Nov 28, 2011

by Carl Safina.



"an individual isn’t as distinct an entity as it seems. No life is an island. We, the living, must be continually plugged into flowing energy and flowing materials. Animals such as we are like bonfires. Stop providing energy and material (food, fluid, and air), and we not only go out, we cease to exist. We’re not like a motor or computer that can be restarted. We’re much more networked, much more fragile, more ephemeral.
The biophysicist Harold Morowitz questions whether individuals are even real, “because they do not exist per se but only as local perturbations in this universal energy flow.” He uses the analogy of a whirlpool in a river. The whirlpool does not exist as a separate entity; rather, it is made of an ever-changing collection of water molecules, facilitated by the energy of moving water. “It exists only because of the flow of water through the stream. If the flow ceases the vortex disappears,” he says. In the same sense, living things like Red-wings and you and me “are transient, unstable entities with constantly changing molecules dependent on a constant flow of energy to maintain form.” You don’t just go with the flow—you live by it. The loss of the inbound flow is death. Death is merely life unplugged.

While an individual is a real entity in some meaningful ways, blurring the edges of our sense of self gives a more accurate picture. We’re less like crisp photographs and more like impressionist paintings. Our material makeup is constantly changing. We are made individuals by our genes— which make us each a bit different—and by our unique actions, memories, and histories. But our histories are largely shared. All the creation myths that intuit a single origin for people are essentially correct. All life is of the same kind: a DNA framework and its consequent window dressing. There is one tree, one family of life, no other.


Albert Einstein went further, saying, “A human being is part of the whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison.”


If you still believe you are distinct from your surroundings, try reading the next three pages while holding your breath. The point is: you are not just an entity; you are an interchange.

A living thing is a knot of passing time, flowing material, and continuous energy. From dust, air, and water, energy assembles itself into the wood, leaves, bone, and muscle that we recognize as living. All lives depend on how energy pushes matter through plants and animals. Often the matter, like carbon, nitrogen, and water, cycles from one living thing to the next through the whole community. We are these dynamic processes in relationship to one another. We are a relationship to the world.


Ecology—the term was coined by the German Zoologist Ernst Haeckel in 1866 from the Greek word for household—blurred the individual further. Ecology investigates how all living things depend on other living things, and on that flow of energy and materials. Ecology reveals a world where each individual seed, each creature, is an experiment, testing the waters with its own uniqueness, striving for a fit. But the chances of surviving to adulthood range from under 10 percent—for most mammals and birds with highly developed parental care—to as low as one in millions, for example for big fish that lay immense numbers of eggs.


How can so harsh a world brim with life? The whole thing works because nature preserves not individuals but the enterprise by which life struggles to survive and adapts to changes. In other words, individuals disappear, species disappear; what survives is the process. The living enterprise continues because the process continues. To keep life alive, what’s important is this: preserve the process. Ethics that focus on human interactions, morals that focus on humanity’s relationship to a Creator, fall short of these things we’ve learned. They fail to encompass the big take-home message, so far, of a century and a half of biology and ecology: life is—more than anything else—a process; it creates, and depends on, relationships among energy, land, water, air, time, and various living things. It’s not just about human-to-human interaction; it’s not just about spiritual interaction. It’s about all interac tion. We’re bound with the rest of life in a network, a network including not just all living things but the energy and nonliving matter that flows through the living, making and keeping all of us alive as we make it alive. We can keep debating ideologies and sending entreaties toward heaven. But unless we embrace the fuller reality we’re in—and reality’s implications—we’ll face big problems."




Wrote by Carl Safina in The View from the Lazy Point








Nov 22, 2011

Huge mistake.

What to do when you do a huge mistake? God, it's difficult to even accept you've done it! It's your fault and you know it. There is no one else to blame but you. You apologize and try to make it right. Will it be enough?

So many things happening and you don't know where to start. So many questions you don't know the answer and you don't know which ones to ask. So many doubts in your head and you don't know where your head is anymore.

You go in, out, above and under, through it and beside it and never seems to be the end (new beginning) of it.


What to do when you are alone and everybody is staring at you?
Close your eyes. You breath very deep. You open your eyes. Everything is the same. the same people staring at you with the same look. Expectations are still high, just where they were when you first left them. And you? You still the same. That moment when you dug into yourself with that deep breath, didn't change a thing. Unfortunately, people still stare at you and stare at them back. The atmosphere is breath taking. They are watching every eye blink you do. They are counting every breath you take or every nervous hand squeeze you do. A sweat drop starts falling off your forehead. It burns you and it freezes you with every millimeter it travels all the way near to your cheek. You try to get rid of it, but the crow is watching. They are looking at you and you just stand there. Suddenly, with calm yet as fast as you can, you swipe that drop off your face! And that's when all of those people change the look on their faces. You feel desperate because you can't move anymore. that fast movement took all of your energy, and it blew up everything! Now the people are staring at you with killing eyes, blaming looks, and don't even know the struggle you are into. They don't know anything. They just know your name, and for them, that's all they need. Your name. They will never forget. You have been marked with their idea of who you are. They didn't even let you try. Or maybe they did and you were frozen to death with the crow surrounding you. That's when you realize that you should had moved at the beginning. That you should had act to actually justify all of those looks the people were giving to you. That you should had done something. That you should had walk away. That you should screamed out loud "This is me! Beware!".
All of those ideas that now cross into your mind, should came up sooner. But no. They have a certain time to appear. They are called "What if"'s. They only come when you are down, and desperate, and when you don't see a way out from that whole you just dug.

What if.
What if
What if
What if

This is up to you. This is the moment when you came down to earth from that cloud of yours, where you used to stare at other people to. Just watching and judging. You now start to think what to do next. You don't want to move! You don't even want to breathe! You just want to wake up from that (un)reality and move on! Like nothing ever happened. How to do that? You are completely screwed up, seriously damage from that sweat drop scene, that you don't want to feel nothing ever again.

You want to go back. You want to stay. You want to live. You want to vanish.
Questions.
Life is this. Life is what you make of it. Life is hard as a diamond and beautiful ans one too.
You want to change. You don't want to stay. You want to find love and passion.


I know where they are. Now please crowd, would you let me go get them?







Nov 20, 2011

by Gia Marie Carangi.



Life and death. Energy and peace. If i stop today it was still worth it. Even the terrible mistakes that I've made and would have unmade if I could. The pains that have burned me and scared my soul. It was worth it for having been allowed to walked where I've walked, which was to hell on earth, heaven on earth, back again into, under, far in between, through it, in it, and above.

I know. Life is so disappointing. Here you are. You have arrived. You are here. This is your moment. What do you have? You have pain. And when you have everything, what do you have? You have nothing. And when everything is right, everything is wrong. It's disappointing, it's confusing. This is life. What can you do?
Work. You have a gift. Use it. Life? Life will be there later. When you have worked, when you have lived, and you know who you are, life is easier. Work. It's the only answer I know

-
I should have been a Rock-star, but I can't sing.
-

Work now. Live later.


Nov 14, 2011

Good morning everyone.



Hello!
Today it's going to be a great day, I can feel it in my bones!
Later, the german presentation, and I fell confidant (well, kind of. I have my script!--see here)

I woke up with a normal alarm clock sound, but inside I felt a drumming that kept me going. Just see what I mean here. CAN'T HELP IT! This music means so much to me, you couldn't imagine...

Saudade, is a portuguese word. I wouldn't call it a word actually. Its a feeling, a emotion that only the portuguese have. There is no translation in any language. Saudade is completely the opposite os Aspirine (the worldwide word!)
Saudade is what I feel. Saudade is what is fear the most. Saudade makes me stronger. Saudade keeps me going foward.
Photo: Sun setting behind sand dunes

The landscape has a hidden power. Nobody can name it. It's just like Saudade, but in this case, there are no portuguese people that know how to expresses this meaning.


Just wait for me. I'll discover what you are hiding. One day, From Faro to Beijing I will go, and unveil these mysteries that have been following me.
A trip will change everything. I know it.

Wait for it...

It will come...

I will go.

Nov 13, 2011

Writing a Script.

Being in Germany is hard, tough, really rewarding.
Everyday is a challenge. (I've survived one and a half months now!)

What can a Portuguese student do when a presentation is coming, and the student should talk in german?
Well... That's easy. The student should prepare a script. SIMPLE, no?

No... Writing every word you want to say on the presentation is a hard task!
But as I said before, everyday is a challenge. And when you get through that, you get a reward -- experience in the real world!


Keep the good work student ;)

My company:









A Caloira prometeu que um dia há de ser minha,
Quando a festa acabar vai-me levar prá caminha!

Nov 10, 2011

Now I get it.

To do or not to do? I think I got to a answer, or some kind of illumination for this.
Changing my way and choosing a different path. Quit "auto-pilot" and make a risky decision, but the right one (I guess)
Nature, silence, be one, be in tune with our surroundings, and let the rest Pass By.



Most beautiful place on  earth -- Iona Park, Angola.
























Someday, I'll be able to show everyone what the real power of landscape and balance is. Something so deep yet so thin and close of all of us. Try to feel what the balance of life brings to you. Don't close your eyes, just see whats in front of you and embrace the beauty within it.

Nov 3, 2011

Need To Go List.



Bhutan.

Just beautiful.

Pass by.

The question for that answer.

Sometimes I wish to just pass by. If so, I wouldn't have to think about the those ironic answers to the old same and stupid questions, like why, how, who, when...
The idea of just pass by, burst some anger within me, and makes me wonder where can I find that inner peace.
Spite all the tries, I still don't have this figured out.

Meanwhile, I search for a reason to do such search. The human mind plays tricks, and when you may think you've found an answer, it makes you realize that" 's not so simple" and "keep questing".

Whenever...





Just pass by.