My mental circus, inside and out.

There's something about contentedness that does not breed blog posts.  As Bodhidharma said, your true nature is wherever language doesn't go. But we live in a talkative time.

Emma heard a very interesting show on NPR on Sunday, on the sleepy drive back from her sister's big Easter Sunday farm dinner. That was like going back to the 40s or the 50s, with her sister's child in a cowboy hat and holster romping around shooting everyone, even if they put their hands up.  "That's the influence of George Bush," Emma said. "He likes John Wayne movies," her big beefy brother-in-law replied.   Maks was into it, even though around Emma's house  aaaaaaaaaaaaar pirates  is the game of choice.   Emma was too tired, way too tired, from the all night partying at the barrister's ball, for which, for the first time in her life, she got a manicure.  She still feels faintly embarrassed about her pink nails, the kind of pink that matches mucuos membranes, as if her fingers were now too revealing.  Horsh loved that, he kissed her fingers one by one as he stood there in a tuxedo with a silver tie.  Before getting to all the other pinks in the way that Horsh does so well  and so energetically for a 54-year-old Republican, or for anyone for that matter.    Let's just say that it's worth painting your nails for, even if you can't really have a serious conversation about Obama's race speech.

But Emma digresses (as good sex will make you do).  So this show, Radio Lab, on NPR was about DNA .  One segment was about a woman who is a "chimera."  In her mother's womb, she absorbed the body of her twin, so that when she, in turn, had children, they were not from her DNA.  Another segment was on the evolution of single-celled organisms, how they leaked helpful DNA and how this DNA was absorbed by other organisms.  For example, one cell could have had DNA that helped it withstand cold temperatures and then this was leaked into and replicated by another organism.  So the point was that this was not survival of the fittest, but rather community.

 

 

 

Posted by: EmmaPele at March 26, 2008 19:15 | link | comments (4)

A Conversation

Emma and Horsh are sitting out in his car, in her driveway,  talking about personal life tragedies, and she asks him, "So have you had any?"  He says that the breakup of his marriage was his greatest tragedy. 

Emma asks, "Did you learn anything about yourself during that time?"

He says, "My wife did not like the fact that I never wore jeans.  She didn't like it that I went to a meeting on Thursday nights."

Emma says, "But I mean, did you change any?  Did you think about how you contributed to the situation?"

He says, "I did realize that my wife was traumatized by her father, who had an affair when she was a teenager."

Emma says,  "But I mean *you."  Did you engage in any self-reflection?"

Horsh looks baffled. He asks, "Why?"

Hmm, well.  Emma supposes there are many people like this, who can't see any reason to engage in what all Catholics know how to do because they all learn St. Augustine's dictum,  "This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections. " And then Socrates, "An unexmined life is not worth living."  As a person who is obsessively self-reflective,  Emma tries to imagine what it would be like not to be. Emma can't even imagine what would go on in a mind like that, a mind that never turns back on itself.  Still, as Alan Watts points out, "You can't see your own eyes. You can't bite your own teeth."  And so perhaps you can't see your own self anyway.

Posted by: EmmaPele at March 10, 2008 04:45 | link | comments (5)