TGIT

Should probably explain why Thursdays are so glorious. Where I work, we work four ten-hour shifts a week, Monday through THursday. That means Thursday is our Friday. Now there's a tradeoff, especially linked to the three-hour daily commute to and from work, which means we effectively work thirteen-hour days, which are a bummer. But that's the price we pay for fame and, well, not exactly a fortune.

Because I've got that kind of time on my hand, I've been pre-reading one of the three texts required for the document design class I'm taking this coming semester -- which starts Monday. It's called "The Object Stares Back," by (I have to reach into my bag to get the book to read the author's name) James Elkins. His premise is that despite the pretty nifty visual capabilities we have, because our attention wanders, because of internal and external distractions, because of unrecognizedc physiological phenomena, when we see, we actually . . .Oh look! Cows! Um. When we see, we're actually missing out on most of what is visually available to be seen because our thoughts, prejudices, distractions, et cetera, get in the way. I buy that.

It's interesting, I think, that we're always seeing. Since I can remember, I've always seen fantastic shapes in the swirls of plaster on the ceilings. On the ceiling above my bed, for example, there's a coyote, parrot, duck, and several monsters. There's a dragon on the ceiling in the bathroom. What this means psychologically, I have no idea. But they are there.

I wonder what gets us inured to seeing what we see. Many people, through overxposure, are inured to violent or pornographic images, having to increas the intensity of what they view in order to get the same kind of visual pleasure (buzz, I guess you'd call it) than when they started. I've read a lot on the Holocaust, for example, and am always amazed at how the survivors, at the time they were in the extermination camps, were able to see what they saw and file it away in some hidden corner of their mind where, for the moment, it meant nothing. Many of them, years later, have that corner open, as they dwell in the camps every day of their life, reliving the images they denied themselves to live then. This is a very simplistic explanation, I know. But I'mintrigued at how some can come out of such visual stimulation committed to stopping atrocities along the same line, while others encourage, embrace and eventually participate in the aberrant behavior they've witnessed, inuring their consciences against the messages being sent that what they're vdiewing and doing is incorrect. The moral compasses get confused as the metal mugs of overstimulation are placed near the card.