On the Notion of Soul Mates

Exposition Universelle / Palais de l'optique (1900)

Georges Leroux (1877-1957)

Beings Split Apart

In Plato's dialogue The Symposium, Aristophanes praises Love in another way, unlike that of either Pausanias or Eryximachus. Mankind, he said, judging by their neglect of him, have never, as I think, at all understood the power of Love. For if they had understood him they would surely have built noble temples and altars, and offered solemn sacrifices in his honour.  

Aristophanes describes early humans as having had four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces. He continues that there were three genders: man, woman and the "Androgynous". Each with two sets of genitalia with the Androgynous having both make and female genitalia. 

The men were children of the sun, the women were children of the earth and the Androgynous were children of the moon, which was born of the sun and earth. 

At the time humans had great strength, which threatened to conquer the gods. Rather than destroy the humans as they had the Titans - losing their tributes in the process - Zeus devised a plan: he split humans in half as punishment for their pride, doubling the number of humans who would give tribute. Apollo sewed up the humans with the navel being the only remnant of their original form. Each human would thus forever long for his/her other half; the other half of his/her soul. 

It is said that when the two find each other, there is an unspoken understanding of one another, that they feel united and would lie with each other in unity and would know no greater joy. 

The Kiss (Lovers) 1908-09

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)

Galeria Belvedere, Vienna

Romantic Liberation

While Plato presents the notion of soul mates as separated beings, there is another perspective, that of liberation. The notion of soul mates as it pertains to liberation romantically symbolizes freedom: in which each mate freely chooses one another. 

By freely choosing each other soul mates demonstrate true love - and thus praise Love. Humans then devise their own strategy for dealing with the gods. Each new couple is thus treated as 'one' under law and the tributes paid (to gods/state) are that of one. 

Take that, Zeus! 

Humans adapt to the flow of separate beingness, obeying not the logic of Zeus' punishment, but rather the stream of consciousness inclining them toward a reconstruction of form from within their newly liberated dimension of existence. 

The Lady of Shalott (1888)

John William Waterhouse (1849-1917)

Tate

The Beauty of Autonomy

Zeus' punishment resulted in something unique for human civilization: autonomy, which elevates humans to their former strength by igniting a new humanism of Love. The quest for unity deepens, but so too does enlightenment, progress, law and reason. 

Humanity sets a new stage in the conquest of the gods. In a human-centric viewpoint, the gods go from being many to only being 'one'. Humans ultimately restrict the multiplicity of the gods' omnipotence to that of a singular being. 

Emerging from Zeus' punishment, humans deconstruct the gods to whom they paid tribute. Artistic, cultural, philosophical and political autonomy rise forth from humanity in a definitive moment in human history, a sort of retribution that culminates in a revolution of love that is entirely turned toward individuals themselves, toward persons and humanity. 

Humans rejected Zeus' ignominy and radically created a new way of viewing the gods. In doing so, they totally transformed the domains of Mount Olympus, claiming final victory over their creators. 

The Philosophy of Falling in Love

Amor Sacro e Amor Profano (Sacred and Profane Love) c.1514

Titian

Galleria Borghese, Rome

Philosophy highlights things that give meaning to our lives. Socrates' enduring quest for living the good life liberates the mind toward revelations on these things, including the intimate feelings upon which they may be based, feelings that transform the entity into a collective, for falling in love is not a solitary experience; it is an experience that simultaneously includes others.

Falling in love calls upon the Roman goddess Venus, whose functions encompass love, beauty, intimate relations, fertility and prosperity. She is the embodiment of the Neoplatonic concept of sacred love. Sacred love embodies the notion of 'beyond being' (book VI of the Republic). In Plato's famous analogy of the Sun, he says that the Good is beyond being (ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας) in power and dignity.

Titian's painting depicts this concept. Dignity, for a woman, resides in her being protected, i.e., clothed. While power resides in her 'being', in her liberation of form from limited human constraints in reasoning.

Venus, the mother of the Roman people, sits lovingly beside the woman (dressed in white) who has fallen in love. This transformation of state goes from being dignified and seemingly pure (white wedding dress) toward being liberated and free from the predominantly human characteristic of wearing clothing, that state which arises from our functional need of protection from the elements.

When falling in love, an individual transforms themselves from one form of love to the other. From the notion of love based on convention and social norms toward the feeling of being in love, a release from a state or situation that limits freedom of thought or behavior. This flourishing or sense of abundance overflows much like how a fountain of love overflows upon those who partake of it.

Triumph of Cupid (1719)

Carlo Cignani (1628-1719)

Reaching inside the sacred Fountain of Venus is an allegory for falling in love. Cupid, our love totem, reaches inside the fountain symbolizing, in Titian's dreamlike landscape painting, our desire to have that which is set apart and forbidden (Émile Durkheim on sacred things).

Walter Friedländer outlined similarities between the painting and Francesco Colonna's Hyperotomachia Poliphili, proposing that the two figures represented Polia and Venere, the two female characters in the 1499 romance where Poliphilo pursues his love Polia through a dreamlike landscape, and is, seemingly, at last reconciled with her by the Fountain of Venus. This story is easily interpreted as more conquering love, it is an allegory for falling in love, for the journey or transformation that occurs when one is struck by Cupid's arrow.

Falling in love is the dream of love personified. François Rabelais, in The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34) wrote: "Far otherwise did heretofore the sages of Egypt, when they wrote by letters, which they called hieroglyphics, which none understood who were not skilled in the virtue, properly, and nature of things represented by them. Of which Orus Apollon hath in Greek composed two books, and Polyphilus, in his Dream of Love, set down more..." (Book 1, Ch. 9).

Philosophically speaking, falling in love is a quest for the dream of love. It is the search for the grandiose, a desire to "reach toward" that resplendent magnificence, and a finding or liberating of it (depicted in the fountain spilling forth) within oneself. Metaphysically speaking, it is a physical transformation whereby white light is illuminated.

In Titian's painting, we see the transformation of white being made lucid, clear, and plainly visible in a nude Venus. Not only does this vision occur in a dreamlike landscape, but the dreamlike landscape is also a natural place, a return to "home" which is often how those who have fallen in love describe the experience of being in the presence of their beloved.

Falling in love as a return home references our exile from Ithaca, that place in the Greek conception of a hierarchical world in which everyone, in accordance with his degree of excellence, has a place assigned to him, being torn away from this 'natural place' is a form of suffering and injustice, just as a return home is a positive good connected with the restoration of the harmony of the cosmos.

This separation between home and being exiled is depicted in the distance between the dressed Aphrodite Pandemos (left) and the nude Aphrodite Urania. Aphrodite Pandemos is that goddess of low sensual pleasures, whereas Aphrodite Urania is "the heavenly Aphrodite".

The unspoiled, harmonious wilderness in the background of this painting is Arcadia, the home of the god Pan (in Greek mythology), who is associated with the mother goddess. In Pindar's Pythian Ode iii. 78, Pindar, the Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes, refers to virgins worshipping Cybele and Pan near the poet's house in Boeotia. Titian's painting could also be an allegory for fortune and fate, with Cupid representing "the child of Zeus...Fortune") [C.M.Bowra, Pindar, page 63; fr. 63.15–20].

Pindar revised traditional mythos so as not to diminish the dignity and majesty of the gods. This painting may also be a subtle example, perhaps, of Pinder's approach to the omniscience of the gods with its elegant compliment: mortals (dressed in white).

Being descendants of divine unions, privilege mortals sit along side their mythical heroes, with cupid serving as an intermediate group between the gods and men, sympathetic to human ambitions. Thus, viewing this painting as an ethical issue, we do not judge the gods, we merely strive to experience their presence, away from our ordinary human experience. Indeed, this paining represents the finest breeds of humanity seated next to divine passions.

"For Pindar a mortal woman who is loved by a god is an outstanding lesson in divine favors handsomely bestowed." [Gilbert Highet, The Classical Tradition, Oxford University Press (1949), p. 225]

Falling in love denotes a divine union. In this painting Titian's elusiveness is telling his audience that he will not talk of it ("silence is a man's wisest counsel")

[New Nemean Odes 5.14-18. The hushed reference to Phocus's murder is cited and translated by C.M. Bowra, Pindar, pages 67-8: I am shy of speaking of a huge risk / Hazarded not in right, / How they left the famous island, / And what fate drove strong men from the Vineland. / I shall halt. Truth does not always / Gain more if unflinching / She reveals her face; / And silence is often a man's wisest counsel.]

Here, Titian depicts our readiness to shape traditional mythos to fit the occasion.

Venus serves as an oracle to a prophet, commemorating a human victory - claiming love for oneself. Falling in love is that claim upon that which initially eludes us, that sentiment of which the maidens sing:

ἐμὲ δὲ πρέπει παρθενήια μὲν φρονεῖν
γλώσσᾳ τε λέγεσθαι.

I must think maidenly thoughts

And utter them with my tongue

The dithyrambs in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility, flow forth from this painting, an allegory of that sentiment which sings forth from our bosom when we fall in love. Love's ballads capture the grandeur of the moment of victory, of Poliphilo pursuing and ultimately reconciling with his love Polia in Titian's landscape. 

Titian's Renaissance style sets the tone for rebirth, a rekindling of ancient myths that evoke the gods or the Muses. Praise goes to the victor, narrated by myth, the central figure (left) exemplifies a mortal, who transformed, gains an audience with the world of the gods. Titian's Amor Sacro e Amor Profano (Sacred and Profane Love) represents the grand sentiment associated with falling in love, that unfolding of the sacred against a background of symbolic elements such as the sea, darkness, fire from the bosom, mountains, and the privileged moral predicament (depicted the castle). 

King of Syracuse, delighting in horses; and his fame shines

among strong men where Lydian Pelops went to dwell,

Pelops that he who clips the earth with his great strength,

Poseidon, loved when Klotho lifted him out

of the clean cauldron, his shoulder gleaming ivory.

Great marvels in truth are these, but tales

told and overlaid with elaboration of lies

amaze men's wits against the true word.

The Odes of Pindar

Cupid's shoulder gleams ivory. Poseidon, the "God of the Sea" is called upon; venerated at Pylos and Thebes in pre-Olympian Bronze Age Greece as a chief deity, Poseidon was integrated into the Olympian gods as the brother of Zeus and Hades (Mount Olympus depicted above left in the landscape). The conflict between Hades and Persephone represents the division between mortals and gods. Pelops, whose cult developed into the founding myth of the Olympic games, represents love's games. Cupid leans over the Fountain of Venus, an allegory for the holy grail or cauldron from which the sacred can be touched. 

Great marvels are depicted in Titian's painting as great marvels are discovered in the experience of falling in love. The wedding between Nicolò Aurelio and Laura Bagarotto in 1514 (the Aurelio family coat of arms is depicted on the sarcophagus) represents a courtship. 

Hippodamia with Pelops in a racing chariot

Hippodamia's father, King Oenomaus of Pisa, was fearful of a prophecy that claimed he would be killed by his son-in-law. So when suitors arrived, he told them they could marry his daughter only if they defeated him a chariot race, and if they lost, they would be executed.

Pelops, son of King Tantalus of Lydia, came to ask for Hippodamia's hand in marriage and prepared to race Oenomaus. Worried about losing, Pelops went to the seaside (depicted on the right side of the painting) and invoked Poseidon, his former lover. Reminding Poseidon of their love ("Aphrodite's sweet gifts"), he asked Poseidon for help. Smiling, Poseidon caused a chariot drawn by winged horses to appear.

Behind Laura Bagarotto is two parts of lighted sky, which could be seen as wing-shaped. On the sarcophagus (on the right) a suitor is being killed while a young maiden, similar to Venus, stands aghast in the background. Flowing from the fountain is Poseidon's blessings.

Titian's Amor Sacro e Amor Profano (Sacred and Profane Love) can be seen as an allegory for falling in love, for the philosophies that illuminate the enormous experience of being 'touched by love'. Falling in love transcends the human predicament and elevates it toward the nature of love, itself (Venus). Love transcends theories of human nature, desire, ethics, and so on.

Philosophically speaking, love logically begins with questions concerning its nature, which is where Titian takes us in his allegory of falling in love. Implied here is that love has a "nature," that it cannot be described in rational or meaningful propositions, only in sentiment. The sentiment evoked in Titian's painting is one that presents a metaphysical and epistemological argument, that love ejects us from our reason; but, on the other hand, it delivers us to the realm of of the gods.

In English, the word "love," which is derived from Germanic forms of the Sanskrit lubh (desire), is broadly referenced in our desire to be god-like in nature. Our natural attraction to love, toward the feelings experience in falling in love, stems from this desire (eros, philia, and agape).

Eros refers to that part of love that inspires passion, an intense desire for something often referred to as erotic desire (Aphrodite Pandemos). Aristotle's Philia, by contrast, entails a fondness and appreciation of the other (Cupid's kindness toward mortals). Agape refers to the paternal love of the gods for humanity (Venus). All three elements of love (the Platonic-Socratic maintains that love we generate for beauty on this earth can never be truly satisfied until we die [sarcophagus]; but in the meantime we should aspire beyond the particular stimulating image in front of us to the contemplation of beauty itself) are presented in Titian's painting.

Falling in love invokes the philosophy of language, of the relevance of meanings, and also provides us with a knowable, comprehensible, and describable understanding of the nature of the gods.

Three little words: "I love you" warrant no further intellectual intrusion. Love is liberated and free and brings us face to face with the gods as an allegory for the divine within.

If love possesses a nature, it is one that is identifiable only in personal expression with it. To be properly understood, one must feel love. Perhaps this prerequisite for understanding love in order recognize its nature is why Titian's painting has long since eluded scholars.

Ruminating on the nature of falling in love coupled with the experience of falling in love opens our eyes to seeing it depicted elsewhere.

Carraway on Smiles

It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. 

It faced - or seemed to face - the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. 

It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. 

Romantic Idealization

Love and imagination are inextricably linked because imagination gives love form through the enterprise of thought, while love, that warm, profoundly tender, passionate affection felt for another provides the inspiration for this sharing.

Human creative acts of perception join passive and active elements in thinking and impose unity on the subject of our romantic affections. The faculty of mind that manipulates images devises its own linkage between beloved and "intuition". As opposed to purely mechanical justifications for the allowance of emotional sentiment, romantic idealization attains the absolute by consulting self-awareness in the process.

Romantic idealization is Bergson's élan vital, "a vital impetus, containing within itself the possibilities of a multiplicity of life-forms". The élan vital - which I call Romantic Idealization - gives rise to a process of eternal struggle between love, intuition, and matter; the process is Romantic Creativity.

Falling in Love

Falling in love thrusts the mind upward. Owing sensation to intuition, each moment spent romantically idealizing a person, idea, or situation, produces an increasingly complex intelligence about the nature of the experience, which increasingly expands the intuition by inspiring it to grow toward new parameters established by the connection. The idea is similar to the joy one experiences when love is renewed: the pre-existing notions softly dissipate into the background as the recognition of new sensations flood one's conscience with new truths.

Love is an extension of our conscience awareness that directs our attention upward toward the ideal: it inspires behavior, as well as attitudes, and in an all-consuming eloquence of mind, ignites a smooth, elastic, adaptable, mindfulness that immerses itself in the immediacy of the moment and soars. 

Imagination conceives of this intuition and announces its intention to "imagine". It is the mind that loves with the entirety of its being and begets the intuition and imagination to work in collaborative harmony with the divine within. 

Indicative of the intensity love brings to imagination, excitement soars at discovering divine sentiment. We then allow ourselves to be fascinated and hypnotized by the intensity of each interaction, in this case, Romantic Idealization; i.e., love that has momentarily confounded life, alters behavior and indeed, as the heart sings, praises it through expressions of delight combined with inventiveness. 

Inventing new moments is the burden of romance that is lifted from within to create tender arrangements from which the romantic narrative takes flight. As these new inventions increase, so too do their effect upon the conscious and subconscious self. Love songs are sweeter, time slows down, and fanciful invention arouses the romantic spirit. 

Romantic idealization

Romantic idealization conceives of itself through another. It lifts our attention toward mindfulness. It is the aspect of self that conceives of that which lies beyond oneself. It is the excitement of discovering another that stirs us from within. It expresses delight before the world and declares to itself the word "love" ~ a word recognizably "too short a word for too long a feeling". 

Romantic idealization is our heart's response to a superior understanding that dwells within. In it, we value new concepts of time by allowing ourselves to experience truths we did not previously know existed. In doing so, our minds rearrange past notions into fond, heartfelt memories to make space for the enormity that encompasses the heart, mind, and essence of self. 

Love is spontaneously intuitive. Both love and romance are codified in the creation of life and involves two bodies, though one could conceive of the notion that each being is held by the other in desirous affection. There is nothing mechanically repetitive about love. Love is always new. The difference is ultimately linked to a pure state of intuition that has the capacity to recognize new truths. 

As romance evolves into love, it becomes increasingly aware that it must continue to find new truths, which may be anything other than what was previously understood, and which we equate with discovery. Allowing for discovery is the intellectual realization that one is "in love with love" and that we need love to live. 

Love compliments our being, connects our intuition to our vision, and allows us to see straight through to the source of our affection. This seeing connects us in a way that boundaries dissolve, problems dissipate, and possibilities abound. Anything that is not integral to the flourishing of love is diminished so that the expression of self and truth might flourish. 

It is upon the path toward truthful flourishing where romantic idealization reigns. Sentiment is the impetus and imagination is the preface to A Love Story that we script for ourselves. 

The Kamikaze Bunny Ballad

The Kamikaze Bunny Ballad

Just look at us where we stand;

Our bedtime is at eight.

We don't like carrots in a can,

Because they are so very fake.

'Do you like our oozies?' we ask.

'And aren't they kinda cute?'

We agree it is a disagreeable task

To turn docile creatures into brutes

We with our little fluffy tails

That bounce while we eat

You cook us with our entails

And on your keychains put our feet

'It is our custom,' you say

'To take that which we see;

And that's just our way -

A fluke of fate, if you please.'

But budding is our plan

Though it may seem a wee bit mean,

We follow lead from the Great Lapin

The wisest bunny ever seen.

So, having no mercy to give

We swipe away your lucky rabbit feet!

And cry the cry by which the Kamikaze Bunny live

And thump you on the head as we screech:

'You have no right to cut off our tails

And throw the rest away,

And if we catch you recounting lucky rabbit feet tales,

You'll drop to your knees and pray:

'Forgive us y'all

We think not as we toil -

It seems that thinking above all

Is for some like taking castor oil.''

But we are armed and ready,

To blow you away all together

So that no bunny suffers your indignant pedi

And keeps their parts together

I shook myself awake and tried,

To think of all that which we do:

'Come, little bunny tell me how you feel,' I cried

'And together we'll hug it through!'

They said 'We hunt for the naughtiest human prize'

Among nature's spies

And pounce upon them in the silent night

And giggle when they realize

That rabbit feet are not lucky

Carry instead a nugget of gold

For carrying around furry little feet is yucky

And the custom is really getting old

And sometimes they listen and update their scrolls,

So that future progeny might learn, too

Keeping us as pets will not console

A baby bunny pruned

'And that's our tale' (they gave a little wink)

'By which we reconsidered lucky rabbit wealth -

And very gladly did the moral sink

Into our books upon the shelf

I heard them bounce away, as I had just

Made their furry little plight shine

Rescuing bunny feet from wicked clutch

By composing this little rhyme

I thank them much for telling me

How not to demonstrate our wealth

But chiefly for their hearts, so brave and wee 

I toasted them to noble health

And now, if e'ver by chance I see

A lucky rabbit's foot dangling from a chain

I'll cry the cry of the Great Lapin

And summon the Kamikaze Bunnies again

Who will point their oozies at your toe

A very heavy weight, indeed

And remind you of that which you already know

That Kamikaze Bunnies only need

A gentle hand, a speech that is

slow,

So that their whiskers don't flicker with woe,

And their faces don't wince in sorrow,

Their eyes, like cinders, all aglow,

Who bring us joy to and fro,

And hop and bounce, and oh

Are so very cute and loveable

And if we cut off their little feet, like so

We'll incur their wrath, just like long ago

So don't act like you don't know

That Kamikaze Bunnies exist, to keep us on the straight and narrow

All before their bedtime at eight.

Fingers, an Organ of the Mind

Richard Mas - Sexy Fingers at Art Monaco 2012

~

Cartesian-inspired dualism directs our attention to the head when searching for mental activity, but the fingers challenge this dichotomy, offering tantalizing possibilities that can only be found by following the fingers.

The world takes form as we graze, tap, and wander with our fingers. We see an object and instantly we imagine what it would be like to touch it.

Hands are the sine qua non for the manufacture of artifacts, but fingertips pull tactile images into our conscious mind, tickling us in the process. A fetchingly curled finger may say "come hither," whereas a other gestures can communicate a broad range of other expressions.

Everyone touches differently ... all hands are unique because fingerprints differ from person to person.

The things we touch leave traceable memories in our fingers, sensory engagement that connects our thinking and engages our imaginations in retrospect (memory) or in anticipation (imagination). Some sensations may not be fully preconceived of in thought, but neither are sensory precognitions without merit.

Thoughts direct the fingers but the fingers determine the will toward the organ of the sense. Exploratory in nature, fingers seem to consciously choose and initiate movement. In extraordinary and meticulous detail, fingers communicate back the relation between shape and thought, between recognition and "second nature."

I can feel the twinkle in the eye of his handshake.

~Helen Keller

Researchers McGlone and Reilly 2010; Morison, Löken, and Olausson 2010, argue for the inclusion of pleasant touch (in addition to tactile, painful, thermal, and pruritic / itch) as a fifth modality in the cutaneous system, which relays information to the central nervous system. The empirical motivation for this claim comes from the identification of receptors, which respond preferentially to low-force, slow moving stimulation. 

The areas linked to the sensory and emotional processing of touch (pain, and other cutaneous sensations) are the posterior ventral medial and medial dorsal nuclei of the thalamus as well as the dorsal posterior insula and the anterior cingulate (Craig 2009).

Touching other people influences the perception of touch on one's self, suggesting that, rather than merely involving the same brain areas, observation and perception of touch also involve shared cognitive representations (Singer and Lamm 2009; Serino and Haggard 2010).

Fingers and their hands are wondrous tools with astonishing versatility ... eclipsing other sensory organs in terms of the sheer magnitude of information they relay back to the head.

When we rub our hands and fingers together, we are essentially both the perceiver and the perceived. This duality of perceiver and perceived facilitates a sense in the body as being both that through which we experience the world as well as the experience of being perceived by others. Husserl said that touch is the only sense that facilitates perception of what does the perceiving. In other words, eyes do not appear to one's own vision, but the perceiver-perceived intimacy known only to our hands and fingers is a unique experience of self-touch. Touching oneself is a sort of self-reflection, a unidirectional relationship of the one who perceives to and well as the one who is being perceived.

We think with our hands - and some of us talk with our hands. Together with our fingers, they have a direct link to our thoughts. Whether or not bodily gestures are among the material vehicles that realize cognitive processes is a matter of debate, but it is ever true that together they make a coupled system of neural activity in which fingers aid us in the realization of a thought.

However we perceive tactile experiences, they offer a distinctively rich adaptiveness and flexibility of intelligent thought and behavior. Sensations occur in our fingertips, but the phenomenon is realized in both the brain as well as the non-neural body.

The case for embedded cognition has been made by many scholars. I suppose the burden of proof lies in how profoundly the ideas we touch / touch us.

Our Blog Apologizes

You no doubt remember the early posts. Nice, quietly contemplative, unfamiliar with the gaze of public scrutiny. At one time, perhaps, but not any more. 

I have been asked by the blog owner, in my capacity as blog writer and conscience of our little blog, to offer an apology from the creators of Happy Thoughts Travel Fast (HTTF) for our occasionally frequent "going off topic" tendencies. Like many small-blog folks, we at HTTF care very deeply about the humor effort. And it is was this effort we believed we were assisting when we fell for the smooth talking "it's my blog and I'll write what I want to" idea. 

If you look to your left, you'll notice our 100% Reputation. If you are reading this from your phone, it looks like this: 

Those honeyed numbers - 100/100 - illuminate our blogiotic duties, bringing an assortment of responsibilities to our blog readers. Each post is created inside a very small library or on the corner of a cozy, leather couch and stored on a GIANT server. Each post aims to feature tasteful images and concepts to multiple Readers with a variety of interests. Naturally, when one of our blog posts are featured by other sites, retweeted, or otherwise shared, we are publicly appreciative, but privately shocked. 

"How in the world do people find our little blog?" the blog author once told me. "Do people have nothing better to do with their time than read internet fodder?" 

Of course, speaking as the individual writing the internet fodder, I totally get why people enjoy reading it. 

It's fun! 

During all those moments when we have absolutely nothing better to do with our time and our entertainment-centric brains are out surfing the web for funny or otherwise interesting tid-bits of data, here comes HTTF to the entertainment rescue. 

So, apparently people haven't lost their senses. Readers assure me that there's "good stuff" in here. Each post contributes to the archive - some 1200+ posts - in an effort to raise our Google ranking and chances of being "discovered" as a true literary talent not to be dismissed. 

The Readers of HTTF, for example, send emails and instant messages to influence the posting of certain articles ... to suggest jokes, to share background information, to share things they probably shouldn't share, and mainly to ask things like: 

Why did you post that? ... 

Where in the world do you come up with all this stuff? ...

What are you smoking? ...

Can I have some? ...

and

How do you know all this stuff? ...

To which the author of the blog responds with clarity, wit, and a slight air of dismissiveness in an attempt to not get too overly personal - a logician's kryptonite. 

So, this is HTTF. Yonder, on the right-hand side of your screen, is a real picture of the author on a Really Good Hair Day ...

So, here we stand, naked as the day this blog was created, next to the HTTF-verse that was created in April 2011. Old "Sophy 'softly' Laughing" turned Happy Thoughts Travel Fast. "Why?" you ask? 

Because there's enough serious stuff out there. When it comes to internet fodder, I take mine with a side of wit, a pinch of playfulness, and an extra helping of whatever-comes-to-mind just to make the mixture a bit more palatable. 

Now, back to that apology. We hope this apology for occasionally going off topic soothes the soul as much as a nice warm beverage soothes the savage adult. Though you must know, in all reality, the author of this blog assumes no responsibility for the posts that fail to entertain while simultaneously taking 100% of the credit for the one's that do. 

Many a perfectly good morning has been spent pecking away at a pristine MacBook Pro laptop instead of sleeping in ... Who knew one could create such a space in the wee hours of the morning before the pets wake-up? The pets, maybe. But there you are. Up with the animals writing in a blog just to entertain self and others. 

Not a bad way to spend a morning ...