Saturday 5 February 2000

Pic of the day: A mild, pleasant, spring-like day. Only traces of snow left. For now.

I looked at my wristwatch as I put the spaghetti in the boiling water. A while later I looked at my watch again. It showed the same. It had stopped, and so recently that I had not suspected anything. Luckily I have a good idea what spaghetti looks like when it is finished. :)

I still look at my wrist now and then to see what time it is, even after I put the watch in my pocket. It has become a kind of reflex. I am sure it was not like that a couple generations ago, when clocks were big and expensive. It makes me ponder (then again, what does not?) and I recognize that we already are sort of cybernetic organisms; and it will just go on that way, I guess.

Already for millenia, at least here up north, people needed clothes to function. Lately we need these watches. Mobile phones are becoming almost as common: I see them on the subway, I see them on the bus etc. There ain't no cure once you've grown used to them. (I have not, yet.) Some people are hard pressed to move out of their door without a Walkman, Discman, MD player or MP3 player. In particular the MP3 players are getting quite small and compact.

Makes me wonder if we soon will have an universal communication unit that we will be wearing always, except perhaps in bed. It should let us make phone calls, listen to music, listen to the radio, read our e-mail for us (and preferably write replies, too). And of course keep us updated on the time and upcoming appointments. Remember to pee at 15:30.

Got an e-mail from my brother (well, actually from his wife) yesterday. They have found some of my old stuff, including stuff I wrote when I was younger. I am very interested in seeing it. Perhaps it can help me understand who I was and how I became the person I am today. Perhaps not, though. I do remember some things from my younger years, and I still am baffled as to how I have become me.

Still, there are certainly memories still hidden. And the further back I go, the darker it becomes, until most of my childhood is just a gaping hole with a few fragments of memories. I'm not sure if it is this way for everyone, or if it is somehow special for me.

Some of my childhood memories are not even memories, just thing other people have told me, typically my parents. For instance they have informed me that I was very fond of girls from early on, and on my best behavior (as fas as my very limited wits allowed) when girls were around. Which was not often. I do however remember (and you can bet nobody would tell me this) that I as a rather small boy saw a naked baby girl and was surprised to see that she lacked the dangly bits. I think I had alreayd been told so, for I was not shocked, but it was more a feeling of "seeing is believing". I don't remember who it was, though. :)

Anyway, I continued to like girls, and later women, though I no longer am curious as to what they look like naked. Hmm. Suffice it to say that the body is not usually what sets a woman apart, in my mind. In fact, some of the most interesting women I have met did not have bodies at all, that I could see.

There are, and have always been, the women of history: From Tamar to Joan of Arc, women who did something unexpected to achieve their goals. Sure, they had bodies at their time, and used them well; but I have never seen them, and frankly it does not make much of a difference.

Now these days there is another group of invisible women I have learned to know, the online ones. Sure, some of the women on the Internet do show pictures of themselves (or at least supposedly so), but others don't. And for most purposes it does not make all that much of a difference. Say I could choose between looking at a webcam showing a pretty young woman typing on her computer keyboard; or I could read what she was typing. Which of the two would be most interesting? Well, I think that's rather obvious. If I wanted to see beauty, I would spill a few drops of oil on the water after it rained.

I remember now that I used to do that when I was a boy. And probably not a very small boy either, if I remember correctly. I would sneak off with a piece of absorbent material dipped in used motor oil, and paint on small bodies of water. The colors were weird and beautiful and I could do this for a long time. OK, it is not quite the same kind of beauty as women. But still, a beauty that stayed with me for all these years. Timeless.