Intellectual Intuition: Part 2

Jai came inside with me. I was still in shock bout what had happened. I made coffee for us, doing something seemed to calm me. When the coffee was down we sat down to talk. Jai started the conversation: "When I was young my Grandfather used to tell me about his Grandfather, who was a witch doctor, or obeah man in Mississippi, the family mover to Los Angeles when my Grandfather was young. I loved the stories of magic. and voodoo he uses to tell. I was reminded of those long forgotten stories of my youth when I investigated you, I realized magic was in my blood, so I took steps to show my willingness to join up." My shock and astonishment was wearing off. I also realized this was the longest conversation I had ever had with Jai. I am not counting the interviews around the Hartman affair when I came into the possession of the Monas Stone. I said in an uncertain manner: "I appreciate the help, but I thought you hated me?" I could hear the amusement in her viola toned voice: "Oh, yes, I did hate you girl, do you know the reason?" i replied: "I figured it had to do with the Hartman affair, you thinking I lied, and obfuscated the investigation." I could hear the smile in her voice as she replied: "Well yes that was part of it, but not the real reason. You see, I has a thing for Steve, and then you came in, and girl you really got into that man's head. He could not eat, sleep, or do anything without thinking about you. You see Steve thinks he is the smartest guy in the room, and he could not wrap his head around the fact that you outsmarted him at every turn. I tried to tell him that he was out of his league trying to match wits with you, but that only made things worse. I knew you were something else girl as soon as my first questioning of you. I hated you, because I was jealous how you got into that man's head." At this point I asked the obvious question: "So what happened?" She continued: "I found out last week that Steve is dating Monique Jefferson." I blurted out: "Who?" I could hear the resentment in Jai's voice as she continued: "She is a lawyer in the District Attorney's Office. She is smart, and pretty like us, but she is ambitious, career orientated, and very normal unlike us" She continued in the same tone of voice: "That is why we were arguing, Steve wanted me to run some errands that would make things easier for Monique, things for a case." The tone of voice she said Monique" in use to be reserved for my name. She went on: "Anyhow, as you say, Monique does not want Steve on those spooky cases as she calls them. So I will be the lead detective on the Brian Stoll murder. I have some ideas, and am tracking down some leads. I do not think Stoll was a member of a death cult, he was a father and grandfather, he was sixty eight years old, something does not seem right. When I get some facts we can sit down again and plan, girl." I had forgotten, or I guess never realized how aggressive Jai was. Of course, we had never had a polite conversation before. I was also surprised Jai had been jealous of me, from what I had hear she was a bronze goddess; she was 5 feet 9 inches being taller than me, and still had the lean body of an athlete. She has been a track and field start in college. Anyhow I agreed, and she left after we traded phone numbers, emails, etc. After she left, I decided that after Jai's not so subtle comments about my teaching, that I should work on my lesson plans. I guess I should take teaching more seriously, but it is hard when all you have is introductory classes filled with students that just want to get the required credit. One thing I could do better is take more time with my grad. students, I resolved to have a conversation with Nora my grad student T.A. Jai kept in touch with me, but did not share much about the investigation she preferred to wait till she had something substantial to share. She was also right about Steve he was trying to distance himself from "spooky" cases. I actually felt jealous and put out about Steve having a girlfriend, I guess it is that feminine psychology again. My new dedication to teaching started paying dividends almost immediately. I was walking next to the parking lot at the University where I teach when I heard Department Chairmen Tom Garcia's car pull up alongside of me. I recognized the sound of the engine, I know this is amazing to sighted people, but it is really not that hard to do. Of course, sighted people never trust any sense other than sight. A sighted friend told me once when he picked up a pencil in a dark room, he still had to check in the light for confirmation it was a pencil. Sad, but true. Anyhow, I turned towards the car and said: "Hi, Tom how is it going?" His response even though predictable caused a me to have one of those ''aha' moments, a huge insight into my thesis on the visual bias in thinking. He replied: "You know Gwen, sometimes I think you can see." I guess that is supposed to be a compliment. He continued: "I just wanted to tell you, you are getting a Medieval philosophy class next year. Keep up the good work" After the exchange of pleasantries he drove off. So my new found diligence had paid off. It also made me wonder if my T.A. Nora had talked to him, but that is for another time. Getting the class was not the most important thing for me, it was my new found insight. Even though I have heard the phrase "I think you can see" many times this time it triggered a revelation, and breakthrough in my thinking. I finally understood the nature of the visual bias. So I quickly walked home, and drew a bubble bath. I do my best thinking in the tub. Anyhow, I wanted to thoroughly enjoy my Kepler moment. Kepler has said he experienced a moment of euphoria when he worked out the revolutions of the planets. I had discovered the fundamental assumption of the visual bias. That all knowledge must be made to conform to visual knowledge or sighted experience. There are many common errors in thinking,but this one in spite of it being so widespread is easy to refute. It is not sight that experience and perception have to conform to, but tactile, or tangible experience. I am a big fan of tactile experience. John Locke's primary qualities, and whatever information we receive from the sense must always be translated into tangible knowledge or it is useless. i joke about the sighted world, but there is only one world, that of bodies interacting is space. That is why it is called physics, and not visicks. As I said jokingly in my lecture on Molyneux's problem, sight is a tangible illusion, like an image in a mirror, or an echo; sight must always be referred to something else. That something else is of course. tangible qualities. Now I understood why sighted people are always suspicious of anything they cannot see, because they assume that all knowledge and thought have to be visual. If that were true blind people would not be able to think much less navigate the world. I must say I was enjoying my Kepler moment. I almost wished I has told Tom: "I feel bad for you that you are so pathetic that you cannot trust any sense but sight. It would seem you live in a very one dimensional world if everything must be made to conform to sight, my world is much more textured." Almost, I had, had trouble with sarcasm as teenager, but what do you expect when you tell a romance starved teenage girl that she is inspiring? I mean what do you say when someone tells you, you are inspirational? You know I wanted to say something, being a teenage girl. So at first I tried being humble, with something like: "Well I do not try.", but that was not me. So I changed to: "Yes I know, people have told me that thinking about me brushing my teeth alone in the dark is the only thing that got them through a disfiguring illness." or "a painful divorced", you get the idea. Anyhow that is when my Mother started calling me a sarcastic bitch. Of course not in front of my face. Well sometimes in front of my face, well quite a lot in front of my face as I think back. Anyhow the incident also decided me to dedicate my book on the visual bias to William Molyneux's totally blind wife, Lucy who taught Locke and her husband that sight only reveals secondary qualities. Anyhow, a few days later Jai came over with news. After the greetings and pleasantries, she asked me: "Have you ever head of The Order of the New Dawn?" I told her "no" I had never heard of such a group. She continued: "They are a group that is trying to free humans form the influence of the Old Ones.". I had heard that such groups exist, but had never encountered any of them. Jai explained: "Remember that leather bound notebook you pointed out was rebound? It contained a coded message. It seems Brain Stoll was a member of The Order of the New Dawn that had infiltrated the Tsahaggoua cult." I asked her for her suggestions on how to proceed, and she had one. "We can contact them I have the coded message, although I have not broken the code. We can use the message as a bargaining chip" Since this seemed the only option I agreed. It was good to have help, although still thought I should have more authority in the cult of Jai and me.