Impossible Flight

It seems easy to imagine a planet where gravity was too strong, and the atmosphere too thin, to allow the evolution of flight. The principle of aerodynamic lift that allows air flowing over a wing to create sufficient lift to overcome gravity and create flight is dependent on the givens of the gravity of earth and the weight it gives to objects, and the density of the atmosphere and the mass of the air flowing over the wing. There must be a point where where the speed of airflow caused by flapping a wing would create insufficient lift for flight: a jet engine might still create enough thrust for flight, but birds and flying insects could not evolve.

If you assume that life must have evolved elsewhere too; that somewhere in the trillions and trillions of other planets in the universe there must be other sentient beings (but so impossibly far away that we will never, never know them), then it seems probable, and perhaps a certainty, that somewhere, sometime, a 'person' or 'people' have lived their entire history without even considering traveling through the air.

One can easily imagine the circumstances, but not so easily the mindset of the person who lives in those circumstances. It is difficult to believe that flight would be non-existent in their thoughts, but without the examples of birds and insects, how would they think to try it? And if the thought ever did cross their minds, the jump required to Jet Engine amounts of thrust would be impossible to make and simple experiments would fail so miserably, the thought must die immediately.

Perhaps imagination might bring to them the idea of a Superman style of fantastic flying, akin to weightlessness, but would flapping ones arms ever enter their head? No. As long as they lived solely on that world, winged flight would never occur to them.

Conclusion: One of the best parts of believing solely in evolution and natural causes is that it then becomes perfectly reasonable to think that Earth might NOT be the perfect setting for sentient life. We often assume it is a garden of Eden specfically designed, or luckily formed, to be the perfect environment for our existence. But what if it isn't? What if Earth is only marginably habitable and on different planets sentient life forms can do things we on Earth can only imagine in the crudest of ways, if at all? If our imaginary denizens of the flightless planet can evolve to intelligence and think themselves complete and powerful without flight, what equally impactful possibility for ourselves are we failing to even imagine because local conditions don't support it?

Questions: Is it true that the heavy world inhabitants wouldn't imagine winged flight? The principle of lift would still be evident in a sail or rudder of a boat - would they discover the principle and apply it to the idea of flight?

What are the boundary ranges of gravity and atmospheric density required for a bird to fly?

The power of an indefinite article

"I really don't give a shit, Dwayne."

"Fine, keep your shit."

"What?"

"This shit that you may or may not be giving, I don't want it. It's all yours baby."

"Don't give me shit, Dwayne, I'm mad at you."

"Oh, so you don't want my shit, but you expect me to be upset that you aren't giving me your shit?"

"It's not 'my shit', its 'a shit.' I don't give a shit."

"If it's not your shit, whose shit is it? And why would you adopt such a self-rightgeous tone about whether or not I would want you to give this non-specific shit to me?"

"Its a metaphor, you son of a bitch!"

"You're gross."

Pain is the Ante

As my three children filed past me up the stairs I implored them, “Please! Do what you mother says . . . or there’s going to be a beating tonight!” And they just looked at me with those sad brown eyes, as if to say “Dear Father, we thank you for your kind nature, and your positive attitude, but we simply cannot fall asleep unless we’ve had a good beating!”

-Bill Cosby, Himself

If you want to experience Bill’s emotions as he futilely attempted to intervene in his wife and children’s tempestuous bed-time ritual, try telling a woman in love not to do something because “You’re going to get hurt.” Of course she’s going to get hurt; you know it, she knows it, he knows it.

Pain is the Ante of Love. You can’t play the game without putting hurt on the table. Play for peanuts and it’s not even a game, it’s just an exercise in probabilities – dull, pointless, dry. Only when the stakes are high do the juices start to flow.

Someone’s going to get hurt. Of course! Small time players swap little piles of hurt back and forth until the constant sting becomes too much. Passionate players bet wildly on weak cards – as thrilled to lose as to win. Eventually, we all play and the chips are always cashed even if it takes death to end the game.

Pain is a given, a sunk cost; forget about the chips. Play to win? “Count your money while you’re sitting at the table?” Play the odds? No. You play the man. Look, listen, feel. Connect across the gulf and read his hand from the way he blinks. Play for the thrill, play for the moment, play because there is nothing else. Bet it all just to see her eyes fill.

Conclusions from Insufficient Data

From time to time a random thing will happen that, on its own, would be unremarkable and soon forgotten but instead forges a new connection to other random experiences and results in Insight. As I was walking out of Ken’s, our corner market, the middle aged black man who was washing the windows called after my retreating back,

“Hey. Nice shoes.”

On the face of it, this is clearly nothing to blog about. One might even read a desperate sort of loneliness into me for having even taken note of it, but wait, let me explain:

People don’t talk to me. I am not one of those people with such an open, friendly countenance that random people end up telling me their life stories in the checkout line. I walk through the world with a sort of formal, distracted coldness that generally keeps everyone but clerks and con-men from bothering to speak to me. This is just my nature: I am either actively thinking about something else and simply running my body on auto-pilot (which did not come with the ‘friendly expression’ expansion pack), or I am aware of the people around me and desperately hoping to avoid useless small talk.

As an aside, one of my greatest tools in avoiding random conversation is the Man Nod: brief eye-contact and a quick downward jerk of the chin*. This masculine code is one of the less respected foundational elements of modern civilization. Millions of times a day, men in casual to semi-formal meetings exchange the Man Nod and accomplish two simultaneously critical objectives: A) we ‘recognize’ each other as human in the Hegelian sense and avoid the need to engage in mortal combat to prove that we do not, indeed, fear death, and B) we avoid having to talk about the weather, road conditions, how we are “doing”, or even exchange names that we will soon forget **. The Man Nod is a critical tool for maintaining my personal space whilst outside.

So for someone to speak to me despite my carefully honed force shield of cool aloofness is, indeed, mentionably odd. As was the timing of his comment; I had passed him at the entrance and was at least ten feet down the sidewalk before he spoke. Clearly, this was no garrulously outgoing fool, constantly

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­*Not to be mistaken for the Bro Nod; a quick upward jerk of the chin which confirms pre-existing friendship and carries a vague “I’ll kick your ass (at some sport, or approximation of sport) later” connotation.

** Women are not sufficiently appreciative of the Man Nod. If those poor school boys in The Lord of the Flies had only had the opportunity to learn the Man Nod from their fathers before being castaway on that island they could have avoided all of that unpleasantness and politely, but distantly, awaited rescue. Women think that we are not participating in the critical civilizational glue of “communication” when we Nod, but if they only knew that, to us, having to say “Cold enough for ya?” one more time in our life vs. dropping a giant rock on this stranger's head is along the lines of a six on one hand, half a dozen on the other situation, they would be a bit more grateful for our Nodding.

scanning his environment for a chance to compliment strangers and ‘connect.’ If that had been the case, he would have said something as I approached him. Nor was he a regular employee of the store trying, and failing, to perform an Operating Procedures mandated, Wall-Mart style, loyalty accreting Customer Greeting; I know a sub-contractor when I see one.

No, the moment for ‘connecting’ had passed, I had left the ‘territory’ of the store, and the comment was awkward. Something had forced him past his own manly reticence and expelled this gobbet of appreciation at my retreating, indifferent back. There is only one force on earth that could have driven him from his own mental work space, breached his self-wrought autonomy, and emasculated him enough to share his feelings: Love.

Love and Guilt

There is no question that my shoes are nice. I first saw them in the fall of 2002 at a men’s specialty boutique in Bothell. The warm glow of the reddish brown leather, the supple weaving of thin leather strips that separate the toe from the instep, the simple, masculine shape; I lingered over them covetously and actually considered the $320 price tag. My clothes horse of a brother-in-law bought two pairs of them for himself that Christmas, one in the brown, one in black. That he bought a pair in black is merely evidence to how beautiful the brown were: in black, they were just a nice shoe, way too expensive for a nice pair of black shoes. The only justification for buying the black pair was that they honored the beauty of the brown. In other words, the brown were so wonderful they loaned glamour to an otherwise pedestrian black version that would never have justified $320 on its own. I both despised my brother-in-law for wasting the money on the black pair, and respected his dedication to the wonderment of the brown by buying the black just for that tiny reflected amount more of the brown they brought him.

For myself, $320 was too much to spend on a pair of shoes and I passed them by that fall, and that spring, and then in the fall again. I really don’t get to Bothell that often, and I think I may have just been visiting the shoes. My wife eventually took pity on me and bought them for me as a gift, thus laying the sin of prideful spending on her soul, not mine. Thanks Jess!

Unfortunately, attached to the purchase of beautiful expensive things comes an immediate burden of caretaker guilt. You spent so much on it, it’s so pretty, and yet entropy will win in the end and you know this! Something will happen to mar it’s perfection and it will be your fault! When I purchased my first new car at the age of 25 I spent several nights prior to picking it up daydreaming about bringing a hammer to the dealership and putting the first ding in it right then and there -- just to get it over with!

I tried to maintain the shoes, I did! I’m just not that handy. I own some shoe polishing tools, but I don’t know how to use them. I’ve always taken my shoes to a shoe repair shop when they needed shining. I knew this new pair, (Allen Edmonds is the brand, the model isn’t made anymore), would last for years and look beautiful the whole time if I just took good care of them. So, I tried. I took them in to be shined a couple of times in the first few years. But I just don’t spend much time thinking about my things and the only time I remember they need to be cared for is when I put them on – which is too late!

So by now the tips of my wonderful shoes are distinctly scuffed. They look unloved and I have guilt. I get compliments on them and in my mind it sounds like, “Nice shoes. Too bad you don’t take care of them.” Sigh.

Black Men Love my Shoes

And it’s not just the window washer at Ken’s! Two years ago I was on the University of Washington Tacoma Branch campus when my magic cloud of absent-minded indifference failed me in the same way. Once again I had drifted past a black man in a blue collar job, a security guard this time, without really registering him in any way. Once again he called after me, “Hey man. Those are some nice shoes!” He was a bit younger and a bit friendlier, he followed up by asking me what brand they were, so it did not seem quite such a breach of protocol on his part. I could easily imagine him making small talk with folks all over campus as he went through his day, so by itself this incident was not overly striking. But put the two incidences together . . .

Actually, I have no idea what this means. I really don’t know very many black people and am horrifically ignorant of African American culture and why these two men would break the silence I impose about myself to compliment this particular pair of shoes. I’m pretty sure I own other nice things, and I’m sure other people have spoken to me randomly without making any impression on me whatsoever. But as I walked away from Ken’s that day my mental reader board was flashing: BLACK MEN. THESE SHOES. WHAT IS THE CONNECTION????

ViperSnake

Today Clara asked if, when you become a big kid and go to pre-school, you could choose your own name and have your old one just be your baby name.

"What name would you choose for yourself, Clara" I asked?

"Umm, Elizabeth? Or Olivia?" she replied.

Dash chimes in, "I would pick ViperSnake!"

Man Talk

Upon asking a small child three times to repeat himself it is simply your job as the adult to figure it out. Zephyrous was over for a playdate with Dash and had emerged from happy occupation in the playroom to seek me out and ask me a question. Zeph is an abstract/utilitarian boy born of delightfully abstract/utilitarian parents (his father, Calico, currently sports purple hair, both parents are in the 'artistically employed' sub-group, and their home is a wonderful playground of creative semi-squalor that makes me want to go crazy with a ball of twine and a glue-gun and model a Tessaract on the spot), overall the kind of people who are a delight to me and sure to figure strongly in Dash's future friend choices.

So I figure I'm having a Moment of Importance as my eyes glaze and I feverishly review the string of syllables Zeph has thrice repeated, desperately decoding for english phenomes. Zeph, with his blonde hair, big eyes and highwater jeans with the knees completely ripped out revealing some equally tattered red jammy pants underneath, simply stares at me in my mute bafflement, sure that I am simply being an abstract parent who does not always respond directly to clear inputs. I know from observation that Zeph's speech often requires de-coding, not just to understand the words, but to unearth the meaning and intent behind it. I fear that if I find him completely incomprehensible in this moment it will be a significant step on the path of his deciding that 'other people' are just no fun to talk to because they 'just don't get me.' I see a lifetime of unexpressed thoughts stretching out before him.

Unfortunately, I am still at a complete loss as to what on earth he may have just said, so I fall back on the in-utterably lame but statistically probable guesses of "Are you hungry? Do you need to go to the bathroom?" I have a fraction of a second to note that my responses, while obviously completely wrong, are so far off from his train of thought that he has barely understood me in return and his face has therefore not fallen into that sad depressive state of self-acknowledged outsidership I feared, before Dash saves the day by clearly shouting from the other room, "He wants you to open the Treasure Chest!"

This brings a happy conclusion to the event as it gives birth to a manly display of hand-strength and 'technology' usage on my part to open the plastic Treasure Chest and give access to the desired pirate crew within. I emerge as a useful Dad, and the playdate continues on without psychological damage. As men we have both failed and triumphed as communicators and can only be glad that there were no women around to make fun of us.

Why Sons are the Best: Part I

1. Five year olds are just the right height to play Yoda to my Dooku in Rocky Horror Picture Show-esque simultaneous movie-viewing/live re-enactments of epic lightsaber duels.

2. They see a pile of unstacked firewood and are inspired to build a robot, complete with instruction booklet, out of wood scaps.

3. The educational opportunities of watching Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher" video together.

4. The other morning when the three of us (Clara, Dash and I) were having a quiet breakfast together when all of the sudden, out of nowhere, Dash says, "It's weird . . . It's weird . . . It's weird . . . It's weird . . . It's weird . . ."

"Dash!" I interject, "Finish the sentence!"

"It's weird," he concludes "that in Star Wars they don't go potty."

5. On the beach in Tahoe I was putting sunscreen on him when I noticed he had put his swimsuit on over his boxer briefs. I kind of laughed at him to myself and loved him for being an absent-minded rational and then stripped him down right there on the beach so we could keep his underpants dry. Later, as I waded in to go swimming myself, I noticed that my own swimsuit felt funny. Sure enough, a quick inspection revealed that I too had slipped my swim trunks on over my boxer briefs. I considered dropping trou right there on the beach too, as a punishment for my own hubris in mocking Dash (even in my mind) but was too cowardly and instead discreetly handled it in the bathroom.