Human behavior fascinates me.

That's not exactly accurate. Human social behavior fascinates me.

As a child, I didn't pattern on all the little social interactions that make our culture work. It means that as an adult, I had to understand those interactions intellectually before I could make them a part of my emotional and social makeup. It's the so-called "alien syndrome" and it's common with incipient geeks and those with Asperger syndrome.

Believe me, it's much easier to pattern it to begin with. As it is, some of my emotional actions and reactions are slightly offset from normal. I don't always understand that at first until I see the reactions of those around me. Sort of a look like they bit into a rotten apple with a worm. And then I have to figure out why.

I suspect that is what makes me good at what I do. I overlook the things I am supposed to focus on and latch onto the things I am supposed to overlook. And if I am in an uncomfortable or unusual situation, I pay even closer attention.

Well, that and Coyote probably permanently warped my viewpoint. *grins*

Anyway, to get to my highly-vaunted (ahem) level of competence, I spend time studying, thinking, experimenting, and practicing. I call it the Hat Trick. All the "oohs" and "aaahhs" are for the razzle-dazzle in a moment of theatre, but never for the work that happened before. People pay attention to the Hat Trick, the final amazing result, but they almost always ignore all the preparation over years that made it possible. The Hat Trick seems obvious in retrospect, but only because somebody like me (or a lot of somebodys like me) went along and mapped out the trail beforehand.

Sometimes that means I have to study and think about things that I don't particularly agree with so I can at least understand the thinking behind the ideas.

That's what happened when I started reading The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game by Paul Shepard. I just couldn't get into it, there was too much "humanity has doomed the Earth." I also had some problems with his central premise that all of the changes were due to breeding and none of it had anything to do with the mental and emotional processes.

Usually when things get that bad, it's best to offset the book with something that deals with a similar topic but from a totally different perspective and with a totally different conclusion. In this case I chose Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson. I'm enjoying it much more, we'll see how well it offsets the other. Hopefully I can use both to bring me greater understanding about each.

I know it's not strictly Pagan, but it is part of my studies. I never know what will prove useful under what circumstances.



And sometimes not even then.

That's a joke. You can sometimes tell by the pause before the punchline.

"I know you're there, I can hear you breathing."

That's a bad joke straight from the days of vaudeville.

See, I do study.