Blue Moon, Blasting Skies, Alchemy of Being

I'm chilling outside, under the glow of the second full moon of this month: a blue moon. It's one of the last few evenings of the year that it will be nice enough to sit out here and close a day with sipping a glass of wine under the stars. I always find the tastiest watermelons around the end of August, and tonight I'm snacking on some that has been enhanced with a sprinkling of Tajin, a Mexican spice blend I found, concocted specifically to be added to slices of fruit. It gives it a wonderful sharp, zippy bite of citrus and chili, balanced by a slightly salty tang that contrasts nicely with the juicy sweetness. It was the perfect bedtime snack to have after I came back from the fireworks festival down by the river. A fireworks festival is the perfect event to have to symbolize the fading away of a Canadian summer: lively, animate, a burst of hot fiery glorious beauty within the year that feels like it comes and goes way too quickly and fleetingly. The flash of colours lead to the expectation of the changing leaves as autumn approaches.

That excursion, my book, plus sitting out here, were my first real breaks of the day. Before and after work, most of it was spent charging around and frantically writing up some correspondence to get some things prepared before deadlines today.

As I said, I read a bit after all that stuff was over with. If I was ever so diligent enough to create and upkeep a blog or numeric list article about a manly man's guide to literature*, the novel The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, would definitely be on it. It has been perhaps effecting me more deeply than I thought it would, now that I sit back and meditate on all the actions I took today to work some things out for the better. It seems like a recent entry into the book market, but in actuality, the work is twenty some odd years old. It's one of those universal and timeless stories, with lots of interplay using archetypes. It's sort of an adventure story; not one with a high level of action or drama in the content of the story, but if you have a real soul in you, it triggers you to recollect and probe into any part of some aspect of the adventure of your own life, in terms of both successes and regrets, where you found yourself chasing after a dream. Paradoxically, it's loaded with a setting and themes of things exotic and mysterious, yet is not as riddle laden as one may initially think: it gets very direct and revealing about some of life's deeper wisdom and truths. I wonder if this writing style is just a unique facet related to literary Portuguese, from which this story was translated, or more of a direct characteristic of the author.

Be warned, this book might make you want to approach your desires in life with a little more passion, as well as tuning into using your present moment to do something more pleasantly constructive. It's a Zen book.


*- Such a blog would probably be called something like, Books for Guys Who Like All Things Related to Beer, Boobies, Action Movies, Dirty Jokes, and Things with Loud Throbbing Engines, and Are yet Still Worldly and Securely Masculine Enough to Not Be Ashamed to Admit to Themselves and Others That They Have an Intellectual and Emotionally Sensitive Side That Needs to Be Nurtured and Stimulated With Deeply Awe-Inspiring, Philosophically  Engaging, Life-Enriching, Soulful, and Thought Provoking Literature. . . Ok, ok . . . I'll work on shortening that title.

Neuroeconomics, The Marketing of Intimacy, First Fall Sunday

I've been messing around again on the FOREX* scene, making a lot of small profits, only to have them wiped out by bigger losses. This morning yielded a net profit, too embarrassingly small to mention, but at least it was profit. I'm thankful that I'm still in practice mode, and not playing with real funds. I have been using the orthodox methods of reading and reacting to the candlestick charts; my problem seems to be setting my stops too tight on my trades. It's too technical to get into, I'm just at the stage of learning from mistakes, making it a habit to stick to modest deals that wouldn't be crippling if losses resulted. I'm trying to be mindful that this is just "game mode", and to not to get too caught up in the elements of greed and fear, which are the major forces of failure at making wise trades. There is so much to study and analyze; strengthened proficiency at this game though doesn't even guarantee anything profitable. I'm more forgiving of myself given these following points, which I gleaned from a book by Jason Zweig, called Your Money and Your Brain.

• "If you think you are a financial genius, you are almost certainly dumber than you think - and you need to chain your brain so you can control your futile attempts to outsmart everyone else. If you think you are a financial idiot, you're probably smarter than you realize - and you need to train your brain so you can understand how to triumph as an investor." (page 6)**
• Even smart people make financial mistakes. Sir Isaac Newton, being the mathematical genius as he was, was wiped out in a stock market crash. **
• "Professional" investors, on average, do not outperform "amateurs."**

Zweig's book would have stayed on the shelf if it was only just about economics. It was, however, the emphasis on the psychology of investing/spending/saving money (neuroecomonics) which was the thing that made me pick it up and read it. Money working for you instead of you working for money is a beautiful thing,*** but for most of us it is just a pipe dream, or we get bogged down by listening to the (often conflicting) details, information, and opinions of so-called experts. Prices of stocks, bonds, commodities, and currency values rise and fall for a bunch of innumerable excuses, (usually false) correlations, and the stupidest of variables and reasons.****  I think the best advice on investing I've heard so far is don't give any money to anybody to invest in anything if they aren't willing to show you the performance of their own portfolio. I don't know of any investment brokers yet who are so willing to do that with me.

The degree of automation in an online trading station is wonderful tool once getting a clearer sense of focus and discipline for interpreting the data from it is mastered: for either market/entry order placement, or closing a trade, which let's you free yourself from constantly monitoring charts to do other things. The one thing I don't want to do is to become addicted to watching a bunch of red and blue lines rise and dive on a time chart, which could be easy for an analytical person to get lost in doing.

I still don't know yet what my gimmick would be for getting a little extra seed money for more investing. To be a writer would be interesting, but it would take a keen sense of knowing what key issues are throbbing through the pulse of contemporary society to create a good original story, and making it a sincere mission to tackle them and building a plot around them. For example, I was reading a recent article on MSN about E.L. James, the author of Fifty Shades of Grey. Her erotic novel has been charging up the best sellers lists, and is so controversial that it has been put on the "books to burn" lists of several organizations as well. I think the writing in the book is rather average and mediocre, but the marketing of it was brilliant*****. In my eyes, the popularity of this book is perhaps not really telling about how the average man and woman is becoming depraved and obsessed about alternative (and painful) expressions of sensuality, but of really how deprived and estranged people, in general, are becoming from the feeling of genuine intimacy. The list of reasons of how and why this has become so in modern society is too long for me to write in this entry. If there is a supply and demand marketing paradigm that E.L. James used in getting rich by creating something that is a reflection of what people in this society today are really wanting and craving, I would have to say that thing/theme would be intimacy: something that money and power couldn't buy for Christian Grey, the rich male character in the book. He had to earn it by learning to surrender power and be vulnerable. Getting to even entering a degree of intimacy that a person wants today, has come to the point where it has to be gained through some greater degree of exploration of humiliation and pain, as the character of Anastasia did in the book. The play and antagonism between Christian and Anastasia leaves one wondering which character has gained, and which one lost power in the strange "romance" depicted in the story. The sex is certainly there, a relationship is there, a (fluctuating) power dynamic is there, but as for intimacy. . . that is very questionable, and it leads the reader into exploring if it's there or not.

To be a successful fiction writer in this day in age seems to be harder, in that one has to have volume set no less than a trilogy to be published before ever getting popular; contemporary examples include E. L. James (as I mentioned), J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter series), Stieg Larsson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), and Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games). Most importantly, there has to be an effort by the writer to be able to build a sense, or a bond of intimacy between him/her, the story, and the reader: an ability in which I'm probably very lacking.

I've been writing this entry piecemeal. It's now Sunday morning: a day off for this part of my rotation. I noticed leaves changing and the smell of the air as I drink my coffee outside this morning, and its crispness makes me feel like summer really has officially ended as of today. I have nothing planned except to harvest the remainder of my tomatoes, and perhaps do some cycling before it possibly rains, or the wind picks up. I don't think I'll be perusing any more female erotica, but the fiction that I would like to check out today is a book by Paolo Coehlo, The Alchemist: a short novel, but reputed to be a very deep one. I'll continue reading along with my non-fiction selections as well. If it stays cloudy, and when my eyes get too sore from reading, I'll maybe nap, or watch a classic movie before the FOREX markets re-open this afternoon (Monday morning in Tokyo and Sydney). I really don't want life to be any more intense than this today after I'm finished dumping out my mind in this entry.

*- It shocks me just how little knowledge people, even amongst those guys whom I serve with commerce degrees, and have had jobs in banking, generally have about the operation/existence of the FOREX market, yet its volume of trading is a few times greater than that of New York Stock Exchange within any given day.

** - Zweig, J. (2007). Your Money and Your Brain: How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.

***- Getting rich by a spark of creativity is even cooler, as you see as I write on.

****- In world of economics and finance, the only prevailing constants are the greed of banks, governments, and corporations, and the power they exert over everyone else from the level of the consumer and taxpayer upward.

*****- Yes, I did read this book before having the gall to mildly critique it. I don't ordinarily make it a habit of reading female oriented erotica, but it was good to do to gain some insight into the female head space. Don't let it be said that won't try to understand. It was done so out of some hint/dare/suggestion from one of my female friends (I can't/won't openly speculate on any other motive as to why she did so).