Ruminations

 In the last couple of years, while I was writing this thing about my dad in WWII, I got to thinking a lot on how people think. Not what kinds of things they think about, but how the thoughts are processed—what prompts them, what triggers certain thoughts, or even ways of thinking the thoughts.

Because we don't do it in a linear manner—I won't bore you with my thoughts about it, only to say that I thought a LOT about it.

Because that was the main way I was telling my story. If I didn't get it right, astute readers would spot it right away—kind of akin to someone doing an English accent. If he lets it slip, someone with a good ear might notice. That sort of thing.

I even invented this whole analogy. It went like this:

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 Ricky's Paw Theory

You’re sitting in a darkened theatre. In front of you is a stage. 

Suddenly a spotlight comes on and some guy walks onto the stage. He’s dressed in a white shirt and is wearing a nice black jacket. 

He seems to scratch the back of his head and all of a sudden there’s a fucking DOG sitting on his head. You say NO, it can’t be a dog. But it is! 

A Pomeranian, to be exact, you realise on further examination, and it seems extremely comfortable where it’s sitting. And you're going WHOAAAA . . . 

The guy lifts the dog down and puts it on the stage, but as it walks away, you suddenly realise that FUCK, THAT'S NOT A FUCKING DOG! IT’S A FUCKING RACCOON! 

The guy invites you down to the stage and offers to be frisked, but since you can’t find anything and there’s no other explanation, you’re forced to accept that he somehow carried the animals onto the stage with NO ONE SEEING HIM DO IT . . . 

Right? Well, that’s my little story. 

It has to transport you back to December 24, 1944, and put you somehow into some guy’s head, who is experiencing quite what you don’t quite know, and bring you along WITHOUT you saying “Huh? . . I don’t know what that thing is,” or “That’s impossible— this story is stupid.” 

It has to somehow convince you that, Whoa, this writer
somehow . . . ? But how could he record someone’s thoughts . . . ? 

So if you believe that you are reading the thoughts of Russ Robinson, age 22, late of Brookline, Mass, in the year 1944, in some kind of heavy airplane going somewhere to bomb some German city, FOR JUST A FRACTION OF A FRACTION of a second— 

—I’ll consider I've done my job. 

(Of course, every crackpot theory has its holes. The magician can’t do his show without help! 

(“I saw Ricky’s paw just inside your top pocket” “Your paint job on poor little Pommy made me cringe”) 

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At the same time, I was also dealing with AI—exploring its capabilities, all the way through its early days in 2023 up to now. I was using it for lots of things—I found out early on what it was good at and what it was useless at (writing—like giving a kid a paintbrush and asking it to do the Sistine Chapel).

Point being that, by looking at the way the MACHINE processed information and turned it into comprehensible things anyone could understand, it kind of underlined some things that rarely occur to the average human being—and indeed, why should it? You don't  need to understand how your thoughts are creating actions—what, are you fucking nuts?

Especially how we process the experience of being alive. Our "default states"—those to which we retreat in times of extreme incomprehension—what would you be thinking in a burning building?—to your "normal state"—whatever it is that is "normal" to you. A goat herder in the Upper Cacuses would, quite naturally, be mainly preoccupied with the care of his goats.  All else—wife, kids, friends—would be in a different compartment.

But all this thinking about thinking has led to a weird kind of side-effect. When I interact with people these days, the way I parse the interactions is not like it used to be.

I suppose it could be compared to, if you went to a magic show, and had no idea what the guy was doing, and he made things disappear and appear etc, etc.—you might be blown clean out of your socks. You'd KNOW, for example, that he didn't REALLY have a fucking rabbit in his coat pocket ALL the time before he pulled it out of the pocket, but since there was no explanation, you'd think it was, well, magic.

But then if you knew how the trick worked—about the black cloth and the assistant who distracted you for a moment while the rabbit was transferred blah blah blah—well, it wouldn't be magic any more.

But with me, it kind of became an extra window into people's minds. I learned to pay close attention to things, like one day when i went to my dentist after a long while, there was some new girl there who worked with the dentist on me. After, when it was just her and me, and she wad cleaning up and I was gathering up my shit I just turned to her and said: "You're from Ukraine." 

I swear, she spun around like I had a cord wrapped around her waist! Her eyes were wide as saucers. "How did you know?!?

But then I said "Your name is—don't  tell me . . . Tatiana?"

Then, I swear, she started looking for the exits. She was FREAKED. But for me, it wasmn't hard. The penalties for failure would be minuscule. I'd twigged to her Eastern Eurpean accemt immediately. I knew there had been a major exodus from Ukraine recently.

The name was more random, but not really. If she'd been Italian I'd have guessed Maria. German, Elke. Russian, Svetlana.

But then, in a leap of something that freaked even ME the fuck out, I said "And I suppose the secretary's name is Svetlana." (I'd KNOWN the secretary for over a year! I didn't know her name—just that she was from around there. BINGO! It was MY tirn to fall out of my chair.

But again, none of it is rocket science. What it is, I would guess if you let some academic get ahold of it, would be Deductive Reasoning. Putting A and B together. You can practice it and nobody is going to be the wiser.

BUT

The reason I say all this is because I know PRECISELY the ill that is plaguing Father; if I suddenly had some amazing diagnostic wand I could wave over him that could cure him, I would, but the reason I know is because I've seen into the very innermost chambers of his mind—quite without him being aware of it. And with no invasive methods—simply, deductive reasoning.

Y'know, you should read my little book, because if you did so, you'd see how I began with a memoir but progressed to a portrait of someone's mind. Except not in an ordinary manner.

I mean, you actually ARE him. You are seeing what he's seeing, and thinking what he's thinking, but as I wrote it I began thinking more and more how *I* would process the very things I was writing about; in other words, it became a giant Thought Experiment with me as the thinker, but a 22-year-old man, an educated, intellectual man, in a four-engined aircraft being sent from England to Germany, to drop expolosives on other people, on a single mission—one that really happened, for which there are documents that I actually possess—with that person as the vessel in whose head I was putting the thoughts. Thoughts that, in order to write about, I had to first know about. Which was where the research came in.

What it eventually became was this: a hundred different airmen performing if not identical, then very similar tasks to those I was writng about—all THEIR expperiences, how they felt, what THEY were thinking, in a thousand different scenarios—I was taking that information, processing it through the filters of my own cognition—Jesus Fucking CHRIST! What the fuck would *I* have been thinking if XYZ had happened etc, etc.—then channeled into one mind—a believable persona that could be thinking all this stuff—namely my dad, but that was the easy part, because I knew what he liked, what music he loved etc. and THAT added that stamp of Realness to the whole thing.

I don't  know if I succeded, but in a lot of ways, it really taught ME about the ways human beings deal with stress, and Bad Stuff, and horror/panic/you NAME the emotion—it's all in there.

One thing it taught me was how a group of disparate human beings can come together in a team situation under the most demanding situations, and win the ultimate payoff—SURVIVAL.

But in that world—the one in which my father found himself that very day—just one person not performing his job to the full limit if his ability could—and very, very often did—mean that the entire group would perish. So you can see how Slacker Henry would not have been a popular guy around the Mess Hall—to put it mildly.

But it's not often that we're put in that situation. Still, if I was gonna write it, I had to learn it down to the individual paint bumps . . . which added to my vocabulary concerning the Human Condition.

I was bludgeoned into a make-it-or-die situation very early, at age 9 or so—when I was dropped headfirst into what I can only compare to a federal penitentiary situation, except there were no "Nice guards,"

It taught me a peculiar set of skills that were to equip me for the rest of my life, but one key thing I learned was how to get along with Unpleasant People. And if they made a demographic, Unpleasant People would make up a 58% slice while intersecting with the Shit-for-brains segment sitting at a very 

respectable 96% . . . the math escapes me for the moment, but suffice to say that nine of the ten people behind you in the checkout line couldn't light a fire with matches.  (And the tenth, you'd have to show which end to strike).

And y'know what? I'll tell ya, when you don't believe in a fucking god or some Creator-dude or even some private angel that you fanatsize is your lucky charm, life can be downright depressing.

Ain't no magic wand gonna come to your rescue. Bad things don't always get better. In fact, the fucking balance of the entire OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE sometimes seems to come together in one organised manner to just drop the shit all over you, wait till you're 85% recovered, then drop DOUBLE the shitload down on you, and frankly, you're better off with the POV that, hey, there is NO REASON AT ALL for things to go your way. EVER.

Even with the willpower of a thousand saints, there are things your mind knows will never change.