) Wisdom tells me I am nothing; love tells me that I am everything. Between the two, my life flows - sufi saying

Estimados Gemelos Gabrielli:
Barcelona se despertó simetrica este primero de enero 2009, a su derecha Daniel y su corazón de plata, a su izquierda Ricardo y su imaginación de oro. O será al revés? No lo sabemos, y poco importa saber cómo los dioses repartieron estos dotes a través de Maria Victoria - en aquella casi Navidad, en una casi montaña, casi en 1976. Daniel, eres cási como Ricardo - y Ricardo eres cási igual a Daniel. Lo que le sobra a uno, también le sobra al otro y al revés es la misma história. O será al contrário? Nos dá igual. Oliver y Belinda cayeron una vez más bajo su encanto, felizes de inaugurar este nuevo año en tán graciosa compañia. Que el 2009 les traiga todo lo que se merecen, entre risas y sueños de amistades duraderas.

) Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso

Dive relax. Silence around you. Sun above shining through. A thick blue world that feels heavy, and you are light. Fly move upside down, your body is mute, feels nothing but void inside your head and outside, in this new territory without directions. Cardinal points melt into one blurry spot somewhere inside your belly; gravity reverses, and drives the oxygen of your lungs up to the surface where sounds survived. Cold warm at the same time, temperatures fight for your pores, senses are sharp as cristals right under the skin and then blend quickly with this giant womb you will return to at night. You are not alone anymore, you are everything and everything is you in return. Silence around you. Sun above shining through.

) Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want - Randy Pausch, Carneggie Mellon

Passbild-Automat forever

) The best things in life aren't things - Art Buchwald

The Clod and the Pebble

A poem crossed my path. The clod and the Pebble by William Blake.

"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a heaven in hell's despair."

So sung a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet,
But a Pebble of the brookWarbled out these metres meet:

"Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven's despite."

I couldn't quite make sense of it and asked Matthew to shine his bright lights on it, perplexed as I was (or scared as I was of having perfectly well understood it, a perfect example of my contradictions in action). Matthew has the finest command of english and an uncommon common sense the size of his hometown island, Jersey.

“Oliver,

That is a bizarre choice of poem to send. I don't think it is particularly nice, but I guess it depends on you interpretation. It is about the manner in which love should be perused, selfishly or unselfishly and the manner in which you express your love, hidden or disclosed. On the one hand the poet seems to suggest that love should be fancy free and that the devotion to love is enough and in a way that love is accepting that you give all of yourself to someone. However, it also suggests that love can be selfish and the pursuit of you own happiness is more important than that of other loves or lovers. Let me know which words are causing difficulty and I will explain them for you as best I can (I am only a simple banker!) but remember poetry is subjective rather than objective, so another person may interpret it differently. Poems are only ever really understood correctly in the mind of the sender and receiver. There is not necessarily any right or wrong.

Matt"

I agree now. That was more than bizarre. Matthew, you are a genious. And I am an idiot. The size of William's British Empire.

) The longest journey is sometimes the distance between two people - anon

Passbild-Automat forever

) We don't see things as they are,we see things the way we are - David Mitchell, Number9dream

34.61°S - 58.37°O

My watch tells me that it is 9.58 pm. Despite that obvious fact, the sky speaks of a late afternoon in the setting sun, the warmth of which helps you fight the freezing atlantic breeze that gets holds of Buenos Aires in early spring. Something isn't quite normal. The fact strikes me that I haven't bothered changing my wrist watch to help me navigate in the argentinian timetable. The discrepancy has followed me for a week now, and my mind has integrated the duality of being in two places at once: Zürich and here, 10'850 km away. It dawns on me that I am the luxurious creature of a globalized world - my time is the one I choose. I find it extremely boring, wishing I couldn't so easily escape local contigencies of where and when. I want to be entirely here, far away from there, hiding in the distance and nowhere to be seen, beyond the horizon.

)Laughter is the shortest distance between two people - Victor Borge

Passbild-Automat forever

§ If we are incapable of finding peace in ourselves, it is pointless to search elsewhere - Francois de la Rochefoucauld

The D Day

30 years and a lof of thinking still to do on what it means to...ZzZZZzZZzzzzz! You took your smile with you and rang at the right place on last June 16th. Did you enjoy the food? Did you drink Christina's amazing Caïpirinha and other exotic personal inventions? Did anyone realize how long it took me to compose the 8 hour long seamless multi-cutural 235 track musique d'ambiance? Don't worry, if you didn't, I sure did, and I enjoyed it like hell. Thanks to everyone who attended, and thanks to those who didn't attend for whatever reason.
> special thanks to Ema, she knows why ;D

Passbild-Automat forever

§ Happiness is like a kiss. You must share it to enjoy it - Bernard Meltzer

Valencia o sus Fallas

Valencia. Las Fallas. Y dos hermanas vestidas de falleras para que la tradición se perpetúe en esas tierras. La virgen y sus claveles, dedicados con paciencia por la procesión de hombres y mujeres fieles a su público. La mascletá, trueno urbano al cual acuden todos para sentir las fallas por dentro, en las tripas, empezando por los huesos, atravesando las camas de carne y reventando por los poros. Las fallas y sus muñecos grotescos que acaban en llamas, la obsesión de cada valenciano en vivir lo que no morirá nunca allá: la fiesta y sus excesos, la fe en sus protectora sagrada, madre de todos estos pecadores que imploran su perdón por trenzarle un velo con olor a paella de alcachofa.

> a la familia Argente, gracias por la acogida! Fallas 2008, quién se apunta?

§ Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go - Oscar Wilde