Heart in your hands

There are days... Everyone has them... You stand at the end of a trail of decisions that you thought would have led to a different destination. Of course, many other people have those same reflective moments on some days. In the late 1800s, those who survived the Civil War had such moments. Stephen Crane was one post-Civil War disillusionary who captured such a moment in a poem. He didn't write with titles for his poems; he just wrote the poems. Here's one of his reflections.

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter -- bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

There are those days...

Park sequences

Every year I get to see spring happen in the park where I walk. There's a certain sequence to the build-up of spring. Winter begins to lose its grip about 3 weeks before March 21st. Winds come to clean the trees of any dried leaves left over from late fall/early winter or dried fruit or leftover pecans. It will usually rain a time or two. Willows begin to bloom, then the oaks. Robins come to dance on the grass. The grass turns green. Then the gaggles/ravens/crows/magpies (whatever these black birds are called) show up to drown out all other birds with their terrible voices. The sequence is orchestrated usually with how many cold snaps are left. Willows will bloom with 3 to 4 cold snaps left in the season. Oaks won't bloom until 1 or 2 cold snaps are left. Robins come at this time, so you know spring is close. The ravens/crows like a little warmer weather so they show up when the oaks bloom and are always surprised by the couple of cold snaps that are left. But, pecan trees aren't fooled. They like warmer weather and won't bloom until the cold snaps are over. When you see the pecan trees budding, you know spring has truly arrived. Incidentally, most of the pecan trees have not started budding yet. There's at least one more cold snap ahead. Life has a certain sequence to it, also, unfortunately. Events happen in a certain order and its hard to break that order. Wish it weren't so in some cases. I would love to use the wisdom accumulated to revisit certain events and alter them. But, I'm not in charge of the order of the changing of the seasons or in sequencing the events in life. All I can do is shout an expletive or two when I run across something I would change. This year, the willows bloomed quickly, the grass was slow in turning green, the number of robins visiting the park was way down, as was the number of crows/magpies. The wind didn't blow all the pecans from last November out of the limbs of the trees. The pecan trees don't have buds 5 days after spring has begun. And, the number of cold snaps since the willows have bloomed has only been two. The winter was colder and drier this year (which probably means the summer will be disjointed in some way as well). Things have been different this year. I do hope with everything in me that that is a sign that things will be different in life as well. I would love to have something I have run across that I would change to be different this year, to be out of the natural order... would love to have that happen. It would cut down on the number of expletives I utter.

Pickin' and grinnin'

Once in a while I get to write songs with a cousin who writes and sings country and western songs and sends them to Nashville. Over the last 5 years he and I get together 3 or 4 times a year to write songs. I leave the singing and playing to him and his group. He also makes demo CDs to send to Nashville. I've only had one song sent there out of the ones we have composed, but soon two more will be sent. Here is a preview of verse one and the chorus of one of the songs my cousin and I wrote together.

Alll kinds of pickin' goin' on
Pickin' peas, pickin' corn,
Pickin' hats and dresses and birthday gifts,
Pickin' up those kids, pickin' out their clothes,
Pickin' at those strings on a new banjo,
But all that pickin's not the same,
As pickin' stars from your eyes - pickin' you.

Chorus:
I can pick a college, or ring, or some clothes to put on,
I can pick peaches, pecans, or some healthy nut bar,
But the most major pick of all is the one where I shine,
I pick you time after time after time.

There are a couple of verses and a bridge besides what is written above. It's kind of fun writing songs. And it is really inspiring when I write and later hear the tune and full instrumentation of the words he and I have composed. I hope you hear this song a year or so from now as you're listening to the radio on your way to work.

And I hope everyone has had the highest form of pleasure of picking that one person who lights up her life... who makes him happy above all others... who adds spring to her step... who becomes a part of his fabric... who inspires music in the heart... every time that one person comes to mind... and time after time after time after that.

The art of the hedge

Hedging is an art form these days. There are at least three levels of it. The level of least hedging, and the most transparent, is through tone of voice or the obvious change of subject when the topic makes one uncomfortable. The mid-level is through using the word "well," which nearly always means there is a problem with the topic under discussion. Occasionally, a dialect will use well as a filler, such as "you know," but that is rare. Identifying with only a very specific part of a statement is another form of the mid-level hedge. The last way to hedge is to tell a lie based on the premise of something true or to mix something false with something true, a hybrid statement. These go undetected most of the time. Very intuitive people recognize this as it is happening, but mostly this type of hedge is caught upon reflection.

We do it all the time for a variety of reasons. Hedging is usually done to save face, however. Sometimes it is for alignment, but that is really a face-saving feature in the final analysis. I think we've made hedging an art form because we don't really want to be transparent with others. There are precious few people we trust. With those few, we can be transparent. With all others, don't lie (because that creates an ethical problem), hedge. It keeps people guessing. It throws them off the real path. It allows us to remain private. It keeps hurt from happening.

Transparency is a value, however... and truth.

.

Foundations

The other night on the Nat Geo channel, a documentary told the story of a star device made by the Greeks in the 5th century BCE. It had a great number of cogs and wheels, and charted the movement of the stars for any given century past or future. Truly amazing... on two counts, the creation of the device and the math behind the movement of the stars. Our 5th century BCE Greek friends lived in a much more sophisticated society than we have ever given them credit for.



It's nice to find nuggets of surprise in history that we have not known before. It happens every so often. The Rosetta Stone showed how well the early cultures moved among themselves speaking each other's languages. An early form of portable generation of electricity was found in the middle east, the place algebra was born. An underground city was found in Turkey that had been carved in the very early centuries of civilization for reasons that appear to be related to evading aerial notice. A city has been discovered in India that contains bones and ceramics with all the signs of a radioactive blast. The list is lengthy. All the hints are that the past was a most sophisticated world.



So, we in this modern era are the beneficiaries of cumulative effect. We thrive because the foundation included a great deal of forward thinking and avante garde living. That seems to be a principle in life: we thrive because of events and people that propel us to heights we would not otherwise achieve.

Every road has a twist

Edward DeVere (Shakespeare) writes plays in 5 acts. Usually, Act IV gives away what is about to happen at the climax in Act V. That is true in the play Macbeth. The opening scene of Act IV is one in which 3 witches appear to give Macbeth some information. Macbeth demands to know his future since he sees trouble ahead of him as others seek to take the throne of Scotland from him. So, the witches oblige him with ghosts to converse with. Then they comment on the ghosts' conversations. Near the end of the scene, the witches cryptically foretell some of what is in store for Macbeth.

"Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be
until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him."

Macbeth takes this to mean that he will not be defeated. In reality, the words are the ones that lure him to his death.

Unbelievably, Hailey Dunn's mother was arrested last Thursday. The Colorado City police have been pretty deliberate on how they have handled the Dunn case. But, eventually, people who are rash at heart reveal their tragic flaws. Macbeth had been careful to a certain degree in hiding his awful deed. But, he got sloppy after the witches apparently gave him their blessing that he would reign as king even though he was beset by the noblest lords of Scotland. He slipped.

The arrest was a deliberate move, but not a careful one. They arrested someone not a suspect, but have not arrested the case's only suspect. Birnam wood just moved against Dunsinane hill. The police interrogated Billie Dunn for 2 1/2 hours according to the Colorado City Record. Then they charged her on three counts. Oops. Milk someone for hours, then throw the whole case into the legal arena? Then, they found more pornographic images on computers. More smoke screens. But, that doesn't matter. The case is not merely in their hands now. It's Act IV in the case of Hailey Dunn. A clue to the climax was just given.

Fortune will now favor the legal pursuit and take the impetus from the law enforcement arena. Just love it when something deliberate happens to suddenly give an event an unanticipated twist. Witches could not have predicted a better twist than the one that happened naturally. Welcome to the world of the attorneys.

Judging your standing

In the 1960s, two researchers conducted a study on politeness in language. They used three languages in their research, which was seminal in the field of sociolinguistics. It was a little more obvious in French and Spanish to see the politeness patterns because of the tu/vous markers in the language. But, in English there are still ways to show politeness even though we don't have such a tu/vous marker in the language.

Because posturing is always part of a conversation, it is good to realize the underlying attitude carried in politeness. At least two ways are used in judging someone else's attitude exhibited when speaking. There is the casual/formal continuum and the deference/rapport continuum. Just as an example (and there are a great number of examples), the words yep/yeah/yes/yes ma'am or yes sir can show the two principles at work.

If you are talking with someone your own age, you would expect equality unless there is a mitigating condition. Thus, you would expect to use and for the other conversant to use the casual form of the affirmative word, yeah. If yes is used, it is a little more formal, so there must be a reason for it, such as emphasis, formality for higher position, exasperation, deference for distancing, or solid agreement. Otherwise, you would get yeah. If yes sir or yes ma'am is used then the one using it is showing politeness for one reason or another like deference to a supervisor or someone more financially well off or someone who has a degree of expertise or more knowledge than the speaker. The deference shows less solidarity. On the other end of the spectrum, if yep is used, then casual agreement is signaled, or perhaps the expected alignment marker of mostly women's speech, solidarity with the speaker, or some other bonding meaning.

Of course, if you are talking with someone a different age from you, then different semantic contexts might be in play. Regardless, the cardinal principle of communication is that words carry meaning or they wouldn't be uttered. The fields of semantics and pragmatics exist in order to more exactly identify what is being conveyed. So, the next time you are carrying on a conversation, try judging one's attitude toward you in the conversation by checking whether their language is showing casualness or formality, deference or rapport. It will allow you to know if someone is trying to be your friend or if there is distancing taking place. It's always nice to know where you really stand.

Noticing the underpinnings

Conversation operates by established principles. Those principles are developed by peer groups as they grow up. The problem is that there are several types of peer groups.

The most obvious is the same age peer group. During adolescence the youth counter culture uses extant words to have new meanings, like the hippies did with the word cool and Generation X did with the word bad. Or adolescents make up new words, most of which don't stand the test of time, such as the Baby Boomer word groovy and the next generation's word bling. The degree to which we participate in counter-cultural language is a marker of the degree to which we identify with our peers in later years.



Another peer group is formed during early adolescence: the female peer group and the male peer group. Each of these groups develops different rules for interacting with each other. One of the studied rules is that of competition. Both groups have competition but manifest it differently.



Girls have an alignment rule first, but if disagreement arises (competition), then they show it by agreeing with something a peer said first before expressing the item of difference.



Boys, on the other hand, challenge statements directly, and either gain face or lose face fairly immediately.

Rules also develop around interactions between younger and older peer groups. Baby Boomers wanted to interact with those older than themselves as equals; however, they wanted to hold Generation X at bay a bit by creating rules for deference. Generation X said that Baby Boomers had to earn their respect, but in turn, they wanted Generation Y to be in awe of every achievement they accomplished.



So, we are all marked in our language habits by the peer group we grew up with. That, of course, sets up all kinds of conflicts - between generations, between men and women, and within a peer group itself. "Don't use that language with me," is a phrase you hear parents say to teens, one peer to another, and a man to a woman or vice versa. The rules for language use from our peer group during our adolescent years are deeply seeded in our psyche. So, when a difficult situation arises, it is important to notice if you're speaking to a peer, a woman or man, or an older or younger generation. Ignoring the underpinnings of language use with the other party makes it fairly certain that a conflict will arise with no apparent resolution.

Slipping away into bravery

Brave New World has to be one of the best novels ever written for a number of reasons. The characters were dynamic. The plot didn't drag. It was a bit prophetic. It took on themes for its time that made the book ban material. The symbolism was universal. And it pointed to conflicts so representative of the human condition.

I find myself referring to it often in conversations I have, especially those involving education of any kind or religion. People eschew the book if they only cursorily read it or read it as a high schooler and have some vague memory of it. But it is one to take seriously. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chairman, recently mentioned having a global currency. That remark would strike fear in those who have seriously read Brave New World, the realm of one-world government. Having a global currency is not too many steps away from the consolidation of nations into a one-world state.

Oh well, it's already too late. Only the alpha pluses among us understand what I'm talking about now. Tomorrow I will hire a delta, say good morning to a beta, and take a phone call from an alpha who reports to a board of directors who reports to a government agency who reports eventually to a world controller. I'm on Soma, so it's ok with me!

Something's rotten in the state

One of Edward DeVere's (Shakespeare's) most famous plays is Hamlet. There are a number of famous lines from this play, but the one where Hamlet is contemplating his father's recent death and his mother's actions with his uncle is the trademark line from the play. As Hamlet tries to make sense of what is happening early in the play, he comes with the line, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

That's exactly what I am thinking as I contemplate the rotten state of affairs in Colorado City with the disappearance of Hailey Dunn. I have followed the coverage from the news media. But, there is a apparently a story behind the story. It's such a sham to have all these volunteers coming from all over who give freely of their time searching for Hailey when all along people close to the case know no body is going to be discovered by any of the volunteer teams. And the case is really shaping up to discover that law enforcement officials are in on the cover-up of the disappearance. Most recently, the police are saying they have a flash drive with child porn images and that the grandmother's computer has a greater number of images on it. When is the last time any grandmother had such images on her computer? And the sudden appearance of a flash drive is suspect. Investigation 101 teaches that the sudden appearance of "evidence" happens only in mystery novels in which the author has to piecemeal the evidence throughout the story to hold the attention of the reader. These new findings are nothing but a ruse, smoke and mirrors to distract from the truth.

It's a pretty stereotypical series of events from a small town. If I were to ever get involved in a case like this one, I would probably have to work with an outside investigating team to crack the truth. For sure, it is not going to come from the inside where it should come from. What a shame that small town people get so caught up in Peyton Place shenanigans that they hide the reality of what is going on.

Hiatus in the flow of time

100 million years pass before diamonds are ready for the Earth to produce its most precious gem - the diamond. I don't have any diamonds, but I have seen them before. They're precious because there is a finite supply of them, and they take so long to produce. When they're polished, they shine a spectrum of colors. They have value above all other gems. The closer to colorless, or a slight blue tint, the diamond is, the higher the value of the diamond. The yellower the tint of the diamond, the lower the value of the diamond. The higher the carat weight of the diamond, the more value it has also. Most diamonds are cut with 58 facets, but those with less are less in value. Then there is the shape, but that is a matter of preference, not value.

About a year ago, I was around one of the most flawless of all diamonds. It was beautiful beyond imagination... the perfect shape, cut, carat weight, and color... perfect.

It was one of those pauses in time where I knew that I was around 100 million years in the making. Other gems like emeralds, sapphires, onyxes, and rubies, are pretty, but they are not the diamond I saw, they were not 100 million years in the making, they don't pause time, and I would have no interest in them. Only one diamond has captured my interest... and if I had to wait another 100 million years to be around that diamond, it would be worth the wait.