Selling Sno-Cones at the Beach

"the West is the best"

B. is more laid-back now that he's at home. It's easier to ask me to fetch whatever than to go through the exertion of getting it himself. Also, there's no possibility of being "the star patient" here if you are the only patient.

How often we are motivated to achieve (in the broadest sense of that word) by the opinions (usually potentially negative ones) of others. "Prof. So-and-So will think less of me if I don't write a good paper." "Dr. X won't be pleased with my progress unless I follow his recommendations for exercise." We may pretend that we are doing only as we like in life, but I wonder how often we are lying to ourselves. We tell ourselves we are driven by our OWN self-opinion, but the views of others seem often to be a more important force.

I tried the freewrite this morning about my research on trenches-as-memorials, and it immediately veered off into an internal epistemological debate about the value (or not) of "the innocent eye." It's fashionable to argue right now that there is no such thing as the innocent eye. To the extent that everyone's cognition comes with experiential/cultural baggage, I agree. But if we discredit that kind of knowing entirely, we lose a lot of the delight in experiencing the world and making sense of it. Is that a worthwhile trade-off? I'm old-fashioned and Euro-Americo-centric, so I say it is not.

Today I'm reading a compilation called The Writers Home Companion by Joan Bolker, she of the Fifteen Minute Dissertation. It's good stuff - but I'm just about saturated on reading-about-writing. That's the point, perhaps, though - to push me into doing it (this blog doesn't really "count") rather than thinking about it.