Seeing Through the Heat.

Ashbourne was a one-layer town today, by which I mean that the population, almost without exception, was wearing only one layer of clothing. I was one of the rare exceptions. I was wearing a light summer jacket over my tee shirt because I decided to act in accordance with my elevated (though rarely evident) sense of standards and style for once.

So, that and several other factors conspired to have me wondering about an age-old question again: why is the human being the only animal that wears clothes?

At this point, a very long post began to emerge. It became tiresome; it awoke too many dangerous inner creatures which began to sharpen their claws, and it prompted the possibility of fallout so excessive that certain valued relationships might have come under threat. So I scrapped it.

Let it suffice to say that I went over this ground ad nauseum a couple of years ago on this blog. I established that my attitude in such matters is highly unorthodox and quite incomprehensible to the mainstream of western culture. More than that, it tends to be inflammatory because my reasoning is almost invariably deflected by inappropriate cultural axioms. Well, I know where I'm coming from and I'm backing my own judgement.

Just as a tangential side issue, however, Mel said to me recently that she's becoming ever more convinced that there are two different species of human on this planet. Watching the world pass by in Ashbourne today, I found myself almost agreeing with her. Maybe I belong in a zoo.