Ailantha
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

What the  #$*! do we know, indeed?

4/7/2014

0 Comments

 
     A couple of weeks ago while I was in Los Angeles I had the weirdest experience.
    It was around 9 pm, and, after reading my  granddaughter Makayla her bed-time story, I was lying next to her in bed while she drifted off to sleep. 
    The bed started jiggling.  
    After the moment it took me to process the reality that the bed was jiggling,  I came to a vague conclusion that Makayla was fidgiting  and making the bed jiggle.
   Now, if the jiggling had lasted more than a few seconds, which it didn't, I'm sure it very soon would have clicked for me that some force other than my 2-year-old, 24-pound granddaughter was making this trundle bed with its heavy wood frame and built-in drawers, not to mention the 130 pounds of weight that I added, shake.  Given a few more seconds of shaking I might even have thought, "Oh geez, earthquake!"
    However the event was so brief that as soon as it was over my brain deleted it and tossed it into the recycle bin.
    So that when I finally returned to the living room and the rest of the adults
cried, "Did you feel it?",  I replied, "Feel what?"
    "The earthquake!"
    "Earthquake?  No, I didn't feel any....Wait...Earthquake? "
    Of course at that moment the light bulb in  my brain snapped on and I realized:
    1. That it was an earthquake that shook the bed, and
    2. How utterly
preposterous it was to think that little Makayla could have  been causing the shaking.
    And yet while it was happening I'd accepted that very idea. 
    After thinking it over and talking it over with the others  (Maria, Tommy, Tom, Jen, and Justin, none of whom could  believe that I didn't know I was feeling an earthquake), I came to the conclusion that,  since I've never experienced an earthquake and had not the least expectation of encountering one, at the moment of the event the thought of an earthquake did not enter my mind.  But I had to give myself some explanation, no matter how illogical, for the shaking bed.  Because otherwise the event wouldn't have made any sense, and for us human beings things always must make sense.  Things that don't make sense don't register in our brains.  So we make everything make sense.  Even when it doesn't.
   
I once saw a movie called "What the #$*! Do We Know?" about, among other things,  how our reality is shaped by our perception. 
    I thought about this movie after  my jiggling bed experience; specifically  I thought about a story told within the movie about how when Christopher Columbus' ships appeared far out on the horizon the natives, though they were looking right at them, at first didn't see the ships because they'd never seen or heard of ships  before and so their brains had no idea of what to do with the images. 
   
I think my inabliltiy to connect what I was experiencing to "earthquake" must have been related to the phenomenon of Indian's inability to see the ships.
  But then, what the #$*! do I know?



  
   
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    "Hail Mary"
    by Patti Liszkay
    Buy it on Amazon:

    https://www.amzn.com/1684334888

    Picture
    "Equal And Opposite Reactions"
     by Patti Liszkay
    Buy it on Amazon:

    http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
    or from
    The Book Loft
    of German Village,
    Columbus, Ohio
    Picture
    Or check it out at the Columbus Metropolitan Library
    Picture

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013

    RSS Feed

    I am a traveler just visiting this planet and reporting various and sundry observations,
    hopefully of interest to my fellow travelers.

    Categories

    All


























































































Proudly powered by Weebly