Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Hope is a four-letter word.

Rejuvenate is a ten-letter word.

One is emblematic of the personal reality of the Outsider, the other, an appropriate term for the ambitions of the Wakefield Doctrine.

…neither, however, are enticing enough to build a post around. They’re more like the scraps of cardboard that seem to appear out of nowhere, a second before you give up hope of getting your car out of the snow-rut. After pressing the accelerator way past the point of effectiveness, (though the exercise is not without a certain feeling of power, as you listen to the wheel spinning in it’s half-circle of rock-hard ice, the sound is a potent combination of engine power and restraint, with just enough of a overtone of burning rubber, you know, to keep it real.)

So, the question we pose, still determined to make use of the two words-of-the-day, where does the emotion of hope* go, when the car does not? What transformation occurs to the marshaling of emotion and thought? We recognize that, in part, the energy, (or emotion), is converted into creativity. Cardboard? To move a vehicle weighing more than any other object in your house? Really?

Really.

But we’re concerned with the energy within, this apparently being take-a-clark-to-work day, at least in terms of writing the day’s post.

Anger…. there’s a common-enough example of the transformation of emotion that no longer has a context in the external world.

Hey, here’s an idea! What would the situation look like, if the driver was a clark, a scott or a roger?

Well, lets assume the driveway is long enough not to permit a view of how deep the snow is, at the far end, where the street is. For the New Reader:

• clark(the Outsider) is the person who grows up in the world of men and women wearing a name card that, somehow, got smudged under the clear-plastic folder (with it’s why-is-this-a-good-design? half-a-safety pin on the back).
• scott(the Predator) the man or woman who holds to the sub-sub-conscious belief that the world is a three-round sudden death playoff, always pulls the driver from the bag approaching the tee; their caddy needs to sprint to get to the green first.
• roger(the Herd Member) has never met a person they don’t believe they know, (or know someone who does know), and interacts with others with the confidence of a four-year-old after mastering the placement of the first three objects heralding a life of education, the peg, the cylinder and cubical piece of wood.

So ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.

In no particular order:

• the scott makes it out to the road and shouts to the neighbor that, as soon as the spring arrives, he’ll help put the fence, (did we mention the fact that our test driveway is between the fences that mark the two abutting properties?) Take a closer look at the photo… it does. Style point to our scottian driver for missing the school children, inadvisably clustered together, two doors down.
• the clark proves our point about the (potential) power of emotional transformation, i.e. hope into creativity… we’re left to wonder where they got the cardboard or how much it will cost to replace the rear tires
• the roger…. well! how do they do it?!! The driver got out of the car, (which had perfectly-right-angled openings in the snow that covered both the windshield and the rear window, the bottom of the windshield looked like the side of a street in Anchorage on a particularly snowy winter, the wipers themself were at ‘9 o’clock’ when turned off, not able to push the ice and snow further off the glass), looked around, muttered something about how the neighbors have not yet even shoveled their sidewalks and a crowd materializes. With little discussion, other than to agree the. weather service got it wrong again, the car was pushed out of the rut and up on to the road. Like an igloo with square windows and four wheels, the roger drove off without a second look.

* and surely it is an emotion, being as practical and rational and a jello sledgehammer