Standard ML, Standard Poodle, Standard Time, Standard Issue
Tonight there was a man on the street with a sign that said, "Do you know where you'll be in 4 million years?"
I wanted to stop and ask either (1) "How long have you been standing here?" or (2) "Never mind where I'll be in 4 million years, do you know where you'll be in ten years?"
But I just didn't have the heart for either mischief or charity. Tonight, I barely have the heart even to just mind my own business.
Tonight I saw BH out on the town with his wife (whose name I simply don't know), wearing one of the loud shirts he lectures in, with the two of them walking a standard poodle down the street. This is odd because I had a lengthy conversation with BH today that ranged over many topics, among them, denotational semantics, algebraic closures, power-conscious compilation, the Carnot heat-engine, the information content of numbers, and intrinsic versus extrinsic names. There were also references to 2001: A Space Odyssey and an editorial on why category theory has become a sometimes inappropriate "fetish" in the computer science world. (I tend to attribute a fair amount of respect to any professional theoretician who recognizes and acknowledges when theoreticians have a break with reality.) It was, in fact, immensely exciting. I managed to say several things that made BH stop and reflect and say, "I had never thought of that," and BH managed to tell me a wealth of things that I had never heard of. It feels so seldom that I talk to people. When I do, it's cathartic to a degree that feels almost untoward or inappropriate. But that was business. Tonight I sat at the little outdoor table, not eating ice cream at the ice cream parlor, and quietly watched things go by, without saying, or appearing to do, much of anything at all, except "Holy cow!" when BH appeared, and, when the dog came over to me some time later, "This is a very peculiar dog. I've never seen one like this."
"It's a standard poodle," BH said. "I don't get around too much with dogs," I said.
I felt strangely uncool for not knowing what a standard poodle looks like.
"So then, what's the standard size for a standard poodle?"
Tonight I am not quite alright. For some reason, I feel very uncomfortably conspicuous for being alone. Which is a shame, because I'm so good at it.
This is oddly the way I felt about being bright and curious when I was a kid. Back then, I just dealt with it by not being that way anymore. It seemed to be the only way I could make friends, or get along with the people in charge. Why I wanted to make friends or get along with the people in charge wasn't immediately clear to me, beyond the fact that it seemed like I just had to do it.
Tonight I just about want to hang my head and cry. The trouble is, I don't yet understand why well enough to actually do it to any effect. Human beings are delicate systems, not just physically, but psychologically and emotionally. Small changes have great effects, and these can be quite destructive. Knowing this, I find myself regularly removed to the place of a disinterested observer, untangling my own system and trying to diagnose its disorders. This is an odd experience, like so many cliched near-death experiences one hears about on television, where a soul floats above a body and looks down on it, except this experience to me feels much more believable. I don't look down on anything. In fact, it becomes completely unclear whether I am the system or the observer or neither or both. The power goes out for some interval of time, and someone methodically pokes around among the wires. I suppose I could get angry at my system of wires and feelings for acting up and failing to function the way it's supposed to, but to me it's just another modern convenience. It's a wonderful thing, but don't take it too seriously.
I have spent most of the week at work trying to untangle a very eccentrically written computer program from five or ten years ago. Often it's fun and challenging to to understand someone else's thought process. But I am tired. I'm just not in the mood for empathizing any more eccentricities, no matter how badly it needs to be done.
I wish I knew what needed to be done first.
Tonight I stood up behind one of the concrete pillars and looked down on the parking lot, and I felt suddenly as if I was standing at a podium, looking down on an audience of nothing, delivering a silent lecture on nothing particular.
Say what you will about the moment you're in. There's not any other quite like it.
I wanted to stop and ask either (1) "How long have you been standing here?" or (2) "Never mind where I'll be in 4 million years, do you know where you'll be in ten years?"
But I just didn't have the heart for either mischief or charity. Tonight, I barely have the heart even to just mind my own business.
Tonight I saw BH out on the town with his wife (whose name I simply don't know), wearing one of the loud shirts he lectures in, with the two of them walking a standard poodle down the street. This is odd because I had a lengthy conversation with BH today that ranged over many topics, among them, denotational semantics, algebraic closures, power-conscious compilation, the Carnot heat-engine, the information content of numbers, and intrinsic versus extrinsic names. There were also references to 2001: A Space Odyssey and an editorial on why category theory has become a sometimes inappropriate "fetish" in the computer science world. (I tend to attribute a fair amount of respect to any professional theoretician who recognizes and acknowledges when theoreticians have a break with reality.) It was, in fact, immensely exciting. I managed to say several things that made BH stop and reflect and say, "I had never thought of that," and BH managed to tell me a wealth of things that I had never heard of. It feels so seldom that I talk to people. When I do, it's cathartic to a degree that feels almost untoward or inappropriate. But that was business. Tonight I sat at the little outdoor table, not eating ice cream at the ice cream parlor, and quietly watched things go by, without saying, or appearing to do, much of anything at all, except "Holy cow!" when BH appeared, and, when the dog came over to me some time later, "This is a very peculiar dog. I've never seen one like this."
"It's a standard poodle," BH said. "I don't get around too much with dogs," I said.
I felt strangely uncool for not knowing what a standard poodle looks like.
"So then, what's the standard size for a standard poodle?"
Tonight I am not quite alright. For some reason, I feel very uncomfortably conspicuous for being alone. Which is a shame, because I'm so good at it.
This is oddly the way I felt about being bright and curious when I was a kid. Back then, I just dealt with it by not being that way anymore. It seemed to be the only way I could make friends, or get along with the people in charge. Why I wanted to make friends or get along with the people in charge wasn't immediately clear to me, beyond the fact that it seemed like I just had to do it.
Tonight I just about want to hang my head and cry. The trouble is, I don't yet understand why well enough to actually do it to any effect. Human beings are delicate systems, not just physically, but psychologically and emotionally. Small changes have great effects, and these can be quite destructive. Knowing this, I find myself regularly removed to the place of a disinterested observer, untangling my own system and trying to diagnose its disorders. This is an odd experience, like so many cliched near-death experiences one hears about on television, where a soul floats above a body and looks down on it, except this experience to me feels much more believable. I don't look down on anything. In fact, it becomes completely unclear whether I am the system or the observer or neither or both. The power goes out for some interval of time, and someone methodically pokes around among the wires. I suppose I could get angry at my system of wires and feelings for acting up and failing to function the way it's supposed to, but to me it's just another modern convenience. It's a wonderful thing, but don't take it too seriously.
I have spent most of the week at work trying to untangle a very eccentrically written computer program from five or ten years ago. Often it's fun and challenging to to understand someone else's thought process. But I am tired. I'm just not in the mood for empathizing any more eccentricities, no matter how badly it needs to be done.
I wish I knew what needed to be done first.
Tonight I stood up behind one of the concrete pillars and looked down on the parking lot, and I felt suddenly as if I was standing at a podium, looking down on an audience of nothing, delivering a silent lecture on nothing particular.
Say what you will about the moment you're in. There's not any other quite like it.