Monthly Archives: November 2003

Mind Muffler

It always inter­ests me to learn how some peo­ple are changed so sud­den­ly in their lives. An inci­dent, whether it’s retire­ment, grad­u­a­tion, death, or any­thing of such a mag­ni­tude, cause some to have new rev­e­la­tions or epipha­nies. The fact that it takes some­thing as dras­tic as these sit­u­a­tions to affect some peo­ple seems seems a lit­tle odd to me.

Do these peo­ple not think at all in their dai­ly lives? Do they go through one day to the next with­out look­ing at the big pic­ture, with­out see­ing some sort of per­spec­tive?

I think I’m gen­er­al­ly unaf­fect­ed by such extreme events because of the fact that I try to find mean­ing in almost every­thing I expe­ri­ence (risk­ing pre­ten­sion). It ends up being that some­thing like the loss of a favorite shirt can affect me as much as fail­ing an entire uni­ver­si­ty course. I feel as if I learn enough about myself from both events. As a result of this, I some­times change on a day to day basis, although it’s gen­er­al­ly on a minis­cule lev­el and takes a while before it all builds up into any­thing notice­able.

Of course, this also means that very lit­tle ends up sur­pris­ing me. I’m rarely shocked by any­thing, and often feel like my emo­tions have been lev­eled off, per­haps numb or sim­ply accus­tomed to change. I don’t get dras­ti­cal­ly affect­ed any­more, and in turn, can think and act clear­ly accord­ing to my set of log­ic. The only thing that ends up over­com­ing my cere­bral­i­ty is hate.

And love.

The TT Characters

At the club yes­ter­day there was a woman who must have been in her sev­en­ties, who played a fair­ly fast (though unbal­anced) game. She liked to talk some shit against my lucky shots, which was pret­ty fun­ny, cause oth­er­wise she’s a sweet old lady with a slight British accent. I was also matched up against Barry, a para­plegic who was kick­ing my ass in his wheel­chair, after hav­ing played two hours of wheel­chair ten­nis. He plays much faster and more aggres­sive­ly than me, and can place his shots with amaz­ing pre­ci­sion. It’s real­ly help­ing me work on my fore­hand to back­hand returns.

I’m get­ting my abs back, espe­cial­ly the obliques. My right arm is rough­ly an inch big­ger than the left now. I’m think­ing that it’s all the weight trans­fer that needs to be done when smash­ing, espe­cial­ly against Dan. He’s like an artist on the court, aware of all vari­ables involved in a sin­gle hit, able to make the ball do what­ev­er he wants. It’s a plea­sure to watch him play.

No Wonder, Iago

Sometimes, some­one does some­thing…in char­ac­ter…and this sin­gle act can change my view of them. It’s as if this one thing is the last piece in the puz­zle, and once this hap­pens I fig­ure some­one out com­plete­ly. It’s sad that peo­ple can be so com­pli­cat­ed, and then sud­den­ly so one-dimen­sion­al. I’m not some sort of social genius by any means, but it sur­pris­es me how many times I end up feel­ing as if I know some­one through and through. It’s almost like being able to under­stand the mind of a child.

I think part of the rea­son is because of how many dif­fer­ent peo­ple I’ve been. I see parts of myself in these peo­ple, as so many types of per­son­al­i­ties I’ve had before. Once this hap­pens, a sort of con­nec­tion in my mind is made, and it’s almost as if I under­stand every­thing about them; their motives, their log­ic, their actions. Generally this means that I dis­like the per­son, since I dis­like so many of my past ideas and mind­sets.

I always won­der what it takes for some­one to change so dras­ti­cal­ly to me. With what sin­gle moment do I begin to under­stand some­one? I know that not every­one can be fig­ured out, only those who are relat­ed to what I used to be (which is only a tiny frac­tion of the peo­ple I meet). And yet, fair­ly often, some­one I know will end up being pre­dictable, bor­ing, and frus­trat­ing.

These are the peo­ple I usu­al­ly feel most com­fort­able around, since I know how to talk to them, their humour, what they want to hear, even how they want oth­er peo­ple to act. They’re also the peo­ple I gen­er­al­ly want to hang around the least. They remind me of how igno­rant a per­son I used to be, and offer no inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion (because I usu­al­ly already know every­thing they have say).

There are many more peo­ple I can’t fig­ure out, both ones I like and dis­like. I don’t pro­fess to be smart enough to under­stand any­one, and I cer­tain­ly don’t think that being able to do this makes me a more intel­li­gent per­son. It’s just odd to sud­den­ly come to such under­stand­ings some­times. I instant­ly lose respect for the per­son, and wish I had­n’t got­ten to this point.

In these cas­es it’s prob­a­bly bet­ter to be igno­rant.