Rare Bird Sighting
Aug. 2nd, 2008 04:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraWoke up this morning to find Max asleep on the couch which made it a good day, but then the sun was actually out. Which made it a great day.
Summer gloom has been particularly hard to take this year in an insult-added-to-injury kinda way. July revenues are down fifty percent under what they were last year. Of course, part of that may be due to the fact that I’m working so many other jobs that I only open the store as an afterthought. My hours are irregular to say the least.
“We have a nickname for your store,” a customer told me yesterday. “We call it the Brigadoon Hot Sauce store because sometimes it’s open and most times it’s not.”
He bought $36.40 worth of stuff so I laughed.
On top of being a Colossal Business Failure, I’m fretting about the usual stuff – how beauty is transient and how knowing that, I should have dental flossed more when the bloom was still upon the rose; how I would be a rich alcoholic divorce by now if only I had married the rich alcoholic Houston tugboat heir while petals were still upon afore-mentioned flower; how I seem to have moved off the social/emotional grid almost entirely; how Project Runway really sucks this season. How I owe so much money to so many people.
Fretting is counterproductive. Fretting doesn’t change a damn thing. Fretting is like a negative prayer wheel going round and round in your head.
I fret less when the sun is out.
Max is doing some interesting neuroscience research which promises to get even more interesting next year. The post-doc he’s working with is studying the neurological basis of compassion. The study is being funded by – get this – the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is big on neuroscience, Max tells me.
“Is there any evolutionary basis for compassion?” I asked. “Seems to me there isn’t. I mean – beyond maternal instincts.”
“Little bit of selection bias there, Mom?”
“Yes, yes, well a mother’s love. Pure. Disinterested. Unconditional. Finest achievement of the human heart. But pushing all that to one side, is DNA unselfish?”
“Of course not. But compassion isn’t about unselfishness. Compassion is about taking a selfish interest in the welfare of other human beings.”
“Isn’t that a learned behavior?”
“Not necessarily. Look at prairie dogs. Look at insects.”
“But I mean like Freud. Civilization and Its Discontents.”
Max laughed. “I hate to be the one to break this to you, Mom. But Freud is not highly thought of within the scientific community these days. He pushed too many of his neuroses off as facts. This may surprise you but no one’s ever opened up a skull and found an id.”
“It’s not nice to make fun of old ladies, Max,” I said. “What about pseudo-speciation?”
“What about it? That’s where people act aggressively on the basis of perceived differences. DNA nurturing and protecting its cousins by running off alien strains of DNA.”
We were walking the dogs up Monroe street near that big old red house with the statues that come alive on moonless nights. For years the house sat empty and curtainless, uninhabited by all outward signs except for a telescope trained at the sea in the upper eastward window. Now there’s a Prius in the driveway.
Across the street is the old streambed – completely dry in this drought year. Blighted Monterey Pines grow all around it. A strange noise was coming from the top of the tallest Monterey Pine, like the whirring of a malevolent machine.
“But that’s just the point. It’s not a real difference. It’s an imaginary difference. It’s the same DNA.”
“Well, not really,” said Max patiently. “The most DNA you share with another human being is fifty percent – with your parents, your siblings and your offspring. And that’s why you’re more likely to put their interests in front of, say, a cousin with whom you only share 25% of your DNA.”
“Well, but I mean, don’t you put their interests ahead of a cousin’s because you’ve lived with them, you know them more intimately?”
“They’ve done experiments, Mom. You’re floating down the Amazon, piranhas snapping all around you. You have room on the raft for one other person. Do you save the roommate you’ve been living with oh so happily for the past twelve years or do you save your brother?”
“That depends upon whether you’re having sex with your brother,” I said. “Or your roommate.”
Max rolled his eyes.
That noise again.
“What the hell is that?” said Max, shading his eyes and staring at the top of the tree. “It’s birds. Pelicans.”
“Those aren’t pelicans, Max. Look at their beaks. They’re cranes. Huh. I didn’t know there were cranes in Monterey.”
Two cranes seemed to be fighting off a third.
“Wow, that’s wild,” said Max. “That tree is – what? Sixty feet high?”
“You think they have a nest up there?” I asked.
“Probably,” said Max.
“Descendents of dinosaurs! You think birds have any version of Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair?”
Max raised his eyebrows. “You’re anthropomorphizing again, Mom.”
I hadn't known there were cranes in Monterey. But there they were anyway.
Summer gloom has been particularly hard to take this year in an insult-added-to-injury kinda way. July revenues are down fifty percent under what they were last year. Of course, part of that may be due to the fact that I’m working so many other jobs that I only open the store as an afterthought. My hours are irregular to say the least.
“We have a nickname for your store,” a customer told me yesterday. “We call it the Brigadoon Hot Sauce store because sometimes it’s open and most times it’s not.”
He bought $36.40 worth of stuff so I laughed.
On top of being a Colossal Business Failure, I’m fretting about the usual stuff – how beauty is transient and how knowing that, I should have dental flossed more when the bloom was still upon the rose; how I would be a rich alcoholic divorce by now if only I had married the rich alcoholic Houston tugboat heir while petals were still upon afore-mentioned flower; how I seem to have moved off the social/emotional grid almost entirely; how Project Runway really sucks this season. How I owe so much money to so many people.
Fretting is counterproductive. Fretting doesn’t change a damn thing. Fretting is like a negative prayer wheel going round and round in your head.
I fret less when the sun is out.
Max is doing some interesting neuroscience research which promises to get even more interesting next year. The post-doc he’s working with is studying the neurological basis of compassion. The study is being funded by – get this – the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is big on neuroscience, Max tells me.
“Is there any evolutionary basis for compassion?” I asked. “Seems to me there isn’t. I mean – beyond maternal instincts.”
“Little bit of selection bias there, Mom?”
“Yes, yes, well a mother’s love. Pure. Disinterested. Unconditional. Finest achievement of the human heart. But pushing all that to one side, is DNA unselfish?”
“Of course not. But compassion isn’t about unselfishness. Compassion is about taking a selfish interest in the welfare of other human beings.”
“Isn’t that a learned behavior?”
“Not necessarily. Look at prairie dogs. Look at insects.”
“But I mean like Freud. Civilization and Its Discontents.”
Max laughed. “I hate to be the one to break this to you, Mom. But Freud is not highly thought of within the scientific community these days. He pushed too many of his neuroses off as facts. This may surprise you but no one’s ever opened up a skull and found an id.”
“It’s not nice to make fun of old ladies, Max,” I said. “What about pseudo-speciation?”
“What about it? That’s where people act aggressively on the basis of perceived differences. DNA nurturing and protecting its cousins by running off alien strains of DNA.”
We were walking the dogs up Monroe street near that big old red house with the statues that come alive on moonless nights. For years the house sat empty and curtainless, uninhabited by all outward signs except for a telescope trained at the sea in the upper eastward window. Now there’s a Prius in the driveway.
Across the street is the old streambed – completely dry in this drought year. Blighted Monterey Pines grow all around it. A strange noise was coming from the top of the tallest Monterey Pine, like the whirring of a malevolent machine.
“But that’s just the point. It’s not a real difference. It’s an imaginary difference. It’s the same DNA.”
“Well, not really,” said Max patiently. “The most DNA you share with another human being is fifty percent – with your parents, your siblings and your offspring. And that’s why you’re more likely to put their interests in front of, say, a cousin with whom you only share 25% of your DNA.”
“Well, but I mean, don’t you put their interests ahead of a cousin’s because you’ve lived with them, you know them more intimately?”
“They’ve done experiments, Mom. You’re floating down the Amazon, piranhas snapping all around you. You have room on the raft for one other person. Do you save the roommate you’ve been living with oh so happily for the past twelve years or do you save your brother?”
“That depends upon whether you’re having sex with your brother,” I said. “Or your roommate.”
Max rolled his eyes.
That noise again.
“What the hell is that?” said Max, shading his eyes and staring at the top of the tree. “It’s birds. Pelicans.”
“Those aren’t pelicans, Max. Look at their beaks. They’re cranes. Huh. I didn’t know there were cranes in Monterey.”
Two cranes seemed to be fighting off a third.
“Wow, that’s wild,” said Max. “That tree is – what? Sixty feet high?”
“You think they have a nest up there?” I asked.
“Probably,” said Max.
“Descendents of dinosaurs! You think birds have any version of Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair?”
Max raised his eyebrows. “You’re anthropomorphizing again, Mom.”
I hadn't known there were cranes in Monterey. But there they were anyway.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-08-03 12:02 am (UTC)Oh, wait ... ;p
no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-03 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 04:25 pm (UTC)Yes, Max is pretty extraordinary. I think I'd think that even if he didn't have 50% of my DNA.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-03 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 04:25 pm (UTC)gloomy summer
Date: 2008-08-03 11:38 am (UTC)Re: gloomy summer
Date: 2008-08-05 04:26 pm (UTC)Re: gloomy summer
Date: 2008-08-05 09:10 pm (UTC)Re: gloomy summer
Date: 2008-08-05 09:38 pm (UTC)