Finding Words

Look again at nothing.

Have deep interest for others. Human beings are not transparent. Strangers are not easy. We have no choice but to talk to strangers. The right way to talk to strangers is with caution and humility. Just trying to be a human.

I would have taken any acknowledgment that I am a person.

What's motivating to you may be crippling to others. But and therefore are words that signal change. Don’t take a straight line to get there. Don't respect the path's boundaries. I'm erratic.

How dark and morbid I've become. This is dangerously flawed thinking at the best of times. It's not structurally sound. At this most necessary of tasks we are inept. I prey on fluorescent light. I want everything as cheap and damaged as this feeling.

We can't all be Holy Fools.

With all this news it’s getting very hard to remember the names of trees. What was the name of the buffalo that sits on you after you die in the religion we invented? I'm proud of you for going technical. “And” stories have no movement or momentum.

You can't not be on any side. Resistant to classification. Surrounded by people trying to define him.

To assume the best about another is the trait that has created modern society. Defaulting to truth makes logical sense. Society cannot function otherwise.

What the world would be like if everyone did what I was considering. Using your own humanity to draw out the humanity in the "other side." Recognize, cultivate, and build on their strengths. Islands of competence. Confidence is contagious.

It simply means your strength doesn't hurt others.

-----

cento (n.) - a literary work made up of parts from other works

The cento above is composed of words from below.

Something I wrote after taking the picture above and the three that follow:

The others

sharing the park's footpath

move with a mission

a purpose

to cover ground quickly

to move their bodies

eyes forward

intense.

My gaze wanders

up and down

side to side

my body following

what I see.

I meander

weave

stop start

don't respect the path's boundaries.

I'm erratic.

I halt

step back

pause to look

step off the path

look again

point my phone's camera

at some grass

a few leaves

at nothing.

Continue walking.

Those who were behind me

are now ahead

moving onward.

Soon

I step off

the other side of the path

stick my phone into a tree

and try to

see.

Something I could write after many of my wanders.

I was recently at a meeting where the table in front of every seat had a small pile of random magnet poetry on it. I made a rough sort of mine then came up with the following poem:

awaken

know it

be it

represent elaborate improvement

observe admire banal

usurp cozy

never lie

never steal

have deep interest for others

actively smile people

and, not or

I loved the phrase "electric autumn wind," but didn't use it since it didn't really fit.

I have children:

[Spouse] (In reference to the end of the school year): I hope you guys are as proud of getting through all of your challenges this year and how far you have come and how much you have accomplished this year.

[Younger] (Just turning 10): You mean how dark and morbid I've become? Yes, definitely.

-

[Younger], upon seeing this picture of the monster our characters are encountering: How does it even stand; it's not structurally sound?

It seems he wants the rules of his magic system to follow the laws of engineering and physics. Too many TV episodes about bridge collapses, myth busters, and similar.

-

"[Younger], here's the board game you wanted to take to school today."

"'Have a nice day.' Honestly, I don't know if I've ever heard anything more annoying in my life. I'll just put it in my backpack."

-

An anecdote I shared on Facebook: Whew! Just had one of the loudest driving experiences of my life. We took the boys to [neighboring town] for a dinner with their cousin before the semester ends and they go home. The boys spent the meal and the entire drive back at their most hyper. Constant jabbering, simultaneous talking, singing, outbursts and yelling. Lots of intentional nonsense. The moment I found most amusing was when I overheard, "[Older] (age 11), what was the name of the buffalo that sits on you after you die in the religion we invented?"

-

"[Older], please don't sing along with the song."

"But I have to sing along."

"Technically, you don't have to sing along."

"I'm proud of you for going technical."

Ah, older brother mentoring.

From the Farnam Street weekly newsletter No. 631 – June 1, 2025, Guided by Beauty:

Storyteller Matthew Dicks, on the principle of but and therefore:

A clear majority of human beings tend to connect their sentences, paragraphs, and scenes together with the word and.

This is a mistake. The ideal connective tissue in any story are the words but and therefore, along with all their glorious synonyms. These buts and therefores can be either explicit or implied.

“And” stories have no movement or momentum. They are equivalent to running on a treadmill. Sentences and scenes appear, one after another, but the movement is straightforward and unsurprising. The momentum is unchanged.

But and therefore are words that signal change. The story was heading in one direction, but now it’s heading in another. We started out zigging, but now we are zagging. We did this, and therefore this new thing happened.

I think of it as continually cutting against the grain of the story. Rather than stretching a flat line from beginning to end, the storyteller should seek to create a serrated line cutting back and forth, up and down, along the path of the story. We are still headed in the same direction, but the best storytellers don’t take a straight line to get there.

I have learned to say "and" instead of "but" when talking about people and their ideas, when looking for solutions, working together, and being inclusive, even though I have always appreciated the nuance and complexity provided by "but." So I find this interesting.

Of the book Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell:

I'm a bit torn on how to review this one.

I love most of the information Gladwell shares and the conclusions he draws from that information, but he is so concerned with sharing that information as a compelling narrative (or a collection of interwoven narratives) that he is not as effective at clearly communicating the information as he could be (or, since I think it's important information, as he should be). It makes for especially interesting reading, but at the cost of clarity and impact.

Though not mentioned in the title or on the cover, Gladwell frames this book as an investigation into the dynamics that led to the death of Sandra Bland in response to police (mis)treatment. He opens the book by describing that encounter, spends the book exploring a host of dynamics and common assumptions about social interactions, then at the end synthesizes the dynamics as they played out poorly in the case of Bland's death. Overall, it builds a searing indictment of our law enforcement institutions and their approaches to policing. Powerful and convincing.

At the same time, the book is a little bit at odds with itself, because it wants to be about more than the Sandra Bland frame. Gladwell wants these insights to be general ones that everyone can apply to their own lives. This lack of focus detracts from the power of his synthesis. I was especially bothered by the long chapter about how alcohol impairs judgment, as alcohol had nothing to do with the Sandra Bland situation and he ultimately--though he tries to deny it--draws the gross conclusion of victim blaming and perpetrator excusing when alcohol is involved in rape. That chapter didn't fit with the rest of the book at all, in my mind.

So I'm torn. For the most part I love the book and recommend reading it; I just wish it had been a little more effectively written.

This has been a book about a conundrum. We have no choice but to talk to strangers, especially in our modern borderless world. We aren't living in villages anymore. . . . Yet at this most necessary of tasks we are inept. . . . What should we do?

We could start by no longer penalizing one another for defaulting to truth. . . . To assume the best about another is the trait that has created modern society. Those occasions when our trusting nature gets violated are tragic. But the alternative--to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception--is worse.

We should also accept the limits of our ability to decipher strangers. . . . There are clues to making sense of a stranger. But attending to them requires care and attention.

-----

[Police are trained to suspect people based on their demeanor.] This is dangerously flawed thinking at the best of times. Human beings are not transparent. . . .

One of the key pieces of advice given to proactive patrol officers to protect them from accusations of bias or racial profiling is that they should be careful to stop everyone. If you're going to use trivial, trumped-up reasons for pulling someone over, make sure you act that way all the time. "If you're accused of profiling or pretextual stops, you can bring your daily logbook to court and document that pulling over motorists for 'stickler' reasons is part of your customary pattern," Remsberg writes, "not a glaring exception conveniently dusted off in the defendant's case." . . .

If something went awry that day on the street with Sandra Bland, it wasn't because Brian Encinia didn't do what he was trained to do. It was the opposite. It was because he did exactly what he was trained to do. . . .

I have now watched the videotape of [Sandra Bland's] encounter with Brian Encinia more times than I can count--and each time I do, I become angrier and angrier over the way the case was "resolved." It was turned into something much smaller than it really was: a bad police officer and an aggrieved young black woman. That's not what it was. What went wrong that day . . . was a collective failure. Someone wrote a training manual that foolishly encouraged Brian Encinia to suspect everyone, and he took it to heart. Somebody else higher up in the chain of command at the Texas Highway Patrol misread the evidence and thought it was a good idea to have him and his colleagues conduct Kansas City stops in a low-crime neighborhood. Everyone in his world acted on the presumption that the motorists driving up and down the streets of their corner of Texas could be identified and categorized on the basis of the tone of their voice, fidgety movements, and fast-food wrappers. And behind every one of those ideas are assumptions that too many of us share--and too few of us have ever bothered to reconsider. . . .

If you are blind to the ideas that underlie our mistakes with strangers--and to the institutions and practices that we construct around those ideas--then all you are left with is the personal. . . .

Because we do not know how to talk to strangers, what do we do when things go awry with strangers? We blame the stranger.

Trust strangers, don't suspect them.

More from Talking to Strangers:

The right way to talk to strangers is with caution and humility.

-----

To assume the best about another is the trait that has created modern society. Those occasions when our trusting nature gets violated are tragic. But the alternative - to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception - is worse.

-----

You believe someone not because you have no doubts about them. Belief is not the absence of doubt. You believe someone because you don’t have enough doubts about them.

-----

We think we can easily see into the hearts of others based on the flimsiest of clues. We jump at the chance to judge strangers. We would never do that to ourselves, of course. We are nuanced and complex and enigmatic. But the stranger is easy. If I can convince you of one thing in this book, let it be this: Strangers are not easy.

-----

The conviction that we know others better than they know us—and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa)—leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly. The same convictions can make us reluctant to take advice from others who cannot know our private thoughts, feelings, interpretations of events, or motives, but all too willing to give advice to others based on our views of their past behavior, without adequate attention to their thoughts, feelings, interpretations, and motives. Indeed, the biases documented here may create a barrier to the type of exchanges of information, and especially to the type of careful and respectful listening, that can go a long way to attenuating the feelings of frustration and resentment that accompany interpersonal and intergroup conflict.

-----

In Russian folklore there is an archetype called yurodivy, or the "Holy Fool." The Holy Fool is a social misfit--eccentric, off-putting, sometimes even crazy--who nonetheless has access to the truth. Nonetheless is actually the wrong word. The Holy Fool is a truth-teller because he is an outcast. Those who are not part of existing social hierarchies are free to blurt out inconvenient truths or question things the rest of us take for granted. . . . 

Every culture has its version of the Holy Fool. In Hans Christian Andersen's famous children's tale "The Emperor's New Clothes, " . . . The closest we have to Holy Fools in modern life are whistleblowers. . . . 

What sets the Holy Fool apart is a different sense of the possibility of deception. In real life, Tim Levine reminds us, lies are rare. And those lies that are told are told by a very small subset of people. That's why it doesn't matter so much that we are terrible at detecting lies in real life. Under the circumstances, in fact, defaulting to truth makes logical sense. . . . 

The Holy Fool is someone who doesn't think this way. The statistics say that the liar and the con man are rare. But to the Holy Fool, they are everywhere.

We need Holy Fools in our society, from time to time. They perform a valuable role. . . . But the second, crucial part of Levine's argument is that we can't all be Holy Fools. That would be a disaster.

Levine argues that over the course of evolution, human beings never developed sophisticated and accurate skills to detect deception as it was happening because there is no advantage to spending your time scrutinizing the words and behaviors of those around you. The advantage to human beings lies in assuming that strangers are truthful. As he puts it, the trade-off between truth-default and the risk of deception is

a great deal for us. What we get in exchange for being vulnerable to an occasional lie is efficient communication and social coordination. The benefits are huge and the costs are trivial in comparison. Sure, we get deceived once in a while. That is just the cost of doing business.

That sounds callous, because it's easy to see all the damage done by people like Ana Montes and Bernie Madoff. Because we trust implicitly, spies go undetected, criminals roam free, and lives are damaged. But Levine's point is that the price of giving up on that strategy is much higher. If everyone on Wall Street behaved like Harry Markopolos, there would be no fraud on Wall Street--but the air would be so thick with suspicion and paranoia that there would also be no Wall Street.

We accept the fact that being a parent requires a fundamental level of trust in the community of people around your child.

If every coach is assumed to be a pedophile, then no parent would let their child leave the house, and no sane person would ever volunteer to be a coach. We default to truth--even when that decision carries terrible risks--because we have no choice. Society cannot function otherwise.

Don't be a Holy Fool.

Of the book Invasion of the Spirit People by Juan Pablo Villalobos, which the publisher describes:

Juan Pablo Villalobos’s fifth novel adopts a gentle, fable-like tone, approaching the problem of racism from the perspective that any position as idiotic as xenophobia can only be fought with sheer absurdity. In an unnamed city, colonised by an unnamed world power, an immigrant named Gastón makes his living selling exotic vegetables to eateries around the city. He has a dog called Kitten, who’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and a good friend called Max, who’s in a deep depression after being forced to close his restaurant. Meanwhile, Max’s son, Pol, a scientist away on a scientific expedition into the Arctic, can offer little support. Gastón begins a quest, or rather three: he must search for someone to put his dog to sleep humanely; he must find a space in which to open a new restaurant with Max; and he must look into the truth behind the news being sent back by Pol: that human life may be the by-product of an ancient alien attempt at colonisation . . . and those aliens might intend to make a return visit.

My brief review: A slice of Gaston's life during a pivotal time of loss and change, just trying to be a human, surrounded by people trying to define him by geography, ethnicity, belief, and any other category they can imagine. Entertaining, touching, and thoughtful.

The North Easterner in the greengrocer's insists that Gaston properly identify himself if he wants to talk business; he needs to know where he comes from and what he does, in order to activate the territorial and trade-related codes of trust, or of distrust. It is not easy to determine where Gaston comes from; his skin, darker than that of the Peninsulars, his cheeks, which are broad, his almost grey eyes, and the abundance of hair on his ears, which, more than a physical attribute, is a lycanthropic sign of premature ageing, all produce a peculiar visual effect, resistant to classification. The way he speaks doesn't help, either; the strange accent with which he intones the colonizing language after so many years of living here (more than thirty), and the vocabulary, which is a blend of his own quaint lexicon with that of the Peninsula, with that of Max, and with sayings and expressions taken from the indigenous language.

-----

Before saying anything he also remembers that it's futile trying to reason with people who use shared origin as a way of striking up a conversation or as an argument, and so he opts to keep quiet instead. Cordillera Guy comes up very close, brushing up against him, invading his space.

"You can't be on two sides," he says.

"I'm not on any side," Gaston replies.

"You can't not be on any side," Cordillera Guy insists.

Gaston says that he didn't know they were at war. Pacific Coast Guy grows exasperated. It's clear that he finds civilized intimidation restrictive, like a T-shirt several sizes too small.

"What planet do you live on, mate?" he asks.

What planet do you live on, Gaston repeats to himself, and there is so much violence, so much desire for exclusion in this question, that it seems like a threat of eviction; there's no room for you here--go and live on another planet. Gaston pulls on Kitten's lead, steps around Cordillera Guy, and walks off.

-----

"You can't do this," Gaston says; "it could be dangerous."

"The really dangerous thing," interrupts the old teacher, "is the idea that everything that comes from outside, anything alien, is a threat that must be eradicated. You know what that's called?"

Gaston says nothing, because he is waiting for an answer from Pol, not a speech from his old teacher.

"Universal fascism," the old teacher says, answering his own question. "This fantasy that we have to protect some supposed purity, and original, primitive order, to safeguard some sort of essence, traditions, a better past--which side are you on?"

If I can convince you of one thing in this book, let it be this: Strangers are not easy. To assume the best about another is the trait that has created modern society. Defaulting to truth makes logical sense. Society cannot function otherwise.

A poem I really love from a collection I otherwise didn't completely connect with:

Do You Sell Dignity Here?

Do you know what aisle

they sell dignity,

I say to the store clerk

on University Avenue.

It is a cold October,

Frank Ocean's "moon river"

croons in my head

and earlier that day

I lay flat in the bathtub

like a wild infant, shower

pouring, thinking

of that Dickinson poem

where she says

a bomb upon the ceiling

is an improving thing--

steam gathering in celestial

curls and I imagine bombs

fizzing out gas and me,

radioactive with love.

At the grocery store, I ask

where they sell dignity

and when the clerk says

sorry, what did you say?

I explain

that I am looking

for dignity,

having lost so much

in the last year

and was wondering

if it were neatly placed

by the baking powder

or perhaps refrigerated

with the perishables

given its fragile shelf life

and yes, I really did ask this

partly because I was being funny

and trying to make a friend

but also, I would have taken

a hug

or any acknowledgment

that I am a person

who can laugh at myself

despite walking

with that odd angle

of defeat.

Children have no dignity

and I really admire that about them.

I love their ruthless response

to injustices, their desire to feed

birds in the park.

To grieve the sea.

Their right to be tired

in public.

Do you sell dignity here?

I ask one last time,

and then tell him

how it went down,

how I had lost mine

in Bushwick of all places,

near a building covered in glass

and white girl gentrifiers

having their white girl epiphanies--

such bad coming-of-age trash,

jesus, all my parents' sacrifices for this?

For what?

Is this why I came here from Africa?

they would say over my flat body,

hopefully in the shape of a shrug.

I am undignified.

I prey on fluorescent light.

I enter through the automatic door

of grocery stores with royal glide,

feetless into an even white.

I greet peaches and bawdy

cauliflower, nod to the pink

packets of sweeteners

and wrapped meat thighs.

I am drawn to the milks

and oblong fruit, dent a red

Campbell's can of soup.

I want everything

as cheap and damaged

as this feeling.

When they go low, we go high,

a president's wife said.

I go low some days.

I go so low, you cannot tell me

from the animals we sell.

From the hard grain

my body has become.

At the grocery store, I ask where they sell dignity and when the clerk says sorry, what did you say? I explain that I am looking for dignity, having lost so much in the last year and was wondering if it were neatly placed by the baking powder or perhaps refrigerated with the perishables given its fragile shelf life and yes, I really did ask this partly because I was being funny and trying to make a friend but also, I would have taken a hug or any acknowledgment that I am a person who can laugh at myself despite walking with that odd angle of defeat.

From I Do Everything I'm Told by Megan Fernandes.

Excerpt from a Facebook post by Homeless Training by Ryan Dowd:

I ask myself what the world would be like if everyone did what I was considering.

For example, I spilled coffee at the airport the other day. I asked myself, 'What would the world be like if everyone spilled their coffee and walked away?' Then I asked, 'What would the world be like if everyone cleaned up their messes?' Then I went to the bathroom, got paper towels and cleaned up my coffee.

Integrity.

Excerpt from another Facebook post by Homeless Training by Ryan Dowd:

They don’t appear related, but they have the same philosophical core. Nonviolent Resistance and De-Escalation are both "The Third Way."

3. Nonviolent resistance - Call out and actively resist abuse, but with a refusal to use violence.

3. De-Escalation - Hold the person to the rules, but do so calmly and respectfully.

The Third Way

The Third Way is about refusing to give in to aggression, while also refusing to use aggression.

The Third Way is about using your own humanity to draw out the humanity in the "other side."

The Third Way is about choosing hope over cynicism, even in the face of people calling you a fool… and thinking that they might be right.

The Third Way is ultimately about speaking truth:

• Nonviolent resistance is "speaking truth to power."

• De-escalation is "speaking truth with power."

The more deeply I reflect on both, the more I am struck by how often the answer is The Third Way.

Use your own humanity to draw out the humanity in others.

An article:

The Wrong Way to Motivate Your Kid

When children fall short, many parents’ instinct is to take away something they love. That’s the wrong impulse.

My experience working with children, along with plenty of research on resilience, has taught me a valuable lesson: When a kid is falling short, penalizing them by taking away the thing they care most about is not the way to motivate them. . . . 

Decades of research have shown that a key to raising capable young people isn’t to target their struggles. It’s to recognize, cultivate, and build on their strengths—to identify what experts in child development call “islands of competence.”

That term was introduced more than 40 years ago by the clinical psychologist Robert Brooks, who argued that every child, no matter their challenges, possesses distinct areas of ability, and that it is educators’ and parents’ job to nurture and celebrate those gifts—not merely as a feel-good exercise but as a crucial foundation for growth. Other research has shown that “strength-based parenting,” or the practice of helping a child lean into their skills, correlates with lower stress levels and higher engagement in school. In contrast, psychologists have suggested that parenting focused on fixing weaknesses can negatively affect a child’s confidence and self-esteem, and can lead to heightened stress and avoidance behaviors.

Confidence is contagious: When we’re good at things, our courage rises. When young people experience themselves as strong and capable—as an artist, an athlete, a leader, or a friend—they are better equipped to persevere through obstacles in other areas of their life.

Again and again, I have watched actors in a spring musical find ways to lock in academically while managing long rehearsal nights, athletes whose social struggles turn around during their MVP season, and debaters who produce an excellent English essay while traveling back from a tournament. When young people have a sense of purpose or competence, when they have an “island” on which they can stand, this capacity frequently carries over to other parts of their lives. . . . 

Emphasizing the good in order to correct behavior—veering positive when observing something you might identify as negative—may not be many parents’ first instinct. But it’s a competence worth developing in ourselves. To help fortify children’s islands, parents can take a few simple steps: . . . 

5. Tell an optimistic story.

Family narratives are powerful. When children consistently hear messages about what they lack (she’s not a reader; he’s terrible at time management), these identities can solidify and become self-fulfilling prophecies. A family culture that celebrates strengths (I’ve noticed how you make people feel included; I love the stories you tell—your imagination always surprises me!) can foster a positive sense of self. This is not a call for participation trophies. Celebrations must be genuine, or they’ll ring hollow. When my own children invite me to read their essays, I tell them what I like but also what doesn’t make sense to me. Authentic praise is meaningful because it’s credible.

At its core, the “islands of competence” framework is an invitation to reimagine how we see our children. It asks us to shift our focus from fear to possibility, from correction to cultivation. In an era when young people are bombarded with messages about what they must achieve, we can remind them of what they already possess. By identifying and nurturing their islands, we show them a way to deepen their own potential—and in doing so, we might quiet some of our own anxieties as well.

For managers, teachers, leaders, and many others in addition to parents.

A new-to-me meme I love:

Gentleness doesn't mean you're not strong.

It simply means your strength doesn't hurt others.

-----

Another:

Diamonds are formed under pressure

And bread dough rises when you let it rest

We're all our own things

What's motivating to you

may be crippling to others

The same boiling water

that softens the potato

will harden the egg

A poem:

J.B. Penname

Leprosy

The leopard woke up one day

and realized he had completely

lost his sense of identity. Why

hunt or claw or stalk the trees?

Was that really who he wanted

to be? The leopard applied for a

credit card with zero percent APR

and started to read the newspaper

daily. With all this news it’s getting very

hard to remember the names of trees,

he said to the ghost of Carl Jung,

who was on the phone explaining

the various late fees the leopard

had accrued, mainly for newspaper

subscriptions and the occasional

jigsaw puzzle. It was just before

dawn. There were flecks of gold

frozen in the resinous lakes,

there were microplastics in every

cormorant. Have you ever considered

taking out a second mortgage? said

the ghost of Sigmund Freud

(while the ghost of Jung took

fifteen for his smokes). Once

a year the leopard did consider it,

about as often as he thought of the

beaches of Normandy, the tiny bits of

iron shrapnel strewn across the sands,

still visible, but only by microscope.

People died for you there, someone

had said once, maybe a great aunt,

but the leopard had never met

these people. The leopard had

never even been to Normandy,

so it was very hard to remember.

There was no more news to read

today. The leopard turned off

the lights in the savannah, then

shuddered, because Savannah

was the name of his ex. But

there, for a moment, how cool

the darkness was on his eyes.

It was already tomorrow.

 

 

anniversary loose years falling into placemats

 

from #87 – Spring 2025

I love all the juxtaposition.

But and therefore are words that signal change. Don’t take a straight line to get there. Don't respect the path's boundaries. Be erratic.