Life Graphics

I reinforced my position saying - I am and individual! - I said that when they suggested me to join into their group, but they wanted to say “only to their group”, for their own specific reasons and their particular benefits and goals. I thought I could not do it, I thought that; in lots of ways, I could be a part of that group but never be contained in it. I told them about my relationship, or better say, my participation since long time ago in other associations, about my professional plurality, about the respect I have for nature and about my intimacy, that part of me which only I know about myself. They seemed not really convinced, so I decided to speak to them helping myself with the description of graphics.

- Graphics – I began, - they can be made with bars, squares or triangles, there are cake shaped ones, polygonal, three dimensional etc. Their aim will always be to represent in a visual way the situation of a certain universe. Well, this one was a “Venn diagram” in which I am the main circle in the center and I intersect with other conjuncts with different shapes and colors that at the same time intersect with themselves. I can be a political individual or a religious one, I can be a friend, a husband, a son or a father, a brother or a citizen, a partner and an enemy all at the same time, I am multifaceted due to my interaction with different entities and their ideologies or conditions; but there is a part that is always alone, that is intersected with no one or nothing, and that is my private me, my intimacy what I’m speaking here -.

After a zip of my tea and a quick glance on my interviewers gestures so to try and discover an incipient reaction I continued: - But let’s speak about history, about biographies. We all have a tale to say. We haven’t always been the same. In some moment, not lost in time because our society has registered it and keep it, we were born, and in some other moment, that one indeed lost in the future, we will die. No one knows when or how despite the predictions we can make. At some point we were babies, then children and then all capable grown-ups, after that you can say we become some kind of children again, and finally we pass away. I do grant you that, we all have that in common. But, here comes the interesting, the specific details and every single possible experience that any individual may have during his life, will construct at the end a completely different set of ideas, concepts, likes and dislikes, opinions and a whole set of different ideologies regarding different situations, that will draw an unique and original graphic on the universe of lives and interactions of lives. Sometimes we stay interacting with some people and after a while we separate, maybe for some seconds or maybe for an eternity, but we will always remain being the center for ourselves. The center of our own graphic. -

This idea was not well accepted. They said it was egocentric and that they wanted someone that could give his life for their organization, they said my self-esteem was way too high and I was not showing the required modesty. I defended myself saying: - Let me explain myself better; maybe it was an error to let you understand that I think I’m the center of the universe. That is only because we are talking about me and of my great responsibility to multilateral groups, if we were speaking about yourselves, then you will be the center of the universe; please don’t get it wrong, I think everyone is the center of its own life and, paradoxically, the center of the universe… and of course, the center of your own graphic. – I came to think that sometimes only by distributing egos you can satisfy some people. –Like that, the center of the universe is shared at the same time by every single living being or not living thing. It would be the only way to prove that one space can be occupied by more than one single entity. -

More than a satisfied expression they were all casting a face that showed confusion. I thought that the strategy of asking a question to answer another question could perfectly suit this moment. Very well, I mentally worded the sentence: The time for me to ask has arrived – Any of you know how that universal graphic I am speaking about would end? - Two… five… seven seconds slowly were born and died and they did not answer. Suddenly, all stressed and with the pressure of their long faces on me, I forgot for a second about them, I decided to try and take them out of my mind immediately and I focused again in the construction of that universal graphic adapted to my own history. Should I call it histogram? Maybe histographic? I was really sweating heavy drops of tension and panic. I thought about the changes related with me that were described inside it, in our movements inside the graphic, in their appearance and disappearance of it and in the way they change of shape and color… but not to forget, about the great incertitude I have about my future. The first graphic that came into my mind was a cylinder surrounded with all types of different shapes and different colors, all the shapes intersect with the cylinder and with themselves, so we have something like a three dimensional Venn Diagram, not only speaking about an instant, but speaking about the history of the events.

One of them finally answered and in a rush brought me back from where I was, he said that if history was like an spiral, in which some events, like birthdays, New Year’s Eves or the arrival and departing of springs, summers, falls and winter times are repeated, then, although similar one to another, they could never be the same because the space used for their description would be on a different spot on the graphic, occupying another place along the time axis. I completed his own idea: - Certainly! You get the impression of it being the same, but if you pay good attention you will come across with subtle differences. -

Everything was ok, at least better than before, so I continued with the inertia that the previous interval had provided me and kept on explaining as if nothing had happened. - I am a cylinder describing itself through time, in which other shapes, that for me are different but for themselves are cylinders as well, are attached to me, intersecting here and there, appearing and disappearing, but something is still missing because those are my own changes, the changes I can see from my inner revolutions, my failures and successes, when I’m sad and when I’m happy, when I’m performing into a community and when I’m alone. But we still have to contemplate the changes and modifications of others, of all the people interacting with us and changing with the help of external forces our own graphic. - After some modifications of the first picture and my biggest effort to make them understand it I finished the description of my professional multilateralism, the graphic finally drew itself into their minds.

- If we could see it, we could never think that what we are looking is actually a graphic, it just would be too complex, plus, we would be only looking to the graphic of one single being, mine in this case, and not a collective one. It would look like a postmodern painting, like a crystallized drop of pure water, which have fell into oily liquid and that have rebound upwards describing, now that is full with oil and surrounded with other little drops, a colorful and suspended sculpture on time and in the universe. – They finally began to look interested so I did my best to increase that reaction. - The drop of pure water before touching the oily surface is me before being born, the drama begins when the drop of pure water is at least in contact with the oily surface, life as we know it, in this world and with the different conditions that is prepared for each one of us. History begins in the moment that the drop rebounds and begins to describe a shape into the infinite and unknown universe. My drop fell in an oily substance, rich with different components, and good enough for displaying all types of colors, but I’m sure for other people’s drops, some other liquids are prepared, maybe orange juice or coffee, what about chocolate, or wine, or even acid?, for these people the graphic of their lives will be always stained with these liquids. You can call that a race, a nationality, a gender etc. What if your drop fell down on piss? Some people die at the same moment of being born. But nobody falls in pure water. Anyway, every heart speaks louder than any color can. We are all pure water stained with different conditions and in different situations all along the map of Universe. Pure water is the promise, what religions tell us we will reach at the end of the way, of the description of our lives, when the strength that the drop has for going up is wasted. -

I began to be very excited about my own descriptions and I perceived they were sharing my enthusiasm! - In our global society the map would be drawn like a complex and paradoxical garden full with different sculptures of drops coming up and down. Why complex? Because there are about six thousand million people in this world, some dying and some being born at the same time, and because we can consider as well, the graphics displayed by plants and animals due to the fact that they are important stains that interact with our personal graphics. And what about objects? They describe shapes as well, they are important to us in lots of moments in our lives. Our first car, our house, a guitar, a piano, a watch that someone gave us as a present, a favorite jacket or a favorite pair of snickers. Why paradoxical? Because we are considering every sculpture in a separated place, with stains that others perform in us. But if we realize that every little stain attached to the main drop is another entire drop by its own self, somewhere else in the map, then we could dare to say that we are all in different places at the same time! You have, you posses a little part of me, and my wife posses quiet a lot since we share important “chapters” in our lives, my mother and father are with me all the time although they are not here anymore, but they will always be described in our graphics. They live by me and I live because of every other graphic that shows a little part of my oily condition.-

Let’s tie this victory for one and for all! I tried to close the interview like this: - We could arrive to the conclusion that we live more when we give a part of ourselves to others, since that piece of us remain, positively or negatively, on others graphics. People that have produce a wonderful piece of art that has have the power to fill us with joy, or a politician that has ruled the country where we live, or a kid in our childhood that used to make our life impossible, has the power to remain in our graphic for a long time. Some persons during their lives produce these impacts on thousands of other people, and they arrive to be “immortal” since the substance they are made from have stained others graphics through space and time. Our conditions “stain” others lives and produces, little or dramatic, changes in others. We have the ability to modify others lives! That is why we must be really careful not to damage the main drop, but instead, be nice and with harmony combine with it and even help it be more beautiful and plentiful.-

I suddenly realized I was behind a podium giving a lecture to hundreds of Scientifics, Professors and Artists. They came out of nowhere and now they were listening to me with fixed attention. So I continued behind the blinding light coming from huge spots. - If we have a Universe showing all the individual graphics as drops of water rebounding in different liquids and describing different positions and situations, imagine your selves the main graphic, it would be a graphic of graphics! That would be a complete chaos of colors and shapes, everything would be saturated with all kinds of strange paths and weird shapes, the graphic would arrive to be even more complex than reality itself, and to interpret it would be impossible, so we would need to return to reality and stop trying to understand everything. -

- The important part of this fact, is that we can modify others graphics at will, then others can do the same with your own. Does morality really has to make an entrance at this point of the conversation? Well not really, but we can ask to ourselves, why would you even shake a man's hand if you're not going to help him stand? This Universe, the real one, and the description of it from everybody’s point of view, is fantastic and is worth to be thankful for it.-

Five… seven… ten seconds, the lights faded away, the multitude disappeared and I was sitting on a chair being interviewed by the original group, the one that wanted me to be included into it and didn’t want to accept my multilateralism. The group want it no more, in fact, they now wanted me to stay outside and “intersect” myself with them only if this was necessary and if my contribution was “harmonic” for their organization. They began to use my words, they were satisfied and they were smiling. These theoretical physicists are strange persons, maybe so am I. Finally they hired me.