Stupid!

Stupid!

I can hear my mother's dismissive “stupid” directed at people and systems she didn't understand. I censor myself and don't speak it as I watch that word, stupid, move from my mind to my tongue. It's so much easier to blame outside, 'stupid', than to look at my own inability to communicate and be communicated with.

I'm too aware when I send a quick email comment to a friend that the valence of my mood hasn't been heard. I don't want to have to write more and more. I want to be heard! I get angry when the email response detours. I blame myself for having even tried. Sometimes I drag more words out of my brain, resisting, resentful. Sometimes I feel so lonely, want so to dismiss that correspondent from my friends list. My mother's way was easier. Spray discontent. Blame the other. Stupid!

100% cotton

I saw an online ad for 100% cotton sweatshirts and phoned the 800 number. The answerer fumbled the phone and then a sluggish voice with a New Jersey accent put me on hold. And then disconnected me. I called back. The same east coast young male unconcerned sounding voice answered.

“Did you call before?”

“Yes, we were disconnected. I saw your ad for 100% cotton sweatshirts. I'd like a gray one.”

“We don't have gray.”

“No gray. Why?”

“No gray.”

“Because?”

“It's black that makes the gray and black is polyester.”

“Well then the sage. Long sleeve. Medium.”

“We only have short sleeve.”

“Only short sleeve?

”Right.”

“What about in the fall?”

“Short sleeve. It's a niche.”

“What about when it gets cold.”

“Then we have heavy weight.”

“Are those 100% cotton?”

“No, 95%.”

“Thank you”

I hung up, remembering the website offering 100% cotton sweatshirts and imagining the bodies in the niche market for short sleeve sweatshirts.

Poise

The upper classes don't fidget.

Three Tends

Social conservatism appreciates cleanliness and purity. The current stress on hand-washing and education about germs and infections tilts society in a more traditional, less innovative direction.

Society is aging, and older people tend to be more cautious, less bold.

The awareness of one's own death affects the decision-making of individuals and groups of people. A consequence of more public discussions of end of life care, advance directives, right to die, and mortality might be that we become … “more socially conformist and centered on group values, more authoritarian, less understanding or forgiving of deviance, and all the more willing to punish eccentrics and outsiders and to reward mainstream heroes.” *

Might these three trends lead to the end of deviation?  Are there other markers?

        * NIcholas Humphrey, Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness, Princeton, 2011, p 189

Motel room decor

A modest motel in Napa, CA - twin beds with matching bedspreads, twin night tables, identical twin lamps, décor topped off with twin paintings – two framed art prints, the same print, centered over each bed.

Please comment on why identical prints seems so odd, though identical lamps are expected.

Tools or Patterns?

Tools or Patterns?

Humans are differentiated by being users of tools.

Humans like to find patterns (think about the constellations).

I wonder if finding patterns came before using tools, that first humans recognized a pattern in several unrelated events and then developed the tool to make that pattern happen in a consistent way.

Numbers, like nature, are a self-organizing system.