Letters To An
Overseas Friend.

This entry is in response to this. I thought it an interesting and confounding enough subject to make it its own thing.

According to Google:

un·hinged: ənˈhinjd
adjective
past tense: unhinged

1. mentally unbalanced; deranged.
"the violent acts of unhinged minds"

Not sure if you meant that. I’ll assume you (kind of) did, for now. I also assume you meant you chose a certain reading and are stating now that it may not have been what I meant.

Yes, in this case, perhaps a little unbalanced in that this drawing that I had once observed existed lucidly in my head but was quite different from what I actually observed. When I say “mental image” I mean “imagined picture” or just plain “representation.” I could have easily said “It’s based off a picture in my head of…”

As Wikipedia puts it, “A mental image is the representation in a person’s mind of the physical world outside of that person.” The article also goes on to cover more psychologically significant meanings of mental image, as I believe you were touching upon.

I see now that “mental image” can have several meanings. I like where you were going with it though. It’s got that Charlie Kaufman thing going on, something which seems to have burrowed its way into many of our recent discussions.

Also, I might have fantastically misinterpreted your comment that spurred all this.

Proofs of concept. Fart jokes. Things that look like other things. These were our competing interests…

When I try to do something cool and fresh (fresh to me) with the youngsters, it fails I’d say about 80% of the time. A frustrating number to be sure, but then you get a reminder that that means you succeed 20% of the time. This evening’s small scale aviatorial dream was one of the 20%. Some notable failures from the past include the Lego man that walks by himself (lifeless), vinegar powered vehicles (more intricate than I anticipated), harnessing the power of lightening (please), and anything remotely related to aviation*.

Rory recently got a book of paper aeronautical designs, and she wanted to make a plastic bag parachute. But we’re mad scientists. We don’t do tried, tested and true. We do this:

It’s based off a mental image I have of a Leonardo da Vinci drawing. Although I realize now I might be thinking of his helicopter. How accurate my design was, I didn’t care at that point. Because it actually worked!

The real thing doesn’t even look like it has any right to not fall apart in my hand. Believe me, the photo is too flattering. I am not a delusional man. I was emotionally prepared for the disgrace of failure. But before accepting defeat, you must have persistence. That’s why I love a good rapid prototyping session (it even sounds cool: RAP-ID PRO-TO-TYP-ING). But while I was doing real and important science through iteration, Max preferred to distract us with word games (like calling it a fart-o-type and a para-fart). Rory insisted our creation was a worm and needed to make the thing look more worm like. Efficiency suffered. I just couldn’t keep everyone on the same page.

Worms have eyes I’m told:

Cool is relative. Of course.

The best laid plans of the children and this man gang aft agley. But not this time! Rory got to enhance the visual design of our craft. Max got to entertain us all with his comedic stylings (as well as gathering raw materials), and we all achieved slowed aerial motion via manipulated air flow. By any measure, the evening was a success and a good time was had by all.


*In spite of that, I believe I am still looked upon as a trick-full magician. But for how long?

Flukes. It took me over a decade to get around to reading Hunger. During that decade plus period, I had walked into book stores on occasion casually looking for Hunger. I’d look for Knute Homson. Didn’t find it, of course, and leave. I was certain enough, for no strong reason, of the spelling of Hamsun that I felt safe in my assumption that the book was not at that store. I suppose I never actually looked up the author in a way that would have exposed the true spelling of his name. How many times have I walked out of a book store without Hunger when it was a few inches or feet away from me? How long ago would I have read that book?