id credo ergo verum est

to claim we are living in a post-truth era is to - by definition - also claim that there was previously a truth era and before that, a pre-truth era.

are there truths or is there Truth.

what is truth. is truth fact. is faith truth. is faith fact. if fact is quantifiable, measurable, visible, objective... and faith is conviction of things not seen, then faith cannot be fact. can a non-fact be truth.

whence context. i look like doris day... compared to a pine tree. there are people that will tell you that yoga is a religious experience and people that will tell you that yoga is a sin. we claim different truths because we have access to a wide variety of inputs, yet we lack shared basis for discernment. does that make one of us wrong or are we all merely differently right.

what is the value proposition. when is it worth lying. when is lying wrong. is it a lie to say "we are all winners" - to tell children "we are all winners". is it a lie to say you're beautiful, if it's only true in my eyes.

whence tolerance. is it intolerant to express a singular Truth in the face of someone with a different view. does equating the merit of a view with that of Truth mean that Truth doesn't actually exist (because it's merely a view). or, is Truth a case when intolerance is tolerated.

what is trustworthiness, is it fact or perception, intrinsic or contextual. do we trust people because they are innately trustworthy, or are they deemed trustworthy because we choose to trust. when no one is trustworthy, we are free to choose whom we trust.

when you can't trust anyone, you can trust anyone.

i believe it, therefore it is true.

favourite thickness

when i was a kid, i had a stuffed owl called owlie. she wasn't my first stuffed animal, but she was the first i fell in love with. she was brown with a white belly and had plastic emerald-green eyes with black highlights. she didn't have any feathers, just plush. her eyes were nestled in rings of white felt and her feet were the same white felt. i loved her dearly and slept with her every night.

then, i took her with us to florida and she was lost.

my mother replaced owlie with a frog called froggie. froggie tried really hard, and he was okay, but he was no owlie. a couple years later, i took my birthday money to the store and bought a teddy bear. this bear was the bomb diddly. he fit perfectly in my arms and he smiled at me so sweetly. i christened him peshal and have him to this day.

but even as special as peshal bear is, he doesn't have one thing that owlie had. it's something i have never seen on any other stuffed animal ever.

owlie had my favourite thickness.

owlie's felt parts - her feet and the rings around her eyes - were made of felt that was my favourite thickness. i told my mom this thing about owlie, when i still had owlie. i told her and i even showed her -- this here, this is my favourite thickness. i remember telling her because it was highly important and dear to me, and she of course laughed. haha, mom. thanks a billion for your support. i was six years old for godsakes.

anyway.

i can see how you'd think, well - you loved owlie so of course the thickness of her felt was your favourite. but, it wasn't like that. it was the other way around. i didn't love the thickness because i loved owlie... i loved owlie because she possessed a physical manifestation of my favourite thickness. i loved her for it, and i grieved when she went missing.

for a while, i sought the thickness, but since i'd never measured owlie's felt parts, i had no idea what i was looking for. time passed and though i never forgot about my favourite thickness, i managed to let go the search.

then, the other day, out of the blue, i look at the toilet paper roll and i was like oh. my. god. because there it was, the toilet paper was my exact favourite thickness.

you know how the sense of smell is most closely linked to memory? well, the sense of sight falling on favourite thickness is most closely linked to calm. seeing this thickness made all the tiny shards of life lose their sharpness and meld into a whole, smooth sphere

this time, i measured it. my favourite thickness is a quarter of an inch.

it's okay to laugh if you want. i mean, even my own mother laughed at me. her laughing at me really hurt me at the time, and even looking back, i think it was a shitty thing to do, but in context, i know that having a favourite thickness is not common. something uncommon is harder to understand, and not wanting to feel stupid for not understanding, we dismiss the uncommon by laughing at it. it's like using the "ridiculous" spell on a boggart - laugh at it, turn it ridiculous, and thereby make it go away so that you don't have to face your own ignorance.

so go ahead and laugh, but this boggart isn't going away.

i have a favourite thickness, and my favourite thickness is a quarter of an inch.

books 2016

clearly, audiobooks are the runaway winner this year. does listening to audiobooks count as "reading"? googling me up some definitions, i find "read" means to look at and comprehend the meaning of written or printed matter by mentally interpreting the characters or symbols of which it is composed. the "look at" part is obvs missing with the audiobook, and there's no interpretation of letters, numbers, or other symbols. someone else is doing that part for me and i'm just listening. in conclusion, listening to someone tell a story doesn't count as reading.


print
voyager - diana gabaldon
dragonfly in amber - diana gabaldon
the burgess boys - elizabeth strout
outlander - diana gabaldon
queen of the tearling - erika johansen
station 11 - emily st john mandel

audio
emerald green - kierstin gier
thrice the brinded cat hath mewed - alan bradley
a rule against murder - louise penny
sapphire blue - kierstin gier
ruby red - kierstin gier
the cruelest month - louise penny
the trespasser - tana french
wicked autumn - gm malliet
a world away - nancy grossman
landline - rainbow rowell
fatal grace - louis penny
fangirl - rainbow rowell
eleanor and park - rainbow rowell
hider, seeker, secret keeper - elizabeth kiem
dancer, daughter, traitor, spy - elizabeth kiem
lost & found - blaire davis
the room - jonas karlsson
mr penumbra's 24-hour bookstore - robin sloan
artemis fowl - eoin colfer
still life - louise penny
a few drops of blood - jan merete weiss
these dark things - jan merete weiss
screwed - eoin colfer
plugged - eion colfer
career of evil - robert gailbreath
slade house - david mitchell
the silkworm - robert gailbreath
the cuckoo's calling - robert gailbreath
mrs queen takes the train - william m kuhn
the girl on the train - paula hawkins
the ocean at the end of the lane - neil gaiman
boston girl - anita diamant
a tree grows in brooklyn - betsy smith
plum spooky - janet evanovich
full house - janet evanovich
big girl panties - stephanie evanovich
plum lovin' - janet evanovich
plum lucky - janet evanovich
visions of sugarplums - janet evanovich
a week in winter - maeve binchy