Yarn Bombing

I'm so intrigued by yarn bombing that I regret giving up my ill-fated attempt to learn knitting some years ago.* Civil disobedience with yarn? Wonderful.I really think the war memorial downtown could use a colorful rifle cozy. :D

*I may have failed at guerrilla knitting, but was quite successful with my controversial embroidery, at least.

More Fun At The Bookstore

Hey, wasn't there something in the Bible about "putting off adornments"? And how your jewels and finery won't save you from the Judgement Of God etc.? Well, perhaps they thought this didn't count because the Bible doesn't say anything specifically about not putting sequins on the actual Bible.

I don't even want to think about the look the pastor would have given me had I walked into school with one of these. At any rate, I'm imagining a lot of "nyah nyah, my Word Of God is sparklier that your Word Of God!" happening at Sunday school.

Also, I refuse to even comment on the Young American Patriot's Bible standing next it.

We Have Always Lived In The Castle

I came across this book over the weekend. I was familiar with much of Shirley Jackson's other work but had never read this one. It's astoundingly good (and the cover art of this edition is pretty awesome, too) In some ways I identified with the eccentric narrator, Merricat, and her strange ways and sympathetic magic - I often did the same as a child. With her conscienceless-ness and affinity for murder, not so much. But the state of being outcast and suffering harassment at the hands of the villagers is easy enough to understand, probably is for many who live in small towns.

I did have a struggle with the story though. It was extremely triggering to me - nothing to do with the madness or death or cruelty like one would imagine, but the elements of agoraphobia and fear of intruders made it difficult to read without panicking at times. This isolation and fear of certain people, I understood all too well. Watching, waiting, checking the locks on doors, being terror stricken at the sight of a visitor or sound of a knock - this is the sort of fear I live with. It was so vibrantly described that it was almost intolerable.

After I'd finished (and as I said before, it's an excellent book) I decided to see what literary critics had had to say about it. I had not known much about Shirley Jackson's life, except that she had died relatively young. I was surprised to find out that Jackson had suffered intense agoraphobia toward the end of her life. This had indeed been reflected in the book. Jackson had done what I can't bear to do - look directly at the thing that frightened her.

Easter Nests

Happily, there were enough wildflowers to decorate the nests this year.
As you can see, the Easter Bunny was generous :D

Happy Easter

Or, for non-Christians, happy celebration period that occurs in Spring, however you might practice it.

Despite not being Christian, I have fond memories of Easter. It was a big deal in our family.There were traditions they had brought from the old country that were important and tied us to our roots a little more firmly - important in a country without too many roots of its own.

Of course it was a big deal at my Catholic school too, being the holiest of holy days. Even though I was one of those outsider children who was not Catholic (always a bit of a puzzle to my classmates) I watched the rituals leading up to the ultimate day with interest.I may have even participated more intently than my peers, because they had to. For me it was something else, a chance to witness something alien but supremely important,carried out with utmost reverence. The sense of being part of the highest of high ritual magic pervaded everything. That is what the Mass is of course, even if no one calls it that. An formal ritual drawing down the spirit into bread for the participants to consume is undoubtedly a magic one.

I can comprehend the meaning of the sacrifice as presented in the Gospels. I can understand the joy that would follow finding that your leader had miraculously risen from the dead, thus proving that he was indeed the son of god. I've always found the story of the women at the tomb touching and meaningful. I also know that Jesus was not the only one who had followed this pattern, nor has such a story. It's no less respectable for that - the story of Jesus' death and resurrection is connected to more ancient roots. These stories and attending rituals clearly have a deep significance, whether as proof of a living god or as a symbol of the earth coming back to life.

Neuroscience Vs Philosophy, Again.

Neuroscience wants to be the answer to everything. It isn't.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/7714533/brain-drain.thtml


Nice article by Roger Scruton in The Spectator, concerning a particular thorn in my side. Just one example, from the article:

"So just what can be proved about people by the close observation of their brains? We can be conceptualised in two ways: as organisms and as objects of personal interaction. The first way employs the concept ‘human being’, and derives our behaviour from a biological science of man. The second way employs the concept ‘person’, which is not the concept of a natural kind, but of an entity that relates to others in a familiar but complex way that we know intuitively but find hard to describe. Through the concept of the person, and the associated notions of freedom, responsibility, reason for action, right, duty, justice and guilt, we gain the description under which human beings are seen, by those who respond to them as they truly are. When we endeavour to understand persons through the half-formed theories of neuroscience we are tempted to pass over their distinctive features in silence, or else to attribute them to some brain-shaped homunculus inside. For we understand people by facing them, by arguing with them, by understanding their reasons, aspirations and plans. All of that involves another language, and another conceptual scheme, from those deployed in the biological sciences. We do not understand brains by facing them, for they have no face."

I have the argument mentioned in the article all the time, albeit from varying angles. There is a hard dividing line that seems very difficult if not impossible to communicate across. Most of my efforts have been toward finding a way to communicate this that extreme scientific systemizers (in my case, usually those with significant social deficits) will be able to accept, if not understand. The arguments in the comments section of the linked article are all too familiar.

While it may seem unrelated on the surface, I couldn't help but recall Brugger's experiments regarding apophenia and dopamine. Among other things:

"In his July 2002 report, Brugger stated that during the first stage of the experiment the individuals who believed in the paranormal were much more likely to see a face or a word when there was none. The skeptics were more likely to miss the real words and faces when they appeared on the screen."*

The link between patternicity and paranormal beliefs aside, I had noticed something interesting. When trying to communicate the nuances of interpersonal social interaction to these extreme systemizers and analyzers, I was being asked the same questions again and again: How can it be possible to understand another's motivations if it's not explicitly stated? What is the mathematical formula for friendliness? What is "flirting" and why should I believe it exists if I can't perceive it? Feelings are only a neurochemical process, so why should they matter in relationships? Trying to explain that many people experience empathy and emotional attachment feels like trying to tell a skeptic there is a ghost standing behind them.

There was so much missing of what was actually there that I thought of the apophenia experiment. One day I asked, rather frustrated, "when you look at clouds, do you ever think they resemble other things? Like, faces.or horses or ships...anything like that?" The answer was (and almost always has been since) a puzzled no. Clouds look like clouds, those other things are not clouds, so why should there be any resemblance? What's more, people who said they saw such things were either lying or crazy, or perhaps these stories of cloud shapes were just a peasant superstition cherished by the ignorant. Sort of like sasquatch or God.

It might only be anecdotal (and hence unacceptable to those same folks I'm talking about) but such consistency perked my interest. For all the mockery of those who believe in the paranormal (or who experience apophenia, pareidolia, cartocacoethes, synchronicity or what have you) such a consistent absence of such among a group who were not seeing, nor sometimes even believing in things like empathy or social nuance was intriguing. Could it be that detecting patterns plays a not insignificant role in successful social interactions? Thanks to my own tendency toward patternicity, it was pretty easy to see the similarities between the two groups. :p In my estimation, it's not so different from those who would see consciousness as simply a neurobiological process and nothing more, a "brain in a box" more than a whole person.

Personally - in all my crazed, irrational, philosophical unscientific-ness - I don't believe the views (and the theories) of those who are super-rational are the only correct explanations. Nor do I believe those who grab hold of any pattern (or convenient bit of mysticism, or worse, conspiracy) to explain their world are necessarily correct either. However, I do believe (and have been damned many times for saying so) that there is an added level of experience for those who are able to sense something beyond being a bag of water and chemicals, where everything simply corresponds to a precise formula. Being a synesthetic, for instance, I am a great test taker, always have been. Why? Because I'm using several senses to peg the answers in my mind. It's that much easier when you know how the answer tastes, feels, and what color it is. My friend over there, the non-synesthetic, has far less sensory information to help him out. Our experience of the senses and how they affect us is not the same. By the same token, a person who has a feel and understanding of philosophical concepts as well as the scientific is going to have an edge. Just because a person experiences something and you don't, it doesn't always mean they are a fool. Sometimes it only means they have a different experience than you.

Neuroscience has its place and it's an important one to be sure, but more is necessary to help us explain our experience as people.

*I've lost track of the source of this quote. Will find and add later.

Picnic Area #17 or, The Horror of Home

When you have been a strange child, nostalgia is a double edged sword. Walking through the park where you once spent so many hours is fraught with emotion. It's all fine one moment, recalling this bend of the road, the gravel beneath the swings, the water fountain where your hot and tired classmates lined up for a drink. Everything smells the same - the grass, trees and river still have the same sweet scent and you are amazed how much you remember despite having forgotten. When you have been a strange child, though, alongside comes an upwelling of old miseries.

Depression and alienation have effects that are hard to put your finger on. It's not so easy as cataloging a series of events. It means nothing to say. "I felt lonely in this spot" or "the bank of this creek is where I sat crying in despair". These are only expressions of things that happened The real horror is one of perception. Depression is like a wound in the mind

Amid the the sunnier memories, the feel of a nightmare emerges. The dense mat of live oak leaves crunching under my feet makes me nauseous. The webby light coming through the trees feels prickly. There is a yawning horror somewhere that I can't name, only sense its presence. It's here though, and comes back to haunt me in vague, uninterpretable dreams.

I had forgotten about picnic area 17. Reservations Only. It's always been there under the trailing oak branches, despite my forgetting. Snippets of far-off memory emerge - my sister's friends hoping to hide from prying eyes. My schoolmates in our Kindermaskenball costumes playing and clinging to branches like little monkeys in fancy dress, or sharing sodas with other girls whose names have been lost to me. It hardly matters. These are all just descriptions of things that happened. I had forgotten all of that long before yesterday as I was making my way to the springs, when suddenly it was there in front of me. The light coming through the branches was as it had always been, catching me in its sickening web.

There is no reason I can give, only that the wound in my mind makes it so.