Your identity signifies an absence. . .
Ever meet a person that seems so boring, so bland, so totally without interest to you, and without the slightest bit of vigor about life or ability to express themselves through the exceedingly narrow hole that is their mouth, so that they seem like nothing but that flattened affect broken apart only by occasional whining born of a child-like inability to deal with fatigue? And then by some means you get to know them better, get some glimpse into their thoughts and feelings and understanding of their environment and what you discover is that this person is as plain, boring, vanilla and empty as you imagined.
It must be habit or pity or some form of unconditional loving kindness I don't have access to that keeps that person in circles of friends, or perhaps innocuousness alone is reason enough to keep some people around.
Sometimes when we catch a glimpse of someone's inner life or of their social realm beyond the narrow point of contact we usually share with them, whether it be work or school or through some other friend, we discover something new - Something intriguing, perhaps attractive, perhaps repellant, but something we had not known before that. But when there is an absence of that? In a way the absence, or the continued opaque quality of their being (or is it hollow transparency?), is more startling than a new discovery.
Some total strangers reveal too much, as the woman on the subway this morning cursing at her teenaged daughter over the phone amid paranoid accusations. The daughter's voice was so loud and clear through the phone that I could hear and understand nearly every word.
{ring, ring}
Daughter: Hello?
Mom: Who were you just on the phone with?
Daughter: Huh? It was {garbled}.
Mom: Liar! You were on the phone for thirty minutes! Who was it?
Daughter: I said it was {garbled}.
Mom: I know you are lying to me! What did he say.
Daughter: {pause} He wanted {more garbled talk}
Mom: You're a lying piece of shit.
Daughter: I'm not lying!
Mom: Yes, you are. You had better be home when I get home from work. What were going to do today after school?
Daughter: I'm supposed to hang out with Ralph.
Mom: Well, you aren't anymore. . .
Daughter: WHY?! Ma, I didn't do anything! I swear!
Mom: I don't know what fucking game you are trying to play, but I am not putting up with your bullshit and you ain't gonna pull it on me! You had fucking better be home when I get there or else don't bother coming back at all!
Daughter: But mom . . .!
Mom: I don't want to hear it!
And with that she hung up. When the daughter called back a few minutes later. All the woman said was, "I don't want to hear your fucking shit anymore so don't waste your time!" And then she hung up again, and I heard the tell-tale electronic notes of her phone being turned off.
Now, obviously I don't know the circumstances that led to this exchange, but I always feel like I learn the most about people by their interactions with this children - how they treat them, how they talk to them. . . Of course, I don't have kids of my own, so perhaps I am not in a position to judge, but I can't help but do it.
But that doesn't have much to do with my original point, just something else I was witness to on my morning commute whether I wanted to be or not. At least it was entertaining, intriguing in the sense that I could not help but try to figure out the situation - what was the context of that mother-daughter conflict? Who did the mom think the daughter was on the phone with? The man beside me was having the most banal and repetitive conversation on his cellphone for no other reason that I could tell but to kill time on his commute, and I hear that a lot. Who are these people they are talking to at 7:30 in the morning who have the time and inclination to talk about nothing so soon after getting up? It just seems to me that these people are just not comfortable in their own heads and with their own thoughts, or they are unable to have a quiet moment free of some chirping stimulus. I mean, the guy next to me went from the phone straight to watching some movie on his iPhone as soon as the train went underground, jealously guarding the screen whenever he noticed me look over, as when I would open my eyes, the flicker of the screen would catch my attention.
Then again, if his conversation were any clue to his interiority, I would not want to be alone with my boring ass thoughts either if I were him.
I did not mean someone I overheard on the subway when I started this entry, I meant an acquaintance, a near-friend. . . But I guess the point is that in some cases they might as well be a stranger on the subway, or even less than that.
It must be habit or pity or some form of unconditional loving kindness I don't have access to that keeps that person in circles of friends, or perhaps innocuousness alone is reason enough to keep some people around.
Sometimes when we catch a glimpse of someone's inner life or of their social realm beyond the narrow point of contact we usually share with them, whether it be work or school or through some other friend, we discover something new - Something intriguing, perhaps attractive, perhaps repellant, but something we had not known before that. But when there is an absence of that? In a way the absence, or the continued opaque quality of their being (or is it hollow transparency?), is more startling than a new discovery.
Some total strangers reveal too much, as the woman on the subway this morning cursing at her teenaged daughter over the phone amid paranoid accusations. The daughter's voice was so loud and clear through the phone that I could hear and understand nearly every word.
{ring, ring}
Daughter: Hello?
Mom: Who were you just on the phone with?
Daughter: Huh? It was {garbled}.
Mom: Liar! You were on the phone for thirty minutes! Who was it?
Daughter: I said it was {garbled}.
Mom: I know you are lying to me! What did he say.
Daughter: {pause} He wanted {more garbled talk}
Mom: You're a lying piece of shit.
Daughter: I'm not lying!
Mom: Yes, you are. You had better be home when I get home from work. What were going to do today after school?
Daughter: I'm supposed to hang out with Ralph.
Mom: Well, you aren't anymore. . .
Daughter: WHY?! Ma, I didn't do anything! I swear!
Mom: I don't know what fucking game you are trying to play, but I am not putting up with your bullshit and you ain't gonna pull it on me! You had fucking better be home when I get there or else don't bother coming back at all!
Daughter: But mom . . .!
Mom: I don't want to hear it!
And with that she hung up. When the daughter called back a few minutes later. All the woman said was, "I don't want to hear your fucking shit anymore so don't waste your time!" And then she hung up again, and I heard the tell-tale electronic notes of her phone being turned off.
Now, obviously I don't know the circumstances that led to this exchange, but I always feel like I learn the most about people by their interactions with this children - how they treat them, how they talk to them. . . Of course, I don't have kids of my own, so perhaps I am not in a position to judge, but I can't help but do it.
But that doesn't have much to do with my original point, just something else I was witness to on my morning commute whether I wanted to be or not. At least it was entertaining, intriguing in the sense that I could not help but try to figure out the situation - what was the context of that mother-daughter conflict? Who did the mom think the daughter was on the phone with? The man beside me was having the most banal and repetitive conversation on his cellphone for no other reason that I could tell but to kill time on his commute, and I hear that a lot. Who are these people they are talking to at 7:30 in the morning who have the time and inclination to talk about nothing so soon after getting up? It just seems to me that these people are just not comfortable in their own heads and with their own thoughts, or they are unable to have a quiet moment free of some chirping stimulus. I mean, the guy next to me went from the phone straight to watching some movie on his iPhone as soon as the train went underground, jealously guarding the screen whenever he noticed me look over, as when I would open my eyes, the flicker of the screen would catch my attention.
Then again, if his conversation were any clue to his interiority, I would not want to be alone with my boring ass thoughts either if I were him.
I did not mean someone I overheard on the subway when I started this entry, I meant an acquaintance, a near-friend. . . But I guess the point is that in some cases they might as well be a stranger on the subway, or even less than that.