General: Help me I'm a rock!

Message of the day:

"Help me I'm a rock"

Frank Zappa

This is it: I decided to rename the blog from Metamorphose to Master Flow, because, after all, is more related to the kind of subject that I've been writing. And Metamorphose has nothing related. It means nothing.

I watched some movies in last weekend. The first of all was in Telecine Channel, in Net, a cable TV. Mothman, or The Prophecy, in Brazil, with Richard Gere.

It's a movie that deals with interesting things. I'd watched the movie before, but, anyway, it made me perceive details which I had not perceived in others two previous times I had watched it. It deserves a full separate post. I promise that one day I'll talk more about this movie and its implications.

Another movie I watched is The Day After Tomorrow. Very nice, with great effects, although with some inevitable cliches. Some comments are appropriated in respect to the military world, the political world and the scientific world. The military aspect of the movie made me see a second strategic role for the military paraphernalia of the world. The political aspect left in the mouth a taste of naivety come from the First World. The Mexico border would never be closed as occurs in the movie if an eventuality forced Americans course in mass to the South. Certainly things would be politically very different. And the scientific aspect, apart from the obvious issue of time taken in the process, suggest me a second chance for the climate model, and could also generate a great movie in the future: imagine the weather does not cool off, but turned it up, until 60, 70 degrees Celcius in few weeks? How does a movie like this would unfold? It would certainly be quite fascinating to watch. But all these ideas deserve to be discussed and developed.

Of course, I also dreamed with a fabulous group of helicopters rented for geological exploration companies. A show of aircraft design. Only a 3D software could shows what I saw while I slept.

This is it.

My message of the day:

"Without being updated, a blog is like an old newspaper we usually see on the counters of grocery stores, except that we can not wrap meat in it"

Rosenvaldo Simões de Souza

General: Space-time: now!

Message of the Day:

"Millions long for immortality but don't know what to do whith ours lifes on a rainy Sunday afternoon"

Susan Ertz

Again: Who is Susan Ertz? I don't know. I simply read the phrase in an old copy of a Reader's Digest magazine. But the phrase makes sense.

Where am I now? Or, what my reference in space-time at the time I writing this text to this blog?

The time is always the present time. My present moment now is a relatively cool dawn of 29 May 2004. In the measure that the present slides into the future and leave the past as a trail, this date will become increasingly older. My descendants living a thousand years from today are not even able to imagine how all which is commonplace today could have existed and occurred. But all existed and occurred.

Further, all exists now while I'm writing and is occurring in real time, while I'm typing each letter of this text. Yes, time is indeed relative.

And about the space? Where am I standing now, at this moment? What is my physical reference in the space?

I'm sitting in a comfortable black chair in front of my PC - a Pentium 266, something quite outdated for 2004, but which working still very efficient and reliable - with a headset, listening to a Frank Zappa's CD.

I'm using an old dark green shirt, black shorts, a watch and glasses in the face. In describing these things in this way, it seems the description of the material goods left behind by Gandhi when he died, and that turned  the world admired for his frugality and generosity. But it is not so simple.

I'm in my bedroom-office, a room of my house I use to keep my computer and my books.

My house is located in a relatively poor district in Goiânia, a city in Brazil. A set of combined new, but small houses, in a corner resulting from two narrow ugly streets, where dozens of children and adolescents play part of the day. One block down there is a group of houses in form as a small slum next to Meia Ponte River, the main river that runs through the city. It isn't a known neighborhood. In fact, it exists more as an appendix to larger and more structured neighborhoods, but because it is locate in a down part next to a river, it grew as a kind of marginalized area.

I live in Villa Monticelli already since one year and a half ago. It is close to the Agricultural Park, the place where occurs the famous annual agricultural fair in Goiânia, an event regarded by many people as the high point of the agricultural world in the State of Goiás, Brazil, and even one of the largest event in the Midwest Region and in Brazil. But, forgotten, so next to the park, stays Villa Monticelli, where I live and shelter myself dayly.

I have few friends at this stage of my life. Very few, for the sake of the truth. No more than five. Maybe one or two. None of them live in the Village Monticelli. Around my home, I know a dozen people, including a couple owner of the small grocery store where I make small purchases along the day. I believe that, in community terms, I am an illustrious stranger. A kind of ghost, seen by some people in the neighborhood with a certain frequency, but unknown as a ghost. I'm connected only physically with these people, I mean, we share the same neighborhood, but that's it all. My life spin around spheres others than the Community.

And where is my mind?

My body is on a chair, in a room full of books, in a simple house located on a corner of a overlooked neighborhood in a large city in Brazil, a large country on the Eastern side of Latin America, a continent, a large mass of firm land in the South region of the planet Earth, a planet that, well, in a thousand years ahead I hope they still knowing what is and where is located the Earth.

This brief description is a bit like the life of some people who lived in a distant past, whose biographies tell us that lived their lives even more common than the live we think we usually get in our day everyday. Many great men have lived simple lives, without luxe, without friends, without fame and without glory. No one power, and a recognition that only consolidated sometimes centuries after they died, and a recognition that they could not even contemplate, or maybe even desire, nor enjoy. Humankind has this strange behavior: it is relatively blind to the present, and in a way, aspires to a great future, but do not know what to do, in fact even don't know see, its great men in their rainy Sunday afternoons. We do not know what the future will reveal. Which of us alive today will be remembered in five thousand years?And for what reasons?

We can't know beforehand, but one thing seems certain: no one will be remembered for what he didn't, or because, he can or ought to be done, failed to do so, regardless for no reason by the history books, however convincing and persuasive it sounds. It would be very curious to read in any history book the name of some famous person who was famous for, may have been a great scientist and have invented the penicillin, not invented it because he could not have been a scientist, because his mother died when he was a young child and he had to adapt to the reality of his time being a humble farmer of lands, who died without having done nothing more that cultivate land. Even Jesus, being a humble carpenter, did not become famous in history for being a great carpenter.

Maybe one day we can, by a ingenious and unimaginable way, to rescue the memories of people who have gone before and know what they thought during every second of their lives. In this case, it is possible that humble strangers who did not were in the history books henceforth could come to be in it, by virtue of what we will learn about what they thought, but this knowledge is still far from being possible.

But this doesn't mean it is impossible.

In this case, would be good that we took better care of what we think. Although we are not put on pedestals and worshiped in the distant future, we may be execrated as large evils and villains. But I'm not talk serious about that possibility. The universe might be such that it will never allow it occurs, for good and for evil of our descendants, and our name. For good or evil of our own name, because this is all that is left of us, whether a lightning does not erase our latest information from a large database server in some department of government archives. So, we die for the third time...

My message of the day:

"No one will be remembered for what he didn't"

Rosenvaldo Simões de Souza



General - what I mean by 'general'?

Message of the day:

"The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms"

Muriel Rukeyser

Who is Muriel Rukeyser? I don't know yet, but I promise I'll find a way to know who is. It is a matter of education. Anyway, we will talk more about the use of messages from famous people and the implications behind this costume.

But what the mean of this 'general' in the title of this post? Well, explain it is the reason for this post ...

In previous posts, I considered the various modes that a blog can be used.

I thought better about it and realized that I want to use my blog in at least four different ways.

The first way in which I intend to use this blog is to talk about general things that I think, but without any more organized aspect. It is the blog as a forum of generalities, or a column of a newspaper dedicated to amenities, comments, explanations like this, ultimately, the texts written in this way will be texts belonging to a section called General.

Thus, this explains the 'general' in the title of this post.

The second way in which I intend to use this blog is like a memoir. That's right, an online record of my memories from the time of the caves to today.

Why?

Because I think my life is unique in experiences, as well as all life is unique, but how much worth to have  lived unique things if I don't share these experiences with anyone? And then, since I can use this blog as a time capsule, I will use it, because I want to be immortalized in the world of bits. I want that in a thousand years in the future people might know who was Rosenvaldo. Because otherwise, I will be forgotten, and the idea of ​​being forgotten upsets me greatly. I think the fact that the death exist is a drug, but more sad is to die and be forgotten. If physical death is not enough, we run the risk of dying in memory of the time. So. I think this blog can and should be my time capsule.

All right, you don't need to read anything that has relation with my memories. Who knows someday in the future a lightning burn Google's servers and no one has a copy of my memories in some HD Backup. Done, goodbye, Rosenvaldo... it will be my second death, my digital death, but that's all right, we do not need to worry about it for now...

People's memories are vast. My memories will be subdivided - incredible as it sounds bureaucratic! - in Genealogy and homeland, and five thematic memories. Then it will be better explained.

This blog will also have a third section called Agenda 99.

Why? What does it mean?

This section is intended to - and it also sounds very bureaucratic ... - aims to move to a digital and public environment things wish I have recorded in my paper agenda that I bought to use as a normal schedule in 1999, but started to use it as a notebook of ideas and a lot of things that I think deserve to go public to be discussed.

Of course, as I go coping through the items on the paper agenda to the blog, one day I end up coping all of it, and then I will not have why to have this section. It will have only historical value, as well as the paper agenda. By the way, it, the paper agenda of 1999, is to be filled soon. A few days more and it will be completely packed with stuff. So, I have a lot to do with it.

But if it fills up, where I will write my new ideas?

No, I will not buy a new 2005 agenda.

Of course, I'll have to write down my ideas where I can put my hands more quickly, because ideas come to mind anywhere, anytime, and I can not afford to lose an idea, however odd it might be. Then I will write it down on some piece of dirty paper and then move on it to my famous and versatile White Board - in capital letters, because it henceforth becomes an important person to the world, and deserves to be treated with the respect it deserves - , to then after I copy the idea now clean to, that's right, this dear blog, but not anywhere.

My new ideas from a certain point will go to this blog under the control of a section called Essays. That's right, my ideas come to light as soon as they come out of the oven. I mean, as soon as they come out of my head, they will go first to our friend White Board, then to a Word file, where they will be lapidated, and then they will come to this blog, to be submitted to the scrutiny of the universe, to become hardened and sharp as foils, or die, under the rubble of unsustainable arguments crumbled by lack of organized reasoning.

Of course, each essay will be themed properly, because the ideas are many, and varied, and I will weave my mental cobwebs over a wide range of themes, from the simplest to the most profound, not always, obviously, with the same firmness and conviction. But no matter the strength of the arguments, they will come under the command of the section Essays.

This is it, all explained, except the "Message of the day", which comes to the fore, after the title, but before the text itself.

Messages are beautiful.

When it come in the beginning of a text, whether in a book or in a blog, it give a classic air to what comes next. Like those big letters in gothic style, called chaptulars, which appear in the first word of every chapter in literary books. These letters, extremely ornate, are like a kind of breath that comes before anyone starts a long speech. The initial messages are it. They have the power to enchant anything where appear, since these are relevant to the subject.

I'll try to be creative with my messages.

But make no mistake. I'll put my own posts, in the end, because I also feel that I can contribute with my modest ability and mastery. If the initial messages are the sigh at the beginning of a speech, my final messages will be a sigh of relief, surprise or, who knows, of boredom. It does not matter. They will be the last breath of each post. That's it.

I try no escape the theme, and if possible, make by my way messages like those opening sentences of famous personalities. Anyway, they, my sentences, will always come at the end. Matter of modesty, and not that they are the last things to be said. No, they are not closing remarks. They are trial balloons. Maybe pleasing, maybe not. If they proliferate, as well, but if not, so they not proliferate. But if they proliferate, do not forget to quote this author, because I am also flesh, bone, and ego.

I've never seen anything being mentioned about me by anyone before, and I think if one day I see a sentence in any place whatever, that has not been raised by myself, even in a dirty truck fender, I think I'll feel accomplished. I never received this award before, but before I never wrote any kind of sentence. So, how do expect to be awarded if I have no bet before?

Now, I decided to bet ...

My message of the day:

"The stories of our lives are our guarantee of eternity"

Rosenvaldo Simões de Souza

What this blog is and what it is not ... - part 2

The idea that a blog is a diary has the advantage that it is an electronic and public diary, but I personally do not see my blog as much as a diary. It can be a diary in terms. I can not conceive that I use my blog the same way I would use a personal diary, made in paper, that colored little agenda that comes with a sheet for each day, and at the end of the night when we're already in bed, ready to sleep, pick it up from a drawer of a nightstand and philosophically noted our emotions during the day, our not solved problems, our secret dreams, our little crimes that we do not have the courage to tell anyone alive, but we think are worthy of being noted for any future use. I think writing a diary is a boredom.

To be honest, I'd written already a diary during a certain period of my life. It was a very strange experience, but I'll let to the next opportunity the story of my 1992 old diary.

In short, it was dull to write every day, while reading it today, I see its as something valuable and that worth the effort of having been written. But I never would put it in public on the Internet. Maybe after some years of the facts, or with some lines and phrases censored, but then it would lose much of its originality and spontaneity.

But it does not mean that this blog can not be another kind of diary. It can.

Who knows, I can use my blog not to record the details of my day-to-day, or my innermost feelings, but I can use to record my rational thoughts, the flow of my ideas. It can be my diary that report my relationship with the outside world. I can register my perception of what happens in the world, on TV, at work. But in this case, it would be as closer to a daily newspaper as a diary. But has not that same newspaper which is considered a diary? In fact, they are very similar. But I will not write a newspaper. It seems to me that the Internet is already too full of this kind of subject. Unless I'm somebody incredibly important, an authority on something of interest to the general public, as is the case of famous from politics, from journalism, from media, like Allan Greenspan, David Letterman, among many others. I do not think I would have something to contribute in this matter.

The second idea, that the blog can be a personal homepage, seems partly true, but it is not. Sure, a blog and a homepage have something in common, namely both are in HTML format, can be accessed through a browser, are public, can be updated, enhanced, edited, etc., but I think a personal page contains more freedom of production, more organization in terms of technologic resources, and does not have the urge to be constantly updated as a blog. I mean, one not uptadet blog has no harm for it, but it does not arouse any interest to the public, only for the owner. Without being updated, the blog is like an old newspaper that we usually see on the counters in butcher shops, but we can not wrap meat in it. Already a homepage can contain most enduring subject. It is more like a book to a newspaper. Of course, depending on their content, a blog can be more durable in terms of interest, and a page could be more futile and disposable. Then both would be more like those monthly or weekly magazines than daily newspapers or eternal books. But this is not a magazine or a newspaper that I have in mind when I'm writing a blog. At least for now, no.

The third idea is that the blog is a forum, but I think that the blog as a forum loses much agility to competition. There are sites where we can create our own forum, which sorts by area of interest and is visited by people who share common interests. The fact that an owner who can have some control over what is published in a blog turns it in a more organized tool than a forum, where everyone usually normally have enough freedom to publish whatever he wants, including things that have no relations with the theme of the forum. These are the famous off-topic. By have an owner, the blog looks more like a guest book that accompanies a work of art that is exposed to the public and serves as a presence list book, with the advantage of it not merely receive a signature and a date. But remains the idea that the public must have no more prominence than the owner. The owner's text is the art. Who wants to receive more attention than the owner must to create your own blog and go to make your show there. In this case, the blog is a kind of showcase for the owner's texts.

Partly yes, everyone likes to show off a little, and I am no exception to the rule, but this is not the main intention to start my blog. I see it more as a forum than a showcase. And I like the idea of having control of what the public adds to it because, face it, we can not discriminate based reviews and critical to our ideas and texts, but do not want people criticizing us in our own home, or be warned in public that a word is not written with x, but with two s. I like the idea of a blog as a forum. The fourth idea is that it, our dear blog, can be a book that will make over time. An e-book written almost live, with nearly simultaneous electronic applauses as well, via comments.

This is not exactly my plan. Who has written a book, any monograph or any other written work that requires time and lots of pages and any organization knows that the Microsoft Word working offline is much more appropriate, and that writing something unfinished and subject it to criticism before maturing this text is, in my view, a kind of masochist and dull. If you want applause, better is to publish something really carved and polished, not something primitive and unfinished. Not that anyone would not want to do a book in this manner. It's just a matter of personal taste, and besides, I do not want to write a book. I have written one, and I know how it is. But the story of this book is also for later.

The fifth idea, that the blog might be an online archive of texts and notes, in order to preserve data for the distant future is not a bad idea, but a file no need be public and receives comments. If the intention is to preserve, to keep, he can type notes in Word and print it, put in an envelope and send it to a mailbox, or store in a safebox, in other words, you can save his writings and ideas anywhere you want, as a time capsule. But it's still an interesting idea to see a blog as a time capsule.

So, that profile will have my blog?

It will be in part as a diary of my new ideas, in part as a draft to test ideas for my future personal page, which I promise that I will make the way I always dreamed, in part as a forum to discuss my ideas with people who I think have something to contribute and discuss, and in part as a book, in which I write provisory texts for a truth book in the future, and finally as a time capsule, where I keep my ideas for posterity in form of bits. I know it has a strong tendency to want to be much less than this, but I also know that it can become something much more interesting than anything I have mentioned. It depends of me. For now it is suffice. I'm glad I have written so much!

What this blog is and what it is not ...

I think that I have written a second text for this blog is already an advance... many blogs, I think, do not go beyond a dozen posts for a week or two at most, and then they are abandoned. I also had one in the IG site and I literally continued it not beyond the first posting. So why to have another? And anyway, what is exactly a blog?

Going on by parts: why to have a blog? Of course, the question refers only to me. Everyone can has his blog to put whatever is wanted, but why would I, Rosenvaldo, need a blog? It depends on what is exactly a blog, and then we go to the second question: ultimately, what is even a blog?

First, to not lose the opportunity, I'm listening to "Cradle Rock", played by an unknown band called The Heartbreakers, who flourished - flourished is a way of speaking that the ancient Greeks used to refer to people they did not know exactly when they were born, but they had a moment of glory in their lives about to be remembered - in short, a band that I believe that flourished in California  in the 50th in the last century. It means some kind of bee-bop style... and the music Cradle Rock is a great ballad... who that want to know where to find, just look in the bookstores for a Frank Zappa's CD called Cucamonga... something rare and fine ... But, what is a blog?

The first thought that comes is that it is a sort of online diary. A diary that the owner uses to tell the world his daily hardships and adventures.

The second idea is that it is a kind of personal page, except that it is much easier to do and we do not need to know any HTML code.

The third idea is that it is a personal forum where the owner puts texts to visitors opine.

The fourth idea is that it is an online book, that the owner uses to go on adding new pieces every day, until it is complete, at his taste.

The fifth idea, a little more exotic, is that it is a online notebook, and serves more as an electronic file that the owner keeps in some server in some place outside your home, to those his memories are preserved for posterity.

Each idea has its merits and demerits, and I still do not know what I'll do with this my blog, but this text is a start yet.

Before the light turns off ...

The idea is simple: I need perpetuate my ideas, even whether it are poor, even whether it are simple, even though it don't interest to anyone else. You must see each idea as a seed, which launched, can grow or not.

It is my firm hope that I can put some order in an old 1999 agenda that I have used in recent years as a trunk of ideas, memories, conjectures, dreams and theories. So, there are many things in this agenda, and if it lose, the world loses together ...

I intend to, and here is something more formal than just a 'I intend', I promise to be loyal with this blog, and make it fruitful and become a beautiful, organized and updated personal web page, because one thing is certain: I write a lot, always, every day, and I think it would be foolish not to share this with the universe ... it is a matter of socialization ...

C'mon ...