Many broken souls should band together and write a self-help book entitled How To Raise A Gifted Child In A Hick Environment.

I have no conclusive evidence, though it would be rather simple to just put the question to Christian, but I am convinced that in the cesspool that is Cold Brook, New York, he was raised to believe he was a kind of prodigy. I remember snippets of conversations with this cesspool of a man roughly between 2004 and 2006 claiming genius-like abilities and guaranteeing success before the age of forty.

Well, he is forty now.

Heaping praises on children because of yet undeveloped ability is a curse. Expectations pile to form an insurmoutable mound. Most likely, tunelling through it would be more practical. Sluffing off the baggage of youth becomes harder with each passing year. My parents also promised me blinding future success. I was even presented with a plaque (of sorts) by my mother’s best friend that stated Scientest Bob. A portrait of a boy with a bubbling test tube in hand accompanied the declaration. Expectations were built from an early age.

And did I turn out to be some prodigy? No way, vole! Certainly, I chose a different path from most. That fact can be directly attributed to the expectations foisted on me during youth. There was even a time during Middle School when I rejected intellectual progress altogether. I recall telling my brother and my mother in the car on the way to school that I am not bothered by not being as intellectually competent as others. Not in exactly those words, most likely.

Christian took a path somewhere between mine and the one mapped out by his family’s encouragement. He entered the opera world and has worked in a number of places playing insignificant parts in insignificant productions. Nothing has lasted. A series of temporary jobs has been what Christian has waded through. He’s mostly turned to his obscene desire to produce lettuce products for cash. Well, that and borrowing from his family.

I’m going out on a limb here, but I’d suspect he also had the expectations of attaining and keeping any woman he selected. He saw himself as a type of superstar, able to elect as he liked from the seething mass of female-kind. The sting that was Sing dumping him came late in life - at the age of thirty nine. His attitude towards women hasn’t changed, so it was a lesson lost. Or it could be he is set in the ways his family molded him in.

I told him the other day in a message that at this point in my life I am happy to never accomplish any thing in the western sense of the word. I’ve slowly turned to my own hobbies and the satisfaction tiny successes bring. Just solving a difficult problem on 4clojure makes a half an hour / hour / day worth living.

(4clojure)

Small successes. No pressure. No expectations for a grand overture or finale. I like that.

The sound of tape unsticking itself from its roll, being severed by a razor, and then applied to rough cardboard fills the air amid the music of Amarok that spills from my telephone to my right. More and more often, I find myself, during these days bereft of Galictis-Vittata, listening to music in the manner of teens on the metro in Prague. They blast from the tinny speakers of their mobiles crass dance music engineered for precisely that environment.

And I am doing the same now.

The pitiful difference is that what I am listening to, and what I usually listen to, has a dynamic range that prances over the music of those oblivious teens. It prances then tramples their music to mulch. How I wish it would trample the teens, as well! I can see their twisted bodies protruding shards of bone. Their faces are frozen in screams of incomprehension. This mental picture allows me to smile for the seventy-third time today.

I am a happy mustelid.

I increasingly see a gulf between the lifestyles of Marisa and me. The main contention (I call it a contention now, but it is really no more than an observation at this point) is that I am a lazy, easy-going marten who has little to no stress affecting his furry life. Marisa, on the other paw, goes few waking moments without an air of hurry. Time is not her friend. In fact, she is a slave to it.

I refuse to be.

Only predetermined spans during any particular day allow her to relax. During these segments, she disconnects. She is a different person. Besides sleep, which is always something altogether alien to all else, it seems to me that only these two modes exist:

• Hurry hurry run run corre!!!
• Disconnection

The latter can involve trancelike states with either films or a book. I find it hard to imagine her enjoying many acts that give me joy. Take cooking, for example. I have not actually seen her in her day job, but I imagine the atmosphere is pretty much the same. Her preperation of meals is not an art or even a craft. It is a race with the hands of that nefarious clock that hangs on the wall adjacent to the kitchen’s exit into the garden. Every task in state number one is marked by an alarm (silent or not). She is a slave to time.

I ponder, as says my newly created Clojure / lastfm web application, that this vascillation between two poles is normal and I am of the outre.

Bipolar is a frightening status quo.

I don’t like to think of them in this manner, but at times, Marisa’s explanations to me come across as lectures. She was, after all, a teacher at one point in her life. Not only that, but she was a teacher of children. I am certain this sort of profession can skew one’s personal relations for a lifetime.

I don’t like to be lectured.

As Shambal Brambel would say:

I force my veined member into her orifice. She can say no more. Except for shuffling and a slow gurgle, all is quiet.

The Fresneda Family (as is called both the clan and the WhatsApp group) is a stable compoud. The nucleus is the grandparents. According to Marisa, they worked to secure a place (or places - there are two more or less adjacent houses) to which the family, or clan could come congregate. It is a place to be together. It is a place to perpetuate bonds - to wrap and rewire circuits that are not even tattered.

I told Christian the following earlier:

They attempt to keep this cluster of humans tight. Their efforts to integrate me will never be successful, as I am too much of an intrevert and loner, much to many of their chagrins. Some seemed baffled that I was leaving to go visit others during this time.

Even though some (like Alfredo this time round) try to encircle me in conversation, I am still an outsider. He presents topics that he thinks that I will appreciate, from which I could gain knowledge. I listen. I am still an outsider. I mostly just listen. I am not comfortable enough with Spanish to retort or even agree in a scholarly fashion most of the time. I need to choose my words deliberately. This is another reason that I am outside of the circle. The clan.

My best bonding experience in Fresneda was over one and a half years prior, with Ivan. I believe one reason that we bonded was that he is also an outsider. He is the boyfriend of Anna - neice of Marisa. So he is too far from the foci (grandparents). We related almost immediately and created our own mini-clan within and at the sametime apart from the home-clan.

Remember: CLAN GLAND – slant rhymes, and oh so fine. They reverse to relate in a handly slanty fashion, baby.

Considering that I have no idea what will happen at the aeroport on Sunday, I am not very nervous about my impending voyage (doom) to Praha from Madrid. Originally, I thought I’d leave Fresneda tomorrow via bus from Belorado and arrive in Logroño at an unspecified time in the evening. I would then have an evening in the casa in Paseo del Prior alone to collect my rational and recharge my hungry power supply.

At the moment, I am sitting on the bed in Marisa’s room in Fresneda (as opposed to the bed in my old room in the other house that I had grown a bit acusomed to) trying to ignore the people shouting fragments of conversation at each other to and from the upper floor (where I write). We shall embark on a paseo to get away from the closed spaces and multitudinous warm bodies.

At least, that is the relief it will give me.

As the room is being populated by others who must conduct conversations no matter if a proper topic exists or not, I am a bit distracted and shall continue like a proper mustelid later.

I am not Shambal Brambel, but I know him. He is a greasy spic who sleeps on park benches beneath seven month old newspapers. You smell him from several hectometers away. He produces expansive and even at times artistic puddles beneath his place of rest simply by drooling during his slumber.

I plan to kill him. Perhaps I already have and do not remember.

The purpose of this post is to test whether blog_to_mongo.js still works on my new system. If it does not, I shall kill Shambal yet another time. The good thing about immortals is that you may slay them various times, each with pleasure.

During the next few internet blackout days (in Fresneda), I want to rewrite the bulk of martenblog in Clojure. The original was in Clojure using Noir, which has not been maintained in ages.

However, blog_to_mongo.js, if it is still functional, will remain, at the moment, as a script to be executed in Node.

The weeds, as they term them, teem with thriving insects in an ecosphere unknown to neighbouring lots

This could be an analogy of the multiverse concept, but I’ll distill it down to something more simple. Humans, even in the same city, divide themselves into different peergroups. Perhaps peergroups is not the best word here. I’ll go with penguins. So, humans, even in the same city - even in the same barrio, divide themselves into different penguins. These penguins are mostly oblivious of each other. Or, rather, they choose to ignore each other. They are the differing mini-cultures of insects in abstractions of different fields.

I see this breaks down, obviously, when penguins are required to overlap, such as in the workplace, but I’ll ignore that for now. My mind is set on the family clusters especially that I have encountered in Spain such as the one I find myself a part of at the moment. A central hub of this penguin centers on the grandparents. Further out on the spokes are nuclear family. Here the spokes are close. As you move further out from the hub, family and friend groups of this penguin populate spokes, but are further apart. Communication between them is more rare.

Kurt Vonnegut’s folk group discussion in one of his books echoes this. Communities, even in this so-called interconnected world, conform to the 150 person max. After that, things get fuzzy. Family breaks down. The penguin breaks down. At the edge of the wheel, where the spokes are furthest apart, are the stragglers. They are also a part of other wheels. Those further in on the spokes may be, as well, but not THOSE IN THE CENTER.

More later…

An aside - I am on the autobus from Belorado to Logroňo. Eskaton is playing in my ears. They rock. As always, whilst on an autobus, or in any form of transportation alone from one distant (relatively speaking) place to another, I feel a distinct feeling of displacement. The feeling is not negative. It is not even neutral. It is thrilling. No matter the eventual destination, I am thrilled to be on the way from one life (however transient or temporary) to another.

A day has passed and the ecosphere is mown, lost to care and trimming to please surrounding ecospheres that care only for its outward aesthetic.

There comes times when one penguin interferes with another penguin’s way of life enough for a sort of purge to occur. It actually makes me smile when something like this happens, but, sadly, instead of mass bloodshed, it is mostly metaphorical. It takes the form of gossip. A member of one penguin becomes involved in an unsavory manner to one of another penguin. Usually, only the parts of the spokes furthest from the hub are riddled with this, ahem, problem.

In contrast, I am an exception in this regard. Marisa is very close to the hub of her penguin. I am, most possibly, not even of a penguin at all, but one of the rare outsiders. I’m not bragging. I’ve reaped little reward. Basically, I was placed here when Shambal fucked my mother, waited nine months, pulled me uncerimoniously from her womb, set me aside, boiled and ate her, then put me up for adoption. So it goes.

Except for Marisa herself, I am still not really a part of the penguin at all. Her mother, perhaps, is the closest to letting me in. Others are, shall I say, wary. I am an invasive species.

Another aside - There are three girls a few rows up from me taking endless selfies. I want to rip out their entrails and decorate the interior of the autobus with them. Intestines draped over seat after seat! Old women with viscera coloring their hair! Three empty bags of skin flapping out of three smashed windows! A three spleen / three liver artistic hood ornament! This autobus would be the talk of the provence!

The inspiration for this quote, originally, was a walk in the park in Seminole years ago. During those walks, I wrote down many aphorisms I thought appropriate at the time. The tidy lawns, possibly enforced by some absurd city code, inspired both quotes. I imagined the pollution from one insectosphere to another. Mapping this to penguins and humans, Newcomers to the former from foreign penguins surely, especially to the hub, pollute the ecosystem.

You gotta marry within yer own clan, sonny!

After time passes, if the pollution is not expunged, it is accepted. This is a gradual process. I am currently experiencing this process.

So DIE!

Tuesdays come at us from all angles. And by that I mean every angle possible. This includes those angles not able to be perceived by human grumpiness. Truly, Tuesday is a day of change, and, as the omniscient Michal says, every day is Tuesday. Therefore, every day is a day of change and of opportunity. This Tuesday is bright and full of clouds - a good beginning.

If all goes as planned, I leave Fresneda today for home. Currently, as any reader might recall, home is Logroňo. Several things await me in Logroňo. The most important one to me at this moment is my guitar. I shall concentrate on lessons with my guitar. It is my hope that I will transcend other problems that I shan’t mention right now with this concentration.

Music has always been a defining factor in my life. It needs to be back in full force.

Second is study of spanish. El Principito is good reading material. It is within my grasp. I need to proceed through a bit of it every day and accumulate vocabulary and fix proper phrasal construction in my mind. I also have the idea to go to Santos Ochoa and ask for a good Espaňol para Extranjeros book. And / or scour the internet.

Third is a return to creativity in programming. Lua is an interesting language I could replace Ruby with for scripting.

• Reinstall from source.
• Install documentation.
• Rewrite some of my Ruby scripts in Lua.
• Investigate creating Android apps with Lua.
• Recreate the Addition app in Lua.

The ionosphere was not built in a day.

This I know.

I’ve listed aims in journals in the past, mostly in vain. My problem is that I usually lack focus. I drift. Mis pensamientos están desperdigados. Perhaps I take on too much simultaneously. Perhaps I get frustrated and give up too easily. Perhaps I am just a cunt.

What I cannot put in my enumeration because it is overreaching is my relationship with Marisa. I have felt alienated whilst here, but as people disappeared and just a few remained in Fresneda, I felt better and better psychologically. Yesterday was particular telling. Our journey to Pozo Negro was frustrating in the vehicle because the conversations escaped me, for the most part, and, besides, I drifted. The actual time at the pozo was bonding. That is, besides the nasty průjem attack I had! Errrggghh.

She doesn’t want me to leave today. She said it in words, in both English and Spanish but more telling was her face. She was almost pleading. I’ll see her again soon.

I have found a bizarre error in the Martenblog. It is not a, as they say, show-stopping error, but an error nonetheless. The last six or so entries are always rewritten to mongoDB (locally) when I call the aptly named executable blog_to_mongo, which is actually just a link to a node script in a distant directory not covered in my PATH. At first, I put this down to a change of date format in some new(y) version of nodejs - the fs module to be specific. Yes! My fetoid brain insisted that the manner in which mongoDB stored dates was just not compatible with node’s. I even planned, again in my fetoid brain, a manner in which I could easily repair said error. I would convert both to UNIX timestamps before comparison! Yes! In my fetoid brain, this plan had already succeeded, as it was particularly brilliant. Any user of UNIX-like dates would instantly agree. In fact, they’d send me grants in the form of the internal organs of their beloved pets to praise my insight. I’d be held in esteem by my universe-wide collegues for the valid lifetime of UNIX timestamps, which I belive is sometime in 2036, at which point I will be the ruling tyrant of the omnisphere, anyhow.

However.

After a bit of testing, naught came from this fetoidal brain excercise. The dates were being compared correctly. No incompatability existed. My fetoid brain was crushed. I am crushed. I lie on the lawn now with my fetoid brain weeping from my aural orifi.

Fuck um.

Marisa is mopping up un monton de agua whilst talking to herself. Her father and a number of other locals were standing near the door to the building and since she is technically not supposed to be in my room with me - or rather, her father may flip (her opinion - not proven to me). My room in fresneda is as such:

Note: I don’t have the patience to get bluetooth working on galictis-vittata, so the photo will be added later.

My semi-crisis from earlier has passed to an extent. I do not feel any particular alienation at the moment. I am, however, sitting alone in my house on my bed writing, so this could contribute to my positive state of mind.

Whilst I am here, what I look forward to the most each day are two things:

• Mine and Marisa’s very long and often semi-strenuous paseos around this less than lively little village.

• Getting back to my bed after a long night of trying to understand the crisscrossing conversation of her family so I can read something calming then fall to slumber.

Today’s paseo was up a long, winding road through the forest. It lasted over two hours, perhaps three, there and back. There signifies a point of formidible altitude at which she decided we need to get back to the family to create almuerzo. A note on the word almuerzo: It is lunch, basically, but I’ve never heard her or one of her family speak it (much less write it - ha!). They always employ comida, instead.

I suppose I’ll mosey on over there pretty soon. I just wanted to fill another entry. I need to keep up with doing just that every single day.

Unrelated note: The band Her Name Is Calla is very enjoyable and I have been listening to their album Navigator throughout this entry.

Another unrelated note: DIE!

They sit on the couches before me yelling at each other. Or so it seems they are yelling. Their voices are naturally very piercing to me. I have bearly entered the room less than 10 minutes prior and already feel like fleeing. At least the television is not blearing. It surely will be a bit later, however. The hated instrument of stupidity is perpetually in the background in this house. How anyone can have a free thought is beyond my comprehension.

I discussed my alienation with Marisa yesterday during our two times in bed. She seems to understand my plight. I understand little of the conversations between her family, and especially when we are all at the table of endless amounts of food. I sit silently. I try to eat slowly so I’ll have something to occupy my time, and therefore my thoughts.

I am the most lost when she leaves for the kitchen. The remaining at the table are shouting at each other (yes - so it seems to me, as my voice is very mild) and I am caught in a crossfire I cannot avoid or battle. I cannot even contribute. By the time I comprehend the topic of conversation, it has moved to another topic.

Yes - I am whining right now.

And it is also most likely true that I’d only be able to stand the same situation for slightly more time were everything in a language I speak fluently. So, one conclusion is that I am an introvert and need to recharge my mental faculties very often.

I have nothing against the food in this establishment (which is exactly what this family is), but, as any reader knows, sameness wears on me like sandpaper. My skin is thin in this sense. In this regard, as well, I yearn for release back to Logroňo where I can concoct anything exotic. Exotic to this bunch, anyway.

For example, yesterday, Marisa and I came up with an alternate form of tortilla de patatas that was more like something Patricia, Habosh and I used to create back in the good old days (the summer of 2005). Whilst we made this, her father created a more traditional variety consisting of solely potatoes, egg and a bit of onion. At the aforementioned table, this version seemed the more preferred. In fact, Carlos openly mocked mine and Marisa’s tortilla.

We sautéed zuchini, onions, red pepper and something else I cannot recall at the moment (they are shouting again). To be proper, we did add potatoes, as well. We added eggs and parsley and fried it as one usually does.

The result was the following (before the last step):

My conclusion is that I don’t know how much longer I can be here and resist despondency. I am not sure what this implies for my relationship with Marisa in the long run. She is a very family oriented woman. As, I said earlier, the mastery of the language is not going to matter much in the long run.

I am an introvert. Absolutely no one here is similar in this regard.

This morning is Thinking Plague morning since, in reality, they are the only civilised music from the only civilised band appropriate for a civilised morning in a semi-civilised village in a pseudo-civilised country on a laughingly civilised planet.

Ayer, Paco and I took a long walk together in the evening. Marisa and Mari José were away at the doctor in Graus. Marisa is always seeking medical help for this or that ailment and it will eventually end in her demise, methinks, but that is another topic altogether.

So, Paco and I took a stroll along the crescent length of the village. The castle perpetually overlooked us, peering down from its dead husk. The most important feauture of our walk for me was the conversation. The contrast to dialogues with Marisa is sharp. With Paco, I feel comfortable saying anything at all. He enjoys my little philisophical quips and attempts to follow up with an open mind. Christián has a point when he says that women are unable to be wrong and it is therefore impractical to converse with them about any topics beyond the superficial. Well, I think Christián said that. Probably the conclusion was a joint effort, however, during a drunken word joust in Polo.

It is surely one of the reasons I left most of my women in the past.

Jeníček used to call Magdalena The Gestapo. I’d either get a blank stare from Marisa were I to do the same to her or she’d harbour anger for the remainder of the day. She is better at taking my jokes than most women, but that is really not saying much.

It should not be shocking to me after decades of dating that women (yes, I am stereotyping) feel uncomfortable or downright angry when they do not feel in control. Is there a means of making situations seem like the woman is in control but yet, at the base level, is not? I’m sure (and I write this laughingly) such advice is written in Christián’s beloved papers and books concerning Neuro Linguistic Programming. That vůl is a paradox in himself. He’s a fantastic friend but oh so easy to make fun of.

Earlier in the day yesterday, Marisa and I did have an outing. Our purpose was to visit the castle, but we found ourselves instead on a dirt, gravel and dog feces path around the base of the high hill on which it sits. The conversation centered on the stifling heat more than anything else, really. I could put that down to the weather itself, as when Paco and I went out, the weather was much more mild.