On the Familiar

Maybe it's a symptom of getting older, but I find myself seeing people in a crowd and thinking I recognize them.  Then I spend a few minutes trying to figure out where I know them from.  Finding that context for recognition and then finally coming to the conclusion that I don't actually know them, but they apparently look like someone I've met or at least seen in my time on the planet.  Then again I've met and seen enough people that the laws of large numbers would suggest that maybe I have seen them before and my brain knows that while I'm still clueless about it.  Or maybe it's possible that what seems like an infinite combination of facial configurations nature has finally given up and just started reusing combinations to save time.  More than likely though it's just that I've seen enough people that while I may not know that person, they are a close enough match to someone I have seen before and that's enough for my brain to categorize them as "known".

It's not just people that this happens to.  Another thing I've started to notice is that I'll hear a song that sounds familiar, but it claims to be new.  Then I realize that it's not a cover of a song I know, but the people playing it heard all the same stuff I did growing up and now they're making their own music so of course they're going to be influenced by what came before.  They just happen to have the ability to make music while I do not.  It's not much different than how we pick up the speech patterns of the people around us.  We tend to mimic what we see and hear.  The problem when it comes to music and movies though is that I've seen the original, or at least the original for me, and most of the new stuff feels like a pale imitator for some reason.  I know that Han Solo wasn't the original roguish anti-hero, but for me he was my first instance where I understood that while he was a bit of jerk, he was actually a good guy, even if he didn't know it.  In the thirty plus years since he was introduced there have been plenty of other iterations of that character type.  You finally get to a point where the character you see is essentially the distilled version of Han Solo or Han Solo version 27.  So you have kids today, who are growing up with Peter Quill as their version of Han Solo.  That's not to say it's bad or anything because I like Peter Quill.  It's just that I'm finding myself looking at both and saying to myself "Yeah the new guy is good, but you can't beat the original."  Is this what getting older is going to be like?

I won't say that I've lived all over, but I've been a lot of places here in the U.S.  I've lived in a few key places multiple times.  Each of those places have been long enough that it's created a sort of context for all memories there.  The problem though is that as time has gone on those start to get mixed up.  I'll see someone who is out of context and my brain can't figure out what's going on.  It's like seeing a friend from high school twenty years later while you're standing in line for lunch at your company cafeteria, which is two thousand miles away from that high school where you knew them.  You know you know them from somewhere, but they aren't where they're supposed to be.  I guess it's just something that happens when you move between the same few places over and over.

In less than a month I'm going to be traveling to someplace entirely new for me.  While it won't be impossible for me to see someone there I know, it's highly unlikely.  This is both exciting and a bit disorienting because after all this time there is a strange bit of comfort knowing that things will seem familiar most of the time.  The problem with the familiar though is that it's entirely possible for it to eventually become boring.  I've seen enough movies where it starts out with a character who seems like they're going through the motions.  They have their routine down and the world is in order, but something isn't quite right.  It's about this time in the movie that some wacky character storms in and shakes up their life or they are forced to go on some journey of self-discovery.  Even that story feels familiar at this point, but this time it's my turn to go on that adventure.  Next time you read this, it will be from somewhere halfway around the world and I'll be looking out at a crowd of people and knowing that I don't know any of them.  It's time for a little unfamiliar.

On Timing

It seems that I have inherited my father's strange timing.  Mostly when it comes to other people though.  He has this ability to draw people to him.  For instance the street he lives on could be nearly empty.  Traffic has been light all day.  Then he gets in the car and goes for a drive and what does he find?  A tractor going 15 mph and ten cars trailing it, meaning he's now stuck in traffic that didn't exist until he went for a drive.  I can do the same thing now.  I'll be wandering through a store in the evening.  There aren't a lot of people there.  I go down an aisle to look at something and within seconds not one, but several people will arrive in the same exact location and stand inches away from me, in what was once an empty spot on the planet.  The thing is though that these people may be thinking the same thing about me.

The whole idea got me wondering about all the strange bits of timing that we run into where it feels like the world is conspiring against us or no matter where we go there is resistance.  Then I started to think, what about all the stuff that we miss?  You're driving along a narrow road and there is something just slightly in your lane that you try to avoid and at that exact moment there is a car coming from the opposite direction.  You hadn't seen a car for the last twenty minutes and don't see another on the road after that, but at that precise moment your timing brought you to this meeting.  How many things are we missing?  Those instances where we're clued in on what's going on around us makes it seem like a cruel twist of fate that you can't go anywhere without drawing traffic to you.  What if though we're silently and unknowingly avoiding things that are potentially much worse...or much better?  Afterwards we tend to say to ourselves 'If only I had...' in some attempt to rationalize that if our actions had only been slightly different, we could have changed the outcome.  Maybe if I hadn't stopped for that extra minute then I would have been in the intersection when the truck ran the red light.  What's to say though that in changing that single action on your part everything else would remain the same?  The truth is that our actions are such a small part of a greater chaotic system.

Still we tend to be the center of our own universe and we tend to think that our actions matter.  That we brought ourselves to this moment and weren't carried here by unseen forces of a chance.  Maybe these little moments in time where we run into, or almost run into, something that feels like a world working against us, we're actually peeking behind the curtain a bit to see just how random everything is.  Sure you tried to make a quick trip to the grocery store and managed to leave at the exact time when the power goes out in your neighborhood.  It could feel like you have the worst timing.  Then think about all the times you read about how something happened and you were nowhere near it, but close enough to think you could have been.  Those are just the things that we're aware of going on around us.  When those weird things happen it may be helpful to think about all the random stuff that we sailed through without problem.

Heart of the Flower

On Superman

The thing I find most interesting about Superman isn't so much his fantastic powers, but more what he chooses to do with them.  I suppose it's fairly common to fantasize about what you would do if you could have super powers.  Now there are probably people out there who would immediately try to find a way to make these powers benefit themselves, because what's the point of being super if there isn't some kind of payoff?  So maybe using these powers to get a lot of money or a lot of sex or even more power aren't out of the realm of possibility as far as top on the lists for most people.  On the other hand there would be people like Superman, who would see these powers as a sort of responsibility to do more than just fly around and be rich.  Everyone knows what Superman is all about.  He's there to save the day when the day needs saving.  Helicopter about to fall onto that field trip of little kids with puppies from the shelter.  Superman will swoop in and protect them.  Bank robbery where the goons have robotic weapons attached to their bodies and are about to take hostages.  Superman will put a stop to it and make it look easy doing so.  It's a comic book world so the stories have to be fantastical to keep our attention.  Here's a question though.  Is what Superman does every day really a good thing?

Sure saving those kids from becoming street pizza is hard to argue against.  And bank robbers should probably be stopped, even if there is FDIC.  Still what if the person he saved today was someone that wasn't supposed to be saved?  Without getting too far along into the Final Destination scenarios, what if that person was supposed to die?  Their time was up and while it would have been sad for those who knew them, it was part of the natural order of things.  Instead you have this alien wearing a cape with a God complex coming into the situation like a red and blue monkey wrench and changing everything.  Sure you could argue that if they were meant to die then they would have.  Still someone or better yet, something, like Superman changes the rules for everyone and everything around him.  He's an anomaly.  On his own planet he's just like us.  Fragile and susceptible to the world around him.  On our planet thought he's a super man.  He can barely be hurt.  He defies the laws of physics.  And if you believe some of the stories, he may in fact be immortal.  A being like that stepping in to save someone from a runaway train is like us diverting the course of a river to save a few insects from getting washed away.  A chain of events were set in motion and possibly had a purpose and was then interrupted by a huge X factor.

The other problem with Superman stepping in to save someone from a fatal situations is that once he's done it enough times people will start to expect it.  At first people will continue to take every precaution that they normally would.  Wearing a seat belt.  Putting on a helmet.  Not juggling that running chainsaw while riding a unicycle blind folded in busy traffic.  When Superman comes along to save them from an accident it will be kismet.  He was supposed to be there to save them from harm.  Eventually though the expectation that Superman will be there to protect them will override other safety precautions.  The construction worker doesn't bother to tie himself to the support beam because if he falls Superman will swoop in and save him from falling to his death.  At this point Superman becomes like a parent who is there to catch their child before they fall.  In this way people will never know any sense of danger.  Sure they may be scared at the time, but in the back of their mind would they just assume that Superman is coming at any minute?

No matter how fast or strong or well-intentioned Superman is, he's still just one man.  He can't be everywhere at every time.  Even if he were running at 99% efficiency when it comes to saving people there would still be people falling (literally) through the cracks.  So how would someone like that have time to have a relationship with someone or hold a day job as a journalist?  I don't know much about journalism, but I do know that when they write things, they tend to have to do some kind of research beforehand.  That takes time.  Superman is going to allow that burning building to continue destroying lives while he gets the quote from the mayor about the upcoming budget talks?  How would he even be able to take off the costume if there is something happening every minute of the day?  Maybe he just focuses on Metropolis and only gets involved in the really big events that are worldwide?  The guy can fly around the globe in minutes so for him knowing something terrible is happening across the country or the world would be like looking across the street and seeing your neighbors house on fire and thinking it's too far away for you to do anything about.  Everyone he doesn't save would either be a conscious choice or a failing on his part.  It could be he'd have to start doing triage in his head.  If I save this commuter train from derailing then I save 250 people, but if I save them then the 45 miners caught in a cave in will die.  Does it become a numbers game for him?  And would he start having to make judgement calls on who he saves and why?  Would it be women and children first and maybe people who are known to be assets to the human race?  At this point isn't he essentially playing God?

At this point wouldn't he have so disrupted the natural order of things that everything would be contingent on where he was and what he was doing at any given moment?  The things he would be changing are based entirely on what he chooses.  Would mankind still be in charge of their own destiny with someone like him around?  Granted Lex Luthor is a megalomaniac, but his point about Superman isn't wrong.  Having a god-like alien around stops us from achieving our own fate, for good or bad.  We are often defined by our failures, sometimes more than by our successes.  Only after we've seen the error of our ways or have lost something do we really understand our potential to overcome.  Constantly being protected is comforting like a security blanket, but in the end it starts to do more harm than good.  I'm not saying that I wouldn't love to have a real life Superman around, if only for the sake of knowing that someone like that could exist, no I'm saying that we should be our own superman and work on being more than we currently are.  Capes are optional.

Nebulous

On Looking Back at Today

 If you've ever watched a PBS documentary about nearly any subject from say fifty years ago or older they all tend to be very similar in how they relay the information to you.  At least the Ken Burns style has a certain way of showing you what happened, or at least how people remember it.  Usually there are old photographs and someone narrating to set the stage of the time and place.  Maybe there will be letters read by various people from that time, along with more black and white photos.  It's a fairly effective way to tell a story when all the people involved are likely not around anymore to tell it.  The thing is though, how much of the story are we really getting?  In some cases the event is just too large to try and tell all the stories so instead it has to be focused on just a few people who experienced; say a town, a unit of soldiers, or a specific group of people that were impacted by whatever it was that happened.  We know right away that something like World War II seen through the eyes of a small town in Kansas will be a much more emotional story than trying to cover something that went on for years and involved a large portion of the world while it was happening.  Any documentary is going to attempt to tell a certain story, even if that story changed from the time they started to the time they finished.  The filmmaker is going to influence the information that they find and maybe there is no "true" version of any event that is in the past.

I'm sure everyone looks back at yesterday and wonders how they got by without what we have now.  We quickly become accustomed to today's features and it's almost alien to think of a time when they didn't exist.  Ask someone under the age of eighteen to think of what life was like without the internet or a phone that you carried in your pocket.  Ask someone under the age of forty to imagine life without the civil rights we have today or of a time where mankind only dreamed of going into space.  The previous generation is always looking at the current one and wondering if they really know what's going on or how good (or bad) things are in comparison to how they were.  Once you go back farther and farther it becomes more difficult to get a true record of what was really happening then.  People took pictures and recorded it on film.  They wrote about it and kept track of their thoughts just like we do today, but the ease in which to store and spread what you saw and experienced wasn't always easy.  Plus often times things were just lost because at the time no one considered it to be important enough to keep.  How much of history is just memory because someone didn't feel the need to capture it?  And maybe that's not exactly a bad thing.  Somethings aren't meant to be captured.  Some moments are here and gone before we know what to do with them.

Today we have even more means to record the moment, for all the good and bad that comes with it.  Not that long ago people would break out the camera to capture special moments like holidays, graduations, and weddings.  Sure there were some people who recorded more than that and probably have boxes of tapes sitting around somewhere collecting dust.  Most of it may not be anything anyone wants to go back and look at.  Maybe though someone will find those tapes and catch a glimpse into moments between the big events.  Looking back at childhood pictures you may notice that in a lot of cases they were posed or were taken during a special occasion.  Some of that had to do with the fact that the camera wasn't as prevalent as it is today thanks to smart phones.  With everyone walking around with a camera in their pocket it means we have a lot more pictures of mundane things (and a lot of cat pictures).  At least for me there is a lot of mystery to how my parents were as kids.  I've seen pictures of them and I know it's them, but it's a moment frozen in time.  I don't know of any movies of them.  Any letters that they wrote were written for a specific reason, say a letter home or whatever.

Today we email, text, and tweet to the point that its specialness is lost.  I'm not saying the form of communication is bad.  It's just that when you can send an email at any moment during the day about any subject then it loses a bit of its importance.  Tweets and texts aren't any different.  Maybe you kept that text to a childhood friend, but I have a feeling that after about the fiftieth one you're not too concerned with saving it.  Now a letter from that same friend may be something that you carry around with you for years.  Is what they have to say any more or less important than in the text?  I'm not sure.  How about the pictures from your tenth birthday party where that one kid ate too much cake and threw up on your presents?  What about the picture you took of the bacon wrapped shrimp you had last week?  Maybe in that moment it was important, if only to you.  Does quantity of recorded memories reduce the quality of them?

People today don't tend to write letters as often anymore and most of our communication is electronic.  Plus we tend to change phones, phone numbers, and email addresses quite a bit throughout our lives and even if we don't, we don't really keep a lot of that old communication laying around.  In say 30-40 years if someone were to try and piece together the life of someone living today do you think it would be easier or harder to do since we tend to be somewhat disposable with our communications to people?  You'd think that with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Myspace, email, text messages, random photos taken with your phone or camera that you'd get a fairly clear picture of a person's life, but are we right back to where we were fifty years ago where the pictures and words left to tell the story are only the highlights that we chose to keep?  We have what seems like instant communication, however, are what we recording anything that worth keeping?  Is the majority of what we capture ultimately going to end up in the electronic shoebox in the back of the closet?  That's if it's saved at all.  We assume that someone is keeping that information somewhere.  It's like when you pass someone broken down on the side of a busy road.  You don't stop to help because you figure there are lots of people.  Someone has to be on it already.  Not everyone could drive by without helping.  On a lonely country road though you may be more likely to help someone because you know that you may be that person's only hope for a long time.  So do we think it's safe to not worry about keeping our history of today because someone else in the sea of millions of capture points will do it for us?  Twenty years from now we may look back at today and wonder what happened to our history because we don't have anything more than some 1s and 0s to hold the place of something tangible that reminds us of how things were.

Alient Plant