Gracias a la vida

 

And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?---Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground

Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground

Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn’t I better end my “Notes” here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I’ve been writing this story; so it’s hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. 

Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. 

Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do we fuss and fume sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We don’t know what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if our petulant prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of us, for instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of our activity, relax the control and we ... yes, I assure you ... we should be begging to be under control again at once. I know that you will very likely be angry with me for that, and will begin shouting and stamping. Speak for yourself, you will say, and for your miseries in your underground holes, and don’t dare to say all of us—excuse me, gentlemen, I am not justifying myself with that “all of us.” As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what’s more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after all, there is more life in me than in you. Look into it more carefully! Why, we don’t even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at being men—men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea. But enough; I don’t want to write more from “Underground.”

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Desintegration

How is it that wooden floors creak so ordinarily while someone prepares to leave in the rain ? 

Why wouldn’t they? Naturally, the wood doesn't give a flying fuck if she’s walking toward sunshine or a downpour. Neither does the red light at the intersection where she’s getting soaked, trying to get as far from you as possible, as fast as possible.

It has always been this way, and it always will be. Your misery is a private collection, mon ami. It belongs to you alone.

The universe isn't ignoring you; it just very busy expanding, hasn't had time to check notifications since the Big Bang.

But don't worry you’re in the queue. Current wait time: 13.8 billion years.

"Are you fucking serious?" The voice comes from the right side of my brain—my alter ego, waking up. "You stupid fuck, can’t you see this is poetry?"

Settle down, man. Of course I know that. I'm working on the opening for my new story.

"What story?"

The other night, I’m sitting at the bar, trying to develop a situation with a young girl. She’s showing interest—half-drunk, semi-crazy type who doesn't care about tomorrow. Those are the only ones I seem to get these days.

Another girl I know, older and more mature, waits until the young one leaves to take her stool. She looks at me and says, "Don’t you think you’re wasting your time? You should be looking for someone serious. I’ve been watching you, and you look lonely. You look lost."

How about you, then? I ask.

"What do you mean?"

How about the possibility of you being that girlfriend?

"Come on. You know I have a boyfriend. We’re friends, aren't we?"

Sorry. I forgot that almost irrelevant fact.

She stares at me, trying to decide if I’m truly a lost cause or just playing a part. "You’re the biggest cynic I know," she finally says.

I think to myself: How is it that every girl I like has a boyfriend? How is it that none of them see a possibility in me—for something, for anything?

Silence. 

No response. Just the echo of the wooden floor creaking ordinarily as she stands up and leaves the bar.

 I almost forgot. 

This is how things are, how they’ve been, and how they will always be. 

 You should be realistic, maybe even grateful for what you’ve got, I tell myself.  Everything ends eventually, so what’s the meaning of any of it?

"You must be kidding me," the Alter Ego snaps. "Haven’t we been over this a thousand times? You’re still blabbering about the 'meaning of life'? Let it go."

"The left side of my brain is starting to ache."

"Haven’t we already concluded there is no meaning? And doesn't that fact give you a freedom of enormous proportions? Possibly universe-wide freedom?"

Settle down, I tell him. I get it. I’m just trying to figure out how the story ends.

"What story? I see no story here. Just endless rambling. Me, me, me. 'My brain hurts.'"

Silence.

Did you hear that NASA shut off the instruments on Voyager1 ? They’re trying to keep it running after 49 years. The motherfucker has already left solar system; now it’s condemned to wander the universe forever. Eternity. Can you imagine that?

"Could not care less," Alter Ego replies.

Silence.

Do you know that if you fall into a black hole, you disintegrate down to the tiniest particle? The only way to recover anything is to travel faster than light, which we know is impossible. You’re really gone. Fully and completely.

"Great," he says. "Put it in your will that you want to be buried in a black hole. It’ll make the world a better place—maybe even the whole universe."

I have to admit, I don’t always dig your point of view, but I like your sense of humor.

Silence.

Disintegration. Absolute disintegration.

So that not even a mention of beauty remains.

And more, much more.

Quantum Mechanic and Sexual Encounters of Extraordinary Kind

An extraordinary event is one with a very low probability of happening, yet capable of producing enormous consequences — the kind Nassim Taleb would call a black swan.

For the purpose of this text, let’s define a “sexual encounter of the extraordinary kind” as one with a probability of less than 1%.

Picture this: it’s a Saturday night. You walk into a bar and spot a stunningly attractive woman — the kind who radiates confidence, mystery, and absolute unattainability. You know, instinctively, she’s two leagues above you. The odds of even a conversation, let alone a sexual encounter, are so microscopic that you don’t even bother trying.

And that, my friend, is where quantum mechanics enters the picture.

---

What Is Quantum Mechanics?

It’s the branch of physics that governs the strange behavior of matter and energy at unimaginably small scales — where the rules of classical physics simply break down.

Some of its key concepts include:

• Wave–particle duality: everything behaves both as a particle and a wave.

• Superposition: a quantum system can exist in multiple states simultaneously — until observed.

• Entanglement: two particles can be mysteriously linked so that the state of one instantly affects the other, no matter the distance between them.

Quantum mechanics is astonishingly precise when it comes to predicting experimental outcomes, but deeply confusing when it comes to interpreting what’s actually happening in reality. To make sense of it, physicists have proposed various interpretations — attempts to bridge the gap between cold mathematics and our everyday intuition.

One of these is the Many-Worlds Interpretation, which proposes that all possible outcomes of quantum events actually occur — each in its own parallel universe.

---

The Quantum Bar Scenario

Let’s say the probability of having that improbable sexual encounter is exactly 1%. Now imagine a multiverse with 100 parallel universes (a gross oversimplification — physicists suspect the number might be infinite).

Statistically, that means there’s one universe where the encounter actually happens. One universe where you get lucky.

Amazing, right?

But wait — quantum mechanics has another trick: entanglement. If your different selves across those 100 universes are somehow linked, then perhaps some faint echo of that encounter resonates across all realities. Maybe, on some subtle level, all your other selves feel a trace of it.

Now it gets even stranger.

---

The Houston Street Problem

Let’s say after having a sleepless night and multiple sex acts with that gorgeous girl in your lucky universe, on your way home early Sunday morning, the car hits you on Houston Street. Fatal.

Do you cease to exist only in that one universe, or in all 100?

If the probability of the accident was 3%, does that mean you die in three universes — each in its own slightly different way? And what happens to the remaining 97 versions of you — do they feel a ghostly echo of that death through quantum entanglement?

Thinking about it too long could drive anyone insane.

---

The Lottery Multiverse

To make peace with this madness, let’s try a happier example.

Suppose there’s a one-in-a-million chance of winning this month’s record-breaking $500 million lottery. Let’s say our multiverse contains a million parallel universes. Statistically, in one of them, you hit the jackpot.

Now you’re rich. You buy a Maserati, a Soho penthouse, a $250K watch, and the latest Dolce & Gabbana everything. Then, naturally, you head to the same bar, park your Maserati right in front of the door, and casually stroll inside, admiring your 250K watch.

There she is again, the same girl but this time the odds have shifted. Now the probability of an “extraordinary encounter” is at least 90%.

Let’s do the math: in 900,000 universes, that encounter now happens.

At that point, who cares about entanglement? Who cares about dying on Houston Street? Who could possibly care about anything after having their mind blown in 900,000 universes simultaneously?

The possibilities of the quantum world are endless — infinite.

So I ask: Where is the door, and how do I cross?

Gracias a la vida

About a year ago I met this girl. I thought she was a beautiful human being.

Number of years have passed since I met someone I liked that much.
She liked me the least of all those girls that did not like me . As a matter of fact I think she did not like me at all.
What irony !

Who is writing these scripts , a cynical God or the Devil himself ? A simulation game perhaps?
No , not really just kidding.
Only real life , full of mismatches , delusions and compromises in complete display.
An ordinary existence , everything to be said can be captured in few lines , not the material for the cheesy Hollywood script or cheap sappy novel.

The early morning sun beams through the window . Drinking my first coffee, listening to the podcast.
Sleep is so elusive these days.
It seems it is going to be a beautiful day .
AI holds the power to profoundly and transformatively benefit humanity, AI guru on the podcast claims.
I feel nothing, just emptiness .

Welcome, my old friend !

EPITAF

Happens to the Heart

I was always workin' steady but I never called it art

I got my shit together meeting Christ and reading Marx

It failed my little fire but it spread a dying spark

Go tell the young Messiah what happens to the heart

There's a mist of summer kisses where I tried to double park

The rivalry was viscious, the women were in charge

It was nothing, it was business, but it left an ugly mark

I've come here to revisit what happens to the heart

I was selling holy trinkets, I was dressing kind of sharp

I let pussy in the kitchen and a panther in the yard

In the prison of the gifted I was friendly with the guards

So I never had to witness what happens to the heart

I shoulda seen it coming, after all I knew the chart

Just to look at her was trouble, it was trouble from the start

Sure we played a stunning couple, but I never liked the part

It ain't pretty, it ain't subtle, what happens to the heart

Now the angel's got a fiddle, the devil's got a harp

Every soul is like a minnow, every mind is like a shark

May have broken every window, but the house

The house is dark, I care but very little

What happens to the heart

Then I studied with this beggar, he was filthy, he was scarred

By the claws of many women he had failed to disregard

No fable here, no lesson, so singing meadowlark

Just a filthy beggar guessing what happens to the heart

I was always workin' steady, but I never called it art

It was just some old convention like the horse before the cart

I had no trouble betting on the flood against the Ark

You see, I knew about the ending, what happens to the heart

I was handy with a rifle, my father's 303

I fought for something final, not the right to disagree

Leonard Cohen