Yesterday I went shopping. It has been a while. And for the first time – for a split moment – the plexiglass in front of the cashiers at the clothing store reminded me of the bullet-proof glass at convenience stores in downtown Louisville. Shook me. I didn’t really shrug off the thought – I let it hover without looking too closely at it.
Threats and deterents.
Is it me, or do words like “deter” and phrases like “fend off” imply “try to” or “tried to”. There’s an undercurrent of overwhelm in the conversation.
He managed to fend off his attackers. Against the odds. A miracle.
Every time I found myself in one of those stores with bullet-proof glass, I recognized which side of the glass I was standing on. Where I was being sorted in the potential categories of victim and perpetrator. So finding myself in the clothing store, on the contagion side of the glass, all I wanted to do was go home and take a shower.
It’s hard living in a world where we sort strangers this way. I thought I left that behind as a major cultural feature when I left America. Talk about privilege. It took me a long time to let down my guard.
Last weekend we had dinner with friends. One of them is a bit older than we are and she moved in to embrace us saying she’s fully vaccinated. We aren’t. I later giggled about the image that came into my mind of a cuttlefish embracing its prey. An uncomfortable giggle.
It’s odd how the unthinkable becomes the norm. Recoiling from a friend’s arms. Responding to an overture of warmth with suspicion. I believe that our body literally shapes our behaviors which create our thoughts. Not the other way around. Goosebumps are the result of the body responding to the environment, not the mind relaying a thought to the skin.
I wonder about all these precautions we are taking with one another—to protect ourselves or to protect one another—in the communication loops of body-mind-body/mind-body-mind, what kind of a groove are we forming in the soft pathways of our neurons?
The brain is plastic. For good and for… change?
Scientists proclaim
the solitary creatures
but waters run deep
I agree re ‘deter’ – it’s a hedge, to be used when you can’t say ‘prevent’, like using ‘tends to’ instead of ‘does’. I had an argument with a literary studies person about use of hedges – she kept insisting that even in science they are used by authors to distance themselves from their claims, and wouldn’t listen to my explanation that in science they’re used because the fundamental underpinning of science is falsifiability, so no absolute certainty can ever be claimed. No real scientist uses the word prove. She made feel like a tribesman having their culture explained to them by a white male anthropologist – I just wanted to stick a spear through her.