inquiry

> CJ Eller wrote an excellent blog post on here today about > “Unnoticed Signalling” or what I interpreted it as; > self-blogging or personal journaling on the WWW. I do this > often. So this is more or less a #responsetoCJ, in a way.

It was CJ's usual thoughtful writing excellence.

But what kept coming to mind while reading it was the difference between communicating about communicating with others, and flat out communicating with others. To me, the latter constitutes a sort of magic. And as with “real” magic, the value seems more than a little proportional to the tour afforded by its magical mystery, if you will, by which I mean to say “it's magic until you know how it works”.

From that point of view, I really don't want to know how or why communication works, or understand other meta matters thereof. I simply want to be doing it, immersed in it, etc.

> Audience Required(?)

Sometimes. Sometimes not.

> <long list of good things mom did> > > But then I think back to the three instances when she > really fucked up and like water passing through sand, > all of the good thoughts I have about her disappear.

Remotely similar occurrence for me, last night.

We hit up our favorite winery on the way home from glorious times on the road. But despite having a great time interacting with friends, the winery people themselves seemed rather off.

First, our pourer carded me – not for age, because I'm clearly of drinking age, but to prove we were members.

Well, um... that pourer has poured for us before, and we're basically on first name basis with all the pourers and management there. So that was a bit of a lead pipe beneath the knees with respect to “you wanna go where everyone knows.. you name”.

Then, I got one glass above the freebie our membership provides. But when I went to pay, I put a $5 bill on the counter, because that's the amount he (i.e. same guy, a manager) charged me the night before for the same varietal. But after a few moments of screen interaction, the manager looked up and went, “that'll be six dollars”...

Well, okay, I suppose I should have not put the money down right off the bat. But that's how certain I was of the price (and I tend to want interactions to be as efficient as possible). But I did feel more than a little embarrassed in that moment. And, of course, the thought of arguing the price cam to mind, but then so did his possibly pointing out it was the amount the night before – when I purchased three such – that was in error, and thus that I owed them three bucks....

But my main point, here, is I spent far too much time agonizing over those couple events in a way that led to some profound disillusionment with the place. I actually fell asleep while mentally composing versions of “here's why we're cancelling our membership” email....

And I'm not proud of that. It seemed rather “hot-headed”. And yet it's amazing how a couple negative instances can somehow poison the water of – relatively speaking – countless positive instances.