frames, shame and automobiles

So I drove me and Dan around all day yesterday in my car and that was fun.
The day punctuated with 'i wonder where the ....... is? Get out the manual!
I wonder how you put the windscreen washer on, I wonder where the cigarette lighter is (to charge my phone)
Dan read the manual aloud to me and like all good manuals, it sounded like they'd missed out a few CRUCIAL words or translated from japanese: Dash drop push button top top steering wheel turn wiper six setting int.

????

It was fun. We were like two little girls in their dads stolen car. Dan said dads car. I said NO SEXY CAR!!!! she said, ahhh okay sexy car. She may never learn.
It took me 5 attempts and making Dan get out to look to parallel park the beast.
I nearly gave up. Dan said: you weren't going to give up. She's probably right.
And I worked out the six CD changer, bought three new cds and pumped them on the wickedly good sterio.
And now, tired from playing, the guilt is settling in.

The planet is going to hell in a handbasket and I just joined the front of the line of excessive consumption of unsustainable resources.
War ravages the planet, the most horrific inhumane atrocitites occur billions of times every day in almost every country except this one, and oil, has it's finger on the trigger.
It feels like a complete suicide of my value system.
And just when I was getting un-characteristically un-apathetic enough to start doing something about the things I care about.
How can I turn up at 'save te arai' rallies in a hummer. practically a tank.
oyeish.
somebody help me. I haven't got the answer to salve my wounded sense of justice. I cannot reconcile my expectations with my reality.
You know, i love this planet, with real feeling. Like a parent, or a child.





in other news
lately i've been thinking alot about the apparent fact that we all can only see things through our own framework. I actually see a frame, held around our heads, this that we can only see through.
Through the experiences we've already had, these mould our brain to expect certain experiences.
I remember learing about the part of the brain (don't ask me what part! ha) that had the job of recognition of items already encountered. They gave the example of putting your hand into your pocket and finding a coin there, and recognising it as a coin by its shape, texture, weight, because you'd encountered a coin before.
Ever felt something and expected it to be one thing and it turned out to be another, how the brain swells.
These experiences must get somewhat ingrained, and experiences we have alot of, must take the forefront in the list of possible interpretations.
Especially in reference to people.
Don't we ONLY have reactions to people and things, in relation to all the other things we've encountered?
Don't we only have emotions or feelings about a thing, because of all the things we associate it with? That may be unrelated save for our own, personal, utterly unique pick-a-path history of experiences?
I am constantly in a state of approval and disapproval of my environment based on things that have already happen. Everything is nostalgic in some part. Smells are so evocative, the type of light, that will transport me, texture, carpets, seats, clothes.
I'm bumper car-ring from one experience to the next saying: unconsciously (well somewhat consciously) saying: this reminds me of...

I also wonder, when it starts that nothing new can really happen to you.

When do you stop having firsts, experiencing things and feeling your brain expanding and twisting and trying to get its teeth around this. Forming impressions.

I don't spend anywhere near enough time with my incredibly smart and wonderfully original niece, but when i do, i notice her having new experience after new experience.

What i also notice is the tactics she has developed, to deal with the experiences she gets ALOT of, like being told to do things, like wanting something she can't reach or isn't allowed.
Even at four, but of course at four, four years is an eternity, but even at four, she is creating, rapidly, a frame work of the world. And I worry for her. What framework this will be.

And i can hear my mum say: darling, at one.. in the WOMB you are creating a framework.
because thats true of human development isn't it.

i think of it alot in realtion to issues of race and racism, and culture barriers. Which are topics that I feel are smattered throughout my everyday. We ultimately know next to nothing about different cultures, races, and there are SO many different races in new zealand, and all of us bobbing about like apples in a bucket and encountering each other without any real understanding. But forming and holding dangerously strong opinions on each other, based on dress and skin colour.
This hit home to me when I saw that ad for intrepid journeys or whatever that programme is where B grade psuedo nz celebrities go to foriegn countries and dabble in their culture, bringing us home a little piece. well mary somebody the old host of good mornign went to a country where she had to where a burka (Sp). in the ad in a bus shelter there are two photos, one of her normal, died hair andmakeup, one of her in a burka. in the busstop, sat a woman in a burka.
and i felt really like, do we have ANY idea (we being white colonial new zealanders) how any of these people feel about any of this? Do we have any idea what is going on for them at all?

that was a tangent. you've all gone to sleep.these things really concern me.
isn't racism, and i don't mean hate crimes i mean judging people based on a handful of experiences, experiences that are totally blendered by the media, isn't that terrifying?
We are being lied to, and we are forming opinions based on those lies.
The most conscious of us, know only that we are being lied to, but not which parts about.

Oh god it terrifies me.
It really terrifies me because what it really means is
there is no reality.
Or at least, no reality that you, or I, or any one from the objectivity of their own perception, can ever truely know.
In relationships, friends, partners, parents, bosses, children, all relationships, their are two realities. No, there are infinite realities, but the ones that count are yours, and mine.

If those realities don't match, which they mostly don't, because how can they, in order for us to get along and agree we would have to be able to suspend our own belief in our reality, and understand willingly theirs, and then submit our reality to the apparent truths of their reality.
A humungous ask.

I can only do this readily for one person. And I don't know why that is. That I feel gentle enough towards her, and can care about our relationship enough to be willing to sacrifice my belief about reality. She does it for me too. It works well. We've been friends for 20 years.
Other than her, I don't hold out too much hope for us, me, and any relationships.
Especially because I so steadfastedly hold to my reality. But what else have you got?!
Unless of course you find people with fairly identical frameworks. Thats why old friends are the best friends, and why no one knows you better than your siblings.

I also remember learning this about the brain, that if you suspend all of it's senses: sight, sound, touch, smell and taste.. the mind very swiftly goes insane, has hallucinations and loses it's grip.
We are creating this framework, to keep us sane. And it is all, a made up game.

what a grave morning it is.
arrrggh. maybe it's because this storm slaughtered the surf.
oh and i bought a 'surf' dvd yesterday that turned out to be a BOOGIE boarding Dvd!!! you couldn't tell from the jacket, but in a much graver insult, it turned out to be a
CHRISTIAN BOOGIE BOARDING DVD
mother.
fuckers.
it got into scene two and the guy starts using the word pray alot. hmmm, okay.
then theres a full blown interview with this OTHERWISE nice young man saying, if i could have everyone know one thing it would be that there is a creator and he is our friend.
i will follow jesus forever.
It's not god, or jesus that bother me. it's christians.
i'm livid.
it was a horrible mistake and i'm taking the dvd back.
i realise on the cover it says a 'faith and devine' production. but in very small writing.
insidious bastards.

piha is stil a wash of white.
everyone join hands and pray with me for good surf on sunday please..
one, two, three
PRAY!
:)