But if we are learning, whatever it is that we are learning - such as how to interact with folks of different strokes or how to be happy without being in denial - we are bound to face information which, at first glance, is not pretty.
Take for instance historical name dropping. I don't like it. Those isolated names that are attributed with the status of divinity: Da Vinci, Copernicus, etc. Never mind that Copernicus had his predecessor in Pythagoras, or that da Vinci is often attributed more importance than he deserves. We are told history through pictures of the chosen few, when in actuality, the story is more complicated than that, and the name-dropping skews our view of life, giving us the impression that life is formed entirely through individuals, and not through, for example, the spirit of the age, as Bakhtin so beautifully explains. Bakhtin's famous example is how Charles Dickens was like a sponge to his age, and that the strength of his writing lies in his ability to re-present the multiple dialects and class realities of his day.
The truth is always somewhere in the middle - of the often one-sided information.
And while it can seem frustrating to go up against all those narratives that inspire anxiety and not beauty in one's mind, we just need to try to hold out, calm down, and wait for inspiration to come in and sew the information together into a prettier picture. It might not come immediately, in fact it cannot come immediately, when we are taking in the information. It comes when we are putting the information away in our minds. Inspiration is the delightful housekeeper of the mind.
But not everyone wants to sort life out. Many people just pile up information, which means the information can't actually be used. This is exactly like those annoying pictures in home decorating magazines which feature a "decorative" tower-of-Pisa of books - which clearly aren't being read, imagine pulling one out from the bottom!
So, what does one do while one is waiting for the information to settle, before one puts it away, if this is what they want to do in life, to learn life? While I wait, I like to cook.
Yesterday, I made my first caramel sauce. I had been so put off by the two sets of caramel instructions, so I just tried the recipe, given that I know how to melt sugar until it is dark copper in colour. If you know how to do that, too, I don't see why the recipe wouldn't work.
All is well if we remember to look for the sugar and spice - which, incidentally, pretty much sums up the ingredients in punch! So, I propose that instead of "put a bird on it" we put some punch in it!
medallions: pugly pixel.
