Make the Ones You Care About Feel Mysterious

In stories, trees are always angry.

The tumbleweed refused to tumble but was more than willing to prance.

The tortoise jumped into the lake with dreams of becoming a sea turtle.

They finished building the road they knew no one would ever use.

The memory we used to share is no longer coherent.

I'd always thought lightning was something only I could see.

I seem to enjoy books that fill me with confusion and existential dread - just like life, except the comfort of pretend.

I think I'm probably corrosive.

He will debate the matter with you until you decide to wash.

Walk the thin line between apathy and calm.

They didn't have city killers then.

Make the ones you care about feel mysterious.

I haven't had a muse for words lately. Sometimes that indicates I'm anxious or vexed or down, but I don't think it does this time. I've been moving positively along the continuum from apathetic toward engaged at work lately, and am generally busy and happy with the family. I've been working with my hands and taking pictures for a creative outlet instead of writing. I wouldn't say I've quite been content, but not driven to articulate frustration or escape with humor. All the usual worries are there--major election in a month, after all, and worsening hurricanes and such--but I've been sighing and detaching more.

So this post will be and odd and random collection of things that have caught my eye the past month, starting with the first sentence above, stolen from my listening of The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemison during my lunchtime walk today, the ones after from the Random Sentence Generator, with a few at the end taken from what follows. I had thought of doing something creative with them, but inspiration hasn't struck yet.

Speaking of random words, the other week I entertained myself during a slow moment at the library by going to "Philosophy" list of our new books webpage and arranged the first 25 titles into a poem. 

Understanding Consciousness

Devil's Contract

The Weirdness of the World

How Nietzsche Came in From the Cold

A Summer With Pascal

Hope for Cynics

Traveling Solo

You Don't Have to Do It Alone

First Love

Begetting

Beauty

Wonderstruck

Our Kindred Creatures

Should We Go Extinct?

The Occasional Human Sacrifice

Right Thing, Right Now

The Seven Generations and the Seven Grandfather Teachings

Hyperobjects

On Gaslighting

Being Philosophical

Perplexing Paradoxes

The Random Factor

Learning to Disagree

(Retrieved on Sep. 21)

On another day, just after finishing The Bride of the Tornado by James Kennedy, I decided to make a booklist:

What Did I Just Read?

I seem to enjoy books that fill me with confusion and existential dread - just like life, except the comfort of pretend. Unusual or experimental writing, unreliable narrators or narrators in unreliable situations, strange and off-kilter or simply unique. Often creepy. These are some I have particularly enjoyed.

I didn't add Bride of the Tornado to the list since I like Kennedy's Dare to Know even more, so here's what I wrote for my review:

Kennedy is a master of creepy, off-kilter, gnawing dread in this story of a teen girl in a middle-of-nowhere town on the plains that is constantly surrounded by tornadoes that almost seem sentient and predatory. Life in town revolves around avoiding the tornadoes and a nearly religious reverence for a boy who has the magical ability to fight and kill tornadoes. And the adults all seem to know things that the kids don't, things that make their behaviors sometimes feel cultish. It's immersive and atmospheric in a way that messes with your head.

These might really be my favorite kinds of books, I think.

A few days ago I shared this anecdote on Facebook:

Taking a walk break in the park behind the library. Noticed a guy walking by with his dog giving me a funny look. Realized he'd probably just overheard me making growling and coaxing sounds at a squirrel in the hopes of getting it to recreate a pose it had just struck so I could get a picture.

EDIT: This is the closest I got. It had turned fully toward me and advanced a couple of steps while maintaining direct eye contact, as though it hoped to intimidate me into retreating. Much different than the usual scurrying out of view. I was alternating between staying threatening and encouraging it to keep trying to scare me.

Someone responded perfectly (and accurately), That squirrel is giving solid "Come at me, bro" energy.

Speaking of Facebook, I reshared this meme with the lead: I think I'm probably corrosive.

Corrosive is one of the options from the NFPA 704, after all.

And that thought reminded me of this favorite quote:

“If things go badly for me tonight, I want you to stay with Mr. Wynter; he will pay you a decent wage.”

“Will he make me bathe?”

“No, he will debate the matter with you until you decide to wash.”

“Ah. One of those.”

― Eoin Colfer, Airman

Which I proudly claim as about me.

I said at the top I've been keeping busy making things with my hands. Here's something I posted to Facebook:

A couple of years ago I made staves of power for [Younger] (cat paw) and [Older] (dragon), and have recently finished ones for [Uncle] (owl) and me (nature).

When [Uncle] spent way too much money on a broom handle with cheap decorations at the Ren Fest last year, I said I would make him something much better. This summer I finally dug out the one I'd started a while back before losing my muse and finished it for myself, then got started on one for him. This morning I presented him with the finished product.

When people wanted more details, I shared the following elaboration:

I found sticks in the woods on my wanders. For the boys, two small cedars that had been recently cut to clear the trail and cast aside; for mine, a young tree that had just been broken off at the base due to weather or animals or hikers; for [Uncle]'s, a dead tree that had yet to fall over and start rotting (it broke off at the ground/roots when I tested it).

Growing up we had pocket knives and would whittle, but only to reduce and sharpen, never proper shaping or carving. So [Older]'s dragon was my first time carving something (with a cheap carving knife set from Amazon). I cut each of the scales, dug out the spiral of the shaft, etc.

Wrapped the handle area in leather cord, tied and glued the "magic items," stained and sealed. Cut a bit from an old flip-flop to glue to the bottom to save our floors.

[Younger]'s was similar and followed immediately after. Different colors and design and magic. The claws have broken due to rough use and I need to find something to glue in their place.

My nature one doesn't have much carving to it, but I wanted a bit more naturalistic and wild look. Attached are: a bit of horn for land animals; shells for water animals; feathers for air animals; a tiny "sword" from a flattened nail shape for metal; a rock for earth; a couple of acorns for trees (now just caps since the resin coating didn't preserve them as I'd hoped); and a few wood carvings I made: a ring, a key, and a disk. The shells came from the beach on our family trip to Maine. The rock came from the beach on our family trip to California. The acorns came from behind my library (workplace). The feathers I found on a walk at local park. It has a strap so I can hold it on my shoulder to be hands-free. And is lighter than the others since it's the only one I gave time to properly dry out before working. It's the most practical of the bunch (aside from the dangly bits).

For [Uncle]'s I learned to use the rotary tool (off-brand Dremel) [Spouse] got me for Christmas (or my birthday). That and experience/practice helped. I knew to start with a thicker stick so I'd have more ability to reduce to give it shape and dimension. I was able to go into more detail much more easily. He requested the owl and a more "wizardy" feel than my "druidy" one. [Older] and I made a trip to the store Third Planet for the "magic." I had thoughts and colors in mind, but didn't know what we'd get for sure until we saw what we could afford. We ended up with a lapis lazuli orb of power and some amethyst geode pieces to embed. The eyeball beads came from Michael's--I can't remember if amethyst or something similar. A grey stain, with some bits sanded after to get the brighter colors. Oiled and coated in polyurethane (like the rest).

This process is a nice distraction, a healthy obsession, and a flow-like meditation.

This article resonates, both because it reflects my personal values but also takes the time to validate the authenticity and allure of Quietism, which I often feel on the verge of.

Everyday Philosophy: Is It Better to Debate People or Shrug and Drink Wine?

At its core, quietism means retreating from the active pursuit of truth or intellectual engagement, promoting instead a kind of serene acceptance of the world as it is. Quietism walks the thin line between apathy and calm. It still cares about the world and its people but tends to let everyone go their own way, focusing only on meditation, contemplation, and quietude. . . . 

It might be a philosopher’s fancy, but the entire point of discussing ideas with other people is to clarify those ideas and, we hope, move one step closer to something like the truth.

Your convictions are fine, and you might feel noble, but it is not the philosopher’s quest. Quietism is a form of capitulation. It’s giving up on working together to improve our ideas. . . . 

However calm and appealing the gallic shrug of quietism might seem, I do believe that we have to still engage with other people about almost all matters. This isn’t to say that we should always be looking for a debate, but I think we need to have them sometimes.

I take a "don't sweat the small stuff" and "pick your battles approach," responding to many things with quietism so I have the energy and capacity to properly engage with the really important things.

Speaking of important things worth engaging in, I recently came a cross a video that is wonderful. Here's a link and a transcript of the slam poem.

Royce Mann, Age 14, "White Boy Privilege", Slam Poem

Dear women, I’m sorry.

Dear black people, I’m sorry.

Dear Asian-Americans, dear Native Americans, dear immigrants who come here seeking a better life, I’m sorry.

Dear everyone who isn’t a middle or upper-class white boy, I’m sorry.

I have started life in the top of the ladder while you were born on the first rung.

I say now that I would change places with you in an instant, but if given the opportunity, would I?

Probably not.

Because to be honest, being privileged is awesome. I’m not saying that you and me on different rungs of the ladder is how I want it to stay.

I’m not saying that any part of me has for a moment even liked it that way.

I’m just saying that I f—— love being privileged and I’m not ready to give that away. I love it because I can say ‘f——’ and not one of you is attributing that to the fact that everyone with my skin color has a dirty mouth.

I love it because I don’t have to spend an hour every morning putting on makeup to meet other people’s standards.

I love it because I can worry about what kind of food is on my plate instead of whether or not there will be food on my plate.

I love it because when I see a police officer I see someone who’s on my side.

To be honest I’m scared of what it would be like if i wasn’t on the top rung if the tables were turned and I didn’t have my white boy privilege safety blankie to protect me.

If I lived a life lit by what I lack, not what I have, if I lived a life in which when I failed, the world would say, ‘Told you so.’

If I lived the life that you live.

When I was born I had a success story already written for me.

You – you were given a pen and no paper.

I’ve always felt that that’s unfair but I’ve never dared to speak up because I’ve been too scared.

Well now I realize that there’s enough blankie to be shared. Everyone should have the privileges I have.

In fact they should be rights instead.

Everyone’s story should be written, so all they have to do is get it read.

Enough said.

No, not enough said.

It is embarrassing that we still live in a world in which we judge another person’s character by of the size of their paycheck, the color of their skin, or the type of chromosomes they have.

It is embarrassing that we tell our kids that it is not their personality, but instead those same chromosomes that get to dictate what color clothes they wear and how short they must cut their hair.

But most of all, it is embarrassing that we deny this. That we claim to live in an equal country and an equal world.

We say that women can vote. Well guess what: They can run a country, own a company, and throw a nasty curve ball as well. We just don’t give them the chance to.

I know it wasn’t us 8th-grade white boys who created this system, but we profit from it every day.

We don’t notice these privileges though, because they don’t come in the form of things we gain, but rather the lack of injustices that we endure.

Because of my gender, I can watch any sport on TV, and feel like that could be me one day.

Because of my race I can eat at a fancy restaurant without the wait staff expecting me to steal the silverware.

Thanks to my parents’ salary I go to a school that brings my dreams closer instead of pushing them away.

Dear white boys: I’m not sorry.

I don’t care if you think the feminists are taking over the world, that the Black Lives Matter movement has gotten a little too strong, because that’s bulls—.

I get that change can be scary, but equality shouldn’t be.

Hey white boys: It’s time to act like a woman. To be strong and make a difference. It’s time to let go of that fear.

It’s time to take that ladder and turn it into a bridge.

Transcript from the article Teen’s ‘White Boy Privilege’ Slam Poetry Goes Viral

He articulates it so well.

The hurricanes this past month had me revisiting this section of Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi (2010):

Whatever Nita thought of the scavenge opportunities, there was a lot of abandoned material spread out before them, and if Nailer understood correctly, this was just Orleans II. There was also the original New Orleans, and then there was Mississippi Metropolitan -aka MissMet-what had been originally envisioned as New Orleans III, before even the most ardent supporters of the drowned city gave up on the spectacularly bad luck enjoyed by places called "Orleans."

Some engineers had claimed it was possible to raise hurricane-resistant towers above Pontchartrain Bay, but the merchants and traders had had enough of the river mouth and the storms, and so left the drowned city to docks and deep-sea loading platforms and slums, while they migrated their wealth and homes and children to land that lay more comfortably above sea level.

MissMet was far away upriver and higher in elevation and armored against cyclones and hurricanes as none of the others had been, a city designed from the ground up to avoid the pitfalls of their earlier optimism, a place for swanks that Nailer had heard was paved in gold and where gleaming walls and guards and wire kept the rest of the chaff away.

At one time in the past, New Orleans had meant many things, had meant jazz and Creole and the pulse of life, had meant Mardi Gras and parties and abandon, had meant creeping luxurious green decay. Now it meant only one thing.

Loss.

More dead jungle ruins flashed past, an astonishing amount of wealth and materials left to rot and fall back to the green tangle of the trees and swamps.

"Why did they give up?" Nailer asked. "Sometimes people learn," Tool said. From that, Nailer took him to be saying that mostly people didn't. The wreckage of the twin dead cities was good evidence of just how slow the people of the Accelerated Age had been to accept their changing circumstances.

The train curved toward the hulking towers. The shambled outline of an ancient stadium showed beyond the spires of Orleans II, marking the beginning of the old city, the city proper for the drowned lands.

"Stupid," Nailer muttered. Tool leaned close to hear his voice over the wind, and Nailer shouted in his ear, "They were damn stupid."

Tool shrugged. "No one expected Category Six hurricanes. They didn't have city killers then. The climate changed. The weather shifted. They did not anticipate well."

Nailer wondered at that idea. That no one could have understood that they would be the target of monthly hurricanes pinballing up the Mississippi Alley, gunning for anything that didn't have the sense to batten down, float, or go underground.

I don't think we're quite to "city killer" levels yet, but the damage is getting worse in new and unexpected ways.

This article caught my attention.

The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books

The student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover.

“My jaw dropped,” Dames told me. The anecdote helped explain the change he was seeing in his students: It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to. . . . 

His students tell him up front that the reading load feels impossible. It’s not just the frenetic pace; they struggle to attend to small details while keeping track of the overall plot.

No comprehensive data exist on this trend, but the majority of the 33 professors I spoke with relayed similar experiences. . . . 

For more than two decades, new educational initiatives such as No Child Left Behind and Common Core emphasized informational texts and standardized tests. Teachers at many schools shifted from books to short informational passages, followed by questions about the author’s main idea—mimicking the format of standardized reading-comprehension tests. Antero Garcia, a Stanford education professor, is completing his term as vice president of the National Council of Teachers of English and previously taught at a public school in Los Angeles. He told me that the new guidelines were intended to help students make clear arguments and synthesize texts. But “in doing so, we’ve sacrificed young people’s ability to grapple with long-form texts in general.” . . . 

The issue that Dames and other professors have observed is distinct from the problem at community colleges and nonselective universities, where some students arrive with literacy and comprehension deficits that can leave them unable to complete collegiate courses. High-achieving students at exclusive schools like Columbia can decode words and sentences. But they struggle to muster the attention or ambition required to immerse themselves in a substantial text. . . . 

According to the neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, so-called deep reading—sustained immersion in a text—stimulates a number of valuable mental habits, including critical thinking and self-reflection, in ways that skimming or reading in short bursts does not. . . . 

I previously blogged about Maryanne Wolf's book Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World in Introspection and Contemplation.

This article is fascinating.

We Should Take Awkwardness Less Personally, and More Seriously

Embarrassment happens when an individual commits a social gaffe; its characteristic facial and bodily expressions involve a kind of apology. Embarrassment is thus a kind of social repair. But awkwardness is different: it’s not something an individual causes, and it’s not something an individual can resolve on their own; it’s a social rupture. The failure involved in embarrassment is a failure to conform to existing norms. Awkwardness is different: it happens when we don’t have a social script to conform to. In other words, embarrassment happens when we violate socially prescribed scripts; awkwardness happens when we lack prescriptions to guide us.

People often feel like awkwardness is about them – that they are awkward, or not. But awkwardness is a collective production. More accurately, it’s a collective failure. Awkwardness is a kind of normative negative space, offering what Adam Kotsko calls ‘insight through breakdown’. It arises when people find themselves suddenly without a social script to guide them through an interaction or an event. The term ‘script’ carries associations of playacting, and that’s not a bad way to understand awkwardness. But the lesson of awkwardness is that, in the dramedy of life, we’re not just the actors, we’re the writers. . . . 

Social interaction is a kind of performance in which we occupy various roles. When a performance fails, the actor feels discredited – to use Goffman’s term, he loses ‘face’. Maybe he’s trying to play a role his audience won’t grant him (for example, a failed attempt to flirt, or a rejected marriage proposal) or he loses his composure and botches the performance. . . . 

The social cues by which we navigate the world range from the explicit – a dress code; the ‘no presents’ written on a party invitation – to the nearly imperceptible. . . . When two people land on different answers: awkward! . . . 

Awkwardness is fundamentally a kind of social disorientation. There’s a certain comfort in being able to socially situate oneself. That’s not to say that hierarchies are comfortable or beneficial for everyone – far from it. But even as social rejection and downranking hurt, there is a different kind of discomfort that comes along with being socially lost and disoriented, and this is the discomfort associated with awkwardness. . . . 

We should be wary of labelling others ‘awkward’. This gets awkwardness wrong – it’s not a personality or character trait, but something that emerges from social interactions. Awkwardness requires the presence of others: individuals aren’t awkward, interactions are. This might seem surprising: people often describe themselves (or others) as ‘awkward’, and it seems that some people do have more difficulty navigating social interactions than others. But there are practical as well as theoretical reasons for resisting the idea that awkwardness is an individual trait. The label ‘awkward’ is not as innocuous as it seems: it’s ambiguous, and it obscures more than it reveals. . . . 

Because awkwardness is often aversive, those perceived as causing it risk ostracism. Changing social norms and rituals isn’t easy; adopting new ones can be costly. The person whose presence reveals the inadequacy of the status quo thus presents a threat. For example, in a department where the men routinely take clients to a strip club after dinner, or tell sexually explicit jokes in meetings, the presence of women colleagues might make things awkward, as they are forced to confront the clash between their workplace rituals and professional norms. One option would be to accept this conflict as of their own making, and adjust their behaviour accordingly. But too often, it’s the presence of the women that is blamed: now it’s awkward to tell those jokes, because there are women here. Blame falls on those perceived as different for ‘making’ things awkward. In many cases, though, it was awkward all along: that awkwardness was just being borne by someone else, as they tried to conform to others’ expectations. . . . 

It’s worth paying more attention to when and where it arises, and be more willing to tackle it head-on. An unspoken expectation in many social interactions is that people already know how to navigate them. People avoid admitting social ignorance, and we are embarrassed by those who do, as if they’ve violated some unspoken social norm. But why should not knowing which pronoun, title or fork to use be any different from not knowing where the bathroom is, or what time the café opens? The reluctance to ask that social norms be made explicit reveals a deeper expectation: that social interaction should appear effortless. Awkwardness highlights the fact that our interactions are scripted. Its aversiveness shows the extent to which people prefer not to be reminded of this fact. . . . 

For people who are neurodivergent, who struggle with reading facial cues, or who find themselves in unfamiliar social settings, the world is full of rooms with unpredictable, unreachable infrastructure. Awkwardness is a reminder that social infrastructure exists and that it is not equally accessible to everyone. . . . 

When awkwardness is understood as an individual failure to fit in, the response is supposed to be: do better; conform; learn the script. But that’s not always possible. Nor is it always desirable. In some cases, those norms are not serving everyone – or anyone. . . . 

Awkwardness isn’t something an individual should, or even can, fix on their own. To view awkwardness as shameful, or embarrassing, is therefore not just a philosophical mistake but a practical one: it is to miss out on an opportunity to repair the social infrastructure. . . . 

But it’s important, too, to be mindful of who’s doing this work. Because awkwardness is felt as a form of social discomfort, it doesn’t attach to everyone equally. Social expectations of who does the work to make others feel comfortable – and correspondingly, who is held accountable when people feel uncomfortable – intersect with scripts around gender and social status. Women are often tasked with managing others’ moods and are expected to get along with others; this ‘emotional labour’ includes the work of repairing social interactions that become awkward. There’s a privilege in not worrying about others’ discomfort.

Don't be afraid to make social norms explicit--and question them where needed.

A poem of randomness.

Laura Tanenbaum

WHAT IF I CAUTIONED YOU

found poem, fundraising texts

Can I tell you about my family’s farm?

We stood together under a HUGE tent,

a bit longer than usual.

More butterflies than a freaking’ garden.

Is there anything I can say?

What if I told you,

or what if I reminded you,

or what if I cautioned,

Cruelty and chaos.

I can’t even begin to comprehend.

Revenge and retribution.

STOP

13 million 35 million, 5 now,

10 now, 20 before midnight, 109,201

Any another amount. Anything at all.

Last chance

STOP2END

 

—from Poets Respond

I love it.

And, of course, always be brave enough to make the ones you care about feel mysterious.

Randomly generated by Inspirobot.