Warm Blooded

Allegory of Charity

Ca. 1655. Oil on canvas.

Zurbarán, Francisco deFuente de Cantos, Badajoz (Spain), 1598 - Madrid (Spain), 1664

We are warm blooded creatures. Unlike fish and reptiles, we can produce our own heat and warmth. We don’t need to rely on the fevered exterior of the world to bring us our own strength, we can produce our strength from within. And while the warmth of a heater or the radiation of the sun may please our soul, the flame in our hearts nourishes us like no outside force can. I would always prefer to have a full belly in cold surroundings, then be hungry while in a warm climate. Because with that full belly in me I can find my own love and my own admiration that hugs me closer than any soul could. My own vitality pulses in the heated convection of my own blood. The orange tones of life's passions start as sugars stirred in the essence of myself. To create your own energy is to be warm blooded, to be enriched, to be alive with the force of life itself.

Maintaining your own fire may take more effort, but it's always worth it. For the flame that comes from within will always feel more enriching than the flame that comes from foreign origins. To love yourself is to stoke that fire, love yourself from the inside-out, that's what I say. It’s all within our capabilities, maybe some easier than others, nonetheless in all of us is a pilot light waiting to be fueled, waiting not for someone to say they love us, but for us to say we love ourselves. 

Prado Museum, Allegory of Charity, Prado Museum archives, accessed on 29th January 2023, <https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/allegory-of-charity/95d3d5cc-4af1-4c0d-b03c-a9e1c1e6481f>

Avaritia

Avaritia; Greed

Pieter Bruegel the Elder. 1558

Engraving

Greed builds greed, money chases money, dopamine chases dopamine. I met the man tonight I’ve talked about for a long time, the posited drug-addicted rich boy child of a legacy family. I'm lucky to have booked this hostel because tonight I saw what it looks like to have unceasing desire. He had just fled his previous country. He fled with 700K in corporate debt whilst running away from drug habits and running towards the imagined dream of a family. He said there was no luck that he was born to a rich family and to be fair this was the only thing we agreed on. He was privileged to be brought up amongst wealth but not lucky I felt. He lacked fortune to be born to his gilded surroundings, surroundings that on his own accord praise three great virtues: God, Glory and The Family Legacy. Here I found this Family Legacy drunk on his hostel bunk, coming down from a cocaine binged Wednesday night of paid dopamine and paid sex.

He was a man of God he told me, just not a practicing one. He was upper class British in accent and American Christian Free Marketeer in nature. He told me as he’d gotten closer to God, he had found happiness. Yet he never espoused the moral ethics of humbleness, humbleness he told me was what poor people told themselves to stay happy being poor, he said sipping his corona. 

He could stay in a penthouse suite in a hotel, yet he stayed at the hostels as they helped to stay grounded between his binges. When I asked if his hunger fueled his appetite even more, he told me yes it did. He told how he envied his friend who was satisfied sailing alone on his boat, his friend who didn’t crave money and instead managed to find himself simply content. 

He credited himself for the livelihoods of his employees saying his actions provided them with over 200 salaries, while never stating the fact that 200 working employees also provided him with a salary. A salary that would pay for his lawyers, his fast cars and even his helicopter rides when his licence was revoked for speeding 100 km over the limit. 

We talked capitalism, we talked socialism and somewhere we got into the weeds of what an economy should indeed look like. He asked me was it fair that he’d put in all his hard work, after he’d received the McClaren, the Penthouse sweet, the fixed wing-aircraft , he asked me if it was fair that he’d lost relationships, he’d lost his company, he’d had to stare the barrel of a gun, was this all fair? 

Fair is a funny word isn’t it. It doesn’t have the same legal bravado that justice has, or the same inalienable quality as prescribed rights, fair is a unique one. In this case the way he was using the word “fair” was to ask what should've happened? I can’t say if what he was describing indeed should have happened, but indeed it did happen, he chased his lust till it pushed him back to the other side of Earth. He consumed everything till his gluttony overwhelmed him and he found himself stewing in his own self-pity. 

When I asked him if money made him feel happy?

“define happy?” he asked, “fulfilled” I said, 

“define fulfilled” he replied, “feeling satisfied” I answered, 

“No one can ever feel truly satisfied,” he concluded. 

He told me he couldn’t meditate. For him the 30 minutes a day made no sense if the other 23 and a half are wild and frenetic. This is a thought that had on his own accord only for it to be confirmed and reiterated in one of his favourite podcasts. Meditating was both unachievable and unneeded in his life. Yet it’s often the things you feel like you don’t need that you often require the most. 

He is a child of his own privileged trauma, a human who can and will pursue their own financial success through non-stop self-sacrifice. Moving to Monaco was his next stop, a location picked for their low taxes and safe neighborhoods. His new God driven direction in life was to provide financially for the family to sow the seeds for future generations, preserving his and families name and legacy. He was yet to find his partner or yet to have his children, yet sure enough in the end the family name will pass on and his own legacy will be extended. 

When I dream of a family that brings me fulfilment I don’t dream of legacies, I dream instead of leaning back to the large wooden table that presides in front of me, relaxing quietly while I appreciate the people I love surrounding and showing love for each other. You will never live to see your legacy, but you can live to see and enjoy the immediate moment, only if you pause and breathe for it. I'd recommend 30 minutes a day. 

Image :

Greed, British Museum, New Hollstein (Dutch & Flemish) / The New Hollstein: Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts 1450-1700 (24.I), Accessed on 26th January 2023, <https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1880-0710-642>

Ship of Theseus

1909 Illustration by John F.Campbell

I experienced multiple selves in my dream last night. It's as Paul, a companion in my Cypriot hostel said, "in dreams you can see behind yourself”. In dreams you can stretch your legs, pace around to observe yourself. You see your profile, your hands, your feet, even the weird ridges on the back of your head. It is when you walk around yourself that you realize that at all times there are multiple versions of you. Multiple representations of yourself that spontaneously emerge each time an observation is made from a different angle. This is the liquid nature of the human condition, the never-ending flow of lived and dreamt experiences. A perspective that is defined as much by what is being perceived as to who is perceiving. In all evaluations of perspective, we must interrogate the observer strenuously, even if that observer happens to be our own selves. 

When one does not pause and dive into their own psyche, they end up living blind, blind to the present and obscured to the feelings of the past. For while we can all stop to imagine our own selves, we only imagine ourselves through the context of the here and now. So, when we ignore the here and now, we reflect through opaque lenses that lack clarity. Perceiving the present self within conscious thought is possible but far from easy. It's like checking the oil yet we can’t slow down the car, we must continue to drive while the hood is popped up and we lean forward as the highway winds blow in our face. We are the observer, the test subject, the hypothesiser, the control group and the out-of-control group all wrapped into one. We must cut into and dissect the sinews of thought yet not flinch too hard in case we ruin the anatomical investigation. 

Leonid Rogozov acting as surgeon to himself 

and removing his own appendix as he the only trained medical profession during a 1961 Soviet Antarctic expedition  

This is our lived reality, the unceasing conditions of existence. For all our awake lives we are forced to swap out sections of our hull while the waves come crashing down on us. The open ocean of life is swimming with challenges and rewards that require us to do day to day repairs. This daily maintenance is imperative if we are to not take on too much water. The easiest way to repair a vessel though is to return it to the safety and quietness of a harbour. The drydock of REM sleep is perhaps the best suited location to discern and make alterations to our vessel. 

It is a unique opportunity for while the brain is cataloguing its archives in deep sleep, we can sit and take a read. Perhaps that is part of the reason we feel so relaxed after a dreamy night of sleep, for it is one of the few moments we can simultaneously reflect and rest. We sit portside while we look at our galley, we see the barnacles being stripped back, the decks scrubbed properly, the sales fashioned anew, and while we sit there, out feet perched up high, we ask two most important questions.

Why do we choose to set sail back to the high seas?

And what course shall we plot for our maiden voyage?  

Barham, M 2021, Counter Arts online article, 6th September, accessed on 16th January 2024 , <https://medium.com/counterarts/the-ship-of-theseus-time-identity-and-memory-f6a6e2e815b2>

Lentati, S 2015, The man who cut out his own appendix, BBC online article, 5th May, accessed on 16th January 2024, <https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32481442>

Waves

I can’t remember when the dreams of waves first began. I only recall that they started to emerge sometime during my primary school years. They all would start differently yet would end the same. Sometimes I was on a beach, a boat, or a cliffside, wherever it was I was somewhere I could see and sense the waves. Often it started in the presence of calm waters but out of nowhere you would feel it and then you would see it, a behemoth would lay before my eyes, stories and stories of water that blocked out the sun as it approached. My gut would drop as the wave crested over me, its form mimicking a mountain of liquid dread. Sometimes I’d try to run, but it would be of no use, slowly but surely the predestined terrors of Poseidon would always reach me. 

Gradually the wave grew and gradually the wave advanced.

And then Boom, it’d Hit. 

Sometimes I would claw to the earth as the waves washed over me, holding on with as much strength as I could. But it was all in vain as the swell would drag me back as it wasted the soil and dirt beneath my body. 

The ending of the dream would always be the same, you can’t escape fear and I could never escape the path of this oncoming deluge. 

I would have these dreams repeatedly throughout my youth. Over and over the wave would wake me up and leave me wide eyed in the middle of the cold dark night. Many good nights of sleep were sacrificed to this nightmare as I had to pause and collect myself in my adrenaline-fueled state before I could (if indeed I could) return to my slumber.

It would be years before I realized those waves were psychic manifestations of my own anxiety. These were the literal waves of dread and emotion that washed through my childhood and early adolescence. 

At an unclarified point these recurring dreams lessened.

From nightly happenings these dreams moved to weekly, then monthly, then seasonal occurrences. These dreams would never cease completely, still occurring as sporadic phenomena, but they now lacked the volume to dominate my life like they previously had. 

Once again, I had one of those dreams last night. It followed a similar pattern to others yet for the first time finished differently. In this dreamt illusion I found myself on an open barge in the middle of the ocean. Flanked to my left and the right were elevated platforms in which faceless members of the crew found themselves occupied. I however was in an open section and, like standing on the edge of the public swimming pool could feel the warm water lapping at my toes on the fringe of the platform. The sea at that moment was turquoise and tranquil, but as soon as I looked out I knew that the inevitable was yet to come. That's the thing about a recurring dream you can feel yourself being pulled towards it, and like swimming against a rip your attempt to fight it will only make you drown quicker. From the calm waters I saw the ocean grow angry and witnessed as the water welled up to tower before me. Slowly but surely the wave made its way towards the barge. The vessel creaked as the ship tilted back, my eyes a gaze at the giant that had terrorized my nights on so many occasions. 

And yet in this moment that I had found myself in so many times, something was different, something was different inside of me. And instead of filling with unceasing dread as I awaited my fate, I captured my resolve and ran forth and dived into the tidal beast. 

From the chaos of the surface above, I found myself sinking into pure tranquil blackness. The presence of my own body and soul provided the only illumination to be felt in these voided depths. With no noise and no movement, it seemed as though I had found myself in space, floating in a galaxy where every star had been painted over. 

There I floated and there I meditated, not concerned with the waves atop or the troubles in my soul but occupied instead with the quietness of the deep. 

A quietness projected not from the stormed reality above but projected from the dreamt solitude below. 

A solitude I can always find within me, only if I choose to leap towards it. 

Edited Journal extract- 

Originally written- 

4th of December 2023 - Madrid 

Video Cyprus- Filmed 10th of January 2024

nonsite-Iberian Peninsula

nonsite - Portugal 

"There’s a central focus point which is the non-site is the unfocused fringe where your mind loses its boundaries and a sense of the oceanic pervades, as it were. I like the idea of quiet catastrophes taking place…. The interesting thing about the site is that unlike the non-site, it throws you to the fringes. In other words, there is nothing to grasp onto except cinders, and there is no way of focusing on a particular place"

Reference Smithson, R, 1996, The Collected Writings, New York University Press, New York, USA

nonsite - Spain