Author: Ruestrasse

As a kid, I would often wonder what exactly was the point of dancing, especially from a survival of the fittest standpoint. I thought I could understand many of the typical bursts of spontaneous human behavior, but dancing was always a notable exception. Why would the body react to rhythmical sounds was beyond me. What strange force makes an otherwise intelligent individual feel like standing up and moving around a typically flat surface wearing a silly smile? Why does that make them feel “good”?

In my opinion, this phenomenon is not gender biased. Fear of social humiliation is stronger in the male, as he doesn’t typically possess the compensating treats for balance that women do. That is likely the reason one would see many more women on the dance floor. Other than Seinfeld’s own Elaine’s little-kick dancing style, girls aren’t typically vulnerable to social rejection because of their dance moves.

Thus, I believe this mysterious force would affect males and females equally, though women are more likely to physically react to it.

Without regard to any gender bias, why would a reward-seeking individual waste useful energy in an activity which does not provide immediate satisfaction to any primary animal needs?

One could say that it serves the purpose of a mating ritual, intended to attract members of the opposite sex to the physical qualities of the dancer by his shaking the most obvious appendices in public. What better way to signal good health to the group? Though this could be a plausible explanation for disco or hip hop dancing, it fails to unravel the mystery behind tango, kabuki, step dancing (rapid leg movements while body and arms are kept largely stationary), post-touchdown celebratory dance, etc.

Next year, I plan to embark in an informal research project aimed at discovering speculating over the main reasons behind your irresistible urge to jump on the dance floor at the sound of your favorite song, whether you cave to it or not. It is an empty and “rewardless” journey, but one that should still be slightly less soul crushing than the futile rat race that is today’s typical career.

It is still the holiday season. And for the time being, it is time to go back to a state of drunkenness.

We often walk back and forth without even looking up to see the faces of those we bump into on the street. Driving around, the isolation is even more pronounced.

But sometimes, when we are forced to raise our eyes to avoid running someone over, amazing things happen.

Is he waiting for his loved one, flowers in hand, making sure he has the poem he is planning to recite upon her arrival duly memorized? Or is he just killing the time with a book in the mean time? What is he listening to?

The stock market is getting destroyed, Europe is falling apart, dictators are thrown out of power and killed. But in a little quiet corner of an otherwise noisy and crowded place in the heart of New York, someone longs for his loved one. And that´s all that matters.

When you enjoy spending your weekend mornings under the bed sheets the way I do, it is hard to find a compelling enough reason to embark on a “weekend trip” to escape the city. Who needs to escape the concrete jungle when closing the blinds and watching the National Geographic channel can get you there? In the end, mind altering drugs are not the only way to fly. A good movie, an interesting book, a good baseball game at the nearby bar… The outdoors exist only for those who lack imagination, or a 42 inch TV.

Still, some additional elements to the trip proposal ended up inclining the balance in favor of my sleeping in a foreign bed for two days. Once there is no way out, you start to rationalize it. “How bad could it be?”.

I jumped on a bus, the preferred mode of transportation of the weird and the crazy in this country, and arrived in Washington D.C. I know what you are thinking. Washington is not the most outdoorsy destination, right? However, there is definitely more green around you there than in my city of residence. Surprisingly, the journey there took place without incidents worth mentioning.

I needed a haircut badly, and so dedicated a good part of the next day to search for a hair salon. To my dismay, they all seemed to be booked. It was just as if the entire D.C. population decided to get a perm or haircut the same day. What is one to do in a situation like this? I have no ability to perform this task on my own hair (nor anyone else’s for that matter), so I asked my host in the city for recommendations. He said my best shot was trying a Barber Shop, and offered to drive me to one that is close to his house, in a predominantly black neighborhood even for Washington standards. By dusk, the bastard had already dropped me at “Dynasty Barber Shop”, which looked more of less like this.

He stepped on the gas pedal as soon as I jumped out of the car. There was no choice now but to get into the shop. I wouldn’t want to look silly going back to his house with the same tropical jungle I had in place of my hair.

I walked into a small and tackily decorated “salon”, where a patron was getting a hair trimming and 2 barbers (one busy, one not so much; I will call them Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy respectively) listening to very loud hip hop music as they glanced at a football game on a TV carelessly placed over the most fragile wooden structure IKEA ever produced. Immediately as I walked in, it felt as if the needle of an LP scratched, Adam-Sandler-movie style. The eyes of the patron, the two barbers, a small (do I need to specify race?) kid in charge of sweeping the place and a guy sitting by the corner eating a Big Mac all locked on me (9 in total, as corner guy had only one functioning eye). I was probably the first non-black customer they had seen this year, conservatively speaking.

Recovered from their original shock, which must have lasted 10 seconds but felt like 10 hours, Eddie Murphy approached and asked if I needed help, probably thinking I was lost and needed directions. Trying to sound as street as possible, I said I wanted a hair cut.

“I wanna ‘air cut, mon”

I heard myself as I talked, and realized my best street accent sounded pretty Jamaican.

Making an obvious effort to contain his laughter, he said something really fast to me while pointing to a chair nearby. I sat, almost by instinct, as he repeated what he said. “How ya wan’ ya tappa” (How do you want your “taper”). I looked at a poster on the wall with pictures of different hair styles, none of which applied to anyone with hair longer than 2 inches. This is how all styles looked like to me.

Though not as long, and definitely uglier, for the purpose of the story this is more or less the kind of hair I have.

Feeling unsure about my stupid impetuous decision, I managed to say “just a little bit on the back and on the sides”.

A fraction of a second before Eddie Murphy turned my the chair 180 degrees, preventing me from looking at what he did on the mirror, I realized the salon had no scissors. No scissors anywhere to be seen. There was nothing but the typical haircut trimmer to be found anywhere in the place. A mildly bad decision was fast becoming idiotic in lieu of the anticipated results.

Hip hop music resumed after some unintelligible words from the radio DJ. I should have known they had simply tunned to a radio station, instead of playing a CD. Chris Rock told a joke to Eddie Murphy, which made all four, customer and one-eyed guy included, explode into laughter. Then, Eddie said something about a cheap date he supposedly had with Chris’ girlfriend. Laughter ensued. The Barber Shop had turned into a black comedy show all of a sudden. Two more guys came in (wanna guess?) and the jokes went on. They all obviously knew each other. Often, Eddie and Chris had to stop cutting hair to laugh, jumping up and down while holding their bellies. This was surreal. I was now less worried about my safety, but way more about my hair style. This made me imagine the situation in which I would have to shave my head to spear the world from my hideous look. Hey, is this why so many of them are bald? No time to focus on hair styles while attending the comedy show? I had seen nothing yet though.

DJ on the radio interrupted the song before it finished. I reminisced about the times when I used to record songs from the radio into a cassette, and the DJ would interrupt the song to say something stupid. “The things that made me want to kill myself at the time!” – I thought to myself. Immersed as I was in my deep 90s memories, I failed to notice something other than hip hop started playing on the radio. Yes, I know this song. It is Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”!

Chris Rock, carefully trimming the hair of the other patron next to me and Eddie Murphy, started singing. What compelled me to utter the words “You have a nice voice!”? I will never know. Eddie Murphy got offended and said something about some dance off or dancing contest, as apparently he didn’t have his partner’s Soprano abilities. He thus started dancing, completely disregarding his customer: yours truly. Chris Rock didn’t want to be left behind, so he engaged in the same activity. Before I knew it, sweeping boy, one-eyed corner guy and the two others that had arrived stood up and started dancing to the contagious voice and rhythm of the King of Pop. Eddie Murphy moved around so enthusiastically that he ended up pulling the plug of his haircut trimmer. That minor incident did not slow him down one bit. Hands in the air, he jumped in the middle of the improvised dance floor and moved frantically like possessed by the devil, going up and down, side to side, zigzagging… No move was too physically demanding, no twist was too exotic. The sweeper, the Russian knee slapper, the scuba diver… He was now in his natural element.

The music and the dancing went on until the end of the song. The DJ said something about Michael Jackson I couldn’t quite understand, and they all laughed. I laughed too. Judging by the undiscriminating high-fiving, we were all friends now.

Eddie Murphy turned my chair around so I could finally see myself in the mirror. Surprisingly, my haircut didn’t suck!

I paid the $20 USD with a big smile. It is not everyday that you get to attend a hip hop concert, enjoy a dance show and get a haircut for less than the price of the mushrooms that would help you imagine it!

Simple, basic, average people will tell you prayer is powerful. They will tell you stories of desperate situations in which they prayed hard, had friends and family do the same, having lots of faith; lots of conviction that it was going to make a difference. Then, the miracle happened. Their grandmother avoided certain death. They found their missing passport. Their brain tumor turned out to be operable. Their favorite player made good on the penalty kick at the last minute to save their team from elimination.

Unsurprisingly, their recollection will omit the countless occasions in which their prayers fell on deaf ears. Pointing to an especially difficult statistical data point to collect, I have often felt curious about the number of people that, facing almost certain death, prayed for salvation but died anyways. Unlike their luckier counterparts, they have almost no way to provide the collector with the data (save mediums and the low probability of having someone with said interest stand by at the time of the life-removing incident). Thus, it is natural to perceive as valid the natural bias of the statistical distribution of prayer as a powerful tool to modify God’s will.

The interesting thing is that highly intelligent people will often agree with this convention. Thus, my hope is that I will get to retain enough clarity of thought to remain within the rational middle of the intellectual power scale, at least until old age dementia takes it away before I develop the will to put a bullet in my head.

If reality is a lagging indicator of God’s will, prayer is an exercise in futility. Accordingly, prayer has about a 50/50 chance of succeeding in granting the agent his/her choice. Statistically, that would assign praying a correlation of 0.0 to life events. Unbiased human experience would, in turn, reduce the propensity to pray to zero, on the premise of its null effect on events.

However, empirical evidence will bias human behavior towards praying. Once all traditional means are exhausted, humans tend to resort to alternatives that are less than rational. And when they work, for simple probabilistic reasons, they are interpreted as manifestations of his/her will in response to the power of his/her prayer. Few things belittle us as an evolved species the way prayer does.

The net result of suddenly stopping to pray would be zero if we dedicated the time devoted to this activity to doing nothing at all. Deciding to work on getting what we were praying for in the first place, employing on the activity the exact same amount of time we had planned to dedicate to praying, would deliver better results. It would at least have the potential to delivery results. Only employing ourselves personally in achieving a defined goal has the potential to modify God’s will, whatever that may be.

Rebelling myself against the futile act of praying is not enough. I will therefore continue to discourage people from praying, in exchange for their doing something that actually makes a difference in their lives and the lives of others.

So, your grandfather is in a comma and you want to pray for his coming out of it.

Let it go. Grow up. It is not in your hands. It never was. Do you want to know what is in your hands? Go to the local retirement home, where old people die way before their time in the minds of their former loved ones. It is there where people meet oblivion way before their bodies are buried. Go there today, and play some dominos with a group of those whose rich experiences are looking for nothing but an eager ear that will allow them to relive their past. Go beyond that, and dedicate some of your praying time to giving company to a forgotten soul in the streets.

To relive is to live. It is the only food that tastes better the second time around.

Praying will not make the world around you a better place for your and your kids. Don’t let your brain become the zombie that drags your soul into darkness.

Come to think of it, we are all sitting by the entrance of the cemetery, patiently waiting for the funeral procession in the horizon come slowly to deliver the shell of what we once were. No tear will stay on their faces for long. No thought in their minds while they are sleeping. Before long, nothing but a vague memory. And then, oblivion. It is this nothingness the true forgiveness of our many sins.

People tend to envy those who live near the sunny beach. Endless summers, starry nights, the proximity of the ocean and limitless fresh seafood hold a magnetic appeal the hedonist soul can’t resist.

The mirror has two sides, but life has at least as many.

Working for the tourist industry can carry a steep price tag, beyond its usually poor compensation structure. One thing is to rise from bed before sunrise to watch turtles hatch eggs on the beach, a very different one is to do so out of obligation on a daily basis even if to witness the same miracle of nature. In this context, labor becomes the assassin of joy: a minimum-wage happiness hit man.

Bored and sweaty, I spent most of my time in the island avoiding contact with tourists and searching for the elusive air conditioned establishments. That they would sell me beer was second in priority. That is how I ended at the poorly lighted local library, “The Heroes that Gave Us Freedom” on Cosmel avenue.

A man with one arm missing and the other amputated almost up to the elbow greeted me with a face that seemed to reproach me for past sins. Later, I noticed his right eye was slightly bigger than the left and didn’t move, a clear sign that it was made out of glass. I past by him as fast as I could, reaching straight to the “special interest” section. “Section” was, of course, an overstatement. It consisted of a dozen or so pilled books, with pages yellow like rotten teeth. As I reached for the first one on the pile, my hand almost touched that of someone that I hadn’t noticed before and was attempting to gather the same book. I instinctively pulled back, jumped a little and then smiled at myself for overreacting. A second after, I was smiling like a dork to a complete stranger.

“Hi, I’m Emily”, she said. I tried to reciprocate, but words barely crawled out of my lips. “Hi”, I finally replied.

We were both from small towns in the south, had grown in an environment of repression, rejected common wisdom almost systematically, laughed at the same jokes, atheism, liberalism, education, economic schools of thought… Too many coincidences not to at least consider the existence of destiny.

A conversation I started reluctantly had become second nature in minutes. We walked to a nearby bar, talking about every topic one is expected to avoid: politics, sex, religion… Nothing was banned; no subject a taboo. The conversation just kept flowing uninterrupted, save to respond to the waitress and go to the bathroom. I looked down to the table and realized we were holding hands. Who knows for how long we had been doing so? We had grown so close so quickly, physical proximity was not even a next step but a blurry continuum in our relationship. Hours went by, but they felt like minutes. Hours went by, but they meant years.

The day became night. The waiter, impatient, brought us the check and asked if we had not liked our food. No one had eaten. Beer, on the other hand, had flowed like a river to the ocean. We were drunk, but alcohol had nothing to do with that.

We walked the streets of the island, never letting go of each other’s hands, looking for a place that would sell us more beer. We needed an excuse to continue our journey into each other. We didn’t know it then, but this was actually a road into ourselves.

In a dark corner, near the main port, there was a stand that expended fresh fish starting at 3:00am. It was 3:12am already. I convinced the fishermen to sell us their beer, an easy task when one offers double the retail price per bottle. Money was the least of my concerns that day. I didn’t care about anything but extending the time so we could talk more. We sat a few yards off the stand, on some stairs where the occasional change in the direction of the breeze would bring us the smell of fish intestines; or so I imagined. With all our senses focused on one another, we wouldn’t have noticed.

The sun started to come up. We decided we needed some rest. I walked her to the place she was staying at and began my journey to the other side of the island.

It couldn’t have been more than 10 blocks when I realized I still had her necklace, which I borrowed to make a silly pirate impression. It wasn’t an expensive one, but I felt ashamed for keeping it and decided to leave it at the front desk so she could pick it up later. The streets looked different under the full light of the sun. Hers was so distinct, I hadn’t even bothered looking up to the sign. But now, I couldn’t find it. Was it 17th? Or 19th? Maybe the one after the tall bent tree? They all look the same now!

I was calm at first. Then, I started running around, screaming her name. “Emily! Emily!!!”.

I started sweating. The sands of loss were pouring through my fingers…

I did not go to bed. I knocked on doors and asked neighbors for directions to nearby hostels. Asking every hostel I could find, I realized nobody under that name had registered at any.

“Taxi, take me to Hostel Madrid!”, I yelled at the first cab driver that would take me. Everybody was waiting for me at our place, wondering if I had gotten lost, but ready to go to the beach otherwise.

“I will catch up with you guys later”, I said. “I have something urgent to do right now”.

I called every hostel, hotel, bed & breakfast, accommodations house and any other establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. No trace of Emily, maybe in part due to the fact that I didn’t even get her last name. Why would I need her last name when our souls touched..?

The rest of the week was a miserable experience. I hit my head on the wall every time I thought of her and how foolishly I had lost her. If only I had looked at the name of the street, looked at the name of the hostel, asked for her last name, exchanged phone numbers, prearrange a time and place to meet later… “If I had at least thought of one, this wouldn’t have happened!”, I told myself over and over.

Actual years went by. It didn’t matter how hard I tried, her features started to sink into the darkness of oblivion. The more I tried to picture her smile, the more I replaced the missing pieces with those of famous artists we get shoveled down our throat by the media. I tried to look her up, but it turns out there are more than 20,000 Emilys in her country. Only the memory of the feeling remained in my heart.

One day, my cousin invited me to his bachelor’s marlin fishing expedition extraordinaire. Coincidently, it took place near the same island I had spent that summer. When I told him the story, something hit me. I could not wait to get on that boat and stop at the island once again.

The day came, we stopped at the island and I rushed off the boat. “I will be back in 30 minutes, 40 max”, I yelled at him and his friends. The need to replenish our beer reserves lowered the tone of their protests.

I took a cab to Cosmel avenue. “Take me to the library!” I barked at the driver, impatiently. He drove slowly nevertheless. I almost ripped his ears off, and jumped off the car when we were still two blocks from our destination. I ran the rest as fast as I could. Breathing heavily, I couldn’t speak to the library attendant. A bearded man had replaced the amputee, and smiled at me from behind the counter.

“Hi young man. What can I do for you? Perhaps you would like a glass of water?”

“No… Thanks…” — (breathing heavily).

Then I went right to the issue, “do you have a note for_________________, from about 6 years ago?”.

The old man’s smile was replaced by an expression of utter surprise. He looked at me, then to the wall behind him, then to me again. He seemed to be in complete disbelief.

“My brother told me about this when he left me the library and drowned in the sea. A young lady brought him a note addressed to Mr __________________. The stranger never came to pick it up, but my brother asked me not to throw it away.”

“Give it time, said my brother”. “Some things are meant to happen now, some later and some take a long time. If it is written in the stars and in the sand, he will come to get it”.

My hands were shaking when I finally had them on the letter. It wasn’t really a letter, but just a piece of paper folded in 3 parts.

Dear __________,

Thank you for making the last day of my life a thousand times more wonderful than I could have ever imagined. It was through our conversation that I decided to wait a little longer to carry on with my plans. The book I came to buy at the library was for me to bring on the boat that would take me to my ocean grave yesterday afternoon. I decided to commit suicide away from everyone, because of a burden I can no longer carry; but meeting you kept me in this world for another day. Because of our random (random?) encounter, I had a chance to experience love for the last time. It was also the first time I experienced it. You don’t know you haven’t experienced real love until something like this happens to you.

Ephemeral love is the truest and strongest kind there is. Sadly, as the name implies, it also carries an unavoidable element of deep sadness that stays with you for the rest of your days.

With my deepest love,

Diana

The fishing boat that brought me to the island left the port without one of its original passengers.

Theodore von Girnisch was put in this world to deliver God’s message through music. To that end, the message was of the least importance.

He was born in the basement of a rundown house in the outskirts of Prague, below a ballroom dance academy for the retired where he lived his first nine years. It was under the rhythmic influence of his noisy upper neighbors that his reluctantly adopting father, a down on his luck violinist named Marcus von Girnisch, realized Theo had been granted a gift denied to the rest. Crying uncontrollably seconds after being pulled from within the swollen hips of a dying prostitute, Theo stopped screaming and started to move his tiny arms rhythmically, side to side, to the music upstairs. Even more than the sounds, the vibration from the floor above seemed to travel through the old wooden structure, the bed’s body and into Theo’s soul.

Marcus had never wanted any type of commitment to anything but his violin; hence his taste for rental women. There was no rent-to-own clause to his bi-weekly affairs. One of his favorites, “one-eyed” Dorothy, often dispensed of her services in exchange for 15 minutes of music and a loaf of hardened bread. More than the music itself, Dorothy enjoyed feeling loved for the brief moments that he dedicated to repay her this way. Marcus never knew this.

Many a night of this fluids-for-music exchange eventually got Dorothy pregnant. She realized her state at too advanced a stage to have an abortion, thus decided to give the package up after delivery. Little did she know that the baby was going to fight his way into the world, even if at the expense of his mother’s life.

A seven-month baby ended up in Marcus´arms. He had left the city for a few months, only to come back to this. Theo barely survived, mostly thanks to Nataysha, the academy´s manager. Nataysha always wanted a daughter, but was so ugly no mortal ever dared look into her only eye.

Theo grew up surrounded by old adults who thought dancing could somehow distract death. He spent many a time wondering if he was some sort of freak, incapable to fit in with his “peers”. Unable to find answers to his many childish questions, Theo spent his time playing the old piano of the studio and, when he wasn´t around, his father´s violin.

Despite his efforts to keep a low profile, Theo´s talent did not go unnoticed by his father, who chained him to a discolored barrel and brought him to the city to play for money. His job was to cram inside the barrel with the violin and play it. In order to fit inside, and still have room to move the bow accordingly, Theo had to jump head first into the barrel supporting the weight of his body on his neck. Marcus would later hand him the instrument, then close the cylinder with a heavy lid.

Besides providing for an irregular flow of korunas from tourists, the “Hudební Barel” (musical barrel) never became what Marcus dreamed: the ancient philosopher´s stone that would magically turn his cheap liquor into champagne.

Theo´s neck started to adapt by giving up to his body´s weight. Before long, his growing up got in the way of his fitting into the barrel. Marcus was not about to buy another one, and so it was up to Theo to make himself fit into it. Soon enough, removing his shoes wasn´t enough, and Marcus had to push him to be able to properly close the lid. Life felt sorry for Theo, and helped him by stopping his growth at the height of 1.20 meters – relative to the barrel´s 0.88 meters height -.

This is how the violinist of the twisted neck came to be, his abhorrent figure forgotten after 10 seconds of the sweet melody he furiously ripped off his instrument. A paranormal force seems to possess his trembling hands when he placed the bow on the strings and started playing, moving it so fast as if to prove to his body he was no longer trapped in a barrel.

His bow, once dripping the blood of his father, became a lightning in his capable hook-like fingers. Soon, he was pulled from the streets and offered to play for audiences around Europe, if only he would promise to do so behind curtains as to keep people coming back.

His bow, earlier dripping the blood of Nataysha, became tonight the freeing instrument of a man who thought of life what he saw and nothing else. Only 23 years old, he got a chance to play in front of a large group of businessmen at the Leipzig Gewandhaus theatre in Vienna. Theo finished the first movement, then stuck the tip of his bow on the sharpest angle of his bent neck and sprayed the audience with the warm thick liquid that had contributed to his prolonged agony. He fell sideways on the floor, with an ear to the ground, which allowed him to very clearly feel the steps of those rushing to the stage to help him before expiring. Had they rushed to the stage 15 years earlier to save him, they would have been late still.

No tears were shed for Theo.

And so I asked her – imagine I am an unsophisticated investor, only used to long positions in stocks and bonds. Can you explain a plain vanilla CDS* to me?-

In asking the question, I didn’t expect her to recite the official definition from the finance textbook. I wanted her to walk me through the structure, or at least explain the basic exchange of risk that was taking place as one party went long, while the other took the short side. Hell, I would have given her a pass had she explained it to me in her own words AFTER I described it.

She didn’t even flinch. She started talking about how risky the use of derivatives can be for bond portfolios. She spoke to me about the efficiency of markets, told me stories of the time they had been effectively banned, their bad reputation with regulators, etc.

Let’s step back for a second, – said I – remember I am unsophisticated. All you just said is Greek to me. First things first. Tell me, what is a CDS?

No clue. She just stared at me, like a deer caught in headlights, probably thinking all I needed to know about them she had already told me.

They are trading at a very attractive premium right now – she said, hoping that spitting the last piece of information she had on them could save her. It only made it worse.

I switched gears, asking her about her current experience. With 6 years as a bond salesman under her belt (yes, 6 full years), maybe there was something I could learn to salvage from total waste the remaining 27 minutes of this discussion. Unfortunately, it appeared as if she had taken a 71 months holiday during her 6 year career at a major financial institution that didn’t seem to be concerned with the ability, or lack thereof, of its salesmen to understand the basics of the products they sold. Sound familiar?

Yes, you guessed it. Well, you only guessed it if you were as cynical as I am. She supports market making efforts for CDS and CDX related products, which she has been doing for quite a few years.

In the end, I did learn realize something. As the subprime crisis was greatly a product of crooks and morons, I came face to face with the fact that many of the latter were still in the market, jumping around financial institutions with their hollow but shinny resumes. The system hasn’t purged them yet. And I am not even sure it ever will…

There is hope if you have an idea of what you don’t know. If you don’t know what you don’t know, there isn’t any.

* Essentially, a CDS represents insurance on the event of a default on the underlying. In isolation, the buyer of insurance is short the credit risk of the issuing entity. The seller is long the credit risk of the issuing entity. A CDX is similar in concept, only applied to a whole index instead of a single credit.

Most of the people who suffer insomnia bear the bulk of its effects the next day. It is as clear to outsiders as the vision is blurry to the afflicted. Sounds are muted, situations are flavorless. Emotions get their volume turned down.

Hopelessly in love with darkness, I found in my new state of unemployment the perfect opportunity to make the conscious decision graveyard shift workers are condemned to. I decided to operate by night and sleep during the day.

Within the warm embrace of nighttime, my self confidence grew. Who would now focus on my slightly bigger right eye, uber-thin upper lip or distractingly hairy mole? I gradually became smart, creative. The dormant right side of my brain flourished again. In my mind, I was popular, attractive to the opposite sex. My conversations at the local waterholes became interesting, not only to myself but also to the listener. And that was just me outdoors! At home, I played music again. Singing, painting, dancing… I never thought I had ability for most of these fabulous activities. It turns out, I was just too busy to discover my talented inner self. Indeed, all forms of art previously forbidden to this tie-wearing monkey suddenly granted me their favor, like the woman who never dared look at you and now gets wet just thinking of your shadow.

How come art now flows like a river off my lips, hips and the tips of my fingers? I would put on a stripped jacket, jump on the street and dive into the crowds of bar patrons, homeless persons, garbage collectors and exhausted investment bankers coming home after another long day of pushing paper. At night, faces reflect the soul more clearly. Less natural light meant more life in a society obsessed with visual perfection.

My internet connection almost got interrupted for lack of payment, so I used my emergency funds to pay for one more month. A daily diet of street hot dogs got me sick. My beard got too itchy, then I discovered it had turned into a bug hotel.

No matter. I have to shave anyway. Tomorrow I have an important interview. It is time. One cannot be the owner of his own life for too long. The moment to exchange my time for a handful of dimes is once again at my doorstep, and the moment to wake up to adult reality has reared its ugly face.

For a moment there, it was nice to dream I was alive; to acknowledge I had no purpose.

I used to think life on land stood still while I flew. How could things even happen while with the seat belt fastened? The seat belt sign has lit. Please go back to your seat, and continue to wait like a docile cow until you reach your destination, ironically far away from your destiny. Remember, smoking is prohibited.

It turns out that reality is exactly the opposite. Time stops for YOU, the passenger, for the duration of the flight. Nothing takes place in YOUR life during the miserable hours in which you cram your body to fit on the anatomically incorrect receptacles you are assigned to.

You stop aging, your old ideas freshen up and present themselves to you anew (subconscious racism, homophobia, the traditional role of women in society), hair stops growing and falling, bacteria in your mouth multiplies while your immune system ignores your body’s cry for help.

When you manage to land, in another place and at a different hour, people close to you may notice you changed a little. Less patient, slightly easier to get you annoyed, uncapable of finding humor where others see substantial comedic value. The behavioral resemblace with your parents, which you thought you had finally overcome, evident in all its glory. But you didn’t move forward. You didn’t move backwards either. You reached that special point in evolution only available to those that managed to stop. To really stop, as your physical you advances at the greatest speed you are likely to achieve in this life.

They always told you life goes too fast; that you should take time to smell the roses. No one told you it wasn’t really about the roses, not even the single serving version that accompanied your airline breakfast to add color to those cold and tasteless microwaved scrambled eggs.

Today you asked me about my day. Once again, there was nothing that deserved to be mentioned. I just wasted another day of my life, mostly while sitting uncomfortably on a plane… Going nowhere…