Of loss and possession [The Thin Red Line, (Terrence Malick, 1998)]

Que no escriba a menudo no significa que esté quieto. Me sigo moviendo pero tengo miedo a enfrentarme a mí mismo a través de la concatenación de vocablos que tantas veces me ha salvado. Sin embargo, a veces necesitamos un empujón: la disciplina académica es un buen ejemplo de ello. Os dejo con un ensayo que he escrito para "Filosofía y cine" en la Universidad de Islandia. Trata sobre la pérdida y la posesión de uno mismo relacionados con el anhelo por la plenitud de la vida, todo aderezado e ilustrado con los personajes de una de las películas que han cambiado mi forma de ver el cine: de un mero entretenimiento a un mecanismo capaz de sugerir y provocar la chispa del pensamiento. La película es The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998). El ensayo lo podéis encontrar pinchando aquí., está en inglés.

Trailer oficial de la película:

Es una pieza de arte filmada por un director experto en Heidegger. Él mismo lo tradujo al inglés e incluso tuvo algunas reuniones con el filósofo alemán. Hay algunos críticos que ven en el film de Malick una clara alusión a la difuminación del Ser en los seres, propio de Heidegger. Sin duda son unos ensayos magníficos sobre esta película, algo difíciles de contraargumentar por su gran poder de convicción. Veo en ellos una muy buena y sugerente lectura de la película. Es uno de los mejores ensayos acerca del cine que, particularmente, he leído en mi vida. Es el que sigue: Furstenau and MacAvoy, “Terrence Malick’s Heideggerian Cinema: War and the Question of Being in The Thin Red Line”

Hay otros ensayos que aluden a una buscada "calma antes de la muerte", una calma que debe ser buscada a través de la plenitud en la vida. Es un escrito algo menos potente aunque inequívocamente sugerente - en parte, mi ensayo bebe de él -. El autor ve en la figura de Witt (Jim Caviezel) la máxima expresión de esa calma antes de la muerte. También alude al cine de Malick como un arte de la calma, sólo nos hace falta ver una película de él para caer en la cuenta de cómo utiliza los elementos para crear un ambiente de sosiego en las situaciones más angustiantes: el sonido de la hierba abrazando al viento en medio de una batalla, las constantes secuencias de vida animal en medio del destrozo, el silenciamiento de los obuses y los disparos dejando sólo la atención a la respiración de un soldado, etc. El ensayo es el que sigue: Simon Critchley, "Calm: on Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line"

Aquél que esté interesado en leer uno o ambos artículos puede dejar un comentario o enviarme un mail. Se lo(s) brindaré en formato pdf.

Más allá de mi creciente cinefilia algo grande está por llegar: la aparente culminación de una lucha contra mí mismo a pedales por el centro de Islandia. Aún me queda demasiado para digerir todo lo que viví encima de mi bicicleta el pasado verano, es decir, me queda demasiado por acabar de escribir todo lo que viví. Acabarlo será abrir las puertas para una nueva lucha a través de la reiterada repetición de un mismo movimiento.

La concurrida repetición de lo idéntico // The crowded repetition of the identical

El primer y el último fulgor. Olympus Om 10.

Nada nuevo bajo la luz dominical. El caballo azul iba en segunda línea. Parecía que iba a sobrepasar a los tres musculosos equinos que tenía en su frente. No lo hizo. Cómo siempre. Había vuelto a perder. Cambió de canal y puso un serial mohoso de sobremesa. Los mismos domingos. Semana tras semana. Detrás de aquél mostrador, esperando la llegada de los que querían llenar el depósito, de los que se quejaban del continuo vaivén de los precios, de los que adquirían productos en el día del Señor que habían olvidado el viernes en el supermercado. Todo igual. El tedio amamantado por el batir de las alas de una mosca que busca salida a aquella pecera. El tañir mecánico del reloj de campana que iba tragando los minutos que le faltaban para llegar a casa y seguir batallando por encontrar el fulgor de la ilusión en una televisión mayor. Nada nuevo bajo el Sol de domingo. Escuchó el timbre de la puerta que anunciaba la llegada de la interminable repetición de lo aparentemente diferente. Se paró ante él, suspiró y movió los labios:

• “En breve tiempo crece la dicha de los mortales, pero, de igual forma, cae por tierra zarandeada por el destino inflexible. Seres de un día, ¿qué es uno? ¿qué no es? El hombre es el sueño de una sombra”

• ¿Qué desea?

• ¿No lo ves? ¿No lo tienes claro?

• Disculpe... le juro que no sé de qué me habla.

• ¿Cuál sería tu mejor momento para morir?

• ¿Qué? Verá yo sólo soy el dependiente de esta gasolinera. Si quiere hacer una encuesta deberá esperar a que venga mi jefe.

• No quería empezar tan pronto.

Con un ágil movimiento posó su mano izquierda sobre la rolliza papada del dependiente. Apretando los dedos, tratando de asegurar su tráquea y sus vértebras entre la palma de su mano. Con más calma elevó su mano derecha apuntando al falso techo y con un grácil movimiento de muñeca sacó un afilado punzón de su camisa que sostuvo entre sus dedos. Los ojos del dependiente se posaron sobre la punta metálica de aquél sutil pedazo de metal que podía dar al traste con su apacible languidez. El fulgor le había llegado sin necesidad de cambiar de canal. Posó el extremo metálico del punzón en la arteria izquierda que conectaba el corazón con su cabeza, cansada ya de recorrer los mismos senderos, canal tras canal. Apretó un poco más hacia adentro para poder sentir el latir del corazón en la palma de su mano, a través de ese trozo de metal que ya se iba calentando-

• ¿Y ahora?

• ¿Qué quiere de mí? La llave de la caja está debajo del mostrador. Hoy está casi llena. Lléveselo todo.

• No he venido para eso. El dinero no me hará falta allí dónde dormiré esta noche.

• Si quiere ir a prisión para dormir entre sábanas sólo tiene que darme una paliza, incendiar la gasolinera o algo así... pero no me mate.

• Contéstame. ¿Cuál sería tu mejor momento para morir?

• ¿Qué quiere decir con eso?

• Contéstame. Te aseguro que no derramaré una sola gota de tu sangre con mis manos.

• No sé... cuánto más tarde mejor supongo...

• Nos preocupamos por buscar esos momentos de gloria en nuestra vida. Creyéndonos capaces de ser hasta los creadores de nuestro propio fracaso. De nuestro propio dolor. Y no somos sino hijos de un destino que se nos aparece cruel por su implacable infalibilidad. Lo intentamos todo. Deseamos ser los reyes de nuestro universo y sólo somos los siervos de la imagen que los demás proyectan sobre y de nosotros. ¿Has sido alguna vez tú mismo? Me refiero, ¿te has sentido alguna vez tan absorto que las cuerdas que te atan con ese titiritero se deshilachan y se abrasan hasta tornarse en ceniza? Verás, ¿eres tú quién mueve los hilos de tu vida o son los demás? ¿Eres gobernante o gobernado? Compréndeme. Crecí de la mano de aquellos libros que nos contaban los viajes de aquellos aventureros con densa barba a los que no les importaban las opiniones escépticas y las miradas de recelo de sus coetáneos y, sin prestarles atención, lanzaban su vida al camino. Y son las vidas que han merecido ser recordadas: las que han olvidado que había alguien esperando algo de ellas, que había alguien opinando sobre ellas. Son las únicas vidas que han logrado ser gobernadas por sus amos. Sus amos estaban al mando del navío y degollaban a todos aquellos que pretendían amotinarse en contra de su rumbo. Yo he anhelado ese control en mi mismo, ese deseo inalcanzable de la sombra que jamás habré de proyectar en la crujiente madera de mi velero. He sido demasiado débil y nervioso. Siempre gobernado por las miradas de los demás, los comentarios, el agrado, la condescendencia. He sido un simple grumete en el navío construido por mis propias manos, diseñado por algún otro maestro en los astilleros. Yo he sido el simple ejecutor de una orden venida desde fuera. Ellos lo han controlado todo. La posición de mi cuerpo ante una conversación para tratar de aparentar lo que debería ser; la forma de caminar y vestir, adaptándome a cada momento: melancólico, altanero, boyante o extático, sincronizándolo con los ojos y las orejas de los que me habían de atender; la inclusión repentina en una conversación, tratando de aportar algo brillante e inteligente, tratando de impresionar a mis oyentes más que dejarme absorber por el diálogo; abrir un libro en un bar humeante pretendiendo parecer interesante mientras espero esa cita, mientras mis ojos atienden más a mi pose, a la posición de mis vestimentas, al recorrido del humo por mi tez, al cruce perfecto de mis piernas, atendiendo a una imagen que debía ser impresa en la mente de mi cita, mientras veía ese viejo borracho delante mío, atendiéndose a sí mismo, sin levantar los ojos de su novela y cerrando las orejas a las opiniones colindantes; dejar mis sueños moldearse en las manos de las opiniones de los demás; no parar de mostrar, como un mercader en un rastro, todas mis virtudes a la audiencia, pretendiendo aparentar – a través de la repetición del diálogo memorizado - una solemnidad, una claridad y una agudeza que no era más que la proyección de un sueño de clarividencia nunca cumplido. Dejar mi vida a los demás y dejar que la coman - sin ser ni siquiera conscientes de ello, sin degustar bocado alguno - que la desgarren con los colmillos y que la machaquen con las muelas. Atendiendo siempre a la imagen de mí mismo en lo ajeno, me olvidé de mí, perdido entre las tinieblas de la sincronía con lo otro, olvidando la sincronía conmigo mismo, con mis anhelos y con el gobierno de mi propia vida. Jamás lo conseguí. Y yo quiero conseguirlo, quiero dominar mi vida. Y el dominio y gobierno de la vida pasa inevitablemente por el gobierno y dominio de la muerte. Decidir, al menos por una sola vez en la vida, cuándo y cómo ser, cuándo y cómo vivir, cuándo y cómo morir. Atenderme a mí mismo y finalizar mi vida con un apoteósico fulgor de pólvora y metal. Estar absorto ante algo, al menos por una vez, sin atender a la posición de mi mueca, de las últimas palabras o de mi vestimenta, tratando de poner todo en sincronía con la audiencia. Como un mal actor, por atender demasiado a lo que el público tiene que decir, mira a la cámara. Quiero ser, por un sólo segundo, como un buen actor que, siendo consciente de las cámaras que registran sus movimientos, sabe cómo olvidarse de ellas. Absorto en el papel. Como el aventurero que sabe que tiene toda la opinión de su país en su contra y, sin embargo, atiende sólo al funcionamiento de las velas, las cuerdas y el timón. Absorto en el navegar. Sé que no hay otra forma de lograrlo. Jamás lo conseguiré si no es así. ¿Continuar? ¿Para volver a hundirme en la teatralidad? Prefiero morir, como lo deseaban los atletas olímpicos, en el éxtasis de la gloria, huyendo de esa vejez que no para de recordar, con lágrimas en los ojos, victorias pretéritas. Y prefiero controlar este último compás de esta patética obra. Ya no me importa el público. No sé si están ahí. Para mí el telón ya ha besado el escenario. Sé que lo has hecho. Es normal. Has tocado ese botón. Dentro de poco vendrá la policía. Dentro de poco habrá acabado todo. Antes querría pedirte un favor. Pon tu mano en el bolsillo de mi chaqueta.

• ¿Ahora?

• Sí

• Hay una cosa fría

• Es una pistola, sácala

• ¿Y que hago con ella?

• Mátame

• ¿Qué?

• Si no me matas tendré que hundirte este punzón en la preciosa arteria que te está regando tu postrado cerebro día tras día.

• No puedo hacerlo

• Yo si puedo atravesarte el origen de todo tu dolor

• ¿Y qué pasa conmigo? Iré a la cárcel...

• Defensa propia

• Las cámaras no pensarán lo mismo

No quiso alargar más aquella conversación. Apretó un poco más el aguijón contra el vaso de su cuello. El dependiente reaccionó y sacó la pistola del bolsillo. Temblando y sudando levantó la pistola lentamente hasta encontrar la faz del que sostenía su cuello entre una poderosa mano. Una presión que le obligaba a mirar con el mentón trémulo y erguido la línea entre la pistola y la frente dónde debía dirigirse la bala.

• Hazlo, ahora.

• No puedo

• Te voy a hundir esto hasta las vértebras si no lo haces

• Pero...

• Te doy cinco segundos: cinco, cuatro, tres, dos...

La policía irrumpió en la gasolinera. Entre los cuatro agentes destacaba un joven policía que temblaba blandiendo su pistola entre sus manos. Las ventanas temblaron ante el estallido y todo el mostrador quedó salpicado de esa viscosidad escarlata y gris que baña las entrañas de toda sien. La pistola cayó encima del cristal del mostrador, quebrándolo en esas formas preciosas que recuerdan a una tela de araña tejida en las entrañas del vidrio. Por fin abrazó el fulgor entre el amarillento y repentino estallido. Y lo abrazó en el fondo más profundo y viscoso de su alma. Hubo de hacer más fuerza con la mano, ahora sostenía todo el peso de un cuerpo antes sostenido por eso a lo que llaman alma. Dejó caer al muchacho encima del mostrador y acercó la mano, con el punzón escondido en su palma, hacia su cara. Se limpió la sangre y los pedazos de sesos con el dorso de la mano.

• ¿Pero qué coño has hecho?

El joven policía miró fijamente a los ojos del dependiente, recorridos por una cascada de sangre fresca que se deslizaba por su papada y se acumulaba en la blanca camisa. Una mancha que ampliaba sus horizontes cada vez más al ritmo de ese corazón que parecía que aún seguía latiendo. No escuchó a los gritos de su superior. Cayó sobre sus rodillas y sintió que, la escena lo pedía, debía llorar. Y no pudo. Todo se contuvo en su garganta, quedándose atrapado en las cuencas de sus ojos que recordaban el estallido del percutor en la palma de sus manos. Uno de los policías, tratando de recuperar la calma se dirigió al hombre inmóvil delante del mostrador:

• ¿Se encuentra usted bien señor?

No pudo decir nada. Sólo pudo hablar consigo mismo, en el silencio de su mente. “Todo se vuelve a repetir. Lo escrito, escrito está. No hay nada nuevo bajo el Sol: nacimiento, construcción, alegría, dolor y muerte. Y, ¿todo para qué? ¿Para elevar la vida a categoría de obra de arte y hacer con ella algo bello? Parece lo más conveniente. Y, sin embargo, para hacerlo hay que negar, hay que olvidarse por completo de aquél quién observará la obra . Hay que deshacerse del espectador para crear una obra digna de ser vista, tener en cuenta a la audiencia sólo sirve para sincronizarte con ella. Dejando de tomar poder sobre tu propio universo, tu propia vida, tu propia obra. Siempre lo mismo. ¿Cómo escapar de mí mismo? ¿Cómo escapar de este destino destinado a complacer a los demás? Muerte. Y nada más. Me volví y vi todas las violencias que se hacen debajo del sol; y he aquí las lágrimas de los oprimidos, sin tener quien los consuele; y la fuerza estaba en la mano de sus opresores, y para ellos no había consolador. Ah, ese maldito Eclesiastés otra vez. Vanidad de vanidades, dijo el Predicador; vanidad de vanidades, todo es vanidad. ¿Qué provecho tiene el hombre de todo su trabajo con que se afana debajo del sol? Generación va, y generación viene; mas la tierra siempre permanece. Sale el sol, y se pone el sol, y se apresura a volver al lugar de donde se levanta. El viento tira hacia el sur, y rodea al norte; va girando de continuo, y a sus giros vuelve el viento de nuevo. Los ríos todos van al mar, y el mar no se llena; al lugar de donde los ríos vinieron, allí vuelven para correr de nuevo. Todas las cosas son fatigosas más de lo que el hombre puede expresar; nunca se sacia el ojo de ver, ni el oído de oír. ¿Qué es lo que fue? Lo mismo que será. ¿Qué es lo que ha sido hecho? Lo mismo que se hará; y nada hay nuevo debajo del sol. ¿Hay algo de que se puede decir: He aquí esto es nuevo? Ya fue en los siglos que nos han precedido. No hay memoria de lo que precedió, ni tampoco de lo que sucederá habrá memoria en los que serán después. Y, sin embargo, pretendo seguir teniendo anhelo de originalidad, anhelo de control sobre mí mismo, de olvidar a los que me gobiernan y permanecer absorto en la construcción de mi vida. La vida que merecería ser colgada en la pared de un museo. Merecimiento. Merecedora para los visitantes de ese tétrico museo, cuando yo ya esté muerto. ¿Para qué? Siempre pensando en la mirada de los demás. ¿En qué momento me diluí entre la mirada ajena? ¿Cuando dejé aquél egoísmo necesario para atenderme a mi mismo? Ese cuidado de mí que nunca tuve. Y ahora ya... qué más da.

• Agentes, ¿cuál sería su mejor momento para morir?

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

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  ENGLISH VERSION

  
  

  

  The first and the last glare. Olympus Om 10.

  Nothing new under the Sunday light. The blue horse was in second line. Seemed likely to exceed the three muscular horses he had in his forehead. He did not. How ever. He had lost again. He changed the channel and putted a boring serial on his TV. The same Sunday. Week after week. Behind one counter, awaiting the arrival of those who wanted to fill the tank, of those which complained of the continued sway of the prices, of those that came to purchase the food on the day of the Lord that they had forgotten at the supermarket on Friday. All the same. The tedium suckled by the flapping wings of a fly that looks out to that tank. The mechanical clock tolling bell that was swallowing the minutes that were missing to get home and still struggling to find the glare of illusion in a larger television. Nothing new under the sun on that Sunday. He heard the door bell announcing the arrival of the seemingly endless repetition of different. She stood before him, he sighed and moved his lips:
  
  - "In short time increases the happiness of mortals, but, likewise, falls to the ground buffeted by the inflexible fate. Beings of a day, what is one? What is not? Man is the dream of a shadow

  - What do you want?

  - Do not you see? Do not you confused?

  - Sorry ... I swear I do not know what you're talking.

  - What would be your best time to die?

  - What? You see I'm just the clerk of this station. If you want to do a survey should expect to come my boss.

  - I did not want to start so soon.
  
  With a quick motion put his left hand on the plump jowls of the dependent. He clenched fingers, trying to secure his windpipe and vertebrae from the palm of his hand. More calmly raised his right hand pointing to the ceiling and with a graceful flick of the wrist took a sharp punch of his shirt he held between his fingers. The eyes of the dependent rested on the metal tip of one subtle piece of metal that could derail its peaceful languor. The glow had come without changing the channel. Posed the metal end of the punch on the left artery connecting the heart with his head, tired of traveling the same paths, channel after channel. He pressed a little more inward to feel the heartbeat in the palm of his hand through that piece of metal and that was heating up step by step.
  
  

  - And now?

  - What you want from me? The key to the box is underneath the counter. Today it is almost full. Take it all.

  - I have not come to that. The money is not useful where I'll need sleep tonight.

  - If you want to go to prison for sleeping between the sheets just beat me up, burn the gas station or something ... but do not kill me.

  - Answer me. What would be your best time to die?

  - What do you mean?

  - Answer me. I certainly will not shed a single drop of your blood with my hands.

  - I do not know ... as later as possible I guess ...

  - We care about looking for those moments of glory in our lives. Thinking ourselves capable of being up to the creators of our own failure. From our own pain. And we are the sons of a destiny that seems to us cruel for his relentless infallibility. We tried everything. We want to be the kings of our universe and we are only servants of the image projected onto others and ourselves. Have you ever been yourself? I mean, have you ever felt so absorbed that the ropes that bind you to the fray and puppeteer scorch to turn into ashes? See, are you who pulls the strings of your life or are the others? Are you a ruler or ruled? Understand me. I grew up in the hands of those books that had the travel of a bearded adventurers who do not care about the skeptical opinions and suspicious glances from his peers and, without paying attention, they threw his life on the road. And it is the lives that have deserved to be remembered: those who have forgotten that there was someone waiting for something from them, that someone was reviewing them. They are the only lives they have managed to be ruled by their masters. Their masters were in command of the ship and behead all those who wanted to mutiny against their course. I have longed for the control of myself, that unattainable desire of the shadow that I shall never projected on the creaking wood of my sailboat. I was too weak and nervous. Always governed by the eyes of others, comments, pleasure, condescension. I have been a mere boy in the ship built by my own hands, designed by another teacher in the shipyards. I have been a simple executor of an order coming from outside. They have controlled everything. The position of my body to a conversation to try to pretend who I should be. The way that you walk and dress, tailored to every moment: melancholy, proud, buoyant or ecstatic, synchronizing it with the eyes and ears that I had to meet. The sudden inclusion in a conversation, trying to make something bright and intelligent, trying to impress my listeners instead to letting me absorb the dialogue. Opening a book in a smoky bar pretending to look interesting while I wait for that appointment, as my eyes servemore like my pose, the position of my clothes, the smoke down my skin, the perfect crossing of my legs, taking an image that should be printed in the mind of my appointment, and then, I watched that old drunk in front of me, without looking up from his novel and closing their ears to the surrounding views, without taking care in which the others will say. Letting my dreams be molded into the hands of others' opinions, not stop to show, as a merchant in a track, all my virtues to the audience, pretending to pretend - through the repetition of a memorized dialogue - a solemnity, a clarity and sharpness that was only the projection of a clairvoyant dream never fulfilled. Let my life and let others eat it - without being even aware of it, without trying one bite - the tear with the teeth and the grind with the teeth. Consistent with the image of myself as others, I forgot myself, lost in the darkness of sync with the other, forgetting myself in sync with my wishes and the government of my own life. Never got it. And I want to get it, being the master of my life. And the dominion and government of life inevitably involves the government and control of death. I've decide, at least once in life, when and how to be, when and how to live, when and how to die. Addressing myself and end my life with a flash of gunpowder and metal. To be lost before something at least once, without regard to the position of my face, the last words or my clothes, without trying to put everything in sync with the audience. Like a bad actor, for attending too much to what the public has to say, look at the camera. I want to be, by one second, as a good actor who, being aware of the cameras that record their movements, he knows how to forget them. Absorbed in the paper. As the adventurer who knows he has the whole view of his country against him, however, serves only the operation of the sails, ropes and rudder. Absorbed in the sailing. I know no other way to go. Never will get if it is not. Continue? To go back to sink into the theatrics? I'd rather die, as they wanted the Olympic athletes in the ecstasy of glory, running away from the old to not remember, with tears in his eyes, wins bygone. And I'd rather handle this last measure of this pathetic work. I do not mind the public. I do not know if they are there. For me, the curtain has already kissed the stage. I know you've done. It's normal. You have touched the button. Soon will come the police. Soon be over. Before I would ask you a favor. Put your hand into the pocket of my jacket.

  - Now?

  - Yes

  - There is a cold thing

  - It is a gun. Take it off

  - What I do with it?

  - Kill me

  - What?

  - If you not kill me I'll have to sink this beautiful punch in the artery that you are watering your brain lying day after day.

  - I can not do

  - Yes, I can pierce the source of all your pain

  - What about me? I'll go to jail ...

  - Self-defense

  - Cameras do not think so

  
  He declined further lengthen the conversation. He pressed a little more sting against the vein of his neck. The clerk responded and pulled the pistol from his pocket. Shivering and sweating up the gun slowly to find the face of whom that was holding his neck with a mighty hand. Pressure which forced him to look with trembling chin into the straight line between the gun and the front where the bullet should be directed.
  
  - Do it now.

  - I can not

  - I'm going to sink it to the vertebrae if you do not

  - But ...

  - I give you five seconds: five, four, three, two ...
  
  The police stormed the station. Among the four police officers stood a young man brandishing his gun trembling in his hands. The windows shook with the explosion and the whole desk was scattered with the viscosity of scarlet and gray washes the entrails of every soul. The gun fell on the glass counter, breaking it in such beautiful shapes that resemble a spider web woven in the depths of the glass. Finally embraced the yellowish glow from the sudden burst. And hugged him in deeper and viscous substance of his soul. There was more force in the hand, now holding the full weight of a body before it sustained by what they call soul. He dropped the boy on the counter and put his hand with the stylus hidden in his palm to his face. He wiped the blood and pieces of brains with the back of the hand.
  
  - What the fuck have you done?
  
  The young cop stared into the eyes of the servant travels by a cascade of fresh blood that ran down his chin and accumulated in the white shirt. A spot that expanded their horizons once again to the rhythm of the heart that it seemed that he was still beating. He heard the cries of his superior. He fell on his knees and felt the scene and tried to cry, as all the audience was expecting. And he couldn't. Everything was contained in his throat, remaining trapped in the caves of his eyes that recalled the striker burst into the palm of their hands. One of the police, trying to restore calm to the man is still at the counter:
  
  - Are you all right sir?
  
  He could not say anything. He could only talk to himself in the silence of his mind. "Everything is repeating. Writing, written. There is nothing new under the sun: birth, construction, joy, pain and death. And, all for what? To raise the life into an art work and make something beautiful out of it? It seems most convenient. And yet, to do so is to deny, forget completely that one who observed the work. We must rid the viewer to create a work worthy of being seen. To take account of the beholder only serves to sync with them. Failing to take power over your own universe, your own life, your own work. Always the same. How to escape from myself? How to escape this fate destined to please others? Death. And nothing else. I turned and saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun, and behold the tears of the oppressed, they had no comforter; and strength lay in the hands of their oppressors, and they had no comforter. Ah, that damned Ecclesiastes again. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What does man gain from all his labor which he take under the sun? Generation goes and another generation come: but the earth remains forever. When the sun rises and sun sets, and hurries back to where it stands. The wind go toward the south and around to the north, is rotated continuously, and their money back the wind again. All the rivers run into the sea, the sea is not full, the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. All things are wearisome more than man can express, the eye is never satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What it was? Just as it is. What has been done? The same will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything you can say: Behold this is new? And was in the centuries before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor what will happen in memory to be later. And yet, I intend to continue longing for originality, desire for control over myself, I forget the rule and remain absorbed in the construction of my life. The life you deserve to be hung on the wall of a museum. Merit. Worthy to visitors that fateful museum, after I'm dead. Why? Always thinking in the eyes of others. At which point I diluted me between the eyes of others? When I left that selfish needed to be addressed and absorbed into myself? That care about me I never had. And now it does not matter.
  
  - Agents, what is your best time to die?

  
  

La pretendida nitidez de lo vivo // The supposed clarity of the alive

Auto-foto en la cocina a altas horas de la noche o de la madrugada. Olympus Om 10.

Al menos tenía algo claro: todo dependía del ojo con el que se miran las cosas. De esa lente -ya clara, rallada, sucia o quebrada- a través de la cuál veía el mundo. Su vida era un intento de clarificarse a sí mismo, de mostrar a los demás su verdadera esencia y de demostrarse a sí mismo que podía aniquilar la apariencia en su propio templo. En algún punto había atribuido la sinceridad a la personalidad, olvidando esa máscara tras la que se ocultaban los actores en el teatro que era el garante de todo lo aprehendido, de todo lo que construía su personalidad. Esa máscara que, siendo un cúmulo de todo lo vivido, hacía posible toda reproducción. Él no quería reproducir. Él no quería imitar. Él quería producir. Él quería brillar con luz propia, no siendo el reflejo ni el filtro de nadie, quería ser el Sol que iluminase su universo. Un astro puro e inmaculado donde no tuviese lugar la aparición de todo aquello que lo había construido y que lo amenazaba en su pedestal de pretendida originalidad. Quería olvidar a todos sus maestros para ser el portador de toda su sabiduría y quererse productor de la misma. Sincerarse con su anhelo de ser su propio Rey y acallar a sangrientas andanadas todas las voces que surgían de su interior y reclamaban su parte: las lecturas, las caídas, las subidas, los paisajes, las caricias, los puñetazos, las charlas, las destrucciones y las construcciones. Todo. Olvidarlo todo y saberse el Dios que había creado todo aquello. Una soberana empresa de destrucción memorística.

Enfocó a todo lo que tenía delante. Todo estaba muerto. En su momento habría estado repleto de vida pero ahora todo aquello posaba inmóvil delante de aquél ojo que trataba de definirlo. Enfocó lo que se mantenía a la misma distancia desde la atalaya que lo debía retratar. Allí donde el ojo ponía la atención, allí definía ese universo impasible. Debería funcionar. Alejó la cámara hacia la misma distancia con la que había estado dirigiendo la atención de su ojo, clarificando y definiéndolo todo. Programó el auto-disparador y esperó sosteniendo en su mano esa botella característica de las noches donde el duermevela envenenado lo difumina y lo confunde todo. Sonó el disparador y escuchó el diafragma abrirse y cerrarse, guardando en la película detrás de él aquél proyecto de purificación y definición. Nitidez del alma. Aquel objetivo descarnado de subjetividad que debía hacer el papel de su ojo. Esa atención que debía aclarar, reflejándolo, quién era él. Quién quería ser. Dió un trago al mar de dudas que se embravecía dentro del casco verde y mantuvo la idea de depurarse a sí mismo, olvidando todo lo que lo había construido. Ahogando esa apariencia de originalidad en la aniquilación de la memoria. Ese anhelo de querer ser original, de saber que cada paso es un paso nuevo y nunca andado, pasaba por destruir el recuerdo de todas las piernas que habían recorrido sus mismos senderos. Borrando todas sus huellas en el barro. De esa aniquilación debería surgir el sentimiento de ser el originador originario de todo lo acontecido.

Esa nube quimérica desapareció al cabo de unos días, cuando sostuvo la imagen impresa entre sus manos. Su templo tembló al ver que, habiendo puesto la atención en sí mismo, aparecía diluido entre las formas de la cocina. La nitidez la acaparaba esa botella que sostenía entre su mano. Lo inerte aparecía mejor perfilado, mejor conceptuado, que lo vivo. Es entonces cuando dio cuenta de ello. Su pretensión de su peculiar visión de la originalidad quedó enterrada bajo la evidencia de aquella grafía lumínica. Clasificar y conceptualizar lo vivo - cincelado y cosido por innumerables pedazos de lo vivido - es una tarea reservada a los dioses. La identidad esencial se pierde entre los millares de pasillos que construyen nuestro ser y, aún más, quién sabe si la identidad no es sino esos pasillos por los que ya pasamos cogidos de la mano con los que nos los descubrieron y que algún día volveremos a recorrer, quizás en soledad, siempre recomendados por alguien o algo. Tenerlo todo muerto, puro y limado para poder encontrar lo esencial. Si lo esencial de lo inerte es el ser, ¿lo esencial de lo vivo será el hacer? La pregunta atormentó su mente hasta tal punto que hubo de abrir otra maravilla verde para poder calmar la impertinencia del asalto. El rigor del cerco del concepto sólo pasa por la inmovilidad de lo inerte. Lo móvil, vivo y vívido siempre tiende a saltar las cercas que los pastores del alma y la ciencia pretenden apuntalar para estudiar detenidamente, siempre en detención, aquello que tienen delante de la nariz. Se vio a sí mismo como uno de aquellos delimitadores territoriales con bata blanca, corbata, pluma, pipa o cualquier utensilio de precisión académica. No le asustó mucho la idea, al fin y al cabo era cuestión de decisión. Él prefirió la senda del desvanecimiento, de la difuminación, del no entenderse por la mañana y comprenderse profundamente por la noche, del cambio de plano, del horror de la quietud y su nitidez. Él prefirió dar un renovado y recorrido trago a la verdosidad cristalina que ocultaba el ámbar y saltó la verja que lo separaba de la calle, de la noche y de sus abrazos silenciados con la brillante oscuridad boreal.

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ENGLISH VERSION

Self-photo in the kitchen at higher hour of the night, or the morning. Olympus Om 10.

At least he had something clear: everything depended on the eye with which you look at things. In this lens - clear, shredded, dirty or broken - through which he saw the world. His life was an attempt to clarify himself, to show others his true essence and to prove to himself that he could destroy the appearance in his own temple. At some point he had attributed the sincerity to the personality, forgetting that mask behind which the actors hid themselves in the drama that was the guarantee of all apprehended, of all that built their personality. This mask, with an accumulation of all experienced, made it possible the reproduction. But, he didn't want to reproduce. He didn't want to imitate. He wanted to produce. He wanted to shine with his own light, not being a reflection or filter of anyone, he wanted to be the Sun that lights his own universe. A pure and immaculate star where does not take place the appearance of everything that had built up and threatened him on a pedestal of alleged originality. He wanted to forget all his teachers to be the besarer of all their wisdom and being the producer of it. Confide with his desire to be his own King and silence bloodily any voice that emerged from his inside and demanded their part: the readings, falls, rises, landscapes, fondling, punching, chats, destruction and construction. Everything. Forget everything and know himself as the God who created everything. A sovereign plan of rote destruction.

He focused everything in front him. Everything was dead. In its time it would have been full of life. Now all that were posing in front of his eye were quiet, while he tried to define it. He focused at the same distance from the point he should portray. Placed where the eye take care, defining that impassive universe. Should work. He putted the camera away at the same distance he had been directing the attention of his eye, clarifying and defining everything. He programmed the self-timer and waited in his hand holding the characteristic bottle of half-sleep nights where it poisoned, blurs and confuses everything.He listened to the iris shutter opened and closed in behind him the movie that purification project and definition. Sharpness of the soul. The objective, stripped of subjectivity, playing the role of his fleshy eye. That attention should clarify, by the reflection, who he was. Who wanted to be. He gave a drink to the tempestuous sea that was in the green bottle and kept the idea of purging himself, forgetting everything he had built. Stifling the appearance of originality in the annihilation of memory. That desire to want to be original, knowing that every step is a new and never walked step, was possible if he had the bravery to destroy the memory of all the legs that had run his own paths. Erasing all tracks in the mud. From this annihilation should come the feeling of being the original originator of all that occurs.

This chimeric cloud disappeared after a few days, when the printed image held in his hands. His temple trembled seeing that, having put the attention on himself, appeared diluted in the forms of the kitchen. The sharpness was monopolized on bottle he held in his hand. The inert appeared better profiling, better conceptualized, that the alive. It is then that he realized it. His claim to his peculiar vision of the original evidence was buried in the light of that script. Classify and conceptualize the living - carved and sewn by countless pieces of lived experience - is a task reserved for the gods. The essential identity is lost among the thousands of corridors that make up our being and, even more, who knows if the identity is these corridors through which we now - hand in hand - with which we were discovered and that some day we will go, perhaps alone, if recommended by someone or something. Have it all dead, pure and filed in order to find the essential. If the essence of what is to be inert, the essence of the living will be the “doing”? The question haunted his mind to such an extent that it had to open another green marvel to calm the impertinence of the assault. The rigors of the siege of the concept only goes through the stillness of the inert. The moving, alive and vivid always tends to jump the fences of the shepherds of the soul. That shepherds that seek to bolster science to study carefully, always in detention, what's in front of the nose. He saw himself as one of those territorial markers in a white coat, tie, pen, pipe or tools of scholarly precision. He wasn't scared by this idea, after all was a matter of choice. He chose the path of the fading, blurring, of not understanding the morning and understanding everything deeply in the night, the change of plane, the horror of the stillness and clarity. He preferred to drink from the amber hide in the green crystal and jumped the fence that separated him from the street, the night and its silent embrace to the darkness of bright lights.

Nietzsche. A philosophy for the weakened but not for the weak.

Summary: I'll try to use the destruction of the ideals, the amor fati and the eternal recurrence in Nietzsche to try to show how the psychological philosophy that we can extract from this concepts is one of the better ways to refuse the nihilism in the sickness, the pain and the life. An optimistic way to the weakened, not for the weak.

The life in the sky is pleasant but our feet need to touch the ground. In the university classrooms of philosophy sometimes happens that, so often for my taste, the speech only lives in the air, constructing beautiful castles there. Those castles are really impressive and sometimes even overwhelming but their architecture don't have sense for me if they don't recognize that they're grown in some and touchable soil, in the soil of the mind at least.

I was at only one step to quit my studies in Philosophy, I was watching how the teachers were growing up the most beautiful castles with their language, logic and rationality, but it was impossible for me to find some stairs to go down from the big castle and connect it with the ground. After a while I realize that the main object, at least I hope this, of my teachers was to give me the weapons to construct this building, creating sense for some situations that mankind want to express; my aim, and for me the most difficult thing in philosophy, was to find the stairs to connect the buildings in the air with the situation in the soil. The way from the telluric to the celestial and, then, find the way to return from the celestial to the telluric without hitting the ground. From the soil to the theory and from the theory to the practice, to “how to behave” in the soil. A friend of mine from Barcelona can express this go and back between the theoretical world and the practical world much better than me, he is a philosophical counselor, and discussing about the book from the Greek Scholar Pierre Hadot, “Philosophy as a Way of Life” he said:

<<Hadot emphasizes the importance of congruence between the rhetoric of philosophers and philosophical schools and their practices and lifestyles. For Hadot, linguistic or theoretical dimension of philosophy is meaningless if it is connected to change and transformation practices that enable consistency between the philosophical discourse about the Truth, Goodness and Beauty, and practices, behaviors and activities of the philosopher. Thus, the practical and transformative activity is, from the origins of philosophy, at least as important as theoretical or discursive dimension>>¹

The ground is as important as the castle: without ground the castle collapses into the void and without the castle, the ground turns into an empty wasteland. There's, sometimes, something missing in the theories of the philosophers: to prove their own

speeches in their daily life. Without this return to the soil the philosopher behave like an hypocrite: trying to be honest and rigorous in his speech but forgetting that this argues should be prove. Otherwise philosophy is only a game of words and logic, a mere pastime. Of course that philosophy can be as joyful as a pastime but is not merely a game. Returning to the soil, the argues of the philosophy touch something that, at least, have the conditions to be more than a simple game: the life. I'm not saying that life shouldn't be treated like a game, what I'm trying to say is that philosophy -if its considered like a mere game of words that don't have anything related to the daily life- hasn't any value for life itself.

A paragraph from “Economy”, a chapter from “Walden” of Thoreau is always in my mind, when he is talking about the education he said that:

<<I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from the beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? I think this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics>>²

Remind to people that they need to live their lives. Live the life. A pleonasm or an oxymoron? When I hear this I always think about the compilation of two different concepts in one syntagma: living and life, the daily living and the ideal of life. The ideal of the life is an ideal built in the daily life, in the soil of the common life, in all the things that happen to our body since he took the first breath.

I can understand the longing of some philosophers that want to reach the universals, the general concepts, the Truth, the ideal of life, in that ante rem (before the thing) way. Those authors influenced by the philosophies of Being from Plato and Parmenides, thinking that there's some stable, untouchable, incorruptible and eternal before the thing that tries to imitate the perfect and universal concept.

I also can understand those philosophers that say that the ideals, the universals are created with the thing, that the essence of a thing is in the development and living of that thing, that is in re (inside the thing, in the thing); those philosophers influenced by the stoic Lógos that keep something from the Semitic tradition: the creation. This lógos spermatikós that is beneath the things, is going with the things and controlling the things. All is created through the patron of this ideal that can also change with the changing of the thing. I can understand those philosophers, but I can't live with them, through them.

I can understand those philosophers that say that the ideal comes after the thing, that the ideal is only a projection of the experience of the human that proclaims the ideal, a projection of the experience in some things that need a control on them through the language, through a tag. We're tied to create the ideals through our simple experience, all philosophy is a matter of a subtle induction. We're tied to thing in ideals created post rem (after the thing). I can live with them when they become honest and say that all our ideals, all the essences, are engendered by our living, by our experience, by our life. The ideal of the life are conceived through living. We're necessarily tied to our experience in the world in which we're living, we can't scape from it. In a way we're determined through it but we can still creating things as the ideals and, much better than an ideal, the art. Determination and creation: are mutually exclusive? We need to wait a bit to answer this question. For the moment I can only say that I can live with the thinkers that say that our world is a creation of our own context, that our image of the world in which we're living is determined by the context in which we're living. The world is not the same for me before touching this land with my hands, dreaming about the northern Thule in Barcelona, and now, living in this impressive land emerged from the bottom of the ocean. All the things that surround the human, all his context, conditions his way of thinking, the reception of the multiple projected to the essential. Although, let's talk through the mouth of Nietzsche:

<<Here one may certainly admire man as a mighty genius of construction, who succeeds in piling up an infinitely complicated dome of concepts upon an unstable foundation, and, as it were, on running water. Of course, in order to be supported by such a foundation, his construction must be like one constructed of spiders' webs: delicate enough to be carried along by the waves, strong enough not to be blown apart by every wind. As a genius of construction man raises himself far above the bee in the following way: whereas the bee builds with wax that he gathers from nature, man builds with the far the more delicate conceptual material which he first has to manufacture from himself. In this he is greatly to be admired, but not on account of his drive for truth or for pure knowledge of things. When someone hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as well, there is not so much to praise in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand regarding seeking and finding truth within the realm of reason. If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare “look, a mammal”, I have indeed brought a truth to light this way, but is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic truth which contains not a single point which would be “true in itself” or really and universally valid apart from man. At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the metamorphosis of the world into man. He strives to understand the world as something analogous to man, and at best he achieves by his struggles the feeling of assimilation>>³

Then, the man and his thoughts are sons of his own context. All the universal morality, all the common concepts that want to be an explanation for everybody are an illusion: is just a matter of anthropomorphism. The universals, all the ideals, all the essence, all the Truth are established after the contact with the thing that one wants to transform into an abstract, into an universal: first the man, the skin, the bones, then the mankind, the human dignity, the honesty. The first contact is with the particular, then the human mind dream with the universal. One can say that the environment in which a man grows is the soil of his concept, of the endowment of sense of his world.

And, what's the environment in which Nietzsche grows? What's his context? In a few words: sickness and pain. He was always with health problems and, as far as I know them, they can stop all your life from one day to the other. I found in Nietzsche a sick man that wants to hug his own sickness. I found in his philosophy not a psychology for the weak but for the weakened. He was, as I am, a weak man but this health determination never exclude the strength on him. I've been four years inside the walls of an hospital and, without reading Nietzsche, I felt two ways of behave: hug the whitish of the walls and smile when all the air turns into this niveous color that erase everything or left gag your mouth by the walls, losing yourself in all the whitish corridors. It's simple: life or death; or, even worst: being into the vitality or being into the mortality. Vitalism or nihilism.

Is not easy. In the morning you're a joyful youth that feels himself strong, trained and boss of his own life, and in the afternoon one is nude in the bed of an hospital feeling totally sick, weak, afraid; with all his body surrounded by machines, plastic tubes and hands that want to search something that explain the sickness. In the first night illuminated by the fluorescent lights the weak feeling also invade the mind. One start to think that the contingency and the hazard govern his life, that this could happen to everybody, and no one can scape from the hazard things in the life; and, when the day rise up another time, one think “but it's happening to me”. To me. You see how all the people can enter and leave the room. A lot of people in the same day. A lot of faces that gives to you some smiles and try to hug you putting their hands one your foot, the only part of your body without cables and connections to that machine that keep you alive. They are free to leave the room. And you spend the nights there, with the tolling of the machine that reminds you that your heart still inside your chest. Neither you no anyone can explain how a youth plenty of life and health can disappear between the white blankets in the icy warm of the room in that hospital.

And one day, when you feel that you can't control your life and the snowy walls started to eat you, sinking your smile into your throat; when you feel that everything is lost and the life is a torture camp without exit, this guy appears in the room. A little boy much younger than you: he's not even an adolescent. In a few days you feel something strange: he's the only room mate that you've seen smiling. “How he can smile?” Maybe he's not even conscious about our determination by those rules behind the hazard that we're not able to know. And you can only see in his smile the influence of the innocence, because you never talk with them. One day you find yourself surprised with your own voice that was jailed in the throat for a long time: “Why are you so happy?” Through the lips of the boy escapes an uncomfortable “Because I like it”. Talking with him day by day you can see how behind this apparently naivety he hides a deep wisdom. Saying “yes” to the pain, saying “yes” to the hospital, saying “yes” to all the suffering he becomes more stronger than the pain, the hospital and the suffering. Hugging his enemy with a big smile he can approach better to him, know him better and become more powerful than him using this knowledge.

Over the time I could see how that child was transforming the determination of the hazard which led me to deny my condition of being sick into the determination of the necessity. Taking control even of the things that I considered part of the hazard, this will to power even over the things that befall us. He was hugging a necessity that he wanted to hug, saying “yes” to this necessity he took control over his own life: allowing the control over it, allowing the creation in it. The creation in the middle of the determination, in the limitation of the necessity. In a way, he was hugging also the amor fati of Nietzsche:

<<My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati; that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it – all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary – but love it>>⁴

There's something important here at stake, the life of the human are governed by the destiny, the determination or the responsibility? Or all together? One can see this amor fati from Nietzsche the only scape from the pitfall between the determinism of Paul Rée and the willing of Schopenhauer.

In Rée, if the sufficient cause is present, the act of willing must happen sub specie necessitates (under the aspect of necessity), so the free will that is supposed to construct the behave of the man and his life don't have a real correlation in the nature. The responsibility disappears and the man is a product of the deterministic laws of nature. If my companion of room had embraced this way, what he would have done? Nothing. If he was determined by the laws of the nature and the will is a mere illusion, whatever he did he would be exposed to the determination.

In Schopenhauer, the supreme act of will that can will everything although it cannot, have a limit in the insurmountable: the death. Even if my chest follow the will of life, it will follow this hungry of wanting through the suffering and the pain until the end. When the human forget that this will of life is a servant of the specie, he want to take benefit of it, but is an enterprise doomed to failure: the will to life, in the individual, drives him inevitably until the death. And the question that rises up with this way is: and all this suffering, for what? Schopenhauer point at art as an escape from this death spiral in the will of life. Is a good way, but he continues persisting in that will of life that wants to, even if the death is in front of us, denying the determination of the perishable: willing, willing and willing. If my companion of room had embraced this way, what he would have done? Willing to will embrace something knowingly the close final, even if the will to life hide the death with an tireless wanting.

Both ways hide the human in a big shield: one through the determination and the other through a will that loses the character in all the spread willing. The way of that child was completely different, he was standing in the middle of the battleground without any shield, without any spear, only with the nude hands and his big smile. He took the way between the determination and the free will, he just embraced his destiny. With the amor fati of Nietzsche the child could made a subtle transformation through his smile: all the hazard for us, all the things that one can see as a destiny, he changed into a contingency and, because he want it, he put it away as a necessity. All his past, all the things that happened to him were established because he want it. Embracing the hazard, smiling to it, he change it into a contingency, into something that could happen or couldn't happen, if he don't want it. He change the hazard into a contingency – something that may not influence him - and this contingency, because he wanted it, into a necessity – something that is forced to influence him – with this will to power over even the happened, this persistence of the character over even the occurred:

<<And it is all my art and aim, to compose into one and bring together what is fragment and riddle and dreadful chance.

And how could I endure to be a man, if man were not also poet and reader of riddles and the redeemer of chance!

To redeem the past and to transform every “It was” into an “I wanted it thus” - that alone do I call redemption!>>⁵

This willing to want what it was, this redemption of the past. But, how can man want the occurred? Wanting the past as we want, is it possible? We need to remember here the verses of Pindar:

<<Creatures of one day! What is everyone?

What is not? Man is the dream of a shadow>> ⁶

Remembering the fleeting pleasure of the Olympic athlete, Pindar reminds us our despair to project all the things that we want to be and what we really are: a projection to become the winner, the successful, the good, the holy in the looser, the unsuccessful, the bad and the evil. Man is always dreaming about the shadow of his ideals, of that shadow that covers everything but no one can touch it. Is the problem of the idealism always beyond the human, like a big shadow in the afternoon: the ideal is in us but escapes from us, is impossible to reach.

But the ideals are also projected to the past, to the happened: “What was everyone? What has not been? Man is the dream of a shadow”. This shadow in the morning this interpretation of the last night in the sunrise, this projection of the ideals in the past, this attempt to shape the past with the form of our ideal. Living in the morning with the mind putted in the night and living in the afternoon with the mind putted in the incoming night.

Who's the human that will live in the noon with the mind putted in the noon? The will can only work projected to the future in a relation with an ideal of the incoming, and can only work projected to the past in a relation with an ideal of the happened. But, can the will operate without ideal?

<<But now learn this as well: The will itself is still a prisoner.

Willing liberates: but what is it that fastens in fetters even the liberator?

“It was”: that is what the will's teeth-gnashing and most lonely affliction is called.

Powerless against that which has been done, the will is an angry spectator of all things past.

The will cannot will backwards; that it cannot break time and time's desire – that is the will's most lonely affliction.

Willing liberates: what does willing itself devise to free itself from its affliction and the mock at its dungeon?>>⁷

Can the will work without the shadow of an ideal? Can the will work without a goal? Can the will work in the noon?

<<And this is the great noontide: it is when man stands at the middle of his course between animal and Overman and celebrates his journey to the evening as his highest hope: for it is journey to a new morning.

Then man, going under, will bless himself; for he will be going over to Overman; and the sun of his knowledge will stand at noontide.

“All gods are dead: now we want the Overman to live” - let this be our last will one day at the great noontide! - >>⁸

All the gods are dead, all the ideals should be over, it's noon time: shouldn't be any shadow. With the idealism one behave with his character putted in an ideal that is behind him – in the past, like the Christian values – or in front of him – in the future, like the socialist utopia – so the character is always related to a pathos that is in the past or in the present, but never related to a pathos of the moment, of the noon. In the midday is when the child in that room and the human that is in the way to overcome himself are governed by his own will to power, this will to take control of my will directed to me, not to an ideal. Governed through me not through the shadow of an ideal. This persisting in the character – the ethos - of the moment in which I'm living, of the exactly pathos in which my actual ethos is performed. The will can only take control of the things that are happening in the noon, now. The will to power couldn't take control of an ideal putted on the past, because can't touch it, and couldn't take control of an ideal putted in the future, because can't smell it. The only way to take control of all over the eternity, of all over the happened and of all over that will happen is take control now. Controlling my present I'll control my past and I'll project my controlled creation to the nearly future.

<<Zarathustra is more truthful that any other thinker. His doctrine, and his alone, posits truthfulness as the highest virtue; this means the opposite of the cowardice of the “idealist” who flees from reality […] >>⁹

The idealist, to escape from this will that wants to control him – that is his own will -, hides himself in an ideal projected to the past or to the future. But, was the child willing backwards? Was trying to change his past changing the hazard into a necessity? Simply: no. All the things that can happen to a human happens in his character through the pathos and he was taking control over himself, over his character. He his not searching the shadow of an ideality projected from one supposed reality, he wants to create his own reality without the shadow of the ideal. Searching and taking control over the thing (res) – the suffering, the hazard - that conforms and performs, after controlling it, his own character as a master of his own universe; a changing world that never will project the same shadow, the same ideal. An universe subject to the noon of the hazard turned into necessity because “he want it in that way”.

Then, the way of the amor fati, affirms the life of that child making him smile. Is the way between the nihilism of the fatal determinism and the nihilism of the free will: our willing and our body are tied to some determinations but, even so, we can be autonomous, we can be creative, we can smile, we aren't fatally determined. The will is an illusion when she goes more far than this moment and the will is tied to the limits of our body and, further on, to the limits of the nature itself. The problem is not in the first determination: we can have a powerful will concentrating it at the noon, at the concrete moment. Forgetting the abstract and the ideal.

The thing that Rée and Schopenhauer don't want to embrace is the limitations of our will into the determinations of our body and the limitations of the nature as a source of autonomy: Rée pointed the determination but, because he don't embrace it, he couldn't approach more to that determination and see that is the source of the autonomous man. Taking distance from the determination he's not able to see how the will can operate over the man and over his character. Schopenhauer see the autonomy in this will to life that will overcome the determination, not in the determination itself. Not accepting the given, the happened, their positions goes into the sadness: the impossibility to change the determination in Rée and the meaningless of a will that, even if its impulse to live, will push me with my determinations into the death.

Is in this point when the amor fati of Nietzsche becomes a thought for strong and for weakened. Who wants to say yes to his sickness? Who wants to see in his sickness a new noon, a brilliant light to shine from oneself? The strong weakened: Nietzsche, that child, my room mate in the hospital. One can see a spark of autonomy in the middle of the determinations when feel how the will works in the limits of the happened. Is a matter of psychological position: one can embrace the sickness and become creative through the control of his character - become the master of the situation - or one can deny the sickness and behave with a character that belongs to an ideal environment - being the slave of an illusion: he without sickness -.

Embracing our destiny, our sickness, all that things that seem that happens with no sense, that seems that happens randomly, we can become creative in the middle of the destiny, because accepting it, we can control it. I'll explain how I understand this mechanism of affirmation of the fate, how through the determination of the happened one can become creative:

All the fate, all the things that seemed to us an hazard, creates in us some suffering, some πάθος. This suffering generates in us an apprehension, an αίσθάνομαι (aisthanomai, perceiving through the senses). This apprehension of the suffering is received in our concrete ἦθος (ethos), in the character of the moment of the happened – no the character in an ideal moment – is in this moment when, embracing the suffering created through the fate we can convert the hazard in contingent with our character willing to be more powerful than the suffering, teaching it how to behave. The character transforms the hazard, the determination, in contingency – the hazard may not hit us - because he wants it, because he wants to take control over the situation. And the character, letting affect by the contingency, transform also his way to feel and, with new eyes, can interpret the happened in a new way: through αίσθητικός (aisthetikós), through the aesthetic, the sensitive. This aesthetic interprets all the suffered in the happened and establish it like a necessity: the contingency now takes the form of the necessity. The child, wants the fate necessary because is all that explain his actual character – his actual character is formed through the reception of the pain created by this hazard – expressed through this aesthetic movement to change the fate in necessity. One can say that, expressed through the aesthetic output, the ancient happened, the actual necessity, forms part of the new character.

But, all this hugging of the necessity, it's only for change the character? Not at all. In the light of the noon, all the idols are died, there aren't no idols in the world of the midday. Hugging the amor fati and the will to power that support it we killed all the ideals from the past, the future and even the present. We killed the world where we were always living. Which world we should receive with all this blood?

<<We have done away with the true world: what world is left over? The apparent one, maybe? … But no! Along with the true world, we have also done away with the apparent!

(Midday; moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; high point of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA)>>¹⁰

The apparent world was the shadow of the true one. With the disappearance of the true world, with the disappearance of that ideal, the apparent – the shadow of the shadow- world disappears also. The amor fati destroy the ideality and put in front of our nose the crude reality. The task of the child, of the Overman is to built his own world through his own reality. Creation from the necessity, from the limitation of the res. The unlimited creation of the ideal, the creation in the air, that castles are been collapsed.

The world of my room mate in the hospital and the world of the Overman is the world created from the sharp soil of the necessity, the relation between the human and the world without ideals is the relation between the hazard, the reaction in the character and the accommodation of this sensible input into an aesthetic output that creates the necessity. The relation between the world and the man is through the art: the human creates his new necessary world, conditioned to his character, with the aesthetic output. This creation from the determination, this transforming of the “was” in “I wanted like this”, this newborn world also hosts the immoralism of Nietzsche. Of course, if my new world in which I'm the boss is created through determined sufferings and the assimilation of them, only the people that lived the same can enter in my world and understand it, can reach the same character that supports my ethical view of the necessity. The question of if is it possible a society with this conception of the world only rises if we forgot that we're talking about my room mate and about the Overman, not about me and the lower man. We're talking about the own world of the artist, of the poet, of the child.

An emptiness covered the room when I came back from my operation: his body put the final limit to the will. He defeated in front of the chemotherapy. My teeth started to gnash. Where was the hug of the fate, of the destiny, there? Another time: all this suffering, for what?

<<The greatest weight: What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"

Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine." If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, "Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?" would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?>>¹¹

Who wants to live one time and another the sickness, the death of his room mate, the death of his grandmother? The same asphyxia, the same sense of powerlessness to the hazard. Who is so psychologically strong to live his life one time and another? Who wants to walk through the same pathos that construct his ethos in that moment or this pathos that is constructing my ethos in this moment? The eternal recurrence of the same is only desirable for those who are so brave and strong to accept the amor fati, to see all his past as a construction of his will in the ancient present. To accept that all the suffer in their lives are, at the same moment, the raw material that construct their character. The raw material from which they develop their own universe: aesthetically and ethically. Saying “yes” to my life is saying “yes” to all the things that happened to me as a necessity, as a strictly necessary to construct who I am now. Even more, If I accept myself as I am, I need to accept all the suffer, and all the pleasure also, that construct my character in some moment.

Accept the material with which is constructed my building as a necessity, more than contingency, more than hazard; accept the soil in which my roots are planted. Without that telluric support my current self disappears, he is what he is due to its construction from the pathos. If I see all the pathos as a necessity that construct my character, I shouldn't have problems to repeated one time and another if I really accept myself, my character, my world. Then, if I accept myself I should know that this entails accepting all the suffering that created my character. If I accept myself in that way, I will say “yes” to that angel. The demon is only for those who don't see the connection between their suffering and their self, their character, for those who deny the life – and his deeply pain – putting themselves in an ideal world where the suffering can be erased and the character can be constructed far away from the pathos. For those who are living the dream of a shadow.

Saying “yes” to the life is saying “yes” to all the pathos but also to all the newborn world that we create to express that pathos, to all the art that the child create to control his noon: to all the new art and new values that this world entails. We can understand the relation between the life and the amor fati as a creation of and art work, as a result of the aesthetically output.

Why all the suffering of my room mate? All of this, for what? To create, to become gods in the middle of the determination, to have the possibility to create new worlds and control them through us, to create an art work with our lives and smile at it, to create a life that should be hung in the wall of a museum. The life as a construction of ourselves, as an autonomous activity in the midst of such determinism. The child become an artist, the Overman become a poet. Creators of his own world. Accepting the limits, hugging them and creating through them. I heard sometimes that Nietzsche is a nihilist, that is a pessimist: is from the mouth of them who confuse the destruction – basic for the construction – as a nihilism and the acceptation of the limits – basic for the creation through them – as a pessimism. I only can see in his pages a sick man that need to dance and to smile, a room mate that want to smile at the white walls, an optimist that see in those walls the limited soil to construct himself and his world.

The hug of this amor fati can be seen properly in the figure of Odysseus. The travel around the world trying to reach Ithaca change his world view and he become the master of his own universe, loving the happened because without this he never will have seen himself. This hugging of his own life. Not as Ulysses. He, in the river of the Styx become resented of his own life and regret his life as a hero. Is the vision of that who regret his character that create his world, his situation, through the way to connect the ethos and the world: the aesthetics. Is the vision of that who don't want to live in the noon: don't want to live in his constantly changing world that change his character and in which the actions of the morning must be understood through the pathos and the ethos of the morning. The resentment rises when the human look at the world created by him through the ethos of an ancient pathos. The Overman hug the deed even if it contradicts his actual ethos because without this contradiction he'll never exist as he is. Understanding the life as an unfinished art work that is in constant process, as a constant creation, in which the will need to concentrate in the creative moment to continue growing up the castle from the ground. This don't exclude the project, the building plans. In the Overman, the moment, as a moment that will be repeated one time and another, in one life and another, need to reach the perfection in line with the character of that moment. Every ancient deed, as beloved for all the eternity, shouldn't be denied by the character of another moment. The plans of the building are this wanting to eternize the moment to create the action that will be repeated one time and another, the best action possible for the character of that moment. Creating, in every action, the best life possible. This life that want to be repeated one time and another. Is not a project for humans, is a project for the Overman.

Inherent to the creation of this life is the creation of the world associated to it. This creation of the world in which the creator is the master. An example of this creation, managed through the aesthetic output, can bee seen in the art work of the Icelandic visual artist Eggert Pétursson¹². In his paints he keep the passion that he receives from the determination of the Icelandic flora, digest it in his stomach, in his character, and push it away through the aesthetic output, creating a new pathos. A new necessity. Limited by the elements and the chance he can be autonomous, create a contingency from the hazard environment – he decided to be influenced by that incoming pathos – and he transform this contingency into a necessity through the aesthetic output. Now, the world that was unknown and hazard, now is his world. His can embrace his own world as a necessity as the thing created by him and that at the same time explain his own character. He, as a master of his own world, can develop himself in his own world. And, the others, who never felt the same pathos that Eggert, need to interpret his art work: those who pass through the same passion stand in front of the pain with the overwhelming feeling of “how can he felt the same like me?” and those who are far from the passion that starts the creation will behave as an hermeneutic, discussing and talking about it, but never reaching the experience that starts everything.

The life of my room mate hanging in the wall of a museum. The artist, the idolatrous of the mouth-opened and the hermeneutic chatterbox. A life that embraced the amor fati, that wanted to be eternally repeated, that created his own world. The demon turned into an angel. “I want to live the same life” said the idolatrous. “It must understood as a joke, a product of an immature... saying “yes” to the cancer, fool stuff!” said the hermeneutic chatterbox. How easy is following into the disappearance of the self into the idolatry or the denying of the greatest art of work from the envy of the hermeneutic. How difficult is create our own world, our own life, being the master of it. At least the art give us the possibility to create a world in which we are the creators, the gods, the master. How difficult is to be oneself, the master, the god, going far beyond from the canvas, taking our life as a canvas. How difficult and painful are the ways of that child and the Overman for who wants to take this ways. Is it possible for me to take this – not their - ways? I can supported it? Looking at the art work hanging in the white wall from the inside of the niveous blankets in my bed I realize what I wouldn't be: an idolatrous or an hermeneutic envious.

1Ivan Redondo Orta, from his article “Care of himself and hellenic philosophers” in his web-page “Philosophical Psychology and potential of the change”: http://blogs.uab.cat/ivanredondo/ Translated into English by me.

2This paragraph from the chapter “Economy”is written on a paper hanging on my door. I can't find the exact page where I found it.

3“On truth and lies in a nonmoral sense (1873)”, Nietzsche

4 “Ecce Homo”, Why I am so clever, § 10; Nietzsche.

5“Thus spoke Zarathustra”, Part II, Of Redemption; Nietzsche

6 Excerpt of “Pythian” from Pindar

7“Thus spoke Zarathustra”, On Redemption; Nietzsche

8“Thus spoke Zarathustra”, Of the Bestowing Virtue, 3; Nietzsche.

9“Ecce Homo”, Why I am a destiny, §3; Nietzsche

10“Twilight of the idols”, How the “True World” finally became a fiction, §6; Nietzsche

11“Gay science”, Book Four, §341; Nietzsche

12You can see his paints in this web site: http://www.eggertpetursson.is/