Pepper is a therapist. Not everyone's pain is out there for everyone else to see. Bunny says that it is Pepper's job to find that pain and exorcise it.
When not working, Pepper and Bunny travel. Pepper's hobby is telling fortunes. I watch the cards on the table and observe the intense concentration. Frighteningly accurate.
On another front, This just in: I've been caught, but not by the Old Lady.
I was snooping in the Old Lady's room when Pepper appeared from out of nowhere, also known as the hallway.
There was I, gazing at a large bottle of au de something on the dresser. Pepper left without a word, not without mercy and did not say a thing to me or the Old Lady, but later did sing something with the words chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug at some point. I think our little secret is safe.
This one takes the cake:
I was innocently passing by Pepper's office door when I stumbled a bit and my ear accidently pressed against it and I heard the Old Lady telling Pepper that her brain has a little language of its own, an electrical language, if you will, and that her brain talks to itself, but the language is not deciferable in human speech because it does not require physical sound.
She says that is why she is slow to respond to our questions sometimes. She can hear what we are saying and she has an answer, but there is no way to express it out loud, so she has to take a moment for the "switchboard" to quiet down and shift gears so she can find words to say.
This is your brain on Tomten.
Pepper and I have struck a deal. I will take the responsibility if the Old Lady finds out I have filched her papers. (Which I will cheerfully refund to her if she catches me.) Pepper may consult with fellow nut thatches, my term, not hers.
The Old Lady gave this sketch to Pepper. She said it had various applications on this planet and others, mostly therapeutic.
It is a fish bowl meant to be built into a wall, front and reverse view shown. The reverse view shows a glass door just above the water level with a little handle so that a person can open it for feeding,cleaning or adding fish. She feels the reverse could be either in a closet for easy access or on the opposite side of the wall in the next room. With an attractive handle, she says, there's no need for it to be Cinderella's stepsister. And no need for a gyrostablizer unless it is a problem for the fish.
She means well.
Pepper said the Old Lady insisted it was a must for habitations on other planets for psychological reasons.
What do fish do while they swim endlessly? Think.
Now that I look at the sketch, wouldn't it make better bicycle wheels? Try and gyrostabilize those fish then. Tantalizing.
On another note:
The Old Lady submitted this design to Pepper as a practical therapeutic tool for those without sight. Initially, it was an idea for one of Pepper's patients who can see a little bit but whose vision is unclear in regards to reading labels on medication bottles. It does involve memory and the sense of touch.
Quite simple, really: Medication bottles whose caps are coded to touch and not sight. Each medication would have a different textured top, such as sandpaper, fur (faux), velvet, pebble, smooth ceramic and so on. The patient would not have to read the labels then. They will know that the sandpaper cap would be for a certain medication, while a fuzzy would contain a different medication. Pepper asked her why this would be better than a raised number system or braille. The Old Lady said Because it is easier to know that you have to catch the Red or the Green bus than to look for the correct number or destination.
She later clarified this later by saying the mind gets tired of analytical thinking. The more primary the "instruction", the easier it is to act upon in a discomforted state.
You see, Pepper does a lot of thinking. I've seen it. Pepper saw Albert Einstein do it. (I'm sure.)
Anyway, I tried the technique. I reclined on the settee in the middle of the yard. I gazed up at the blue sky with white clouds. Pepper asked me what I was thinking of then. I said: giraffes rampaging on castles.
One's eyebrows are capable of quite a range of motion.
Pepper is speaking to a group about her work. The subject is called the Self / Not-Self theory.
It goes something like this: In terms of every entity, whether it is an individual person or a group that functions as an entity (feeling that its members are a unified whole), the Self / Not-Self Rule will prevail. If the human body, thinking of it as a Self Unit, rejects anything that is Not-Self, whether it is bacteria, pollen, protein, or part or product from another human body, or even a splinter, attacking, destroying and ridding itself of the foreign or Not-Self, then would it be improbable that the human mind would function differently, psychologically speaking?
Theoretically, that is why people often find it difficult to accept change and new ideas. It takes time for them to incorporate a new concept into their set of beliefs and become Self. Younger people accept new thoughts or oddities more readily because their sense of Self is not as solidified as older people who are "set in their ways". Groups of people of any sort will tend to rebuff any person(s), other groups, or ideas which are not part of their already incorported set of values. At the most primitive level, they will reject, attack, and kill that which they view as different. And although, supposedly, everyone knows this, they could use this to their advantage by appearing to be as much like the target group to avoid hostility.
And getting beat up.
The Old Lady says the Primitive Brain can take over at unexpected moments.
A-hem.