Michel de Montaigne's essays

Montaigne retired at 38 just to write and think. This is how he describes that moment in his Essays:

In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, his birthday, Michael de Montaigne, long weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned virgins, where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life, now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will complete this abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquillity, and leisure.

I have just read the 1.350 page volume of his essays. It's a mix between philosophical thoughts and personal story-telling. Without any order he writes about things divine and human, but mostly, he does it about himself.

I'm exhausted. What did I learn? Well, I learned about the nobleness of thinking and the joy of writing. To record your thoughts is like gymnastics of the mind.The idea is: let your mind flow and record whatever thoughts pass through your brain. Let's call it stream-of-consciousness. Don't try to edit too much, just let your thoughts go by and record them as they come. The style is not important, the freshness is.

That's precisely the purpose of this blog, dear reader, which I have named essays on my life: to reflect, to write my thoughts down, trying to fix them somehow. Like Montaigne I'd like to take refuge on the bosom of the learned virgins . Unfortunately, I have no castle to retire to, nor I have his fortune to lean on, the only thing that I promise is to do my best to write this blog while I carry on with my life.

Kisses, Hillary

This is the way Israel behaves today: flowers for Hillary, but white phosphorous for the Palestinians.
Israel has not many friends these days. Its arrogant behaviour, its brutality, its contempt for the international law, has earned the Jewish state many foes. But as long as Big Brother remains a friend, everything is all right. Will ever Big Brother get tired of supporting the unruly child?
Israel is the greatest single irritant in international relations. The US has paid a heavy price for supporting Israel: the enmity of the Arab Word, 9/11, Afghanistan… But they have manoeuvred deftly to be portrayed as the victims.
Well, Barrack Obama, you have a chance here to undo many wrongdoings. Will he be able to apply economic and military pressure to Israel? Will he be able to resist the Jewish lobby? If past experience gives us any clue, chances are that all things will remain the same.

The royals

Here we have the Swedish royal family announcing the marriage of Victoria, the heir to the throne, to a, supposedly, distinguished gentleman. This photo is taken after the royal couple has approved the wedding. Yes, the parents have to approve the wedding, like in the Old Times. All very formal: dark suit the men, with upper pocket white handkerchief, exactly folded, colour dresses for the ladies, the daughter bright, the mother pale. Low table Louis XVI intended to hide the royal legs. The King is to the right (from his viewpoint), the Queen to the left, the youngsters in the middle, but, the heir to the right.

How many royal servants have pressed those suits, folded those handkerchiefs? How many royal detectives have investigated the former life of the groom, his family ties, fiancées, drinking habits, police record, health history and net worth?

Given that the monarchy is about having heirs, perhaps they have tested his ability for that endeavour.

And how much will the wedding cost? Sources say € 2 million. Will the Swedish taxpayer foot the bill? Aren’t the royals rich already?
I would like to know the royals close by. Will they carry cash on their pockets or purses, or will everything be paid by others? Will they know how to send an email, clip their own nails? Does the King sleep with the Queen in the same bed?
I don’t like it. It’s old, false and conventional. They are royals because they descend from a royal family? This is nepotism, isn’t it?

Early retirement or late retirement?

We are in a concert Hall. The musicians are already on their seats. A side door opens and everybody stands up as a sign of respect. The conductor, a white haired man, enters dragging his feet. He looks very old, so bent over, that he has to do little effort to bow to the public applause. He approaches slowly the conductor's stand. Once there, he takes seat in a stool: he is so feeble he cannot conduct the orchestra standing up. Should we admire the old man for his stuborness in continue working well into retirement age or should we feel sorry for him?


This strikes a familiar cord with me. I am over retirement age, and continue working. I tell to myself all kind of excuses: I would not know what to do all day without working, I will bore to death, I would probably fall ill out of inactivity, etc.


Frankly I think that retirement is not a conquest of civilisation. To establish a frontier between working life and non working life is totally artificial. More, to establish a frontier between living and working is a nonse.


Most of the people are doing a work that does not satisfy them. Actually, most people hate their work and they distinguish perfectly the time they are toiling (unpleasant) and the time they are out of work (pleasant).

But if you are one of those rare persons who enjoys what you are doing and do not distinguish between working time and living time


In my case, I don't make such a distinction. I'm just living

Buzzwords

The dictionary defines buzzword as an important-sounding, usually technical word or phrase often of little meaning used chiefly to impress laymen. Impressed be not, dear reader, here are some explanations about buzzwords that the current economic downturn (a buzzword in its own right) has brought.

Stress test

The US government wants to submit the American banks to a stress test. It means that they want to know how much toxic garbage hides under the banks carpets and into their closets. In the process, they expect to know what banks will resist and what will fail in the current crisis. The good ones will be rescued and the bad let go under.

Too big to fail

The above rule does not apply if the bad bank, full of toxic trash, is a big one. Then the risk of letting it fail would be systemic, and it will be rescued anyway.

Systemic risk

It’s a risk that affects the whole system. The whole, as you know, is more than the sum of the parts. Systemic risks are unacceptable and should be avoided at all costs.

Quantitative easing

Having the Central banks tested all monetary measures to remedy the crisis; there is one of last resort, to crank the money printing machine full steam ahead. This is what the British Central Bank is doing. There will be walls of cash all around. Inflation? Oh yeah, we will deal with it later.
Mark to market temporary suspension

This, roughly translated, and means “if facts cannot be changed, let’s change the rules". The banks have to account for assets at their market value. If from one month to another, the value drops, the bank must register a loss. This is killing the bank financial statements and putting many of them under water. They want a suspension of the rule so they can breathe a little air.

Uptick rule

If a stock drops dramatically there is a way to stop the decline: raise the value artificially. That's what the rule does. In the process, the investor is deceived.

Tony the coward

I have just learned that Tony Blair, former UK premier and now special envoy for Palestine, had not been in Gaza since the inception of his mandate. Finally, two years later, he dared to enter the besieged zone, but only a mile, just a little bit, and then... back to the safety of Israel. This is what I would call a courageous guy. Well done Tony, you are earning your salary and probably you will enter into History for your peace endeavours. I f I understand well, your job is to promote peace in the Middle East. And you plan to do that by going into the area, probably staying in a luxury hotel in the Jewish Sate, take five-o'clock-tea with your Jewish friends and, occasionally, with Mahmud Abbas, the Fatah leader. But you don't dare to see how a trapped people, mostly disarmed, in the most densely populated area of the world, has been massacred by an army with jet fighters, heavy armoured tanks and rockets filled with white phosphorous.

Probably your senses are too delicate to see the maimed children, the wanton destruction, the filthy refugee camps, the foul odour, the ruin of so many lives. Probably you'll get dirty shaking hands with the Palestinians. You may not sleep well afterwards.

How I gauge the depth by the lenght

How deep is the current economic downturn? You can measure it by the fall in GPD, the thrashing of stock markets, the increase of unemployment, the decrease in consumer confidence, the reduction in auto sales, retail sales, and industrial sales. But I gauge it by the length of the taxi queue in front of my favourite department store in Valencia (Spain). The fact is that the queue has lengthened in the last months. The idle drivers chat with one another with long faces, no jokes here, please.
If the queue lengthens, what does it mean? It means that consumer spending has reduced: either fewer customers go to the store, or same number goes, but more of them get out empty-handed. You don’t need a taxi if you don’t carry any packages, do you? A taxi fare is typically 7 € and a bus or metro ride is about 1.20 €. With the difference you may eat a one-course meal in a restaurant with wine and coffee.
A queue that shortens or lengthens is easier to understand to the layman than all the stock exchange charts in the world. However, there is a catch to this: if the current crisis continues, many taxi drivers may loose their jobs and the queue will shorten. This is what an economist in its inhuman jargon would call a demand – supply equilibrium (the price is fixed in this case).

You don't get it until you write it

My reason to write a blog like this is in the title: you don't get it until you write it. Millions of thoughts have passed trough my mind, along the years, without my taking the endeavour of writing the most meaningful down. Thousands of books may I have read, without my making a note, or even taking the trouble of underlining something. Millions of landscapes around the earth have passed before my eyes, but I forgot to record my feelings. I have met with many interesting people in my life, but now they are vague remembrances.

It has been like drawing on carbon and forgetting to fix it. Everything is gone. But now, on the decline of my life, I have decided to put remedy to all this waste. To spray-fix my thoughts with the help of the Internet. I will record my opinions, recollections, suggestions to make them permanent, if this may be said of an electronic blog.

Humour will be my weapon of choice. Irony will, hopefully, permeate my writting. I will not write this for anybody but myself, but I will expose it to the whole world.