Reorganizable Chemical Elements

... sitting in the middle of a room.

Here I am. I sit beside a book, in front of a notebook that is on and a television set that is off, near a cell phone that is always half-on-half-off, and thus is actually never either of them.

But here I am - in the very middle of a room, geometrically even, but specially psychologically.

A room that is called a living room, which always seemed odd to me. If this is the living room, what do we do in other rooms?

Maybe it's just one of those words that are so old that their meaning just passes them by and becomes something else. Like some old folks, up to the elbows in a quicksand pool of black bile, who used to be a lot of things, and now are just melancholic about what they are not. Just watching the world become something else, losing themselves on the way, waiting for some kind of end. An end that would bring back some sense, some meaning. Words, like some old folks.

Or teens. Or war veterans.

Maybe it is because it used to be the living heart of the house, in times where having more than one room in a house was something rare and luxurious. In times when the kitchen was a place for servants, not for decent family people. In times when the house was a place mostly for women and kids, that would live their entire lives knitting, chating and testing the limits of human patience to frustration and the flexibility of happiness. A place to guard the ones too frail to actually live outside, and to put the outsiders in their place.

A place marked "living", fenced and defined by those who lived - outside.

Today, it's just a room with a couch and a TV set. Couches slowly became a symbol of inactivity and lazyness. Depression, even. And TVs, well, TVs have long lost their throne as a tool for education and bringing the family together.

I wonder if it ever did bring the family together. At least in the terms of how people dreamed it would. Or should.

I cannot think of an old-time traditional family leader happily discussing his opinions, values and positions, just like those old tv series. That's just not how it happens. It doesn't happen like that between adults of - theoretically - equal power, and it certainly doesn't happen anywhere near that between the ones above and the ones bellow.

Spanking,sadism, domination and abuse you say, Mr Foucault?

A lot of things came through the telly - and not necessarily the sorts of things people would consider educational.

Entertainment. That's the word.

That E word.

I mean, think about it. It sounds like a good thing, the word itself. En-ter-tain-ment. Sounds good. Sounds like an evolved word, born out of culture, of debate, of living. Not primal, not gutural, not too short, not onomatopoeic, like beer or gun or burp or fur.

Then, a wave of bad meaning comes. Entertainment. Mass culture industry. Frankfurt school. Brain washing. Couch potatoes that used to be people. Political propaganda. Cigarrete adds. Pop music.

And sillyness, and bigotry, and pornography.

Human, all too human. All our guts, ugly and primal, viscerally yelling truth on our faces.

Well, I was just thinking... Isn't that a good thing, after a while?

To have stupid things around, breaking the one voice of wisdom, unified and holly? To have an industry to produce what would otherwise be... what? Nothing at all? Having political propaganda broadcasted isn't logically one step further from aristocracy rulling nations from one little room?

One living room becoming a million living rooms? And then something else?

Don't get me wrong here, pal. I'm just as bored with smiley stupidity and just as pissed off with plastic inertial monotony as the next guy. I would certainly like some kind of fallange of cultural heroes to come and intellectually bitchslap all these half-wits who somehow got grip of a microphone.

All I'm saying is that I am here, sitting in the middle of a living room. Reading my book and watching youtube in the middle of this room, yes.

But I get to live outside. I got out, saw things, picked some. We maybe even live outside through them, because of them.

And when I get bored of reading - or knitting, if I chose to, which I certainly don't - I can go out and live. Buy another book, talk to peolple about that book, change my mind about that book, maybe even write a book about it. Throw a party or rally people because of it.

And maybe tape it. And you can see me, or something else, on your screen. More bullshit, yes. But who wants only one kind of bullshit anyway, except those who would want their bullshit to be the one and only?

By the way, my family spends most of the time alone, but the time we are together, we are in the kitchen. Primal, sitting around the fire, you say?

One howling, chanting toast to that, my friend. Living outside the living room as much as we can and then coming back around the fire when we want to seems like a pretty good evolutional leap here, doesn't it?



J., who just baked cookies for the whole klan, is blogging this, watching youtube, ignoring the academy awards and waiting for a call.

Quando a gente vê a Martha Stuart discutindo o papel dos republicanos na votação do pacote econômico enquanto corta cenouras, a gente pode se sentir bem triste de não saber direito o que se passa no nosso legislativo...