storyteller

We meet him at the corner. He sees us looking at the house and says, "You want to buy that house? Let me tell you about that house." He says, "I used to live in that house". The girls up the street call out and he waves back.

He says, "I teach kung fu, and I've never been defeated in a match. That's over 300 matches in the United States. But I've been disqualified 157 times due to broken bones." Later on he forgets, and it's karate instead. He says, "My cousin died in that house."

He says, "You know why that house is empty? There was a fire. That house burned. A girl burned that house trying to kill me. She was on drugs."

He says, "That house, it's like, what, that Adams Family house? It's bigger on the inside. Looks small from out here, but inside it's very roomy. It's very nice. All these houses, they were build in the 1800's. Solid houses."

He says, "I work at the Cancer Center. I live in Edison now, but I come back here during the day to visit my family, my friends. I grew up just down the block. See that row of houses? Count 10 windows in. That's where I grew up." He says, "they call me Kung Fu Al."

He tells us, "If you do buy that house and you move up here, just do me a favor. Don't go down that way." He points. He walks us to the corner. "This is good, people seeing me with you. They'll leave you alone while I'm here. But whatever you do, please, don't go down to Monticello." We agree.

He says, "I used to love that house. Let me tell you about the basement. Down there, it's very big. And the floors - they're marble. I'm not talking marble tiles. I'm talking slabs. Big slabs, like this size. There's a jacuzzi tub in the back corner. That used to be my thing. I'd just leave the lights off, if you know what I mean. Yeah, you know what I mean."

The realtor pulls up. We have to go. We thank him. And he says, "Good luck, guys. One thing, you know, I hate to ask you. My truck's around the corner, but I need about $6 to get myself going. If you don't have six, anything would be great." We say sorry, we don't have any cash. He leaves, waving, saying, "Nice meeting you guys. And remember, whatever you do, don't go down that way."

short

I had it in mind to write something long today, but my time turns out to be short. Which sort of reminds me of what Hobbes thought of man's life (or at least man's life if not lived the Hobbesian way) - "nasty, brutish and short". Yes, I had to look this up, and it's from The Leviathan. I think there has to be a joke in there someplace. Was Hobbes, perhaps, nasty, brutish and short himself? Or could it be the name of a law firm? The Law Offices of Nasty, Brutish and Short. No? Ok, maybe not.

However. It may be true that as we age we become these things. Gravity pulls us down. Society grates on us. Desperation makes us unkind. Our faces, as we age, settle into the expressions we make most, and so many of us will spend our old age in a permanent scowl. Low to the ground. Frowning. Defensive. Ready to judge. How can we fight this the way we fight the settling of our bodies? What is the mental and emotional equivalent of running, or of stretching our arms to the sky and breathing deep?

debt

I wonder how many adults (am I an adult? I always forget) feel personally responsible for their parents' happiness? Is it even fair of me to want things for my parents, and think they should make certain choices about their lives, because it's what I think would be best for them? They're definitely adults - shouldn't they be able to figure their lives out for themselves, or at least be allowed the freedom to mess it up if that's what happens?

Why do grown children come back to their parents with this feeling that they (the children) know better than the parents? I don't think this used to be the case. Used to be, the older you got the more respect you were given, and children were the ones who had a lifetime of catching up and learning to do to reach the point of their parents and grandparents. Now, it seems as if children become independent so quickly and have so much more external input that they feel as if their parents' advice and experience isn't as relevant anymore.

Is the experience of our parents, which they use to teach us about life, a single brick to begin with when building our own lives? Or is it a structure that shapes us and that we spend our lives learning to fill?

If we spend our early adulthood worrying about our parents, and our middle adulthood worrying about our own children... and then come back to worrying about our parents again when they're old... when do we get to relax? Oh, right - that was childhood.

fragile web

I ran into an interesting concept a bit ago while reading Christopher Moore's Fluke. It popped up again in a slashdot article today, so I thought I'd look it up. Here it is: the meme. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme. It's a unit of social / cultural evolution, the way the gene is the unit of physical evolution. This wiki article is long and very good, and no, I haven't read the whole thing. But I will.

A meme is an idea, a trend, a phrase... anything that seems to pop up and spread throughout a culture or sub-culture. Some are stronger than others. They grow and die off. Religion is a meme. Science and the scientific method are memes. The Blogging Phenomenon is a meme. E-mail spam for people who believe Bill Gates is going to mail them a big fat check is a meme. Some would say language is a meme too.

Ah, but can we say language is a meme and yet also say we have a built-in predisposition to language? I think so - and I think the same goes for all these other examples. We are a product of both our physical and our mental makeup.

It strikes me that the meme is different from the gene in that it requires continued interaction with other members of the race or culture in order to be passed on. An animal (such as a human) can pass on genes without ever coming into contact with the offspring. This is part of why the meme is considered viral - contact is necessary, the more the better.

Seems to me that culture is built on memes. My first thought, and thus the title of this post, was that our culture is bound together by an incredibly fragile web of ideas. But the more I think about it, the less I'm sure it's fragile.

Yes, we need to interact to maintain this web. What direction are we heading now? Are we drawing apart physically yet drawing together mentally with the growth of the internet and automation? If so, then fine - the internet brings more people in contact than the physical world can, and allows ideas to spread without prejudice. They may be less permanent, but the strength of this web may be in the number of connections and speed of propagation, rather than the permanence of any one strand.

the curse of being slightly above average (warning - excessive use of quotation marks to follow)

Hey, I can write. And much as I wish I could deny it, there's still something appealing about clicking that little "publish" button and seeing my words made public. Ok, it's an audience of one, maybe two (and at least one of them is me), but still. It's "published". In the future, everyone will be famous, and no one will be famous.

Do I care to be famous? Not really. Do I want to "be a writer"? Yes, though I'm not completely sure why. Part of it is what I wrote in primatescrewandbearing today. Our life on earth is both a heartbeat and an eternity, and I feel that drive to be remembered. There's also this - I've read things that have made me smile, or laugh, or reevaluate my own beliefs. I think this is an incredible thing. I know what I think good writing is, and I want to do that. I want to have that effect on others.

But here's what bugs me. I'm an "ok" writer. I can write. My sentences are complete, my grammar consistent. My spelling is spell-check-assisted. I can take you through a paragraph without making you trip (oh, unless it's a really trippy paragraph... sorry, that was awful). And every now and then I find something among the debris of my day that I can turn into something beautiful. But, really - big deal. Maybe I can do it a little better than the average person. Maybe. But the bookstores and even the weblogs are full of people who can do it even better than that.

Yes, I'm whining. No, I'm not the only person cursed with above-averageness - by definition, in fact. Only a few people can be really, really good - that's the nature of having a scale to judge by. But I'm reminded of the track team in high-school. I trained, and I ate right, and I even understood strategy, and I turned into a pretty good runner. Just good enough to be at the tail of the fast group of runners or the head of the slow group. Stuck in the middle...

So I keep writing, and I keep running, mostly because both of them feel good. Because it feels better to be a slightly above average runner or writer than not to be one at all.