We sell no balls here

Jerry Crotti called and said to come to the gala ball. "You are one of everyone! You must."

I hung up and went to my clothes closet. Nothing. I went out to West Sixth Avenue and went into the first men's store. I was greeted, but coldly.

"Yes?"

"What have you got for a ball?"

"We sell no balls here."

"Oh, OK. I mean. What have you got here that would be suitable for someone like me to go to a ball, a formal dance, in the evening?"

"We have nothing suitable for someone like you. No, just kidding. Come on. Let's take a look over here."

He led me, off balance but relieved, to the far corner of the shop where there were tuxedos lined up, all alike but different sizes. I could see by the sleeve lengths first then the length of the jackets.

"Perhaps here is where you belong."

"I doubt it, I said not loud enough for him to hear."

"Eh?"

"Well, er, yes. Forty long and about 34 in the waist."

"We can come close to that. Would you like a conservative cut or something more dramatic, like tails."

"Having a tail, or more than one would be dramatic, wouldn't it?" I saw the look on his face and took it back. "Sorry."

"Yes, here are two possibilities. This is three hundred and fifty dollars plus tax. This is nine hundred."

"Do you have anything more modest? in price, that is?"

"This is the least expensive tux we have."

"That it may be, but I'm not sure I can afford that just for one evening. I don't go to these things often."

"Yes. Would you like to try it on?"

"Is it my size?"

"We will make it fit with some slight alterations. It is included in the price."

I went to the changing room and tried it on. I came out looking and feeling sheepish. The pants were too big around the waist and the legs were about a foot too long--each leg. The coat seemed about right, but the tails seemed a bit long.

"Are these supposed to be shorter?"

"No, that is about right. We can take the pants in and hem the legs. Let me just--"

At that he put his hand up to my crotch and I jumped. Actually my right nut took a jump and I jumped in reaction. "Hey, just a--"

He looked surprised and I composed myself. Perhaps he didn't mean it, but I was definitely put off. I didn't even think.

"This is not going to work."

"I'm sorry?"

"I changed my mind. I don't want to do this. Buy a tuxedo."

"Yes, sir. Is there something--"

"No, I have changed my mind. I didn't want to go to the gala anyway. In the first place."

"But there will be people there. Our customers love to see and be seen."

"I don't."

"Yes, well--"

"Yes. I am going to take these off." I went into the changing room and as I was removing the pants I heard at the door, "Sir? May I interest you in a tux without tails?"

"No. No. Thanks but no."

"Perhaps a sport coat and slacks?"

"No, really. I am not the type."

Silence. I guess I had thoroughly rebuffed him. Perhaps he walked away and was out of hearing range.

"Fuck. Shit. It always comes to this. I hate these social things. Why did I listen to Jerry? Waste of time." And I went on like this to myself for a few moments when I heard a tap, tap on the changing room door.

"Are you all right in there?"

"Yes, fine. Be right out."

I exited slowly thinking I might hit him in the nose if he was right there outside the door. He was standing at attention a few feet away, hand outstretched to receive the store's garments. I handed him the rejected black bundle.

"Thanks, I need to be going."

"If you change your mind, I will be here. My name is Chris, and I would be happy to assist you should you--"

"Thanks."

I walked out of the store and began thinking. Was it because I did not care for social affairs or something that the sales clerk said or did that? led me to invitation's end? I went over it all in my mind, convinced that what put me off was agreeing with Jerry's upbeat invitation and soft sell, which appealed to my ego, I have to admit. But I was wrong.

The sales clerk became my focus, and I thought that there must have been something. And then I had it. He was a chameleon. First, he stood off, formal like. then he tried to kid with me, and when he found I wasn't playing, he almost insulted me with his allusion to pop psychology. "Perhaps here is where you belong." Then he changed again, trying to probe my tastes. Finally, there was this choice of two. One way too expensive; the other at the lower end but still too pricey for me. Choosing that and having to appear in an ill-fitting pair of pants in front of him. Oh, and that upward jab into my crotch.

No. It was all too . . . too much to take. And it didn't matter that I didn't want to go anyway. Put me off. Put me off.

I can blame Jerry for starting all this. No, I just won't go. Won't say a thing. Avoid the whole thing altogether.

---

Funny sort. He looked like someone I could sell. But he danced around too much. I guess he really didn't want to buy. Kidding works with most people, but even when he kidded back, there was something reserved in his manner. I may have gone too far with what I said, but I don't think so. Maybe pleading with him in the end was going too far. But I had to try to salvage the thing. He jumped a bit when I tried to measure the inseam. I didn't touch him, but maybe he is hung low. I don't know. With some customers you can never tell. He was kind of dressed like a clown, but I didn't . . . I ignored that. I don't know what it is. But another customer will come soon.

Pack it in, pack it out

Indians walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds and squirrels, and their brush and bark huts last hardly longer than those of wood rats, while their more enduring monuments, excepting those wrought on the forests by the fires they made to improve their hunting grounds, vanish in a few centuries. --John Muir

I thought the quote was "walk softly in the woods." Anyway, I walked softly in the Indian Peaks Wilderness heading out from Eldora back from the early to late 70s. Registration was optional and based on the idea that if you were in the area, register at entry and exit so that if missing, someone would know where to look for you. I walked with my dog Niki, a Golden Retriever, and saw no one hike in or out in those days. My son accompanied me and our dog once or twice, and either alone or with this company we encountered snow we'd posthole through till exhausted, or be enchanted with the wildflowers till delirious with the colors and relief from built-world noise . . . high up, now and then, an airliner showed its tail heading west.

Backpacker ethics, which I picked up somewhere along the line in those days, was "pack it in, pack it out." I took it a step further, pack out stuff that I found that didn't belong, such as bottle caps, aluminum beer can tabs, bits of broken glass, foil wrappers for candies or chewing gum. And I, or we, did that, depositing same in some trash at the trailhead or at home in Nederland.

Seems to me backpacker ethics like those of (my) old days should apply to everyday living, although I know this is not realistic. But as applied to one's personal relations and effects, seems like a good rule of thumb. 

www.deskdrawerdrafts.com

One of my (uncountable) brilliant non-profit ideas a web site:

Brilliant words never before given to an audience for the appreciation they deserve--to wit . . .

OR

Excerpts of brilliance from my [unpublishable] canon.

The day before yesterday I was thinking about all the writers, unpublished, who have bits and larger bits and bytes of writing they are proud of. I thought of the writers, published, who have talked about  works from earlier years that they have put away in a drawer or filing cabinet, i.e., almost abandoned, shall we say. Then I thought about a web site to harvest these writings--the unpublished/under-appreciated bits and bytes in various genres and with varying volumes of words, and then  letting the unpublished if partial works speak for themselves. Let writers of whatever class place something they are proud of somewhere so that it can be read. This morning I got up and the idea of this site struck me again. I wonder(ed) if there was such a place on the web already that harvests this kind of stuff.

Consider the bower bird

Consider the bower bird as inspiration(?) for the scene Conchis paints for Nicholas, from _The Magus_ by John Fowles. I think a strong case can be made.

 

"When I was fifteen, I had what we would call today a nervous breakdown. Bruneau had been driving me too hard. I never had the least interest in games. I was a day boy, I had permission to concentrate on music. I never made any real friends at school. Perhaps because I was taken for a Jew. But the doctor said that when I recovered I would have to practice less and go out more often. I made a face. My father came back one day with an expensive book on birds. I could hardly tell the commonest birds apart, had never thought of doing so. But my father’s was an inspired guess. Lying in bed, looking at the stiff poses in the pictures, I began to want to see the living reality—and the only reality to begin with for me was the singing that I heard through my sickroom window. I came to birds through sound. Suddenly even the chirping of sparrows seemed mysterious. And the singing of birds I had heard a thousand times, thrushes, blackbirds in our garden, I heard as if I had never heard them before. Later in my life—ça sera pour un autre jour—birds led me into a very unusual experience.

"You see the child I was. Lazy, lonely, yes, very lonely. What is that word? A sissy. Talented in music, and in nothing else. And I was an only child, spoilt by my parents. As I entered my fourth luster, it became evident that I was not going to fulfill my early promise. Bruneau saw it first, and then I did. Though we tacitly agreed not to tell my parents, it was difficult for me to accept. Sixteen is a bad age at which to know one will never be a genius. But by then I was in love.

"I first saw Lily when she was fourteen, and I was a year older, soon after my breakdown. We lived in St. John’s Wood. In one of those small white mansions for successful merchants. You know them? A semi-circular drive. A portico. At the back was a long garden, at the end of it a little orchard, some six or seven overgrown apple and pear trees. Unkempt, but very green. Ombreux. I had a private 'house' under a lime tree. One day—June, a noble blue day, burning, clear, as they are here in Greece—I was reading a life of Chopin. I remember that exactly. You know at my age you recall the first twenty years far better than the second—or the third. I was reading and no doubt seeing myself as Chopin, and I had my new book on birds beside me. It is 1910.

"Suddenly I hear a noise on the other side of the brick wall which separates the garden of the next house from ours. This house is empty, so I am surprised. And then . . . a head appears. Cautiously. Like a mouse. It is the head of a young girl. I am half hidden in my bower, I am the last thing she sees, so I have time to examine her. Her head is in sunshine, a mass of pale blonde hair that falls behind her and out of sight. The sun is to the south, so that it is caught in her hair, in a cloud of light. I see her shadowed face, her dark eyes and her small half-opened inquisitive mouth. She is grave, timid, yet determined to be daring. She sees me. She stares at me for a moment in her shocked haze of light. She seems more erect, like a bird. I stand up in the entrance of my bower, still in shadow. We do not speak or smile. All the unspoken mysteries of puberty tremble in the air. I do not know why I cannot speak . . . and then a voice called. Li-ly! Li-ly!

"The spell was broken. And all my past was broken, too. Do you know that image from Seferis—'The broken pomegranate is full of stars'? It was like that. She disappeared, I sat down again, but to read was impossible."

Seems to me: The bower bird as creator of illusions to attract--tease and torment--Nicholas into becoming conscious of who he is, and who others are, in the drama of life and love on and off the island of Phraxos.

 

PS Art slips aside when confronted with the power of realities seen and felt?

And so forth

Regardless of the debates about the existence of a self or the self versus a construct we ourselves create in order to explain ourselves, we function as if there is such a thing, or person. I am aware that I am me and not someone else. On these foundations--a self that is me--including  traits or dispositions or thoughts or values, etc., we distinguish ourselves by working with the constellation of all these things to come up with decisions and actions, a life. 

Regardless of whether a particular synapse-connection occurs before or after conscious, that is intentional, choice, or will, we function with the illusion, if that is what it is, that we are in charge and making our own way in the world. The self stands ready or becomes identifiable at the moment of attending and following through on this or that. Have it either way. For everyday business in the living life that consensus reality holds and upholds our ego/self/person/personality/persuasions/perversions, etc. In short we get along, more or less well, in a my-/me-world.

My writings then are or seem to be evidence of my center of narrative gravity which I have manifested and promoted as a/my way to live in the world that I make and know. Is it really fair to inflict that "stuff" on readers as well as my complex of intentions (values?) I deem preferred?

Therefore, if only for this reason, I find my writing output more personal and not close to sometimes-clever much less artistic creations. I don't recommend. . . . It turns out that my efforts are more on the order of self-therapy and less other-oriented, regardless of prefaces or epilogues, other apologies, and so forth. And yours?

All is gossip

The only one who can know what you have done is you. Others will always and forever have partial information and faux-understanding. Let others talk about you. Gives 'em something to do, unless it comes to serious misinformation/-understanding. But even then, you can select which--actual or imagined--needs affirmation or correction.

In addition, do you fully know now or in reflection, perhaps years hence, everything about you and what you have done? This too often is an unrewarding pursuit, for what can you do now about all of that?

We believe we have the knowledge, the insight, the facts of the matter, and so we narrate based on partial info (such is as with any narrative) and subsequently believe that that settles matters related to that which we felt important enough to bother about.

Grasp now at some kind of certainty in this world in order to keep on keeping on, because living under illusions is practical if to a degree not full Truth.

Morality play

I was at the end of one hedge corridor and he, or was it she? the other. Although I could not discern in detail, I felt she had a menacing look: "Kill when I catch you." 

Whether or not to turn and run in her sight and enter or bypass the next corridor, I waited for her next move to pursue her prey. An eternity in the minute, and then she slowly advanced anticipating my defense. I had choices to make--my best bet to evade and escape. Or was it no exit no matter what?

It was with her determined, every advancing step, at the ready to alter course in order to gain her advantage, that I quickly thought to exit right and return to cross to the next corridor left. What if she ran forward in chase? or would she return to her end to exit left or right to meet me in the next lane? Either way I'd have a half length advantage if that, and how could I know if she advanced or retreated to anticipate my next position?

I exited left and quickly returned to see where she was. She stood where she'd stopped before I exited with a sinister smile aimed as if with a knowing, telescopic eye at my heart. I ran right then left up the next hedge corridor, the one leading to a door in the wall at the end. I was running fast and didn't know whether she was following. Half way up the corridor toward the door she appeared stepping slowly into view staring at me running toward her.

Must have wings, a spirit--now she was he. Escape from was hopeless and my heart beat the end was near. Survival said, "Keep trying to escape, or at a minimum prolong the chase." Reality's truth said, "Stand your ground. Let it come."

We both sang, "Fight to the end," with the refrain, "Time is, time was, but time shall be no more."

My way of--DRAFT

"Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view."

Phenomenological Descriptive Analysis

To hold experience still in order to study it, it needs recording. For this discussion that would be a text. And to study that text, one also needs words to describe and analyze and comprehend selected, specific phenomena thought to be represented by and through the text. The result of study would thus be lost to the ether if not another text with (which to de-construct and understand). That secondary text, if produced with care, valid method, and sound foundations for description and analysis, we can call a phenomenological descriptive analysis.

Writing.

Writing is the act of one person recording streams of words on-/into a medium (e.g., paper, digital document, dictation recorder). Editing, proofreading, and formatting for greater ease of comprehension are also forms of writing.

All other albeit related activities are not, in this view, writing per se. Writing is not thinking about something without recording for a reader to access. It is not the spontaneous idea one must remember to be sure to include later. It is not following a writing process such as is taught in schools and colleges. It is not some aspect of the psychology of writing such as where or when one does it, associated rituals, choosing preferences for inscription method, promoting or marketing writing-as-product (e.g., article, book), and so forth.

Evidence of having written is a text someone can read.

Subjective view.

The standard points of view are three--the position of the speaker/narrator in relation to what is written. These reduce to "the subjective or first person point of view". A text in first person point of view is clearly within the boundary of conscious experience as experienced by _I_, the first person. A second person point of view is a first person speaking, thus their conscious experience captured as it were in process, verbatim, "I am speaking to you". Access to the second person is directly from and through the first person, the one that address an other. Third person is what a(ny) speaker/writer, a first person, holds in consciousness and represents as such to communicate to an audience such as a  reader.

Description.

Any text, simple or complex, answers the question of what is/was it like to experience something.

Text is a description of a phenomenon or phenomena. Phenomena as conscious-experience-as-experienced knows no bounds. However, a phenomenon contained in a larger text may be worth holding in consciousness and studying in order to comprehend, in the sense of completeness and understanding of what and how something is or was for the percipient-writer.

Text takes countless forms. Each can be seen as description. For example:

• A letter of complaint describes a correspondent's experience and how an altered  state of that reality really would be better.
• A poem presents images and sentiments and thoughts sharable among others through its construction and words--see what I see, feel what I feel, think what I think in this special way I have made it accessible for to you.
• A personal memoir tells us what life was like at that time with me.
• The company policy memorandum makes the case for or answers the question of how it would or should be in present and future experience.
• A work of historical fiction describes how it could realistically have been in people's experience.
• The peer reviewed scientific article describes what was done/experienced and how and what happened as a result, and what the meaning of the phenomenon might be--an invitation to experience along-with and consider for yourself (and perhaps a world however large or small).

A text can be in present tense, such as I am experiencing such and such about what I have in my focus now. It can be reflexive in that I am conscious that I am conscious of myself experiencing such and such. It can be reflective in the sense that this is how it was for me when I experienced that. Although there are refinements to this mirror-like reflecting self, in process versus at a point after having experienced, the nature of the text for all practical purposes is the basis for the description of the what and the how of experience.

A text taken as a whole is a description or an as-accurate-as-can-be image including feeling-tones and the like. Such may include other elements as narrative structure, chronology, attitude toward one or more parts of an experience, factual details, and so forth. And that whole is primary data to disclose or uncover an object or objects in consciousness--phenomena. The choices for which phenomena should be the subjects for analysis and description depends upon the need to fix more certain than in generalized fashion the understanding of same.

Meaning.

". . . [P]henomenology is the study of . . . appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience."*

Integral to understanding meaning has to do with the structure and content of primary data word streams constituting the phenomenon, and this can only be known by a methodical taking apart and putting together what and how of the experience including considerations of whether or not the given data is comprehensive enough to reveal in clarity and fullness and boundaries of the phenomenon we would know and understand better. Structure refers to parts and how they interrelate in order to comprise the whole. Content refers to themes and qualities that are deemed to be essential to the understanding of the experience of the phenomenon.

To be continued.

_____
Sources.

* Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy. 2021. Plato.Stanford.Edu. https://plato.stanford.edu.

"Phenomenology Online » Writing". 2021. Phenomenologyonline.Com. http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/inquiry/writing/.

** Illustration source. Husserl. (2021) Optionals IAS Mains Philosophy Phenomenology (Husserl)(History and Problems of Philosophy) Questions 1 to 1 - DoorstepTutor. Retrieved April 13, 2021, from https://www.doorsteptutor.com/Exams/IAS/Mains/Optional/Philosophy/Questions/Topic-History-and-Problems-of-Philosophy-0/Subtopic-Phenomenology-Husserl-6/Part-1.html

Rabbit hole

Hypothesis:

A. Creative illness (Freud, Ellenberg) = dark night of the soul (Christian mystics) = spiritual emergency (Grof, S. and C.).

B. These similar psychological phenomena grow out of a similar "cause" or process: phenomenological-psychological reduction (Applebaum), contemplative meditation (e.g., Dominican prayer), altered states of consciousness (Wilber, Tart, and others), and Freud's psychoanalysis (in his case, his self-analysis).

Next step: Go deeper, including comparisons among descriptions for each concept (e.g., columns and rows mapping(?) characteristics).

References (partial list, draft form):

Which The Phenomenologist. (2021) Key ideas: Applebaum on the phenomenological reduction - PhenomenologyBlog. Retrieved April 03, 2021, from https://phenomenologyblog.com/?p=616

Ellenberger, Henri F. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.

Grof, C., & Grof, S. (2017). Spiritual emergency: The understanding and treatment of transpersonal crises. International Journal of
Transpersonal Studies, 36 (2). http://dx.doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2017.36.2.30

Itself Because Not. (2021) The Concept of ''Creative Illness'' - Physicists and Artists Have Found a Common - Sleep and Health Journal Chicago. Retrieved April 03, 2021, from https://www.sleepandhealth.com/concept-creative-illness-physicists-and-artists-ha/

Charles Rycroft. (2021) Freud's Creative Illness | by Charles Rycroft | The New York Review of Books. Retrieved April 03, 2021, from https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1985/05/30/freuds-creative-illness/?lp_txn_id=1232790

Smith, David Woodruff, "Phenomenology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/phenomenology/>.

Now, sort them!

Freud (1859-1938) was born to Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austrian Empire (now Příbor, Czech Republic). Freud wrote phenomenological descriptions  of psychological phenomena--the conscious perceptive experiences of people. Freud theorized and stressed the importance and functions of the unconscious. Graduate of the University of Vienna, Brentano was academic advisor.

Husserl  was born to Jewish parents in the Moravian town of  Prossnitz, in the Austrian Empire  (now Prostějov, Czech Republic), 1856--1939 died Freiburg, Germany. Husserl pioneered the philosophy of phenomenology and methods of isolating the content and themes of intentional objects of consciousness. Husserl legitimized and stressed the importance and reality of the imagined, streams from the unconscious? Graduate of the University of Vienna, studies with Brentano.

Did Freud and Husserl "learn/develop" in some truly parallel ways, naturally enough because of where they came from, who they were, who they studied under, where they lived, the time they lived, etc.?

Additionally, 22.02.23.

The answer is yes. For an engaging read about these giants, see https://aeon.co/essays/brentano-who-taught-freud-and-husserl-is-a-lesson-to-us-all.

Black dung beetle or?

Will I return after this? and if I have a choice, who would I be? come back as?

One, I have to take a look at what this life has been and if I demonstrated the highest and best capabilities known and available to me to match or exceed. After all isn't it about that? to be all that you can be and more before saying, "See ya next time"?

If it is not about this, life is for whatever reasons we come up with not all of which are lofty. There are those who embrace whatever and hell with all else. Consider the effects of that; don't look too hard. Not that this always leads to messes and worse for others or the world, but this posture or belief or whatever it is has no other reason but satisfy-me-here-now.  

Of course aspiration and just-let-fly and points between assume we can make rational choices, although even in full awareness, we surely don't always make the best ones. We just live, and without 24/7 vigilance, because this is impossible, drift along--mostly--the easiest, most convenient byways. Some have embraced the me-path, mostly. Some have chosen or drifted towards more other- or ascent-oriented paths.

I chose and drifted and was guided to follow less-me paths, although I had to learn lessons that put resurgent-me (a horribly selfish ego) back on a better way, or the best I could find at the time, too often having strayed from what worked best and was, in hindsight, the decidedly better.

So the question: What worked, or what conditions did I find myself in and how did I use or advantage my better self given what I forged or came my way? Given that honest and accurate assessment, I can begin to answer who would I be, or who I would come back as?

It would be nice to know in awareness some options and future conditions before finding a new self with years and years ahead as a black dung beetle in sisyphian hell.

I have no complaint about living-to-thriving this time round. But the purpose, the meaning . . . would that next time I could see that part more clearly and live like or as that. And the form and life's necessities would fit that function.

Is it possible that those who believe this is it and all we will ever have will not come back and we who have questioned, perhaps believed in the possibility of coming back and the like or the as of it will be afforded the opportunity? In other words, the promise is you get what you expect or hope for. Those who take care in this go round get another go.

Rest in that still point, for now.

Draft from a 2011 computer folder

[. . . slightly edited and excerpted. What got me going then? vs. now as it would be more obviously justified.]

 In street and alley what strange tongues are these,/ Accents of menace in our ear.
 Thomas Bailey Aldrich, The Unguarded Gates, 1882

I refer here not to different languages but to language distorted, seemingly intentional and decidedly intentional. These voices have gained greater and greater prominence. The slants this way and that on who and what and when and where and why have directly threatened and struck the alarms of coming terror and pending totalitarianism, although the speakers are not the ones we fear but the energies and machinations behind these messengers.

Are the messengers themselves part of the conspiracy? To be sure in that they speak the distortions, contrary to facts and accurate memory. So those to blame, if blame it is, are these mediums as well as the nameless making up the hoards who would move us off center and towards an agenda of uncertain rationality and often insanity. Can we speak of particulars? of people and events in detail to support this claim? Surely, but my beef is not with these things but with the accents of menace who would fill our ears with rotting offal and outright garbage.

[Long quotation about socialism here from Wikipedia, including this, "Created . . . with the purpose of building a classless society."]

Those people and forces at play to move us in a direction counter to fact, to reason, to the most accurate understandings of things past, they wish to build a one-class society in the image of imagined or contrived truths and skewed values. Danger. Therein lies our peril, while at the same time the mediums abhor the notions of socialism, including efforts at reforms that look at what is and pose what could be. Reform to these is less and regress, but less means more and regress means what it was, which is to say how it is, some imagined status quo as they would have it. Such entrenchment under the guise of adjustment and change merely keeps them on their podia.

Would they stop talking were their pictures of what is or what should be become manifest? Once a distorter, always a distorter. Or, in normal parlance, probably not. The power felt by creating discord seduces; they will ride a new horse warning that the red coats are coming without ever having seen one, or substantiate-able evidence that that (new) menace lies in wait. They will do so because of that power, or the felt power that the attention, money or other "gain" has brought them.

Goofballs we can dismiss. Clever twisters and those who reinforce common misunderstandings and half truths--they are evil and we should also dismiss.

Where are the champions, that is to say, experts in knowledge, who tell it as it is and was and can correct the accents, the distortions? Without making the same performative error by killing off the opposition, literally or figuratively, how can we interrupt the most influential flows of misinformation?

I have long said that if you want to change the relationship with the other, you have to change the pattern of communicating with them. The usual approach is to try to directly affect them; doesn't work. People convinced they are right do not change. Talk till the proverbial come home merely consoles you and makes you the opposite "right", and thus not open to understanding, and change--if that is what is warranted.

We change our understanding on any side not by direct frontal assaults but by undermining the strength of the floors upon which the other stands. That is to say, if what has been distorted is left to stand on a weak foundation without attack at what's below, history will eventually make error fall. However, in whole or in part the process can be accelerated.

The time has come for acceleration, and in the case of accents that menace--

Two conditions must prevail along with undermining. One, a greater than and opposite offensive needs to be mounted to change the direction of the onslaught as, two, the onslaught needs to be exposed for what it is. In the case of accents of menace, this means to tell the most accurate truth in the most convincing fashion and to explain the errant ways. Take the stage away from them.

[Long rant here, unintelligible.]

I suspect, on the other hand, that in the case of political impotence or inability, you find new things to direct your feelings toward. And thus you find yourself changing from reading the news and the leaks to reading other things. After all there is more to the panoply of phenomena than power influence and preoccupation of what the other should or should not be doing. It is then about me and my small circle. It is about what we do and experience outside this more public and fractious world. It is about different truths and realities, more personal and private ones. And if not about health or physical well being, it will be about culture and beauty.

So it is I find myself turning again to what I will call art and expression and the richness of what I see, hear, taste, smell, and can touch. Life and living become important again. I bottle up emotions in certain aspects of my life and my history and what I can see if I look outward and find disturbing. I let them, my emotions, have free reign in matters of beauty and love and appreciation and understanding. I do not have to understand a mendacious world, only a world that is immediately around and inside me.

I have this peace now. I wish it for you.

A different breed

From "a Black Bitch" to "The Black Bullet" (God, what a fast runner), Ash continues residing here in Petrovice I with her shell-shocked owners. She continues to test the line between expulsion from and embrace into her adopted home, her savior being currently a no-nonsense Czech dog trainer who tames the beast for an hour a week, replenishing the chalice of our grace for another three days before she has exhausted patience and fifty percent of our hope. Still somewhat clueless about the terrorist in our midst and trying like hell to get up to speed also with help from the Czech dog trainer, we say, "Well, she might become civilized, if we can survive the first two years of puppy-through-puberty hell!"

This German shepherd dog (GSD) is indeed seriously different from our beloved golden retriever. We say to those skeptics who try to assert all dogs are just dogs, "You have no idea till you have one!" Fortunately, we the mystified are connected to other GSD owners who report the same, similar, and worse experiences growing through and along with their wild ones. YouTube University and books and whoever might have a word of encouragement are keeping us engaged and committed for the devoted, gentle adult Ash will be.

Time was back in November that we thought we had a cute mixed breed from some gypsy ghetto in Slovakia, but local authorities to 100 percent consensus here confirm, she is a German shepherd, and by the way the Ferrari model. (You don't just get to get in for a leisurely Sunday spin. You have to learn how to control and drive it first.)

Aristos--DRAFT

1. Each is alone--we imagine we’re not because of connection, but connections are creations in mind: Contortions of real, and other rationalizations we are responsible for and rely upon. Not bad; contortions are useful and comforting, these illusions, images of those _with_ us. We even have beings we can't see and people we know and love not physically present that right now we deem (virtually) here, so we are not alone. But we are.

2. People are essentially good---No. Too many examples. Self interest first, especially taking the forms of survival and "the way we would have it always". If that is and continues, then I’m good, goodness being essential but conditional and--truth--often accidental. Some are inclined to show and enact more or less of  good, defined socially and culturally. And extreme or approximate extremes in goodness exist, such as those wholly compassionate saving someone other at the risk of losing their own life . . . rarer than we imagine.

3. Evil exists. What it is is not clear, but it exists probably because first, self interest. It can and does go to extremes. Perhaps it is some form of I-am-alone, and therefore must do whatever I must or can to ensure me, to make me important, real, of significance in a world where connection is not possible, but I don't know that.

4. Clarity about reality is never achieved, always in the making. Some give up or take easy ways to resolve what is real. Others never give up trying to realize even though this is futile. Still others, most? don’t bother much. Or get so muddled, they go off half- or fully-crazed in opposition to other perceived/believed realities. Those that think they have discovered clarity fight to prove to themselves that they have it. Different realities often fight to the detriment or death of others.

5. People can change and do for umpteen reasons: easy sometimes, hard others, which makes for a necessary flexibility in relations. Sometimes relations are impossible to have, the differences now--after change--versus then--before changing--are so great.

6. People hide who they are. No one can know the other, they are so trapped by their own self preserving imaginings, and those in the smoke others emit about themselves. And the other is always throughout alone and separate--and changeable.

7. Care versus futility: the former makes for society; the latter for evil or something less, such as belief in nothing, thus just getting along and through somehow. The span of care and its focus are variable as is intensity.

8. The individual combination of inclinations, etc., make for the personality and character of a person. Aside from what biology and heredity bestow, a person is who she is and presents that to the other in the world.

9. So you’re free to play in the playground, and I’m glad for your discoveries and happiness, as we all can be glad.

10. But leave me to my private garden with imaginary flowers. I need make-work to get through all of this. I am very busy. My life. No strife. (Back to aristo no. 1.)