no, here there are no ambitions to become the president of any nation. still i am starting to deal with the reality that i am the president in a few little things that i do. actually i have surprised myself with the ease that spontaneously came over me in deciding to let out a press release to the local media.
between tuesday and wednesday, during a period of 48 hours, i got 4 hours of sleep, and yesterday evening, my face did not show any signs of the abuse, but today my whole body is telling me that i have over done it. i will never understand my face, and my body tends to keep me honest.
on wednesday my son returned to los angeles after being in good old switzerland for ten weeks. he arrived safely. to date, this was the hardest separation i have had from him, and we have had a few rough ones, especially when he was in boarding school, and hated me for leaving him there. this one was emotionally taxing on me. he is a lot like me, and then there is a world of difference, he as an individual is a stranger. i had not quite seen this one coming, although it could be that all the signs were there. for the past two weeks the both of us were on edge. i for my part have plenty of issues to keep me on edge, so i was not paying too much attention to the fact that i feel a bit off. i did notice that he was a bit more impatient than usual, but then, being 21 is not always a picnic.
i keep on having a permanent identity crisis, and somehow i feel that this week went to the dogs. i did a few of the things that i needed to do, not all. i had phone conversations that i somehow did not care to have. above all i made one decision, one that will give me something to chew on for the next few months. this thing with entropy sometimes does get me. i do spend a lot of time just containing entropy, and preventing total diffusion, absolute dispersion, and total oblivion. it does bother me that somehow we are never really content! we eat one good meal, and then within hours, we are hungry again... rats! forget the cure for cancer, get me the cure for hunger!
then to add insult to injury, the house keeps on getting in a state of disarray. i take off my clothes, put them on a chair, and then nothing happens, they just stay there. then i wear something else, given my forays into the kitchen, eventually these too get dirty, and join the others on the chair, once again, they stay there, mute, silent, pathetically inactive! could they not get themselves washed and ironed?
but the worse is the kitchen sink! and here we are: the dishes just won't do themselves. why not? forget it, i do not have a dishwasher in this place. remember, this is a pied-à-terre, my office, my atelier, and given that my house is a bit too far for a commute, well, i sleep here most nights. now, am i talking about the blog or the kitchen? go figure, i gave up long long ago.
this is where i drifted off into politics, and ended up posting this in "random democratic parallax"....
i was at an event with one of our federal councilors yesterday and somehow i do not envy the man's job. he has to smile politely and control his mimic while some total retarded swiss democrat goes into xenophobic rhetoric! in contrast, i think my life is a piece of cake compared to the federal councilor's. on leaving the event, i congratulated him on his capable argumentation, and i got a thank you and one of those looks that i could only interpret as "i wish i could just walk away from this one too." but he can not, much is at stake, the swiss are again voting on september 25 on a referendum about this bit of extending the labor market opening to the new EU member states. remember before last may, there were 15, now they added 10. the swiss wrangled this bilateral agreement out of brussels and then, because the swiss are more democratic than the greeks ever dream up of being. a small vociferous polarizing and populist minority can pool together enough signatures to call for a referendum on an issue that could totally throw overboard the bilateral agreements if rejected. it is easy to say no politically, although at the personal level most people only know how to say yes, but then what do you have when the whole construct of bilateralism collapses on itself because... of what?
let me explain this. if the swiss vote NO on the referendum in september, then the EU can, and most likely will, revoke all the dossiers of the bilateral agreement. business will be quick to react, and they will move to the EU as not to have to deal with the burden of all of a sudden having to deal with rules and regulations that increase the cost of operations to the point that the view of the alps, the sparkling water in the lakes, and the chocolate became a luxury that they can not afford. i wonder how fidel castro manages to operate his country in total isolation, but i suspect that soon the swiss government will be paying him a visit, and ask for advice. the almighty knows, they will need it. this is progress in helvetia.
but the week was not over yet. i spent the day meeting a deadline, i do hope the editor appreciates my efforts.
getting back to my life. the weeks with my son were great, still he absorbed more space and time than i seem to have available. i am either getting stingy, or cranky or both, and i am not sure that this is related to old age. i have had a pulled muscle on my left arm for the past three months, and that in itself does make me rather cranky. the dojo in the matte is flooded, i have one less outlet for my frustrations, the punch bag. given that i am a glutton, well no aikido this week either. i think that i am in love, but do not ask with what or whom, however i think it would be wiser to take my temperature.
and then i turn around think of the man with the angel's name, and i know that insanity is my only anchor.
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