Benevolent Clouds

when the bank would default on its loan, we dined on bowls of snow
and no,
it wasn't cocaine, but, rather, the seasonal stuff,
which falls from the clouds

we'd send out the little ones to go scoop it up by the road
"mind the traffic," we'd say, "and come back in before your fingers are cold."

sulkily, they would gather their winter clothing
and, with a syrupy slowness,
lead each limb through the appropriate insulated sleeve
exaggerating the arduousness of the task
regarding us, from time to time, with contemptuous glares,
intimating a less than voluntary willingness to carry out the chore

bundled at last, they would face the door
and, with eyes sullen,
the eldest would push it open

the rest of us then would sit still waiting
round the table with faces silent and sad
our stomachs would churn and groan and yowl
launching into an empty, hungry chorus

when back they came
each carried a high dome of cold white water
and these they portioned out to us all
combining the excess into a large bowl at the center
for anyone who might want a second helping

they joined us at the table

we all leaned a bit forward in our seats
peering into our bowls with a restrained eagerness
submerging a cupped hand
to be withdrawn supporting a workable quantity
lifting the frozen crystals into our mouths
reducing the temperature of our oral cavities
crunching the stuff
until our tongues were numb
chilling the gums
until the ice resisted melting for a good while

summers were less difficult
what with all the insects about

On the Etiquette of Being Polite

We postpone taking actions that facilitate our comfort in cases where immediately obliging the desire would result in others' discomfort. This is polite behavior. For example, you won't see a sober passenger take a piss on the subway.

What's happening implicitly in many of these cases, including the example above, is the establishment of a currency exchange, where the currencies being exchanged are different types of dis/comfort. This is easiest to describe with the help of an example, so I'll just keep using the one I started. But first, a brief clarification: I'm defining comfort and discomfort as inverses of each other; it depends on one's point of view, two sides of the same coin, etc.

The reason an exchange is implicitly created is because, if the passenger took a piss, the resulting discomfort of the other passengers would not be a consequence of their own bladders becoming more filled with urine. Their discomfort would, instead, be caused by the breach of social norms that the pissing passenger selfishly accomplished. In another scenario, a passenger who opted to postpone pissing until they reached a restroom, while six other passengers rode along obliviously, would essentially be saying "one bank note of my urinary tract discomfort equals six bank notes of an average person's comfort associated with things progressing in a socially acceptable manner."

We've dissected this a bit so far, but there's more to uncover. Let's look even closer...

Viewing the dis/comfort exchange in terms of an actual currency exchange becomes problematic once your observations of detail require that you peer through a microscope. One of the first discrepancies you may encounter is that the deterrent to piss when three other passengers are present equals more than half the deterrent when there are six other passengers. In fact, there's hardly a deterrent reduction at all. This is very different from the bank, where the former of two pieces of paper worth three and six bank notes, respectively, is valued at exactly half the latter. The sleigh of hand in the preceding is inconsequential; you'll obtain similar results if the bank notes retain their original metaphorical attribute...the number of other passengers has no bearing on the discomfort resulting from being polite.

As humans, we have the wondrous ability to regard ourselves from the point of view of another. This is especially easy when the other person is within our line of sight, a circumstance that encourages the notion of seeing ourselves from another's point of view to be taken quite literally. Such occasions are worth mentioning here because they introduce a relevant quirk. Though I somewhat trivialized the endeavor by describing it as 'especially easy', an aspect of it that's more involved is to ensure that when one is viewing oneself from the other's visual perspective, insider knowledge doesn't infiltrate the perception.

By this I mean, for example, if two people, Ashley and Philip, are separated by 20 meters and approaching each other on the sidewalk, and Philip is imagining how he looks through Ashley's eyes, he should take care not to allow his knowledge of what he's spitting onto the sidewalk influence his out-of-body perception of himself, since Ashley is still too far away to determine whether he's spitting phlegm, which is possibly offensive, or watermelon seeds, which could only offend someone who is sour to begin with. This demonstrates how people are liable to erroneously incriminate themselves for being impolite when viewing themselves through another's eyes.

Driveling Drippy Drinks

I recently overheard an exchange that drew my attention to a previously unexplored aspect of verbal communication, which I will refer to as Exchange Structure. Though such structures can be graphically represented numerous ways, I didn't spend time evaluating the options, and simply chose the first that came to mind. It's all very straightforward, with each column corresponding to an Exchange Participant, and the circled numbers representing the chronological order of things. Here's what I overheard, shown in its ES form, which led to the construct of an ES in the first place:

So we have a person who had made the innocent mistake of swapping the relationship between proof and % alcohol. They happened to have been reading from the bottle's label, on which was printed the % alcohol, and from which they had incorrectly inferred the beverage's proof. What interested me about all this was that, despite the other Exchange Participant accurately pointing their inquiry to the piece of information they had assumed was given (% alcohol), they could just as well have asked about the inferred information, the proof, thinking that it was this information from which the % alcohol was inferred. And what in god's name would the Exchange Structure look like then, I wonder? Would not the EP being asked to confirm the proof similarly reply 'yes', albeit perhaps less confidently, owing to the fact that in this case the information whose accuracy they were being asked to confirm was based on their own inference rather than on an official-looking label?

Well, of course, I had to draw it out. As you would expect, this ES is rather longer than that from the first case, since the EPs have to hash out a seeming contradiction: whereas before, the Exchange Participant who was corrected by the other is led to concede that their inference was in error, now they're staring directly at the bottle's own label, which claims that the beverage therein contained boasts a fourfold increase in % alcohol compared to the % alcohol purported by the correcting Exchange Participant.

I was initially quite taken by this idea of an Exchange Structure, romanticizing that it could be used to quickly discern whether a misunderstanding had taken place. I had imagined that variables like the intonation associated with questions, and the number of arrow "branches" between EPs, could be used to uniquely render a conversation graphically in a way that would catalyze the deduction of information about it. I've since concluded that conversations are too unpredictable to ever dependably fit into anticipated, pre-fabricated forms. For example, questions are sometimes asked with the intonation of a statement.

Yes, I had already given up on the idea of an Exchange Structure by the time I started writing this post, yet I nonetheless propagated the fallacy of its merit, at least for a time. After all, who wants to read about something that is total bunk? I included this last paragraph in an attempt to illustrate that authors who are unwilling to let go of ideas that once held promise might be knowingly deceiving their readers. It is easier to believe your own lie after you've convinced others to believe it with you.

Speaking of Words

It's irritating when people use terms

1. that could be replaced with fewer-syllable terms without loss or alteration of the conveyed meaning.

2. they understand only vaguely or not at all.

Regarding the 1st point, candidate term-pairs guilty of this offense cannot merely be synonyms, for most synonyms differ subtly in meaning, usually through differences in connotation. In fact, the only example I can think of is utilize vs. use. One could argue that their meanings are not exactly the same and they are therefore not a case in point. "And why are their meanings not exactly the same?" I would ask. And one would answer "Because their connotations differ. Utilize is associated with formal language, while use is casual." But this argument defends formality for formality's sake, which I find nauseatingly pretentious.

How far will a champion of utilize go? Will they up the ante by two and dare to speak the 5-syllable utilization, a behemoth for which use, again, is a 1:1 substitute? Reading this is liable to make future instances of utilize more difficult to ignore, and I apologize, but this should only be temporary. In accordance with my previous post, its prevalent use means that, with time, it joins the background buzz.

Onto 2.

This happens more often than people would like to admit, but it's usually inconsequential and so doesn't warrant drastic counter-measures. In fact, it's something of a benefit, insofar as it can help one distinguish the posers from the real deals. Here's one I've come across a few times: diametrically opposed. Why use the diametric qualifier as opposed to, simply, opposed? What additional meaning is conveyed? I suspect even the speaker isn't sure, and that instead of for providing a clearer understanding to the audience, they use it for artificial linguistic lift to the plateau where live the visionaries in whose company they aspire to be.

I know very little about anything. I'm not even sure whether a majority of earth's land surface annually experiences four seasons. But I do have a good idea about where to find answers to some things. In this instance, a consultation with the undisputed authority on English words is the best choice. The OED provides 3 definitions for diametric, with the 2nd one corresponding to its use with opposed.

"In the way of direct or complete opposition. Usually with opposite, opposed, contrary: Directly, exactly, entirely, completely."

I think the default intent when the term opposed is used alone is that the two things being compared are understood to be completely opposed. This makes diametrically opposed almost redundant. If nothing else, one could step off the pedestal and substitute the 6-syllable diametrically with any of the four 3-syllable options given in the above definition.

As Thirsty As A Fish

When we're surrounded by what we want, we cease to want it. The trivial explanation is that the desire to have is incompatible with the condition of having. "Listen hear, little nipper! You can't want to have what you already keep!" This is, however, a pathetic, semantics-fueled avoidance of the following truth: when one is in possession of what one had desired, the portion of thought concerned with it suffers a decline, like a sloping mountainside. With time, waves of erosion may even take their toll, prompting calls for the object's disposal.

Corollary: the more ubiquitous somethings is, the more it assimilates with the background. This is an effective strategy our perception has adopted for lessening the risk of being overwhelmed. Imagine if, instead, for example, each snowflake we saw falling in a storm caught our attention just as had a single snowflake falling alone. The same principle is responsible for our sympathy strings being pulled tighter after reading a profile on a starving individual versus an article about a famine-stricken country involving thousands of people.

Finally, a word on the spotting of things both ubiquitous and sparse. The lessened opportunity to spot sparse things is balanced by their being very apparent when present. Similarly, the heightened opportunity to spot ubiquitous things is dampened by their being so common as to be invisible. This is partly what makes a school of fish such a great defense mechanism.