Science is Golden

 Fabric transfer, feather, embroidery sticks and beads  collage, sold in August 2014

My brother is a funny, warm, intelligent and wonderful man. I love my family. 

However i feel like an alien these days. I am calling this the price of trail blazing, as i come from a somewhat audacious family, i might as well frame myself heroically!

Awhile back i felt hurt and frustrated when trying to talk to my family about issues that question mainstream dogma.  I suffered some minor damages, so listened to advice and learned to bite my tongue.  Feedback told me  things like "i agree with what you say but dislike the way you say it"  that i was too loud, too shrill, too persistent, I am paraphrasing this as being too  "unfeminine." 

Being damned by the invisible rules of socialized discourse, rules no one i knew ever voted on, or otherwise chose, are as an invisible wall that protects Status Quo.  Since status quo is a form of stagnation and this defies the laws of flow, of nature, of energy and life in the process of ever evolving- i just have to stand up  and say "what i want to know is,... what the hell is going on?" (My 4 year old niece made  this phrase a family gem, 1980's citation )  

But i love my family and don't want to be ostracized from the little bit of tribal bonding i have left. In a world seeking individualization, an array of life choices and organized by divisive measures, i am guessing this resonates with many others as well. 

So for quite awhile now,  i have avoided much of anything controversial on the home gathering front. This might have forced me to seek more receptive outlets.  The "Species on the Verge," "Retail Therapy Redux" videos and " FashionRIP" and "Water the Flow" installations at the Kerf Art Gallery might be a part of that result. (my resolute subconscious guide?)

Since this unfolding process picked up speed with the "Journey to the Center of Being" script that started to inform my life as life influenced (and still does) the story,  i cannot separate myself into the parts and roles i once understood to be as "me."

With the deconstructing of myths, those of self and culture,  i realized how insidious some of the most normal, passive, benign appearing actions, memes, stories are as they inform beliefs. When i pulled up to look at the shadow and found the wilde woman of "she who was banished" so very long ago, answers started spilling out. Pandora's lids are lifting higher,  her veils are coming off.

The hearth of family must come back into the story. I hope i have learned enough to address things with compassion, love and what wisdom i have gathered. This experiment must continue, i cannot stop what inspires and intrigues me more than anything i was ever taught to believe to exist, perhaps it is living the "i am?"  I do not know more than i know.

So yesterday, after a rocky beginning, the holiday ended with several "embrace the emotion, own the love, the pain, the whole of life"  moments...and it was beautiful. It was an evening of laughter, memories and overflowing love for all of the "us" we have become, those in body and in spirit, the all. 

If we cannot show the people we love the most who we really are, then who do we dare show?

And now - for the bro of the intro, as a thank you for pushing my buttons and forcing my attention, i give you the scientific method,  the modern sacred rule of reality, the dominator of  the factual.

hey ho let's go:
I go outside and a crow shits on my head. Damn

The next day I go outside,  but this time I wear a hat.  No crow shits on me. I go outside several hundred more times and no crow shits on me. I call my friend and tell nim that when I wear a hat no crow shits on me. My friend repeats this fact to his friends. Now everyone in the neighborhood wears hats.

I go outside wearing the hat, the crow shits on my hat. The next day I go outside, no shit. I repeat this several hundred times and am never shit on again. I deduce that the first incident was an anomaly and throw it out of the data pool. This means that no crow ever shit on my hat. I could not repeat the incident, it is not a fact. Since it isn't a fact i do not tell my friend that hat wearing does not stop crows from shitting.

I go outside, a crow shits on the head of a person walking near the bus stop.  (Hat wearing had gone out of vogue as fashion speaks louder than practicalities)  The next few hundred days I go outside walk all over and no crows shit on anyone's head within my broad range spectrum of subjects.  I realize once again that the first incident was an anomaly and throw it out of the data pool.  But since i had broadened my experiment to include a wide array of situations i now extrapolate the facts to cover the "commons." I repeat the walk from the bus stop to the park over and over and neither i or anyone  i see, is ever shit on by any crow what so ever.  I deduce that no one is ever shit on by crows. I publish this data.

I go outside, a crow shits on my head. I know this isn’t true because I read that crows do not shit on people's heads. It was proven in repeated experiments. I therefore ignore the obvious,  because “I “ must be wrong. 

I go outside, crow shits on my head, but we all know crows do not shit on people. 

We all know this because we have been told over and over that this is true. I do not even feel the shit hit my head. I go to work and no one sees the shit on my head. I go to the bathroom and wash my hands and do not see the reflection in the mirror that clearly reflects shit on head. I return home and eventually wash my hair. This never happened. This is cognitive dissonance.

Amen 

PS, no crows were paid or trained to act in this experiment. No crows or humans were harmed in this experiment. No experiment really took place, therefore crows that shit in phantom experiments are not to be deduced as having any real life qualities whatsoever. The word crow exists as a phantom, an abstract and yet we all pull up "crow visuals, stories and other lore" -this phenomena is most interesting in and of itself. However, as all crow stories and images vary..how does one claim one as more real than the others? How does one claim this mental occurrence as fact? It doesn't happen but it does!