The Limits Of My Everyday Secret

Don’t sweat the pictures. It’s simply that I’ve got a reputation to protect and I need the plausible deniability of someone allowed to be foolish. We learn more from error than confusion. This is the me of hazardous planetary influence. “So…,” he mutters, “Everything In this breezy corridor of electrons could be a liaison dangereuse? Communication at the threshold of imagination’s eeriness?” It’s one of those things that do not tolerate the weight of much analysis, like why tornadoes always choose to tear Arkansas trailer parks to smithereens, or why money needs so many secrets to be of use, or what is so tempting about the aesthetics of someone’s hedonism that you perk up at a particular shimmering profile on this interactive wall of flames. And while I can say that my heart has been broken more times than it has been broken into, I’m not here as the Titanic searching for its iceberg. I learned long ago that laughter is the best antidote for “ordinary, everyday unhappiness,” the successful outcome of a depression cure. My sense of humor has the killer instinct of French Silk Pie: tart on the tongue but just sweet enough to insulate us from the booming anarchy of all the many other lollygaggers. I don’t drool, I like cool sheets. My true heroes are the world’s sure-footed belfry mechanics. I like winter when Sunday afternoon snow is as pure as a railroad siding on the moon. I like quirky European films that inflame the will of dreams. I doubt you get an accurate view of someone judging the shape of their sandcastle. I've got plenty of baggage but it's neatly packed, so it doesn’t add much expense to the already skyrocketing cost of friendship. I believe the first order of business is to linger, to become undone slowly, where every knot becomes an undone heart. If you don’t have fun with the way someone's subtleties churn their mystery you will never have courage for the whim of planetary hazards.

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Garbage Notes | Franco Amati | Substack

from the writer who brought you Scuzzbucket—the original home for dirty realism, grunge lit, creative confessions, speculative fiction, and

This is definitely worth a read.

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This simple graphic explains how ethical science operates and is most important when medical science is involved. When you understand it you can see how “science denial” is a predacious falsehood opposing science with half-baked half-truths; incomplete and insufficient information of questionable provenance; data that is often so remote from scientific rigor that it becomes a mythic nightmare; is an outright lie, a fabricated deceit to be accepted on the strength of emotional response, not the calmer, but most intense rigor, keen observation and imaginative experimentation of true scientists. Proper science properly analyzes observation, experiments to gather reliable supporting data that will be independently repeated. Ethical science is always attentive to the ever-shifting balance of safety and risk, ever alert the intrusive distortions of gain at the expense of others. Science denial often has an improper relation to monetization, is not politically neutral, has intentions that are remote from science. Finally, we must accept that "The Truth" of science, that which resides in the upper right quadrant, is not where the most knowledge resides. What remains to be discovered is always much larger. Science is rarely a neat binary of black and white. It is mostly an ever-changing palette of grays that invites new data to replace it.

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“Marie of Romania Takes A Chance On Falling In Love”

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The Father, The Son, and The Holy Mackeral

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Spirituality And Science

Recently read a post about some struggling with a unification of spirituality and science so some extended thought: “Unification,“ or at least an understanding of how spirituality (distinct here from religion) and science can complement each other requires some “meta-thinking.” What the term means in this context is some ”higher level” (additional, not better) analysis of how each of these as disciplines is constructed and defined by the mind and the cultural context in which it exists.* Most people think that proper science reveals facts that stand alone as “objective truth” about reality when in fact these “facts” are “truth” as it is defined by the “instruments“ used to discover them (eyes, telescopes, microscopes, Hadron Colliders, experimental technology), the social construct of science defined by the training that defines who is a scientist, those scientists using those technologies of investigation and the “scientific method” in which investigation is embedded. Today that all combines to provide the undertaking with legitimacy even as it has been recently attacked by the methods of traditional religion (faith) and the contemporary right-wing politics that abets “religional” thought. Vetted science (Repeatable and peer-reviewed independently) becomes a generally accepted, reliable source of accepted “truth” in Western culture. It waits to be replaced as new information strengthens, amplifies or disproves what is current. For quite some time any kind of meta-thought (thinking about how thinking works) was not conducted (perhaps not permitted) which lead to conflict between science and religion as religion was “truth” by way of faith in beliefs proclaimed by “experts” granted that distinction by a politics that lead to a male-dominated, often misogynistic or at least chauvinistic, religious hierarchy. Science as we understand today was almost nonexistent. In the last hundred years, as scientific technology, “empirical scientific truth,” and advancing technology in general kept accelerating, religion has been fighting a rearguard action to defend conclusions based on the long standing and unchanging nature of its faith-based methods. It’s co-traveler in the form of Right-wing politics has chosen a frontal assault co-opting traditional religion. “Modern spirituality” (“modern” meaning “here in the West”) provides a third context of methods and social constructs that suggest using the technology of “mindful meditation” (you may fill in the spaces; they are placeholders) and it’s associated Eastern constructs to say that a properly trained mind is a reliable instrument for investigating reality without the technological paraphernalia or social constructs that define science, i.e. the results are likely to be different, not necessarily contradictory of science, but as legitimately alternative or additional, just come to by a different means. The control exerted by central authority “experts” is softened and in the background with one’s own mind as foreground. Leaders see themselves as teachers, not as monarchs, popes, bishops, party leaders, presidents, or prime ministers with partial or absolute authority over the ultimate “truths” that an individual discovers on the spiritual path to enlightenment. Some will argue that the popularity of “being spiritual” today is not religion; some will say it is thinly disguised substitute for religion that is anachronistically rigid to the point of irrelevance. Lately science has taken to analyzing “spirituality,” Eastern techniques of mindful investigation and some of the “results,” in a way that has provided more “legitimacy” than is given to traditional Western, Abrahamic religions. This popularity may be enhanced by a perceived hypocrisy: despite what they profess as a non-violent approach, traditional Western religions often support cultures that depend on some sense of aggression, war and warfare to maintain their integrity. Recent events in Myanmar notwithstanding, Buddhism is viewed as a genuine alternative to aggression and a legitimate way of turning away from the

tradition of Western theologies without losing feelings associated with one’s spiritual sense when confronting the mystery being here. It accepts mystery as something inevitable regardless of what is “discovered.” Science sees mystery as an invitation to pursue its sort of investigation of mystery to further reductive “scientific truth.”

*see Wikipedia article on “meta-communication” for a fuller understanding of how to understand and use the “meta” prefix. See also NewYork Times article “Bruno Latour, The Post Truth Philosopher, Mounts a Defense of Science,” By Ava Kofman, New York Times, October 25, 2018

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#photoshopfix @photoshop

“And Out Steps Your Voice... Changed.”

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“And out steps your voice... changed #2.”

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Fish Running Around With His Chicken Cut Off

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Double Dream Of Winter ❄️ (at Vermont)

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Groundhawg Dawg

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Buddha and His Sombrero

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Narrative Fracture

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The Limits Of My Secret by Kittlybender

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Once again...pawsing for The Fall

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#thefall (at Barnet, Vermont)

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The conjoined twins are sharing a heart. A “fail” as biology, a perfection as metaphor from the blue, out of, as it sparkles ironic. These days, everyone wants to share their head.

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Between Heaven and Earth Satori Blooms