music: (music video) system of a down - spiders
volume: 19 (rattling something in my desk/room/heater...)
first of all, decent day. got a good chunk of sleep on nyQuil and red wine, woke up to do some work w/ acis...took a while but i manged to fix a computer always good. class was actually really interesting...had to do with design tactics, i always like those. at one point my professor was describing a simplification in a circuit and how a certain power source was unnecessary and someone in the class (poor schmuck) asked for more clarification, skeptical.....after sufficiently proving his point, prof. tsividis says "i could put a TOMATO here, and it wouldn't change the output"...and he draws a fuckin' tomato in the curcuit. the class gave a little chuckle but i was laughing quietly long afterwards :) i guess you'd kind of have to be there.....
alright, back to something that's always been on my mind since highschool. (warning, this might be long...you know how i am when i try to focus a thought...). in a word, conversation. requires a bit of background but i'll make it quick (attempt). as i've mentioned numerous times before, in elementary school i barely talked. i hung out with a small group of people....in groups i think i was somehow the 'quiet leader' of things...much like i am now, i liked starting things...deciding things. i was always a fan of initiative. in
austin's post about a bunch of questions he's been asking himself, one of them was something along the lines of given a few choices, of seemingly equal utility, how do you choose? my answer to that (which i didn't comment, sorry austin) was FUCK IT, just choose. live your life and give nature a chance instead of being a stickler for details and wasting away trying to figure out things that are far beyond you. yeah, give it some thought, but there's a balance, as ther is in everything in life. the correct balance tends far towards initiative in my book though. while you're deciding you're wasting lots of time in your life and there's no way to learn more about each choice unless you TRY THEM. sure, some are mutually exclusive, but there are a lot of choices in our lives that are only time dependant and can be put off. i realized a long time ago that i get easily interested by things....and that i can only have so many hobbies at once. trying to satisfy all my curiosities degraded the experience of ALL of them, so i started consolidationg. now i have all these hobbies backed up that i'll have time for at some point in my life, but for now i've got a few that i concentrate on that leave relieve me of most of my boredom in life...so why fool with it? get movin'. (this relates later, albeit it is a tangent)
so back to my historical background. elementary school...silent. when i went to intermediate, my curiosity about 'life' extended beyond the observations i could make from afar and i reallys tarted exploring and , more important, valuing the new friendships i'd acquired. i was still on the quieter side 'cause i really was learning how to interact since as a child i was very introverted. the only friend i needed was my family....
so that progressed...but i was always a social retard. i could usually fake it in most situations but i felt awkward in most situations because i'd try to make sense of them a lot of time and when i really couldn't understand it, i could always retreat into the bubble i grew up in. of course, what defines most social interactions between people is CONVERSATION. i began to wonder what exactly it is about conversation that makes it so interesting. basically, it's a sharing of minds to me. then of course i delved into different kinds of conversations and which ones i enjoyed most....which others enjoyed....and whiched ended in awkward silences.....
i'll interject here why i'm blogging this NOW (and why it's been on my mind). i was having a conversation with a friend...debating whether to give a name *ponders*....i'll refrain. since i don't really understand it's origin i won't assume it's a neutral topic. either way, so i was having this conversation and this person and it came up that i she (can't be avoided) couldn't talk like she usually does around me....that was a surprise to me...i hadn't sensed that. either way...and i may have misunderstood this (it was an incomplete conversation)....she likes telling stories, and she said usually with her friends, she'll tell a story, 'other' will tell a story, back and forth. it's funny to totally regiment this type of thing...but that's the idea i got from her. with me, however, she couldn't do that...for two reasons that she mentioned. for one....she said i talk like i blog....things come to mind and they come out...like one string of comments. so i couldn't just sit and listen to her stories because they're very INTERESTING stories that made me think of other things....in the process of thinking of these things i often needed detail clarification for certain words she'd picked for very specific reasons for one thing. i mentioned that she does that a lot...and in choosing these words so painstakingly, the thought process is lost because cannotations of such specific words between parties destroy it. remember that point, i'll get back to that too (so you're remembering initiative, and cannotations now). so becuase i didn't let her finish her stories in one breath....she thought i was very rude...i think. rude or some other type of uncomfortable.
on TOP of that, she said i'm really quiet. that baffled me completely. especially with the fact that she was mad i kept interrupting her. but she said yeah, she'll tell the stories and i won't say anything and she thinks i'm not interested. i was really confused because i really didn't think i was that much of a quiet person anymore. she mentioned the exchanging of stories again....and i was confused. and to that person that knows who you are, i'm not poking fun or trying to bash you, just got me thinking.
enough'a that...i think i've illustrated the spark. it reminded me of a lot of ponderings that have come and gone in my mind over the years. unfortunately, the boldest display of it is an actual relationship. when you devote so much time to ONE PERSON...there's a lot of conversation going on....and conversation became the basis of most of my attractions. there aren't many people i can talk to alone for an extended period of time....much less daily or with any other sort of frequency. i guess it's part of my growing up in a bubble *shrugs*. either way...inevitably i must mention the x's. *booooo*. so the first one, lindsay, my senior year in high school. she was a really smart girl and i could have conversations with her that extended beyond school, band, gossip...you know...the usual 'friend' type of thing for a high schooler. she was one of the few people i had conversations with regarding...well...life. we weren't just rehashing our pasts, or laughing about the present....it was so much deeper. she's the first girl i'd felt that with and i found myself anxious to talk to her again everytime we said goodbye.....this went on for five years.
she never got closer than a friend and i never pushed it *shrugs*. well, finally our senior year she took a liking to me and we'd talk for HOURS....alone. just about stuff. everything she said sparked more thoughts....thoughts that would keep me interested later, pondering them and devising a stance on it...and she seemed to enjoy it as much as i did. we finally got together and...i think 'went steady' is the best term for it 'cause it really was just that. we'd hang out a lot more, went out a few times on the weekends an ended up doing nothing but sit around different places and talk....and kisses hello and goodbye. the whole 'relationship' thing got in our way when we didn't know what exactly we meant to eachother and our conversations slowly died down as our minds were occupied with things we couldn't...or wouldn't say to each other. aaaaand the silence eventually killed us. blah blah....i'll finish that story there.
so i learned a lot about relationships in that relationship...and in the process destroyed what may have been the best friendship i've ever felt. years later she and i reconciled our pasts and started talking again....for many hours at a time sometimes....but our reservations still impeded our interactions and that fizzled out too. my understanding and respect for a good conversation went up exponentially, though.
a short mention of candace (short, i promise)...she was like a friend i was trying to turn into a girlfriend. the thought inspiring, uninhibited, three hour long conversations about some minute aspects of life never happened. we talked about school, friends, food...blah. it never progressed....i never understood how she thought....she never trusted me to open up. i was unfortunatley very attracted to her physically and was in an...interesting period of my social development (yeah that part of it was a lotta fun...if you know what i mean *nudge nudge*) and i finally realized that you can't force conversation. if it didn't happen....there was a reason for it.
and my respect for good conversation rises even faster. i think a lot of my infatuation with it is due to my inept skill in it. it's hard to change things we learned in our childhoods. i started out a social retard, i guess i'll die one. enough talk about me, though, let's talk about the conversation.
so you've got different types of conversations. story-story, story intertwined with inspired thought, gossip, debauchery, comedy, debate, flow....which ones do YOU prefer? through the years i've found that my favorite is the flow. just like ultimate...right up the field with the occasinal goal. sometimes you get d'd. sometimes you get scored on. but flow is beautiful. flow in a conversation, like ultimate (haha, okay i'll stop that now) is a beautiful thing. by flow what i mean is things just kind of come together and mesh and mold into different things constantly. a dynamic conversation, if you will. unfortunately this type of conversation requires lots of flexibility in thought processes. you have to be able to listen, think, sometimes decide.....but in the end it's SO stimulating. of course for flow to happen, the parties involved (not necessarily just a couple) must have a pretty good idea of each other's conversation tendencies. change subject too fast and thoughts don't get finished. change too slow....stagnant awkward silences and the need for random 'start ups' to get things going again. definitely something that's usually 'worked up to' in a friendship but sometimes two people just jive and moving together is subconscious.
so AAAALLL the way back to initiative (but remember cannotations). it's a parellel here, but i think an apt one. in conversations one big hinderance is wondering what should be said and what shouldn't be said. don't trust, don't wanna offend, ashamed, intimidated, unconfident...whatever the reason. people have only a certain amount of processing power. if everything approaching the vocal chords has to go through this filter....it slows it down, and flow has a dampening factor which will inevitably destroy the conversation (haha, god i'm a geek). so anytime there's something uncomfortable between people and you get various filters and whatnot....the conversation suffers. the panopticon comes to mind (as it does often....) again here. if people were used to throwing it out there and telling the world...we'd get along a lot better. it's painful, but sometimes you just need to say what's on your mind or you'll end up somewhere you definitely don't want to be....like in a neverending conversation about...video games with a computer science major who won't stop. i say stop trying to create the best scenario...or the scenario you THINK is best. give the other person a chance to help make the scenario...it's a conversation, don't be selfish. take the initiative, lay it out, drop the filters and contemplations (within reason....she still doesn't wanna hear that she's fat) and let your thoughts flow unimpeded to discover new and wonderful things about the world.
and now cannotations (i think this'll be my last point on it). people always comment that i talk like i blog how i IM how i email how i write how i THINK. and i do. as i told my little friend, i find more value in the means than in the ends sometimes. this is all a big ploy to hide my severely limited vocabulary by the way :) but i'm still gonna try and justify it (as i do find value in it). in math and science, you're always searching for GENERALIZATIONS. they're easiest to remember. from the generalizations you can start branching into specific cases as they come up, but they can usually be contrived from a small set of general cases. they're wonderful because instead of memorizing twenty equations or systems....all you have to remember is two and a few small variations of them which usual make some physical and logical sense. i think words are much the same.
when you're a living thesaurus...it makes conversation interesting and you sound sophisticated and it's a really GREAT tool as a writer to keep your language from getting bland....but if you're trying to teach someone something...be it about life or about yourself....isn't a general case more easily palatted? it's always a difficult task for me to put my thoughts down in words.....i know part of that is 'cause i'm a social retard :) but i think it really is an art. sure i could sit back and think about the PERFECT way to say something....but i'm a slave of my impatience and value initiative...so instead i try to use simple thoughts and simple words to slowly creep closer and closer to my ultimate idea. in the end i've left behind a long trail of my thought process that is also an open door into another part of my soul....but take of that what you will. it's an issue of compatibility instead of efficiency. sure, the perfect word might say a lot. but all the thought you put into that word is LOST and replaced by an inanimate definition someone decided to put in webster's. if you keep things in general terms, it might be less efficient....but you won't be forced to constantly go back and explain things.
damn, this is long. done with that for now.
quick question i'm too naive to answer myself. i always thought the english language was a piece of shit. there are just too many vague rules and variations that we're attempting to force the ENTIRE country (and most of the world) to adhere to....but i was wondering. am i justified in saying that it's a piece of shit? or are other languages like that too? another reason i think this is that english is so fuckin' bastardized. we have words from every other major language on earth in our dictionary....which keeps growing every fucking year. back to my thoughts on generalizations. my parents aren't gonna know what a dirty sanchez is....but if i explained it to them in simple words...sure, they'd get it.
for one thing there's like...chinese and japanese which are PRIDES of their cultures. hawaiian as well. the language doesn't change, and they're taught VERY strictly so that it doesn't change and the culture is passed from generation to generation the same way their ancestors knew it.
no culture.
(that may have been my longest post yet....who got this far?)
dump swing.
