear shame or regret? No. Would I do the same again? Yes. Should I do the same again? Probably not. Do I want to do the same again? Yes. Why shouldn't I be doing the same thing again? Because I could find more efficient ways to achieve a similar end.
But we all know that it is not always all about efficiency, don't we? We all know that it is about being, willing and feeling, none of them being particularly efficient in its own right.

So, to a good night and a good friend: may we grow in understanding while still being different enough to be able to amaze and befuddle each other. Cheers to that ;-)

Is it a swine, is it a maddened cow?

No, with 90% scientific certainty.

I guess that the remaining 10% beg to differ, God only knows why ;-)

Cold

This has been going on till yesterday afternoon, but some symptoms where already there Friday evening. I hate this state: snotty, coughing, feverish, remotely coherent, and, above all, this damn torticollis that comes and goes.
Then, I am not the only one I guess.

Tell me about cold comfort...

Indulgence weekend

Yup, I have been busy indulging myself , big time ;-) Well, let's just say that I haven't done the least thing productive.

So, yesterday the boys were in town, a fourth of them, so we went a-whiskeying, a-cigarring and a-talking till there was nothing more sensible to say. Mister G. was his usual entrepreneurial self, going to visit his dominions in outer Czekia or whatever, while Mister R. was in FO hush-hush mode "somewhere East". Got some news about Mrs. A. and the HR gal along the way. They left for Paris this morning, led by the ineffable Mister R. who was once known to have misled us three times in a row in landnav exercises. Some things never change ;-)

After a lengthy hydration, I have decided to begin the latest Weber, and trolling weird sites. And now it is siesta time.

An evening with Miss Q

Yup, Miss Q, her choice, not mine ;-)

I have met Miss Q on a "social cum tests" site two years or so ago. She actually contacted me, which takes some guts as my profile there is best described as an exercise in psycho weirdness. Anyway, as she contacted me and as we were on top of each other "match list" the least I could do was to be polite and we ended up dating for a few months last year. Miss Q is another exception. I like to see her as "one of the boys", even if the doppelgänger factor is quite high. She does not like to jump out of plane for fun and profit: she likes to jump out of lives. An engineer by trade, she is working in legal, likes a fun spank and spends her time generating her own "Nacht und Nebel" effect. She is not forthcoming, but quite talkative when put on the right track, is not that social but goes well along, and treads a fine path between laugh and duty. So, yes, whatever matching algorithm they are using there, they were quite right in their computations: we had no trouble relating, our basic outlook is similar on many points and complementary on most of the other. In the end however, she proved to be even too weird for me, which is telling.

Anyway, it was a nice evening: we had a lot to say after not seeing each others for the better part of a year, then we talked about common acquaintances, traded restaurants addresses and parted with a smile, which is, all things being equal, the most satisfying ending possible.

An evening with The Pickle

The Pickle and I are going way back, fifteen years or so. Friend of a friend of a friend, we used to meet once or twice a year, acquaintances at most, with nothing really significant going on. We lost touch, met again, no reason why it should not go on any differently. Not so. As to why, I do not know. She wouldn't be The Pickle if I knew. Let's just say that before her, I knew five kinds of women: part of the scenery, colleagues, agreeably dumb little tarts, doppelgänger girlfriends and confidantes. It is more four than five actually, because the doppelgänger girlfriend invariably becomes a confidante after six months to a year, when we have to agree that being so similar does not lead us to anything. The Pickle, well, she does not fall into these. As I hate exceptions, being just wired to systematize, and as I cannot make her fit my own preconceptions, it could be an explanation. Or perhaps is it that she is just way out of my usual, despite having most of what I am looking for. So, I guess, that The Pickle is a pickle because I just cannot find a way to relate unambiguously to her in a way that is both satisfying and efficient. "Efficient", she would utterly hate this word when applied to a relationship, she who readily reproaches me to call an infant or someone an "it" (well, it may be a conceptualisation/translation issue, as I usually phrase it as in "I have met someone, it was interesting.", but then again one might say that this phrasing is ambiguous). You see, The Pickle tells about herself that "I do not know about emotional intelligence, I am just emotional.". She truly believes that humanity is based upon emotions, shared feelings, and an intangible commonness of affect that may lead to mutual interest and negotiated intents. For my part, if I have to make this point clear once again, I believe that a humane relationship foundations lie in convergent intents backed up by common interests, leading to emotional entanglement. So, I am supposed to be the cold fish to her fiery bird, or something when I see it as two sides of the same coin. Truth to tell, following our respective ways do not seem to have brought us what we expected, and trying to go the other way around has left her disappointed and me in a very appropriate pickle.
So, how am I feeling about The Pickle? Good question. I feel attracted to her, to say the least, even if I cannot say why, which is also part of the pickle. But as I am not one to go clubbing baby seals just for fun and given her current predicament, I do not wish to take advantage of her situation: I would be disappointing myself, not to mention that it would very probably fire back at me anyway, so I am hardly keeping her at safe distance. Or so I believe or try to make myself believe. I just cannot escape the feeling that we are wasting a great opportunity. Then again, the current state of affair is better than having met like trains in the night.
Anyway, it was a very enjoyable evening. Once more ;-)

Understanding Coco

La psychologie vectorielle est un champ de recherche vaste, à peine exploré. Il nous appelle comme toutes les figures de l’Infini.
Comment l’aborder ?
Faut-il parler du premier jour, de la création ? Probablement pas.
Science pratique par essence, la psychologie vectorielle est loin des paradoxes fondateurs. Œuf et poule ne l’intéressent que dans la mesure ou l’un se mange et l’autre peut être utilisé comme projectile.
Ce moment si délicat du commencement, cette heure si particulère où l’on cherche à définir les bases sur lesquelles on s’appuiera, ce momentum entamé en un point du néant n’a, pour nous, pas lieu d’être.
S’imaginer un tableau blanc, le champ d’expérience, est amplement suffisant. On exclut l’orgueil conceptuel d’une création ex-nihilo, la gageure des attaques académiques à l’encontre des prédécesseurs. Seule existe la perception immédiate du réel. Pas de symboles. L’empirisme est réhabilité dans son immédiateté brutale.
Les mathématiques se subtituent aux constructions élaborées. La figure emblématique du vecteur est la seule concession à l’appareil conceptuel. Les mouvements de l’esprit deviennent accessibles. Le brouillard du jargon, dissipé.
Toute expérience humaine peut être le point de départ de la psychologie vectorielle, car la psychologie vectorielle investit la totalité du champ du vécu, fait apparaître nettement son intelligibilité filigranée.
On en prendra pour exemple Coco.
Soit les points A, B, C, D et E.
Au moment 0 : A est en conversation avec B, C est en conversation avec D, E (« Coco ») est sous la table de C et D.
Au moment 1 : E (« Coco ») quitte la table de C et D, renifle le sac de A. C suit E (« Coco »), le rappelle, et en profite pour offrir une perche à A. B et D font semblant d’ignorer ce qui se passe.
Au moment 2 : A ne saisit pas la perche de C. C quitte le champ, suivie de D, et de E (« Coco »). B ricane.
Hypothèses de travail :
1) Inertie de A
2) Manque d’arguments convaincants de C.
3) Mouvement de C vers A contrecarré par la présence de B, D ou E (« Coco »).
Conclusion : La psychologie vectorielle améliore l’intelligibilité du réel. Il est démontré que toute situation peut être résumée à des interactions simples entre des acteurs, et étudiée de l’extérieur, sans que l’observateur ait à subir les interférences perturbantes d’un appareil conceptuel lourd.
La psychologie vectorielle est résolument moderne, en ce qu’elle s’inscrit dans la lignée des sciences qui prennent en compte les conditions d’expérimentation pour mettre en contexte leurs observations. Dans un prochain article, nous étudierons ces convergences.

Coco

Critical: never have both a cocker and a daughter named Constance.

The side-kick intro

Between the time when the oceans drank Flanders,
and the rise of the sons of Toffler,
there was an age undreamed of.
And unto this, Maj. Hindsight,
destined to wear the jeweled crown of Vectorial Psychology upon a troubled brow.
It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga.
Let me tell you of the days of high adventure...

--Archimago

An evening with Miss S.

Last evening, I was supposed to finish a paper, then guess who came by.

Miss S. and I are going back a long way, in more than one way, so to speak. We meet once in blue moon, and keep loosely in touch ; it usually goes like "Ping, hello, still alive?", followed by "Pong, elho too.". These days we usually keep it at that once or twice a year except for the even rarer email detailing some issue, in the hope that the other may have some kind of advice or help to offer. We have an open door policy, but none of us has taken advantage of it for years. Since last March that is, when I found myself crashing at her door at 0500, sailing three sails to the wind, and still "smelling of another you obviously cannot remember", as she so elegantly (and indulgently) put it. This brilliant situation having arisen from my ongoing pickle with someone else. Anyway, it is complicated. The point is that I would have met her gladly, and, given the current inglorious situation, I just had to.I am still unsure of what her purpose might have been, perhaps was it simple kindness, checking up on me, payback, revenge, or just that she had to make a point, I honestly do not know. Or perhaps I do. Anyway, what she said strangely echoed and expanded on what my current beloved pickle told me earlier that day.
Here are a few pieces of what went flying to my face:

• "You and I are more interested in what is being done than in who is doing it. This is why we went along so well and drifted apart so easily."

• "We are more interested in caring instead of being cared of. In fact, I resent being cared of, it makes me feel dependant and victimized. It makes you feel worthless. I wonder which is best actually."

• "People like us do not communicate instinctively about fundamentals. You just assume too much, no wonder the impression you end up leaving is of someone insensitive, arrogant and demanding. Well, you certainly do the cold part quite well."

Or perhaps was it just to say that she has recently found her own pickle? I guess I wasn't that helpful then, but as she said: "You do not grow by asking your mirror image, but it helps seeing what may be off. If you can see it;-)".

Anyway, it has been a nice evening. And while it doesn't help you to know that someone is facing the same issues as you, it is, in a way, reassuring.
There is still hope in Aspergerland, after all ;-)

The French Touch V

The French Touch IV

"Ici chacun sait ce qu'il veut, ce qu'il fait quand il passe."

expectations

Having to reluctantly meet someone else's expectations is usually accomplished minimally. Pursuing this course only leads to greater frustration. Go beyond these expectations and find the freedom to have yours.

frustration

Never try convincing yourself that you are not feeling and needing

something again if you do not want to wake up at 0400 feeling like you have been betraying yourself for months.
After all, you can only learn from what you did, not from what may have been, even if by trying you are risking to find why what you will cannot be (and even if your previous attempt has been far less than successful;-).
As you already said, it is time to move on, but not in a way that denies and deceives yourself and others.

The French Touch III

New new Mini's best thing ;-)

The French Touch II

They call it a park, I call it a cage.
Makes for some interesting misunderstandings ;-)