Thoughts on a Saturday Morning
12:30pm:
I just came from the public library and a seminar by science-fiction author Robert J. Sawyer. He spoke on "Approaching Science Fiction from the Top Down." While I'm not a fiction writer, I'm interested in how the creative process works, and this was a great hour-and-a-half glimpse. Afterward, taking the bus home from downtown, I had the following thoughts.
1) There is a great distance between aspiring to do something (...when one has time, or necessary experience, or oomph) and being in love with the idea of doing something (grand, exciting, interesting). And using the same reasons to not do it now, as for if I wanted to do the thing, itself. Why do they feel so similar to me? And is this a common experience to everyone?
2) Our local downtown bus terminal has: a usual location for each bus; a renovations location for some busses while the terminal is under construction; and... today, at least, a third (unannounced) spot where i actually found my bus, which I only noticed through scanning all of the busses around, when the bus was clearly late arriving. Even though I was pissed as hell as I ran to catch it, I was quite polite to the driver, asking how long it was going to be in this new location, instead of the renovation location. She said, "I've got no idea, I'm not involved with the renovations."
On that note, should I read "Who Moved my Cheese?"
3) Does it make any sense at all to talk about forgiving an institution? I can forgive individuals, especially for making mistakes. But if an institution has institutionalized a mistake, that's more of a problem for me for "letting go". Sure, I can forgive whomever is in charge; or the person who was the blunt end of the customer-service chain that happened to thwack me.
But the institution as a whole isn't endowed with any sort of common spirit with me; it doesn't have a conscience to appeal to, apart from that of each person who works there. I don't believe in some anima/soul/gestalt that's greater than all the people who work for an institution, even though that would be convenient as an agent of forgiveness. I can imagine forgiving each and every person involved with the problem at the institution. But forgiving the institution itself, feels to me like forgiving- a snowstorm.
And yet, the institution is so much more culpable- it's human-made, sometimes it should be human-dismantled or reshaped. Not forgiven.