Sunday, June 28, 2009

Clueless. And loving it.


Bill is the sort of person who really wants to understand things. Therefore, when you stick him in a chair that overlooks a beautiful scene, he spends a certain amount of time marveling at the beauty. And then he gets down to business and starts hypothesizing about stuff. I'm a pretty serious Understander myself so I'm happy to jump right in, sometimes as the instigator.

So, here we sit, staring at the water and the sky, appreciating the view and saying things like, "Why do you think that one gull is floating out there all by himself? And crying like that? Lost? Hungry? Looking for a girlfriend?" Using our acutest powers of observation we work that one for awhile and then move on.

"Why do you think those rivers of lighter colored water are meandering all over the surface of the lake? Like that one that comes from all the way out at the horizon and ends up over by the harbor? Oil slick? Naw. Doesn't look oily. Thermal differences? Maybe."

"Hmmm."

"Pretty though."

"Yeah."

"Why do you think some sunsets linger in the clouds for an hour. And others just 'plop down' and are done?"

"Well, I suppose atmospheric conditions...."

There probably is a factual/actual answer out there. Somewhere. We can Google around some of the questions. And we do. Every now and then we get an expert down to the deck and grill him or her. But harsh reality is, we're never going to know for sure why sometimes geese fly down the shoreline and sometimes they swim.

"Maybe it's because they're stopping to eat some goo? Goose buffet. Maybe it's because the babies can't fly yet?

"Maybe. But I don't see any babies, do you?"

"Uh uh. Do you think the babies are grown up already? Where are they anyhow?"

Experts on thinking and knowing tell us that, in the world of the human head, there are the things we know and the things we don't know and the things we don't know we don't know. I would add to that the things we'll never know. But just like to sit and wonder about until the sun goes down and the stars come out.

"So, where is Venus? Last summer it was right over there...."

June 27, 2009

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