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Saturday, August 31, 2013

P-L-ease!!


In a radio interview, the director of an institute on national educational policy in Dallas commented on the difference between boys and girls learning math.  I am sure she wanted to make comments that make her appear as if she was on top of her field, but she should have followed the adage, "Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

"Boys are better with spatial learning," she mused, "as girls are better with language."  Both parts of that statement are false at worst and socially conditioned at best.  The first part of that statement shows a complete void of knowledge with how the brain works.  The information the director spouted is from the observations about learning math from the 1970s and 80s.  Atrocious.

So many studies on learning and the brain have taken place, that to place the director's words in the parallel context of astronomy is to say that the earth is flat.  Want to know why American math scores are behind other nations?  Seriously!

Underlying both math and language is a syntax or grammar, a system of rules governing the use of symbols for that particular logic (math logic and language logic).  The number system is not any more difficult than the alphabetic system.  Social attitudes about learning math along with the socialization process of adolescents and the conditioning influences of business and home have more to do with the differences in boys and girls learning math easily than ability.  Anyone can learn syntax whether with numbers or with letters and words.  Please, madam director, get a clue.  Don't spew archaic information and think for a second that you can guide the policies for national education!

Friday, August 30, 2013

Duping again

A man wanted to see what effect each leg of a grasshopper had on the length of its jump.  He measured the jump with all four legs and wrote down: grasshopper with 4 legs jumps 1 foot.  Then, he cut off a front leg and measured the jump.  He wrote: grasshopper with 3 legs jumps 10 inches.  He removed the other front leg and measured.  He wrote: grasshopper with no front legs jumps 8 inches.  He cut off a hind leg.  He commanded the grasshopper to jump.  Then he recorded: grasshopper with only 1 leg jumps 4 inches.  Finally, he cut off the last of the grasshopper's legs.  He told the grasshopper to jump.  The grasshopper didn't move.  The man shouted, "Jump!"  But the grasshopper still didn't move.  He thought he would yell one last time, "Jump!"  "Jump!" he yelled.  The grasshopper didn't move.  So, the man recorded,: grasshopper with no legs is deaf.

Last night I heard a portion of an interview with the director of an institute for national policy on education  in Dallas.  It reminded me of the grasshopper joke I had heard in a statistics class many years ago when the professor was cautioning against jumping to conclusions without measuring something properly and against using the wrong choice of statistical method for the situation.  I heard a woman in an important position spouting information that reflected both old research and age-old notions, not modern research.  In her position, one would expect different, and better.

One of the things she said was that boys in elementary school develop in language more slowly than girls do.  I heard that in the 1980s also.  But there has been a great deal of research in both developmental language and language of the sexes.  One of the first pieces of information from the 80s spawning the notion was that the corpus collasum of women's brains contained more nerve endings than men's.  One of the theories was that the thickness accounted for the verbal prowess of women over men because of the popular idea that men spoke more often and with greater eloquence than men.  That theory has disappeared with the great amount of research that has ensued.

The idea that boys have fewer language skills in childhood than girls is a pedogogical observation that also has been scrutinized and has disappeared. Boys' language and girls' language are merely different in style and topic, not development.  Boys who have men teachers don't lag behind girls in language use or development because male teachers realize that topics are different as is choice of words.  But developmentally behind boys are not!  Boys with women teachers seem to run into problems if female teachers don't care for the boys' topics or restrict the topics boys can write or speak about or the types of verbs they can use.  (Oh, the grasshopper must be deaf! Seriously!)

And one last piece of research from the field of sociolinguistics addresses the idea of covert solidarity.  It happens between men and women, and between generations.  Boys and girls would not be exempt from the influence of covert solidarity.  But teachers are not made aware of this phenomenon, so they don't address language development against that context - to the detriment of the children's development in language use.

The good director in the position of having anything  to do with educational policy, much less on a national scale, should be guided by more current research, at least within the last 20 years, and less by outdated observations before she makes decisions, and absolutely before she grants an interview to be aired to the public.  Ditzes like her don't add beauty to the educational landscape.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

One single factor

I remember running an experiment with a close colleague using an ANOVA in order to determine what factor stood out among 4 factors on student scores on a standardized exam for 4th grade children.  So, we selected the 5 highest and 5 lowest class scores in math and writng.  We wanted to know if the same factor that was outstanding for high scores also produced low scores if it was lacking.  Sure enough one of the four factors mattered.  It wasn't class size (4th grade classes were limited to 22 children) or number of years a teacher had taught or whether it was a team of teachers or a single subject teacher.  It was the amount of time the teacher spent on the subject.  The other factors didn't matter.

That's simple enough.   It doesn't require any training.  It doesn't require hours all day trying to integrate anything.  It doesn't require one to be a brain surgeon.  When people wonder what it is that makes students perform, well, the "it" is simple.

I am also never left wondering in my personal life who and what the "it" factor is either.  It's simple... and I think about it a lot... and perform well in life when I do!



Monday, August 26, 2013

At the end of your words

I have had a chance to observe a person who has been socialized in the Ukraine and who didn't arrive in the U.S. until after adolescence, the time period during which socialization happens.  I have also been able to observe a number of people from a number of countries south of the U.S. and from Canada for very short periods of time whose childhood happened outside the U.S., some whose childhood and adolescence happened outside, and some whose childhood, adolescence and early adulthood occurred entirely outside the United States.  This has allowed me to anecdotally compare the kind of socialization that occurs in the U.S. with that of people outside the country.

So, did the same features of marking conversation of the two sexes appear?  In the group of people socialized in the Americas, it was a mixed bag. The feature outside in/inside out appeared right away.  Alignment of women to other women in conversation appeared also.  Men taking the floor away never appeared, but adding important detail so as to look important did appear.  Interruption patterns of men with women didn't appear as reported in the gender language literature.  This is merely by observation, not by empirical data.  As far as the person from the Ukraine is concerned, I have observations only from mixed company (men and women together), so I don't have enough observation data to go on.

Socialization is powerful, and its traces are embedded in language.  It would appear that knowing who is on the other end of your words, no matter the country of origin, affects interpretation of and attitude toward the speaker.


Friday, August 23, 2013

Logical extensions of misinterpretation


Writing is a part of language and has a rather curious history when it comes to including it as a part of the educational curriculum in the public schools.  In the 1800s, grammar was taught, to be sure, but not for the purpose of writing.  It was taught for proper speaking.  In the early 1900s, higher education wanted to ensure that the idea of grammar could be reflected in writing especially on tests.  From that point on, composition began being taught with the idea of propriety in writing.  Then it filtered into the public schools from higher education so that students could perform better on college entrance exams.  Of course, now, writing has become a staple of the curriculum.  The idea of the 3 Rs (Readin', 'Ritin', and 'Rithmetic,) illustrates how entrenched writing has become in the public school system.

That means that the socialization process that gives us different language features seen in speaking can now be seen in writing.  That causes a real problem since in elementary school the bulk of the teaching corps is female.  Roughly half of the students are male.  So, both stylistics and topics are affected.  Girls write about the same topics they would speak on, as do boys.  That's expected.  But, who does the grading?  Ay, there comes the rub.  Students using an inside out perspective and personal topics tend to have higher value than the students using outside in perspectives and topics about external events and the environment.  Grades are affected.  A quick review of grades given for writing in elementary schools shows higher grades for girls on the whole than for boys.  Male high school students fare a little better since more teachers  who teach writing are male, but not that many more.  So, writing is greatly discriminatory in the school system.

Fortunately, that will be changing over the next 5 years as more emphasis will need to be put on visual organizing, video organizing, storyboard organizing, and eventually, holographic organizing.  Presentations through YouTube and PowerPoint have absolutely changed the playing field from writing to a medium more visual.  Therefore, writing skills as a way of presenting information will be taking more and more of a backseat.

While it is possible that language behavior of women and men will continue to bleed into visual presentations, it might be less likely since the visual world includes an environment for words to happen in and a personal extension of what the world means.  Something for men, something for women.  So, while writing has reigned for 100 years tormenting its male users, visual organization and presentation will replace it and hold out the promise of more equally guided language expression.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Orientation

Inside out.  Outside in.  These are the two terms that have been coined about the language that represents the two sexes.  Women, supposedly, speak of matters on the personal level.  The talk of what happens in terms of feelings, the inside of a person.  Once that area has been satisfied, then the conversation can take a turn to the larger environment, or what is happening around the person.  Men, supposedly, speak of matters in the environment.  The talk is of what happens around the person, such as politics, news events, sports, religion, or the weather.  Once that area has been explored, then the conversation can take a turn to the more personal.  Women, therefore, have language habits reflecting inside out, men outside in.

Of course, none of the features has to be that way.  They are the result of the socialization process.  They help men and women to make themselves distinct from the other sex.  They definitely are not genetic.  Some women who are not socialized as other women seem to have characteristics attributed to men.  The same is true of men.  Androgynous people, for example, speak of the pressure they feel from other men or other women to be like them.  Homosexuals also speak of the same pressure.  Socialization creates an atmosphere of ostracism, sometimes, if a particular unwritten behavior isn't heeded by a person.  Thus, women are pressured to speak like other women, men like other men.

That's the formula for misinterpretation.  Women began speaking on the personal level to men.  Men begin by speaking on the exterior level to women.  Women then say men don't seem to care about them.  Men say women don't show interest in their conversations or that their interests are so very different from their own.  So the war between the sexes rages on.  We should blame ourselves, however.  The sexes are not born to miscommunicate; they are trained to miscommunicate.

Our loss.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

What surrounds a statement

Interpreting what people are saying is really a full time job.  The brain cannot follow people's utterances word for word and analyze them for meaning, at least not while thinking about all the other things it does like run bodily functions, notice things about the environment, such as safety and caution (especially if driving), take into account tone of voice, try to have the right face for the emotion required by the the one talking, and a hundred other things.  So, the default is to accept people's words for face value.  But, if something seems like it doesn't fit or like something is missing from the full intelligibility, then the brain has to shut down one or more of its functions so that it can analyze what is being  said for all the utterance's possible meanings.

Cross-gender conversation is particularly susceptible to having the brain not run its many functions while conversing because the conversation will be different from what is familiar.  And, what is familiar is what someone has been socialized to accept as normal.  So, when men and women speak to each other, they are on high alert, spending available brain power to analyze statements for secondary meaning.

One answer is that the two speakers are not knowledgeable enough of the other's background.  For example, if one person says that her uncle is coming into town so she it will have to put a lock on the liquor cabinet, then the other person is left to wonder.  Is her uncle a religious fanatic who is a tea totaller, so the other speaker can't drink while the religious uncle is in town?  Or, is the uncle a sot, so the speaker has to keep liquor from the uncle's lips so as not to be embarrassed?  Or is it that the speaker's mother doesn't know that the speaker drinks.  If he or she drinks in front of the uncle, the speaker's mother will surely find out?  Or is it that the uncle feels free to take the liquor with him when he leaves since he has to scrape by for money?  The visit will cost the speaker a fortune in replacement costs.  Or, is it that the uncle is rich and always has an opinion about the cheap liquor that the speaker buys?  So, in order to avoid how cheap she or she is, they go out to buy their liquor while the uncle is in town.

Great, now one's background for what is meant contributes meaning to an already difficult conversation.  Socialization is different, so misinterpretation arises, AND the person's background has to be known or misinterpretaion arises.  Cross-gender conversations are just doomed.

There is one exception, but that is the subject for another time.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Volcanic language


One study about gender and language I would like to see done is the language of innuendo.  I am not sure what it would exactly show, but I have a working hypothesis for it.  When two people are building to a point of high emotion, the signal that an eruption is about to happen is the use of innuendo.  I don't know if it would show that women or men use it more, but I think the study would conclude that women use it to get matters to change, men use it to warn that matters have gone too far.

If the analogy to eruption holds true also for innuendo, there would be particular placement for these eruptions equivalent to the Pacific Rim - right around the tectonic plate boundaries.  The "seams" that cause people's relationship to "rumble" from time to time are the cracks in the lower strata where magma  leaks through to form a chamber right below the surface.  When the pressure is great enough, the magma forces its way through the mountain top in a violent spewing show.  Eruptions don't happen that often, but they change the landscape around them when they do happen.

It would also be interesting to see what topics trigger an innuendo and subsequent eruption.  Simple linear regression would be the statistical tool of choice since it is both predictive and descriptive.  I'll add this study to my bucket list for the next decade.

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Chasing our tails

The notion is that women talk a whole lot more than men.  Well, that depends.  On what?  Socialization of course.  Some researchers have studied mixed groups and their conversational habits and observed that women speak more words and with more frequency than men.  But, there are other groupings, such as men with men and women with women.  How many words are used then?

And then there is the idea of topic.  Because men like banter, they tend to speak about the two subjects, religion and politics, which women tend to avoid because they prefer more personalized subjects.  Because women like alignment with each other, they tend to speak on topics they personally identify with.  So, the topic helps to dictate whether women or men are using more words to express themselves.

Also, what constitutes a conversation is the subject of some debate.  One researcher, for example, mentions that women were much more silent in a mixed group faculty meeting of high school teachers.  One has to ask if a faculty meeting is the same as a conversation  among friends, even among acquaintances, or if formal meeting groups are not to be considered conversations.

Back to the main point: men are socialized to speak with other men, not other women, as women are to speak with other women, not other men.  So, it would be natural to think that women are more verbose with other women and men with other men.  A researcher would need to take those two groupings, then weight the findings against the third grouping if (s)he thinks that (s)he has figured out the role of the third grouping and the guiding principles on when women will speak in such a grouping or when men will speak.

Another problem with researching the above idea is the so-called Observer's Paradox.  When people know they are being observed, they alter their language behavior.  Some methods have been used to beat the Observer's Paradox, but not the studies dealing with conversation groupings.  Socialization doesn't happen under the microscope.  It happens over time as a result of seeing how language operates in all the possible combinations where language is used.  That's a real problem, for who can study language situations over a lengthy period of time or define what scenarios for language use represent other scenarios if trying to shorten the length of time or the number of different situations in which language is used?

So, no one really knows whether women speak more or not.  It doesn't really matter except that the popular belief is that women speak more, so are perceived as more nurturing, or better with words, or better communicators, or more impressive in sales jobs, or better at persuasion when closing a deal, or easier to listen to in presentations, or... (the list goes on).  And how does that popular belief arise?  Now we're back to socialization.

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Product of socialization

The situation seemed more than a bit awkward.  The teenage couple ate together in almost complete silence.  Occasionally, the girl would try to introduce a topic to talk about, but the boy would merely answer with 4 or 5 words, and the topic hit its dead-end.

In the same restaurant, an older couple, in their late 30s possibly, were also eating.  There were 2 boys at the table also, presumably the couple's children.  They were eating in silence for the most part, but from time to time the mother would say something to try to get the boys to talk.  The father merely talked to them to redirect their behavior.  The boys talked to each other mainly.  The husband and wife exchanged words only to ask about the schedule for the rest of the day.



Scenes like this beg the question of why cross-sex talking is so difficult.  The answer is not simple.  Part of the answer is found in the combination of personalities.  The particular events leading to a conversation contribute to what is said too, of course.  But part of the anatomy of a conversation is the different conversational styles developed as young people are socialized as a (fe)male in this society.  Styles, of course, have features, and features are identified because they surface several times in a conversation.

Politeness is one of those features that manifests itself differently in men's and women's conversations.  Men show politeness by listening.  Since another feature of male conversation is to participate by adding more important details to a story or to take the floor, it is noticeable when the absence of taking the floor or adding details is happening.  Being silent after a comment before extending the conversation or changing topics signals appreciation for what was said.  Women, on the other hand, show politeness by immediately responding with a remark of personal affirmation to what has been said.

So, in a cross-sex conversation, the man shows politeness to the woman by being silent.  She thinks he is being non-responsive to her remark or ignoring her.  He is trying to make it clear that he is not trying to take the floor or add more important details.  The woman shows politeness by immediately responding to the man with a remark of personal affirmation rather than with banter.  This makes him feel like what he is trying to say is something that is over her head or that she has no interest in at all.  She is making a placating remark.

So goes the misinterpretation of styles.  So, on goes the ill will in the conversation as a whole.

But, I will say that I have had a female conversational partner that was socialized to understand the opposite sex's style, not merely her own style.  Maybe that was a part of compatibility of personality also because there were very few moments when we were not on the same page.  That enhanced understanding, for sure.



That was a utopian environment, making everyday pure joy... to be so clearly understood... and to so clearly understand... two who were in concert with each other.

What a difference when the world slips back into the world of men's and women's socialized understandings.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Inevitable miscommunication

Every society builds socialization into its culture.  The language the society speaks bears the marks of that socialization process.  English is no different and its American speakers use it in a way that marks them as having been socialized in the U.S.  The two genders within the American experience seem to also have semantic markers that show that they use language to different ends sometimes.  So, while there is a general American socialization process, with language expressions illustrating American attitudes (as there is for individualism and materialism, for example) there is a gender socialization process with language expressions illustrating men's or women's attitudes about how to share personal information and how to relate directly or indirectly to the environment around them.

And that difference in socialization, as shown in language expression, causes great difficulties.  The attitudes expressed in words bear out the values behind them, and that is where the rub comes.  A great example is that  practice of women to acknowledge other women's ideas as they express their own while men practice an almost opposite habit of adding detail to another speaker's story to enhance it or taking the floor from a speaker with more important information.  Great conflict arises since women see men's speech as supercompetitive or as always having to add something to women's already complete thoughts while men see women's speech as too dependent on what others think.  And, that is only one cause underlying miscommunication.  There are certainly other kinds of conflicts.

So, the two sexes are socialized to misinterpret each others' remarks.  That's a shame in many cases.  It leads to vicious fighting, hurt feelings, and ideas that same sex conversation is to be preferred over cross-sex conversation.  (Of course, misunderstandings arise within the arena of same-sex conversations, too.  It's just clearer as to what the cause of the misunderstandings are.)

Even knowing the features of the two sexes' conversation patterns that underlie attitudes and values doesn't really stave off miscommunication.  But, it does make for a quicker rebound and a more tolerant view of why one sex says something that seems contrary to the first nature of the other sex.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

At least dignity

According to some 15-year-old research, there is supposed to be a lot of interrupting going on in conversations between men and women.  I have certainly seen interruption before.  The research said that men interrupt women much more than women do men, and that the purpose of men's interrupting women was to show who was in control of the overall situation.  I don't doubt that a lot of interruption is going on,  but I am not in situations to see much of it.  Generally speaking, professionals at work don't interrupt, and if they do, they are polite enough to renege and allow the first party to continue talking.  In my particular case, my workplace is filled with turn-taking not interruption.  At home, the norm is turn-taking as well.

The particular study quoted quite often in cross-gender conversational literature contains recordings from men and women in the home environment.  The couples are young and childless, and they are all from a working class or middle class background.  I think the study needs to be redone.  Things sometimes change about language use, even from one generation to the next.  That's what the "S curve" graph is constructed around - language behavior that changed in a generation.  Or perhaps, my corner of the world isn't like others' corners.  My corner is the exception to the rule, but I have no other frame of reference.

I do think cross-gender conversation is difficult to navigate.  Actual contexts and expected or anticipated contexts are very different.  It's almost surprising that meaningful communication takes place at all.  But, control of a conversation, such as the purpose of interruption as a strategy in language behavior, is not and won't be part of my corner of the world.  Too many other variables can go wrong between men's ideas and women's ideas of conversation for interruption to be a problem.  Equality should be a given when two people talk.  And if not equality, at least dignity.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Splendid, beautiful, ironic

A great number of poets take great care to hone their poems to their most succinct form.  They try to put passion in a small space.  Many succeed.

That's ironic because passion and emotion drive us to expand ourselves, to elaborate our actions, especially for a recipient by whom we want to be seen clearly and transparently.

Which is also ironic because when something is clear and transparent, it is nothing... there is nothing to see.  But, it is the most important thing we have to offer... it is everything.

Which is ironic since clear and elaborate actions happen in a pocket of time, which ironically are captured well enough, but only in a pocket of time... intact, but not lasting.

Oh the irony of the most splendid and beautiful moments of one's existence.



Nothing...
is what I have

Everything...
is what I would give


to keep the moments
Intact...

never to come
Apart...

Monday, August 12, 2013

Cloudburst


I looked above my front door through the arched window at a flash I thought I saw.  It had been a while since I had seen the familiar bright light.  Then I saw it again clearly through the arched panes.  Wow, what a welcome sight.  The high today had reached 101, but it was cooling slowly since the sun was about to set.  Rain had not been predicted for my area.  I went outside to enjoy the show.

What a show it was.  The sky lit up for over an hour with all the ensuing thunderbooms clapping overhead.  Loved the show.  It was the 3rd time today that I was reminded of one who had brought me my life just a short time ago.

First, I was watching a TV movie in which a young woman and a young man had fallen in love.  She told him about halfway through the movie that she had leukemia.  The woman had touched the young man's life deeply before she finally passed on to the next world.  At the end of the movie, in a stirring set of lines, he compared the young woman's affect on him to the wind.  She had swept into his horizons giving him life, changing him, and leaving him with her spirit before she passed on.  It was a touching ending.

The young man's speech about the wind reminded of a passage from the New Testament that I remember so well from studying Greek in college.  The Greeks had the idea that the wind and the spirit of someone shared the same characteristics.  They reflected that in their language.  Pneuma was their word for wind and spirit.  The ideas are different in English as shown in our having two words for the ideas.  But, not for the Greeks.  The passage I remembered was a saying of Jesus, "The wind (spirit) blows where it desires to blow.  Nobody sees its origin or destination.  All those who are born from the spirit (wind) are just like that."  People interpret this passage as a pun on the words wind and spirit, translating them as such in that order.  But, both words could be translated as spirit and both words could be translated as wind .  Now there's a thought.  We are children of the wind - making our presence known, leaving our impressions even after we're gone.

Then, about 8:30 tonight, at the end of a very typical hot August day, the wind began blowing ferociously.  The neighbor's fence split and fell to the ground in two sections from its force.  It was the advance guard of the tremendous downpour that followed.  Now the storm is gone although I can still hear the rumbling of thunder in the distance.  The wind announced the coming refreshment to the parched ground with the wind that swept through with the storm.  It brought lifegiving elements to everything alive, including me.  Then it left.

So this evening, in three reminders, I have been alive with the spirit (wind) of one who breezed through my life, refreshed it with lifegiving elements, and covered me forcefully so that I should never forget the absolute joy, zest for living, and love for this one that I felt .

Let the wind (spirit) blow!!!


Saturday, August 10, 2013

These days, dog days



This is the period of time referred to as the dog days of summer.  The last 7 days and the next 7 days,  on average, are the hottest days of the year.  This year is not an exception.  Each day has been between 101 and 109 with heat indexes higher than the temperature.  What makes these days bearable is the refreshment one gets from drinking all manner of drinks - water, of course, but soft drinks, icees, smoothies, flavored teas, milk shakes, and floats too.  Ahhhh, there's nothing like refreshment in 105 degree heat.  It's that season... and season of life as well.  I'll take a cherry snow cone - large, please.  Thank you, it's hot these days.

Friday, August 09, 2013

The hand that's dealt

There are competing theories about dreams.  One is that people dream all the time.  They just don't remember them.  Brainwave activity determines whether or not a person is dreaming.  The other is that a dream is only a dream if it is remembered, even if only briefly, when a person comes to full consciousness.  I don't know which is correct.  I prefer to think the latter is correct since no one can yet explain if the brain activity is meaningful or not.

Lately, I have been dreaming a lot, meaning that I have had remembered dreams.  I don't normally characterize my sleep as producing dreaming.  I have had a few along, sure, but it is not the rule.  Over the last week, I have had recurring dreams, and today, I had one that showed my great frustration.  It was a groundhog style dream.  The same activity kept happening over and over.  I could change the details if I didn't like the outcome of the time before.  Crazy dreaming.  I kept having to sit in the backseat of a car and come to a stop at a stop sign.  Now, that is tricky to hit the brake from the back seat, but I remember four distinct times having to do just that.  Cars were pressuring from behind, nearly hitting me, and ready to smash into me if I didn't successfully stop.

I don't know if every little thing in the dream has symbolic value, but given that the mind rumbles around ideas to create different scenarios as possible outcomes, I think that the week's dreams have dealt with my inability to direct reality, particularly the one today, or to accept reality.  I have a different idea of what I want my reality to be than the way it has worked out actually being.

My dreams will probably subside when I become more accepting.  I can more openly accept my reality or I can more doggedly pursue changing my reality.  I can't unilaterally control what my reality is, so trying to do so would never change my dreams.  Becoming more accepting is not really appealing.  I'll figure it out.  My next dream should have a few more symbolic details in it that will help me.

Thursday, August 08, 2013

Peering into the dark


Inside the house tonight, it is quiet and dark.  There is light in only one room.  As I look down the entryway, I see shadows of the few items that are there, but only dark forms.  I know the door is white, but I really can't see its outline because it is too far away.

I hate being in the position of not being able to see much out of the present moment.  I know what certain things should happen next, but for some reason the future is completely blocked from view.  I have had two pretty troubling dreams of late because my mind runs dark scenarios of subconsciously drifting thoughts. I can only see shadowy forms.  One dream was comprised of symbolic action that would make me sad for a very long time were it to really happen.  Surely it won't.

Wednesday, August 07, 2013

Against the mundane

I have walked on the nature path that is adjacent to my house many times.  I love walking on it for the exercise, of course, but also for the peculiar view of bullrushes lining the little creek that runs through it.  Willow trees and a few Cottonwoods are mixed in with the bullrushes in certain spots along the winding course of the creek.

A little while ago, I happened to be looking at the line of bullrushes and the trees as I had a hundred other times, but thought that something might be a little different.  The eyes play tricks on the brain all the time, so there's nothing new there.  But, I began trying to isolate what was different.  Everything looked basically the same except that little yellow patch against the backdrop of solid green.  Yes, what was that yellow patch?

A golden-leaved tree?  How did that sneak in?  I don't remember seeing that before.  But, it was too large to have been newly planted.  Wow, how could I have missed a tree that stood out so clearly against the otherwise monochromatic green of the park?  Its golden leaves made it outstanding and beautiful in its setting.  I stared at it.

I stared at it then and have so ever since then because it represents to me what happened on my journey down a recent path in my life.  Life was pretty routine, mundane actually, when boom!, a thing of beauty suddenly entered it.  I have stared at it ever since that recent time because of its beauty in its setting.  Oh, how I enjoy to look at it (figuratively and literally).  What I wouldn't give for it to be in my setting now.  I would enjoy it every day of my life soaking in its golden leaves in the otherwise monochromatic color around me.

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