This Is Not a Pipe

Some of the things I think at various times of my life seem at once profound and yet so simple that I am reluctant to share them lest someone say, "Duh."

So I'm on the train today, pressed into a corner near a door and far enough at one end of the car that I have a view of most of the passengers and it occurs to me that all I see, well, what I call seeing is just rippling light. I don't see glasses and headphones and moustaches and shirts and skirts and skin and bags and belts and color- just waves moving in three dimensions that the globs of goo in my head convert to chemical reactions. Those things I see as blue, head, shirt, eyebrows, etc... are not merely observations but are assessments... I don't just mean I give names to sensory data- or agree that these are the names that we give, which is itself a wild thing. I mean seeing these people as people all around me on the train, and then the platform, and then the stairs, the sidewalk, street, etc.. is not in the seeing itself. That is, there is nothing in the physical seeing, in the sense, that says "people" and then tells me how to negotiate my way through everything. What I see all around me, is just rippling light. What I do is something else not based on any of that.

There is nothing in the flood of data that tells me what I ought to do. It seems, there is nothing in the assessments, or even the names, that is founded in the sensory data.

That's why Jordi, or even Daredevil could see...

Like I said- duh.

Playlista
Nature Boy- David Bowie
Everything Is Broken- Bob Dylan
Lover Man- SarahVaughan
Auf Asche- Franz Ferdinand
The 59th Street Bridge Song- Simon and Garfunkel
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out- The Smiths
I Wish- Stevie Wonder