Love is blind.

No joke, it really is. I’m not speaking about how a young woman in love is blind to the jerk they share their bed with, or the fact that he hasn’t had a job in 5 years and is living with his parents. That is true enough, but I am speaking quite literally, that love makes you see something visually different than other people see.

I never would have agreed with this hypothesis until it happened to me. My daughter was born severely premature. When she finally came home from the NICU, her hair had all fallen out and she was still only 4lbs after months and months of all kinds of hell and triumph that I won’t go into here. I watched her grow and develop from 1lb 9oz to that beautiful 4 pounder. I was holding her one day and was staring at her little face and mentioned to my brother-in-law how I was amazed that some people have the ugliest kids and don’t know it. He says “Well, yours isn’t exactly winning any beauty contests…but she has been through a lot, and that is to be expected.” I was floored. I honestly saw the cutest little one in the world when I looked at her. Was he blind, or was I? Eight years have passed and I look back at those pictures and see a baby that had many medical issues and can almost understand how someone used to seeing a chubby infant would think my child looked skinny and sickly….almost. It has never crossed my mind that she wasn’t always adorable, except for that one comment by my brother-in-law.

Another example is a woman I saw through social circles many, many times. I would giggle to myself that she looked exactly like Aughra from The Dark Crystal (note the picture above). Then, my wife and I got to know her and her family and we all became quite good friends. We have now known her for seven years and I really don’t see it anymore. I remember mocking her, but now her hideousness has been reduced exponentially. I would say she is of average attractiveness like anyone. Seven years ago, I didn’t see that at all.

This is really a remarkable thing. Why can feelings change the lines and colors that our eyes take in? How can an emotion bend light? I really don’t know the answer, but I do know that when every parent says their kids are the cutest in the world; they aren’t lying. To them, the really are. To all of those women who want the light off because of a few extra pounds, know this: if your lover really loves you, his eyes don’t see you the way you think they do. Shapes are shifted and light is bent by a process that boggles the mind.

One of the Worst Things I Ever Did

I lived in a somewhat rural area when I was of high school age. My best buddy and I were hunters and we killed everything we legally could. With our Ruger 10-22s in hand and a belt full of 50 round banana clips, we hit the desert in the Toyota pick-up and slew the masses.

I think it was my Junior year in high school when the farmers had an infestation of rabbits. Again, I worked at the auto parts store and the farmers would come in and beg us to come thin the herd. We would spotlight and kill hundreds of them, they were everywhere. The gore was outrageous.

One night, four of us jumped into the truck, grabbed the one million candle power spotlight, Rugers, pistols, and even a few shotguns and headed for the desert just outside a group of farms. One person driving and three rednecks in the back blasting anything that moved; ya, we were asking for trouble. Now Jack rabbits are big ugly things that were rodents to the farmers, so they were our main target. Cottontails, on the other hand, are small, fluffy, and cute, and aren’t nearly as fast, but were still abundant. We generally wouldn’t shoot them. I know you anti-hunters argument, “it’s ok to kill ugly things…”

Anyhow, I was in the back with the two other guys and a rabbit ran out. One guy has the spotlight and me and another guy are doing the shooting. We take a few shots and he yells “I’m out”. I’ve got a few more rounds in my rifle but the rabbit is getting out of range and darting away from the road. Without thinking, I jump out of the back and sprint after it. Suddenly the bunny turns on me so I stop. I’m standing in a clearing with the spotlight’s pencil beam illuminating me and the rabbit. Everything else is pitch black, like this moment is fixed on a stage and the rabbit and I are the only players. It doesn’t stop, it comes right at me so I raise my rifle to shoot and “click”, I’m out too.

Still the little fella comes until he finally stops two feet from my shoe. He looks up at me and I can see the bewildered expression in its eyes. It is a baby cottontail, probably separated from its mother in all the commotion. I see its little pink nose twitch and for a second....time stood still. From then on it is a little bit of a blur. I pull a 22 cal. revolver from my holster and fire a single shot directly into its head at point blank range. Its head went back, and to the left….back, and to the left, and then it lies twitching a few final kicks before it dies.

I holster my gun and jog back to the truck. There, I see three high school friends staring at me speechless. My best friend has a tear rolling down his left cheek and he whispers “That is the coldest thing I have ever seen.” I giggle a little at first and then realize he is dead serious. The other two guys sit down in the back and don’t say a word. My buddy puts the rig in gear and we drive off silently, done with the slaughter. You have to understand, my friends were cold blooded, damn killers. We gutted animals while eating sandwiches. We had no feelings. Our mantra, “God kills indiscriminately…and so shall we”.

To this day, they reference that event with disgust and amazement. They are certain that I am devoid of a soul. I don’t hunt much anymore, and when I do, I rarely take game. Some say I’ve gone soft, some say I’m just a poor shot. Either way, I regret killing that little bunny and I know he is going to be standing there on Judgment Day. I’m sorry little buck (a male rabbit is a buck)…I’m sorry.

Poe is God.

I’ve never claimed to be well read in anything that wasn’t a textbook but I’ve got to say Edger Allan Poe kicks major arse. If you have read my other blogs you may remember me bragging about the unremarkable feat of memorizing “The Raven”, his most well know poem. It’s good, and there are some passages in it that are amazing that I have read and reread, stunned by his diction.

“And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;”

Damn… that’s good. Very few will ever write a single passage that compares to the one above but his other works are so much more impressive. If you haven’t read “The murders in the Rue Morgue” you need to drop the channel changer for about 20 min. and crack open a tallboy…I mean a book. You can do it, come on, hoist up that gelatinous meat sack that you call an ass and pick up a damn book for once. You don’t even have to read the whole short story but rather just work through his commentary on “Analysis”. It is life changing. I’ve never read anything that so well encapsulates some of my own personal thoughts on the analytical mind as the start of this story. Good stuff. Here is a nugget:

“The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension praeternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition.”

If you don’t get lost in all the “big words” the theme is extraordinary and dead on accurate, and it just gets better from here. By the way, you can download the story for free on the internet, so you won’t really have to pick up an archaic, leather-bound, paper weight. I realize most classic have you nodding off before you get through the TOC (Table Of Contents you nit), but a few are truly classics. Opiates or no, Poe is a God…and remember, “Never Bet the Devil Your Head.”

Profound vs. Complex

I am continually amazed at how moronic supposedly intelligent people tend to be. They take a few college classes, post-grad even, and suddenly they think themselves geniuses. The fact that they don’t know they are nothing special is what makes them morons.

Remember that scene in Goodwill Hunting where the Math professor is talking to Matt Damon and says something like “Only a handful of people in the world would be able to tell the difference between you and me.” I want to expand on this idea a little more. I’ve sat through a lot of classes, a lot, and have worked with many intelligent, learned people. However, there is one concept that most don’t quite grasp. The idea of doing something profound vs. something that is only complex. I emphasize only because really it is the basis for my argument. Complex just means a bunch of steps. I don’t know if it is inflated ego or just ignorance, but “The Learned” give themselves much more credit than they deserve. As a matter of fact, so do the observers of “The learned”. For example, take multivariable calculus; if you haven’t had the class, you may think that someone capable of learning this is highly intelligent and/or gifted. Sorry, it’s just a series of somewhat complex steps that, with practice, can be followed as easily as a dot-to-dot. Remember the steps, a couple of formulas, and you're set. This is only complex as is most higher level math. Now, being the one who invented Calculus, the one that thought of shrinking those little rectangles infinitesimally small to calculate that area under a curve; that is profound. This idea extends to more than just Calculus, it applies to almost everything. Laws, proofs, theorems..all memorization of steps and understanding of profound work someone else did, which to you, is nothing but complex. I give all the grads and post grads props for being diligent and working through the steps, but the truth of the matter is, almost none of you have done anything profound. I am absolutely in this category but the difference is, I know it. I am smart, but that’s it. You may consider it arrogant to call yourself smart, but my definition is nothing to brag about. Smart only means you have learned that with time and resources you have the ability to learn someone else’s work. That’s it. I’ve never been clever or inventive and never had any real talent, but I’m smart so I copy really well, like most people with a BS or MS. I’ll leave the Doctors out of it as I would be speaking out of turn.

I work with engineers all day long and they think reciting some random formula or proof demonstrates the significant brain power that they seem to mask with their daily work. Again, idiots; and I’m the worst of them. I actually memorized “The Raven” by Poe for bragging rights. It is really really long and I am really really smart. Again, anyone, anyone with too much time on their hands and the will to do so can recite someone else’s work. The tragedy is when you realize what you are incapable of doing…writing an original, inventing anything of your own, having an original thought. Unlike the high school student that says they just can’t do math, you know better. You know you can learn and think and work through problems and in doing so you also learn that you really have little more to offer than a copy machine. Sorry moms, those genius sons and daughters of yours are far from genius…you just didn’t know any better.