Dear Pupil.

I often think of you when life bids against my wishes. What are any wishes worth compared to your destiny, killed by your own father at age 19, young, happy, ready for life. A young promising light was so crimefully dimmed  – you – but not forgotten.

Thinking of you in a dark moment of my own gives hope, gives promise. Because I will promise you that I will return even stronger than weakened just now. The best answer to everything is just to live on, to install happiness and good fortune in the mindset and to focus on own abilities. Who the f*ck cares about the “others” ? As Sartre pointed out, the others are hell.

Personally, there is no way that I can be put down, not by anyone, not by anything.  And I am totally “beyond bullshit”. I do not feed on lies or hostile reactions and I do not maintain relations with people without integrity or that keep double agandas or fill me with crap. People need to earn my respect and it does not bottle because of a fancy Title or a big car. In case you didn’t realize: these things span in Time like moisture in the desert. Very shortly ! I don’t need the junk of pretendence. No, show me something real. Feed me with wit, humour, intelligence, playfullness, curiosity, action, some of the stuff that creates memories for Life. Then I will be yours for keeps !

Well yes, I’m bleeding just now but not for long. Why ? Because none of the common nonsense in ordinary life compares meaningfully with your fate, dead Pupil.

For you, I lift my eyes, once again.

“The eternal feminine draws us ever onward and upward.”  Goethe

So these days I’m reading up for my 70-536 certification on the .NET Framework. It is quite frustrating to experience that stuff you thought you knew a bit about is just magnitudes of order larger and more complex than imagined. On the other hand, that’s what makes it fun and challenging. The important thing is to get avoid being intimidated and just read on. Just read the fricking book, absorb the concepts, the specific words, the key examples.

Actually, that’s the way one pick up all kinds of Frameworks/Universes. I have been in a few during the times, my favorites ones being Organic Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Carbohydrate Chemistry, Biochemistry etc. and in IT basically the .NET and other OO-stuff. It’s all just a matter of reading and understanding. However, the key is not to absorb, the key is to produce yourself. Producing is the difficult part: as a researcher to figure out new stuff, as a programmer to be efficient and creative, as an author to be imaginative, as a sportsman to be stronger and more visionary and so on. Producing equals success and success equals happiness. Isn’t that what we are all indoctrinated to believe in ?

On a larger and perhaps more important scale we all choose Frameworks for our Personal, Spiritual and Religeous Beliefs. That’s how I see it, anyways. One could argue that the different Religions are “just” Frameworks, each with a certain set of characteristics and expected behaviours. Same goes for the different Cultures around the World. Same goes for the different Civilizations throughout the span of Time. Same goes for the different Trades you can be in, the paths you can choose for your career: do you plug in to be a Programmer, a Medical Doctor, a Lawyer, a Craftsman etc. It’s all just a Framework thing ! And Frameworks can be shifted.

So ?

The important thing is to choose, really. Most importantly: in your private life. Choose the things that work for you, interests, partners, beliefs, places, feelings. We all plug in every day, into our Personal Framework, so it should be rather obvious that it is of some importance that we understand what is going on. Thus, Know Thyself ! Know the Framework !

What immense power of imagination and vanity to think that anything will be remembered.

What incredible force to put meaning and purpose into the small doings we have.

What blindness to forget the span of Time and the forces of Nature, the powers of tens that outnumber all Human creation and leaves but historic relics to witness the moments of yesterday. Our attempts to manifest are desperate, yet pleasing, are in vain, yet our destiny.

The Flux of Life is brutal and seperate from our Thoughts about it. Life is short, yet each moment eternal and accessible.

Surely, I am no artist myself. I do not have anything to offer you, nor do I need to, I just live my life from birth to death as most people do. Unknown, unimportant, never remembered and thus never forgotten – John Doe, DOA.

But. I have been blessed with one thing, though, the gift of thinking and the gift of being excited. One of the things that has always excited me is the arts – paintings, sculptures, music, literature. I have nearly photographic memory from very early age and still remember quite vividly the impressions of one of the first museums I visited, the Pompeii Musuem and Ruins in Italy which made me realize the brutality of both Nature and Time and the shortness of a human life. Oh – I was four years old.

Similar realiazations followed on museums like Villa Julia in Rome (the Etruscans) and The Britsh Musuem in London, and step by step many other musuems have been added to my inner map of art, kind of similar to getting to know new friends or taking on a new point of view or picking up a nice idea. I would not be the person I am without.

Still, sometimes the arts gets in the behind in the rumble of the everyday, duties and stuff. So much greater my enjoyment of the three incredible museums in Madrid, Spain, this past weekend, namely the over-worldly collections at the Prado Musuem, at the Thyssen-Bornemisza and at the Reina Sofia museums. Especially the Reina Sofia is a magical place where you enter as one person and leave as another: Transformed, enlightened and full of wisdom, love and humility. And the artists to bring you in this state count amongst others three of the great sons of Spain, namely Juan Miro,

Salvador Dali

and the maestro himself, Pablo Picasso and his eternal Guernica.

Oh oh oh, behold the masterpieces of these artists at Reina Sofia,  OMG !  Actually standing face to face with these paintings that I have known for a lifetime from books and movies, that was taking a quantum leap backwards in Time in my own life and perhaps into the Future as well. It was like putting fire on that inner map and burning down the roads to Le Louvre, to the Vatican, to MOMA, to Louisiana and to all the other museums and exhibitions I have seen, it was like seeing it all in one glimpse, it was a moment of transcendence and peace – it was stopping Time with the Incredible Power of Art.

It was getting my eyes back.