concocted glimpse

I just got to meet my little nephew, Jeorgie Borgie. I was thinking about him today, and unrelatedly thinking about one of the guys he was named for, and something that guy said,

I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.

and it reminded me of a blurb I wrote six months ago about Roscivs’ proposal.

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My husband proposed in a library.

I love this story. If it’s true, as Daniel Gilbert asserts in Stumbling on Happiness, that when you tell a story it cements in your mind and you have a hard time remembering it in other ways, I think this story would be an exception; it’s non-cementable.

It was a Friday. I’d just finished a job interview, so I was all dolled up. He picked me up and was fond and affectionate and talkative; typical Roscivs behavior—I suspected nothing. I didn’t know he had a ring. I assumed we were driving back to his place, but I didn’t notice we’d passed it until I’d lost all sense of where we were. I asked him where we were going just a block before we pulled into the Orem library parking lot. Everything looked familiar then; in our early dates we spent lots of time there.

As we wound through the bookcases I was suddenly whisked up in a memory of three or four years before:

Two children had found us reading and asked us to read to them. After we’d read to them a while, they asked “are you guys married?” When we said “no” they thought a minute, then one of them asked, “are you best friends?” And we said yes. Both of them started telling us a story; the story of how we would get married someday.

I reached over to Roscivs, as we stood there in the stacks, and almost whispered the story to him. We’d made our way to the section where the walls are windows set with stained-glass storybook depictions, floor to ceiling. It felt unbreakably magic. He told me after he’d planned to introduce the proposal with that story, so he was all, hm, you’re taking my line!

I was going to tell him that I thought that whenever it was that we’d get engaged, the spot should be right here!—when he knelt down, pulled out a ring, and wove in words a paradisaical profession of love. I’d heard this story before; I knew how to begin it: Yes, yes, yes.

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Two weeks ago we received a package in the mail; five tags for travel bags. The backs of them show some rusty ol’ text:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

When we packed last week, I rather gleefully put one on my checked bag. I did not—alas! alack!—thus decorate my carry-on. O fateful omission. On the return trip, during the part of flying where Uncle Sam asks you to strip yourself of various liberties garments and you do it, they targeted my carry-on.

“Whose blue bag is this?” asks a man, fully dressed, his epaulettes sirens of power.

“Mine,” I own.

“Is there anything hazardous, sharp, potentially dangerous, or breakable in here?”

A candid “No.”

He says he needs to search it.

secure in my effects . . .

I start feeling upset.

shall not be violated . . .

He zips open my bag.

upon probable cause . . .

When he finds a toiletry case inside of it, he says, “there might be something liquid in here.”

describing the things . . .

He does find something liquid. My SPF 50, nearly empty, greater quantities of which failed to blow up three previous planes this year.

“A case in point” he says, as he brandishes the hollow pink bottle in one hand. I’m reminded of something, but I can’t put my finger on it—a flame. A dangerous servant and a terrible master. “This bottle says ‘8 oz.’ You could either check this bag or you can surrender your items.” An empty choice, which his modal verbs aver: were I to try to go back and check the bag, my flight would have departed by the time I had gone through the baggage and security lines again.

He waits for me to speak. There is no call for acquiescence; only obeisance. I seethe. Little tatters of the constitution clog up my mind. I’m partly disrobed, searched, accused, completely trapped. I put up my hands and look him in the eye. “I surrender.”

He laughs.

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So once upon a few different times there were these guys, Emmanuel, John and Oskar, Douglas, and Bruce. You know the guys; Kant, von Neumann and Morgenstern, Hofstadter, and Wayne. Emmanuel had his categorical imperative, John and Oskar had their game theory, Douglas had his superrationality, and Bruce had his batcave. And his arch-nemesis, the Joker, who himself had his social experiments.

Talk About A Prisoner’s Dilemma!

One of my favorite parts of The Dark Knight was when the burly inmate took the detonator and did what should have been done as soon as they were introduced to the parameters of the situation. I thought this scene was a good example of the difference between superrationality and the categorical imperative, which before I too closely conflated.

• The categorical imperative: actions enact moral law

People would only act in ways they’ll accept as universal rules. In the detonator defenestration scene, applying the categorical imperative is choosing not to destroy the other boat in preemptive Battleship. This covers the moral gap Kant decried in simple utilitarianism, where killing one boatload would result in the greatest good for the greatest number.

• Superrationality: my actions influence others’ actions

This is the irrational belief that the choice you make will influence other people’s actions. For example, you may believe against reason that your cooperation will foster cooperation; you believe that, if you make this choice, someone somewhere else [in the game] will also make this choice. We don’t blow up them, they won’t blow up us. We are both rational.

So is there “supermorality”, too?

The Dark Knight mostly just made me very sad. At first I thought it was from wondering if people are generally good at the core. This wondering makes me sad. But I think it’s that sometimes I believe that we are mostly good, we’re just not willing to believe it of each other. And this makes me even sadder.

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Somebody shared their Seattle bus story with me after I shared a tidbit of bus literature.

* * *

This fellow was new to Seattle and had to pick up some documents downtown. He got on a bus outside of the city and asked the driver how he’d get where he was going when they got downtown. The bus driver responded thusly: “Just remember, Jesus Christ made Seattle under pressure.” The fellow befuddled: “Excuse me?” The bus driver repeated: “Jesus Christ made Seattle under pressure.”

Bus riders hear wacky non-sequiturs from people on the bus all the time—just not usually from the driver. Where was he coming from? Where was this going? I’ll, ahem, spell it out.

Jesus [Jefferson, James] Christ [Cherry, Columbia] made [Marion, Madison] Seattle [Spring, Seneca] under [University, Union] pressure [Pike, Pine]—the city streets in order from south to north. He’s never gotten lost downtown.

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Yesterday was the summeriest midsummer’s day yet. In anticipation of positively infernal temperatures we went to a water park and stayed and played all day. I love water parks because there’s tons of water but almost none of it is deeper than I am tall. I also like that you can publicly wear the amount of apparel it makes sense to wear when it’s over 90ºF. Of course, because my ancestors voted me Most Likely to Die of Skin Cancer, I wore a lot of SPF 50, if not much else.

When I was little I desperately wanted to be a mermaid. Water parks are about the closest I’ve gotten to a cool grotto of water world wonders.

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There are bus reader riders, and there are bus writer riders. The busses even sponsor some writers: Poetry on Busses. The poems are posted inside the busses alongside two kids of ads: -vertisements and -monitions. Of the bus writer riders there are those who write while on the bus and those who write on the bus while on the bus. I have now seen an editoral and a poetic exposition on the bus omnibus. Exhibit 1: INFANTSIDE written in a blue Bic on a women’s reproductive health agency ad. Exhibit 2: A succint iamb proffered in bold Sharpie underneath this poem: HE DIED.

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Lots of kids go through a stage of the Horrible Hypotheticals.

Would you rather be deaf, or blind? Would you rather die of heat, or cold? Would you rather have stinky farts or loud ones? Would you rather drown, or die of starvation?

Someone who has a hard time appreciating make-believe or some insufferable cheek will always say “I’d rather not die at all.” But for those who take thought experiment as a grave responsibility, it’s not always an easy game to play.

My sister Rita went through a phase of terribly earnest Horrible Hypotheticals. They were usually pretty awful choices, scandalous things people don’t want a child to say, like If someone came into our house with a gun and was going to kill mom or dad and made you choose, who would you choose? The one I particularly remember was among incessant postulations in the car on the way home one day from errands in Salt Lake. Rita was probably six. She poked her little blonde bangs and blue eyes around the side of the minivan’s shotgun bucket seat and said, in an agonized peep, “If it was between all the birds in the world dying or mom dying, which one would you choose?” My sister Sioux—who is, let’s just say, NOT particularly fond of birds—said “piffle! That’s a stupid question! I’d save mom.” Sioux usually had quick and solid reasons for picking one hypothetical over another. “But what,” chirruped Rita, starting to cry, “about all the birds?” My mom is no stranger to children who are tortured by thought dilemmas and she didn’t mind.

Sometimes when I face a hard choice, I turn to Roscivs and just say “If it was between all the birds in the world . . .”

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I have a problem. A dessicated banana problem.

We just had to throw away three dessicated bananas. The casualty rate this year alone has totted up to a number of banana deaths one might expect¹ from an afternoon of gorilla warfare.

I like my bananas nice ‘n’ yellow-green. Once they ripen they have a certain noisome taste that I can’t bear. Once past their small window of prime, however, bananas can be used in functions that mask their progression into decay. And because of these other culinary uses, it becomes difficult for me to dispose of a banana even after I won’t eat it.

So I blame this problem on banana bread. The potentiality of banana bread. Unborn banana bread. I’m pretty sure one of the next steps would be taking responsibility for the problem, but I don’t really want the onus here. I think it counts if I find out where the blame truly lies.

I fall into a holding pattern. I think, I can keep this banana. This banana need not go to waste. I can make this banana into something edible. And although I have made many dozens of loaves of banana bread in the past, I apparently don’t make banana bread any more. Yet still it persists: I should keep this banana. This banana need not go to waste.

So I keep, and I keep, and I keep the banana.

It’s just so hard to let go.

¹ Calculations based on the Mr. Tally Man census of 2006-7.

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Four weeks, nine hundred pages of neuroscience text, twenty-one human brains, four human spinal cords, twelve research articles and one set of hiccups later, Neuro is over. I loved Neuro. A lot. Even though the final almost killed me.

Celebration was in order, so my cohort went out after our exam papers were pried from our fingers, and we clinked a big hoppy CHEERS over surviving. Then I went out with friends to a little Italian grotto, Machiavelli, and to the international cinema, where I did two things I’d never done before. I saw a film in the presence of the producer, who introduced it, and I saw となりのトトロ, in English.

Then I figured, before I start Fourier analyses tomorrow, I have a little time to pick back up my leisure reading, so I resumed where I’d left off: halfway through Musicophilia. Hm. A book about . . . neuroscience. I checked out the next book on my reading list and started laughing. How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony. A book about sound physics. This is a very good sign. I’m in the right field.

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We’re going camping this weekend. I’ve really only been camping once before in my life, three years ago, with friends in Utah. It was fun: first we put up our tent! which involved all sorts of amazing preparations like clearing the area of rocks with our bare hands. When we bought the tent I was under the impression that all tents had been mislabeled. Roscivs assured me that “8-person tent” was not based off of Ana Ng’s body measurements. It looked to me more like tent-for-two. Two who really like sleeping glued together. Suited us to a T, I thought. I discovered that people who camp have preserved a gene closely related to their distant cousin the sardine. Our friends with a family of five slept their family in two tents that compared to ours like Pluto compares to Earth. I’m just glad Roscivs understands my claustrophobia. As was impressed upon me in India, Western sprawl is scrawled deep in my psyche.

The most amazing thing about camping was that Roscivs, who has been camping one thousand times, made pancakes in the morning over the smoldering coals of the night before. Wilderness pancakes. They were amazing. Husband’s O’er the Smoldering Coals Wilderness Pancakes; there’s a recipe that would sell any cookbook. He told me he had a magic mix and just added water. It’s an old trick, but the whole thing is a pretty cool concept. The first time I saw this trick I just couldn’t believe it. You don’t have to grind the flour?! Hey, Chicken Little, have I got some news for you!

I was pretty sure we’d see a bear. I thought it would probably even try to eat our food, and maybe even try to eat us. There was no bear, but there was a spider. IN our tent. I had to kill it myself. When I told this story to my in-laws they said, “A spider? What kind of spider?” I’m not going to say exactly what kind of a spider it was, but it wasn’t a mommy short arms. They almost died of laughter. But we obviously have different assessment styles for animal dangers. Once my sister-in-law had a friend over and a scorpion—in the house—stung her friend. She went to her dad, and said “oh hey dad, a scorpion stung my friend.” He said, “what kind?” She described it. He replied, “oh, okay. She’ll be fine.”

I said “Roscivs, what would you do if I got stung by a scorpion? Would you call 911, or would you call 911 first?” He said, “How about I look it up on the internet!”

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