Cook of the Sea
Session Start (saberinblue:harriercasii): Wed Sep 27 21:15:36 2006
[21:15:36] harriercasii: How much do we miss, I wonder, because we're not moving at the appropriate pace to perceive it? What do we pass as we're going swiftly, and what can't we keep up with when we move sluggishly? How often is the line between a mere noting of circumstances and a revelation the direction we're facing, the way we're tilting our head or squinting our eyes, or the way our day has gone?
[21:16:30] harriercasii: After dinner tonight, I decided I didn't want to go back to my room immediately, perhaps out of fear that I would just go back to sitting at the computer and not accomplishing anything. So I took a walk around campus.
[21:16:47] harriercasii: There's something interesting about this place at night.
[21:16:50] Saber in Blue: heh I would do that if my back didn't hurt
[21:16:55] Saber in Blue: but I think it all depends on chance
[21:17:39] Saber in Blue: or rather factors beyond our ability to understand
[21:18:10] Saber in Blue: it's really a very random thing
[21:20:13] harriercasii: The world of the nighttime is such a strange, forbidding thing, especially to people our age. All our lives we've been press-ganged into a social structure which asserts that anything that truly happens, happens during the day.
[21:20:20] harriercasii: School, sports, clubs, etc.
[21:21:20] harriercasii: Now, we're out of that structure, so when the sun sets, we're not made to go to bed or forced to shut ourselves in our rooms with our work- though we can certainly choose to. So, given the opportunity, we look out our doors and windows and realize, "Hey, stuff hasn't stopped happening."
[21:21:35] harriercasii: "New stuff is happening. Stuff that didn't happen before, at least to me."
[21:21:49] Saber in Blue: yes
[21:21:57] Saber in Blue: the night is the analog of the day
[21:22:05] Saber in Blue: you just have to look harder to see what happens
I am often guilty of simply sitting at my computer doing nothing. I justify this with the somethings that I often do on the computer, such as talk on AIM, surf around, see, as an artist, I consider it worthwhile to simply sit and observe. I regurgitate what I see and experience in the form of my art, input and output. However, one begins to simply retread old paths when one lives much of their life online.
The day after that AIM conversation with my best friend I saw the student production of Hamlet. I came dressed in full regalia, in addition to my normal jeans and black t-shirt I was also wearing my awesome sweater (this sweater is, indeed, better than your sweater) and I had my hair tied back. When dressed like this I feel much cooler and more confident. When the play was over I was deeply moved (this is always the case after I see Shakespeare) and I felt much as Harrier had; I felt I needed to go somewhere other than my apartment.
So I set off on foot in simply another direction. I realized that if I kept going I'd go through a stretch of campus I had never seen at night. This excited me. Because of a light sensitivity condition nighttime is the only time I can be outside without being in constant pain. I walked through the grounds of the rich kid dorms, very pretty at night, and I saw many things I had never seen before. I opened my eyes wide--a luxury for me--and just drank everything in. There were bushes, fountains, people hanging around and talking, laughing, kissing, sprinklers, stones, arches, lights, sounds... it quickly occurred to me how awesome everything was. I don't mean the situation or my surroundings, I mean everything. The whole of the universe, good things and bad things, contentment and adversity, everything. I was faced with the knowledge that everything is as it should be, that everything has a purpose and everything will turn out all right.
As excessively naive a conception of the universe as this is, I very much enjoyed it and pressed on. I made my way to a popular coffee shop just off campus called Common Grounds, a place with the specific atmosphere a college coffee house has. It was very full inside, but for some reason the quantity of people didn't bother me. I approached the clear fridge--I've always been partial to cold drinks over hot drinks--and a guy near it said:
"There's no Jones Cream."
This was a blow. That's what I always got. I saw one name that leaped out at me: D'peach Mode. Delighted, I decided to make a mantra for my outing: Do Something You've Never Done Before. I am a man of excessive routine and I felt I needed to break it. So I reached for the drink, paid, worked my way through the crowd to a seat, and drank and studied my Chinese a bit. It was delicious. After about a half hour of studying and saying Hi to people I packed up my stuff and jettisoned my way back to my apartment, taking a different way back. I hit IRC for a while and then went to bed, elated.
Now we come to tonight, the real reason I'm typing all of this. Today I felt particularly full of energy, having watched a bit of a very peculiar show, and since I knew if I went to bed I would toss and turn for two hours and get no rest, I decided to do it all again. So I dressed the same way and head out. I took a random path to the coffee shop, exchanging a laugh on the way with some people who were trying to get this one girl to climb out of a tree,
"Come on, come down!"
"I don't wanna! It's too far!"
"It'll be easier than climbing up! You know, less effort involved!"
"Yeah, and more pain!"
and saw a few other people gathered around late-night spots such as statues and fountains, and eventually found myself at my destination. There were only two people outside it and I found that the door was blocked by a chair.
"Is it closed?"
"Yeah, it's open till two on the weekdays, but you know"
"Ah yeah, this ain't a weekday."
Slightly abashed but not flustered, I set off in another random direction. I hit a convenience store and got another drink I had never had, a White Cranberry Strawberry Ocean Spray of sorts. Armed with this I set out for the huge parking garage on campus, known colloquially as the Garage Mahal. I walked through it and took an elevator to the top. I had been here in a car with Harrier on occasion talking about stuff but tonight I wanted to see it on foot. I hit the roof and stepped out. It was magnificent. A very large expanse of concrete with a wall running around the perimeter with steeples the whole way, a huge ramp cutting into it and going into the garage itself like a runway at a hidden base in a James Bond movie, and--this is the kicker--a girl.
A kindred spirit? She sat as far to the middle of the roof as one can get, with her knees clutched to her chest and staring straight forward. I set around the perimeter and waved to her. She waved back and I kept going. I stopped at a far corner and looked out over the town. I have always faulted Waco for thinking it is a larger city than it is, but I have found it difficult to wish I was elsewhere on these outings. Tonight I found it breathtaking. I turned back around and headed toward the girl. She was perhaps Indian in descent, with long hair, and still she sat in the same position. I stopped within about twenty feet of her.
"Do you come here to be alone, or...would you like some company?"
"Well, generally I come here to be alone, but thanks anyway."
She smiled, rather sweetly, I smiled and made a sort of bowing gesture, and kept going around the perimeter. As I came back around to where I had entered the roof from, I turned back toward her. She was now laying on her back, looking at the stars. I took my leave and made my way back here.
You learn something new every day.
[21:15:36] harriercasii: How much do we miss, I wonder, because we're not moving at the appropriate pace to perceive it? What do we pass as we're going swiftly, and what can't we keep up with when we move sluggishly? How often is the line between a mere noting of circumstances and a revelation the direction we're facing, the way we're tilting our head or squinting our eyes, or the way our day has gone?
[21:16:30] harriercasii: After dinner tonight, I decided I didn't want to go back to my room immediately, perhaps out of fear that I would just go back to sitting at the computer and not accomplishing anything. So I took a walk around campus.
[21:16:47] harriercasii: There's something interesting about this place at night.
[21:16:50] Saber in Blue: heh I would do that if my back didn't hurt
[21:16:55] Saber in Blue: but I think it all depends on chance
[21:17:39] Saber in Blue: or rather factors beyond our ability to understand
[21:18:10] Saber in Blue: it's really a very random thing
[21:20:13] harriercasii: The world of the nighttime is such a strange, forbidding thing, especially to people our age. All our lives we've been press-ganged into a social structure which asserts that anything that truly happens, happens during the day.
[21:20:20] harriercasii: School, sports, clubs, etc.
[21:21:20] harriercasii: Now, we're out of that structure, so when the sun sets, we're not made to go to bed or forced to shut ourselves in our rooms with our work- though we can certainly choose to. So, given the opportunity, we look out our doors and windows and realize, "Hey, stuff hasn't stopped happening."
[21:21:35] harriercasii: "New stuff is happening. Stuff that didn't happen before, at least to me."
[21:21:49] Saber in Blue: yes
[21:21:57] Saber in Blue: the night is the analog of the day
[21:22:05] Saber in Blue: you just have to look harder to see what happens
I am often guilty of simply sitting at my computer doing nothing. I justify this with the somethings that I often do on the computer, such as talk on AIM, surf around, see, as an artist, I consider it worthwhile to simply sit and observe. I regurgitate what I see and experience in the form of my art, input and output. However, one begins to simply retread old paths when one lives much of their life online.
The day after that AIM conversation with my best friend I saw the student production of Hamlet. I came dressed in full regalia, in addition to my normal jeans and black t-shirt I was also wearing my awesome sweater (this sweater is, indeed, better than your sweater) and I had my hair tied back. When dressed like this I feel much cooler and more confident. When the play was over I was deeply moved (this is always the case after I see Shakespeare) and I felt much as Harrier had; I felt I needed to go somewhere other than my apartment.
So I set off on foot in simply another direction. I realized that if I kept going I'd go through a stretch of campus I had never seen at night. This excited me. Because of a light sensitivity condition nighttime is the only time I can be outside without being in constant pain. I walked through the grounds of the rich kid dorms, very pretty at night, and I saw many things I had never seen before. I opened my eyes wide--a luxury for me--and just drank everything in. There were bushes, fountains, people hanging around and talking, laughing, kissing, sprinklers, stones, arches, lights, sounds... it quickly occurred to me how awesome everything was. I don't mean the situation or my surroundings, I mean everything. The whole of the universe, good things and bad things, contentment and adversity, everything. I was faced with the knowledge that everything is as it should be, that everything has a purpose and everything will turn out all right.
As excessively naive a conception of the universe as this is, I very much enjoyed it and pressed on. I made my way to a popular coffee shop just off campus called Common Grounds, a place with the specific atmosphere a college coffee house has. It was very full inside, but for some reason the quantity of people didn't bother me. I approached the clear fridge--I've always been partial to cold drinks over hot drinks--and a guy near it said:
"There's no Jones Cream."
This was a blow. That's what I always got. I saw one name that leaped out at me: D'peach Mode. Delighted, I decided to make a mantra for my outing: Do Something You've Never Done Before. I am a man of excessive routine and I felt I needed to break it. So I reached for the drink, paid, worked my way through the crowd to a seat, and drank and studied my Chinese a bit. It was delicious. After about a half hour of studying and saying Hi to people I packed up my stuff and jettisoned my way back to my apartment, taking a different way back. I hit IRC for a while and then went to bed, elated.
Now we come to tonight, the real reason I'm typing all of this. Today I felt particularly full of energy, having watched a bit of a very peculiar show, and since I knew if I went to bed I would toss and turn for two hours and get no rest, I decided to do it all again. So I dressed the same way and head out. I took a random path to the coffee shop, exchanging a laugh on the way with some people who were trying to get this one girl to climb out of a tree,
"Come on, come down!"
"I don't wanna! It's too far!"
"It'll be easier than climbing up! You know, less effort involved!"
"Yeah, and more pain!"
and saw a few other people gathered around late-night spots such as statues and fountains, and eventually found myself at my destination. There were only two people outside it and I found that the door was blocked by a chair.
"Is it closed?"
"Yeah, it's open till two on the weekdays, but you know"
"Ah yeah, this ain't a weekday."
Slightly abashed but not flustered, I set off in another random direction. I hit a convenience store and got another drink I had never had, a White Cranberry Strawberry Ocean Spray of sorts. Armed with this I set out for the huge parking garage on campus, known colloquially as the Garage Mahal. I walked through it and took an elevator to the top. I had been here in a car with Harrier on occasion talking about stuff but tonight I wanted to see it on foot. I hit the roof and stepped out. It was magnificent. A very large expanse of concrete with a wall running around the perimeter with steeples the whole way, a huge ramp cutting into it and going into the garage itself like a runway at a hidden base in a James Bond movie, and--this is the kicker--a girl.
A kindred spirit? She sat as far to the middle of the roof as one can get, with her knees clutched to her chest and staring straight forward. I set around the perimeter and waved to her. She waved back and I kept going. I stopped at a far corner and looked out over the town. I have always faulted Waco for thinking it is a larger city than it is, but I have found it difficult to wish I was elsewhere on these outings. Tonight I found it breathtaking. I turned back around and headed toward the girl. She was perhaps Indian in descent, with long hair, and still she sat in the same position. I stopped within about twenty feet of her.
"Do you come here to be alone, or...would you like some company?"
"Well, generally I come here to be alone, but thanks anyway."
She smiled, rather sweetly, I smiled and made a sort of bowing gesture, and kept going around the perimeter. As I came back around to where I had entered the roof from, I turned back toward her. She was now laying on her back, looking at the stars. I took my leave and made my way back here.
You learn something new every day.
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