On the other hand...

...considering that we are whirling at 67,000 mph through a vast and pretty much empty space, seven billion sixhundredeightythousandeighthundredsixtynine humans on planet Earth is a comforting thought...

My Fall

I don’t know how your fall has been so far, but mine has been exactly that: a deeper than ever tumble into the depths of motherhood...ah, and just as I have sat down here to whine about it all, in comes a phone call from Zoe...and off I go to pick her up because she missed her ride - did I say too much?

Back again... So, on my way back from school, I also picked up Julian’s bike from the shop and a pint of milk from the store since I never leave the house for just one errant - I can’t, I virtually would have to quit eating a sit-down meal all together. As it is, I only have one of those a day anyway.

I have given up on breakfast ever since the daily fights over the bathroom began...I could have changed my routine a gotten up earlier to resolve it, but that would mean earlier nights on the other end and since I only get to see Matt in the evening, I decided to go for plan B...a protein-joghurt shake on the run.

So let’s see what else did I accomplished today...? After a brisk and very wet walk to school, I sold used children’s books at the canteen to raise $$ for the class trip and after 1.5 hours had brought in a whopping 17.00GBP!! When there was no further hope of talking an unsuspecting fellow parent into buying an almost new copy of Winnie the Pooh, I hauled the sad rejects back and decided that maybe class trips are over-rated anyway.

Next was the wash - three loads - the dishes, chili con carne and a futile effort to fix the recessed lighting in the kitchen, which ended up tripping a fuse and subsequently also blowing out the fridge which shrewedly went into defrost mode over the rest of the morning.

Next I wrote on a monologue for yet another fundraiser - this time to restore the clock house - an epic endeavor. But this one should be fun, given that it can’t possibly be any worse than the first one I staged. There came a moment during that performance when I actually thought that to cut my losses, I should just drop the microphone and put the house on the market. That was last month.

Since then, I had the flu, travelled to Lisbon for a reunion where nobody showed up except for Matt, watched the school musical five times in a row (because Zoë, after years of being cast and recast as a Viking, finally scored a female lead), and made lanterns, a dragon head, and seventeen calendars depicting every inch of our existence in order to quench any requests for pictures - forever!

I also made three sour dough Friendship Cakes that nobody wants to eat because they suck (don’t ever get talked into making a cake called Herman!), and nit-checked diligently every Wednesday as ordered by the school nurse...actually I skipped the last two times....

Anyway, my fall has been a blurr of maddening hyper-activity tempered only by a few hours of restless sleep here and there with my face esconded between seven downy purple pillows, that and a walk through the olive garden of São Jorge.

I don’t know where it all will end...it says pride comes before the fall but I wonder what comes after?

Broken Dreams

Our wish for freedom, mobility, opportunity as well as our search for happiness define what we consume from cars to musli and ebooks.

But almost more importantly, they define the well-tuned marketing machinery that fuels our consumption habits. Because virtually anything can be marketed as ticking at least one or two of the boxes.

A car may promise freedom and mobility in one ad and maybe opportunity and happiness in another. And the same is true for most things ranging from soft drinks to life insurances.

Most successful of all, smart phones have quickly become our new best friends because they seemingly tick all the boxes. After all what could be more perfect than a gadget that gives you instant access to virtually unlimited information, entertainment, and people?

Like children in a pink cotton candy world, we are living out our sweetest dreams with the one difference being that we usually pay for them.

But what happens, when they brake, because they usually do. What do we do when the pictures from our Blackberry don’t load onto the iMac, what if the slide show we spent hours on froze and folded? What if that brand new car has a clunky gear shift, or the five star dishwasher is slow? What if the dream we bought doesn’t work?

Usually at that point the nightmare starts. We spend endless hours searching for warranties in old cardboard boxes and browse through endless online chats and waste many agonizing minute explaining in detail the truly frustrating experience to a blatantly indifferent Bangladeshi.

In the end, more often than not, we end up putting more money down to purchase the new and improved version, the upgraded dream, and hope that this time surely it will last....

Mug Shots

When you wonder how and when bankers became bankers, or why some people are just in it for themselves, just think back to your high school class. They were all there then and they haven’t changed: the notorious liers, tricksters, bigots, socio-paths, and...yes, loosers, their mug shots are all neatly lined up in your yearbook and those of your friends. People don’t just change over night even if your average Newborn Christian will swear they have found the light. Well, yes, maybe in their closet.

Too Much of Nothing

We all bemoan the impending death of the bookstore and yet I admit, I haven't supported one lately. For one, the only ones that survive in today’s online ordering business and Kindlemania are either the very specialized ones, the secondhand bargain ones or the nondescript “whatever sells” kind.

When I browse through the titles on the shelves, I can’t help but feel a strong urge to yawn at the sight of yet another teenage fantasy triology, celebrity memoire, ten-steps guide to utmost riches, love, and/or happiness, or else a trite fivehundred page romance novel. Boring!

Where are the witty short stories? Where are the daring one volume only best story ever books? Where is the content? What I see has all been there before.

Authors and their agents apparently have to keep trends and mass tastes in mind because their publishers are struggling to hit their numbers (or so they say).

Some of the best authors probably keep their stuff in the drawer, because the story they tell is a quiet one, one that doesn’t have Hollywood potential. I guess they could always self-publish on line. And there goes the idea of the independent bookshop.

In our village, we have five cafés and ten restaurants. I guess virtual eating hasn’t come en vogue yet.

Chop Chop

Every time I ponder the issue of our explosive population growth, I cannot help but blame virtually all of humanities plagues on it. From poverty and gender inequality to war and genocide, from urban sprawl and globalism to global warming and rising mountains of rubbish.

Resources are being depleted rapidly and our lives are becoming more desperate in a race for the last remaining ones. Anxiety is the widely shared sensation of the twentifirst century whether we are able and willing to admit it or not. We are struggling for our survival like a hoard of newly hatched sea turtles racing to reach the surf before being scooped up and gobbled down by some unknown predator.

Any species will come under pressure when its population reaches a certain size because only the fittest will survive the harsh struggle for scarce goods. Usually it’s the food supply that becomes increasingly limited, consequently leading to rivalry and ultimately starvation of the weakest members.

Sounds familiar? Many parts of the world are experiencing exactly that. And those lucky ones who live in more prosperous and well-managed corners of this planet acknowledge that luck can run out.

Who has not worried about work being taken over by a cheaper foreign competitor, or a university place given to a more industrious student. And so, as we all compete for impressive grades, ever longer CVs and measurable personal achievements in the hope to outcompete those who would like our share of the pie, our life quality in this desirable part of the world begins to sink as well.

Tiger mothers are a good example. Just forty years ago, with three billion fewer people clogging up the system, a book such as Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn for the Tiger Mom,” for example, would have been regarded as the sad testimony to a full blown Angst psychosis instead of ending up on reference bookshelves across the world.

Yet, today we wonder whether she might just be right and even those who question her vindictive methods may consider signing up their children for an after school chess club and music theory tuition. Surely a slight competitive edge wouldn’t hurt, right? After all, what, oh my, will happen to us, once Aids will stop decimating the African subcontinent and China further eases its one-child policy....? So better scamper along little hatchlings as long as you can...

PS Boo!

Over the last days of October, human population on this planet has reached seven billion i.e.7,000,000,000 !! Cities in the ‘developing’ world are bursting out of their seams, with the urban poor living in squalid quarters feeding off the refuse from the more fortunate. Schopenhauer once compared the earth and humanity on it to a churning ball of iron with a cooled crust covered by a growing funghus - us. Boo!