Arisitides likes to say mas o menos. Even in less than "more or less" situations. Like when I asked him today about the two parakeets pigging out on the pile of rice left for them on the floor. And I believed him that the broken footed one was the female, for no reason other than, of anyone, he should know. I mean, he carves them out of Cocobolo. But then he said mas o menos, and got me all confused. He also told me that
Aristides also works 40 hours a week, often putting in overtime. I know he’s working even when I can’t see him working. I’ve become accustomed to the solid clunk of his make-shift hammer log pounding the butt of his various sized carving tools. And then when I do see him, like this morning during the confusing bird gender conversation, he’s covered in deep red cocobolo chips. His legs are most always bent at the knees, almost in a cross leg Indian position, if only they were crossed. He usually stops with the bottoms of his feet together. His simple seat raises him a good 6-8 inches off the floor. But now that I come to think of it, that’s probably intentional. He likes to grab his artwork with his feet to stabilize it, giving him two free hands to chip away with.
He is also a lover of geography. We often get into conversations discussing locations of various far off (and other seemingly far off) countries. And that’s when his fondness for the mas o menos phrase comes to my benefit. I often leave Africa close, mas o menos, to
Ok, it's been less than sunny and my battery doesn't like that. Time to stop.
1 comment:
Dual valued logic (either/or) is an analytic tool. It's not reality itself - only a means of pointing to aspects along the continuum of reality.
All babies in the womb are female mas o menos - until some of them start developing male characteristics at a certain point of their unfolding. Light is a wave mas o menos until it behaves as a particle. Panama is a sovereign nation mas o menos until it is invaded by its benevolent hegemon.
Fuzzy language can sometimes evince respect for the continua which we often mutilate in order to create a vocabulary for purposes of discussion. This analytic moment is the glory of Western Civilization.
Unfortunately, dissection of a living reality can kill the object of our attentions rendering it wholly conceptual. Other civilizations retain awe and reverence for the synthetic whole.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said that the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in one’s head at the same time.
The difference between subtlety and the insane slavery of mere Orwellian 'doublethink' is the autonomous reality testing of the educated mind.
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