16. Munich: 5th Philosophical Meeting (8 pgs.)

ACT I - CHAPTER 16

5th PHILOSOPHICAL MEETING

MUNICH

Saturday February 17, 2018

Munich Germany

At the Stern Munich club stadium there were five minutes left in the game when Alexandre was fouled inside the area. They were tied, but their team was playing with ten players. He insisted on taking the penalty.

The German goalkeeper was two meters tall. Alexandre knew that the shot had to be dragged and close to the pillar. It would be difficult for that giant to come down from above.

The whistle blew, he advanced quickly, feinted and launched a drag shot. As he fell, the goalkeeper saw the ball enter the opposing goal.

Alexandre ran while his teammates chased him to celebrate.

“Goal! Goal! Alexandre’s solidity is demonstrated once again on the court! Goal! Goal! Goal from the football philosopher!” exclaimed the match reporter.

The German fans were silent in mourning and the players were devastated at being left out of the championship.

His team stayed at the Munich Walker Hotel. It was one more of the luxurious chain. He was giving autographs to some kids in the hallway when he found Yellow outside sitting in a luxurious German sedan from a famous brand.

It was difficult for him to get to the car among so many people asking for autographs. A few blocks from the hotel they noticed someone following them on a motorcycle. Apparently, it was a journalist who had his camera hanging around his neck.

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Yellow began evasive maneuvers to lose him, but it was not easy on the streets of Munich. When they reached the highway, it seemed that they had lost him, when suddenly, next to them, a second motorcyclist dressed in black appeared. Alexandre saw the gun on the other side of the window. One, two, three, four, five shots hit the windows, leaving marks, but the bullets did not enter. From behind, a third motorcyclist appeared and pushed the second, causing him to fall violently onto the shoulder of the road. The last motorcyclist followed them for a few minutes until he left the highway at a detour and they lost sight of him. They were going two hundred kilometers per hour.

“Who was the last one?” Alexandre asked.

“I don’t know,” Yellow answered.

Fifteen minutes later they arrived in a town to a three-story Bavarian-style house. There was a helicopter on one side of the access patio and more than ten guards in bulletproof vests armed with machine guns.

In the entrance hall inside the house there was a huge head of an elk that welcomed them until they reached the living room.

“Are you OK?” Ricardo asked.

“Yes. If it’s not for the armored glass I’m already dead.”

“Alexandre! Are you OK? Look what a son of a bitch! If I knew where he was hiding, I would kill him right now! Where is the car?” Arturo asked.

They went out to look and saw the traces of the five shots, one next to the other. The armored glass had resisted and saved his life.

They had dinner and, although somewhat nervous, they felt protected by the armed guards of the small army that always watched over their meetings.

“It does not matter what happens! We will finish the book! Nothing and no one are going to stop us!” Arturo said like a locker room harangue in a final. He had done it so many times to give confidence to his teammates on the Argentine team.

Then they drank beer and talked about the skydive they were going to do the next day.

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“I’m ready to jump alone. And you?” Alexandre asked looking at Ricardo.

“I still don’t feel ready. I want to take another month to prepare better,” he replied, “but today I will jump in tandem.”

“This time I’m just going to look,” said Arturo.

After dinner, Alexandre turned on the recorder and they resumed the themes of the book. First, they talked about reason and then about emotions. Alexandre had a strong debate with both of them, mainly with Arturo, because he did not agree that emotions depended on a rational evaluation.

“Nobody evaluates reasons before feeling an emotion! You just feel the emotion! When you feel you don’t think, you just feel!” Arturo exclaimed, “Can you show me how do you think first and then you feel an emotion? Do you have a photo, video or something to prove it?” he asked.

Alexandre couldn’t show them the video because an emotion was something that happened in the body and inside the brain. But he explained to them that when something real or imaginary was perceived, a sequence began in several stages. It was a sequence that occurred at the speed of light. First, what was perceived was identified, which could be real or imaginary; second, it was evaluated rationally; third, the emotion occurred. The second, was the cause of the third; the third, an automatic response to the second. They understood it better with the example of the person that learned to drive. At first, he had to think separately about different things, such as learning traffic rules, knowing what each sign on the road meant, learning to signal when to turn, accelerate, brake, look in the rearview mirror, etc. Each action had a rational purpose and had to be integrated into a single one: driving without thinking. After years of driving, it became automatic. The same thing happened with emotions. Alexandre said that, at first, a boy followed the example of his parents and family. As he grew up, he learned cultural values and when he reached adulthood, he already had his own “traffic rule” in the subconsciousness memory of his brain. They were the “cultural norms”, not for driving a car, but for living in a society where emotions were felt. But, the rational evaluation of those cultural norms, which were frozen in the subconscious, did not necessarily go through the filter of critical thinking.

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The adult who had questioned them as a child was an exception, since such thinking was weak in childhood and, in most cases, never matured. In any case, the emotion was the effect; the rational evaluation of cultural norms, the cause. The emotion was perceived; the evaluation was ignored, and it was ignored because it happened behind the scenes and at the speed of light.

They continued talking about that and other topics until they decided to go to sleep because they were exhausted.

It dawned sunny and quite cold. Already at the nearby airport, where they had arrived by helicopter, they reviewed what they had to do with the same instructor from Dubai. Ricardo, would jump in tandem again; Arturo, would stay down; Alexandre, would make his first free-jump. Free-jump was a term that referred to the skydiver who jumped alone and opened his own parachute after packing it himself. They boarded a single-engine plane whose door had been removed to give them a panoramic view. They would jump from eight thousand feet high, Ricardo first in tandem and then Alexandre. He had to jump alone and count to thirty before opening his parachute. Another instructor would jump behind him to open it if he fainted.

When the plane reached altitude, Alexandre mentally reviewed the position he had to take in the air and the movements he had to make to open the main and reserve parachutes in case of emergency.

“One minute!” the jumpmaster shouted, warning them to get into position. They waited the next few seconds almost without breathing because of the terror in their bodies.

“Jump!” the jumpmaster shouted, and Ricardo and his instructor jumped into the void in tandem.

Alexandre felt that adrenaline had replaced his blood. He was swallowing and was completely serious. His fear was total, but he had decided to make it his ally. He knew that if he didn’t do that, terror would paralyze him. His decision helped him continue and retain control.

His instructor told him to stand on the edge of the door. When he heard it, he felt a pang in his stomach, and when he looked down, he felt another when he saw the emptiness that separated him from the ground. Next to them another plane was flying at the same altitude, very close, perhaps, too close. Alexandre thought he saw an armed man.

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“Jump!” the instructor shouted.

He was paralyzed and his body tensed

“Jump!” he shouted again.

Like a fetus born from her mother’s womb, Alexandre leapt to the void into the unknown. He took the position he had practiced hundreds of times, relaxed his muscles, watched the two planes receding above him. He saw his instructor jumping behind him and, from the other plane, the unknown skydiver doing the same. Would he kill him in the air? The stranger fell about fifty meters away from them and then realized that he had nothing in his hands. They were falling levelly at two hundred kilometers per hour, but the speed could not be felt.

Alexandre smiled, flying like a bird, serene, contemplating the wonderful landscape, the distant hills and some clouds, seeing them from above, but watching the passage of time. He knew that death awaited him just a few seconds away if he didn’t open. He felt immense joy and a sense of triumph bathed in adrenaline. It was the force of a colossal power that he had never felt in his entire life.

His instructor looked at him floating in the air, five meters away from him, and he saw that his cheeks were waving like angry flags in a hurricane.

Falling in free fall at 200 kilometers per hour, Alexandre began to rock back and forth in short movements, like the seesaw on which children play. He was too tense. He needed to relax his muscles. He remembered when the instructor had thrown his vest into the air to explain to him that he had to relax in the same way, surrender to the air, so he tried it and after a few seconds he stabilized and noticed that he was laughing with joy. He didn’t feel afraid.

He looked down and, in the distance, saw an open parachute with the image of the United Kingdom flag. Was it the stranger’s parachutist who had jumped from the other plane? He saw that he was heading in the opposite direction from his, to another landing point where he was going. Suddenly, his instructor, approached Alexandre and signaled him to open its parachute. In the middle of the joy, he had forgotten to count until thirty.

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Before opening he made sure his position was horizontal, with his stomach pointing down, and stable. With his palms extended, also pointing downwards, he first had to take the pilot with his right hand. At the same time, he had to put his left hand in front of his head. That symmetry was necessary falling at two hundred kilometers per hour, otherwise he would be thrown in any direction and it would be difficult to regain control. Take the pilot! he thought at that moment. The pilot was a tiny parachute about the size of a basketball when opened. It was connected with a cable to the main parachute and its function was to open it, that is, to unpack the main parachute. He carried the pilot folded in a special pocket at the height of his right hip in his parachutist suit. He had to take the handle that was sticking out, the size of a ping pong ball, return both hands to their original positions, but now with the pilot in his right hand, and release it. The pilot would shoot upwards and in a second would open the main parachute that had taken him half an hour to pack. He had packed it with all his attention to the details since his life depended on it. He had placed dozens of cables that should hold him in his harness when he opened up. They had to be ordered and placed in specific places next to the folds of the parachute fabric, otherwise everything would get tangled and cause a tragedy in the air. Open now! he thought. He went through the motions, grabbed the pilot and released it.

The wind, at two hundred kilometers per hour, opened it in an instant. The pilot rose violently to about seven meters, tensioning the thick yellow cable that opened the bag and brought out the main parachute, which opened. It opened! he thought after feeling the strong pull as he reduced his speed from two hundred to just ten kilometers per hour, in only three seconds. Despite the violent opening and strong pulling, none of the dozens of cables that connected the parachute to the harness where he was sitting had become tangled. I did it! Good packing, good opening! he thought at that moment, “Now I just have to land!” and he realized he was smiling from ear to ear.

He looked up and there was his open parachute. He saw the drivers’ handlebars exactly where they should be. He took the right-driver, then the left-driver and began driving his parachute. I’m alive! he thought and smiled.

After three minutes of driving, he placed his feet gently on the sandy court, landing almost like an expert.

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“Alexandre! Alexandre! You did it!” Arturo shouted from afar running towards him to hug him, but when he was about ten meters away, he stopped and thought, Don’t bother him! He just came down from the heavens! Now he speaks another language that I do not understand, that of the gods!

Alexandre could barely contain the rush of adrenaline. He stood motionless looking at his hands and the place. He picked up and hugged the cloth of the parachute that was on the grass and felt the desire to hug the planet, the galaxy and the entire universe. At that moment he remembered the question from one of the cards Ronald had written, Who am I? and he thought, Someone who could be dead, but is alive! and he felt grateful. Although I may not have been born, I was born; although I may have died, I am alive.

He had the feeling that if they shot him the bullets would bounce. That was the power and feeling of accomplishment he had.

He did not speak for several minutes and remained in his place contemplating the landscape, with the parachute gathered in his arms, seeing that Arturo did not approach or say a word, as if he was afraid of him. The jumping instructor walked quickly up to him and congratulated him.

“You were very good. Come on, there’s no time to waste, there’s still two left,” his instructor told him and Alexandre followed him, but first raised his hand to greet Arturo from a distance who raised his hand back.

When he folded his parachute again, he reviewed every detail and felt great confidence in himself. He thought, If I pack well on earth, I unpack well in heaven, necessarily. Causality does not betray. Understanding the parachute packing, so that the wind will open it and not kill him, was the deepest verification of the law of causality in action. He was happy to learn that. But he also felt deep gratitude of just exist. He thought, Life, is appreciated in contrast to death; the gratitude it produces, is the nectar of awakened men that the gods cannot reach.

After jumping two more times, he felt that he was no longer the same as before. He had entered a new state of consciousness that allowed him to appreciate, not a supernatural world, but this same material and sensitive world, but in a different way because now his whole body knew that life was appreciated in the face of death.

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He barely spoke during the lunch they had at the airfield with the instructors. Alexandre, was like a mutant who had taken an evolutionary leap; Ricardo, was in process and acted slowly; Arturo, realized what he was missing.

“At least I have a tandem jump!” Arturo said, and he realized that perhaps he should take skydiving with the same seriousness that he had taken football, but he thought, I don’t know if I have the guts.

“Life is appreciated in contrast to death” said Alexandre and with indescribable joy he thought, It’s metaphysics. They both stared at him, not just at what he said, but at how he said it, and there were no words to describe how he said it.

At that moment Alexandre thought, I am the absolute existence of being alive in the present moment. His joy evoked new words, Oh! Beloved death, always present that everyone evades! I looked into your eyes, without taking my sight, and you revealed me the secret of life! Thank you!

Many other similar thoughts came to his mind. How many more things was he capable of doing? What was his limit? How did he want to sculpt his character? Like Michelangelo’s sculpture of David? Perhaps better?

He wanted to do a feat and the first was to finish the book, win the world championship and avenge Ronald. He would marry Victoria. Francisca? He did not know. She was a mystery.

They decided that they had to celebrate Alexandre’s free-jump, so they emptied two bottles of Whisky. The effects of the alcohol, rather than dulling them, perhaps from the adrenaline in their bodies, increased its wits and heightened his sense of humor as they continued their work to finish that part of the book.

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