I started a business. It made me want to drink copious quantities, smoke myself into oblivion and hit my head against a brick wall. Instead I wrote a blog.
Yesterday we went to a child's 4th birthday party. Our first chance to really socialize with the people of the island (who had nevertheless heard about the two newcomer's living in Fritjof's house on the hill but who had gazed at us from afar until now). As we approached the fire station - which doubled as the village hall (clear demonstration of the dangers of swedish efficiency)- we were greeted by loud bongo drumming and a waft of savory chickpea galettes, followed by limbo dancing and smash the pinata. Not your traditional English birthday party then. Nor as it turned out, Swedish.
I have to assume that there was a large proportion of the young children of the island age present - since the population of Branno is only small and there must have been 20 or so kids there. As we took in the raucous rabble of screaming non-blonde children running from side to side with spoons in their mouths (the potatoes they were supposed to be racing with were long since scattered around the room), I said to my boyfriend, bemusedly
'I thought you said all Swedish children were blonde'
My boyfriend said, pointing to our curly haired daughter half Swedish daughter -
'Oh look there's one.'
Indeed she was. One. The mix of Russian, Chilean, French, German and yes, some Swedish people too (they're not all blonde...). A splendid cultural mix, just like a microcosm of a Parisian 18th arrondissement in my own back yard. And I had been afraid of a lack of international influence...
'They call our part of Branno the crazy part of the island.' confided my new neighbor Alex. 'I hope you're a little crazy!!'
Ordinarily I would have said - definitely. To pick up and leave one's life behind at a moment's notice as we have done if not crazy, must be considered at least a little impulsive. To fight against the corporate world and what it stands for, surely isn't the norm. But in that room, I felt sane, predictable and - well - prosaic. There are no weird and wonderful hand made sculptures in our house, no self woven tapestries hanging on the wall, no 'gargoylian' carpentry, not even one plant to nod a head to Yggdrasil. But we have an iMac, a Wii, two laptops, two iphones, an ipad, a nintendo ds, a ps2 and even a nintendo 64 tucked away somewhere beneath the television...we are a house of technology. Our reality is expressed mainly through script or code, caged within our gadgets and let loose in the virtual world.
The nature and validity of true reality has long been debated (waaaay before the Matrix). Whether that which is perceived by the senses is the true reality or whether this in itself is an illusion brought about by an evil genius (Descartes at his finest). Do we live through our heads or our bodies? If in fact our sole purpose here on earth is to learn the lessons of partially or wholly predetermined lives, then the sets of our lives must be manufactured by an external force like The Truman Show.
This is also the way of gaming. You accept certain rules of the game - the nature of your power, the limitations of your rank and you live inside a created illusion governed by the parameters that have been defined for you. Investment Impact creates a new reality within a reality of the business world, which itself exists within the reality of life.
Maybe I am crazy enough to live on this island after all....