6 Feb 2008
Last night I had a dream I was at a tea stand that stuck out into the main concourse of a mall. It was Japanese — not the mall, I don’t think, or the rest of the dream, just the tea stand. I was excited, since it seemed a comfortable place to practice the little bit of Japanese I’ve learned (as opposed to the crowded-with-actual-Japanese-folks bakery where I chickened out this weekend). Also, even in strange mall dreams, I love tea. So I asked for a cup of tea in passable Japanese, and had the tiny conversation involved.
When I woke up, I thought to myself that was pretty awesome, since I’ve only been learning Japanese* for a month, and decided I would tell you about it, since there’s nothing more interesting than other people’s dreams. But writing the paragraph above, I realized that I don’t know the Japanese for tea. Or cup. I have not forgotten them; I’ve never known. So what the hell did I say? The memory’s pretty clear, down to the hesitation where I try to remember tea instead of coffee. “Une tasse de … thé, s’il vous plais.”
Well, I did order tea.
* more on this later?
Filed by shaun at February 6th, 2008 under indifferenthonest
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19 Dec 2007
The bus, especially when your total commute including walking to and from and waiting, is 40 minutes, is not a great place to read. There’s a lot of distraction, you have to keep looking up to check that your stop isn’t coming up, the words bounce around, people want to talk about why you’re reading something about Danish dreams, are you Danish?, etc. The bus is a great place to listen to audiobooks and lectures. (I have a lot of audiobooks and lectures. Never you mind where I got them.) You can do this during the to/fro/waiting parts, you don’t have to stop while you watch for your stop, fewer people interrupts you because you’ve got headphones on and are clearly listening to something, and buses are just distracting enough to allow for real focus on listening.
So I listened to some (Discworld) books, and then to some lectures. I don’t remember which one I started with, but it’s the Robert Solomon lectures on Existentialism from The Teaching Company that are important, because they’re amazing. Robert Solomon is a comfortable man to listen to, comfortable in a Fred “Mister” Rogers or Dalai Lama way, which is a very good thing in a man who’s talking to you about Heidegger and Sarte and the nature of personal responsibility. (You may remember him from such films as Waking Life, where he had a cameo as a philosophy professor.) I could go on about how amazing he was, but I think you should just inter-library-loan yourself ahold of his Existentialism lectures now instead. This would be a better use of your time, and I need to get on to my main point, which is this: they were too awesome, these lectures.
Because of this awesomeness, one night when I got home I did not stop listening. I kept the mp3 player on while I petted the cats and made dinner. This worked pretty well. While no one should need something extra to occupy their attention while petting cats, because cats are fully as awesome as any lecture or audiobook, even read by Nigel Planer, could be, unless I’m frantically trying to read upside down the chou-fleur with beurre noir recipe I’m making for the first time while it’s boiling over on the stove, cooking dinner is often less than totally engaging, and an audiobook is just the thing to occupy you while slicing the carrots.
Since then, for I guess two or three months now, I have pretty much been occupied 100% of the time. I listen to the audiobooks while walking, cleaning (the little I do), playing with cats, cooking, eating, brushing my teeth, and waiting to fall asleep. Mira has largely been doing the same thing. Our conversations happen while the book is paused. I have, while not actually at work, working, been listening to someone talk all the time (sometimes this is David Attenborough or Simon Schama and there are pictures of animals and castles and things that I look at instead of just listening), with three exceptions. 1. While actually with-eyes reading books. B. While exercise biking, when I watched silly movies (Our Man Flint) or Babylon 5 episodes. iii. While sitting there, concentrating on my breathing and trying not to think for about 20 minutes a day.
A couple days ago, that just sitting there got extended to way more than 20 minutes, not on purpose. I stared at the bookcase across from me for a few hours. Later, I went upstairs and laid in bed and stared at my eyelids for another few. When I couldn’t fall asleep there, and seemed like I was going to keep Mira from doing so, I went back downstairs and sat in the chair again, in the dark this time, for another hour or so until I eventually fell asleep. The next day, very tired, I forgot my headphones on my scramble to the bus, and since my carrying-around book is in my desk at work, I had to just sit there on the bus.
That night, I was thinking about these things. Since I recognized even at the time that this really was not a super-sane thing I had been doing, hypnotically staring at a bookcase for hours, I was surprised at how much better I felt without actually doing anything. Later while I was brushing my teeth I came to the conclusion that this is because it is that constant stimulation that is really not super-sane. I came up with the perfect analogy to explain it, too, but because I was sure I’d remember I didn’t write it down, and now I can remember the bristles on my gums, but not my analogy (the shape of it feels like it had something to do with dreams).
It was too much. I sneer at heavy television watchers because television’s main goal is to constantly distract you and pull your attention away to the external, but I was doing the same thing. Granted, I was doing it with Alan Watts and not Snuggles the fabric-softening bear, but what the hell was I thinking would be the result of the constant occupation of my attention with these external stimuli, if not constant preoccupation? What sort of dissonant worldview does it take to schedule yourself a 20-minute break from your self-inflicted distracted state so that you can practice mindfulness?
Today I spent several hours by myself. I played the guitar, and the keyboard, and stared into space for a while (on purpose this time). And wrote this (sorry, I meant it to be short, but didn’t have enough time). I did listen to a book on the bus (because George R R Martin may be sort of creepy and very dorky, but he breaks all kinds of rules about what directions your narrative is allowed to go and has written one of the most original takes on zombies since that whole Easter thing in the Bible) and while I was reducing my curry. This feels like it may still be too much, and I think I’m going to need at least one day a week where I don’t listen to anything at all.
I don’t eat meat now, of course, but when I did I was very fond of ham sandwiches. I always prefered the ham be shaved thin, translucent, so it would barely hold together. The Frugal Gormet told me (and other Viewers Like Me) one day that this is because there is more room for air when you have very thin slices than one slab, and the air lets more of the flavor get to you.
Filed by shaun at December 19th, 2007 under indifferenthonest
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17 Dec 2007
Since the second job I’ve had in Columbus, every work day (with the exception of the few weeks I had one job two blocks north Goodale), I’ve passed through the intersection of Broad & High. It’s not the main intersection in Columbus, not anymore, but it is the main one downtown, and it’s where almost all the bus lines cross. I’m not a temp anymore, but while I was, for eight of my twelve jobs I got off the bus at or just after that intersection, so it provided a bit of continuity.
On the northeast corner, they’re building a building. They have been for as long as I’ve been passing by. At least, they have scaffolding and billboards (that sometimes fall down), and plywood-roofed temporary sidewalks, and men in hardhats, and for a while an enormous crane, but they don’t seem to have done anything in, what, two and a half years?, except move the advertising around. I guess that’s how it goes sometimes.
This is a months-old draft beginning of something. I think it was going to be about to say something about the Kelvin Arms and someone I used to know, but now I can’t remember what.
Filed by shaun at December 17th, 2007 under indifferenthonest
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4 Jun 2007
I wish there were a quiet way to flag people, or their actions, or creations, as favorites the same way I can (though seldom do, because it would violate the lurker’s code) metafilter comments, so that that quiet feeling I have of being glad that as long as I’m in whatever place at whatever time I am, there are these things or events or people that make it good, or better, or bearable. Just a little button I could press, because I’m shy about positive things for whatever reason, so I’d never actually say anything, but I know that it’s just as important–hell, much more important–to note the good things as the bad.
Filed by shaun at June 4th, 2007 under indifferenthonest
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18 Jan 2007
- The hospital’s helicopter light reflecting off that big black cube building looks like lightning out of the corner of my eye. So much peripheral lightning.
- One of the old lady office assistemps here has a framed picture of Keira Knightly sitting on her desk.
- Nobody stole the receptionist’s lunch. Her lunch (Zap’ems Macaroni & Cheese) was in one of the three safe categories, too gross to steal; it was just thrown to the back of the freezer and had things piled on top of it. No one ever steals my lunch, since it tends to fall into one or both of the other safe categories, unidentifiable ethnic and health (or at least in a Whole Foods bag) foods.
- People are bloody ignorant apes
- Take your stinking paws off of me, you damn dirty ape.
- Going Ape
- Monkey Shine
- Monkey Trouble
- King Kong
- The other King Kong
- La Femme Monkita
- Monkeys Again
- Monkeys, Monkeys, Ted & Alice
- Carnal Monkeys
Filed by shaun at January 18th, 2007 under indifferenthonest
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