Social Networks

Things such as the social networks, in whatever form, shape, name, exercise an impact over the life of people, the way they see life, the way they meet other and the way their interact. The norms for meeting others, the particulars that make two individuals qualify as "friends" - or whatever name they are given in the different circles - morph within the boundaries and rules proper of each of these cyber human-interconnections.

The social networks I'm part of at this moment are basically iwiw (the Hungarian profile social network. Invite only), Facebook, Interpals (a network to make friends for correspondence, or penpalling), and naturally, Twitter. Of all these Twitter has to itself a distinctive feature that haven't been able to find in any other: the actual chance for people to meet. A space created for "mini-blogging", though I keep seeing it like more of a "messageboard"-meets-"fortune cookie"- meets-"yes-it-could-be-mini-blogging", it proves to have the muscle to bring people to meet, sit down on a group date - no romance involved - to provide for the lack of proper photo albums and costly apps that aim for your data while throwing in exchange some time consuming game or a quizz designed to make you believe you could actually be Hitler, a vampire or Wilson from House MD.

Through breakfasts - or more like brunchs - and sushi or pizza dates, a group of people armed with internet-abled phones or handsets of any other sort, sit together and break the bread, exchanging their usernames, engross their follow and follower lists, making their timelines speed up faster, unroll at a higher speed with more and more tweets from more and more people. I'm getting more and more used to the interaction among them, unlike in the begining, where my old school head couldn't wrap around the concept of having a table of 20 people, with all of them talking through their phones, tweeting instead of talking.

The communications flows, truth to be told, both recorded in the cyberspace, 140 characters at the time, but also life, in the flesh, where the smile, the tone of voice, the eye contact gives meat to the follow. Meetings like these uncover for the cybernaut the person behind the picture, the human behind the characters, the mind behind the message. Here I must stop for a moment and pay my respects for my friend - in here now and shortly referred to by his user, @dankenzon - who was the one to pull me into this social network, and then further introduce me to the rewarding life of #breakfasttouring.

Today's rendez-vous brought together over 28 twitters, gathered around a long table - well, more like 4 or 6 of them pushed together - sharing the moment and the nourishment like a big family. Several local celebrities sat with us, not in the least pushing themselves over the others, claiming their cyber-status to extend also to their real life presence. Known bloggers, who's opinion has been widely shared, sat and commented with those of us less published - if not down right silent about our writing. 

Two of the many topics mentioned caught my attention, bringing me to write this post: The influence of Twitter over expression skills, and infidelity over twitter.

In the first topic, it was mentioned how Twitter pushed people into developping certain skills, such as creativity due to the need to express oneself in 140 characters - thus being able to better phrase one's thoughts, but also the capability of being more tolerant, since the level of peer-pressure on this medium is much higher than in any other network of social sphere. Though these reasonings were quite eloquently exposed, I found myself wondering about them, finding it was not my case, nor I saw it that way. As a longtime journal-writer, and penpaller neither blogging nor tweeting has further developped my expression-skills. If anything, I've found my skills diminished, when compared with those I used to have when more deeply involved in the former practices. There is a certain self-censuring going on in the cyberspace, that does not appear in the intimate paper plane. In here you can write all you want, say all you want, but you never say really all that's in your head. The instant quality of words typed into the big cyberness, does rob them time and again of their better considered, matured condition.

Type and publish. It is out there to be read in the moment you finish typing it, and though you can save it in your draft box for a while, mull over it, how often do you do so? It's different with a date counter to tell you how long has it passed since you last wrote, in a medium so expedit, so instant that up-to-date-ness is expected, in contrast with the paper way, where the past is the seal, the mark, the brand, and the eternity of the things written, scratched, carved upon paper is the expectation.

So, does it improve? Is tweeting better? Does twitter hones expression skills? That's not an affirmation I'm willing to make. It changes the mind, the expressing structures, and it imprints the current trend: fast, concrete, social-centered, and up-to-date. Is this good? It depends on what are you aiming for. In my book the paused, eternal thinking, the one that searched still at the roots, that dwells in the past and goes back to the classics is still the best way to go. Not that I would oppose younger styles and forms, but I do weep for the lost of the paused, dedicated wording that set the written style appart, with verb forms and tenses only used for the written language, the descriptive, rounding palates that could not be freely, spontaneously spoken, but that flows from the pensive soul that has munched on the tip of the pen for long moments before.

Perhaps today's social networks, in the wake of a style that does not make distinction between the spoken and the written language, that makes no distinction between opinion and philosophy, and prefers openly the latest trend instead of the abstract, timeless, rhetoric flow, pulls new speakers, new voices and new forefronts of thought. An era of speech is solidifying around us, that make writers such as Sartre, Nin, Lorca curious memories from a past close in time, distant in concept where the weaving of terms rounded in an diseconomy of words and characters a concept of beauty that fades in the eyes of those easily bored if not excited constantly.

This new expression trend would be like fast and furious fucking, while the former style might have danced and skirted sex, prizing the flirting, the long courting of the message, climaxing, satisfied with the touch of the ungloved hand.

From here I flow to the second topic, that lack of skirting and flirting, it has come to my attention how it happens that people act rather unashamed on the social networks, typing down messages that should be meant for one person, to be read by many. As if in absolute disregard of the 500+ people in whose timeline or wall their words will pop up, pleads and jokes are exchanged in a way that makes it blatant who is talking to whom. Two friends share their private jokes on the net, pretending to be alone - yet not using more private means to communicate - rubbing their intimacy on other people's face, pushing impressions - wrong or not -  and then expecting others not to meddle in their business.

Open channels are exactly that: open channels, and there the conversation of two becomes the headlines of hundreds.

It is already shamefull to witness people going intimate, personal before others, but then, when it happens with people otherwise engaged in a romantic relationship with someone else, it's scandalous.

I have knowledge of a particular case, where someone, having a relationship with someone else, mistreats the official partner and openly favours an alleged friend, with whom trades messages in the open channel, that go way beyond decency. Ads playing with the concept - telecommunication operators pushing the danger of being discovered while away from the computer and not being able to control the damage - do not go as far as these cases do. The case I was witnessing seemed to me abhorrent and beyond any paramether of decency I could come up with. The Ms, was not as much courted by a Mr that couldn't come close in class or education to her significant other, but she in a true Messalina fashion, threw herself to the Mr in question, shamelessly whoring herself out, pleading publicly for his attention, declaring her affection both freely as well as upon the call of the Mr.

At one point things had gone as far as to arise the public cry and rejection over their low, dirty behavior, to which it was the Ms who dared to reply wishing third parties out of their business, while the shady, sleezy Mr obscured his presence by retiring into mere observation. Such disgraceful scenes are never to be seen - not often anyways - outside the social circuits created by the cyber space, where the narrowness of the screen deludes the mind from the wideness of this kbps impulsed universe.

The unabashed Ms and her coward player, continued their games after less than 12 hours of resented silence towards the open channel, soon falling into much shameless messages, earning this time the unspoken, yet blatant scorn of their peers.

It happens, as I found out today, that their case isn't the only one recorded in hundreds of timelines and walls and updates. Infidelity, cheating is even more shameless now, happening often before the very eyes of the offended partner, who witnesses astonished how the person that has promised to share love and life turns to someone else, with the same promises. Whore and solicitors pululate, rubbing their dirty business in the noses of everyone unlucky enough to happen there and watch. Is it our business? Well, it is my screen, my timeline, therefore my right to react, but - here curling back to the topic of expression skills and perfected tolerance - where's the extent of our alotted expression?

In the light of these happenings, the trend of today's expression becomes a little bit more outlined. You can say anything you want, but you are expected to self-censor when others do not, otherwise mayhem falls upon you. The careless, shameless cheaters and flirters polute your updates with their unrequested, offending messages, opening their intimacies in the same way cheap whore spread their fuckholes at any passerby at the streets, and those of us who are slapped with the unrequested, unwanted goods, shall look away, mask out gaging reflexed, and mutter under our breaths "how disgusting". We, declining, uninterested patrons, shall choose silence and self-restrain.

Tolerance of the prostituting of expression, where the whore can rule the demure? Yes, public scorn rises, the user will soon find it's account cut from others fed up with their unclean display, their disrespectful ways, but the offended shall choose the self-restrain, wrap in the mask of tolerance when there is no tolerance for silently, in very private notes and thoughts the message is bold, loud and clear: "I'm disgusted by the whore".

Big is My Country

With much joy, today Costa Rica woke up to Hope in its Legal System. Industrias Infinito, a Canadian Goldmining enterprise found its outrageous demands halted by the Court, as after their pretentious behavior, daring to disregard the judges, disrespecting them, confronting their rulings and behaving in manners proper of kinder garden children, their earlier obtained permits were revoked, and found themselves fined to pay for the environmental damage dealt to a protected primal forest.

Their bullying didn't work here. Big shot lawyers didn't do the trick. The judges weren't awed with the big names and big signatures that backed them. If anything, this process stripped down the State to its most shameful facts. Dodging questions, pretending to get out of trouble simply by the volume of their shouting, disregarding facts, trying to hide them under their screaming.

A well prepared team of environmentalist lawyers brought donw the facts brick by brick, exposing the lack of studies, lack of due procedure, the lack of the minimal requirements, the outrageous disregard of the Law, where the head of the concerned Ministry had the nerv to say she had no knowledge of the ban on all mining activities, ruled two years before.

Over the head of the former President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias Sánchez, looms now this charge as well, for the Court ruled the Public Ministry shall consider opening a procedure against him for signing a National Interest Decree to favor the Goldmining company.

Crucitas, the case of bribing the Caribbean Port workers and illegally deposing the head of the Union, and maybe even the case of Autopistas del Sol and their poorly built and managed road to the Pacific. Oscar Arias, who dared to claim that Hell would freeze before anyone could prove a case of corruption in his Administration may need an anorak on his way downstairs. It seems this is the time when snowflakes have a good chance in Hell. :-D

Where Is The Love?

Recently - or not, I don't really remember, nor I care enough to reseach this particular matter - the topic of "love" and "relationship" has been cursing around enough in various forms and ways, usually thrown in my direction in a sort of distorted, deviated concept, where both "love" and "relationship" are one and the same thing. Naturally they are not, but the collective mind, though rationally accepting this, do not aknowledge it in general. Lets not get here in the even more twisted concept threesome melange of love-relationship-sex,  or the foursome-of-doom love-sex-relationship-having babies where all of them represent exactly the same thing.

While growing up, one is often exposed with a repetitive message from society, that tells you that the "natural order of life" is to be born, grow up, marry, have kids and die. Certain variations happen between the message sent to boys, where the tale goes like "grow up, get a good job, marry, have kids and live happily ever after", and that sent to girls where the "good job" part goes missing. In a rather primitive way, women are still ushered into marriage and having kids as their only acceptable way to secure their future. Professional, working women often don't escape from this as they are measured not for their professional success, but for the success of their boyfriend or husband.

Within different circles of life, the environment exercises pressure upon all member to follow "The Plan". Being single isn't all that accepted, particularly not for able-womb-females, thus the teasing, the searching, the pushing for A and B to get together. The comments about someone "has no love in his/her life", or someone, after spending a lot of time single being "wanted by nobody", not to mention the ill gossip about how this or that person being seriously damaged because she or he has spent so much time single or with no known lover.

Naturally pressure don't leave when you have a boyfriend or girlfriend on your side  - preferably of a gender different than yours. Once you've given into the pressure, proving pliable, you are pressed into marrying to prove you are not a failure, this time worse than a "old maiden", a "slut" who's picked up only for fun. If you manage to marry, pressure builts for you to give the world a child, or you are broken, barren, a failure as human. If you give a child, you will be pressed for more, until your womb dries up and you then will be labeled as "old, worn".

Society, needs to apply this pressure, otherwise it would hardly multiply and survive. Society needs a constant flow of new, able bodied humans to keep on carrying. It can accept interracial unions, gay unions, equal rights for women (sort of), but it cannot, under any circumstance, accept non reproducing humans. It's not about love - though love (almost a myth now) serves as an excelent excuse to push people into the foursome-of-doom to make them produce more humans.

This pressure has bred a particular type of people who love relationships. In a way, such a phenomenon is a strange thing, it's like standing in line before Macy's on Black Friday because you love to stand in a queue. There where the relationship should be about the people in it, the concept of it, the idea of it, has lifted the relationship from the people to place it in a different light, different position, turning iot into an object of cult where the people in it are entirely interascendental, simple actors, support elements for something far more important than them.

People often talk about their dream to marry one day, but marry to whom? They dream about their wedding, but then again, a wedding to marry with whom? It's almost as if the person they are with is a mere convenience, someone that heppened to be there at the right moment in the right place.  I've heard people say that they love to be married, and if they get to divorce, they would marry again. People also that have been dating for years, that haven't been without a boyfriend or girlfriend since they were 12, and can't live without one.

Interestingly, though, for those of us who prefer the person over the relationship, those of us who don't care for the formalities and forms of a relationship, who don't look for a name to give to what's going on with somone else, don't hang expectations on it, don't give the whole deal an expiration date, but rather enjoy the person we feel for - whatever we feel - and settle ourselves with being happy, we are the deviant, the immature, the twisted. the environment around us tells us and everybody willing to listen, that you can't love if you are not in a relationship, you can't just love a person - or many - because love only happens within a relationship. Sure, you can be in a relationship, hating your "significant other", but "loving love" (have never heard bigger bullshit than that), but can't refuse a relationship while claiming to love the person you refuse the relationship with. "If you love me, you'll marry me", "If you don't marry me, you don't love me enough".

Truth is that the world around us, the world socially correct people create around us, is set up for the doom of people. Of course, sacrifice is sold as "prove of love", and the aprehension towards accepting pain and suffering is quickly labeled as "selfishness" and "inability to love", covering all bases but one: true happiness. As people, honest - or at least sincere - the fight should be brought in many fronts, not only to allow our gay brothers and sisters the same rights we straights have, but also to allow, not in the bosom of the law, but in the core of society, to - if not accept, at least leave alone -  those of us, who wish not to be labeled, who want to love freely, carve our own paths in every area of our lives. Don't lable us freaks because we don't get jealous if we catch our mate with someone else, because we find polygamy natural, because we worship loneliness and advocate for friends who remain friend even if they decide to throw in a fuck whenever it feels like it. Don't lable us because we dare what you don't: we experiment.

Don't say we use people because we kiss and leave, because we fuck and don't give an engagement ring and a live sentence in exchange. We love people, we don't use them. Those who get into a relationship with anyone willing, those who don't care for the person, but the ring, the set of rules, the anniversaries, birthdays, St. Valentines and vacations together, those use them. Those trade them as meat.

My position remains, my believes stay strong:

Love, Live and Be Free.

Proud Not To Be A Mom

On Facebook I found a paragraph of "Mother Pride". It was abhorrent. I read the words with horror, trying to understand how could anyone actually state that wit a proud or happy heart. Given, however, that this message is common in our society, I felt moved to reply to it, and here is the arena where I shall do that.

I am not a Mom, and I'm able to love my mom, understand her as human, as woman, as peer. I am not a Mom and I don't feel nor consider myself less or unachieved. I am not a Mom. I sleep until the sun or the alarm clock does. I go to bed when I'm tired. I mind my own business. I keep in touch with my friends, go out with them and enjoy my time with them, without worrying the entire time about the nanny, the kids, or feeling guilty for feeling good with them. I can stay out late whenever I want, with whomever I want.

I haven't changed my make up for the tired, disheveled look. I don't sacrifice my nights for months. I don't have people throw up on me. I do not endure shrieking and crying. I don't need to wish for my closest next of kin to shut up and fall asleep to have a moment of peace. I don't get frustrated, don't need to fight for attention, for others to understand me at home, partake in the chores because I feel burned out. I don't have to smell someone else's shit or piss. I don't feel guilty for spending my wage on me or my friends an family.

I am not a Mom, I didn't need to leave who I am to accomodate someone else into my life. I am not a Mom, and I can't be happier about it. I am not a Mom and I don't need to justify myself for it, I'm bragging about it. I am not a Mom, I'm a happy, accomplished human being that knows and wishes to share with the world than there's more to life than being born, grow up, marry, have kids and die.

I am not a Mom, and I'm surrounded by love. My friends and family, because I am not a Mom, and I can appreciate, value their love as well.

On Marriage, Couples and Happiness

I stayed up until "late" last night to watch a show in History Channel that caught my interest a few days ago. I'm not one to watch much TV other than the few shows I pick. Supernatural (obviously), White Collar (when they are showing it, which isn't now), News, a Colombian old telenovela (Betty, La Fea, because it reminds me of the days I worked at the Bank. Plus its really hilarious) and the NFL games. Since my cable company decided to take away from us awesome channels such as HGTV and Food Network, my TV-time has been quite reduced. (The cable company moved them to a much more expensive pack, and filled the basic pack with crap channels.) Either way, somehow I came across this show's add - Strange History -  for this episode "Til Death Do Us Part".

The show - well, have never before heard of it - steps somehow on the path of another show called Taboo (Tabú in the Hispanic version), where customs odd to the Western Culture are shown to us. From the add, as they pictures only one story, I thought it was going to be about these three people getting married together. The story immediatelly called to me, particularly because it reminded me of a storyline I had written a while now, and some real life paramether would have been great to support it. It also picked my curiosity that the happy threesome marrying were two guys and a girl, far from the social conception that a bigamic or poligamic relationship means more women than men. Go figure.

The show presented four cases: young wives burned to death in India in what could be called "dowry deaths", girls kidnapped in Kyrgyzstan against their will to be married in a display of manhood by their local men, a couple that met and fell in love through Second Life, and this threesome - or triad, as they call themselves - marriage.

The story of falling in love over the Internet is hardly strange anymore for the Western Culture, where kb's flow down our bloodsteam alongs with our bloodcells. Love at distance, however dreadful for any of us, isn't something so unheard or unexpected. Does it work? It depends. Love at distance isn't something everybody can handle, because each person has a different set of needs and a different way to grade the elements that compose or could be part of a relationship. I've been asked several times about how can I handle y long distance relationship like the one I've with Kari. Personally I don't see anything to handle on it. Is it successful? Yes, it is, specially because by having him a whole ocean away, my chances to pick a fight with him are significantly reduced. =) But just because my relationship is successful, does it mean it would be for anyone else? No, because not everybody is me or Kari.

As for falling in love through an Avatar online, well, people have the capability of falling in love over the strangest treats of others. You don't need to fall in love with the appearance or phisical presence of someone else. Often it's a parfume, a word, a smile, a flick, a joke, a car, a glance, an ass, a drawing, a picture, a bip what makes click. So is it possible? Yes, but then again, it may not work for everybody.

The cases of the women murdered in India because their dowry isn't enough for the family of the groom, or the case of the girls kidnapped from the streets in Kyrgyzstan to be wedded, where a girl escaping her captors disgraces herself and the family of the boy, remind me of things much similar in our Western cultures. Reading Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe, I find in Moll's constant seeking for a husband with money enough to support her, in the men around her who look for a woman with money enough for them to live, a feature still present in today's world: the people that marry for money or any other benefit.

Golddiggers as we call them, are not only a group of women, but also men, who dedicate their lives to seek the means to their livelyhood through being kept by others, a spouse most often. Personally I do not know many cases of men looking for women with money, but the amount of women seeking men for their wallet spring around like weed in an unkept garden. Coworkers of mine have often declared that love isn't a good reason to marry, that though they want to marry (or had already), a potential husband shall be graded by the money he spends on her, the kind of engagement ring he slips on her finger and the money he makes. Matters such as genetic base (okay, maybe that's important only to me), personality, afinity, temper, looks, charm, feelings are not to be considered. Many even make arrangements for a beneficial divorce much before the weding even happens. Sure, they usually don't murder their spouse in order to get the money and move to the next big fish, though many stop close from it.

Other selfish reasons also prompt people to marry. Marry because they want to enjoy the political power of their partner, marry so they don't have to be alone, marry to be considered successfull by their peers, marry because that's the next step of life towards living a fulfilling, evolved existence - followed then by children because that's what mature people do -, but there's also the case of those who marry in order to steal the partner from someone else, or those who do it out of spite, to prove to an ex that they are much wanted. It is marriage for reasons far away from the alleged one reason you are supposed to marry for in the Western culture. So, what's worse: marry for money openly for it, or marrying for money but pretending it's for love?

The horrors of marriage are not proper only to Eastern culture, since the kidnapping of unwilling girls by men and their families can be compared with the blackmailing of women who get pregnant to catch a man, or at least force him to keep them. The cases of marriage by coersion, the marriages into which many women rush into in order to escape from brutal family lives and also quite common, or the cases of marriages for visas and permits. These all, whether we choose to look at them or not, clearly prove that marriage is a long since expired institution, a remnant, a romantic carcass that never fulfilled its purpose. Marriage becomes a legal security, a benefit package, a lock that shackles down two people in a long term contract, often subscribed under false pretenses with no clause that allows you to dissolve the contract and restore the previous state if the promese of that pretense turns out to be false, or wanes away.

If you really love the person you are with, what need do you have of a clerical and a legal insurance? None, because in the end marriage seems to be made for all the other reasons the pretense covers for. So, does marriage makes you happy? Only if you think that prison gives home to the poor.

However the one story that got to me was that of the triple marriage, not that I would understand why would they felt the need to be wedded, even if the wedding couldn't be socially recognized. The threesome, composed as I said earlier, by two guys and a chick. had this full circle form, where everybody slept with everybody. Interesting indeed, but far more the words of the lady of the group. She talked about how she never expected to live in a monogamous relationship, how she has always given freedom to her partners in hopes to get the same freedom back. Here I felt identified.

I'm not a monogamous kind of person, and honestly I'm not a relationship kind of person. By listening to her, once again I was put to think about my current situation and how pleased or happy I am in it. I thought whether this is what I want, and the only honest answer I can come up with is "No". No, I don't want to be in a relationship, I never want to marry and I never, ever want to have kids. I do not wish to partake in any social couple ceremony, nor I want to be a component of a couple. I don't want monogamy, I do not wish for the lie called "loyalty" or "cheating". I honestly expect freedom, expression, sincerity, opennes, and all the elements proper of a relationship do nothing - in my eyes and in my heart -  but to cut them. If people were birds, social relationships expect you to lock yourself with your mate in a cage. Do you and realize how even if the cage gives you some security, you'll dream of freedom. In my head, as birds, I rather fly. I'd be happy meeting my mate in flight, sharing a nest, but letting him fly solo and I'd expect to fly solo too.

Now, don't get me wrong here, and here's the core of my message: I love Kari and I love being with him. I loath the relationship, and the ties of it. I hate being tied down by it, but Kari I love. Is love sacrifice? Not for me. Love is freedom, love is new scapes and new adventures. Love is new experiences, all of which the tie of relationships can trample. I'd love to be with Kari in a limbo of relationship where we are all and nothing, friend and lovers but with no lables, with no rules and no pre-fab estipulations other than those that grow from the very dynamics of what goes on between us. It stays together as long as it should, and it falls appart when the time for it comes. No commitment, no deception, no pains and angers, just two eagles circling the sky.

A relationship doesn't produce love, nor is a relationship the sign of love, love grows from people with no rules and no expectations, it just does. Rules and expectations only asphixiate it.

Achievement

Like in the life of every childfree person, recently I had a "run into" with an acquintance - friends, for some - who questioned again my decision about not to have children from two fronts, which amazed me by their irrationality. One was, the questioning about whether my boyfriend knows and what does he think about it. The other was the argument, that I was a child too.

For the first, whether my boyfriend knows or doesn't and what his thoughts are on the matter, are something that pertain strictly to him and me. Besides, I am not the property of my boyfriend, nor am I the property of nobody, therefore it is in my rights to decide what happens or not with my body. Giving birth, having children is MY RIGHT, not my obligation. It is my right also to decide not to have children. Topics about my boyfriend's rights to have children have already been addressed in prior posts.

For the second matter, yes, I was a child, because people can't be born in adult form, but that doesn't mean that, because I was a child, I must make children. Or is it that, because we were poor and I "had want" of many things in my childhood, if I were to have children, they must suffer the same needs and shortnings? Because I was raised atheist, even if I've found God later and believe in Him, I must raise children atheists? Or maybe because I was born  a girl I must have only girls? However this irrational, laughable argument is the kickstart of this post.

One of the usual arguments pro-child campaign is that children and parenthood is a vital stage of life, and not living it equals to miss a step of life that ensures the only real maturity. In their philosophy, no real maturity can be attained if not through parenthood. I'll step away here from counter-arguing that no rational maturity can be assigned through parenthood when it comes to the parents that kill their babies or torture them, put their children to work or prostitute themselves, or down right neglect them or raise them in unhealthy environments. These are beyond proving and the shelves of Children Protection are filled with plenty of sad cases that can, alone, rest this case.

The point here comes from the line of "attaining maturity". The question here is "What do we understand under 'maturity'?". Maturity is often related to adulthood, wisedom, the capability to reason and be able to make decisions of its own and shoulder the upcoming consequences of it. It can be said in simpler terms, that maturity means being fully responsible of one's actions. Though indeed parenthood demands - ideally - capability to be fully responsible of one's actions, since with parenthood you must assume responsible over someone else, it doesn't mean that parenthood indeed gives you such responsability, or that - lacking of it before parenthood - you will grow into it by the force of being a parent. Furthermore, the idea of waiting until parenthood to become responsible and therefore mature (as no maturity can attained without parenthood, as pro-child preechers say) nulifies any other source of learning, maturing, stripping any sense or need to be responsible of one's actions and one's life and its conditions and circumstances. Let's not talk here about the shock it means for parents-to-be to not only become suddenly responsible for themselves - something they've never done so far - and also responsible for someone who is not in the capability to be responsible for itself.

Something these pro-family groups don't seem to want others to know is that you can learn to be responsible much before you become a parent, and therefore, you can attain maturity not only before parenthood, but also without it. This is particularly applied to women, where even today no woman can seem to be considered fulfilled, mature, achieved or even normal, if she doesn't go through motherhood. No matter how good she is in her other activities - be it work or not - if she's not a mother at a given age, she's a freak, bitter, aberration. In this same line, women close to the age of having children or slightly under are not taken seriously because they are "up to be taken", and therefore considered unreliable. It's not strange though that in a world that pushed the family-centric model over us, that force us to choose to be a mother over everything else, even being a woman or being a person, laborally women are in such a terrible position. No women is seen as a person, therefore able to prove her reliability through her daily actions, but seen as a womb that some man will eventually fill with seen and have poping children, breastfeeding them, converted to domestic life and puting her family before everything. We are socially and laborally preceived as unreliable, temporal work that will never be able to step in the place of men.

As women, family-centric  societies preech that the only kind of real achievement we can ever aspire for is in motherhood. If motherhood doesn't make you feel fulfilled, you are unnatural. If you are fulfilled by something else, then "you don't know what's good", "you are immature", "you'll grow out of it eventually". Family-centric groups, of course, excersize this sort of pressure over men as well, making them see family as the last link of a long chain of conquests that prove his virility, his manliness, and add to it, they are socially pressed to take responsability not only for the children, but also the woman or women sexually linked to him. So back off ladies, men are in in this with us.

So basically we are bullied into family, rather than let to choose it by our own free will. It's almost as if childfree-ness were the only real, freely taken decision. By selling us this preposterous idea that parenthood is the only acceptable mean towards maturity or achievement, be it or not, attained or not, children become a tool, a mean towards that end. It's not only unfair to use someone to get ahead in life, but then proven that no maturity can be attained, what kind of achievement do you get from having a baby? You've achieved to get laid? You've achieved to get knocked up? That you've got past the splitting pain of childbirth - or made someone go through it? Talking about the achievement got through "watching him grow" and "his achievements are mine" sound to me like crap or stealing. First of all, either you simply achieve to keep it alive, which is hardly and achievement, but your responsability for giving birth to him or her, or taking credit for something that's entirely the child's achievement. You can't learn for others, you can't evolve for others, you can't progress for others, just like noone can do any of those for you. So where's your achievement? In making your teachings stick? Okay, and what are you teaching?

Because, if you've denied yourself the chance to mature outside of parenthood, if you denied yourself to accept responsability if not until after parenthood, if you bought the line that parenthood is the only real achievement you've got - which is using others, your own children, to accept worth in yourself, and steal their achievements, congratulate yourself for what's your responsability in the begining, or even for what's not yours to decide or control - then on which grounds can you expect your kids to be responsible, to mature, or on what ground you dare to tell them that they can be whatever they dream to be? Are you going to honestly tell your little girl that she can be all she wants as long as she'll drop it when the time comes to have children? Or are you gonna lie and spend your life spinning tales, because once you were a child and that's what your parents did with you?

Nice.

Yes, I break off the path designed by society to me. I've chosen to achieve fulfillment through other means, towards builiding myself by myself. I chose to make no one my achievement, but myself. No use of children, but develop myself, try out the path without dragging in innocent bystanders in my quest for completition. Funny thing, I do feel achieved, fulfilled and happy, and this is more than what I can say for many of those with kids. Childfree need not to blame their frustration or inability to enjoy themselves in "have kids and you must sacrifice things for them", but the childfree takes the responsability, when that excuse is often heard from parents, or told to parents by others, when they try to do things they could do when they didn't have them.

Thing is, to summarize, that parents or not, childfree or not, as people we should seek honestly our personal fulfilling - whatever it is - and attain maturity through life as a constant process since birth, and instead of making the choice of becoming a parent a social obligation, make it into a personal choice where whatever the outcome, whatever the decision, it will be respected by all of those around us.

As a childfree, I respect your decision to become a parent, even though I don't share it nor I can comprehend it. Please show me and my piers the same kindness.

Absorbing the World and Repelling it

Our world is mainly visual, or so we tend to act like. In our vision of world, there isn't anything as bad as to be blind, because you honestly believe you are missing the whole planet. Can't read a book (though there are braille books), can't watch a movie - less an old mute movie - can't see the fireworks, can't go in the Net, can't read this post... and so on. Add to it, it is said that, taking as starting point Flemings VARK learning styles' structure (where people's learning style is classified as Visual, Auditive or Kinetic), an important percentage of the population is visual, meaning that most of the population learns the world around them throught their eyes.

If you pay attention, that tendency to suck everything in through the eyes follows us everywhere, in fashion, for instance, where the point of it is for you to look in a certain way. Space decoration is designed to please the eye, and even the efforts many people do to change their bodies is also to please the eye. We even talk about the looks of people. You combine colors, watch prints, take pictures, watch the TV, paint your face, watch a game and place a wallpaper on your screen. Of course, not all of us are visual, but the world certainly set us and presses us in that direction. and even though other areas of the world would commercially offer us things for other senses, like parfumes, music, food, pillows, are brought to us through our eyes. How many time have you picked a parfum based on the image first, then the scent? How many times have you picked a meal in a restaurant for the look it has, before you even know it's taste?

Okay, lets be honest here for a moment: for those of us who can see - not meaning that we actually do so - the portion of the planet we absorb with our eyes is important, and the amount of information we get from it is also quite sizable, but the other senses, truth to be told, are also there and eventually something happens that makes us far more aware of them.

So it happened that yesterday, on my way home, from the office, my sense of smell was tickled and put in the center of my life. Quite like in "The Perfume", by Süskind, and I even came close to murder a couple of times. Yesterday, however, was divided in two chapters, like "Hostel" and "Hostel II". One was worse than the next.

In the first part, titled "The Patchouli", I sat down, unavertedly next to this age-inapropiate lady. Short and chubby, she had dressed her parchment, loose skinned body in a peasant-like white dress with deep clivage. Her poorly coiffed hair was horrendously dyied into some sort of redish tone, that seems to have been waning for a while as it had been taking that distinctive cockroach tone. (That or she purposefully decided to die her hair into that insect-color). Her face, on the other side, looked like a failed color test, with Heidi-like cheeks, and a mess of products all over, almost as if she would have put in a bowl the shadows, lipstick, pressed powder and mascara, stirred it and then smeared it on with a spatula. Honestly, it was pitiful. Just one look at her told a story. Uneducated, low self esteem, strugling with relationship problems, either because her partner is cheating on her with a younger woman, or she's the mistress of a man who's turning more towards his wife, or she's lovely and is desperate to catch a man, any man. Perhaps she could be in her 50's, but by the looks of it you'll put her in the mid 70's. It was a walking-talking dissaster, canditate only to be approached by What Not To Wear.

Now, that was the visual. Once I sat down, an aggressive, invasive attack came over me. Posessed by some insane conception, she seems to have dumped on her head a big bottle of Flower by Kenzo. I'd like to tell you here that this particular parfume is one of my favorites, along with Pure Poison, Ysatis and Brit. For over 45 minutes I simmered in the stench of the perfume, forced to press my nose to the glass and hope against all hope that she would remove her perspirations in the closest stop, and that it wouldn't rub on me.

A lot of people do that, by the way, among them my Dad. He also seems to believe that colognes and perfumes have been invented to bath in them, and so they liberally dose themselves with it, pouring on easily some $40 worth in smell in each turn. At the office there are also some people who are literally announced by their smell. Don't they know that just makes them repelent? Don't they know that covering themselves in stench they manage to be unappealing and unapproachable? Scent is a way or a wall. Poorly used, it becomes a wall that keeps people at bay. They won't come close to you because you smell so bad or so strong you could kill a horse with the stench around you. Try it. Pour a bottle of perfume on your head and see how the Red Sea divides before you.

Scent, properly used, becomes a way that leads people to you. How? Use it wisely. Just a little, enough to be felt faintly close to you, so that people, intrigued by it, come closer to get a better sniff of it. It works. Yes, it does. I've known girls who have fell for a man just by his cologne. I, myself, have been trapped by a perfume, that lead from a friendship, to friendship with rights to kiss his neck, to rights to nibble his neck to... well, you know. It works and I can personally testify for it.

The smelly-lady eventually removed herself from the premises, but nor before leaving me sick to the point that I had to sit down and breath in deeply the cleansing smell of the city.

Now, if you think that this was bad, the second part was far worse. This chapter, titled "The Stench", was just like ripped from a Childfree book. Yes, a mom and her stinky child sat next to me.

Now, if you recall, yesterday I wasn't well, due to the intoxicating amount of sweet goodies I ingested on our Halloween party. I hadn't eaten all day, so by 6 pm I was getting hungry, which left me with going to a McDonald's (was the closest) to score some food. After waiting in line, patiently eyeing a couple of retards - they were in line 10 minutes, but didn't think about what to order until after they were at the counter. Then they took  another 10 minutes to make up their minds, only to have the male-retard interrupt my order and say that his partner, the female-retard, really meant something else, and then have mended the order... which was already served - and finally ordering some whatever meal  to go, I went to my bus. Sat down and leaned my head to the window.

First an old man sat down, who tried really hard to pick up a conversation with me, regardless of the fact that I was evidently indisposed, as the healthy Green Giant green tone of my complexion may have suggested. I ignored him really hard, even closing my eyes and pretending to sleep, which the old dude didn't pick up, as he surely believed I can talk in my dreams. Prying no reply from me to his many attempts, he gave his seat in the first available chance. To my disgrace it was to the mom and the baby.

From the moment they sat down a nauseating cloud of warm baby-shit smell flopped down and expanded like an epidemy. It was sheer luck that the kid was silent, and so the mother, but the smell was loud and clear. This nauseating cloud, however, seemed to have life of its own asn it evolved, developped, riped. The stench of baby crap mixed with rancid sweat and milk, that only deepened as the mom decided to breastfeed the thing, and flapped out her boob in the middle of the bus and stuck it in the mouth of the thing while she dexterously started also opening the baby's pants and fingering the diaper. The stench waved all around, alternating stronger tones of rancid milk and saliva with buckets of rancid sweat and fresh shit in a rancid diaper. I nearly went Omen as I turned my head as far as I could and pressed to the glass to the point of nearly fusing my face into the plastic pane. At one point, however, I had to look at the driver, and a slap of stench hit me flat on the face, making me visible gag. The facial expression of the mom made it clear that she did not took well my not aproving the "baby scent".

As a Childfree and a Childfree life style supporter, this comes handy as a clear case of what babies are about: stench. Even a perfectly well behaved flesh lump like that becomes disgusting through all the virulent smells it produces, which then transfer to the mother. Sure, you can always keep your baby clean, and nicely dosed with baby cologne and all that, but babies still shit and still burp and vomit and sweat and pee and get that rancid milk smell. Parents, on the other hand, lacking time and space to organize their things, soon find themselves dirtied, covered with specks of baby food, baby vomit and baby shit. Sexy, right?

Sitting next to the stinky family, I wondered about the lines we are fed with about babies, how "cute" they are, and how much satisfaction they give you. Well, those flesh lumps are not cute. Stinky kills cute. Besides, really, the baby was ugly. Ugly and smelly. It was a moment to preech Childfreeness in the most successful environment.

So, in this visual society, where other senses are relegated to a second plane, these senses, like women back in the day, can still wreck havoc and can still surreptitiously manipulate the world around us. Smell becomes an unspoken sort of Social Norm, where you are expected to smell pleasantly. It is considered rude, for instance, to fart or to speak with bad breath, or walk around people smelling badly. The daily cleansing rituals, including the dosing of antiperspirant and cologne are a social expectation. Does parenthood then, particularly motherhood, give you a free of jail card? No. Society tolerates it, but it is still seen as a transgression, and regardless of the condition of motherhood, outspoken or not, messed up parents and kids are regarded as dirty, and thus avoided for as long as social rules allow it.

Now, lets put aside the Childfree activism, or the age-apropiate topic, and lets concentrate on the senses and how the world is brought to us by them. Visual or not, Auditive or not, the world around us signal us through many ways, and we all, at the end sip in that data. You might be very visual, but if I ask you to think about the smell of chocolate, you can immediatelly recall it, right? Or if I ask you to remember the feel of a cotton ball, the sensation comes to you right away. The taste of milk, the sound of laugher, the feel of heat or cold, speed, sudden stop... being particularly visual, particularly auditive or particularly kinetic doesn't make you exclude all the others, thus exersize paying attention to those details on your daily life, not simply to be more pleasant to others or receive more negative signs, but also to grasp the world better.

Our Halloween

First of all, I missed the game between the Steelers and the Saints. Go figure. I was lining up so much for it, I made arrangements to watch it, and at the end, I didn't see it. (I was looking for it on the wrong channel.) Did see some Vikings against Patriots, and I was surprised to see Favre play, as I was sure he was retired or so. I mean, wasn't the whole shebang in the game against the Packers about that?

Anyway, so I missed a game (at least it wasn't a Colt's game), but still I had a FABULOUS time with my friends. And when I say fabulous, I mean it was a hoot!

First of all, I must say that my gingerbread cookie pilot test was an absolute success. After last year's cookie fiasco, I took precautions trying out the recipe before hand, and since I was doing the test this weekend, it was only fair that I would make Halloween gingerbread cookies. Thus the Jack heads. The recipe is easy to make, and all you need is to be able to get all the ingredients, which I'm afraid, won't be so easy outside the American Continent. Why? Because the recipe requires molasses, and there were the sugar comes from some sort of root (Sugar beet) the possibility of getting your hands on good ol' molasses (sugar cane syrup) is near to impossible. Since Kari and I will be preparing the cookies in Hungary, where the Sugra beet reigns, the possibility of getting some molasses can endanger the whole project, specially because I haven't found a single recipe that seems doable (sorry Emeril Lagasse) and doesn't require this particular ingredient. Naturally, were I to find teh recipe, I'll have to test it before hand.

Anyway, I've got my cookies, watched the time of baking - all very scientifically - and then separated two batches: a big one for home and for my brother to take with himself (my older nephew got addicted on the spot with the cookies) and a smaller batch which I took with myself for my friends. The success of the cookies there was also blatant.

My friend Alix and I had decided from earlier, to celebrate Halloween together, since here there isn't much of a Halloween celebration, particularly with a lot of wackos already decorating their cubbies and houses with Christmas motives. Dude, really. So, Alix and I, the two witches, decided to celebrate our witchy day. (I totally forgot to send my customary message to all my girlfriends, but it isn't every year that you have such a cool celebration.) The celebration was all organized around The Carving of the Pumpkin. Alix and her hubby got this perfect pumpkin at a local store, something that wasn't really seen eariler before down here, in the Tropic of Cancer, and with the guide of hours and hours of Internet research, the techniques and tricks were mastered - theoretically -  and now the practival part of the game was to be implemented.

Using a whiteboard pen - trust me, you wanna do it, you take a whiteboard pen, otherwise you could ruin your pumpkin - we made all the markings on the victim pumpkin. Eyes, nose, mouth and lobotomy hole. Now, if you have never carved a pumpkin, you must know that it's freaking hard, and I mean FREAKING hard. It puts up a decent fight. The lobotomy was first, so we tackled the top carefully cutting around. The technique that proved efficient was to dip the knife and pull it out, then dip again. Once we had it all around knifed, we put it in again and this time moved the knife around, being so much easier to cut.

Once the top was off, we gutted the pumpkin, which again, was much harder than expected. Scrapping the seeds and the tendrils wasn't kids' play. Alix' daughter wanted to make pumpkin pie, thus she needed some pumpkin. It came handy, as so it happened that we needed to thin up the pumpkin's walls. Thus we scrapped some more before proceeding to poke out the eyes, nose and mouth. If you are a beginer in the carving business, you must take the following advise in consideration: design a face made out of straight lines. The traditional Jack-O-Lanterns are all made with straight lines, so start picking out a traditional face, and carve that. It's gonna look pretty and you won't have to sweat over the damned thing trying to carve a curve where neither the knife or the pumpkin cooperates.

Alix' daughter, Jo, gutting the pumpkin. Isn't she one cute little psycho-witch? ^_^

Alix' hubby, Jose, opening the skull of the pumpkin. 
See? Jo has an example to follow in psychomanship.

Once cleaned, to prevent oxidating, the pumpkin was thoroughly rubbed with cooking oil - inside, of course -  and then a votive candle was placed inside. The effect was to die for.

The Pumpkin has died, Hyne saves the Pumpkin!

Witchy Me and the Lit Pumpkin

Witchy Alix. If you see her around, do not buy her apples. I repeat, do not buy her apples!

 

Jack, in the Pumpkin.