Okay, so I was thinking about writing something mind-boggling. Something só cool you would think of it every day. Read about it. Talk about it. Tell it to everyone you know. And totally enrich the universe with my awesome lines I had written down for you to read. But it kinda hit me this week and the week before. That I am not that person. I am not somebody who could say something to someone, and change them for the rest of their lives.

So I am human. You might as guessed it. And I am pretty proud of what I have accomplished the years I have been here. I mean: school is good, private life is great, my work has never been more inspiring. What more could I wish for?

There was no irony in that last message if you wondered. I am actually really happy with my life right now and I just wanted to share that much to the world. In my opinion there are too many people that sit around and nag about everything and everyone.

So then my question to you – reader – is: are you happy with your life? It is about time that people start being positive in stead of being negative all the time. And doesn’t everything seem a lot better when you are thinking positive? A lot of good comes from negative things. For example: I was studying Industrial Product Design and I hated it. Well not hated it, but it was difficult for me and I didn’t really liked the way it was going. So I quit. And now you might think: “oh man, he through away half a year of his life!” Oh contraire! I’m now studying something completely different and loving every bit of it.

I guess the message of this is: don’t get down when some things didn’t work out as you had planned it. Not that I’m a big believer of faith, but you never know.

“Of course I listen”, you might think immediately. But this is not always the case. For example: a young human brain can decipher up to 450 words per minute. A normal speaking human can speak 150 words a minute. That leaves a lot of words for other thoughts. So then I ask you, when was the last time you really listened to someone? For example, let’s say you are meeting someone. You get together, go to your favourite sandwich store and stroll down town looking for a bench to consume your lunch. On finding one, you sit down and admire the view and scenery around you. And then you…talk. Talk for hours. About the weather. About your school. About the coolest thing you have ever done. And you listen to the other while they tell you, with absolute ecstasy, how their life unfolded in front of them.

If this sounds familiar to you, you can almost stop reading. Because this should be something you have experienced at least once in your life. Now here is a sight you might recognise easier: On waiting for the bus to come you stumble across a long lost friend. “How are you?” you ask him, waiting for the usual answer in the lines of: “Good, and you?” “Oh, I’m wonderful” you reply and you spur into a monologue that probably contains very interesting subjects like school, work and your fascinating private life.

After fifteen minutes of talking to air, your friend turns to his watch and says: “Oh dear boy, I have to run. Well it was great to talk to you again, take care!”

Now I actually come to the conclusion and explain why there is a sleeping cat on top of this post. The reason is that most of us are like cats. We sleep most of the day, eat whenever we want, cry for attention and try to impress people that are close to us, even though it usually does not work.

So what I want to give you today is, get out there and communicate! Listen to people and show genuine interest. You will be rewarded, I am sure of that.

One could call it ante-chronological (against or opposite of normal chronology), one could call it asynchronous (lacking temporal concurence), but it doesn’t really matter. What it is, is out of place. Perhaps then, a better — less instrumentalist — term would be orphaned nostalgia. Because the feeling of longing that I am talking about is not one for things past, but for things that have not yet happened or perhaps never will; it has no origins which can be identified, other than that it exists.

The sentiment is not to be confused with desire, or want, or simply wishing this or that, because in many cases the patient (nostalgia, in the eighteenth century, like so many matters of the heart, was considered a disease not unrelated to that of melancholy) does not even yearn for something per se. He just feels the emotions that accompany a certain state of longing.

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For as long as I can remember, I have wished I was there. Nowhere in particular, just any place that wasn’t here. Not that I was unhappy or uneasy at any given location; here wasn’t an exact place, but a state, and it was one I simply did not want to be in. Mind you, this longing should not be confused with the urge to travel. As a child, I was dragged halfway around the globe already, so these days, I’m quite happy not to board a cramped 737 filled with low cost globetrotters. Travel should be endless: not a progression from A to B, but simply the act of being underway. It is a dilemma: wanting to be places but not wanting to go, and enjoying travel so long as you never actually arrive.

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There is a line in David Lynch’s Lost Highway that struck me the first time I ever heard it and which hasn’t left me since. When the Madisons are visited by the police, after a number of disturbing videos have been left at their door, one of the detectives asks Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) whether he owns a video camera – somehow insinuating perhaps the couple may have shot the tapes themselves. The conversation goes like this:

Ed: Do you own a video camera?
Renee Madison: No. Fred hates them.
Fred Madison: I like to remember things my own way.
Ed: What do you mean by that?
Fred Madison: How I remember them. Not necessarily the way they happened.

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If you read this on a blog, quit.

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