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family interpretation

Horns of Strange Places

My family recently visited Chicago, as we have done a couple times before.  Our Portland ears are always stunned by how frequently and aggressively people honk there.

I remembered one early morning walk when my son  was young enough to be strapped to my belly. He kept asking ‘what’s that?’ with increasingly frequency and curiosity. It took several long walks to realize that he was confused about horns, and had probably never heard them before.

This time we talked about how some people probably use the horn regularly at the first hint of delay or frustration. Some probably do so and forget about it a block later, never having their pulse increase or attention diverted significantly. It’s just part of the ride.

I remember all of the times when I was honked at this trip. I’ll likely remember it for years – how nervous and angry i got. It isn’t part of the ride for me, but it should be.

Part of respecting others is respecting their intent. Holding on to unintended harm is empty weight, something no one gave and no expects me to keep.

Categories
divination personal streetfinds Uncategorized

conflate

I went to the highway like I used to go to the library in the pre-Internet days. I would walk the couple of miles reviewing my headful of questions, and go over my notebook so by the time I got there, I would be ready to research answers for the weeks’ questions.

I got to the highway thinking about what I needed to change to help ease the mid-life-crisis feelings that had been growing over the years.  I could have looked for symbols and oddities in the wooded roads to the highway, but I don’t spend a lot of time in the woods. I spend a lot of time looking at trash on the side of the road. So I was going to the highway.

When I got there I looked South and looked North.  When I looked North, right near what used to be a cafe where years ago I registered nshrine.com in a fit of vacation inspiration.  I saw a white lump in the grass. “That’d be it.”

vocabularyAs I got closer I got disappointed.  It looked to be directory, maybe even a phonebook.  Those can be inspirational, but nothing that could really get me going, nothing right for something like this.  I decided to go with the bibliomancy method.  I would think of the question in very precise terms, pick a random section, and pretend the contents were some confused person’s answer.

The paragraph I chose was a definition of “conflate”.  Now the challenge is to wedge this into the problem space. Shouldn’t be too hard.