I Don't Feel Like It

I know what I need to do, but I don't feel like it. And I will never feel like it. I will do it. It's not hard. It's not a big deal. It will just take time. I just wish that I could get it in my head that life would be so much easier if I just did stuff sooner instead of later.

The list of things that I might actually feel like doing is very short. If I were to limit my activities to this list, I would quickly become homeless.

Two Great Downers

Last week, after devouring The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao indigestible references and all, I saw The Wrestler.

If I ever read Junot Diaz's first novel again, I can refer to http://www.alizahausman.net/2008/12/oscar-wao-vocabulary-dictionary.html for the Spanish.

I'm proud to say that I only covered my eyes once during The Wrestler.

Poop, Actually

Last night, while I was on the phone with MJP, I heard him suddenly cry out in horror. He had discovered that what had looked like chocolate was actually a piece of his daughter's feces. Apparently, she'd missed that bit of poop when she tried to wipe herself. It fell off when she was getting undressed.

This is just one of many little moments with MJP's little Rock Star that remind me how complicated life is and how much we have to learn just to be baseline functional. If you think about it, wiping your own ass is very tricky. Knowing your ass from your elbow is not a trivial matter when all of your parts are new and your brain is still growing. In fact, the whole process of civilized personal waste disposal requires dozens of complex motor and self regulation skills--recognizing that your bladder is full or that you will soon have a bowel movement, accepting that you have to stop whatever fascinating thing you are doing and go to the bathroom, aiming, wiping, not getting freaked out by the powerful vortex that is the flushing toilet, washing hands, etc.

The toilet is just one of many challenges facing this pre-school Rock Star. Not only are people constantly interrupting her important projects for trivial things like meals and baths. Social standards are constantly shifting. MJP lets the Rock Star know that Grandpa might find her burps charming, but the rest of the world is not amused. She is still figuring out when it is acceptable to throw punches, shake her butt, talk about penises, and raise her voice. Maybe all you other adults out there answered such questions for yourselves long ago, but I still haven't.

Self expression can be a challenge, too. What is the right balance between following your personal vision and communicating with the audience? The Rock Star is not so thrilled about the fact that only three horizontal strokes go in the letter E. "It might be a lot cooler with more strokes, but then it wouldn't be an E. And people won't be able to figure out what you're trying to write." Whatever, she seems to say with a bored tilt of the head.

Can't I work and play well without paying the tax of sleeping and eating nutritious food? Can't someone just carry me any time I don't feel like walking? Can't I have whatever it is I want now and in any quantity I desire? Can't I control my feelings at will?

No, no, no, and no. Sorry, honey. Many adults I've met haven't come to terms with these answers, so I have to remember to cut the Rock Star some slack. It can be frustrating, but watching a kid coming to terms with these problems makes me feel a lot more compassion and humility for kids and grown-ups.

Lying, Insanity, etc.

I just happened to find a bunch of writings by scientist and Huffington Post blogger Dan Agin that relate to the doodoo head problems. Agin wonders at the persistence of falsehoods and appears to share my suspicions about lying, insanity, and psychological/physiological difference. I hope Agin's examples will clarify what I'm trying to talk about (even though I suspect a few of you will have problems with him). Here, he is writing about persistent falsehoods that continue to feed massive violence. My comments are in italics:

Why do tribal hoax myths continue to be revived after burial? One explanation is that such myths are merely justifications for the exploitation of ethnic groups at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy. (Lying) Another explanation is that researchers interested in promoting racist myths can often find private funds to support them. (Lying, self-deception) Or maybe it's a psychiatric problem characteristic of some researchers and their media puffers, a particular line of personality development with succinct causes in childhood or even earlier (Insanity, self-deception, psychological/physiological difference). Whatever the origins, the myths keep returning.

Now that's what I'm talking about!

I'll admit that beyond turning the questions over and over in my mind, I haven't looked into why people disagree, misunderstand each other, or hold false beliefs in any systematic way (at least not since college). In fact, I may put more effort into not thinking about these questions than I have applied to trying to answer them. There are great gobs of writings on these questions that I don't know. Yet, here's this Agin asking the same questions as if the answers still need to be found and can be found. Believe it or not, opinionated as I am, I try to avoid intractable disagreements and tend to roll my eyes at any efforts to school people who put forth wacky notions, as MJP will tell you.

Varying degrees and aspects of doodoo headedness

This blog post contains good examples of what I meant by "varying degrees and aspects of doodoo headedness."

Disagreement and Doodoo Heads

Here's a problem that I think about all the time. It has troubled me for years.

Some people who disagree with me are doodoo heads and some are not. If a person who disagrees with me is not a doodoo head and I am not a doodoo head, then why do we disagree? What blocks our understanding?

Here are some possible explanations.

-Lying
-Insanity or some kind of self-deception
-Some kind of psychological/physiological difference, perhaps brought on by experience, that effects the ability to perceive or even imagine certain things
-Varying degrees and aspects of doodoo headedness

Does disagreement about the crappyness of the movie Armageddon function the same way as disagreement about the stupidity of Prop 8?

Are my personal dislikes on the same spectrum as my value system? I hope not. I work hard to make it not so. I bristle when people confuse style with politics, or morality with taste.

In many cases, I can safely throw hands up, say, "Those people are stupid ... er...uh...mistaken," and be done with it. But since we're all stuck in this world together, doodoo heads and all, effecting each others lives, I can't throw my hands up as often as I'd like to.

My Haircut Phobia

Didn't Mr. Rogers have a song to help kids overcome their fear of haircuts?

I am a grown-up. I know my hair is dead and contains no nerves. Still, I am afraid of haircuts and the pain they cause. I cannot recall being satisfied with any haircut. The best emotion I can expect following a haircut is akin to what I feel while doing the laundry, a deep, dull resignation. Usually I feel cheated. At worse I feel like some kind of failure.

It's gotten so bad that I would rather have no hairstyle at all than get my hair cut regularly. But that will not do. There's no reason for me to have the hair of the undecided.

Restless, Unaccomplished Reader

This is one of the more boring parts of my day, the hour between Newshour and whatever the hell comes on at 8 p.m. How sad is it that I haven't found something better to do with myself most weekday evenings? How bad do I feel asking you to read about it?

BOOKS I HAVEN'T READ LATELY
Yesterday, I started to read The Soloist, this year's One Book One Philadelphia book which I checked out from the library. It's okay. Frankly but not surprisingly, it reads like a newspaper column. The language doesn't challenge the reader or the author, but it's functional. I'm so bored, I might finish reading it. I think I'd rather be reading that Junot Diaz novel, but I haven't gotten around to buying it yet. (Why am I going to buy the Diaz and not the other book? I only like to buy reference books and classics, and I rarely pay retail for them. Sometimes I feel guilty for not buying more books. My mother and her sisters buy books like mad, and in hardcover. I feel like I ought to actually buy at least one work of recent fiction, and that Diaz looks worthy. I gave up reading Falling Man, not because there was something wrong with it, but because I just couldn't bring myself to get into reading 911 fiction. Now that book is overdue. I couldn't bring myself to read beyond the beginning of What is the What because I didn't want to deal with that horror either, but for different reasons. One horror has been played over and over again, the other is relegated to side bars.

Things will be better when there's more daylight.

Mixed Morning

As I walked to work this morning, I saw a dog and it made me smile. It was like drinking a magical tonic.

A few moments later, I read a horrible headline in the student paper. I knew that kid. And it maybe shallow to mention it, but I did nag him at least once about his excesses. Of course I had no idea it would lead to a worst case scenario, a chain of choice and bad luck. Young people seem full of promise, but there are no promises, only hopes, and neither promise nor hope can overcome the limits of human bodies.

I Wonder

I wonder if anyone is reading this blog anymore. I never bothered adding tracking widgets, so comments are my only gauge.