"What is Philosophy" in a Card

I just read a review over in Brain Pickings about the question of what philosophy is and I got a kick out of one of the quotes therein as it happens to be the very same my folks had put in a card they gave me after the ceremony.

So, I did some digging, found the picture with the card, and voila.

The quote read: “Philosophy is an unusual subject in that its practitioners don’t agree what it’s about. - Nigel Warburton”

On Eudaimonia and Coffee

On the drive back from half a day of snowboarding up North, I stopped to pick up a friend in the city. He informed me the night before that there is a new coffee place worth checking out in the city. Coffee places are like mushrooms after the rain in this city.

So, we go get coffee at this place where the baristas wear these sort of..., eh, why bother. As I keep explaining to my people, this city is where hipsters and scenesters come to retire. Sort of like Portland, but, you know, generally prettier. Sorry, Portlanders. Those of you who've been here sort of already concur.

I still had my slope hat on and my right leg was killing me thanks to a prior fall. Coffee tasted good, though. Apparently, after taking the first sip I had this look on my face that said, I'm so not here right now. I'm so somewhere else.
The other party asked me, "where did you go just now?"
He continues, "you have a look on your face right now that says, 'I'm so not here right now. I'm so somewhere else.'"
I get that look when I'm fully happy for the moment. I wonder why, in moments like that, I look disinterested in the present place and company, but I know that it happens. There's this utter detachment from the present moment. I suppose 'happy' looks different to different people.

I snap back into the present moment. I look around and I see a sea of iPhones and Apple gizmos, Ugg boots, and blah, blah, blah. "Eeek, I had to snap back to this," I think to myself. My friend opened up his messenger bag and he pulled out a book that looked beat up by time.

"Why do some translate 'eudaimonia' as 'happiness'", he asks.
I shrug my shoulders. Not because I don't have an answer. Alas, I sort of did. But because I was getting a bit of a sensorial overload from the new coffee place where the baristas have this 'cool' way of making..... ah, who cares.

"Can't really talk about eudaimonia right this very minute." In a nutshell, the eudaimonists concerned themselves with the maximizing of one's own practical goal to achieving happiness. They might call it happiness, I'm more inclined to calling it evasion of futility. Whichever is more important to one, I suppose. Just an hour ago my telos was staying on the board and not letting the right eye that kept itching bother me too much. "Let's get out of here. I'm worried about getting a ticket. It's been what...?"
"About 10 minutes," he says.
We leave. While driving on a street with too many lights I complain about traffic and then think to resume his initial topic of eudaimonism.
"So, what about them?"
He knew what I was referring to and promptly said,
"I wonder if some translate it as 'happiness' because it puts a stop to artistic pursuit. To go after art means, or should mean, to suffer."
I take a sip of my surprisingly unpretensious coffee and only manage to get two words out before I'm interrupted by a laughter. I say one function word and one content word and then a "HA" ensues.
"The telos...."
Ha, telos, I'm sorry, he says, you have that silly hat on with the two hanging straps and your board is in the backseat and The Killers are playing in your iPod and we're talking about eudaimonia.
I didn't think that the content word 'telos' was that humorous a choice but I suppose in the context we were in, it sort of, kind of was.
We left eudaimonia at that.
This morning as I was straightening my hair, I was thinking of the little exchange and got to thinking about it a bit more. I wondered why I never cared much for it. And then I wondered why I never cared much about Aristotle either. Just because I 'get' them, doesn't mean I ought to care, or even like, them. Philosophy, much like anything else, should serve a practical function, one that is of use to the person to be/get better. Aristotle was so adamant about the importance of philosophy and how it is good for the mind to be consumed by it. It turns out, it's not always so. It's better for the mind to be consumed with the practicality of the pursuit of happiness, however. Sometimes, most times actually, it's better for the mind to wander freely. And that's as close to being happy as some people can hope to get. I suppose this would make me a bit of a eudomonia-enamored person at this present moment. The purpose of life is to practically go after one's own happiness. Or something.

Egocentrism over Email

I just finished reading a study published by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology about the benefit of factoring in paralinguistic cues such as gesture, emphasis, and intonation and how without them it can be difficult to convey emotion and tone over email.

Email communication is ubiquitous. Businesses rely almost solely on it. Interpersonal relationships can't seem to be without it. However, communication is multi-faceted and without paralinguistic feedback it can be quite lacking.

I had an experience with a work email the other day. As a trained close reader, tone matters to me. I pictured what the writer of the email meant by it if the same content were shared by way of the voice while being physically present. I still didn't quite feel I got to the core of the text.

I was in too tired a state of mind to place a phone call. Instead, I choose to give it a few hours, wrap up some last-minute things, tidy the desk, put things away, and then I compile the text. It was an exercise in economy of speech. And as most such exercises go, they take time.

Afterwards, a number of phone calls ensued for the purpose of getting to a full understanding of the content and what now feels like a waste of 60 minutes of my time. In the end, the original writer of the email concluded, incidentally by way of email, "so glad this is all sorted out. sorry :)" I wanted to email back the following, "it wouldn't have even been born had one of us verbally phrased the same thing." But I didn't. Because I was in no mood to waste yet another hour of my already packed existence.

A bit from the study says:

"Five experiments suggest that this limitation is often underappreciated, such that people tend to believe that they can communicate over e-mail more effectively than they actually can. Studies 4 and 5 further suggest that this overconfidence is born of egocentrism, the inherent difficulty of detaching oneself from one’s own perspective when evaluating the perspective of someone else. Because e-mail communicators “hear” a statement differently depending on whether they intend to be, say, sarcastic or funny, it can be difficult to appreciate that their electronic audience may not.

Social judgment is inherently egocentric. When people try to imagine the perspective, thoughts, or feelings of someone else, a growing body of evidence suggests that they use themselves as an
anchor or reference point. Although precisely why this occurs — whether the result of an overlearned and generally valid heuristic, the residual byproduct of an earlier stage of childhood egocentrism, or the inevitable consequence of an effortful cognitive process such as anchoring and adjustment—is a matter of some debate, the fact remains that the assessment of another’s perspectives is influenced, at least in part, by one’s own."



You can read the rest of the study here.

Having Preferences Means Having Weaknesses.

Preferences allow us to carve a space for actualization. We cannot self-actualize without a set of personal preferences for they lead to pursuits. Pursuits, of any kind, are fueled by interests and interests or drive as some would say, are indispensable when it comes to accruing any sort of success. However, preferences reside in a space of exclusion. Having them means shutting doors to other things for preferring one particular thing presupposes a presence of preclusion.

I've been thinking a good deal about the role preferences play when pursuing anything. I've thought about the role choice plays in preference pursuing. Deny the self of a preference, and most pursuits become lukewarm. And achievement is rarely to be found in the lukewarm.

Just as I was thinking about the philosophical nuances of preferences, I had a desire to play a good game of chess. Funny that. I hadn't played in a few months. I call the one person in the city who usually gives me a good game of chess. He was surprised at my call as last time we got together for chess I told him that I wasn't all that interested in carrying on with our chess encounters for a while.

I'm the kind that needs time to warm up to something. I usually warm up to an idea, a person, or a general pursuit by thinking and reading about it. So, I start doing something exciting like reading up on chess news. It's exciting to me. Sort of like writing about 12-century egocentric heroes. We all have a kind of cake we like better than others. Choice has little say in preferences. If it did, impulse would play no role whatsoever in human pursuits. Think of the last thing you pursued with systematic interest and explore how big a role impulse played. I'd wager, a good deal. But I digress.

So I get on ChessBase.com to see what's up in the world of chess. While there I come upon an interview with the renowned chess player, Magnus Carlsen. Reading the interview got my juices flowing. I let out a few 'ha'-s and 'good one'-s as I was doing do. A bit from the interview says:

So you can’t call yourself a tactician or a strategist?
-I’d call myself an optimist! In actual fact I don’t have any clear preferences in chess. I do what I think circumstances require of me – I attack, defend or go into the endgame. Having preferences means having weaknesses.

Could you compare your impressions after a win in a subtle endgame or a whirlwind attack? Do they really not differ at all for you?!
-I really don’t know what I like more in chess! Among other things a game can stand out for the feeling you get when it’s over, when you realise you’ve created something truly worthwhile… But something like that happens very, very rarely. In any case, over the whole course of my life – only a few times.

Well, and if you’re just a spectator, which kind of game do you like more?
-I don’t know. I like the struggle in itself.

You can read the rest of the interview here.

I found it quite interesting that Carlsen would comment on what role preferences played in his activity of choice. In my opinion, however, whether it's chess or cheese-making, preferences matter. It's whether one's got a good poker face going in that truly counts when it comes to the end result. We all have preferences. It's how much/little we show them that matters.
And I'm all warmed up now.
I've removed all the specks of dust from my chess set and in about 5 minutes, my bell will ring. And so it does. My friend has a preference for punctuality. And he makes no fuss about obfuscating it. If he's this open when we play, I'm bound to win, aren't I?
We'll see.

Happiness and Excoriating

"I've got to tell you something and I know you'll excoriate me," says he as I drive through the rainy streets of the city thinking of ways to improve two things I'm currently struggling with. Driving, like working out, is a good way to clear my head. Another way is going down by the beach, sitting on my favorite bench that's usually unoccupied around 9pm and between 7am-8:30am.

"What makes you think I'll excoriate you?" I say to him as I make a right turn.

"Because I know you. Plus, I know I'm in need of being excoriated." he adds. Usually, I would have interjected one of my usual one-liners known only to those who know my discursive routines. Instead, I say nothing. I'm in too involved a mood. My mind's busy. I say nothing and almost enjoy the silence for a bit.

"I might have something you'll excoriate me about, too", I finally say, "but let me hear yours first."

He proceeds to tell me the details and I ask him if he needs to hear from me the same thing I've told him a number of times in the past. He says he does. He feels like a review. "I feel like a good review," he says. Thus, we review.

I've thought a lot about happiness recently and how it relates to micro and macro sociality. Blame it on the rain, I suppose. It does have a tendency to lead to written fecundity. Writing pours out of me when it rains. Incidentally, I just finished a draft I'm submitting in two weeks. But back to the happiness thing.

Happiness cannot happen without self-examination. This is not some adage I had to think long and hard about. This is what the Western canon has taught me since early childhood. Start way South with Sophocles, move on a bit North to Plautus, pick up a bit of Dante in the neck of Florence, head North and West to Shakespeare, head back South and pick up some Goethe and, while you're at it, swing by France and have a sip of existentialism and what you'll end up gleaning is the following: Happiness cannot happen without self-examination. We cannot know the other, without knowing the self. Nobody can tell us what feels good to us, unless we experience it ourselves. I love the smell of pines. Absolutely, love it. It drives me insane with happiness. I discovered it when I was fourteen, right after learning how to dance with a tall boy with whose family we were vacationing and who was a horribly bad badminton partner. Happiness needs context in order to get registered. It needs a vehicle of narration. Without storytelling ability, it cannot be.

And it most certainly cannot happen without a clear grasp of history, one's own history. There's a better chance to face what's around the corner when you know and understand the corners you've left behind. And living because one can is no answer to existence. While existence might be nothing more than a string of coincidences, what our canon teaches us is that collectively we feel better about our individual and collective experience in life when we view it in connection to something larger than ourselves, like a bigger group of people, or a larger cluster of interests.

One of the first Shakespeare bits I memorized as a teen was a Hamlet soliloqui. I mostly saw Hamlet as a spoiled brat, not that different from other spoiled brats I knew growing up. And yet, I was in love with his eloquence. He was a brat who had a way with language. I've never been able to resist this kind, the kind that has a way with language. And my history will back this up.

"What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"

I always found it curious that while most people responded to the first verses, I was always keener on the "quintessence of dust" part. For some reason, I mostly use this phrase when break into German. I really don't know why. Translating Shakespeare into German is almost as sacreligeous as translating Goethe into English. My German counterparts often say, "Was ist denn mit der Quintessenz?!" Essence is fine enough a word, no? I wanted to say Quintessenz on Saturday. I didn't. I remember the context well. I was simply too tired to use it as using it would invite even more questions as to why my speech is often peppered with uncommon words.

The reason why I always respond to the "quintessence of dust" bit of the soliloqui is because it encapsulates the notion of life and human existence most fundamentally. And yet, it's poetic. It's association with nothingness is poetic. While our entire literary canon suggests than meaning resides in tropes, sometimes it feels better to embrace the simplicity of experience for what it is, a speck in time, a cluster of little somethings, some of which are good and others the stuff of anxiety, which inevitably make up one big trace.

The thing is, happiness is about shared experience. We need canon to live well. We can easily survive without a historical blueprint of existence. Animals do it. But to live and to want to live well, a script is needed, a well written one. One that says that happiness is our duty and that to go after it is somehow lofty a pursuit, noble even. We spend our lives going after goals, hard ones, to reach a level of happiness much of which seems to be rooted in status and accomplishment.

Without connectivity, we have no context, no history and few things taste better to one than being known, resisted, and eventually agreed with. Happiness is having someone who truly knows you and whom you truly know say to you that they've said or done something you'd excoriate them about. Bottom line, they know how you'll react and they know they'll feel better after sharing with you their short narrative. And while you've read their script over and over again you somehow feel good that they feel you know how to read them and, like a forgiving teacher, you'll excoriate them briefly but then you'll write little notes on the margins of their essay and they'll know how to get better and do right by you.

Familiarity gives me comfort because familiarity gives us all comfort. Humans like routine. It's
due to our enculturation. We have no say in the matter. It's like saying we like how water tastes after being deprived of it. Another synonym for familiarity is intimacy and intimacy is harder for some for it resides in the territory of vulnerability where impulse and unhoned instinct doesn't do very well and where damage can easily be dished out. Giving intimacy means getting known and there is no ouvre bigger and more significant than that. C.S. Lewis wrote that we "read to know we are not alone."

Those who say they can do without familiarity have never had the courage to acquire it, they're strangers to it. And one could never rely on someone who refuses familiarity because to refuse it means to refuse a shared history, connectivity. And while contentedness can happen free of context, happiness needs more, at the very least, it needs a semblance of importance. The feeling of sucking on frozen grapes makes some, including me, feel content. Wearing silk panty hose with a form-fitting black dress hand-made in Berlin in the early 90's while wearing high-heeled boots as I meet someone for dinner makes me feel good. I do it when I feel like my inner self needs excoriating so that it can get to feeling better.

The Futility of Suffering and Nietzsche

Right after I woke up this morning I started reading the new articles on Vanity Fair. I started reading a new piece on aesthetic stagnation first and after getting upbeat at its premise it only seems apropos that I move on to Hitchens.

While reading Hitchens' article entitled Trial of the Will, I got to thinking about things I'd either experienced in life before or read in previous publications. I illustrate. First I got to thinking about David whom I met in grad school. He turned on to Dosteyevsky and Nietzsche around the same time we met so naturally we clicked. I'd run into David at the oddest times. One night, when my grad school significant other and I were driving home from dinner, I saw David walking by himself on the sidewalk. "Slow down. I think that's David" I say. We do just that. I roll down the window and say, "David! It's late. And cold. I mean, not that it matters." I felt my person giving me an eye-rolling but, naturally, I didn't care. What David and Bri time meant was hours upon hours of Lit Crit talk. We would both dive into a literary discussion almost maniacally. We'd start with Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, move on to Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche and in true, 'light' fashion finish with a good chat about existentialism.

Ha. I think to myself, this morning, as my hair is wrapped up in a towel and I find some pleasure out of smelling the body lotion I've been keen on for years. I get on my email and do a keyword on David. I have to say 'hey,' I think to myself. I enter his name and a sea of David words come at me. I open one particular email. The first sentence that jumps out was when he was traveling one summer around Europe and he was telling me about me his peregrinage. He writes, "I suffer regularly which is good for a person, I reckon." Ah, David!

Suffering and learning. Suffering does little for learning. It makes sense that we'd create a whole narrative of learning around it. I mean, it's bound to serve some purpose, right? Actually, the more I think about this, and I've bee thinking about this since early adolescence, the more I'm convinced that it's nothing more than a shallow myth. This is why back in 2004 I readily agreed with Woody Alen and why I easily get on Hitchens' side on the topic today. Granted, I also have much literary and historical context to back this up. Think Nietzsche. People tend to romanticize him and more often than not forget that his twilight years were yet another example of how impervious to learning one is when in deep suffering. Nietzsche's last years were a scene straight out of the third circle of hell.

There's little catharsis in suffering. The only good feeling that it generates is when it reaches its very end. The thought of not having to experience it again produces relief. And relief feels good when tasted after hardship.

I'm amazed at how our brains work. During the time I was in the shower this morning, it managed to give me a nice little essay, equipped with a full bibliography, of my readings and experiences on one topic. I started with David, moved on to Nietzsche, and closed with Woody Allen's Spiegel magazine interview back in 2005. I read it closely then. I also taught it in my German Literature course that Spring. A bit from the article says, and I translate:

"There is nothing really redeeming about tragedy. Tragedy is tragic, and it's so painful that people try to twist it and say "it's terribly hard, but look we've achieved something, we've learned something." This is a weak attempt to find some kind of meaning in tragedy. But there is no meaning. There is no up-side. And suffering does not redeem anything; there is no positive message to learn from it."

What was Nietzsche's phrase again, Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich stärker i.e., "What doesn't kill me, makes me stronger"? And how strong exactly was Nietzsche during the last decade of his life? By all accounts he was an etalon of feebleness thanks to his intense physical and mental suffering.

So, what's die Moral der Geschichte? The moral of the story would be, when attempting to grapple with hardship, stay away from Nietzsche and any viable association you might want to make between learning and suffering. Sometimes, stuff needs to be experienced and left alone, wrapped up and hidden in some drawer.

I close with Hitchens' own words on pain. His own experience of sickness and suffering is what fueled his new article on Vanity Fair. He concludes: "I am attracted to the German etymology of the word “stark,” and its relative used by Nietzsche, stärker, which means “stronger.” In Yiddish, to call someone a shtarker is to credit him with being a militant, a tough guy, a hard worker. So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our common fate. In either case, though, one can dispense with facile maxims that don’t live up to their apparent billing."

What I learned from reading Greek tragedies as a child was that the best thing to do with suffering is to evade. Pretty good reaction, if you ask the adult version of me. Pretty, pretty good.

18304

This is the number of messages I have in my Gmail account. Of course, I delete. I do. Daily. But I've always led a highly verbal life. As a result, I get to get an email form Google Help Desk letting me know that my "web mail quota has exceeded the set quota which is 3GB. [I am] currently running on 3.9 GB." Forgive me Google for I have exceeded the quota. I've dared go past the permitted parameters. What now? Will I be marginalized to the outskirts of the emailing world? Is there such a thing as an email Inferno or something? Which circle will I end up in? The email did get me to thinking about my writing habits and my usually verbal life, however. For years I've been giving/receiving a whole lot of words. And words add up. 3.9 GB is a lot of words. I take a few minutes to look at some folders. Some are too passe. Especially at 2:15 AM they feel passe. I delete a few folders. And still, not a dent. I need to get a good course of action. I need to put my words on a high-protein, low-carb diet. I wake up on account of a bad dream. I open up my email to get my mind off of the disturbing images of the dream. Why was that scary behemoth of a dog chasing me like that?! I mean, I even fed it and everything. I gave it my Starbucks muffin. What gives, dog? But, I better stop talking about the dream and get back to the google chastisement. I have to face the bottomless well that is my highly verbal life and start editing much like I edit my closets. It's easy for me to edit clothing. I only own a very few items of clothing that are older than one year. The reasons are simple. I'm hard on what I wear. In no time I'll manage to ruin the sturdiest and best-made sartorial contributions any closet would love to have. Why is it to hard with words, though? In my academic career, most of my lectures and writing were about concise speech and how difficult it is to master it. As a matter of fact, for all the courses and syllabi I've developed so far, I have an assignment I called: "capture." Often, especially in literary theory courses, I'd accompany it with another one I called "James Joyce auf Deutsch." i.e., "James Joyce in German," i.e., writing a-la-James-Joyce. So, for the latter, the students would be encouraged to just keep on writing and let the words flow as naturally and freely as they could, one association at a time. And in a matter of days, the next assignment would be a one-page 'capture' intended to make them think carefully about every content word chosen. Many of the comments I would put on most papers would say, "How could you say more with less? - Economy of speech: employ it more often." It's time I heed my own advice. I've always been in love with economy of speech. Some people tend to love difficult things. And I've always loved a good speech economy. The kind that's managed right. Once in a blue moon I encounter it and, when I do, I delight in it like a diabetic at a gelateria who's been allowed to go nuts on ice cream for one blessed day. And, here I am. Looking at the number 18304. Wondering how I could have accumulated a Tower of Babel in such a short time, with much deleting and all. I start to delete a few. But then my eyes get heavy. Surely, this can be done later. I put the computer aside, turn to the left side, close my eyes, and hope I don't get tormented by the awful nightmare that woke me up in the first place and sent me to my email.

Sitting between Two Redheaded People

I received some major news a few weeks ago. You know how it feels when everything around you unexpectedly goes in slow motion and you're almost capable of doing a play-by-play analysis of what's getting shown to you? Yeah, kind of, sort of like that.

Afterwards, I go to my car, sit, and put my hands around the steering wheel as if I’m driving somewhere. Only, the key is not in ignition and I have no music or a podcast episode from WTF with Marc Maron coming out of the iPod. Fifteen minutes into it - even though I'm told it's fifteen minutes. It felt more like 15 seconds to me - I hear, “uhm, so, are we going somewhere or should we see if we can get pizza delivered in the parking lot?”

Funny. I know.

For some odd reason, my mind took me to my first semester as a freshman in college. I haven't really thought about that time since going through it. As a general rule, I tend to experience, file, and move on to the next thing. Anyway. I had a brutal schedule then. One that I had hand-picked myself. Naturally. The thing is, I have a knack for picking difficult scenarios and subsequently sticking with them and bringing them to fruition. It's a chronic condition, I guess. Some people spend their lives averting challenges, others welcome them with an unexplained and unrequired bravado. Color me the latter. Whoopty doo!

So, when most students would take between 12 to 15 credits, I would alternate between 18 to 22 credits. Most unnecessarily, by the way. I just wanted to see if I could push myself to a new limit and if I could still hold on to my full-ride scholarship while castigating myself with an impossible schedule. I know. Let it go. It’s my thing.

To illustrate my point, here’s my schedule as a first semester freshman.
English Writing: 8:00AM-8:50AM (apropos, I am categorically not a morning person.)
Basketball: 9:00AM-9:50AM
Religion: 10:00AM-10:50AM
Biology: 11:00AM-11:50AM
And, after a six-hour break:
Math: 6PM.

Chances are, if I would go at it again, I’d most likely pick some hard scenario like this again. And since I didn't do all that shabbily the first time around, I'd dare make it even more challenging. I wish I were joking. At times, I wished I was one of those people who were happy being a 12-credit type of person. I could never pull that off, however. A certain gene pool and predisposition coupled with certain acquired behaviors proves to be incurable more often than not. Bottom line, some people take the easy or easier way out while others like detours or harder trails. It doesn’t mean that one camp is better and/or smarter than the other. It’s just diversity. I used to think, foolishly proudly, that the harder way was somehow more respectable. Turns out that's not true at all. Being happy with ease and a general lack of ambition is something I wish I could do. I bet life would be a total breeze. I doubt I'd lose track of time, holding on to my steering wheel while the ignition key is still on my lap if I were into 'easy.' Alas, I'm not.

But back to the schedule. I know I'll make the point eventually. The hardest thing about it (i.e., the schedule) was going from Basketball to Religion. I played basketball like I was a 6.2’ dude. And I’m a foot shorter than that. I played so hard all I wanted to do afterwards was take a long shower and do the unthinkable: take a nap. Instead, I’d gather my stuff and try to clean up as I ran even harder from the gym to the Humanities building where the Religion course took place. I was always panic-stricken when going to Religion. Ok, the real reason had to do with the seating chart, yes there was a seating chart for that class. The professor thought he could remember our faces better if we sat in the same place every day. Oh, there were close to 100 students in that auditorium, by the way. Insane man, I know.

In Religion, I was sitting in the middle of one of the back rows. That's the seat you get for being one of the last ones to walk in as you pull a Carl Lewis from gym class. I was smack dab in the middle. I tend to remember few details from people and events if I’m not too struck by either aesthetics and/or intelligence. Nothing much struck me in that class other than the fact that there were two redheads in there, a boy and a girl, and for some reason they were sitting respectively to my left and right. Yup, I was sitting between two bona fide redheads, a boy and a girl. I couldn’t get over the fact how enthralling I found their hair and their galaxy of freckles. They could have been related. They weren’t.

What occupied my mind then was the fear that I would continue to perspire as the professor taught about the historical context behind Leviticus. I couldn’t wait to go home and shower. Hard. Few things make me freak out. Not showering twice a day is one of them. I know. It’s my thing. Let it go. In Religion, I somehow felt some version of piety as I “suffered” in my tight but cushy seat while pursuing my education in the private university where people were more polite than those in Pleasantville and perfect strangers would say “hello” and “how are you?” to you. Ad nauseam.

For some odd reason, after my news, I felt exactly how I felt when sitting in Religion as I freaked out at the prospect of more sweat coming out of me as I had played with a kind of vigor I generally reserve for the airport as I'm always running to my gates trying to make my connections. I recognized the feeling immediately. I scratched my head metaphorically and literally. I wondered why I had to scratch my head and made a quick mental note re: changing shampoos. Then, metaphorically, I scratched my head again and wondered why, of all the thoughts my brain would have strung together, it decided to pick one that took me back to my freshman year.

In sum, I often wonder why I have such loyal tolerance for quotidianity and all its menial routines and overall uninterestingness. And every time I wonder about its strong presence, I am reminded of the function it plays. It's a bringer of stability and overall sanity. I like control. Control, for odd reasons, gets a bad rap. However, control is nothing to sneer at. It comes too naturally to some and very challengingly to others. While I have a naturally hyper nature which at times makes concentration difficult, thanks to learned control and discipline, much can get accomplished.

It's hard to get stuff done well when you are pulled in so many directions all of which beg for your attention. So, amid the frustration of nature, desire for focus needs to kick in. And it does. It says, I want to do a task at a time and I want to do them well. So, controlling one's nature is indispensable when it comes to accomplishment and productivity.
It turns out, it's also indispensable when it comes to dealing with a kind of novelty that puts well-tested quotidianity on its head and tells it to go spin.

And there you are, metaphorically sitting between two redheaded people, hoping your sweat won't get noticed.

How Does One Know One?

Last night, I luxuriated by way of time and language. I rarely find myself in a ménage of this sort. It's usually one or the other but not both. Well, what can I say. I'm in a splurging mood lately and there's nothing I can do about it.

I had the opportunity to take some quiet/unscheduled time lately. After that, however, big questions were born and what better way to discuss them then by talking with those who share your modus vivendi? So, last night one of my closest friends asked me the following, "Na, du, wie kennt man Einen?" Translated: "So, you, how does one get to know one?"

I don't have the answer to it. "I don't have the answer to it," I said. Come to think of it, i don't even wish to have the answer to it. The beauty of getting to know one lies in the process. That is the stuff of poetry. One of the lines that has stuck with me from all the literature I have ever read, - and that is a whole lot -, comes from Botho Strauss' play in two acts Die Fremdenfuehrerin i.e., The Tour Guide. In it, the main character says: "Ein zweiter Mensch erweckt neue Erwartungen" i.e., "A second person awakens new expectations."

Without expectations there can be no drive to renew one's self, to morph into something better, hopefully more developed. Without expectations there can be no passion, no drama, no, well, life. Expectations set things in motions and humans are meant to be in motion. Agito ergo sum, after all. We do/move, therefore, we are.

Back to my friend's question. I told him I didn't have any special insight. I think I added something like, "man kennt einen, wenn man sich selbst kennt. Oder nicht. Was weiss ich denn..." "One knows one when one knows one's self. Or not. What do I know..." After saying it I felt some measure of melancholy. Knowing one's self is tough. It is, in my view, one of the hardest pursuits. Those who think they know themselves well usually fail miserable at recognizing basic truths about them. Self-knowledge is nigh impossible. Which means, a knowledge of the other, actual knowledge of the other, is nigh impossible as well. It's not the knowing of one's self and the selves of the others that is important but rather the inclination to engage in a process of self-knowledge and knowledge of the other.

Knowing others is fundamentally predicated upon knowing one's self and one's 'self' i.e., our 'selves' are not like books standing on the shelf where they can be picked up at any time divorced from time and particular circumstance. Identity is not petrified, like the written word. It shifts, morphs into new things, progresses and regresses. It moves. To get it, to get to the core of one's 'self' one needs to consider any and all variables. And this, well, this is nigh impossible to do. However, it is in this very impossibility where beauty can be found. Not the kind of beauty that fades but rather the beauty about which one is compelled to give a damn. True substance.

Knowledge of the self and the self of the other changes as a result of circumstance as well.

I illustrate:

I used to hate pizza. As in "ewe, blah, double ewe, can't eat that crap"-type of thing. I have my ideas as to what informed my general disgust for this particular food. I reckon it has something to do with a period in my life when I didn't particularly care for Italian cuisine generally and pizza/pasta particularly. I like pizza now, though. Matter of fact, I just had it for dinner tonight. Coupled with hot chocolate. And cherries. Yeah. Yum! Put that in your pipe, Wolfgang Puck, and smoke it. I know why I'm cool with pizza now. I know why I'm cool with pizza in the company of hot chocolate and cherries. Given the same presentation a while back, I would have sneered, mocked, and resisted the urge to part ways with whatever dwelled in my stomach. But that's then and this is now.

Hard things beg for attention. Not-so-hard things are largely forgettable and I happen to think not worth one's consideration most of the time. There's bound to be a hierarchy of difficulty. After all, we're not all meant to be into John Donne. Some are into that kind of hermetic brilliance. Others, on the other hand, do just find with Harry Potter. There's something for everyone.

I have a knack for hard things. It's one of the few things I have come to truly get about my nature. What can I do about it? Nothing. I can embrace it and go with it. Sooner is always better than later. Resisting it would be like the day my friends and I were swimming in the river and I had the brilliant idea to try going against the current because, of course, the Napoleon inside me, thought s/he could just do it. Long story short, I ended up on the other shore, lost my left Havaiana and ruined my favorite swimsuit when wrestling with an unfortunate looking tree branch. I have yet to find a better suit. But I digress. The point is, we are who/how we are. At the core, we are who we are. We do not change. This sounds too much like a cliché. I can't be the first to have phrased it this way. Wait, it's making me think of someone. Duh, Charles Dickens and his Great Expectations. Still, though, it has value even though I get zero points for originality. I happen to concur with the point and that adds value to it. How's this for healthy self-esteem?!

So, after talking about sociality, my friend and I segued into an analysis of sociality. I made the point that an understanding of sociality can only be had when one truly invests in solitude. And investing in solitude is tough. Especially if one's inclination has little natural space for it.

I've gotten to be a bit more decent at alone time. I'd give myself a solid 6/10 as an adult. The reason why is quite simple. It's called learned behavior and focused practice. Gregariousness has always come easily to me. Others would most likely give me a 9/10. I would give myself a solid 8. But, just like it is the case with other traits that one comes equipped with genetically, I tend to often privilege things and traits that are not as easy. I don't know why this is. It's a trait I've long resigned myself to. If all roads lead to Rome, I tend to usually take the longer, more difficult one. I illustrate as a tip of the hat to my Italy-residing people. It's kind of like getting to Rome from Milan by driving your car - at least a stress-fueled 8-hour-period of your life marked by noise, odd lane-changing habits, and traffic that comes out of Dante's third circle of Hell - as opposed to flying from Fiumicino to Malpensa (a mere hour). In case I need to explain, I'd, most likely and almost unequivocally, prefer the former. Why? I don't know. We are who we are. We don't change.

So, how does one get to know one as per my friend's question? One stops being a coward and starts to get to know one's self as one truly is at dawn and not as one thinks one is at dusk. Dusk, albeit a favorite time for many, is a tricky little rascal. Dusk is like wine. It veils things. It doesn't let one see things in an unfettered and untarnished fashion. Nothing can reveal all freckles, blemishes, and corporeal changes the way dawn can. And in that space of time is where the others might be known too. At least to some degree and in some measure. Nothing and no one can be known fully. And in this very lack of omniscience lies the beauty of being human and foible.

And Then It Was about Change

"Let's talk about change," says the friend I went to grad school with.
The question came out of the blue which was not necessarily a big surprise to me. I'm told I'm rather decent at dealing with 'out-of-the-blue' statements/questions as I do dish them out quite easily, so reacting to them does not usually require much effort.

We started talking about new music, the Beastie Boys' new release, how some bands have to be seen live to be truly appreciated, ah, and why the creative class tends to cluster in certain areas as opposed to others. Then, all of a sudden, the conversation turned all change-y and philosophical.

I don't usually know what to make of 'change' questions. I seem to participate in a whole lot of discussions that deal with change, though. The answer I provide tends to follow the same tune for the most part i.e., change happens, so you do it. There's no way around it. Sometimes, when I feel jovial and generally at ease, I even get grammatical on one. The example I bring up is the German auxiliary verb 'sein' i.e., 'to be.' I didn't do so on my friend today as, well, he's fully privy to all sorts of verbal behavior. He's seen and done 'em all. In a nutshell, we're trained in the same thing so I'd be preaching to the choir. But, to complete a point, and for the sake of elucidating the idea in this platform, the verb 'to be' in German is happily married to change, and more specifically, change of state. One cannot form the perfect tense of change-signifying verbs were it not for this verb. It's that important a player. So, in German, one says 'I am fallen asleep' instead of 'I have fallen asleep', or 'I am gone' as opposed to 'I have gone' and, most greatly, 'they are died' i.e., 'they have died' and so forth. Right, you get the gist.

'Now' is all we have and if now is pregnant with change then you friggin' handle it. Idealizing the past and projecting too optimistically onto the future does not help anyone. Well, not if having a good grasp on reality is a priority and I tend to see it as one. I don't know, it seems to work out better this way for me and mine. But, I guess, that's how I happen to roll.

Clichéd, I know, but all we have is the present and living hard in it is the only way to do justice to it. I find, I'm keen on adverbs. They modify so well. See, 'well' - adverb. They're ubiquitous. "You're keen on adverbs" says my friend to me as well. Ha, funny, coming from one adverb lover to another. But I digress. I don't know why I'm keen on adverbs, though. I reckon it has something to do with my literary conditioning. We can't necessarily escape our respective upbringing fully. Especially if it's literarily fecund. This, I do believe. I actually know it to be thus. We are what we read or what our parents read when they had us, even. Ah, hold on. Let me backtrack. If the latter part of that statement were true, I'd be in trouble. I'd rather believe in the former, I think. We are what we read. Ok, that I can do. That I know how to deal with. But back to the adverb. The main function of 'now' is to attract one's attention to what truly matters, i.e. the moment at hand or - as I'm told I say often - contemporaneity. And therein lies my enamorment with it.

I'm often rendered wordless however, not philosophically necessarily but rather experientially as I don't share many of my interlocutors' belief that change is hard. I have a moderately good relationship with change. It wasn't always like that, however. It truly is an acquired reaction. One thing I find useful when dealing with utter novelty is to fuse it with already familiar and comfort-informed things. This is why I always bring familiar playlists, Curb, Wonder Boys, and workout outfits. Armed with familiarity and comfort, no change is too hard to conquer.

In nuce, it's not change that's hard but rather constancy. It's difficult (actually, I mean to write impossible but I'm in too sunny a disposition, I guess) to keep pace with constancy. Its gruesome at times and it requires constant work to keep. Change provides a bit of a breather, a chance to view things from another perspective and point of view. If it weren't for change, the processing of ideas and any life experience would be hard to accomplish.

Hair Is Rarely Inconsequential

I like my hair stylist. Unlike other stylists I've had in other parts of North America, he is somewhat introspective and talks sparingly. I like that. Plus, he is quick and fantastically accurate with his free hand cutting or 'precision cuts', as he refers to them. Guy knows how to measure length with his eye. In a mere 30 minutes he can produce a perfectly executed cut and he never makes you wait. A 2:00pm appointment means exactly that and at 2:30 you're free to resume your day. A man after my own heart.

Today, as he was educating me on the merits of a well-cut bob and why it's a good choice for certain face shapes, he noted that he finds it curious that I tend to answer his questions with questions.
I got a kick out of his observation as, well, he was right.
"What do you mean?" I added cheekily.

As he was working on his precision cut, I got to thinking more about his observation. The act of question acting is not just directly related to information gathering. Quite often, we ask for the purpose of evading additional questions we might be asked which we might be uncomfortable discussing or simply unwilling to entertain. Question-asking as a way of addressing a received question creates a space of comfort, a space in which attention can be shifted to other targets. I suppose that's why we have idioms like, "well, I asked you first." The idiom is not necessarily an infantile evasion as there's some etiquette-informed truth to it. Hierarchy matters in language and s/he who asks first needs to have first pick.

Certain spaces create better arenas of information gathering than others. Hair salons are one such space. I wondered why that was so today and I came to the same conclusion I've come to in the past. Aesthetic topics serve a litany of functions, a couple of which are the bringing forth of distractions and creating a venue in which to discuss substance. Aesthetics, as it benefits the self, helps lower one's guard and it ends up making one feel more at ease, more approachable linguistically.

And might even dare to answer a question in anything but the interrogative.
"So, how do you like your place?"
Instead of pulling an oldie but a goodie, "Yeah, yours is a short walk from here, right? The city smells great in the Spring, eh?"
I simply said, "I like it when I'm in it which is not a whole lot of the time." I wanted to add, "What about you?" You like yours"..., but I didn't.
I suppose, it's okay to answer certain questions when asked first whether one's getting a precision haircut or not.

Happy or Interested?

“Are you happy?” – asks the interlocutor as my eyes are feasting on a sea of green, tilled land, and vineyards. My mind is elsewhere but my eyes are enjoying the scenery at hand.
“What do you mean by happy?” - I ask as I’m leisurely drinking the Venti Passion Tea Lemonade we picked up about 20 miles down the road.
I then added that for some reason I’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of existential questions of this nature this year. Come to think of it, I'm amused by the versatility of answers depending on who asks and when.

We left the ‘happy talk’ at that as dinner was being served and I don’t generally find smoked salmon to be the most suitable choice for existential talk. Smoked salmon says: ‘light, fleeting, easy-but-forgettable fun.’ Beef, on the other hand, would have been a different story. I could have picked beef bourguignon, but I didn't. The interlocutor did. Maybe that's why he asked the question. Beef tends to beg for a different kind of substance and I lacked the inclination needed to process it. I had the salmon, instead. On the drive back I got to thinking about “are-you-happy?”-type questions.

To me, ‘happy’, has always spelled presence of movement, productive change, you know, the opposite of boredom. Agito ergo sum. I believe that. It's got all the buy-in a phrase could ever have. A lack of motion would be a lack of comfort, i.e., a lack of happiness. Some are comfortable moving others feel better in a sedentary fashion. I always felt at home in the company of the former. Ironically, quite often I’m on the receiving end of such movement-obliterating statements as: “just stay put for a minute. Don’t move for a bit. Let’s just stay here a while, isn’t this nice?” Statements of this nature make me feel the opposite of 'satisfied'. They make me feel restless.

Instead of asking, “are you happy?”, one needs perhaps to consider: “are you interested?” Interestedness spells motion, change, problem-solving, eventfulness, you know, things of interest. Without new problems to solve and new avenues to explore, what use is this thing, anyway?

"Ask me the question again", I ask.
“Are you happy?”
“I’m interested much of the time. It could be different but it’s not. Interestedness might lead to more promising changes. So, ja, I’m interested, I guess. Don’t you just love Julian Casablancas’ voice, by the way?”
“The Strokes are cool, yup. So, when was the last time you were this, you know, interested?”
Without thinking much at all and almost in an automaton-like fashion, I say: May 1, 2009.
“Why May 1, 2009?”
“I don’t know. I just was. It was the night I saw Franz Ferdinand in concert. Alex Kapranos, the lead singer, had some beautiful, red patent leather shoes on and I had a smaller number of worries on my mind than usual that particular night. I wanted those shoes. I didn’t want for much those days with the exception of those red shoes.”

I remember the day with such clarity not because I have a good memory (very often I don't) but because I’m a music lover. I journal my life by way of music. My love for and interest in music is unchanging regardless of all else. I can look at the thousands of tracks I have on the iPod and I can unequivocally say what the tracks represents, memory-wise. I even have a playlist that says ‘interested/happy.’ It’s the one playlist that gets edited religiously. I play it daily and with loyalty in the car. But I digress again. I guess that's what things we love tend to do to us. They force us to digress and make everything be about them. Right. I digress.

We have another 150 miles to cover and I reckon existential topics are as good a choice as any when it comes to filling time when covering distance.

I generally don't ask a lot of questions. I prefer to divine answers without being inquisitive. This time, I ask the same question, however. What else is there to do, anyway? It's a long, long drive.

“So, are you happy? People usually ask existential questions when they’re trying to sort stuff out themselves first.”

“I’m happy when I want for nothing. You know, the usual Spiel.”

I feel my forehead wrinkling. To me, not wanting for anything is equal to not having much to live for. Not wanting for anything makes me anxious. It's got to be something I need to want, be it red shoes or whatever. I say, “I’d have a hard time with that, you know, the not-wanting-for-anything thing. I’d feel unable to move and, uhm….” And I got interrupted.
“…yes, I know, the movement thing. It’s just that a lack of movement, even for a short spell, is what happy would mean to me.”

And there’s that.

Finger Eleven's "Paralyzer” came on my ‘interested/happy’ playlist.

“I want to make you move
Because you’re standing still.”

I chuckle.

"Ha. Do I know or do I know my music, dude? And I don't really like much else from Finger Eleven. Good song."

I continue to smile, look outside the window and try to journal the experience by way of the song and playlist: Finger Eleven, short trip, sunny, 62F, red Toms shoes, vineyards. Done.

Happiness is hard to discuss because it's so often subject-dependent. Frequently, I find, those who need to know the degree of your happiness are those who indirectly want to know how much they're perhaps responsible for said thing. The question isn't just a generic one, i.e., "are you, generally speaking, in a happy state?" It's usually of a tendetious nature. Are you happy here? Happy doing this and that? Happy with me?

Are you happy?
I'm interested. Nonchalance is hard to stomach. The times I feel nonchalant are the times I feel I try extra hard to change things up. Nonchalance breeds a lack of fecundity and creativity. And I could never pull the latter off very well. To paraphrase Patrick O'Henry, give me interestedness or give me, well, you know, whatever. Who cares. It's all about the former, anyway.

And, I suppose, eating ice cream while driving might just be as close to 'happy' as one should get. Tolerable quotidianity is no easy feat, I've found. Take it, while you can, ice cream and all.

What Photos Teach

My relationship with photos is now the most clinical it's ever been. I rarely say 'regular' stuff now like, "where was this taken?," "Who's this in it?," "Where were you when this was taken?" I've lost interest in asking information-finding questions of this nature. And it's fine. I reckon we all graduate to that next level, at some point. I learn a lot of the business of photography on a daily basis. I've come to appreciate how difficult a medium it is and how hard its practitioners have to work for their work to reach as a final point as it needs to before showing.

I tend to say more and more things like, "the chiaro/scurro conflict is strong in this one" or "I'm not sure about the sepia tones in this one," and so forth.

Last night I apparently was in a mood. In my usual way I contradicted the statement by resorting to an oldie but goodie, "No, I'm not! What?!"
"You look like you're in a mood. Like here. He-he-he."

And then I smiled. Because I was shown a photograph of mine that was taken when I was three. I don't know which box it was taken out of but I reckon it was a box.

Apparently, I was mad at something that day. I was playing outside but my parents summoned me for family photos which, of course, I resented. Who wants to experience an interrupted game? Not me, that's for sure. When my play time is messed with, I throw fits. I threw a fit. For family photos, one does one thing as a rule of thumb: One smiles.
Yes, ok, consider this picture.
The quality is not good as it was not scanned right but I wanted to highlight the facial features. One can't hide emotion from the camera.
"Smile, sweetie, smile for the camera," Say the parents.
Apparently, I said, "No! Don't feel like it."
"Smile just for a second."
"No."
"Smile and you'll get gelato."
"No!!"
Ok, insert something akin to, "just take the friggin' picture." And it was taken. The face I picked for the picture corresponded with the emotion I was feeling: I was ticked off that I was taken away from the playground.

And I wasn't in a mood anymore. All because of being shown a picture of me when I was three, being in a mood over being removed from the playground against my will. Funny how a photograph can contain so much.

Sense of Belonging and Spot of Sun

I took time off today. Fully off. I usually work on something else when I'm off. Today, however, I promised a day in the park and a day in the park was had. On bikes. It was sunny, warm, and pretty in the city. And especially so in the park.

I took my Havaianas off, yes, flip-flops, folks - gotta love Spring season! - lied down on the grass, put my shades on, closed my eyes, turned phones and speech off, fully off, and let the sun caress my skin. Apparently, I fell asleep in a matter of minutes and even snored. And I am not a napping kind. A snoring kind, yes, but I'm not bothered by that, because, naturally, I'm too asleep to notice. However, I despise sleep during the day. Always have. Today however, sleep was most welcome. I suppose I can blame my euphoria on the effect of the Spring sun. In the evening I asked if I looked 'tan' because, of course, a twelve-minute nap under the March sun would have the power to tan me. The answer was "Nah, you look the same as last night. Rested, though." "Ok", I say. "I'll take 'rested' any day."

As I was enjoying the sun outside with my eyes closed jut before I fell asleep I got to thinking about what it means to feel a sense of belonging. The night before over miso soup and sushi, I had a long conversation with a new friend of mine about that very topic. He asked me how I defined a 'sense of belonging.' I said, I defined it contextually. And, naturally, it varied. I can feel a sense of belonging when standing next to a stranger in line at Starbucks over in Memphis the way I frequently feel it when with the person I get best and gets me the best. I feel it at 5am when I stare at my bedroom ceiling for my routine 'thinking time' or when I'm riding my bike to the park chewing my favorite gum listening to what in certain company I refer to as 'crap light pop'.

After my sun therapy session today, I call him up and say, "you know that sense of belonging thing you asked me about last night? I got some more on Beach Ave. today. Come and meet up. There might be some left for you too." When you feel something good you should share it with those who're searching for it as well, no?

When most bring up questions of happiness definitions, I usually say, that I don't know much about that but I know a whole lot about defining moments of levity and contentedness. I could comment on that, sure.

Happiness is impossible to define. What contributes to this impossibility is the basic fact that it is highly subjective. The idea of happiness that person A has, could be my very idea of the third circle of inferno. Defining moments of bearable weight (i.e. levity) - I do find levity to be a bit of a schlep at times, actually, but that's another thought - is much easier. Moments can be confined to a certain space in time and they're doable linguistically. I might look at the same place on Beach Ave next time I'm out there and I might shower it with the kind of indifference I reserve for other things. Today, however, that is a place where I feel I belong.

And after the pleasantness of a small amount of time, I had to revert back to my usual patterns and suggest that we pay our respects to our Mecca, aka the Howard Schultz' church of Green Tea Lattes and Caramel Macchiatos.

Concert, Trip, and Promises

My legs hurt.
It’s what happens when you’re in a concert venue and you’re trying to see the performers on stage. When the performers look like Kings of Leon’s Caleb, there’s good reason to stand on your tippy toes.
I'm a sucker for aesthetics, what can I say.
I’m only 5.2 and while certain things come with ease to people my height, I do suffer from 'height-envy'. I have it. That’s what I like about wearing heels. Or being with someone tall. Opposites, especially when it comes height, work well together. Especially when in concert venues. Height, I find, ads years to a relationship. When in doubt, go to a concert where you need some shielding from a rowdy crowd. Concerts make me feel safe the way a child feels safe when held by a parent. It's an odd mix of pleasure, safety, and comfort that, come to think of it, I don't feel in other settings. I have clarity of thought when in concerts. The majority of my most important decisions have been made while in concerts. The 'pleasure, safety, and comfort' mix added to a good dose of music is the right recipe for good decision-making.

I’m tired. Haven’t slept much. Had a stressful morning before getting on a plane to see the show and to make matters worse I have something awful stuck in my head.
Disney’s “It’s a Small World After All.” What?!
How does that work, brain, really!
I mean, I’m all pumped up to hear a live rendering of "The End" and can’t wait to feel the bass in the track and all my brain can do for me is gift me with a Disney crap song?! Eh?!

The first and last time I heard this disease of a song was in 1995 which was the year of my first [and last] visit to Disneyland. I remember feeling distinct loathing for the song. I mean, it makes sense. I was still doing Nirvana in ’95.

On the flight back home I wonder why, of all the thousands of tracks I could be thinking about, I'm stuck thinking of a track I would never be caught listing to by my own volition. Then I'm told, 'Well, what about your "La Donna e Mobile?"' I mean, granted, it's Verdi but a few years ago I was so ticked off at it I tried to starve myself of Verdi for a while just so that it would leave my system.

However, Disney track or not, live shows make me happy. Not just smile-because-I-can't-control-my-facial-muscles happy. 'Proper' happy. 'Craving nothing' happy. The kind of happy that restores a sense of hope that makes me want to promise all sorts of things to my person. And then on the flight back home, I'll be metaphorically kicking myself in the back as I watch an episode of Curb and think of how I'll manage to keep to my word.
Hm.
Then, all of a sudden, I'm told: "Don't worry, you won't have to deliver on A, B, or C. I know it was the music talking." Phew! I'm a chronic promise keeper so being relieved of a promise feels as good as ..., yeah, pretty darn good.

I reference music a lot and I do so because it informs every facet of life. In a way, I sort of, kind of resent its hold on me. I resent holds of all kinds and music is no exception even though it gives me much pleasure. Pleasure, is a tricky rascal, however. It keeps you hooked, like a good promise often does, and it often underdeliveres as with time you keep wanting more and more of it. Much like music. Only music rarely underdelivers. Well, unless it's Disney's "It's a Small World After All." And then you're, you know, ....

Complaint Filing Cabinet

After a non sequitur-punctuated chat I had with someone the other day, I got to thinking about my grad school days and, more specifically, a friend with whom I once did a road trip from the Midwest to the West. I like road trips. I do a bunch of them. America is great for road trips. I'll reiterate a cliché here and concur with the following: the best way to get to know someone is to travel with them. Yes, Mark Twain, you're right.

I tend to think about this particular grad school friend when Pedro Almodovar films are playing and, especially, when I'm told by others that I pay no attention to conversation when music is playing. I hear the latter with the same frequency, it seems, I listen to music. And it's definitely true.

Quite often, this particular friend tells me that I'm not as present as I could be and that there's always something else of more consequence that attracts my attention and gets in the way. Like music. Or other friends. Or the fact that it never seems to be enough and I always need to have a third option present. And I always say something akin to, 'well, aren't options good?' In an effort to explain further I add, 'it's a thing all who know me can easily identify and learn to accept with time. It's my chronic condition. You know, like asthma.'

More brands/versions of the same thing help you appreciate and get to the core of the thing better. I wish it were socially acceptable to give someone a resume-type document that highlights your propensities. Then, they'll know right away what you're mostly about and I won't have to write the same paragraph in here every time music and people are mentioned together in the same sentence.

-I pay attention most of the time unless music is playing. Then, you need to be okay taking a back seat. It's not personal. It's music.
-I like to say someone/something/somewhere a lot regardless of whether you know me for an hour or a decade. Let it go. It won't change. It's how I roll.

The same grad school friend, who's very introspective and intensely quiet, wrote to me a beautiful text, a few sentences in which say:

"Now that I've sent you two venting emails, I wonder what you're going to think. I don’t expect anything. I don't expect you to explain anything. You cannot relate to my loneliness because you are gifted with enormous charisma and an outgoing nature. But you can empathize with my feelings of isolation. It's just nice to be able to vent to someone who's not going to try to fix it for me."

This is how my brain processes things. Person A has a problem/issue. They come to me and tell me about it. My first reaction is to file it: shareable info as opposed to vault-able. Then, I try to understand the issue and provide ideas how to potentially fix it. It takes me back to a childhood memory again.
"Bri, you didn't pick me first at dodgeball. It hurt my feelings that you didn't. I mean, why wouldn't you? I'm your best friend."
I didn't pick him first because, while he was my best friend, he was not the best dodgeball-er. And I like winning.

However, the next time little Bri plays dodgeball, she makes a mental note and she picks her friend first. Why? Because he has a personal problem with not being picked first so it stands to reason that he be picked first the next time. It's called problem solving. Plus, I spent most of my days with him (propinquity effect) and I've never been one to want to be around grouchiness. I couldn't possibly watch cartoons with a grouch, could I?

I illustrate again. From adulthood:
"I am feeling so frustrated about my art work and how no gallery has called. And it's taken years to build the portfolio and still nothing. I keep taking all these photographs and I keep experimenting with all these media and still. Arrrggghhh! Why does this keep happening to me, why can't I catch a break, why....."
Ok, I hear language like this and I unequivocally think and then say something akin to:
"It's ok. Rejection happens. Use it to your advantage. Look harder. Let's see here. How about trying places a, b, and, b. I'll take time off, we can work on a strategy together. Let's line something up for this or that day, ok? If you do this and I do that, I'm sure we'll get more results. How does that sound?"
"But I feel like this, this, and that."

I have a hard time with the rest of a conversation like this. Because I don't get it. I get the need to verbalize frustration but it stands to reason that solutions are bound to follow, right? Why vent without a solution in mind?

I had a similar conversation with a few friends of mine this week independently of one another. One of them was sick when we were road tripping together North to South and I remember getting irked at them for not going along without complaining. I mean, what could I do? I went to the store and bought some Advil and OJ. They got some rest. It's not cancer. It's just a casual little cold.

But all the friend wanted to do was vent and feel heard. I don't get that but I get that it happens and I struggle with it. Because I can't relate to it. I feel this and that. It irritates me because it doesn't beg for solutions and answers.

Complaining should be done with purpose otherwise it's a waste of time.
A favorite phrase says: "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it." That's the beauty of struggles and crises. They teach you how to cope with reality and how to find practical solutions for problems. We all have them. Problems. Some of us solve them faster and with less language than others, however.

Having a hard time at times in life can be such a beautifully instructing opportunity. Doing life the same way day in, day out, doesn't give one much of a chance to stretch, does it? You've got to mix it up. Isn't this all a struggle to dodge boredom, after all?

Ice, Ice, Baby!

I took this picture last night. I don't know how to explain what it's like to experience such different weather patterns in a mere 40-mile range. I call my house and say, "Yeah, so it's snowing heavily here. I'll be a while." The answer I get back is, "Snow?!" As if they're saying, "Yeah, right!" I understand though. It's only raining in the city and it's about 8 degrees warmer. As a matter of fact, when I do make it home, I agree to walk to the restaurant and all I'm wearing is a light jacket. I can't believe I experience such differences in a matter of one hour.

I'm going 20 miles per hour when, lo and behold, I see a white car sitting horizontally on the freeway blocking both incoming and outgoing traffic. I hit my breaks ever so gently and I still find myself swerving. Ice, ice, baby!
The ice is merciless.

I come really close to making contact with the horizontal car but, thankfully, I don't. I stop in the nick of time.
Sigh....

And then I think I need to take a picture.
People come out of cars and push the horizontal car out of the way. I drive another few miles and then, boom, the snow vanishes.

Dorothy, we're SO not in Kansas anymore!