John Swinburn

Here are a few photos from our hike today at Petit Jean State Park. Mi esposa bonita y mi cuñadaa hermosa and I did a bit of wandering around.  Only about 2 miles in total, I’d guess, but it was some spectacular scenery (and lots of climbing). My brothers in Mexico called me mid-hike (actually, toward the end), but the connection got lost almost immediately.  That seems to be  my experience with calls between the U.S. and Mexico, more often than not.

Underneath the black sweatshirt I had on today, I was wearing a red t-shirt.  I discovered later, after our adventures, that red is an unnatural color for me, making me look like a dope with a sunburn. I suppose my wish for being more attractive in any color is wasted wishery.

Anyway, here are a few snapshots.  I haven’t posted photos in ages.  Probably because I’m not a good photographer.  At least I got one good photo of my wife.  I’ll save that for myself.

There’s a restaurant in Dallas—actually in the city limits of Plano, I think—with an odd characteristic.  I think it’s the ceiling that allows conversations at each of two specific tables across the room from one another to be heard at the other table.  Even whispers at one table resonate clearly at the other.  My wife and I experienced this more than once.  It was eerie, as if we were listening in on someone’s private conversation.  Which, in fact, we were.  But they heard ours, as well. We faced a choice.  We could either have them arrested for felony eavesdropping or we could drop the matter. There were other options, of course. We made a choice. And it stands. We chose to remember the experience.  I chose to write about it. I suppose I should divulge the name of the restaurant.  It’s Luna de Noche, on Preston Road. The tortilla soup is exceptional.  The complimentary roasted pepper salsa is excellent. The ceiling looks like a starry night sky.  And it acts like a listening device.

Borrowed from http://hex13.deviantart.com/

I find something about prisms vaguely unsettling. Perhaps it’s the fact that they look so simply elegant, yet they so completely alter reality. Let me think on that.

Recently, I read that the speed of light changes when it moves from one medium to another, for example from air to water.  I had always assumed that the speed of light is constant, that it does not change.  Now, I wonder whether my assumption was wrong, or whether the writer of the article knew of my gullibility and simply lied to me out of spite.  Regardless, prisms—simple pieces of transparent glass or plastic or what have you with angular polished surfaces—change the way I experience light.

My fascination is not with the idea of prisms themselves, but with the facts their existence lay forth. Reality as we know it can be bent, transformed into something different than we knew it by something as unremarkable as a piece of glass. The same is true of people who become important parts of our lives almost without our realizing it. Both prisms and people can bring beauty into our lives; both of them can alter the realities we have known. Both can give us focus and clarity. And intrigue.

This morning’s tasks include a visit to the pottery studio to carve bases into pots I threw two days ago. I suspect all six pots will be too wet, still, to handle, so I’ll have to put them in front of fans to dry before I go about smoothing the bottom edges, then carefully carving indentations into their bases. This step is done on the potter’s wheel, too, but at slow speed, with the pots placed upside down on a batt on the wheel and affixed, temporarily, with wet clay. It’s an involved process, requiring care to ensure the pot is centered. The process, like throwing pots, requires practice and patience, which is something I need to refine for myself. I would prefer to do this in my own studio, here at the house, but I have no studio here at the house, so that’s impossible. Throwing pottery, or making slab pots for that matter, is a task best done alone, in my way of thinking. That suits me. It’s like writing and thinking in that regard. Improving my capabilities requires a little more, or a lot more, solitary refinement.

There is a fine line, I think, between acceptable social constraints on behavior and intolerable suppression.  Constraints on behavior should be based on some generally agreed moral code (a topic I’ve pondered here and here and here recently).

It is no small feat to find the line of demarcation, precisely because of the absence of general agreement on what constitutes acceptable behavior.  From my vantage point, it seems that a vocal and media-savvy minority is pushing, hard to scale back the boundaries of what is and is not acceptable, using rigid interpretations of scripture as their yardstick for measuring acceptability.

When challenged as to the legitimacy of their arguments, this scurrilous lot of evangelical moralizers insist that the only acceptable moral code is the one drummed into them from their ‘good book,’ the potential fallibility of which is simply not open for discussion.  Indeed, their interpretation of the book and their understanding of its literal instructions for everyday life are not to be questioned. Their objective is to dispel doubt by forbidding questions.  Unfortunately, it seems to me there are enormous herds of people willing to accept that offer.

In my mind, conversations and debates and arguments are key to establishing broad consensus on standards of behavior, morality, and whether acceptable limitations to freedom can be identified and agreed upon.

People who refuse to discuss even the possibility that their world view may not be the only “right” one make me tired.  They attempt to bully themselves into positions of moral authority, an irony if ever there was one.

Morality and right and wrong are moving targets.  And they should be.

And so I have come to the end of this exercise in “thinking through my fingers.”  That’s a phrase I heard from a writer friend. I had used “thinking with my fingers,” but hearing her version persuaded me it was an improvement over mind.