MindSpinner

Fortunately, sent mail on my ISP’s server was restored to me when I set up my computer again. Last night I discovered two photographs I thought lost - I had emailed them to friends. They aren’t suitable for printing. They exist now only in a reduced state for use on the Web, but they are something that remains.

At Shaker Village, to reach the trail that winds to the river among the wildflowers, you have to venture through a field past these two magnificent fellows. At a distance, this seems a test of your mettle, but when you are nearer, you realize that they mind you not at all.

Among the many shots of wildflowers I took along the trail was this one, of wild phlox. It was my favorite, and I’m glad to see it again.

Beyond the stacked stone fence, the last field, and the algae-clogged pond with its ducks, we found a place that held a kind of magic for me. If E and I had been children together, it would have been our secret place. (Even if we had known each other forty years ago, we would not have been children together, for seven years separate us. He would have been Science Boy, and I would have tagged along to see what he was up to, making a nuisance of my smaller self ;->. I think, though, that he would have tolerated me. But sometimes we can be children together anyway because the children we were are still a part of us now.)

To the left of the trail, there was a stone chimney, partly fallen, that once served as the hearth in a cabin or a house now long disappeared. The house had been replaced by a tree that grew with several trunks and arching branches, along with all her seedling children, to form a grove. From without, the wonder place looked like an abandoned chimney at the edge of a tangle of trees, but when we entered the grove, as I knew I must, the limbs and trunks made another sort of house under the mother tree. The branches formed arching doorways out into light in every direction and a place of quiet, without walls.

This, too, I tried to capture with photographs. I could take a picture of the chimney from within and without, and I did. I could take pictures of the dance of leaves and light, ever moving in a sea of air, and I did, though I only stilled the dance. I could take pictures of the mother tree and even of her bark, which seem to flow in twining rivers down her various trunks, into her roots. I could take pictures of her several doorways, and each resulting shot did indeed invite passage. But I could not take pictures of all around and up above and forest floor at once, as I would have had to do to recreate what it was to be in that place. So the loss of these photographs is not so much a loss, and words will do - or not do - as well.

I can’t quite explain the draw of the chimneyed grove. It seemed somehow sacred, and its sacredness seemed far older than this chimney or those trees. Its discovery was, at the least, part of the gift of a day spent, as E would put it, “down the rabbit hole,” escaped to a world apart.

Spring break is at an end, a succession of eventful and mostly happy days that left time only for fleeting peeks at my blog roll and email now and then. Posts to follow, I hope, for there’s lots that wants writing. But from now until June 2, school picks up speed like a freight train churning down a steep grade.

There was, over break, time for dog walking, which, in the case of the resident dogs, is something close to an Olympic sport, requiring endurance, speed, advanced problem solving and leash untangling, emergency rescues, puddle jumping, and a willingness to chase rabbits. I know they appear to be small dogs, perhaps just 10 inches at the shoulder if you measure with a ruler, but their size is an optical illusion. In fact, these are big strong perpetual motion creatures who project a cloaking device.

Output for christening tall weeds, fence posts, and telephone poles, one after another, also suggests that their design conceals water tanks of virtually unlimited capacity or the ability to extract water out of the air via rapid respiration. Tongues are probably involved. Other evidence suggests that they may also have teeth of steel and small backhoes and other earth-moving equipment instead of mere paws.

When they are not at home, having dug out of the reinforced perimeters of their fenced yard, they may usually be found partying in a neighbor’s trash can or cooling their heels at the local canine bed and breakfast known as the Animal Shelter. Oh, of course, there is a real fence, conscientiously constructed. It’s reinforced at the bottom with chicken wire and heavy rocks and blocks. Never you mind all that. Chicken wire is for chewing up and spitting out. Rocks and blocks are for pushing out of the way. Dirt is for digging. I’m thinking about cinder blocks secured with rebar next. Or a perimeter trench filled with concrete. (No doubt that’s when they’ll take up pole vaulting.)

Taking pictures of them is no small challenge. There’s the perpetual motion problem, for starters, resulting in lots of pictures of white blurs purporting to be half a dog.

One also notes a certain disinterest, on their part, in posing for the camera.

Sometimes, however, one them can surprise the unwary photographer by suddenly standing still. I’m still trying to determine whether this one was momentarily arrested by a fleeting thought or whether he froze the better to receive a transmission from the Mother Ship, no doubt regarding yet another an out-of-yard reconnaissance mission.

The same question has been posed to me in a variety of ways, sometimes tactfully and sometimes bluntly: “What possessed you to get these dogs?” I give the general impression, it seems, of making mostly sane, well-informed and thought-out decisions - except for my inexplicable adoption of the wacky dogs. I could plead that I was the victim of a form of mind control exerted by two eight-week-old pups some three years ago. But then I’d be displacing responsibility. No, truth is I fell for the “cute and adorable” cloaking device deployed by this merry band of brothers, for bellies upturned for the rubbing, for the sheer joie de vivre coursing through their veins. They can be exasperating, that’s for sure; but when they are around, it is hard to be glum.

(Credits: Dual dog walking and dog photo blogging would have been impossible were it not for the able and intrepid dog walker who captained the canine crew on their spring break adventures.)

This post confirms what we’ve always suspected: three men should not live alone together unsupervised ;->.

My pussy willow is a dwarf tree with cascading branches. I thin its branches in the spring and bring them indoors in a vase. Lovely.

I don’t often name plants, but my pussy willow tree is an exception. What could its name be

but Cousin It?

Why would I fill out a 146-item questionnaire for an online dating site when I’m not looking for a date? (Have date :->. Call that Hemingwayesque understatement.)

A. Because I’m a sucker for a survey that asks me to identify smiles as sincere or insincere and requires me to measure the length of my index finger against the length of my ring finger.
B. Because I’m intrigued by the approach of a dating site developed by an anthropologist who studies the brain physiology of romantic love and sexuality.
C. Because I’m easily intrigued by substantive diversions (not to mention trivial ones).
D. Because I want to know whether I’m a Explorer, a Builder, a Negotiator, or a Director. (It turns out I’m no less than 20% of each.)
E. Because I want to understand myself well enough to be the best partner I can be.
F. All of the above.

The answer is F, “all of the above,” and this should come as no surprise. (I know there are too many choices. Multiple choice questions make me feel subversive.)

In “How Do I Love Thee?,” an article featured in this month’s Atlantic, Lori Gottlieb examines the emerging science of attraction which underlies dating sites such as eHarmony, PerfectMatch.com, and Chemistry.com.

I knew eHarmony a while back - not impressed - profiles lacked sufficient “voice” - they were “output” instead. Only a voice tells me I’m interested. I watched some made-for-TV movie once that turned out to be a 90-minute ad for PerfectMatch.com, but I never checked into that site - I’d canned the notion of Internet matchmaking by then. But Chemistry.com sounds interesting on other grounds. Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers, devised its questionnaire and four resulting personality types based on the influences four key hormones have on personality:

“I’ve always been extremely impressed with Myers-Briggs,” she said, referring to the personality assessment tool that classifies people according to four pairs of traits: Introversion versus Extroversion, Sensing versus Intuition, Thinking versus Feeling, and Judging versus Perceiving. “They had me pinned to the wall when I took the test, and my sister, too. So when Chemistry.com approached me, I said to myself, ‘I’m an anthropologist who studies brain chemistry, what do I know about personality?’ ”

Turns out she knew quite a bit: Genes for the activity of dopamine are associated with motivation, curiosity, anxiety, and optimism. Genes for the metabolism of serotonin, another neurotransmitter, tend to modulate one’s degree of calm, stability, popularity, and religiosity. Testosterone is associated with being rational, analytical, exacting, independent, logical, rank-oriented, competitive, irreverent, and narcissistic. And the hormone estrogen is associated with being imaginative, creative, insightful, humane, sympathetic, agreeable, flexible, and verbal.

“So I had these four sheets of paper,” Fisher continued. “And I decided to give each a name. Serotonin became the Builder. Dopamine, the Explorer. Testosterone, the Director. And estrogen—I wish I’d called it the Ambassador or Diplomat, but I called it the Negotiator.” Myers-Briggs, she says, “clearly knew the four types but didn’t know the chemicals behind them.”

One hundred forty-six questions later, this is what I turned up. Not bad. (But when are these profiles ever painfully honest?)

The following analysis is based on your responses to our questionnaire. Your results identify your major and minor personality types, as well as the types with whom you’re likely to be compatible.

Your Major and Minor Personality Types
Characteristics of all four personality types can be found within each of us, but there is almost always one personality type that is dominant. We call this the major personality type.

The Chemistry Profile also identifies your minor or secondary personality type. You exhibit some aspects of this personality type, though not to the same degree as with your major type.
• Your major personality type = Negotiator
• Your minor personality type = Director

You are a NEGOTIATOR/director

You have a great overview of reality. You see many angles to the same issue and enjoy discussing multiple solutions to complex problems. You like to use your imagination and engage in creative theorizing.

You have executive social skills, easily picking up the gestures, facial expressions and speech patterns of others. You are intuitive; you generally understand people, and your sympathetic nature makes you pliant, adaptable and likeable.

Yet despite your charm and poise in large social situations, you often enjoy solitude or intense conversations with just one individual or a few close friends.

You are good at doing and thinking a lot of things at the same time. But when you focus on an issue, idea or problem, you like to concentrate in depth. You leave no stone unturned.

And with your insight, charm and intellectual bent, you make warm and interesting company.

Fisher posits that successful relationships are founded on both similarity and complementarity, so my Chemistry.com profile suggests which personality types will be an optimal match, with the idea that two people who share substantial compatibility can also balance each other through complementary differences. The night’s too short for me to turn the graphs into narratives.

“We also want someone who masks our flaws,” she explained. “For example, people with poor social skills sometimes gravitate toward people with good social skills. I’m an Explorer, so I don’t really need a partner who is socially skilled. That’s not essential to me. But it may be essential to a Director, who’s generally less socially skilled.”

Chemistry.com’s compatibility questionnaire also examines secondary personality traits. To illustrate, Fisher cited her own relationship. “I’m currently going out with a man,” she said, “and of course I made him take the test instantly. We’re both Explorers and older. I’m not sure two Explorers want to raise a baby together, because nobody will be home. But in addition, I’m a Negotiator and he’s a Director type. Our dominant personality is similar, but underneath, we’re complementary.”