Becoming Comfortable.

Let's say you have a chore to do, and the chore (like singing a song for instance) makes you nervous.  So you fuck it up, because you're nervous.  And you let down your dad, for instance, who, let's say, is bob dylan.  And it is easy to let him down, you know the best, because, well, he is who he is. And then you can't fucking sing anything at all and produce a bunch of medicore stuff becuase it is easier to do that because at least you are comfortable.  And yet.

And yet.

You're capable of more.  And one day you actually do produce the good stuff that maybe your dad saw in you from the beginning, and maybe when you do you all of a sudden come to a realization that it isn't hard at all, so much as it necessitates slowing all the way down, and feeling the world, understanding its texture, and whatnot, and then, once you can perform at that level, well, it isn't hard at all, because it is joyful in fact, and the entire reason your dad has been so disappointed in you is because you haven't allowed yourself to experience joy, and not because you can't sing like hank williams, and the entire reason you've felt like shit is because you haven't been able to relax and just exist.  And one day, it all goes together and there's a moment when we're essentially ready to die because we can understand struggle, and we can see beauty, and we can share it with someone else fully, as in both parties understand the same as the other, and there it is, the meaning, so simple, so easy, so natural, and so long coming.

Too bad it doesn't stick around.

But I will download the album.

Purity

Seems to me purity plays a large role in how we evaluate our own acts, in real time, and how we evaluate (also in real time) other people's actions toward us or intrinsically.

Did they have the appropriate purity to act as we think they acted?

Did we have the appropriate purity to partake in our own behaviors and feel good (guilt-free) about them?

Do we have a higher stake in the arena of purity on balance than others?  Do we think we're better because we're somehow more pure?  Or do we think that more pure is simply better, period.

We certainly capitulate reason to nostalgia and sentimentality frequently enough for me to feel that we have a reason for doing so, and I often reflect that our reason is our own supposed purity.

And I'm not even talking about purity as a modifier, although I suppose it would fall in line with the above, and our general ordering of things.

To wit: We don't necessarily like standards that are applied to us from someone else, but we all, and I earnestly believe this, hold ourselves to some standards, whatever they might be.  And, if that's true, if standards are out there, lurking, universal, implacable but different, some highly explicit and some so implicit that actions are taken on the backs of the rugged beasts even when the mere fact of the standard is not recognized (that it needs food, that it bucks, that it sleeps, that it breathes man, and that it has lice), it means only one thing: we're all blazing fucking idiots and it is fundamentally useless to think about how to stop conflict, in whatever incarnation we often do, and we should somehow become much more direct and much less worried about offending others (because if we're all direct, and not worried, then I have a feeling that average offense and average umbrage will actually decrease).

Notice to Women out there RE: men.

Men enjoy, perhaps more than anything else, talking about themselves. 

Memory of Events matter as much as Events

This is a weird one, but quite obvious: Our memories, whether accurate or not (most often weighted toward how we felt at the end of a particular episode), are in some ways distinct from the actual experience of an event/episode.  Such that, our memories are what we talk about, and what we consider, when we consider anything, in retrospect.  Odd, I think, because it means that if there's not a very good fit between how the process of solidifying memory works from the basis of how we experience the world, that we'll have at times fully detailed lies that masquerade as the truth of what we knew we lived through, but which, in fact, are not necessarily close.

Thinking of Getting an MPP/MPA Degree?

Do yourself a favor and just get the MBA instead.  It won't preclude you from any field.  It will instead, simply add options.  Definitely worth it in the longerish run.

Female Orgasm, Visualized in the Brain

Here's the link.

One of the weeks when I don't post for a week.

Excuse my lack of posting.  I'm not sure where it started, this lack.  I have to try to hold thoughts down better, pin them in the corner as it were, or try to get my knees up in the crotch area quickly enough to draw blanched faces and moans of woe.  Keep them still for a moment, isolated from each other.