SLOG STURM DRANG

This looks better than I feel.

It's not just depression that is keeping me quiet. And maybe depression is too definitive a word. I'm down and I'm thinking and I just don't have a lot to offer beyond what I've been saying for the last week or so.

Plus, it is hella-hot in here. I've been prepping packages to ship from this week's eBay sales, plus posting new things. (If you go to advanced search at eBay, you can search for me, "xosas".) Now, I just want to go to sleep ("What???!!") but that might be because of the heat.

Iris had more to say about "I" ...

…on the discussion about personal subject pronouns:  spoke to a friend about it who pointed out that 1) symbol systems, especially language, are shaped by the culture in / for which they are developed, and 2) the systems shape what can be communicated by them (for example, mathematics is a communicative symbol system that can robustly express the concept of time but cannot express the concept of love; the concept of time is very hard to express linguistically but love is something language expresses quite well). 

So maybe we do know something about culture and peoples if we know that personal subject pronouns are not used / tend not to be used by Spanish speakers: cultures develop symbol systems to express what is important to them, and one could argue that if you can’t express it (in one system or another) you don’t do / know / feel / care about it, that the “personality” of the culture is expressed in its symbol systems, which in turn molds the personality of the members of the culture.   You do / know / feel / care about what you can express and you express what you do / know / feel / care about.

I understand these considerations but they worry me because cultural explanations of capacity can so easily be co-opted to evil ends.

We could sit around the campfire all night on this one.

It's good to keep that conversation going. Guess I will dip back into that pronoun book. I had taken a break to read magazines!

Is this a metaphor for our times? Glittery hats in the rain? The party's over, kids.

We should all be so lucky.

But just to keep the record straight, have been walking. Organized all my jewelry and made a big pile to sell/give away. AND! Started cleaning my desk. So it's not all sturm und drang ... there's slogging in there, too.