Warm Recollection #5

More from the Bitz files...

As introduced here, these Warm Recollections are random cullings from thirty years of notes files…

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Taking off from O’Hare, and for a moment a line of clouds rests exactly on the horizon of the Great Lake, making it look as though there’s no break between the two.

A feeling of relief, as always, when seeing these odd optical illusions from a plane — that one has finally seen through the fakery.

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I disagree. Now I have to work out why.

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The exaggerated sense of self that comes through being alone, rather than having to cater for, and adapt to, a 360° of other humans around you, in real time: this is what colors much of online life. It encourages and enables us to be social while in reality we are being at our most anti-social, living by the rules of solitude.

This deep-level disjunct lies behind at least some of the volatile nature of online interaction: we are unsettled by private behavior let loose in public spaces.

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The novelist Jim Harrison is correct in declaring that one should be open to the notion that life is not one long self-improvement exercise — but fried ice cream really is running against the tide of history. Why not Fried Beer? Or Fried Cigarettes?

I mean, I’d try them, obviously…

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It would have pleased Buddha that self-proclaimed Buddhists in the West are so annoying. There is no false seduction.

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