Attila Vajda

Old men and women unite. A ninety seven year old Englishman told me that age is only a number and to not to believe anyone that claims otherwise. I have been listening to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata just now on classic fm, the reporter started jabbering commercially. Commercials, I think radios could do without commercials. I agree with Jerry Mander on banning commercials. It is my flatmate that turned the radio on. As I get the familiar irritated feeling - being disturbed by the different sounds and noises this bored, retired man creates, I am reminded of my not being able to create privacy for myself whereas I think privacy essential to my life. I cannot afford my own place although I stress, sweat, "work hard". I spend most of my life working. How did I get here, from the bottom of the jungles, and how do I get back in there? Immigration. "They were killing people as anything" - another old person tells me while I struggle putting on his TED stockings. He grew up in Kenya, fled with his family from Uganda in the seventies. "You know where is Uganda?". Unrelated to this man, the concept of the "hard worker" comes to my mind - what a lie. What a load of rubbish, this illusion of the hard working man. It is like smoking, or drinking, when it is considered manly to be able to drink large amounts of alcohol. Childish, we were hiding on the edge of town on the hill by the Danube river smoking cigarettes, you were meant to smoke without coughing, comfortably, you looked stronger, you weren't a pussy. Work is a disease. It is not something remarkable. Work is toxic. There are so many things one can do in this life. Old men and women unite with everyone else, with children, with the "ordinary", with the extraordinary, with prisoners, with animals, with those labelled "mentally ill" for political reasons, with the young and fresh in soul, look at those who lived long but are/were still fresh, like Alejandro Jodorowsky, Arthur Janov, Stanislav Grof, like Helio Gracie, like BKS Iyengar, learn from them. Television, blister packs and river cruise adverts while the sharks of private "health care" corporations juice your soul and exchange it for death. For the word man, meant for human being, Hungarian uses one neutral word - ember.