Towards a grand human past

To understand the present and prepare the future, is must understand the past.

Well, what past? My past?

But to understand my particular past, I need to know the past of my parents, and then to my grandparents.

Actually, I have to understand the past of the places where I lived, and the places where my ancestors lived. Therefore, I need to know the past of my state and my country.

But to understand the past of my country, I need to understand the past of the world.

But, how deep in the past the world need I to go?

Actually, I need to go really deep. The human species is ancient. We bring habits which are not new. Our present was designed in the past. Our future is partially traced many thousands years, millions years back.

I can not change this path, but I can try to understand it. This at least allows me to navigate on the ocean of time without the feeling of being lost.

So I'm not only Rosenvaldo, son of somebody and born in a such place. I am not only a Paulist, or just a Brazilian. I'm not just a Western. I am from the last batch of humans, these great plagues that defy the cosmos with his stubbornness, curiosity and wit.

We are, in fact, some kind of monsters very curious to know.

Doctor Feelgood

Yes, they are still alive: Mötley Crüe.

I bought a DVD with their concert in Salt Lake City. Very nice, although the drummer Tommy Lee has pulled out. Mötley without Tommy Lee is not exactly the same thing as Mötley  with Tommy Lee, but that's okay.

I heard a lot Girls, Girls, Girls and Doctor Feelgood in the late '80s. It was a great American band, but that did not make any success here in Brazil. They were sort of a copy of Kiss, Van Halen, all very nice, and then copied by Poison, who was also very, very cool. In the rock world, copying is not a defect: it is a tribute.

I pass years without heard them, but that's okay. Things come and go.

A toast to Mötley Crüe !

Privacidade

I've been concerned about my privacy. I've been worried about everything I've been posting on this blog and everything else on the Internet.

I think there are many things that are online and that should not be.

Sure, there's nothing I did or is doing that is illegal or immoral. That's not it.

I think a smart person can learn a lot about someone just digging a lot on the internet. If I can find a lot of things about people, they can learn a lot about me too.

But why the fear? What I have to fear in the fact that people may know about my life over the internet?

It is that life changes. What I thought ten years ago does not reflect my reality today. Important issues in the past are no longer relevant today. I changed and still changing.

But people know that?

No, people do not know. They do not know this because in general people do not change. They become more themselves.

And why then only do I change?

Not that only I change. There is a minority group of people that change more than other. So one thing that was important to me ten years ago does not mean anything today, but it is difficult for a person who does not understand this change.



So I'm going erasing my digital past.

Perhaps even this blog will disappear.

I do not know. We do not live in a safe world. Do not live in a easy world and I am one of few friends. The rest are neutral people, when not hidden enemies.

So would not surprise me to have to end this blog. There are times when we have to disseminate our ideas, but there are times when our ideas can kill us.

It remains to go ahead and see what the future holds.

Cradle Rock

Nothing like killing the nostalgia ...

http://youtu.be/TL7Sk1rwqgk


This is a song by Frank Zappa's Cucamunga.

A charm, right...

Finally a cold day

It's hard to feel cold in Brazil. Even living in Ribeirão Preto, the cold is rare, because Ribeirão is a hot city. But today it rained, blowed, cooled and maybe volcanic ash from Chile falls from the sky. How good to see the world active!

I went to the mall, bought a nice bag for my wife and a game, a flight simulator to me.

It is this: simulators that I buy and never install or play are my last wishes in the world of aviation.

Moreover, downloaded computer books and now I try to keep this blog alive. Sure, I built some streets in Wikimapia, but that was it.

I will live a thousand years...

No one will be remembered for what not did

This is an important phrase. It is important because it makes me think about things I actually did. It forces me to make an inventory of my accomplishments and achievements. And perhaps the only way to do this inventory is just telling my personal story. Otherwise, how will I know what I did in my life? How will people know who I am or I was?

But first, why this compulsion to be remembered?

But this is not where the problem lies. The problem is that I'm forty years old and with a strong sense of having lived a lot and have done nothing. So it is not to tell people that I report my deeds, but to give myself a sense of accomplishment, not to have lived my life in vain.

If so, what should I say to myself? But, am I the best and most impartial judge?

I do not know. We have to be cold this time.

First, and now goes all the scientific theory of history to support me, I must contextue me, that is, I enter the in world and in time.

Who am I?

This is perhaps a fair question, but is not the most important. I must first ask why I came to be who I am, and then what I can be.



So why am I who I am? And then, what can I become?

Who I am: one of seven billion people living life without a defined direction. So why come to find myself in this situation?

After: I can be anything I want? If yes, what should I be to do something to be remembered?

What deserves to be remembered? I can make that something that deserves to be remembered?

It is the riskiest of the bets: bet a life on something worth doing do be made. Look: is not doing something that is worth remembering, because I do not must be remembered. I just need to satisfy my concept of duty, of  a life that was worth living.

So what I think that should be worth a life?

Write a blog about amenities? Not at all.

Writing about my dull life? Not at all.

Write falsely about my dull life in order to convince myself that my life was, is and will be the most worthy of all lives, because it could not be different from what was, is and will be, and so convince myself that fulfill my mission on Earth?

This is not the worst ideas, but by no means the easiest, because I am a hard man to be convinced that a lie can be made true.

So, this is a challenge: to prove to myself that my life was, is and will be worth living.

Thinking well, why should not be?

After all, what I failed to do that would make me unworthy of life?

Being born under the conditions of my birth, I do the best I can.

Or not?

This is the moment of truth.

Italian Renaissance and Shopping Malls

I'm with sleep messed up, again. I have plenty of time so I'm doing some things that I like. Reading too much, sleeping too much and playing on the Internet.

I am also trying to put order in my ideas, many of them expressed in this blog. I'm making a huge mind map of things I have written here. I just want to see how it goes.

Off to sleep, I went to Saraiva bookstore in the Santa Ursula Mall, here in Ribeirão. I go there almost every day.

With time to spare, I took two big books very interesting. The first about the Italian Renaissance architecture. Dozens, hundreds of pictures of fantastic palaces, castles, churches and monasteries. Unfortunately it was an expensive book and the pictures were all black and white.

 

Then I saw another book about design of shops in malls around the main cities of the world. This time things colorful and beautiful. Worth the price, which was also expensive.

Why all this interest in design and architecture?

Well, because I was a professional artist for seven long years, the time I was in our nostalgic Brazilian Air Force.

Of course, I was just a designer with very little technical knowledge of architectural drawing and design. But for a while now, because without the commitment to have the design as a profession, I liked what even I got not start learning in the Air Force. Oil painting, art history, architecture, sculpture, finally, a set of knowledge that now seems delicious. Sad is not possible to take advantage of some of that knowledge today.

In fact, I would need to be giving way to earn much money, because that's what really matters. It is painful to say this, but it's my reality today.

 

One thing that my mind map has appointed me is that my interests change. Today this, tomorrow that, and I follow through the life, doing nothing whole, nothing complete, nothing valuable. Only insignificant snacking on things that arouse my frivolous interest.

Oh, I act as if I'll live a thousand years!

I do not wanna, I do not like, I need to let go ...

Thinking more about what means the past, I came to the conclusion that the past itself may or may not be used as an indicator for the present and future.

However there are certain historical records that have value for themselves. There are records, though useless as a source of future predictions, they are still very interesting and provide a lot of interest and pleasure to be known and studied.

The problem is that life is too short to we live only by hidden pleasures in things of the past.

Moreover, the past makes us want to continue it in future.

If I see something great that has happened, I think, why not do something big too? How to do something that will be record in the History in a few decades, some centuries, a few millennia?

But why bother to do something great when we are not alive ourselves to relish our own greatness?

There is a dilemma then, between past, present and future.

Balancing these point of views and consider the adequacy of time we devote to each of them is essential.

This equation must be solved.

There are things that I have already registered and that in fact are part of my story. But today, I no longer have any interest in rescuing any recollection or project related to them. But what to do with them, since they are not forgotten, because they are properly registered?

Then I said I do not want to talk about certain things, or thinking about them, because they are overcome. And there are things I do not like to deal with, and does not bother me want to be harping on them. I want to forget them, but I can not because they are registered. How to let go of those uncomfortable things, if I can not simply ignore the records that they are mentioned?

Detachment, neutrality and curiosity with regard to our own past seems a very difficult thing for me. Although I try to put certain things that are already completed in what I call the Archive.

The archive is dead, but not forgotten.

So why look at the archive?

I watch the archive because it is curious.

It's something like the Titanic: we all know that is sunk, we do not have any relationship with him, but it no means that we do not want to see the movie and not be impressed with what happened.

Then, why the past is so interesting?

Why did he fascinates us and holds us in his long story full of endless details exactly when we know that life fades away between our fingers?

I'm inebriate for ages that are gone.

But I can not live without just leaving my mark.

How good is being a spectator of life. But how painful knowing it is to have lived only as a spectator of life ...

What a dilemma!

Mind maps

I've got much time and is the end of the morning. Therefore the sun will appear.

Free time helps me think clearly and then I thought a lot about many things.

I told my mind is confused.

She is confused because life itself is confusing.

I am a meticulous and rational person, and I have a sort of compulsion to try to put order in my mind, and then put order in my life, and then chase my dreams and projects and everything else.

This blog is not exactly the right place to order the life, but is in it I reported some of my deepest thoughts.

Assuming that my confusion needs to be organized, I used a feature that stands out as something very modern and advanced: the mind maps.

It was my friend Renato, from Brasilia, who first told me about the mind map software. Then it was just moving forward.

Today I decided to use FreeMind, a software, to try to order my spread ideas in this blog.

After much meditation, I came to interesting conclusions.

About these findings I will speak in the next posts.

Good luck to me in my arduous mental work.

Huberman and man's worldly goods

I finished reading Man's Worldly Goods by Leo Huberman.

It is a classic book and was written in 1936. Long time. The world had not yet left the crisis of 1929 and had not entered in World War II. Huberman wrote the book then at a crucial moment of the twentieth century. He made ​​impressive predictions on various subjects.

A curious thing: Russia was a communist baby-country, and Stalin was just Stalin.

Curious though communism is not seen by the author as an economic aberration as the way that is seen today. Although not treat in detail of socialism, in the end looks a little like To the Finland Station, by Edmund Wilson, another American who comes to the topic.

 

I made myself the question: these books really are historically relevant outside Brazil or simply are successful only in Brazil and only because they were written by some of the few American writers who do not openly speak about communism as a bad?

It gives the impression that there is in the mind of the Brazilian people, and even more in the mind of the Brazilian intelligentsia a passionate desire that Brazil turns in a communist country.

How can they feed this truly innocent passion?

How can a person with a PhD and well informed to believe that socialism and communism a la Fidel and Che Guevara can be viable here?

I dunno ... it smells as a disguised theology...

Buying more books

I went to FNAC bookstore.

But before I have coffee in Paraler bookstore. The coffee there is better, and the dark atmosphere of the coffee shop too. In FNAC, the coffee shop is Franz Café, and there everything is cold and clear and does not combine with coffee and cold nights.

I ended up taking a look and found in Paraler the book I was looking for: Mauá, Entrepreneur of the Empire, by Jorge Caldeira. In break, I discovered another interesting book: Petroleum, by a foreign author whose name has not memorized yet.

I bought both. I do not know when I read them, but they are part of that kind of books which deal with subjects that seem irresistible.

 

I must read them ... MUST read them!

Ah, my wife bought some little books about tourism: one about the South of Brazil and another about Paris. They are also trips that seem irresistible.

We must to do them ... Reinforcing: MUST to do them!

It is the power of positive thinking and wrote thinking making things happen.

Violated tag

Another small task to accomplish what I set out was to change my E-ZPass tag.

What is this?

Well, the São Paulo highways are excellent, but they are privatized and tolled. So whenever we traveled, we lost some time in tolls, counting coins and small money and it ended when we began to pay for the service from Easy Way and Without Stop companies.

For a modest monthly price already discounted in the current account, the company provides us an E-ZPass electronic gadget we preach in windshield of our car and when we go through tolls, we drove to a special band and we own the track without stopping, literally. An antenna reads the number of the gadget, called "tag", and then electronically charge the owner of the tag.

Well, since some time to now, always we passed in tolls some electronic charts were informing us something like "Free passage: violated tag."

I called the company of tags and I was told that possibly the gadget was removed from where it was preached and represented a violation of the tag. He could not be removed in any way, because people could use it illegally.

How so? Now, if someone steals your tag, he will pass through the tolls normally, but the bill will come in your name. If the tag, the gadget, does not have this safety mechanism, a real market for stolen tags could form. After all, we are in Brazil. Since with the security mechanism, it becomes more difficult to misuse, because sooner or later, some toll gate will lock and your violated tag will be investigated.

Many people, like me, move the tag for some reason, and then puts it back. I did this once time fearing that smart bandits, but ignorant of technological advances, tried to steal the tag, which is always visible on the windshield, thinking it a GPS or something. But removing it was a mistake.

Well, the solution was to change the tag at the risk of being barred sooner or later at some toll worldwide.

Today, we changed the tag. My wife called the company again, noted a number of protocol and with that number, we went to a Without Stop kiosk in a mall in the city and changed the gadget.

We left the mall very happy, certain that we will never see the damn warning "violated tag" the next time we travel. And will travel soon, because soon my grandmother will one hundred years old. That's right: my maternal grandmother is a centenarian. This deserves a trip.

So, no violated tags... change your tag and travel easy.

Little ant from São Paulo

I did something I should have done before, and was noted in my Outlook: credit in my checking account my percentage of VAT tax that the Government of the State of São Paulo return to us because we buy goods and take invoices  with our tax identification number. It is called São Paulo Fiscal Note.

So, since this government program came out, my wife and I have asked patience in all places where we spend money that we provide the São Paulo Fiscal Note.

It has lasted about four years. And it should represent some money to receive.

So today I decided to indicate a current account and the government will deposit an interesting amount of money in a few days.

That is, slowly, I'll fulfill some tasks which I propose.

My wife and I made ​​our work of ants. Now, is time to reaping the rewards. Maybe we buy an IPad 2...