about the smiling girl.
so recently i met a girl, but now i'm a bit mixed up.
the best way to describe it is a kind of infatuation which, according to ze google, means:
Be inspired with an intense but short-lived passion or admiration for.
as for the other online dictionaries, most of the entries qualify this as an "unreasoned" passion .. which sounds about how i would typically use the word.
granted, i don't know if reason and love are particularly well-correlated, or more generally, logic and emotion. to bring things further down to earth, i have known few, if any, persons who have convinced themselves logically to pursue a romantic relationship. [1]
as long as i'm dissecting my thoughts anyway ..
.. there are several factors that obscure the situation. one is the novelty of the situation: i just met her. another is taste: i genuinely think she's a really cool and adorable person.
however, we humans aren't always spot on with figuring out why we feel the way we feel. in one psychological experiment, depending on how sturdy and high a bridge is, men are more likely to ask a woman out.
that said, i mightn't know until later whether i really like this girl or not. [2]
still, i think she's really cool. the best way to describe it is that she delights me.
up to cultural differences, some people are easily likable. she's generous with smiles and laughs, easy with making funny faces. i can't help but want to make her laugh.
i think she's pretty, and i know she looks amazing in a dress. having thought about this for longer than i'd care to admit,
she's more cute than hot, which is fine by me.
i admire hot, attractive women, but maybe i'm too much of a fanboy, watched too much pop-scifi. to me, there is some connection between "hot" and the theme of violence. hot, dolled up women are like warships on the high seas: they will shoot you down and it's only known to them where they will dock for the night.
like a few others i've met, she has this adorable cuteness that is mellow but overpowering. if those hot femme fatales are like warships, then she is like the waves, the oceans. you notice the ships, perhaps become interested or wary at them, but in the end the sea fixates you, the rise and rhythmic crashing of waves happily soothing and hypnotic.
i'm not giving you much of a mental picture of this girl, but that's not the point:
the point is that i feel something,
it seems creepy to me,
but i want to say it anyway.
i've met many women and girls who have struck me strongly, all in different ways. a few of them still do, despite the months and years. sometimes i feel like i fall in love (or into infatuations) over and over again and in varying degrees of fixation.
despite being sufficiently well-adjusted, i can't convince myself that i'm a particularly good addition in someone's life. there's a recurring pattern in all of my past relationships that i can't seem to shake off:
after a while, after the glow of infatuation dims in brightness, i become colder. i become grey again.
i used to think that it was about work .. and to some extent, it still is.
more precisely, it's about not being able to be alone or be willingly lost for a spell of days, while i wander at length through my thoughts. sometimes i think my introversion goes to extremes.
it's also about not being fully understood.
maybe it's a habit ingrained in me from years as a mathematical researcher, but i find so many things hard to say because of scale, nuance, and prerequisite. it sounds like i'm being stuck up and believe myself brilliant, but i only mean that some things deserve to be said fully and appropriately.
in the beginning, when you meet a girl and would happily stay up all night talking and sharing things that matter, she willingly listens to my prattle and minutiae .. but eventually this patience saps away. regular life comes in the way, with errands and schedules and will this take long?
i can't convince myself that it's worth forcing someone to sit for a minute and pay firm attention to me [3]. my ideas mean something to me, but they aren't that worthwhile. then again, i'm not happy otherwise.
it's a sorry thing when you realise that you are in the way of your own happiness. more precisely, the tragedy is having two incompatible but equally dear ingredients to your happiness, and you must choose between them.
that said, back to the girl:
i still think she's adorable, i can't tell if she likes me, and i don't know if i'm leaving helsinki in 8 months (and that this is meant to end in crisis).
all i know is that i want to keep rock climbing with her, have a beer together, maybe occasionally go dancing with her and the loose group of expatriates that are our mutual acquaintances.
if something happens, then it's a happy chaos in my life.
if not .. then that's hardly surprising, isn't it?
[1] in fact, my last breakup came about because (at the time) i didn't see a future for her and me. despite feeling perfectly logical, it was the worst i ever felt about anything for a while.
[2] the older i get, the more of a cold-hearted S.O.B. i become. i blame this on getting better at being alone, which tends to petrify idiosyncrasy (or so i suspect, anyway) ..
[3] this is somewhat long, for a blog post. if you've read this thing to the end and not thought me stuffy, boring, or crazy, then thanks:
i appreciate your appreication.
the best way to describe it is a kind of infatuation which, according to ze google, means:
Be inspired with an intense but short-lived passion or admiration for.
as for the other online dictionaries, most of the entries qualify this as an "unreasoned" passion .. which sounds about how i would typically use the word.
granted, i don't know if reason and love are particularly well-correlated, or more generally, logic and emotion. to bring things further down to earth, i have known few, if any, persons who have convinced themselves logically to pursue a romantic relationship. [1]
as long as i'm dissecting my thoughts anyway ..
.. there are several factors that obscure the situation. one is the novelty of the situation: i just met her. another is taste: i genuinely think she's a really cool and adorable person.
however, we humans aren't always spot on with figuring out why we feel the way we feel. in one psychological experiment, depending on how sturdy and high a bridge is, men are more likely to ask a woman out.
that said, i mightn't know until later whether i really like this girl or not. [2]
still, i think she's really cool. the best way to describe it is that she delights me.
up to cultural differences, some people are easily likable. she's generous with smiles and laughs, easy with making funny faces. i can't help but want to make her laugh.
i think she's pretty, and i know she looks amazing in a dress. having thought about this for longer than i'd care to admit,
she's more cute than hot, which is fine by me.
i admire hot, attractive women, but maybe i'm too much of a fanboy, watched too much pop-scifi. to me, there is some connection between "hot" and the theme of violence. hot, dolled up women are like warships on the high seas: they will shoot you down and it's only known to them where they will dock for the night.
like a few others i've met, she has this adorable cuteness that is mellow but overpowering. if those hot femme fatales are like warships, then she is like the waves, the oceans. you notice the ships, perhaps become interested or wary at them, but in the end the sea fixates you, the rise and rhythmic crashing of waves happily soothing and hypnotic.
i'm not giving you much of a mental picture of this girl, but that's not the point:
the point is that i feel something,
it seems creepy to me,
but i want to say it anyway.
i've met many women and girls who have struck me strongly, all in different ways. a few of them still do, despite the months and years. sometimes i feel like i fall in love (or into infatuations) over and over again and in varying degrees of fixation.
despite being sufficiently well-adjusted, i can't convince myself that i'm a particularly good addition in someone's life. there's a recurring pattern in all of my past relationships that i can't seem to shake off:
after a while, after the glow of infatuation dims in brightness, i become colder. i become grey again.
i used to think that it was about work .. and to some extent, it still is.
more precisely, it's about not being able to be alone or be willingly lost for a spell of days, while i wander at length through my thoughts. sometimes i think my introversion goes to extremes.
it's also about not being fully understood.
maybe it's a habit ingrained in me from years as a mathematical researcher, but i find so many things hard to say because of scale, nuance, and prerequisite. it sounds like i'm being stuck up and believe myself brilliant, but i only mean that some things deserve to be said fully and appropriately.
in the beginning, when you meet a girl and would happily stay up all night talking and sharing things that matter, she willingly listens to my prattle and minutiae .. but eventually this patience saps away. regular life comes in the way, with errands and schedules and will this take long?
i can't convince myself that it's worth forcing someone to sit for a minute and pay firm attention to me [3]. my ideas mean something to me, but they aren't that worthwhile. then again, i'm not happy otherwise.
it's a sorry thing when you realise that you are in the way of your own happiness. more precisely, the tragedy is having two incompatible but equally dear ingredients to your happiness, and you must choose between them.
that said, back to the girl:
i still think she's adorable, i can't tell if she likes me, and i don't know if i'm leaving helsinki in 8 months (and that this is meant to end in crisis).
all i know is that i want to keep rock climbing with her, have a beer together, maybe occasionally go dancing with her and the loose group of expatriates that are our mutual acquaintances.
if something happens, then it's a happy chaos in my life.
if not .. then that's hardly surprising, isn't it?
[1] in fact, my last breakup came about because (at the time) i didn't see a future for her and me. despite feeling perfectly logical, it was the worst i ever felt about anything for a while.
[2] the older i get, the more of a cold-hearted S.O.B. i become. i blame this on getting better at being alone, which tends to petrify idiosyncrasy (or so i suspect, anyway) ..
[3] this is somewhat long, for a blog post. if you've read this thing to the end and not thought me stuffy, boring, or crazy, then thanks:
i appreciate your appreication.