Today I like: walking out of a bookshop, thinking I’ve just spent sixty euros on books, and then realising that I won’t miss them; drinking a glass of quality whiskey and simply enjoying it without having to worry about not spending too much; carefully assessing the demands an upcoming challenge will make on me and realising I’m up to the task.

Today I don’t like: forgetting which way to twist a tap to turn it off; realising I’m still way behind on my required reading; realising I’m making jocular remarks about people over thirty because I’m afraid of growing old and incontinent and disabled and it’s scaring the shit out of me.

Again, hat tip to Linda Steelyard. 

I picked up this book at the used bookstore a couple of days ago in my never-ending quest to understand other humans.

I’ve only read the first two stories, but they both made me think.  The first story showed that people can believe in the dogma of an organized religion but still get ethics and morality right - it was about two women who ran a soul food restaurant.  They were devout Christians but they didn’t judge and hate and try to control people.  Instead they accepted and loved them and helped people who needed it.  Which, yes, I knew that there were some Christians who were like that - the guy who owns my company is one, for instance.  It’s just nice to occasionally have reminders.

Maybe religion is just a focusing mirror that brings out and magnifies whatever was already there.

But it just feels wrong in my head - like this guy at work keeps emailing everyone updates about his sister who was in a bad car wreck, and when he starts going on about his faith and how that helps and how prayer will help his sister my brain just feels wrong.  Not an unaccepting wrong - it’s not the sort of faith that hurts other people.  More just like a “does not compute, cannot relate” wrong.

That makes me sad.

I think this is one of the times when I take bricks off the wall separating me from other humans and peek through a bit.

The guy in the second story traded on Wall Street.  But he could feel empathy for people in poverty and he did feel like people who had a lot should help people who didn’t have much.  He just had trouble following through on that.

I can empathize with his feeling that he needed money before he could help others. Having to sell your soul for most of the daylight hours puts a crimp in your social uplift activities.

But he never felt like he had enough to retire and go help people because he would compare himself to the people around him and feel poor even though he had more than most humans ever will.  Which my husband checked this book named Irrational Predictability out of the library and it mentions that, but I couldn’t understand it - that whole book gave my brain a wrong feeling.  When my brain could get past the annoyance of the constant repetition of the same ideas and the cute little “Remember that thing from the previous page?  Well, I bet you didn’t know it, but the exact same situation with some of the words changed that you’ve been reading while banging your head against the wall is another example of it!  Do you understand the hammer mercilessly beating your head in yet?  Just in case, here’s another exact same situation with a ‘Gotcha, it’s another example!’ at the end!”

Well, okay - wait, maybe I can understand it!  I can’t comprehend thinking of money that way, but well - I do feel rather stupid because I only made a 570 on the verbal part of the SAT in 7th grade and I read about kids who scored in the 700s at that age.

Like I’ve observed before - I’m not an economic neocon at all, but sometimes I do feel like I may be a mental one.

OMG OMG OMG major breakthrough!!!

Okay, like on this other site there was a discussion about how morality and compassion always show up on lists of characteristics of giftedness, and people were getting offended because they were like, “Everyone can feel morality and compassion.” and I brought up the idea that maybe the difference was your circle of awareness.

Like I once read a few entries in the blog of the wife of an oil company executive.  She could feel compassion and empathy for people around her, but not for people who weren’t in her immediate circle of associates.

And maybe economic comparisons are the same way - maybe people who didn’t win the genetic lottery for intelligence can only really be aware of how they compare to the people immediately around them.  Whereas some people have larger circles of awareness and so compare themselves to the whole globe economically.

So maybe a lot of people aren’t even aware of the machine that they’re a part of, and that’s why they do things that continue evil systems.  Maybe it’s not that they don’t care about or even enjoy the suffering of others.  Maybe they’re just really truly not capable of being consciously aware of it.

But circles of awareness can be extended - I’m extending mine right now.

And how am I doing it?  By reading about the experiences and personal stories of others.

So my blogs and my threads like this do have a purpose - a real glowing good purpose.  Maybe they’re helping other people extend their circles of awareness.

December 20, 2006

I’ve been reading Walden, by Thoreau, which the library wants back (*sob*), and which is so good it’s almost painful to read. Every word that man wrote seems to “reverberate within my soul”. I find myself reading a page or two, and then putting the book down, not because of any lack of interest, but because his writing amazes me. Very few authors affect me that strongly. I have an inkling that Wendell Berry is about to be added to that list; I’m just waiting to get my hands on some of his work in actual book form.

I’ve had that nagging feeling that I should be blogging or posting something about the book; maybe it would help me better keep track of my thoughts on it, or just bring up interesting discussion on authors. I was going back to look up this sentence, which I ran across this evening: “How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!” but instead ran across another passage that struck me, with a coincidence attached (which is in the quote at the end of this post).

Thoreau was writing on his once having almost “owned” a farm; in fact, he did, until the farmer’s wife changed her mind about the sale. His description of why he originally fell in love with the place is a perfect example of why I feel such connection with his words…he described precisely the notions I had about the place where we live now: “The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were: its complete retirement, being about two miles from the village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, gnawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have; but above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through which I heard the house-dog bark. I was in haste to buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or in short, had made any more of his improvements.”

We have no river bounding our place, but if you’ve seen it, you’ll know that I have a certain fondness for dilapidated buildings; they have character. I also remember a day last year, when the persistent rumble of bulldozers had me worried. I went out in the yard at different points during the day, the noise kept getting closer to our house. Early the next morning, trees on the neighboring lot (still for sale) were swaying, then cracking with that horrible dying sound that trees have. I was on the phone with the realtor, who kept assuring me that they were just “defining some of the property lines”, while trees continued to fall. A neighbor stopped by, and confirmed my fears that something more was going on than a little “defining”.

Beyond our house, and the next in line for improvement, was a completely wooded lot, with no “suitable” spot for a house or driveway. What would they do to the woods I already loved, the oaks and hickories and a secret little grove of pawpaws, where the trees were so thick there was not sun enough for brambles, and your steps were so quiet you could surprise a deer? What about the “waterfall oak”, where the leaves clung on determinedly through the winter, the sound of the wind blowing through them once causing my son to think we must be somewhere near flowing water?

I took one more walk, trying to make up my mind. I couldn’t leave the children for long, so I brought a two-way radio with me, and ran down through the ravine, hurriedly searching for the property lines, trying to get a more definite feel for the place, arguing with myself the validity of spending the money to “save” a piece of land. I looked at trees, I cut across trails; I was out of breath by the time I hit the top of the next ridge. I considered lumber values…could I justify years of extra payments with those, knowing that we would probably never cut a single tree? I ran through a clearing, pausing long enough to see that it was still the perfect spot for a hidden house…then down the hill…all the while, I could still hear those bulldozers. My shoes were soaked; the dew was still on the grass and weeds. Then I came to the old fence line. There are old oaks here that belong in some fairyland, the line runs across the remnants of what was once a farm. Below this line, there is a ravine that is dark, cool, and silent. The ground is covered in moss, and the tree roots provide homes for little folk, my daughter and I are sure.

All the way back up the hill, and toward home, I debated with myself, told myself how crazy it is to fall in love with trees. I came up with all of the practical arguments I knew my husband would have when - if - I called him at work. But then I took one last side trail, back into the trees that would certainly be the first to go…and saw the light there, the stuff they call “dappled” in the summer, and that as you go deeper into the woods takes on a mystical feel…am I a romantic? I had to make the call.

We now “own” that other piece, but we haven’t touched it, other than to gather hickory nuts and explore the trails. There may be a day when we build a house back in that clearing. Or maybe not. But at least it’s there. What is a clearing without the woods around it?

“To enjoy these advantages, I was ready to carry it on; like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders, - I never heard what compensation he received for that, - and do all those things which had no other motive or excuse but that I might pay for it and be unmolested in my possession of it; for I knew all the while that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind I wanted, if I could only afford to let it alone.”