• KEEP CLEAR •

         
          “Scientology propaganda?” my wife replied.  Although I’d formed my own answer even before I asked for everyone’s opinion—I was already glad I asked because:  I’d never have come up with an answer as funny as hers and this was a chance to test some conversation rules (How To Converse, Rule of Thumb #3: Ask Questions; Don’t Make Statements).

          Thinking of ROT#3 nudged me to keep the ask-balloon floating, “Is clear what Scientologists want to accomplish?—or is it a term used by people who’ve escaped them?”

          She said, “I’m confused; I don’t know how it could be an ex-cult-member term.”

          “Unfortunately, I only know about the title Going Clear, which is wedged in my memory without a film or book behind it; so, my imagination has filled that space with an ex-cult-member (How To Converse, ROT#2: Mirror Their Words; Mirror Their Posture”) saying the phrase: ‘I need to get clear of these asshats before they serve Kool-Aid aperitifs’.

          “Ahh, OK” she said with a smirk in the back of her voice, “Clear, as I understand it, refers to their belief that people can rid themselves of engrams, which is their term for unconscious traumatic memories, by holding the sweat-measuring part of a lie detector while being interviewed.”

          Since she didn’t seem to want to elaborate and nobody else was chiming in, I decided to steer the conversation toward more familiar ground (How To Converse, ROT#5: Plot a Familiar Course) by asking, “Are engrams anything like ‘dust’ in Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials?”

          “I can see a similarity—the magisterium thought dust was related to original sin and scientologists think engrams are from trauma, which occur in past lives.”

          My friend, Brian, was becoming uncomfortable (probably not a fan of the topic: reincarnation), so I asked for his opinion, “Hey Brian, what do you think that KEEP CLEAR stencil with yellow side-circles means?”

          “Maybe it’s just the equivalent of ‘Post No Bills’ since it is on an outdoor bulletin board.   I’m pretty sure it would, normally, have fishing regulations and notices for docking boats stapled to it, but because the lake is beginning to freeze-over, all that's been removed for the year.”

          I said, as I turned toward Sharon, Brian’s wife, “Interesting! He thinks it was intentionally put there by the park.” Then, nodding toward my wife (who'd walked away from us and closer to the sign), “She thinks it was put there by a graffiti-artist. What do you think?” (How To Converse, ROT#6: Stir the Pot).

          Sharon replied, “I’m leaning toward put there by the park but, instead of ‘Post No Bills,’ I think it’s more likely it’s intended to prevent people from blocking the view of the board; more than no standing and no parking, I think it's to say: ‘don’t leave your big-ass trailer in front of here’ - but you’re smiling in a knowing way that makes me think it's time to hear what you think.”

          “Ever seen the movie The Fifth Element?” I asked.   After noticing everyone’s reply (to the affirmative) I continued, “The scene where police arrive at Bruce Willis’s apartment building and he’s required to put his hands against an interior wall…?   Inside two yellow circles?  Anyone?  Anyone?”

Xmas Cat

Examining Art and Thinking About What You See

          Let's assume you're someone with whom some work of art once inflicted gloom, caused the pace of your heart to bloom, or screamed until your (no longer wavering) attention was totally consumed.  Is that you?...Ohh, Good.

          If you're unfazed by my directness (still reading), obviously your eye has at least once in its life enjoyed a gaze sufficient to overwhelm—then—I intend to use this amazing Diamond Warrior as my example for navigating the beautifully crazed imagination of the artist Michael Parkes.  Stop reading, take another look (below): where did Mr Parkes force your focus?...Ahh yes...as he intended it should.

          My eye.  It bumps down into the distant horizon near the bottom (where both the rump of the warrior and the [uncomfortably too-near] edge of the painting are found)—peering in—I'm surprised to discover: pyramids on fire and clumps of smoke resound (no rising-sun cliché caused those yellow clouds); and back my focus goes to breasts and a posture slumped against the chest.  Is that the profile-face of a captive slave at rest?...Orr, no...I now see two contemplating conquerors (as Parkes expected I would).

          What detail brought that conclusion to the forefront of my mind, which your eye sought but failed to find?  From breasts beautifully defined—nipples tight, skin-taught and unconfined—my attention traveled to behind: her wings of white (he and she're one-of-a-kind!)  And, then, down-past his framing grey wings with her pale body entwined: are her hands gloved in his same-color skin or am I colorblind?...I'mm not...It's grey gloves which rest over her maidenhood.

          So it's his adornment I—now—focus on; for assumptions mis-made and conclusions drawn:  It's probably not skin but (instead) head-to-toe chiffon which provided protection as he burned the distant pantheon; also, it's not the hilt of a blade jutting out-upon his masculinity's shouldered brawn, but the scabbard of a diamond-powered cremation baton (obviously capable of rivaling the dawn); and what of his helmet's two white fronds?...Err, adjustable antenna (to keep the eye moving bottom-right to top-left is understood).

          We've spent many long minutes staring at two beings who can fly like linnets.  One wearing a egyptian-blue lady's favor (tiny stars within it); the other bearing an expression of contentment or disdain or—you decide what she exhibits.  Hopefully you paused to wonder about one incongruous tenet:  If the artist intended to enforce—like a martinet—a constantly angled swirl-sweep of our eyes across his palette, why add, on her head, that single indigo pinnate?)...Mmm, to claim the warrior is looking anywhere but at that purplish gem would be a falsehood.
          

Other essays on aesthetic philosophy and thinking about thinking:
Design Fault

tang.abstract.houghts

A Simple Exercise in Rational Thinking 

When You Ponder Why You're Who You Are, What Happens?  

Chewed Beech Tree - What Say You?

Do you query what I think’d gone thru the beaver’s mind?

Might the theory just be link’d to hew that river’s wynd?

Or feel cheery as wood plink’d in-lieu of dreamer’s grind?

‘Insist peering!’ (poem inked) ‘unto dam-weaver’s blind!’

‘Commandeering!’ (author thinked) ‘undo demeanor’s kind!’

‘Empty clearing!’ (muskrat winked) ‘bayou designer’s find!’’

cul-de-sac graffito

personal values in a poetic vocabulary lesson

Virtuous behavior … have you some?
Vitriolic neighbor … don’t become.
Values we favor … eschew none!
Veach Glines's list ere … 5 to 1:

Innate compersion – admire their joy and jealousy rot
Hypocrisy aversion – always guilelessness in thought
Active conscience – embrace Jiminy Cricket taught
Logical reasoning – superstitious belief in naught
Simple comforts – enjoy materials less bought

vindictive or rude … forgive and it’s done.
vampiric in mood … run narcissist - run!
verisimilitude … "jeez gurl z’at a gun?"
vibrant beige food … fun oxymoron

Spend a Few Minutes to Think Like a Stoic —

               What is one of your important plans or goals?

               Now—think about a possible problem—something which would derail those plans.  What will your initial reaction be when you learn the bad news and, then, what do you do next in this hypothetical situation?  Do you react and move forward, abandon the plan completely, or make some adjustments to the original plan?

               This visualization technique requires you to use pessimism to bring about a positive effect when faced with future challenges. 

 

               Assume you’re planning a holiday-vacation.  You’ve already got time off from your employer, purchased tickets, and researched the destination.  Now imagine that the person you were going to be traveling with tells you—last minute—they can no longer go.  Envision the emotions you would feel (anger, sadness, etcetera) and then what options you would in-this-instance consider [going alone; offering the tickets to someone else (who?); postponing (how long?); cancelling).

               Some of life’s problems aren’t urgent (failure to receive promotion, power outage, sickness in the family, unplanned pregnancy, etcetera) and, for those, we have time to consider options when-and-if they occur.  However—many (most?) of life’s difficulties are panic-inducing emergencies (waking to house on fire, witness a crime, spouse wants a divorce, etcetera).

               To successfully practice the philosophy of Stoicism, it’s imperative to deal with life’s complexities by evaluating and making calm, logical, decisions.  One way to accomplish this is by pre-visualizing the shit-hitting-the-fan emergencies and then mentally walking thru the series of actions required for you to make the best of a bad situation.

 

               People in high-risk jobs (police, firefighters, soldiers, etcetera) continually train.  Since it’s impossible to train for every possible negative situation one could experience in life, pre-visualizing is the most valuable mental training available.  A Stoic doesn’t wait for bad news to arrive and think, “Now what do I do?” (while adrenaline fuels their emotions and, subsequently, thoughts).  Instead, a Stoic calmly considers how they will maybe, someday, possibly be required to act, if/when they receive information that’s objectively-universally negative (laid-off from their job; death in the family; cancer prognosis; vehicle totaled in an accident, etcetera).  By routinely doing this (once a week) Stoic practitioners prepare themselves for the inevitable, exercise their metal elasticity, and train their brains to be able to effectively, calmly, handle decision-making under duress.

Other articles about Stoicism and Philosophy:

 Stories of My Demise - Amor Fati and Memento Mori
When You Ponder Why You're Who You Are, What Happens? 

tang.abstract.houghts

The title of this artwork — tang.abstract.houghts — is intended to cause you, the reader, to re-read and re-examine the three groups of letters separated by dots and (hopefully-maybe) make some of the following associations:  the word 'abstract' is between the two dots; when the last 't' in abstract is added to the letters 'houghts' (sounds like: hots) the word thoughts is formed; abstract thoughts; would adding any of the first letters in abstract make a word out of the the letters 'tang'?; tang a b s t r . . . nope.; the word 'tangible' is out of reach; tang has many definitions:  an orange drink powder, the part of a knife below the blade (hidden inside the handle), and it's the abbreviated form of the colloquialism poontang.  tang-abstract-hots ... Hot Abstract Poontang?    

hey there below | moiaq ajayf hau

Everchanging you,
which I only, never, view
thy faceting edge of —
     Please 
just keep knocking.

In-depth ranging clue,
rich *sigh* bonetree, sever, two
my hassling pledge: love —
     Freeze
thrust-deep rockfling.

Neap breath strangling stew
ditch-lie lonely lever, new
lie babbling dredge 'bove —
     Degrees
nonplussed teat-shocking.  

GRAB BAG REDUX

Hey...we've been waiting for an update for...almost a decade!

          Welcome to Pin-The-Tale on You.  Every mature person you will ever pass on the street has more-than-probably done things which could qualify them to be labeled 'bad' or 'good'.  It just depends on who tells your story; and how the game show audience reacts to it.  Our grab bag spinner will stop when your tale is finished.

          Will it land on B, for bad?  G for Good?  Maybe you're a combination of equal parts bad and good; if so, the spinner could stop on A for Average.  And—of course—the audience may choose to reject you from the game (spinner on R), although this only happens when someone competes who is mentally incapable of understanding the difference between good and bad.         

          I recall grab bags from childhood fairs.  A game of chance.  After money was paid (I recall it being ten cents) I reached into a large basket and removed (grabbed) a wrapped unknown paper-wrapped item (bag).  It was usually something worthless; and, by that, I don't mean it had zero value, just that the items were worth less than a dime.  Worth less.

          When we were children my mother told us this nursery rhyme (which, today, Squire attributes to the poet Longfellow):  There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead; when she was good, she was very very good, but when she was bad she was horrid. 

          For too-many-to-count I was (and am still) plagued by bad people.  I've had my fill.

          For seventeen of my twenty military years I worked in law enforcement, where (obviously) it was my job to prevent people from doing bad things, catch those who had already done bad things, and (once I became a supervisor) train my subordinates to do the preventing/catching while (most important) insure there were no subordinates who were bad.

          I wrote this entire essay almost ten years ago; the following handful of paragraphs were specific to my life in 2011: 

Lately, I've been (unsuccessfully) trying to help the two spawn of my fiancée grow up.  They, too, are worth less than the time and money I have invested.  Although one is nearly a legal adult (17 biological years old; mentally 14; emotionally 12) and the other is legally an adult (23 biological years old; mentally 15; emotionally ?...he has none) neither has the capacity, wherewithal, ability, or desire to be good.  Actually, the opposite seems to be true.

Over the last eight months the 17 year old has spent 4 months in jail, (theft, drugs, various probation violations) the other 4 months he repeatedly ran away and lived on friends couches and the street.  There are no rules he is willing to obey.  He says jail means nothing.  It's just "hitting the pause button with free food and TV".  We've rarely seen him in 2011 except in various different courtrooms.  My years as a cop tells me he is going to continue to commit more serious felonies and will spend the majority of his life in prison.

The 23 year old has never had a drivers license, never held a job long enough to put on a résumé, and has also spent a few months in jail (drugs, resisting arrest).  His increasingly erratic behavior could be disorganized schizophrenia.  He refuses to discuss or ever admit he acts abnormally.  In his mind his actions (hording, inability to focus, substance abuse, lack of hygiene, obsessive-compulsive actions, and an inability to handle any property without damaging it) are normal.  He claims he doesn't need anything but to eat my food, waste my hot water, live in my guest room, and use my electricity.  We evicted him this week (and—don't get the wrong idea—he only visited for three weeks...which turned out to be 19 days too long).  My years as a member of civilized society tells me he is going to be a petty criminal who spends his life in dozens of different homeless shelters and on the street begging for spare change.

The studio audience has voted.  The spinner for the 17 year old lands on B...and it's leaning towards HORRID.  The spinner for the 23 year old stopped on R.

          Late 2019:  The 17 year old is now 26.  Eight years ago, he was charged with arson after setting fire to a trash dumpster; for that, he spent a few years in jail and on probation in a halfway-house.  About four years ago, he was charged with attempting to murder his halfway-house roommate, after—allegedly—striking him in the head with a rock.  He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, plead guilty, and was sentenced to 10 years in the state mental hospital (where he currently resides).  Reportedly, medication has stabilized him and his auditory hallucinations are less persistent (he still claims/believes/hears messages from a 'tall radio tower on Mars' sending signals directly into his brain).  He is occasionally permitted to leave the hospital on day-passes; he hopes to be permitted to reside in a halfway-house soon.  The roommate he (allegedly) assaulted with a rock died of a drug overdose a few years ago.

          The 23 year old is, maybe, 32 now.  After living on the street for a few years, he was arrested (for resisting arrest) and spent a few months in a California jail.  Prior to that incident, and since, he refused to communicate with most/all of his family.  Nobody knows where he is.  Nobody knows if he is still alive.

          The spinner—for both 23 and 32—has permanently stuck on R.  Neither of their brains are capable of guiding their actions to conform to societal norms or laws and, consequently, neither of their brains have been judged as capable of acting with intent when it comes to "behaving good or bad".  Although they look like adults, both of the brains in their skulls are incapable of performing high-end executive functions or govern their behavior in the way that society expects "normal" adult brains to perform.  It is as if both their brains never matured beyond those of preteens; they are incapable of future planning and can only think about the sensory inputs of the present moment.

          Writing this update caused me to focus my attention on ethics and morality (interchangeable terms for describing actions relative to desired behavior), which I will write about in the near future.

Also enjoy these philosophical essays:

A Simple Exercise in Rational Thinking
When You Ponder Why You Are Who You Are What Happens?