petty problems
1. We know that pigeons exist because we have seen pigeons and because we can see the effects that they have on the world and because we all agree that a pigeon is a particular type of bird that eats bread and bobs its head like a wind-up toy and is magnetized to find its way home and sometimes dies in the road, where we can pick feathers from its cooling body. While it's possible that angels exist, we can't ascertain their existence in the same way. Some people say they've seen angels, but most people, even people who believe in angels, haven't. Some people will point to some incidents and phenomena as evidence of angelic activity, but these claims are always controversial, highly debatable, and impossible to prove. (On the other hand, if you see pigeon shit on a statue of a famous dead white guy in a wig, you know it's pigeon shit and anybody you point it out to also knows it's pigeon shit, and if you collect a sample and take it to an ornithologist, she'll be able to confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is, indeed, pigeon shit.) There is no universally agreed-upon notion of what angels are, what they look like, or what they do. Maybe pigeons are real and angels aren't. Maybe pigeons are real and angels are real, too; if that's so, then coming to know the truth of pigeons is a matter of observational reasoning, while coming to know the truth of angels is most likely a matter of personal revelation that renders logic and objective evidence and proof irrelevant. That's what faith is. That's what belief is. Nobody believes in pigeons; I mean, they're right there.
2. Also, yeah, okay, we can go the butterflies and brains in jars route and say that, since we can't be absolutely sure the world we perceive isn't just a very convincing dream or simulation, taking anything for granted as objectively real, no matter its apparent tangibility, is a form of faith. It's not a good argument if you're trying to convince me that there's no real qualitative difference between the statements "pigeons exist" and "angels exist," because even if I'm really sleeping in a tank and plugged into a port somewhere, my fictive pigeons seem tangible and consistent and present within my dream, whereas I've only ever dreamed I've seen drawings and windows and tacky garden sculptures of angels. Maybe I made them both up, but the birds are still occupying a totally different tier of my fake reality than the messangers of God.
3. College students think they are so smart about metaphysics and everything.
4. I'm still sick. Turning funny colors all day: firetruck red, cottagecheese white. I went to see the nurse and she asked whether I had a fever and I said I didn't know, I didn't think I had one anymore, but I might have had one earlier, but I couldn't say for sure because I don't have a thermometer. The nurse seemed kind of pissed off at me for not having a thermometer. ( Do most college kids have thermometers?) Then she told me I didn't have a bacterial infection, didn't have strep, and probably didn't even have the flu-- just a really, really bad headcold. Then she gave me these really great pills which are about as big as dimes and contain pain reliever AND an antihistamine AND a decongestant AND some type of anti-cough thing. They wear off sooner than I'd like and the packaging warns me that I absolutely should not take more than eight in a day, but oh man, I am going to stock up on these things anyway and never struggle through a cold on just tea and cough drops and aspirin ever again.
5. Somebody left me this really aggressive, expletive-laden note because I used their soap (and accidentally left it in the dish instead of putting it back on the shelf they'd claimed for their shower stuff, which is probably how they knew) a couple of times last week. I have this problem where I run out of stuff like soap and toothpaste but I'm afraid to go to the supermarket, so I sneak some from other people and try to be as sparing as possible until I can finally remember go to the student bookstore and buy little travel-sized toothpastes and soaps and I understand that this is not an ideal arrangement, and I also get that it looks like I'm either incredibly cheap or incredibly lazy (as opposed to weird and messed-up and woefully lacking in time-management skills), but I think that the person whose soap I "borrowed" maybe should have written something like "Please stop using my soap. I don't like it/ it makes me uncomfortable/ I paid for that soap and don't want it to get used up a lot faster because other people are helping themselves" instead of calling me a "horrible, thieving little shit." (Actually, that was my favorite part of the whole note, but what I'm trying to say is, when people get angry and act like jerks you feel less guilty about using their soap, not more.)
... I mean, I acknowledge that I'm in the wrong here. I just think the reaction was a tad histrionic.
You know, probably I ought to go to a Costco sometime and just buy up All The Toiletries I Will Ever Need For The Whole Rest Of My Life Expectancy. (Does toothpaste have an expiration date?) The only problem would be storage.