Sunday 13 February 2000

Pic of the day: I ventured outdoors today and took this picture from just beside the road. Such is nature around here, that often you can take a few steps from the road and you seem to be in another place and another time.

Well, I do like to live here. "Here" being on the very fringes of suburbia, where the commuters' houses are scattered along the winding roads and surrounded by primordial wilderness. It is easily the best place I have lived since I left my parents' farm decades ago.

Even there, the wilderness was never far away. A good stone throw from the house was the fence that separated the farm from the forest. My grandfather, my mother's father, had started out with a piece of forest and marsh much like that. With his own hands, and a horse, and a wife (ahem), he cleared the rubble and built a home and a farm. Bit by bit the farm grew, even into my own childhood. I remember a new field being cleared: A big stone was shot to pieces with dynamite, large roots were pulled out of the earth. Hard work changed the wilderness to cultivated land. An improvement, we all thought.

There is a story, about a farmer who boasted of his what he had achieved. The local priest mildly corrected him: "You and God have done." "Well, you should have seen how it looked when God was running it alone."

These days it is politically correct to appreciate wilderness. I don't say anything against that. There is a lot of beauty in nature. Then again, there is a lot of beauty in culture too, if you but have eyes to see it. I guess there must be a balance to all things. I pity the many millions who live in man-made deserts of stone and steel and tarmac, where the air is filled with dust and smoke and the roar of traffic and the buzz of voices never cease. I do not sleep well in cities. I would rather hear the distant rush of wind through the branches and the tweeting of birds. (Though some of those winged menaces perfectly emulate the sound of a digital beeper, and turn the volume way up load outside the window early in the morning. Luckily they spend the winter somewhere else.)

So, I'd like to stay here. This, however, depends on exactly how greedy the landlord has become. As of April, we shall have to negotiate the rent again. It has been moderate, but not strikingly cheap. If the guy has lost contact with reality alltogether, I shall have to move elsewhere for a while. Until he has had some months with tenants who don't pay at all, who throw wild parties and leave rotting food around while they disappear without notice. This is the second time I live here, and it has taken him more than a decade to forget the previous rapid succession of tenants. I suppose I might drop by after a while and negotiate the prices again...

But I hate the hassle and cost of moving. And I have a lot more stuff to move this time. I guess I could throw away some of it, but I hate to throw away stuff. You never know when you may need the complete 1983 collection of Byte Magazine. Or a loudspeaker from the early seventies, in almost working order...

What I need is not a larger apartment, but a warehouse. No need for artificial heating and stuff - just concrete floor, watertight walls and roof. Most of the things I own would go there; a few would go into the living space: Some pieces of furniture, the new stereo, the portable computer and a handful of CDs. And then the cycle would start anew...

And of course there is the lifestyle change exhaustion syndrome. I think it could have been Alvin Toffler who first made me aware of this; the guy with the "future shock" books. Basically, whenever we meet something unfamiliar, there is an "orientation reaction", a microstress. Our brain needs to devote resources to the new thing immediately, in case it be a threat. Some people need a certain minimum of this to thrive, but too much of a good thing ...

The interesting thing was that a continuous series of orientation reactions would occur not only in threatening situations. The reaction is a reflex and will occur even in situations we have chosen ourselves. Moving, getting a new job, marrying, having children. And of course the less happy circumstances: Death or severe illness in the family, loss of job, breakup. While these are considered much more stressful, an objective measurement shows that their happy counterparts are almost as likely to elevate the risk of heart attack and similar stress related problems.

Intriguingly, the best way to cope with O.R. overflow may be sleep, more exactly dream sleep (REM). It seems that this part of the sleep processes new information and integrates it with the old. So I guess if I moved, I would have to sleep a couple hours more each night (or even better, day) until my brain had readjusted its mental images. Now how would I find time for that? :)