instead of a definition

Every few years, without a clear rhythm, I break this site, reimplement it, and put it back together. I move pages around—sometimes slightly modified, other times deeply changed—update broken links delete cruft. This is a palimpsest, not in parchment but in text files.

Here you will find:

• old pieces of code in several languages
• explanations to old myself and my future self
• photos with my point of view, perhaps the odd sound recording
• traces of short stories
• flotsam and jetsam accumulated over decades

All these things are material for mental compost, which may end up like tomatoes or mushrooms. I also view this site as an old cardboard shoe box, stored at the top-left corner of a closet, containing a forgotten shopping list, a $20 banknote found in a jacket pocket, a black & white photo with an old girlfriend, a train ticket from Amritsar to Delhi, and a hand-written recipe for green chicken curry.

memories

I used to write mostly for myself and for the odd visitor. Now crazy people insist that I should write for bots and other inhuman contraptions. I am a dissident, I sit apart from that sad idea. More than ever, we (you and I) have to create, to fight to retain our humanity. Now it is easy to understand Frank Herbert’s Butlerian Jihad, the rebellion against thinking machines; except that we only face lying stochastic parrots.

My defence is the real universe and voice, which reminds me of this poem by Raúl Zurita:

Nadie habla, pero en esos días en que la
tormenta rompe, el silencio de sus caras
se hace más intenso que el ruido del mar
y no necesitan rezar en voz alta
porque es el universo entero su catedral

Raúl Zurita (Las playas de Chile VII, Anteparaíso, 1982)

If Spanish is not your thing, here you have an approximate translation:

No one speaks, but in those days in which the
storm unleashes, the silence of their faces
becomes more intense than the sound of the sea
and they need not pray out loud
because the entire universe is their cathedral

Raúl Zurita (The beaches of Chile VII, Anteparadise, 1982)