an edible four letter word

order of events

grocery shopping; picked up delicacy for impending camping trip (for nostalgia’s sake)  Note: this was in addition to essentials for s’mores.

brought in mail

surprise!

read spiffy, stylish, snazzy, spectacular S newsletter rather than setting it aside “for later”

group mentioned, although without acronym

and I think this was on Jeopardy! last week, too… and none of the contestants answered correctly–but I did

 

distinctive after ducking down the alley

I’m at the mercy of others for rides for awhile. (It’s informal and self-imposed.) The role is one of capitulation when it comes to few and far-between local trips around town: I’m not all pushy about controlling the tunes. So, bye-bye to my preferred grooves, and hello, unknown/later-checked Sunny 101.5. The perfect laboratory setting, though: caught unaware, seconds after we had slowed for several deer to dart across the road at twilight, and this song sounds familiar. “I think I know this song…” Seconds later: You Can Call Me Al–for sure, based on the smiling driver, and courtesy each of my 4 programs. Program 3 allowed for initial recognition, with Program 2 yielding the best capture of range of sounds in the moving vehicle.

Overall, concern about limb weaknesses grew today. But I do hope to be documenting more settings and listening experiences soon–hopefully feeding back on overall strength building. I had the orientation to all this formulated and put into action so well as a late-teen and through early twenties. I recovered it a couple times, but don’t seem to complete what I need to get things to stick before another hit shifts it all again. When you can’t pin it down, you just try to do whatever you can, and keep at it, altering pieces here and there–aware of plenty that you’re missing. Interaction.
Just so there’s no bogging down in better or worse, rather than just different; the aspects and qualities we miss when we judge prematurely…

 

gems and selective memory

Well, yes, it’s all about attention. And having an orientation to the world and experiences that is both particularly pragmatic and thoroughly meaningful.*

We all possess selective memories. Awareness and attention, perception, gets focused–or at least has fuzzy limits at a given moment of time–so as to encompass only so much. We’ll oftentimes acknowledge the variety of material and contradictions represented in such slices and mosaics of memories-of-lived-experiences and social interactions, but memory? Nothing more than our decision to focus attention on a generalized view or impression of a situation, person, environment, or constellation of factors that (which? hehe) come together in the unfolding of our lifetimes. Now, as with everything, we are capable of shaping our impressions sufficiently so that they are reduced to a complete distortion of the actual range of qualities they supposedly represent. What this reflects, however, because it is only a simplification, and now has attempted to distill a very large number of moments and social exchanges (or, alternatively, a–relatively or absolutely–very limited reference pool of the same, is far from many of the momentary constructions we actually used, and communicated, in original/spontaneous engagements. (In the case of limited exchange/s, the construction tends to be more dependent upon generic factors and individual sensitivities.) Oh wait–individual sensitivities is useful even in the longer term: We, and our environments, are changing on several scales at once. There’s the momentary shifts in moods and basics. Then we have “phases” that get recognized when more moments accumulate. And then, I suppose, the image of how those phases add up to produce who and what we are, once again, /in the moment/.

If we acknowledge the selective character of memory, enacted as a temporal process, we then see how much the act of remembering says about the actor eliciting and invoking memories. We can all recall positive, neutral, and negative aspects of the people, places, things, and ideas we (have) encounter (encountered). Where we choose to place the emphasis sends a signal of its own–and initiates other loops.** When we choose to empathize and confer the benefit-of-the-doubt, rather than construct an illusory tower of assumptions to fill in blanks, we open a discursive field that allows for deeper levels of mutual understanding.

* Read: receptive orientation.

** Incomplete, but wrapping it up for this moment, because I’ve already pushed through a few physiologically-generated stop signals.

 

What’s your favorite color, baby?”

Or, alternatively, what color were you wearing on November 4, 2008?

I was wearing purple. I don’t know if that blog post of mine is still just a draft, or if I finally posted it, but I thought of the gist of it again: Purple nation.

I have a new lucky shirt. And I am actively reclaiming an irreducible entity.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. ~ Dalai Lama

And the load in the dryer’s done.