Small Thoughts

I am thinking small lately because of pollen. Spring has come early to Seattle, and with it the trees and flowers are blooming far earlier than they have in the past.  I have terrible allergies, and to function during the day I take an antihistamine with breakfast. Antihistamines do something to your mind: In my case, they appear to have temporarily disabled my ability to think symbolically and my ability to write strategically.  Some notes on which I've been unable to expand:

1. In any situation involving another person, you can either make decisions that connect the two of you, or you can make choices that pull the two of you apart. This ought to be a significant factor in any choice, considered with equal weight to logistics, morality, personal preference, and present mood.
2. The defining aeshetic of cell phones and most consumer electronics is one of newness and polish, but this polish ages badly. Few things look worse than a chipped, smudged cell phone. When cell phones that develop attractive patinas with age become popular, that will be a good indicator that they are no longer quite the novelty they still are. This will also be indicated if the look of a chipped, smudged cell phone becomes understood as a point of cultural reference. 
3. Constant drunkenness is, more than anything, a limitation: the drinker operates within certain constraints. And in much the same way that one cannot read a haiku without knowing it's a haiku, one cannot interact with a drunk without the constant reminder that he is a drunk.
4. Existential questions are easy targets because they are open-ended. Death is not objectively bad. It's only our understanding of death that is bad. This is trite, but it's trite in the way that true things that you haven't yet grasped the ramifications of are trite. The realization that life is limited could be a positive realization. There is a part of each person that is hard to satisfy. That part likes the question of mortality for that reason: the human relationship to death is such a big problem it's impossible not to hit.
5. The most deeply troubling accidents are those that are completely unexpected. Sometimes accidents happen naturally, as the natural result of a set of factors with which you were familiar. For example, a car crash is shocking and disastrous, but the factors which created the car crash (multiple heavy vehicles travelling at high speed in the same space) are easy to understand. It's an expected, albeit undesired, outcome.
6. Human beings have an innate need for narrative. Being a part of a family is a way of building a consistent set of characters. The only story that can be played with one actor is "Man Against Himself". That is a story with one conclusion: the failure of Man. This need for narrative is the reason for loneliness and the strategy through which families are formed and the human species propagated.