Questions and Minutiae for a Thursday Morning

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Questions

Is it peculiar that I have been finding a lot of the things on HelloGiggles really interesting? I mean this spinach and zucchini tostada looks delicious. For those of you who don't know, HelloGiggles is one of the projects of my manic pixie dream girl future ex wife, Zooey.

I know that at least one other friend has this issue, but does anyone else think that bags of Goldfish Crackers are essentially a single serving? Is it me?

Is it wrong that I feel a weird amount of pride when my useless snark is the featured comment on AoA?

Did Ian Mackaye's 50th birthday make you feel really old too?


With Pat Summitt retiring, does that mean that Gino is the ultimate winner? (Does it also mean that we, as a culture, can stop caring about NCAA Women's Basketball?)

Finally

This made me literally laugh out loud.

What is the first thing you do in the morning?

Sara* asked an interesting question this morning:

What is the first thing you do in the morning?

Off the cuff, I answered "Put my glasses on", which is generally true. But...is it always true?

I need my glasses most of the time, and my face feels naked without them. (Off topic: Am I the only person who keeps three pairs of glasses on his nightstand and just grabs the pair nearest to him? The benefits of not having the prescription change in over eighteen years.)

Was it true this morning? I think the first thing I did when I woke up was put my glasses on and started my morning necessities. (I recently re-read Portis' "True Grit" and I love the use of the word "necessary" to describe the...well...necessary.) But did I check my iPhone for e-mail first? I know I checked it when I woke up at 5:30, but then I went back to sleep? For someone who sleeps in fits and starts (like me) what counts as the first thing you do in the morning?

Then it hit me.

The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is feel a little surprised that I made it through the night, and realize that the dreams I had the night before were nothing but dreams.

*Sara is Social Momentum and she is brilliant if you are looking for new media help.

My perception is my reality

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves. - Aldous Huxley

(NB: This may run counter to other things I have written over the years, and it probably does, but what can one say? While I strive for consistency, I also recognize that as I get older, the less sure I am about what I know, and more open to an evolution of ideas.)

Over the past couple of weeks, I have had a number of interactions where my perception of a situation was different from what other's perception was. This is not to say my perception was incorrect, thereby my reality, but that the empirical information that I was working from was incomplete (possibly through my own fault, though no interaction exists in a vacuum) and my parsing of available data was flawed because the dataset was incomplete. So, with all these failures/holes in my knowledge and understanding, does this mean that my knowledge was not empirically gained but based on supposition? Is my knowledge of my interactions therefore synthetic a priori?

Why is this a big deal? (Or as someone else has stated: "Get to the point!")

I guess the point is that I have always (often enough to be always) depended on how I see the world to help maintain my clarity of vision, content in the belief that when someone says something, they mean it, and when I witness something, it is free of subtext and therefore the truth. But...

(and that is a huge but. Ginormous. Put white pants on that but and you have a suitable place to show Casablanca)

What if I am wrong?

If I am wrong, I have made decisions based on something (my reality) so flimsy that it becomes an excuse rather than a decision making tool?

Why am I putting this out there? Well, part of it is so that I know that I can admit when I was mistaken, and part of it is to ask if I am alone in making these suppositions about actions and reactions. Would I be a hypocrite if I denied it?

(And, yes...if you are wondering if these are the voices that I hear at three in the morning, this is what they are...or part of it.)

I am looking for answers where none exist and asking questions that cannot be answered.

This is the very definition of futility, is it not?

Questions about friendship...

I have been thinking about friendship and relationships with friends a lot over the past month and I have some...questions and musings about them...

• Do you trust your friends implicitly? If they lose your trust, is it easier to no longer be friends with them than to try to get it to return?
• Can you tell your friends everything and when you do, do you expect mockery as well as concern?
• Do you expect candor from your friends, even when they tell you things that you won't like hearing?
• Is the nature of friendship such that it is forever even when you are no longer in contact with each other?
• Has social media made friendship better or more difficult to maintain?

On books and reading

While doing some legwork for the Beers and Books, I headed down to Market Block Books to ask if they would be okay with me recommending them as the official indie book store of this (hopefully these) events.

While there, I asked for recommendations for books for these events.

Stan recommended Birds in Fall by Brad Kessler.

Let me say that Stan made a wonderful recommendation. It was a stunningly good book, and I have read quite a few 9-11 novels (and make no mistake, this is what it is) and I have never felt the pathos quite the same way in any of the other novels that I have read.

My issue was not with the book, but with the discussion questions provided by the "Reading Group Guide".

Here was the one that set me off:

8. After months of taking care of people in the aftermath of the crash, Kevin is tired and frustrated. "Why all this fuss for people who died so publicly - so spectacularly - in a flash, when there was nothing for the thousands who died agonizingly slow, alone, shunned inside their rooms?...All the friends in New York City he'd watched die and no one cared?...Yet Douglas, who was too young to have experienced those years in New York, needed to talk" (p. 179). What is Kevin referring to in this passage? How does Kevin's past experience as a caretaker for the dying influence his reaction to the plane crash? Discuss the very different ways Kevin and Douglas responded to the crash.

Just to give you the briefest background on the two characters mentioned.

When the book begins, Kevin is 52, and he and his partner Douglas (aged 40) have moved to Nova Scotia to start an inn, from New York City.

The book takes place around 2001, based on the timeline established.

So...readers...

What is Kevin talking about?

Do you really have to ask? Do you really have to think about it?

Did the assistant who created these questions really think that the people who read this book would have to have it spelled out for them?

This is lit-fiction, not Twilight.

I could go off on a real rant, but I would spoil the book and I do not want to do that.