Hocus Pokus
Upside-down have been the hours of my day for a while now, and one of the most soothing habits I exercise is walking about the town under the cover of the midnight hour; the world is quiet in the middle of the night, the sun’s gleaming beauty absent, and in the shadows I’ve always tended to roam in the purest state of mind. Night before last I was to my surprise ‘pulled over’ by a passing cop as I strolled my peaceful stroll in the arms of the night, harassed because there have been robberies in the neighborhood and I’m apparently the thieving type due to my fondness of the wee hours.
I was reminded of a time I was on a similar walk, with my former dog Rocky,
and decided to take a gander at the shiny new cars on a GMC dealer lot in Plano; I was about to start auto mechanics school and was on the phone with Jason, so we decided to play a parts identification game involving me getting under the shiny new cars with a flashlight and locating starter solenoids and tie-rod ends and shifting linkages. This lack of inhibition was apparently quite the suspicious behavior and was reported, unbeknownst to me, to the Plano PD. I noticed Rocky scramble away from me and heard him erupt barking, and heard the less-than-soothing shouts of, “CALL HIM OFF OR WE’LL SHOOT! CALL HIM OFF OR WE’LL FUCKING SHOOT HIM!”. I wiggled out from beneath the Tahoe under which I was lost in discovery and popped up to see 3 cops, guns drawn, and the 75 pound Doberman-Choc Lab mix wailing away at the top of his lungs, defending me audibly and loyally; I quickly called him back, luckily he obeyed, and the interrogation began.
It was intriguing how far from accepting the truth the cops were in this instance, absolutely unable to believe that I was identifying car parts prior to starting mechanic school, unable to believe this was an innocent act with no harmful intentions. I understand what it looked like, especially to a group of guys trained to think that everyone’s a homicidal maniac, so after repeating what I was doing there about 10 times they took my license info, told me to get lost and sent me on my way.
Either way, I was on a soothing midnight walk last night and was talking to Jason about the inherent magic in things unknown to us, and an interesting debate was born of it. Essentially as children we are surrounded by the mystical unknown, and in the lack of explanation we hold to how this strange world works the creative potential is unlimited. Where there are no rules to follow, anything can be; buildings can have duck legs and elephant snouts, puddles can be portals to unexplored worlds and a 2-acre field can stretch on for eternity. Expansive playlands roll out in every direction where the borders of our knowledge are absent. It is quite extraordinary to bask in the imagination, and from this fact is where we explored two sides of the same coin in our conversation.
The subject of engineering sparked this debate, I commented that learning the intimate details of any functioning dynamic raped it of it’s glimmer, that it’s magic fell in our exploration of it’s intricacies, to which he rebutted that it is only in education of something that it can truly be appreciated. I stopped to give this a bit of thought as it seemed we were, for once, both correct in opposing ways.
By my perspective the superficiality of say, laying eyes upon vasting mountainous countryside, was magical in itself. The mountain’s glory was such in the sense that it’s overwhelming size provides a mystical feeling, one of humility and awe, and I felt that from a post-geology-class standpoint it was but a miniscule part of our earth’s rock cycle, that the layers of pine trees constituting it’s forests were simple growth due to fertility of the land. In the view of science (and in that of logic) my soul-grabbing and awe-inspiring mountainside was reduced and belittled to categorized minerals and cyclic cause-and-effect in nature. That’s not even mentioning the strictly plotted property lines and politics necessary to keep this land open for our viewing pleasure. These are all valid things but jebus do they ever rob the captivation right out of this priceless scenery…
The point of view that Jason shared was one that embraces knowing all the science behind something like this before ever being able to truly embrace its beauty, that examination exemplifies the reasons why that stretch of mountain land is so unique. In his eyes the exploration of its existence are what bring the appreciation, and I find this to be extremely valid from the position of logic. Another example would be a tightly tuned sports car in the peak of its performance, a monstrous force of technology squealing it’s tires and deafening onlookers with the rumble of it’s big block and 3 inch dual-exhaust. It’s surface beauty is maddeningly apparent in my eyes, and the knowledge that it’s only pistons and axles and gears and linkages between them all only takes away from it’s divinity. In his world it’s very different though, he sees the precision of the tuning and the marvel therein, the magic comes to him by way of its complicated nature as machinery, and this provokes me to dissect further.
It has always been in his curious nature to examine intricate things, but normally only to the result that he may manipulate them; he cares exactly what goes into the systems of the car, how an overhead cam system is superior to pushrod-driven cams, so that he may let his imagination loose in design of advancing the system. It is here that I’d like to add that being manipulative toward mechanics and science is an immeasurably good trait, it’s in this gift that our technology moves forward. I wonder if I don’t give him enough credit for thinking the way he does…
The differentiating factor I find here is that which I have exploited almost to a fault in older blogs, the undeniable equilibrium presented by logic and emotion in the human brain. I associate Jason’s patterns of thought with logic, that is, learning all the ways something works to manipulate it’s operation and broaden it’s functionality. Human intellect at work, it is what has brought us through the Stone Age into the Bronze Age and into the Iron Age and so on. My view of the mystic power behind these things can be associated with emotion, feeling incredible sensations in the presence of great things, which essentially provides the appreciation for them. No technological advancement is ever born of simple emotional gratification; one person’s admiration of something doesn’t provide the world with anything, rather it provides peace within the one experiencing it- a valuable thing to the individual. He argues that it is the emotional appreciation provided by the experience, the magic that exists on the surface, that sparks the interest to learn about it’s intricacies, basically that it is the flow from emotion to logic. This makes sense because as most of us that have ever been ruled by extreme emotional response to a situation know, the part of the brain that processes emotion reacts faster than the part that processes logic (thus we scream obscenities before considering our programming for forgiveness). Good stuff : )
Just thought I’d share that…
-peace and love-
p.s.- There was a spectacular sunrise this morning which I tried to capture with the camera but was unable to. Hope some of you early risers got to see it, was amazing : )
p.p.s.-If you're ever up stupid late and want to trade stories or laugh or bxtch then i'm probably walking around, gimme a call! haha