the balloon of happiness

In the adjoining room of the inn restaurant, at breakfast time, not my peak hour, the sound of gales of laughter. Uproarious. Full-on, awake hilarity. Fifteen or so folks, most if not all bedecked in American-flag-decorated shirts or blouses. They were not drunk. Stone-cold sober, by all appearances. Nothing stronger than coffee and fellowship. Talk about camaraderie! Talk about witnessing confraternity and bonhomie!

It turns out they were balloonists; crews from far and wide. Here's the thing: they were not just one team AND their balloon(s) did not even take off that morning. Too windy or something.

Did disappointment reign? Not at all. Disappointment had no seat at their breakfast table.

They were by all evidence:


happy.


Which made me wonder, right then and there: were they happy because of their comradeship? Their friendship? Their seizing of the day, the chance to be together, whether in the air or on terra firma? Or did their happiness have something to do with the nature of ballooning, skimming on air, letting go, surrendering to forces beyond your control, riding the current, soaring, rising, falling, floating, being free? Or is this happiness somehow indicative of balloonists and their personalities, their inclination as people to pursue the risks and rewards of floating on air?

They were happy.

They are happy.

'you don't understand'

I'm afraid I don't understand you (or you, either) and I dare say no one understands another. Not completely, not inside the skin, within the neural system, not entirely. Doesn't neuroscience confirm this more and more with every study? (I don't know. You tell me.) What I mean is, "what I want you to understand is," we think (enough with the italics already!) we know what another person feels and thinks. We claim we understand the other person's perspective. We feel we share a perception. We say this especially for those who are related to us by blood (parents and children and siblings and so forth). We say this about those we love. Or hate. Therapist and patient claim it. Business partners. Clients and associates. Intimate friends. Lovers. But it's silly, really, to think two infinitely different universes of experience can somehow overlap or merge or align perfectly. It's absurd to imagine that the river of solipsism can be so fordable. These are not cynical assertions. True, when we have glimpses of this "understanding" of another, they are rewarding, even exhilarating. There are such moments, or we at least perceive them as moments of shared illumination. Wonderful. I celebrate that, I salute it. And isn't this what art, music, literature, poetry, ballet, painting, sculpture, film, even sports do? Yes. But these are fleeting glimpses, glimpses we are thrilled by. We are grateful for such moments. But they are rare, in my view; if not rare, not commonplace. I suppose there is no way to prove or disprove this conclusively. But I posit that "you don't understand" is the norm among humans, except perhaps for conjoined twins. Hence, the study of semantics, semiotics, diplomacy, sociology, linguistics, psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, anthropology, et cetera ad nauseam ad infinitum. Mirabile dictu. Mirabile visu.

quality over quantity?

I have already posted more than all of 2013, but what does that mean?

LIVE NUDE FISH

I saw the sign on Route 298. LIVE NUDE FISH. On one of those little A-frame sign holders. It caught my eye. I don't deny it. And let's be honest, the FISH part was not the hook, shall we say. Echoes of the 1980s, working in Midtown Manhattan, before Times Square and its environs went all Disney on us. The neon signs said LIVE NUDE GIRLS. Or am I misremembering the lures and bait that pedestrians faced then? One had to be curious about the diction, the word choices, though, several blocks from the literal Madison Avenue, the promoters of carnal license seemed to need no lessions in the ad game. The NUDE was an obvious allurement, as old as the hills (well, not the wording but the stark naked commercialism trading on human weakness; nothing new there), but LIVE? Surely, DEAD would be a turn-off, except for creepy necro types. Why not WOMEN? Too much Mrs. Robinson? Or MEN or ADULT PERSONS? We've come a long way, baby, since then. Or have we? On a scale of 1 to 10, how far? Fin de siecle. Finis. Something's fishy here.

Earth Day 2014

I've posted about this before, that Earth Day is a feel-good escape, a chance to feel environmentally holy, if you will. Sure, many of the priests and priestesses of this secular religion practice the same rituals for the other 364 days of the year. But the cleanup rites are typically around Earth Day. It is not unlike waltzing to the soup kitchen on Thanksgiving and handing out turkeys. Good for one day, maybe even a week. But I'm no better and my saying this does not exempt me from such criticisms.
p.s. I hate litter. It is contemptuous of civil order, an act of self-loathing and belligerent degradation, a despair.

hardscrabble, softscrabble, scrabble

If you had one word to describe your neighborhood, what would that one word be? (This is assuming you have a neighborhood. I am not so sure that suburban or rural areas qualify.)

"Hardscrabble" was the first word to pop into my head. But, consulting Merriam-Webster, I'm not so sure it is an accurate adjective:

1

a :  being or relating to a place of barren or barely arable soil hardscrabble

farm> <hardscrabble prairies>

b :  getting a meager living from poor soil hardscrabble farmer>

2

:  marked by poverty hardscrabble

cotton town> hardscrabble childhood> 

 

Since there is not too much unpaved or ungrassed soil, I'll skip sense 1 of the M-W definition. As for sense 2, I'll buy that. I'll buy poverty. (How much does it cost? You can't afford it. Don't ask; don't tell.) But even that is hard to tell. Some folks seem to go to work; others seem to malinger, especially by that nefarious-looking cornerstore.

Maybe we're a softscrabble neighborhood.

Or, for those given to wordplay, maybe we are merely a scrabble neighborhood. And if you are talking about that famous board game, cap that initial S.

parting thought

Group of mostly men in a room. (Rephrase that. It's not a gender assessment. No one is all man or all woman.) I noticed that of those who part their hair (I would part my hair if it were long enough), the men I observed tended to part their hair on the left side of the top of their scalp, right side if you are looking at the person. Why is that? Really, why is that?