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Meeting Sig proved a disappointment. An academic, he talked a lot. Too much. By far.

Having recently used my mother’s dislike of certain “who” persons in her life. I could point to equal numbers where a “who” gets an auto-pass of approval. Both responses questionable to me who (a pun?) normally puts what well ahead of who. But that’s just my wrongheaded way and can be swept aside. Or can it?

Not caring much about the who side of things signals what? A lack of socialization?

Sounds good to me, as a great deal of socializing strikes me as noisy and boring and a waste of effort. And maybe there’s a risk that less socialization means less compassion.

My old friend, Marge, often wished people to the knacker’s yard, a sentiment I neither approved or fought. Well at least I’d have waved goodbye. Maybe.

Who says or supports something matters, but how much?

When I encounter “Experts Warn” (say, predict, etc.) I replace the weight of “expert” with “paid source.” I may be completely wrong doing so, but I give prostitutes, actors, politicians and experts roughly equal moral weight.

A whore’s promise runs on an hourly basis. Time’s up. Next!

Can you imagine how happy was I to leave junior high behind, and with it the continual false excitements of who said what to whom and what it all meant (or more likely didn’t)? I thought and found it exhausting to daily confront the latest-greatest in angst and drama. I’d sometimes participate (can’t lick ‘em join ‘em) but came the day on  foot, bike or Jeep I had to find a stand of pines to sit under to hear nature’s voice come over the millennia and beyond.

Thing about nature, see, is it works without claim or promise. Might be sunny. Might not. Might catch a fish. Might not. Might rain like hell. Be ready for that.

And so on. As a stabilizer, I used nature, going out of my way to walk through certain clumps of trees (since urbanely renewed or arboreally cleansed) to catch a scent of conifer on the otherwise civilized campus.

A salute to Sig Olson, I never got through a quarter (in the quarter vs semester system) at the U. without a copy of Listening Point (among others of his) to remind me of the line between artificial and real.

Meeting Sig proved a disappointment. An academic, he talked a lot. Too much. By far.

Is it, was it necessary to fill every blank space with some noise or other? A howler monkey may like that life. Not me. Be where you are when you’re there. To do so will mean shutting up to observe, sniff, listen and feel.

In canoe guiding days I frequently had to kick people out of Peoria. (I pick on Peoria for no reason but phonics.)

“If you wonder so much about what people are doing in Peoria taking a trip in canoe country was a mistake.”

If that tail boot didn’t work, a direct “Quiet down and pay attention to the waves” could be used. It usually took three days, half the typical canoe trip, before people stopped fretting over Peoria and began connecting with where they were.

We people are like that, aren’t we? You think, maybe?

More than a little. Maybe too much. The other day I was in a waiting room where most of the occupants were fixed like iron filings to the magnetism of a tiny screen with a fake world of reality. Reforming the habits of others is not my game or aim, but I wonder at the consequence of so many so often being other than where they are.

A person is supposed to have told Picasso they preferred realism in art to abstraction. Later when showing Picasso a photo of their fiancé, Picasso is supposed to have asked “Is she that small?”

Life is large. Screens and photos are small. They are smaller still when the little image blocks out most all else. There’s something going on.

Not sure what or how to frame it, but if I’m in a crowd and see someone navigating toward me with a phone screen forward as a priority and make-way shield. I stop. Their marginal awareness kicks in and they step around. You might try it. Interesting (to me) as the ethologist eye flash (also worth trying).

A variant on not being where you are when you’re there is the ever-present knowledge of what’s not known. Very entertaining.

Once when showing a house for sale to a personage (person highly aware of their importance) I didn’t know of (I don’t know most people, so pretty much standard) we got to a pickled (pickling was once a common paint treatment) hallway where the prospect fled (not an exaggeration) issuing warnings of faulty construction. House would fall on our heads.

It didn’t. Hasn’t. But any case, got an important update on structural painting about which I did not know. Personage bought a different house. Thank God I wasn’t involved.

Another personage expert in things not known looked long down nose (I know that look) at a 100-year-old outhouse and declared with swipe of hand, “Ugly. Must go.” Topic covered, they went on to sneer at other issues.

Funny how they instantly saw all. Four one-inch pine boards made the lean-to ceiling. Only four. The door of light poles didn’t sag and was covered in large slabs of birch bark. Lacking a bench, this “convenience” had its throne formed of eight well fitted boards topped with round seat and lid. Evidence of two systems for alerting anyone approaching of “in use” was also there.

The perfect and perfected eye of the personage took all that (and more) in at a glance and departed knowing all there was.

Speaking for self alone, if a simple outhouse is built well enough to go a hundred years it might be worth a second look, maybe, if for nothing else as example of resources used lastingly and well. But to a personage looking for ugly that, don’t you know, is what they find, what they get, and likely what is well deserved.