I visited Bess in Madison a week or so ago, and somewhere during the visit one of the ear-hangers on my reading glasses snapped off. I think I have about 10 pair of reading glasses with the ear hanger snapped off.
Bess had the clever idea of taping a pen to the frame to create a replacement ear hanger. Having been a carpenter who lost many a pencil behind my ear, I could immediately see the practicality of this.
Pen Glasses
So here’s my first attempt. The pen is hard to use as a pen, as it turns out, because the glasses flop down and get in the way.
What an invention. You do have to watch that you don’t poke your eye with the pen. A pen does make for a very comfortable ear hanger, and you do have a pen handy. Of course you can’t see to write, but then you can’t have everything.
I know a guy who, if you speak to him, he always seems to be too busy. It’s like you are annoying him or interrupting something. This might be expected once in a while, but with this guy it is without exception. He’s too busy.
Of course it could be me. He just doesn’t want to talk to me, and so he’s trying to avoid any interaction in the way a person might avoid eye contact with a beggar. If you don’t look at the beggar, you won’t have to give them any money. But it’s not me, because I’m not the only person whom he treats this way. And I’m certainly not a beggar.
I think the guy is really just that busy. His mind is whirring with his own inner business in such a way that he is completely absorbed in the drama of his inner dialogue. He is really too busy with his own mind.
I’ve experienced this myself, as the busy one, with students or children that I have known. I’ve been busy with something as a teacher – some politics of the school or planning for a class – when a student wants my full attention. I’ve had to very deliberately stop the movie in my brain, make eye contact, and pay attention to the student, perhaps with a big noticeable sigh.
I’ve experienced it while watching a TV show or a movie, and also while reading a book. I become completely absorbed, and I don’t want to be bothered by an interruption. I’m too busy.
What is it we are attending to? Our mind’s drama? The thoughts and feelings whirling? We attend to the feelings and reactions to phantoms in our own brain, the stories so compelling we can’t stop paying attention. It’s like we are in a dark cave watching shadows on the wall – we see nothing but the dancing shadows and light and the drama of their exchange. Socrates predicted the video game quite accurately.
What could be more real and necessary than a real human soul right in front of you in the here and now? The answer is our thoughts as they whirl and dance in our mind, more compelling than a flesh and blood person here and now.
Onioncap crashed due to some technical issues. Maybe someday I’ll restore the archived posts, but for now, I’ll just forge on. I had to delete some things in order to get WordPress installed correctly (or maybe incorrectly), but now it appears to be working again.
