Body Language

Grazing through the channels last week, I stopped to watch some of President Bush's press conference with the sound off. I generally find his speeches easier that way. Despite his being muted, I noticed that his body language, the shrugs, the slouching posture, the sly half-smile, the avoidance of eye contact, might not have reinforced the overall message he intended.

Up to ninety percent of human communication is nonverbal. We rely heavily on tone, posture and gesture to understand one another even when we don't actually listen or absorb the individual words. If we see a man and woman in conversation, we all have an idea of her intentions with the hair twirl, the downturned eyes, the half-bitten lip, the over-the-shoulder glance and the upturned face, regardless of the words of being exchanged.

If you want to see the epitome of body language in action, just ask a married couple a question, preferably one where neither is certain how the other will want to answer. Scheduling, especially an event one or the other might not want to attend, is always a good choice. What you will witness is a hive mind being born.

Sure other cliques have their own communication shorthand. They can welcome or reject a new member, even admonish an existing one, all without a word being said. As an outsider, you may understand what's happened but not always how or why. If you are very observant, you might pick out the bellwether, not the obvious leader of the group, but the social force that gives it life. The individual who guides the others without exposing himself to danger, shielding himself in the center of group.

With a married couple, that shorthand is refined down to its essence. Confronted with the right question, they will lock eyes with slightly confused expressions, staring at one another for a moment in silence. With newlyweds, you might spot a subtle hand gesture or the nearly imperceptible nod but such extraneous expressions fade with time.

That eye contact intimacy masks a high-speed data link being engaged. Behind the quiet facade, a contact protocol has been initiated. Once the link is up and operational, information packets are exchanged from separate databases stored redundantly, but incompletely, in each mind as a security precaution. After the combined data set has been reassembled, each partner enters an internal review cycle. Here both inspect the joint data, performing checksums and decryption to verify its validity and authenticity. The reconstructed file is reviewed to ensure no meaningful gaps exist. If a hole is detected, one partner may request duplicate information from the other. If the missing packets aren't forthcoming, say due to a garbled link, a compromise to the secure channel or the lack of proper clearance, one or the other will each briefly enter an extrapolation mode. This breach of the trust protocol could impact future negotiations.

Once both partners are satisfied with the assembled data, they enter a negotiation phase. Bursts of information are exchanged, request/confirm/acknowledge messages gauging the interest in the event, whether it must be a shared venture, and the cost to the more desirous party, even if that is only an unspecified draft choice to be named at a later date. Once the terms have been agreed, they nominate and elect a spokesperson. This may or may not be the more appetent party depending on the analyzed strength and clarity of the link. This likely initiates a second round of negotiation and a price adjustment. Then the precise language of press statement both parties are willing to release is negotiated. Like a SALT II discussion or an Arab-Israeli peace accord, the terms of this joint message could result in further, prolonged negotiations and significantly alter the final cost.

Once the white smoke has cleared, one of them will slowly turn to speak, perhaps trailing his eyes toward his partner as if reluctant to venture out on his own. If he violates the negotiated terms, or his volatile memory corrupts some vital portion of the script, he may hesitate, and his partner will take over mid-sentence, perhaps without a pause.

The entire exchange requires no more than three seconds. Outside the eye contact, the only other visible body language will be perhaps a slight squinting of the eyes or a furrowing of the brow. Should a compromise not be reached within that three-second window, the party breaking the link will likely offer to get back to you noncommittally. If entrenchment results in a forcibly aborted protocol, the aggrieved party may attempt to renew negotiations verbally and sway inconsequential allies to his side. This is a dangerous act of desperation. Immediately change the subject, or glance at your watch and remember somewhere else to be.

Intimacy breeds understanding. Humans are the only animals that mate face to face. Women often complain about where a man's eyes gravitate, not realizing that both genders' gazes subconsciously drift there during a conversation with a woman. When conversing with a man, both stray farther south. We size each other up instinctively, both our prospects and our rivals. Watch yourself more consciously during your next interaction. You might be surprised at the thoughts your eyes betray.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Shadow Play

I talk a lot in these messages about the natural environment, flowers and trees, birds and squirrels, snakes and hawks, light and shadow and color. Generally, they provide my inspiration. They anchor me.

When I started this message, I had a different exercise in mind. Books on writing dialogue recommend exercises in eavesdropping to get a feel for how people actually talk to one another. The point is not to capture the exact manner in which people converse, it's more to get an impression of it, then distill it down to its crucial elements, boiling away all the ers and uhms, the pauses and non-productive tangents to capture the essence of the exchange.

When I sat down to write this, I had a particular theme in mind: watching the people outside my window and what I could learn from the few seconds they are within my sight each day. My notes included things like who had become pregnant, who had hired a nanny, who had gotten a new dog. A husband and wife walking together but separate, her several feet behind as though they shared a completely separate world. Who had started on an exercise routine, who was trying out for cross-country. Who was gleaning extra money by picking through their neighbors' recycling.

The first rule of inspiration is that it's capricious. The muse changes direction without warning or explanation, like a butterfly on the wing. At first I felt resistance, though I couldn't figure out why. Resistance turned to judgment, the idea that the original concept had never been worthwhile and never would be, not matter how long I struggled with it. It is easy to tip from there into melancholy, doubting everything from my talent to my purpose, my direction and my voice. Those are the inglorious moments that few people witness. The joys of being a writer.

I set the message down to salvage another message, another errant child who didn't want to be led down the path where I thought it should go. If anyone is looking for an insight into writing, into creative endeavors of any kind, it is that sometimes you have to force your way through the resistance no matter how wrong it feels. Not your original idea. If you get too rooted in that you will get frustrated and give up. You have to travel where the river takes you, not swim against the current, and trust that you will end up at a pleasant destination. So I sat back down with this message and kept typing, just to see where the stream of thoughts would lead.

People tend to see nature as something different from their everyday surroundings. I'm not sure a bright line exists between natural and man-made environments. Where does my yard end and nature begin? Do the snakes notice the lines of demarcation, or do they just circumvent them like so many thickets and brambles and fallen logs? Do the squirrels notice any difference between the acorns in the oaks on either side of the ditch? Do coyotes discern between a cat on the prowl in the park and in my yard? Does a fox care where it finds a rabbit? Does a hawk think of our chainlink fence as anything more than a cool and slippery perch?

We like to think we control the environment around us, but we don't. Sure we clear land, build houses, transplant non-native species, exterminate pests. Everything we do has an impact. At the same time, other species, pigeons and cats, squirrels, roaches and rats, are at least as adaptable as we are. While we push some creatures to the verge of extinction, others flourish in the margins we've created and thrive on the detritus we leave behind. I'm not saying our impact is value-neutral. Nor do I see it as an anthropocentric manifest destiny. As long as we see ourselves as separate from our environment, we will continue to cause unintended consequences as we alter the complex systems upon which our lives depend. As long as we see ourselves as separate, we are benign dictators, Marie Antoinettes trapped within our Versailles gardens while the countryside erupts and the flames entertain us by casting shadows on our walls.

That was the beginning of my tangent as I sat back down to write. I wasn't sure where it was going or what it had to do with watching people, so I set it down again, waiting for another inspiration, some combination of man and nature to draw it all together.

On Saturday morning, our neighbor had a yard sale. She had one last weekend but didn't get the numbers she'd hoped for so she advertised and tried again. This week the turnout was brisk. Cars came and went, parking on both sides of the street, often across our driveway. But there was not so much traffic as to scare the blue jays off the birdfeeder out front. While we ate breakfast, Mara, our youngest cat, sat in the front window watching them. A car parked beyond our mailbox and a couple got out to see what treasures might lay hidden amongst the castoffs scattered across our neighbor's drive.

For an instant, those elements of man and nature came together. The sun, just high enough to reflect off the curve of the car's windshield but low enough to sneak beneath the trees, passed through the low, bare myrtle branches, then through front window and past the cat to paint a perfect silhouette in shadow on our living room wall. Something about the balance of images caught me, the crosshatch of muntins defining the window broken by the sweeping curves of branches, the shadow cat below with ears erect balanced by the squares of light above, all overlaid onto the everyday items that occupy our painted wall. I pointed it out to Karen who, in her own creative moment, captured the portrait with her camera. A moment later the couple returned from their outing and drove away. The scene before us faded.

Some days, I only get a glimpse of an inspiration, cobbled together from the elements at hand. Like a signpost on a switchback path, the way is only visible for a moment before it darkens and is gone. Like the sunlight dancing across the wall of Plato's cave, that shadow play made it difficult to tell where nature ends and man begins, which was real and which an illusion. Or whether the combination of both had created something else completely.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Scents

Descriptive writing engages all the senses, immersing the reader in an imaginary world, helping them suspend their disbelief. Most authors do well at describing sights and sounds but too often overlook the remainder of our highly sensorial existence.

Of all our sensory systems, smell is the most strongly linked to memory. Scents have the power to carry us back to even our earliest experiences with vivid detail. The fragrance of the lip gloss worn by the first girl I kissed still propels me back to that nervous moment with all its associated sensations and feelings. Even the details of my surroundings, her street, her house, her room, flash across my mind whenever I catch a hint of that cloying and artificial adolescent scent. Remembering it makes me smile.

On a warm, spring day a few months ago, Karen and I explored Heritage Village, a park recreating life early in Pinellas County's history. It is composed of historic structures relocated from around the county, several houses, a barn, a garage and general store, a water tower, a train station and railroad passenger car, a carriage house, a bandstand. As an exercise, I tried to catalog some of the scents we encountered that day as we wandered.

First, we toured the houses, mostly multi-storied affairs from the turn of the last century. Each was a collection of small and simple rooms that reminded me of my grandparent's house on Ocean Street in Quincy. Some were built from light and rough-cut cypress, others from oak darkened and polished smooth by many hands. In every one, the scent of lumber had long been replaced by a musty odor I associate with a Weymouth basement, not unclean so much as slightly damp and under-used. The smell of dust stirred from where it had settled in the corners mixed with a hint of mold slowly spreading its tendrils into any unsealed crevice and a suggestion of compacted dirt somewhere beyond the light.

Another New England memory drifted up in one entry with the smell of dusty cloth rising from a well-worn rag rug whose once brightly colored braids had grayed and were in need of a serious beating. Upstairs, the bedroom was an overlay of a cedary top note from long stored linen recently aired as a toile spread was snapped across the bed to prepare the room for guests, and the tangy base note of lemon oil applied in rich, gleaming layers to the dark, walnut furniture like we smell when opening a drawer in Karen's grandmother's china cabinet, or folding down the writing surface of her great aunt's secretary. The parlor contained the musty-dusty scent of long undisturbed crushed velvet mingled with that of brittle paper captured in cracked cloth bindings. The dormant kitchen still held the clean scent of flour mingled with baking powder and darkly seasoned cast-iron cookery ready to be pressed back into service baking biscuits at any moment.

In a garden beyond the kitchen door, a chest-high rosemary bush's sage green leaf-like needles emitted a pungent cloud of essential oil that hung in the air whenever anyone brushed past, reminding me of the savory aromas of a Mediterranean kitchen. Down the path to the bandstand, a blanket pine needles baked in the bright sun, emitting a dry, slightly resinous odor I've long associated with August hikes and sunny afternoons at summer camp.

The rough and mismatched slats of a barn were still enough to trap the scent of old, mostly evaporated gasoline emanating from the rusty tractors stored within. The simple, open-air stalls lining the outside held the more familiar smell of trampled hay mixed with manure, long un-oiled leather and a hint of musk from horsehair hanging in the combs. In the nearby carriage house, the smell of hardwood charcoal bellowed to nearly smokeless orange embers almost overpowered the lighter scent of red-hot iron being pounded in horseshoes.

More modern, industrial scents clung to the other spaces we visited. The couplings of the railroad passenger car near the train station were heavy with the smell of thick, industrial grease, which gave way to hot, painted metal as we ascended the steps to look inside. The fainter smell of pitch-preserved railroad ties greeted us as we descended. The lighter scent of motor oil and other lubricants clung to the Model T parked inside the mechanic's garage. You could just detect the sweet and tangy hint of oranges near the packing crates in the general store.

In the field beneath the water tower, I could almost smell the thick gray, sharply sulfurous smoke of black powder from the muskets and the cannon clinging to the warm wool Civil War uniforms from recreation of a skirmish they hold there every year. As we headed home across the pine bridge, the dank, earthy smell of mud mixed with decomposing leaf litter by the stream bid us a pungent Florida farewell.

Cats live in a world where scents paint a picture as clear to them as the view outside your window. In order to understand and accept something new in their lives, they have to sniff it. Fragrances and aromas permeate every moment of our lives, but unlike cats we rarely take the time to notice. Even you don't live in such a rich and redolent environment, I hope something in the above descriptions stirred a pleasant memory within you.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Simplicity

When I was younger, I enjoyed complexity. Third Reich, Squad Leader, Stellar Conquest, understanding rules of complex game systems was entertaining and engaging. My dream vacation was to gather seven other people and play a game of Machiavelli to absolute victory. I figured that would take a long weekend at least. If I had a week to burn with like-minded people, it would be with a five-player game of Third Reich in a cabin in the mountains.

I always thought I might have an advantage, not because I understood the rules better or had some brilliant strategy, but because I maintain a singular focus for long periods of time where others got bored and drifted off. If I was ever a decent engineer, it was because I could hold complex concepts in my head and focus on them. Not as well as a few analysts I know and respect, but better than average. Too bad I could never quite fathom the rules of personal interactions, though I still find them fascinating to try and decipher.

I received an e-mail from a friend late last night, replying to my latest Imaginings, asking me not to respond. She's working her way through some 2000 e-mails and I think that's just her personal account. Of course, she might think this is my passive-aggressive attempt to engage her in conversation without actually dishonoring her request. She doesn't know that I, too, am working off a backlog this week, attempting to catch up with unwritten messages as a daily exercise before starting on the four short stories I have sketched out. Nor does she realize the title and several lines have been lingering in my Drafts folder for several weeks while my focus drifted elsewhere.

I see so many people with so much technology that is advertised to simplify their lives but only makes them more complex. E-mail, text messages, blogs, IM's, web sites, cell phones. The last two strike me. Web sites. The Web. Cell phones. Cells. Even the words are indicative of modern technology, sticky, informational prisons of our own creation from which we can't get escape, within which we struggle but only become more deeply entangled. The irony is that the very things that are supposed to free us to communicate more effectively are the ones that chain us deeper in confusion.

What I find odd and amusing is how many people I know who have all the latest gadgets but don't have the time to use or keep up with them. They lose e-mails or miss phone calls, or just don't have time to be in touch. Not that the technology itself helps us there. Once a week I have one program or another downloading an update, sometimes innocuously, other times completely restructuring the interface (like my Yahoo homepage today). Each iteration is supposed to be "new and improved" which it generally is, though there is a trade-off between the time it saves and the time I have to spend relearning it.

That doesn't include the ubiquitous entertainment occupying every moment of every day in almost every facet of our lives. X-Boxes, DVR's, high-def Dolby 7.1 surround. We emerge from our homes as iPod people, walking automatons each wrapped in a private world of sights and sounds but desperately afraid we might miss something going on around us that we don't have time to notice. Internet access at work. Televisions with bottom-lines and sidebars and endless streaming speculation in every public space from restaurants to waiting rooms to gyms to bathrooms. Yes, ladies, the men's room is now equipped with high-def sports and business broadcasts over the urinals in mid-line to high-end restaurants and bars. Are you jealous, or just amazed that we can concentrate on two things at once? I think they only upgraded us from newspapers because they discovered that reading required a little too much of our attention. Just think, guys, one day we'll have video games to occupy our time in there like they do in Holland, though I won't explain how. Plumbing and electricity, two great inventions that go great together.

How long before we mainline information directly to our brains in a completely dark and Gibsonian future. As soon as Apple and Dow Chemical can agree on the materials and protocol for the interface with the Society of Neuroscience, I would think. Or will that be Microsoft and GE? We are an info-tainment addicted society. Wi-fi is our gateway drug.

People undervalue simplicity. How many of you come up with your best ideas or solutions in the shower? Why is that? Perhaps because you are allowing a level of your mind to work without inundating it with stimuli that requires its attention and response. This is your subconscious calling. I'm sorry, he's not available at the moment, would you like to leave a message? No, I'll just follow-up with an encrypted video/voice-mail later in a dream.

Some of what we see as ADD (or ADHD) in children is in fact over-stimulation, giving them too many choices. Anecdotally, many mild to moderate behavior problems subside when the clutter is cleared away and their toys are reduced to a cherished few. There is nothing quite like scarcity to enrich our experiences, and nothing like distraction to dilute them.

In writing, as with other less structured vocations, distraction is a constant danger. Every year I attend conferences where established writers warn against fooling yourself into thinking that you are writing when you are not. The easiest way not to write is to read up on technique, update your software, organize your information, or research a topic on the web, all in the name of greater productivity. Perhaps you need a laptop, a wireless modem, a digital voice recorder, a Blackberry, plotting software and iPhone so you can write whenever and wherever the inspiration strikes. The problem is, most of that time and equipment doesn't lead anywhere. Writers write. Messages, stories and chapters don't usually write themselves, well, except maybe once or twice in a dream.

For me, nothing beats sitting on a porch in the cool of the day or evening, listening to the birds and other sounds of nature with a notebook in my lap. Just slowing down to the ultimate simplicity of me, the ideas and the world at large with none of the other worries and complexities of life to intrude. Unlike the games of my youth, there are no complex rules or scenarios, no long setup time or scheduling conflicts. Just my imagination and the satisfying audio-tactile scratching of 0.5 lead against paper. I find the act meditative and therapeutic, like zazen for a Buddhist monk.

I read this weekend that Buddhism is dying in Japan. The Japanese are turning to Christianity and Islam because they want to hear a sermon every week, which strikes me both as a social function and another form of entertainment. The goal of Zen is not some mysterious state or destination. It is to live each moment fully, to be engaged in each activity without being distracted by other thoughts or plans, the past or the future. You feel a master's presence because he focuses all of his attention, his entire being upon you. He brings that intensity to every activity in his life whether chopping wood or cooking dinner or simple conversation. How poor our world will become if that example is lost beneath the rising tide of noise.

I think we will always need mystics, monks and poets, perhaps even the odd dilettante writer, to remind us to turn off and tune in to the beauty just within our sight as we sit to catch our breath. Whatever their creed, they have but one commandment: Simplify.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Fundamentalism

Part of writing is understanding words, both their meaning and inference, then running with some idea as an offshoot of either one. I hope it is taken in the spirit given, which is more than a little satirical and ironic, as well as contemplative.

The word fundamentalism has gotten a bad wrap in recent years. When people in the West hear fundamentalism, certain images spring to mind, intolerance and violence, jihad and theocracy, crusade and divine right, the extremes Islam and Christianity. Ok, perhaps some if not all of that reputation has been earned.

But the word is merely a label, one which both sides find convenient in supporting their cause. A label which distorts the meaning of word. To many fundamentalism has become a bogeyman, a bedtime story to scare small children by conjuring primeval specters and summoning the hobgoblins of fear.

Stripping away the layers, fundamentalism reveals fundamental which becomes fundament, a word that came to us from Middle English as Latin translated through Old French. And we wonder why we get confused. Even in Latin, the word goes through several derivations, as only Latin can. "Latin 'fundmentum,' from 'fundre,' to lay the foundation, from 'fundus,' bottom" (Am. Heritage Dictionary). "Fundus" can also mean a piece of land, giving rise to the English "fund" in all its senses, but not to "fun" as any Middle English fool would know.

At its heart, fundamentalism is getting back to basics, stripping the building back to its foundations, returning to the land.

What we in this country tend to associate with Christian fundamentalism has more in common with what would be Jewish fundamentalism if such a thing existed, which to the best of my knowledge it does not. Who says irony is dead in this country? Oh, yes, there are Hasidism and Orthodoxy, but as I understand them, neither goes to the extreme of enforcing all six hundred plus commandments as written in the Books of Moses, only two hundred or so of which are positive (thou shalt) rather than prohibitive (thou shalt not). I don't remember any recent stonings in New York City or Miami or Tel Aviv. Of course, I might not be paying strict attention.

If nothing else, the Jewish scriptures capture the human condition in all its inglorious ignominy. Love, lust, adultery, slavery, rape, murder, incest, genocide, the Tanakh has all the bases covered. Kind of a one-stop shopping on human behavior as old as the dawn of history. I think that's why it still resonates with people and endures. And for anyone who thinks I'm picking on Judaism, I would hope my support for the National Holocaust Museum would speak for itself. I respect its pragmatic outlook and its people's struggle.

So back to Christianity. It would seem to me that Christian fundamentalism would more correctly be based on the first four books of the New Testament, skipping the Old entirely. Even the Epistles could be viewed as suspect. Paul, while inspired, was an A-type personality setting up an organization in harrowing times while spreading a message to people beyond those for whom it was originally intended. Even Jesus could be one cagey dude but his parables can make you think. Two or three basic principles, how much more straightforward can you get? But turning the other cheek seven and seventy times perhaps will leave a mark.

Now that I've started this hole, I may as well keep shoveling my way to Islam. Here I will only say that twenty-three years of writing might create some seeming inconsistencies to the uninitiated. Eastern philosophers wonder if we are the same person we were yesterday, even an hour ago, whether each experience however insignificant changes us indelibly. Today, it can be hard for us to remember that in the context of history, Muhammad was a champion for women's rights and equality. With all the Celtic traditions conquered or converted, where in seventh century Europe could a woman initiate a divorce for more than a thousand years?

Which led me to think about Buddhist fundamentalism, the primary corollary of which would seem to be: If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. Siddhartha sees his way to enlightenment as an experiment, a unique path that each individual must find for themselves based on their own experiences. In that light, perhaps the Dalai Lama might be considered a Buddhist fundamentalist. After all, he does say we should accept what science proves as fact even if it contradicts scripture. Who says that science and religion are required to be at war?

Or fundamental Daoism, which has no gods, no immortals, no alchemy, no deified Jade Emperor, only five thousand words and a few dozen parables illustrating the underlying connection between all life and nature, extolling the benefits of simplicity with each moment lived in the present, and government with an extremely light touch.

I'm sure there is even a fundamental Hinduism, though perhaps given the cyclic nature of that religion, it is like the weather; if you don't like it, wait a bit and it will change. There I'm

sure I am wrong and at least one person reading this will enlighten me. But the core of that belief, too, seems simple and positive, at least to me, an outsider. We reap what we sow, and are all divine and connected though we like to fool ourselves into thinking that we are not.

And what would fundamental secular humanism look like? If love and hate are just a physiological reactions, shouldn't we be able to acknowledge the feelings and just move on unaffected? In that way, how could there be any difference between someone we love and someone we hate other than the soup running through our brains? Shouldn't our goal then be to transcend those chemicals and treat everyone with the same compassion, whether we agree with them or not? Or should we honor our evolution and go with the mind-altering, if sometimes Nietzschean bio-chemical flow? I can see where having logic rule emotions and animal impulses in that classical Greek sense may require more discipline in practice than in theory.

At least no one talks about fundamentalist paganism and drenching the sacred grove in blood. Human sacrifice is not among the best qualities attributed to the Celtic traditions. But nature is cyclic and we depend on it for our survival, a fundamental idea I think those whose ancestors migrated to this country from elsewhere too often forget.

If there is a fault with some of these traditions, perhaps it is that each of their foundations is too simple, yet with a goal that is difficult to attain, so that people create complexity to distract themselves from the daunting task at hand: their own improvement.

Where many see only hypocrisy in religious traditions, I find within them all fundamental seeds of wisdom and hope. They are a part of our shared history, the deep lines and wrinkles etched onto humanity's face as it laughs or cries while the comedy and tragedy of each moment unfolds before our collective eyes.

In the end I can only bow to each and say, "Namaste."

Or as the Daoists say: Many paths, one mountain.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III