It hasn’t turned to fall yet. I wouldn’t say, not fully, at least. We’ve had a few cold days, probably in the fifties. I don’t really keep track of the temperature, except for how it feels on my skin. Today it is sixty-three, which places me in an odd predicament. Should I wear pants or should I wear shorts? It’s a trivial thing, isn’t it? I’ve got so much more to worry about, and I am not saying I am worrying about what I should wear. I am just saying it is on my mind. But you would think, you as sure as heck would think, that with everything that I’ve got on my plate right now that I wouldn’t worry about what type of clothing I should wear. And I usually don’t. Now that I think of it, I should probably make a rule for when I will wear shorts and when I should wear pants, but, honestly, that would take too much thought and it would probably not make one lick off difference. I would put on my shorts. I would go outside, and then I would be hugging myself because I was too cold. And the same thing would happen with pants: Pants. Outside. Too hot and sweating. You can’t really win in this world.
Why do women worry so much about what they wear? It is an honest question. I know that many men worry about what they wear as well and they always have, but women seem to obsess over things more. I have heard men comment on what other men are wearing, but it is almost always related to utility. A man will tell another man he likes his boots because they are the last pair of boots that other man will ever own, and for some reason, he really appreciates that fact. Which is really odd, if you think about it. It is really odd. I don’t get that either. I get liking things that are well-made. I get that completely. You live your life in a body. You’ve got to use things in your life. If you purchase something well-made, it is a pleasure to use. It’s a pleasure to use because things that are really well-made work well. And they work well because they don’t break. But I don’t get this whole thing about complimenting something that another person owns that is well-made. How do you have a conversation around that?
Of course, I am capable of having a conversation about how good a product is. My wife and I rant and rave and rave and rant about the stores we like to go to, and we do that because the stores are well-made. Thought has been put into them, and if thought has been put into something, it connects to the shopper on a personal level. The store doesn’t simply sell merchandise, the person or people running that store have put thought into that merchandise. They have put thought into how that merchandise is displayed. They have put thought into how the store is set up. They have put thought into where they put everything.
It’s all about that aesthetic value, isn’t it? I appreciate aesthetic value, but I don’t completely understand it. And let’s be honest. I understand about as much about aesthetic value as I understand why my wife gets mad at me. Which means I understand nothing. Absolutely nothing. But I know it when I see it, and I can write in a way that sounds good in your ears, can’t I? But do I understand it?
And that really brings us back to why women take so long and worry so much about what they wear (And some guys as well, but honestly guys, you are ugly no matter how pretty you are). They are trying to reach something aesthetically. And now that I’ve thought through it, I guess I get it because when I write, I am trying to reach a specific flow in how I write. Now, that flow might be a meandering thought process as you are experiencing here, but it also might be a scientific paper (Which doesn’t actually have a writing flow, and bringing up scientific paper writing actually makes me think that if you put too much structure or careful thought into how you create flow in writing you run into writing that isn’t actually that good. But Hell if we aren’t going to systematize everything, make sure everyone follows that system, and destroy everything beautiful. Because we can’t just believe something, like the aesthetic or the beautiful, is outside of our ability to understand. We can’t just leave it be, we have to- God that stupid dominion impulse-we have to rule over even those things we can’t rule over, don’t we?).
The best thing about this is that an algorithm on my blog is telling me I need to change things to fix it. I am supposed to make the paragraphs shorter and add subheadings. And I am supposed to do these two things because it allows Google to index the blog better. So I give up the flow and meaning of what I am saying for a robot. Awesome. How about that for irony (Or whatever it would be).
Featured Image: “Blue Escape” by Pavel P. used under CC-BY 2.0