Retro 5 A Joe Davis hug

Day Five Monday May 16 2011

I got a hug from Joe Davis. Now, I assume, my life is complete. I got a hug from a man who managed to send signals of vaginal contractions into space for the purpose of a very special SETI project.

Well, that was my personal highlight of the last four days, that included the Biofiction Science Art and Film Festival in Vienna as well as a meeting by the ESF financed SYNMOD project in the Falkensteiner hotel.

First there were two days of watching panel discussions and lectures, movies and gala events. In between that and after that there were talks and chats with artists, ethicists, scientists and journalists.

Then I had a day for recovering, especially from drinking in the red bar in Volkstheater, including a nice dinner at Silberwirt in the 5^th district of Vienna together with the SYNMOD team. The rest was hard core biology and our own contribution to the project.

In addition to all that I got to know Fritz Ostermeier from FM4 radio, who does the Sunday show: “Im Sumpf” and a female artist called Sonja Bäumel who won one of the prices of the Biofiction jury.

All the atmosphere was very dense in a real knowledge society feeling. Fritz Ostermeiers final comment on moderating the film gala was that he may become the Peter Rapp of knowledge society.

Now I am sitting in the train from Vienna to Linz, coming home into another world. A world with my love and our dog and everyday business as far as one can call it that way in my case.

After all this thinking and sensations, emotions and the beauty of so many things, like for instance the Museum of Natural History where the festival had taken place it will take some meditation for emptying the cup again.

There will be time for that.

Univers(ity?)

Some demi-philosophical semi published things

When taking a closer look at the bible one could come to some sort of working definitions of this place: Let's call it world, or earth or universe. According to the bible it is a hell of a place, or maybe paradise or both, or the two things well hidden somewhere else, and, as nowadays somewhere else is quite remote, why not put the stuff into another dimension.
Looking into ourselves for these categories of pain and pleasure is another hint given by the bible. Generations of physicians and biologists have tried to dig the stuff out of meat, tubes and bones with no countable success.
Therefore we come back to more modern definitions of hell, paradiese and the universe that could be named chaos, a rather complicated matter or most prominently 42 (By the way take a look at this: http://www.ted.com/talks/douglas_adams_parrots_the_universe_and_everything.html )
I would say that the creation myths are rather complementary: Forget about the snakes the turtles and the Adams-and-Eves, but look at the stories and metaphors.
Nevertheless, we the people of Gonzoland (where I am from) fight our little Armageddons everyday anew, while others prefer to dwell in heaven or paradise and call it a day. Some of us prefer to live. That is why we are here, and why there is a big place to do so.
If you want to know more about it read Douglas Adams or Terry Prattchett, the Ghita, the Bible or the Talmudi, the Koran or just make some more tea. :-)

Good luck

Latest Bauernbergpark Observations

More things that I have found out about the Bauernbergpark man: He has a system of small gravel heaps that he carefully arranges on rocks and park benches around his territory. These heaps appear in different numbers, but similar sizes, as if the little stones were counted precisely. I have discovered that instead of stone dust from gravel, he uses flour to make white lines on the ground. These lines seem to be borders, sometimes circular, sometimes following the edge of a path, or sidewalk. Furthermore he owns a nice notebook, in which he writes tiny and neat columns of numbers or letters, as if this was some sort of journal of his proceedings. At the moment he has another pram as well as a tarpaulin to keep the rain off his  
humble belongings and himself when he decides to take a nap in rainy weather.

Retro 4

Day Four Tuesday May 10 2011

Today I had another challenging conversation with my close friend B. about motivation. What is the motivation in Zen? You do not seem to do much but sit and meditate. But to what means?

Some might say: To gain enlightenment. But according to Roshi Suzuki, enlightenment is everywhere and it is a “tourist’s exercise” to look for some unique moment or state in life. So what is the motivation?

I suppose it is to learn to do good things and to learn to do these things well. A motivation can be to learn to live in every moment in life, and not to be caught too much by illusions and memories and hopes and above all fears.

When we were talking about these things the conversation somehow drifted away towards the idea of going crazy or being lonely. So I mentioned the tramp up in Bauernbergpark, who seems to live there owning a pram in which he transports most of his other belongings. He somehow collects plastic bottles, which seem to serve as a water reserve. He sleeps on and uses some park benches close to a gravel path and has the habit of collecting some of the gravel in small heaps. With the use of a middle sized and a larger flat stone he seems to grind some of the pebbles to powder. Another thing he does is to fill small portions of gravel into plastic bottles. Sometimes you can find him standing there turning over the gravel filled plastic bottles in a straight nice rhythm, which especially fascinates my dog.

However, I am sure he does all that to save the world.