I spent today at the beach. Yes, the beach. I have wanted to go to the beach for some time now, maybe a couple of years, and I've never really been in the right mindset to get it done. I asked Rose if she'd like to go, and (again) she responded as if I had asked if she'd like an all expenses paid trip to Hawaii - surprise and excitement. So we decided to leave this afternoon from the city. I managed to get to Sherlock's Haven, my tobacco store, and pick up some desperately needed supplies. The drive out there was great. We got food on the way, and laid down on the beach and ate and talked and made fun of the people around us. I think I got a little sunburned. Afterward, she took me on a tour of the 'hood she grew up in. I think she thought I wasn't interested, but I was actually comparing and contrasting her historical waypoints with my own. She got a concussion on one street near where she was born - I got mine near where I was born on 168th street. She told me about a graveyard where she went as a kid and got spooked out - I thought of the graveyard where I went with Ellen and Jamie in Oakland and got spooked out. And so on.
I really enjoy spending time with Rose. I like just sitting there next to her. I like hearing her ramble on about things I have no interest in. I think sometimes she thinks I am more difficult than I am, or that I am more judgemental than I am, but really I think she just gives me too much credit. Most of the time I'm just thinking about video games, or the nature of evil, or something totally unrelated to anything relationship-oriented. Occasionally she'll ask me what I'm thinking about, or what's up with me, and I'll fumble for an answer than encompasses the unimaginably wide spectrum of my idle thoughts. None of them are particularly deep, but there are just too many of them to coalesce into "what I'm thinking about."
A long time ago, in a book by Robert Anton Wilson, I was introduced to a concept called... well, I forget the name, but it doesn't matter... boop! the idea of boop was to take two totally unrelated things, say for instance, a banana and communism, and find the connection between them. One can find bananas in Cuba and Cuba is a communist state - Banana boop communism. Voltron boop shoelaces. Voltron is a huge robot who is "the defender of the universe" and his feet are each independant entities resulting in a lack of a tethering requirement - independence cannot be tied down. love boop casserole. And so on. It's a mental nimbleness exercise, and it's a doozy. I did it for years, and now without any intention it's how I think. I am forever trying to make connections.
The BBC show Connections is/was one of my favorites.
Usually, I end up just picking the most readily available point of this chain and present it as the thought at hand. It may be jamming my finger in the cake and pulling a dollop out as an example of what the cake tastes like, but that dollop is still not the cake. That said, it will have to suffice.
Posted by Matt at June 1, 2003 01:04 AM