Nightmares and nudism
Bad dreams last night were so realistic I didn't know, on waking up, whether they were real memories of real events. Until I got, you know, a little more awake. Now I'm afraid they were predictions. But dreams don't predict the future. I know this. But high school and grad school, although thirty years apart, are more alike than anybody wants to admit.
Went to what's getting billed as everybody's favourite PanFest Fundraiser last night, at Bonnie Doon pool here in town. We welcomed many members of a local nudist group, and, it is thought, they'll attend again. In nudism (as in all aspects of life) there are Popular Kids to whom go the many and varied resources of power, and our guests last night are generally excluded from Popular Kids events.
I would never self-identify as a nudist, even though I meet one of the behavioural criteria for such a designation. Funny how that is. I do self-identify as a nurse-- the College and Association of Registered Nurses of Alberta says I can, and they're the ones who'd get to deny me that right, under other circumstances-- but that's merely a necessary condition, not a sufficient one in itself. I wouldn't self-identify as a martial artist, nor as a blacksmith, nor a writer-- and you'd never know I was a nurse, just by following me around at work for a day and watching what I do for comparison against the set of nurse behaviours you've been taught to recognize.
Self-identification is so weird-- more inhabitants of those trailer parks on the border between philosophy and psychology, like so many of my favourite things. (You know that joke about why dogs lick their own genitals. However you deliver the punchline, the joke is in how a necessary condition is rendered sufficient by the unspoken postulate of universal desire.)
If I'm stupid enough to wear a kilt in weather like this, I'm smart enough to wear it the right way. Although my name is Robert Andrew Reid, I self-identify as Acadian French (my mother's Wise Ancestors reportedly came from Alsace-Lorraine, so naming them French or German is a political choice even today) but I couldn't prove why.
Went to what's getting billed as everybody's favourite PanFest Fundraiser last night, at Bonnie Doon pool here in town. We welcomed many members of a local nudist group, and, it is thought, they'll attend again. In nudism (as in all aspects of life) there are Popular Kids to whom go the many and varied resources of power, and our guests last night are generally excluded from Popular Kids events.
I would never self-identify as a nudist, even though I meet one of the behavioural criteria for such a designation. Funny how that is. I do self-identify as a nurse-- the College and Association of Registered Nurses of Alberta says I can, and they're the ones who'd get to deny me that right, under other circumstances-- but that's merely a necessary condition, not a sufficient one in itself. I wouldn't self-identify as a martial artist, nor as a blacksmith, nor a writer-- and you'd never know I was a nurse, just by following me around at work for a day and watching what I do for comparison against the set of nurse behaviours you've been taught to recognize.
Self-identification is so weird-- more inhabitants of those trailer parks on the border between philosophy and psychology, like so many of my favourite things. (You know that joke about why dogs lick their own genitals. However you deliver the punchline, the joke is in how a necessary condition is rendered sufficient by the unspoken postulate of universal desire.)
If I'm stupid enough to wear a kilt in weather like this, I'm smart enough to wear it the right way. Although my name is Robert Andrew Reid, I self-identify as Acadian French (my mother's Wise Ancestors reportedly came from Alsace-Lorraine, so naming them French or German is a political choice even today) but I couldn't prove why.