More than patterns

I have two minutes. More on patterns: Where was I? Oh, so early on we are imprinted with all these shapes that we come to know as safe or dangerous. Some seem inborn, you don't have to tell most toddlers that snakes are bad, seeing one will stop a two year old in their tracks, most of the time. Is that inborn or is it the result of knowing that two and four legged things are okay and that this new no-legged thing is different? Now I am running out of time and what I wanted to talk about was crushes and why we seem to have them or why there doesn't seem to be any reason, just emotion, about having them.

Joe(marked at an early age)Nation

Generica... .

Okay. I'm stealing that word for this idea while you all look the other way.

Generica.
I started thinking about this trend, and I do think it is an international one, from two different directions, 1) is how we seem to get imprinted with forms and shapes and patterns, our mother's face, the voice of our father, the sillouette of two brothers standing on the familiar porch steps and how we, or rather, our deep unconscious constantly searchs for those patterns and records them as we go through life, so that even in a strange land we will mistakenly think we see the face of an old friend or the back of the head of a former teacher. 2) While thinking about ebeth's upcoming trip to our fair city, New York, and whether or not she should try Katz's deli, I was reminded of another visitor. She was the daughter of an old friend, visiting New York because she thought she wanted to be discovered as an actress. ( Yes. That's a completely different story in itself, I'll have to share later. Apparently there are those innocents left, but they are few, aren't they?) At any rate, she arrived and we were supposed to go to dinner.
[I]"I love Italian food"[/I] she gushed, and I pictured us strolling through Little Italy, looking, smelling, reading menus, trying to remember where that really good zuppa was...Umberto's, no, Il something wasn't it, it was off of Mulberry next to the place with the garden out back... when she went on, [I]"I hope there is an Olive Garden here because that's the best." [/I] There are, if you can believe Cityscapes, about three thousand Italian restaurants in Manhattan...I let Mrs. Nation take our wide-eyed guest to the Olive Garden.
And that's when it hit me. Why would New York want an Olive Garden? Or a Gap or an Abercrombie&Whatever or a Victoria's Secret, if the idea is to draw people from other places to come visit here? If this place is the same as what you left, what is the appeal? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, we still have MOMA, and the Natural History Museum and Soho and ... so maybe my question is why would Tulsa, Knoxville and Ft. Worth want all the same stores (they even have the same paint on the walls, it's like the old Catholic Mass, no matter where you went it was identical too.)
Anyway, this thought, if you can call it that, is still mushy in my head. Is this striving for sameness something new or is it the result of the constant drumming of marketing, think :'soft drink' drink [B]Diet Coke[/B], think: home improvement, drink [B]Home Depot[/B].?

Here in Generica,

we like our style to be in style,

we see the smile of all our mothers

on the faces of the ladies

selling cars on the tv screen

look

there are our brothers

standing in line at Starbucks

wearing the same color khakis

as the fellow in the ad. Yet,

we sleep so well,

so deep

we no longer have those anxious

dreams impelling us to unfamiliar places,

to unclaimed stairways

unopened doors.

Joe(Not on purpose, I try to be a little more like everyone everyday)Nation

Still tuning here.

There's a lot on my mind, but what I am doing at present is learning how to do this blog stuff. It seems to be as important as whatever I have to say, which is another way of saying that the Medium is the message. Thank you, Marshall, you were right about everything.

So. Trebuchet, wasn't that some kind of throwing weapon, a catapult? Wouldn't that make a great name for a blog?

Joe(many edits to go)Nation

Some rain today

The rain began early this morning, first as an earnest mist drifting through the streets and alleys, then with the daylight rising and stretching itself over the city, it started to fall in sheets and splashs, gushes and waves, spills as from washtubs and watering troughs. The water flowed down the gutters to the street corners and subway riders emerging from the city's cellars were forced to decide on wading or leaping or simply tromping across the little oceans. The wind picked up and as the storm's fury slanted into our faces we thought "Gosh, I wonder if Eva has gotten back from the beach yet"... .

The Gates New York 2005 

The billowing paths open 

There's a runner in this picture... . 

The Gates, New York's Central Park, 2005 

First thoughts on patterns.

Getting the hang of the different pages and editing tools has taken up much of my time, but I'm getting the hang of it. What I want to do with these pages is just write each morning for a limited amount of time (haven't decided how much time just yet) and see if there is any there there.
So, I've been thinking about patterns and the way the mind recognizes certain patterns, the shape of mountains, the curve of a face, the aspect of a shape against another shape and have begun to wonder if we aren't programmed ourselves to seek out certain shapes and ignore others. Every day on the street there are thousands of faces to look at but only certain ones catch my eye, the rest seem as alike or as uninteresting as cans of soup on market shelf.
The first pattern that I remember thinking about was the line of mountains or hills near my hometown. My heart would swell as I drove over the last hill before getting there and then I would see that peculiar line. I often wondered if ancient people got the same feeling as they wandered from place to place and then returned home. And I found myself unconsciously drawing that pattern when I attempted (badly) to draw a landscape so that pattern it seemed was inborn or acquired at some point without me being conscious of it.

Easter Sunday 2005

Okay. I'm back. See you tomorrow.