Lost love

I can sit here alone and listen to Barber Adagio in tears, thinking of the beautiful curves of her hips, in her skimpy underwear, and imagine kneeling there with my arms around her hips and kissing whatever I can, just pressing my face against her and closing my eyes and wishing it would never ever end, and then opening my eyes right away to see everything I can so I can remember it all forever. Maybe this is the memory, the snapshot, that comes to mind at my end, as I breathe my final few times, and the snow falls silently outside in the trees. It’s all that matters; to love, to have and to hold; to give completely, eagerly, hungrily, to become one with her, and have your creation stand as testimony to the two of you and who you were. One must have this great love. I must have this great love.

There are worn sayings about ‘the love of a good woman’ and references to its ever-presence as a background note…but I believe it’s the melody, it’s the entire substance of the symphony you write. Children and family, of course…but they are on the foundation of the two of you. I have never seen the importance of a woman to a man’s life be given its due. Maybe it will come to the fore, before the age of enlightenment that started in the ‘60s comes to an end. I know I must love somebody, and be loved back, before I’m fit to step out into society. I have no purpose on my own; that part of me does not exist. There are no cures or salves for lack of ambition or for needing encouragement. For me, a great love comes first, and perhaps only; what I do to make our lives possible thereafter is immaterial to me.

Models

We live in a world that’s dominated by the importance of appearance, and naturally, at the pinnacle of that ideal, we have our reverence of  the current crop of “super” models, who’ve been chosen solely for their looks.

There are two things wrong with this picture.

One, the actual rational fact is that looks are not as important as they’re currently made out to be. The cosmetics and fashion industries are huge, and between them they have for many years repeated the same message over and over, almost exclusively to women,”You need to look your best. We can help you. We can make you pretty, and then your life will be better.” I don’t think I’m overstating it. That’s been the message all along, and it’s everywhere all the time, and at this point it’s part of our culture.

The fact is, you look the way you look, unless you’re so obsessed or insecure that you’ll spend thousands of dollars for surgery on your face. Look, some people are born looking (what we call) attractive, and some aren’t. That’s the way it is; big deal. It’s just chance, and you had nothing to do with it. You can keep yourself clean and well-groomed, and that should be enough…and in many people’s eyes, that is enough. That much of your appearance is in your control. At the same time, the person you are, the way you conduct and present yourself, is completely in your control. On this, I yield to Oscar Wilde:

“One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

So in a perfect world, which this ain’t…you are what you do, not what you look like. And we all know perfectly wonderful people who are not gorgeous. Most of us call them “best friends.” It’s what’s inside…

Now the second thing wrong with this picture is the unfortunate elevation of the models themselves to a position of apparent importance. They could hardly be less important. They won the genetic lottery, is the way some people put it, and I like that description a lot. They just happen to look right for the time they’re in; if you look back through history or even just over the last few decades you’ll see that the ideal of beauty has changed over time. And of course it will change again. But if you have the right look for the right time…then you’re the flavor-of-the-month, or of-the-year, or whatever you get away with. These models have a face that some company has chosen to use as part of its own public face; they represent the company in advertising, and sometimes through personal appearances. They are not paid to talk. Probably the opposite is true; they are paid NOT to talk. They are paid to stand where they’re told, and have their face. Somehow, to MY great amusement anyway, models will try to make this sound like a difficult job. Oh, I’m sorry…it is not. Would you switch jobs with them? You’re damn right. We all would. (I should warn you, though…one poor girl said that once when they were shooting in Hawaii it got windy as the sun went down, and she got chilly. You might not want to put up with crap like that.)

How do models get away with the haughty prima donna attitudes? If anything, they should be the most grateful people on Earth, shouldn’t they? You cannot be luckier than they are. Born lucky. They get paid a lot, and they do nothing.

As a culture, sounds like we’ve gotten pretty confused. It wasn’t long ago that Albert Einstein was a national hero for his intelligence and his achievements. His opinions were sought, and heeded. Nowadays, in his place, we have…embarassment, in the form of the poorly scripted and directed “reality” players who celebrate the undisciplined and selfish behavior of teenagers while masquerading as young adults with thoughts and dreams of their own.

It’s an embarassing time to be an American.

A dummy’s introduction to auto racing

This entry is a near copy of something I posted recently to a discussion. It’s mostly basic stuff, and I figured I could get some more mileage out of it here… ;-)

1. NASCAR is a show, first and foremost…and at the same time it’s a race. It’s entertainment, it’s for the fans. So yeah, they throw a yellow caution flag now and then to bunch up the cars, to keep it interesting…of course they do.

2. NASCAR runs simple cars and relatively simple technology; that’s OK. The cars are understandable and relatable to the fans. It’s just an entertainment formula that works. And there is no ‘best’ racing series, either. They’re just different. Watch what you like, and don’t be insulted by the rest. They all serve some segment of race fans, and they all serve different advertisers in particular ways.

3. Every series has at least some world-class drivers…there are special talents everywhere. But no, there’s no fair way to compare them because switching cars requires too much specialized learning about the nuances of each particular car. It does not mean that Driver X suddenly forgot to drive if he goes to a new series and looks lost for awhile. Just accept that the great ones are all up there together at a special level; they’re in the club. And relax.

Orange holes in back window are insert points for suspension adjustment tools

4. You Need To Know if you don’t already: racing is about tires, and how well you use them. All racing is. Surprising fact, critical to understanding car set-up: when you “put a car on the scales”, meaning put a scale under each corner, you can and likely will get 4 different weights. Yes, the weight of the car at each of the 4 corners is different…and it’s adjustable! And that’s the deal (ver-r-ry simplified) in getting a car to work best at whatever course you’re on, because a tire with more weight on it works better; it is less likely to lose traction and begin to slide. And the weight is then managed by springs and shocks, affected by downforce, elevation changes as they happen, #laps on the tire, etc…in NASCAR especially there are adjustments at every stop, and they are reported on during the broadcast, and you can see cars get better, or worse, at each stop. When you get hooked into that level of detail, it gets pretty interesting to watch a race. There are whole books written about how to approach setting up a car; just take away from this that there are many variables and they are interdependent, and it’s difficult.

5. Forgive me for so much NASCAR, but they get dumped on the most…I was in fact up at 3am for live F1 Malaysia, I’ve  raced and won some FF1600, so actually roadracing is my first love.


6. The perfect set-up is almost impossible to hit on because you’re dealing with what’s called a non-linear equation. Or in terms I understand, it’s like the Whack-A-Mole game, where you knock one thing down and another one pops up. For a rough example: you can change tire pressures and the car goes faster but then maybe tire wear gets real bad; switch it back and change the ‘weight jacker’ at the left rear, the car is slower, we need to try some air back into the right rear; now it feels like the car doesn’t transfer enough weight to the right rear, we need to change the Panhard bar adjustment, etc…sort of chasing your tail, but with decades worth of experience and notes, and college-graduate engineers on staff, all trying to find a balance of all the changeable factors to make the car fast. Then you’re the fastest car out there for 10 laps, and clouds move in for the rest of the day. Track temp drops 15 degrees. Start over.

7 and last. Winged cars are solidly planted in high-speed turns, with the wings pushing down and all, which allows them to corner at high speeds. That’s part of the beauty of their show; those things fly. In fact, doesn’t (F1 car designer) Adrian Newey have a background in planes, or aerodynamics? Well, lest you think the stock car fellows are just tooling around in circles, actually these guys are often in a 4-wheel drift at 175-190 mph, if and when they really push for a couple laps, and you know that ain’t easy. It’s Sunday, but it’s no Sunday drive (sorry, couldn’t resist).


If point #4 (or anything else) grabbed your interest and you want to know more, just paying attention all the way through a race will give you a great intro, because the broadcast is dominated by talk of changing conditions and changes to car setups. This is a good thing. There are lots of books that cover it too, and when I think of 2-3 that I think are good ones to recommend, I’ll highlight them in a future entry.

Midlife crisis; a theory

In my world of parallells and comparisons...well, here’s another one.

As anyone who knows internal combustion engines really well will tell you, there is an odd but true phenomenon that is often witnessed in the final seconds or minutes of an engine’s life; it suddenly runs better and smoother and stronger than it ever has, puts out fantastic race-winning power (if that’s what your engine’s doing) and stays like that for an unpredictable but short time until it physically blows up. Something breaks, and pieces scatter. I don’t know if there’s a good explanation for this out there, but I guarantee you this is a real thing.

And it struck me that when you describe that effect, that looks a lot like when a guy reaches the point in his physiological schedule where his testosterone is about to drop from, say, a useful level, to what inevitably, and horribly, feels like a useless level. And that ‘useless’ hits hard. I don’t think you can overstate the magnitude of that event in a man’s life. He’s about to lose a major part of his self-esteem.

So maybe there’s something in the male brain, probably all the way down in there in the original, primal part, where the most basic instincts are, that triggers a final attempt at procreation before the ability is gone. This is just a dumb theory of my own, based on what I know and on what looks to me like common sense, so I have no authors or articles to cite, but I’ll bet there’s stuff out there that sounds like this. The drive to procreate pops up here and there as a primal instinct, and generally looks exactly this out-of-place in our society, but it’s easy to see how necessary it was back when we struggled for survival as a species.

So, maybe it’s a last gasp. And, of course, maybe it’s not this at all. But you need a theory that reaches across the male population and affects nearly all of them, regardless of personality type, or status, or any number of things; it just hits men, period.

I’ll be watching to see how this plays out. Maybe it won’t hold up, or maybe it’ll grow as I learn and see more. It’s a theory.

My Princess

So I saw this little scene in a TV ad: They show some young beauty onscreen, and a guy’s voiceover, obviously to her, is ”You are so beautiful and delicate and wonderful, I want to give you the kind of life you deserve.”  OK, standard fare; guys, we’ve all felt that way at some point, because we think of our special woman as some kind of princess, we want the whole world to treat her as carefully and lovingly as we do. I think we’re wired to exalt our mates that way…history is loaded with stories of what men in power have done for the loves of their life. Do you know how big the Taj Mahal is? Huge; almost 35,000 sq ft. So we’ll say stuff like this now and again, and MEAN IT. The female reaction in the room to that TV ad was “What about the rest of us? So what if we’re not beautiful enough? What do we deserve, then?“

I sure didn’t expect that. So many things hit me at once…like, these women don’t think they’re beautiful? And how was I unaware that women don’t think they’re beautiful? And they are beautiful; I thought they knew that! I thought the ad was about them, but they didn’t! To my eye, women always act like they’re beautiful, and I’ve always thought they all were. Is that why they fuss over hair and makeup so much while we men are always saying you don’t need it? ‘Cause you don’t need it. All women are beautiful, and as a guy I’ll venture to say we’re all crazy about every one of you. So is this why every time I said I think you’re the most beautiful woman in the world you just rolled your eyes and brushed it off? You thought I was lying? You thought I was trying to talk you into something? That’s mean, and that’s really sad. I meant it every time, and I still mean it every time. You are my princess, and like every other guy, I want to have my princess. I need you there to be the focus of some part of my life, I need you there so I can make you happy, I need you there so sometimes I can look over at you in the middle of a crowd of people and think to myself, “That’s my girl. That’s my partner. I make her happy, and I make her laugh.” And as for worrying about how you look, well, sure, when you’re in your best dress and  done up just right in killer mode, hell yeah, you’re breathtaking…but for my 

money, the sexiest and most beautiful you’ll ever look is when you open your eyes in the morning, after a night of lust and love, and your hair’s a mess all over the pillow and your nighty or shirt or whatever is all rumply and sideways and half off, and we look at each other and smile in a plain and simple expression of love and unity that says a thousand wonderful and perfect things; two hearts talking directly where words would surely fall short.  You don’t have to go to great lengths, or any lengths, to “make yourself beautiful,” because you are beautiful; you’re a woman.  And I want to give you the life you deserve, princess, so put on this tiara and let’s get going. You’re making us late for the movie.

Prescription: More sex

 When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.

                                         George Santayana (1863–1952), U.S. philosopher, poet

At first glance, this looks a lot like the punch line of a joke. The male and female brains are proven to be different, and that is observable in our communications. Seems like communication between any two people is somewhat hit-or-miss, as of course it would be because there are too many variables involved. The key words in what you say may have a slightly different meaning to the listener, or might call up a bad memory that colors the way your statement is received. Your mood or intentions may be misread, and change the interpretation of your words. Or in the case of a male/female exchange, you would likely find on closer examination that your paths to the same conclusion are completely unrelated, and I do mean completely; I’ve seen this for myself. To my astonishment. You can investigate this on your own, if you dare.

I’ll get to the sex part…hang on.

 

So when you talk to your mate, even to carry on about how much you love her, and how wonderful she is, you don’t know exactly how that is received. Worst case example, maybe you use a phrase that she’s heard before elsewhere, in a relationship that ended very badly. She thinks it’s a big lie. You never know. While you think you’re being attentive and loving and all that, you might actually be creating an “issue” that will surface somewhere down the line. The spoken word depends on the listener to extract meaning. It’s a lousy system!

So…what’s to be done?

Enter the wordless realm of sex. Even in the silence (optional), it is still up to each of you to extract meaning from your intimacy. With sex, it’s not just that you feel good physically; aware or not, you are interpreting the attentiveness and care of your partner as messages of love, and the brilliance is that it’s in your own mind, in the words you choose, and the message you receive is exactly what you want to hear. There are no misunderstandings in passionate kisses. As a result, having sex recharges your emotional and mental stores, the innermost parts of your being that benefit from being in love. Self-esteem, confidence, comfort, security, etc…all that good stuff.

Frequent sex serves a vital purpose, then, besides being whole lots of fun. The reinforcement of your love trivializes any petty spats, and periods of intimacy enhance your tendency toward cooperation, to work through the real problems. It creates and maintains a strong undercurrent of unspoken love and understanding, and this force makes it easier for two people to work together on life’s challenges.

More sex: it's good for you. It's what's for dinner. Mmm mmm good. No, wait...umm...

Confused

I’ve been in a daze for the last couple of weeks.

A couple years ago I lost touch with a girl from work that was a good friend of mine. We were very much alike, and we sort of took turns with our depressions and anxieties, if that’s what they really were, and we would cheer each other up. Plus I liked her a lot because she was exceptionally smart, and she was analytical and logical like I am. That’s relatively rare in a woman, the story goes, because their brains develop with strengths in other areas. From what I’ve seen, I think that’s true, so I thought I was real lucky to be friends with her. I was lucky. And plus even further, I liked her…y’know, that way too, because she was a woman and therefore special and wonderful. Well, they are.

So when the emails and phone calls stopped without a word, first I was afraid her husband had seen an email that he shouldn’t have seen, or something like that. Because, once I’d realized that she wouldn’t ever be coming near here on vacation or anything, because her husband would never choose this area to vacation, and I knew I wasn’t going to be back there for any length of time, and never with any free time to do anything bad…I had started flirting some, in both phone calls and email, to make us both feel better. God knows we were both bored lifeless by our daily routines, and by our respective long-term relationships having faded into background noise. I was absolutely sure nothing would happen between us, and I certainly hoped not, so I went and opened that Pandora’s box.

So I thought maybe he told her to break off contact or something, and I couldn’t even come up with a better story than that because I just had no clue. And whatever was going on I knew it was none of my business, so I resolved immediately to respect her silence and wait for as long as it took until I heard from her again.

Well…that’s not going to happen. She’s dead.

I spoke to someone back where we used to work, and in circumstances that don’t seem to add up, in a story that leaves a lot of unanswered questions…she and her husband are both gone. Two years ago. All this time I at least thought she was out there, and still in my future somewhere. And now, with so much about this tragedy still unknown, and unknowable, the story is over. End of chapter.

So I’m left with confusion, emptiness, a dashed picture of the future, questions galore, what might have been, and one less friend. All that stuff that we all feel at times like this…you can imagine. Y’know, I can get used to the idea that this stuff happens, people will die and leave your life at some random point, that’s life, but it’s a loss that you can’t make up for, in my opinion. You invest in your friends and you expect to get something back; you’ve spent time and shared experiences and learned about each other, and you get back the comfort of knowing they’re there, that they care about you, that they will continue to share life with you. Seems like your best friends ever are the ones from high school, who shared the most meaningful times with you. As you get older it’s less possible to create as deep a bond.

And that brings me to the strange-but-true part of this that I’m still not sure about even mentioning, but I’ve lead right up to it, so: no one could say for sure what day they died, so I went back to my unanswered emails to her to see when she stopped writing, and you might guess it was maybe in the next week or so that she was gone? Well, 8 days after my last email is the day my best friend from high school ended his life. Just a coincidence? Of course it is. Does it mean something? Of course not, they aren’t connected. Do I still look for meaning in two friends dying in the same week, maybe on the same day? You bet I do. That’s something we do…look for meaning, look for answers. Because I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how to process all this. It hurts, and   it just hurts. I was counting on them both being around. Between the two of them I had a soulmate, with a little left over. When I pictured my old and grey retirement years, they were both there. Maybe not right down the street, but always in touch, and always scheduled for at least an annual visit. 

Ahh, well. So I’ve been in a daze; I never know what I went upstairs for, so I come down and have to go up again when I remember. My thoughts are always elsewhere. My comfortable plans for the future are gone and I’m constantly agitated and haunted by the uncertainty and the bleak picture I have instead. Too many questions.

What do I do now?

About work

I’m not perfect, and even if I was you’d find something wrong with me.

Because it’s the human condition to eventually designate something as the intolerable problem. That’s the ‘job complaint syndrome’, also; no matter what job you have you eventually settle on something as the biggest aggravation, and that’s your complaint. You find the squeaky wheel in whatever your situation. So there’s always something to complain about, and the same thing happens in a relationship. It’s just *not* human nature to say that everything’s OK, and leave it at that. That’s uncomfortable.

And it's an odd thing is how trivial some of the work problems can be, especially in hindsight, but they are major triggers at the time nonetheless. Compare these two examples from my experience…

When I worked on banking software if our system went down in a live bank production environment, and I was on call, most of our management would be aware of the problem immmediately through a series of phone calls, and the bank executives would mostly all be aware they had trouble, and their on-call staff would be heading in to work in the middle of the night…all waiting to hear what I found and how I fixed it. On the other hand, as a dishwasher, if one more person had the French onion soup tonight I’m going through the roof! Y’know?

Just depends on where you are.

Another thing about jobs is the Repeat Cycle. How long does it take before you’ve done everything once, and now you’re on repeat? A job like dishwashing, you get the basics in 15-20 minutes, and at the end of the night you get the one-time, end-of-the-night tasks, and that’s it. On a construction job you’ve got all the phases of house construction to go through, and that takes months anyway, and not every house is the same, so you could easily go a year before you really feel like you’ve seen everything once. It could be a few years before it feels repetitive. Then, something like programming on software that costs over $1M *never* got repetitive because of the size and complexity of what we worked on. Always a new twist, whether creating or maintaining code. Probably any job where you have “clients” will never repeat…but that’s good. Those are the jobs you can stay with.

I should acknowledge that while building houses is largely repetitive, there are clients to keep you hopping, and technology and materials evolve constantly so you’re always learning. No offense.

Speaking of Egypt

With Egypt in the news, with Egyptians demonstrating/rioting for a better life through regime change, I wanted to tell this story…

A couple years ago I had a short conversation with a man who had moved to the US from Egypt. Something in the news back then, I don’t remember what, prompted him to explain to me what he came here for; I remember I was thrilled that I was actually going to hear, face-to-face, what the US represents to an émigré.

He said it’s not about all the material goods, the wealth, and not really about the opportunities you have to follow dreams and fulfill yourself, although all that is certainly wonderful. It’s more basic than that, and something we might take for granted: respect. Every life here is respected, by law. The police will not arrest you without cause. If you are wronged by someone, or by a company, you can bring suit in a court of law. You always have recourse. You matter; you count. In Egypt, he said, the police can pick you up off the street in the morning, question you and beat you all day, and then dump you back on the street at the end of the day, all for no reason…and there’s nothing you can do about it. Without explanation! Imagine!? You are powerless, and you have to accept it. Day after day, year after soul-crushing year, it’s your way of life.

But not here. Here, you have value, you have your self-respect. Your dignity is assured, and that’s a powerful draw for the rest of the world. Some of the things we complain about within the context of our lives can look awfully petty and whiney to people from other countries. That’s just human nature: no matter what you’re doing or where, you will become aware of the aggravations that come with the situation. But it was nice to hear this man’s larger perspective on things, to

a) be reminded of just how good we have it, and

b) view the current struggles in Egypt with greater understanding.

Online comments

I like to spend time on  the Internet reading, following links almost at random, jumping from one subject to another and another. What I find as a maddening constant throughout is the quality and the tone of the comments.

There doesn’t seem to be any interest in civil interaction. Or worse, it doesn’t even appear to be an option. Nearly everything I see out there, at a common site like YouTube for instance which draws heavily from the 30-and-unders from around the world, is an insult about either someone’s looks intelligence, or lifestyle. And it’s not dismissable with, “Oh, kids can be insensitive.” This is firmly rooted in the culture of the next generation. Everywhere, all the time.

Take, for instance, this comment I always remember…someone had posted a thought that was obviously based on a misunderstanding, and there were 4 or 5 comments after it that had just ignored it, but then came the comment, “I can’t believe nobody’s buried this guy. Don’t you see what he said?” Like that’s what we’re supposed to do. We’re missing an opportunity! We weren’t following the rules, and this poor guy wants to know, “Am I missing something?” Yeah, you are.

Or this one…I don’t remember which actress was mentioned in the article (plus I wouldn’t say anyway) but the comment was, “When is she going to get a boob job? What’s she waiting for?” Again, the assumption: like that’s what she’s supposed to do. Like everyone should, or will. Like he’s insulted that she hasn’t, because he thinks those are the rules, and how dare she not follow along. As if we’re owed that. And the arrogance of the constant clinical discussion of women in that manner is disgusting, and so very wrong. Sad.

That’s the common persona, people looking for any “wrongdoing” in order to blast and dismiss the offender, based on such superficialities.  Comment sections are combat zones. They should be communal, like sitting around the campfire. They’re places to discuss ideas with your peers from around the world. What an opportunity…in my dreams. Sure, some good stuff goes on, but not a lot. With everybody hiding behind an alias, they’re free to act any way they want to, and you know what happens then…people don’t exactly give their best.

What a waste.

 

The civilization formula

 

I’m going to start with a little auto racing talk, but don’t worry, it comes right back around to real life.

The top racing series in the world is Formula One. Most people have heard of it. Or maybe you’ve heard of Formula Ford, a very popular and somewhat affordable starter class for the same kind of roadracing. Or you’ve certainly heard of NASCAR, the extremely popular oval track (and a couple road courses) series for “stock cars.” NASCAR is also a formula car, although it didn’t start out that way, and is not usually referred to as such. So…what’s the deal? Well, in the context of auto racing, a “formula” is a set of rules established by the organizers of the series which define all the specifications, and set all the parameters, to which the cars will be built. These are very much purpose-built cars, defined and created out of thin air, usually with an eye toward attracting factory (major auto makers) participation by giving them an arena in which to showcase their products and/or technology.

I love the parallels between that and a society, a civilization…because one way to define a civilization is that we are a group of people who function by agreeing to and operating under a set of rules. Some are codified in written law, some are accepted moral standards, some just implicit in our group understanding of acceptable conduct, but taken all together, they make up Formula Human. That’s how we all manage to coexist; the rules are clearly defined, we’re all aware of them, and we’re all aware that they are enforced. We don’t have to worry that our land will be stolen from us, or our house will, or our business, or that the angry guy at work keeps a butcher knife in one hand all the time…we operate at a higher level than that; we’re civilized.

Of course, other civilizations have evolved differently in various parts of the world. They still operate under a set of rules, just not the same ones we have. Maybe Formula Human is the name of the umbrella organization, and the individual societies are named Formula UK, Formula USA, etc. Same deal, different country.

To say that one is civilized or not refers to one’s ability to adhere to the laws and rules we’ve agreed upon…the formula. That’s the key to how we live. The formula gives us the framework for our lives. It gives us the structure to live closely with one another, the freedom to live as we choose, and the security we need to enjoy it all.

Through the ages we’ve defined and refined the laws we live by, while at the same time the formula has always defined us.

Formula Human.

Perspective…on perception

Reality comes to us courtesy of our five senses, and from the way our brains process the incoming stream of data. Our senses each receive observable data in a particular range of values according to the abilities and sensitivities of our human sense organs. We can see, hear, touch, smell, taste…we know what’s going on around us.

Let’s put that into perspective.

The key phrase in that opening: human sense organs. Turns out, because of our particular set of sensory organs, we humans have a unique reality. No animals on the planet are experiencing what we experience. Dogs, as we all know, can hear the high pitch of a certain whistle that is used to call them, and we can’t hear it. They also have a sense of smell that is hundreds of times better than ours. There is a hovering bird-of-prey that can take up a position over a field, hang motionless while looking down, and see only what moves…like for instance a mouse. When it looks at a fixed scene the stationary objects and background fade away to grey, and only movement is detected. Further examples abound…point being, there’s nothing superior or special about our senses; what we have are the ones that serve the survival of our species, just as it is with animals.

 

Another way to look at our perception can be seen here in the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum. Note that the color bar representing our visual range is a breakout of that little sliver between ultraviolet and infrared. Out of that  whole range of energies/wavelengths, we’re equipped to see only a tiny little bit. It makes our capabilities look so random-ish and insignificant, and by extension so do we find that our  perception of reality is nothing special. Maybe we don’t, so much, know what’s going on around us; there’s more to it than meets the eye!

And with all that, I think, larger points can be made:

   In the grand scheme of all the species on earth, and the millions of years we’ve all been here, we normally exaggerate how special and important we are.

   There are things happening around us all the time that are beyond the range of our senses.

From that perspective, that there’s always more than meets the eye, it is easier to think broadly and stay open to possibilities…to think outside the box.

Perspective…on driving fast

perspective:  the state of one's ideas, the facts known to one, etc., in having a meaningful interrelationship

If there is one concept to keep in mind to help make sense of the daily grind, it is perspective. It has a few meanings, most concerned with art and perception, but the useful one here is largely a synonym for point-of-view. Referring back to my initial posts, “we’re all in this together but we’re all on our own,” to get along together in the first part it helps to keep in mind the different perspectives we all have in the second part.

For instance…let’s talk about the issue of “driving too fast.” We should start by defining the term: not mental fast, or as fast as you can go, but 10-15 miles over the posted limit, which is a speed that statistically a great many people (though still a minority) are comfortable at, including me. I think it’s perfectly fine to go 75-80mph, that it’s not dangerous, and that speed limits are too low. Most people think otherwise. We have different perspectives.

In fact, the issue here is our perspectives. The meaning of “driving too fast” is the hidden problem, because both sides assume that their definition is the topic at hand.  It’s not, and it hit me like a ton of bricks when I suddenly realized… I borrowed a friend’s car a few years ago, a new luxury-type car from one of the Big Three (Ford,GM,Chrysler), and I thought, “OMG, I wouldn’t go over 65 in this thing, either.” It plowed in the turns, the brakes were mushy, the suspension too soft, etc., and I was shocked at how bad I thought it was. Meanwhile, being an “enthusiast,” a winning road-racer, an extremely focussed and attentive driver, I have always driven performance cars. For 25 years, every car I’ve had is further from its limits and more in control at 80mph than the average car at 65mph. You look at the two sides of the argument…(for the most part) we don’t drive the same cars! It makes the discussion of driving too fast an “apples-n-oranges” deal. If you say you would never drive 80mph, well, neither would I, if I was you. And I’ll bet if you drove my car for a day, you’d see the rationale in my (wait for it) perspective.

Perspective is everything

This is an awfully clean and tidy example, but still useful as a reference model for any discussion or argument. We might be using the same phrases when we talk, but they don’t necessarily mean the same thing. Depends a lot on our respective experiences, on how and where we learned something. It doesn’t hurt to ask a few questions up front to help ensure we’re all on the same page. I know now the few speed limit discussions I’ve had were just a waste of time. 



Enjoy the impressive dioramas of '50s and '60s America by Michael Paul Smith, seen here in one of his settings.  

Who’s in Charge?

Sometimes in a relationship there’s an issue about who is in charge, about one person telling the other what to do, how to look, even how to act. It can be a struggle for control, if the personalities don’t mix right. It can also look to outsiders as if one person is strong and in charge and the other is weak.

In a related statement, which will make sense further down: I have always felt that I could love and marry almost any girl I’ve ever met…which is probably why I’m an inveterate flirt. I just love them all.

The common thread here is that people draw the line for themselves as far as what things to stand up for, and what things matter so little that they let their partner have the decision. If there’s something not right about what I’m wearing, I’ll change it; couldn’t care less one way or the other. Want to go to this restaurant, and never that one? OK. Doesn’t matter. I let anything peripheral like that just unfold any old way. What does matter is what kind of person you’re with, and the people I’ve known pretty much have it right. We don’t differ where it matters. I don’t tolerate lying, or selfishness, or being inconsiderate, or arrogance…it’s the core stuff, what’s inside that counts, and if that’s all good then the rest is just window dressing. If I want to spend a night out with the girl I love, and if I happen to be doing that, then it doesn’t matter where, how, what…The details can fall where they may, I figure if we’re together then the important part has been taken care of. Everything I care about has been taken care of.

I’m sure there have been bystanders through the years who thought I was being bossed around, but they didn’t know what they were seeing. They naturally interpret interaction based on their own experiences, and most people would be at a loss to interpret the way we played around. Upon overhearing a conversation, you can only imagine your own motives as the reasoning behind what you hear; you aren’t likely to guess the actual thoughts. 

So, in establishing the dynamics of the relationship it’s just a matter of choosing your battles, drawing the line where your comfortable, and applying your personal perspective on what’s important to you. It’s a very individual choice, and it's just between the two of you. Don’t waste time worrying about what anyone else thinks.

It’s not global warming… (and also) 100%

I don’t know who gets the credit (or the blame) for the term - global warming - but it sure hasn’t helped the discussion any, because it’s not accurate. There is global warming, on average; what it means in day-to-day life is record lows and record highs, stronger storms, and unusual events such as snow in places we’ve never seen it before.

Call it global climate change.

The weather is an oscillating sytem, as evidenced by the rhythmic changing of the seasons. With an increase in temperature there is more energy in the system, and the swings become more exaggerated. When it gets cold, it gets really cold. When it gets hot, it gets really hot. Big thunderstorms become “100 year storms,” meaning they should normally (statistically) occur just once every 100 years. They will, and do already, occur more frequently.

Don’t think that record cold is a contradiction of the coming weather catastrophe. It’s part of the global climate change, to a new pattern of more extreme weather.

Recommended:

Weather article in Discover magazine

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You’re undoubtedly familiar with the obliteration of “100%” as a measure of effort or achievement…it’s never good enough to “give 100%” anymore, you have to “give 110%” to sound like you mean it. And no, there’s no such thing as greater than 100%, but whatever, that’s the way it is. Well, I recently heard someone get a little too excited and, in trying to reach for an impressive superlative, came up with “a hundred and ten…thousand…percent,” like he couldn’t stop himself.

Well, now what? What’s next? It’s out of control.

How about if we reel it in for a while? Let’s think about the implications of 100%, being all there is, and how you can’t have or do more than that.  If you “give 100%,” that’s impressive right there.

You can’t do more.

A new regime(n)(t)

The new regime required the elite regiment to adopt a regimen of long marches.

Regiment

It could happen.

And if it did, it would likely be reported incorrectly. These three near-homonyms are used interchangeably all too often, whether big-time media, learned treatise, or blog/comments entry. Make’a me crazy.

Regime: A ruling or prevailing system. A government in power.

Regimen: A regulated system, as of diet, therapy, or exercise. A course of intense physical training.

Regiment: Noun: A unit of ground forces, consisting of two or more battalions, a headquarters unit, and certain supporting units. A large number in regular or organized groups.

Verb: To manage or treat in a rigid, uniform manner; subject to strict discipline. To form into a regiment or into organized groups.

The basic concept for regime is that it is a controlling entity, directing its attention downwards. A change in government signals the start of a new regime.

The basic concept for regimen is that it refers to prescribed action. A regime may impose rules…which may be structured as a regimen to be followed; a course of action, or a set of rules. A diet is a regimen.

The basic concept for regiment is that it refers to an organized group.  

The new government took control of the military and put the elite unit on a program of long marches for fitness and readiness.

It could happen.

Piece of pie

A quick tip to use when facing temptation, like that (extra) piece of apple pie with ice cream that’s being offered with holiday dinner…if you can’t decide whether to have it or not, pretend it’s tomorrow morning and you’re looking back at yourself to see what you did. What will you wish you had decided? Usually, I wish I’d said “no,” which is why I’m having trouble making the decision. I might still make the so-called wrong choice, but it feels like an actual decision, from a better perspective than just “mmm-treat!” vs “waah, no-treat-for-me.”  It becomes an intellectual choice rather than an emotional one when you remove yourself from the immediacy of pie on the table in front of you.

It works for all kinds of decisions, not just dessert. And sometimes, it even helps me make that right choice.

Sex...and sharing

I’ll be honest…this is about me, and a realization I had to reach before I was comfortable enjoying sex.

The customary point of view of the male and female roles in sex is that the male is always trying to get something from the female, and the female says no a lot to protect her dignity and reputation and whatever. We have an entire culture built on the fact that men want sex and women don’t. There are thousands of bad jokes and hundreds of movie and television scenes that trade on these stereotypes, and growing up this was naturally my starting point for trying to understand the whole sexual interaction mystery. I remember a female comic saying that afterwards men want to sneak away like they just stole something, and she seemed to be correct from what I could gather. That was the only attitude on exhibit, the “I got some” victory cry. I wanted to have sex, and some girls were interested, but I let some opportunities get away because I didn’t understand how it all worked. I was scared of the whole thing because, seriously, I didn’t know how to act the next day. I didn’t know what it meant to a relationship, and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. I would feel like I took something, and I didn’t know what to say or do about that. How do you get from “men always want it,” which is greedy and bad, and “women don’t want it” and have to protect themselves, to all the scenes in the movies where the man and woman are in bed together cuddling and smiling together and looking so wonderful? There’s a huge blank between those two snapshots, and what could possibly be in that space between that ties them together? What’s wrong with this picture?

Took me a couple years, but here’s the Big Truth of the situation, and this may help either guys or girls to better understand each other.

It’s difficult for men to discover this (well, it was for me), given our culture and the attitudes we see and hear daily, but…the healthy approach to sex is as “something two people share, as equals.” That’s it. There’s no “taking” or “getting from,” there’s just giving on both sides, and sharing. Turns out that naturally (obviously) women like sex just as much as men, so we are equal partners in it. We should enjoy it equally. If your partner doesn’t have that attitude, maybe it’s a good idea to bring it up as a positive change for the relationship, if it sounds right for you. Works for me.

First marriages

The divorce rate is high. There are lots of single moms, divorced or not. Second marriages are common; they at least seem to be better marriages and last longer,  based as they are on greater maturity. No, I won’t be looking up statistics…I have merely an observation: A great many first marriage failures are the result of some basic human nature, and there’s no reason to think “we should fix it,” which is the knee-jerk reaction to almost everything. This is just the way it is.

Young women mature faster, emotionally and sexually. We’ve all heard that, and it appears to be true. They’re in charge from an early age, and they know what they’re doing, and they’re good at it. They manage to keep teenage boys in line, for the most part. Tough job. But being in some control, being in a position to get what they want, by their late-teens they begin to shape their lives according to their own agenda. For the great many who want to start a family, or are just ready to have a baby, they can do that. They feel ready, it’s what they want to do, they choose the guy they want…and they can do that.

What about the guys at that age? For purposes of this discussion, let’s separate guys into two personality types. #1, the popular guy, has a car, maybe a fast car, probably on the high school football team, part of the social group at the center of local partying, openly chasing girls and not thinking about much else. Just wants to nail as many as possible. That guy.

As opposed to #2, a more serious type, mostly in the social background, maybe has one girlfriend in high school, worries about his future, tentative around girls because he’s not sure what it all means and he wants to know before he gets sexually involved, because he doesn’t want to be just another guy who takes advantage of and hurts girls.

Which one does the young woman want at this point in her life? The first one: the bad boy, the dangerous one, the one who so clearly wants her and makes her feel desirable. The one who, unbeknownst to her, thinks of her and treats her like an object, a conquest. She doesn’t know that much about guys yet, so he looks like the real thing. He might marry her, especially if there’s a baby involved, but he’ll think nothing of moving on in a few years.

Meanwhile, boy #2 has matured and come to terms with women and sexuality, thinks of them as precious and beautiful, treats them with respect, and makes the new divorcee feel desirable again. He offers a stable life and love, and he becomes the second husband. Second marriages have realistic expectations, and in my experience they last longer. Two people of similar maturity and understanding have the best chance to make a lasting commitment to each other.

About marriage

Here’s a pithy saying that I love…

No matter how good-looking she is, somebody is sick and tired of putting up with her bullshit.

Which means you’d better not base your relationship on looks, because no matter where you start it’s all about compatibility in the end. In spite of what many people seem to believe, marriage isn’t some kind of contest to see who marries the best-looking mate. It’s about who’s smart enough to marry their best friend; a best friend that they’ve allowed themselves to fall in love with. And then you go from there, because being in love gets deeper after you’re married, if you’re any good at it.

And that involves mostly trust. If you both believe your vows, if you mean it, then you feel safe enough to share of yourself on a day-to-day basis. To be open and unhesitating in what you think and say. When two people do that, and learn each other and get comfortable, that’s how a thousand tiny connections are made between the two of you over the years. That’s the unspoken thing you see sometimes in a close couple, the quick glance or the sly smile between them.

I know there are all kinds of successful relationships, or I suppose there are, but one thing I believe in is doing everything together, or reasonably so. Obviously, why wouldn’t I want to spend all my time with my best friend? I have since childhood, whoever it was at the time…seems like a good habit. This seems to be a touchy subject with some, who feel that there are rules about this among principled people. That ‘normal’ independent people would need to have their own life. Go ahead, follow somebody’s rules, live up to the expectations. I’ll just do what I like.

One thing you cannot do is lie to each other, because that’s breaking trust on a grand scale. If that happens, it’s not a marriage anymore; it’s just a stupid game. You’ll never say anything without double-checking it in your mind first. You force yourself to be vague and evasive. When you start to worry about spending time together, about what might come up in conversation, you certainly aren’t sharing your lives anymore. It’s a cancer that spreads fast, and touches everything in the relationship. How could you ever relax with pending lies circling overhead?

Mark Twain covered that, and he gets the last word:

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.