jchrisobrien | Time Travel : The day of thanks

A recent discussion I've been watching on a mailing list was discussing the difficulty of language to convey emotions or feelings. Once the writer find the words to express what they are feeling, the feeling can only be approximated, a pale shell of the original concept. Nietzche was speaking about language in it's entirety, but the saying goes equally well when trying to update one's journal after several days have passed.

Thanksgiving. The sting of fresh cut onions is almost enough to drive me from the kitchen, but it does quickly drive the lethargy from my system. A failed alarm setting woke me up two hours later than I wanted, so the turkey will have to overlap time in the oven. Hoping they will fit, I finished prepping and stuffing the first bird, and start it cooking. Later on, I learn this will not be a problem, as both birds are coexisting warm and snug in the oven. Final cleaning and preparations are completed, the guests begin to arrive, and the consumption begins.

I arranged for a bit of overlap between my gaming friends and goth friends, and the overlap carried over, as they mixed like oil and water. I'm not too surprised at this, both groups can be fairly insular, and there's a comment lament about the difficulty of meeting new people in the goth scene ... but that's a slightly different tangent. The gamers decided to see Harry Potter, while I remained to consume more food and revel in the Buffy marathon. There was some good natured wincing, when I watch moments that I particularly enjoyed get dissected and mocked by the crowd, but that's to be expected. Not everybody is taken in by the same things. Eventually the party moved over to Raul,s but I stuck around to make sure the others could get back in the house when they returned to the movie. The day overall is filled with a sense of fulfillment, of general contentedness and basking in the shared pleasure of friends I have made, and that I hope to expand upon in the days and nights ahead.

Time passes...

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...I swear I'm not. I had a great time at your house Thursday. Thanks for hosting. I think it's funny that I'm no longer a gaming friend or a goth friend, but I used to be both. I'm not surprised everyone went to go see Harry Potter though. For they are an insular bunch (plus the movie is cool).

Nietzche was speaking about language in it's entirety, but the saying goes equally well when trying to update one's journal after several days have passed.

Once, while travelling, I made an effort to keep a travelogue. I found that if I sat to write the day's event, I'd get too entangled in the minutiae of the day. I was putting it all down on paper because, at the time, it all felt equally vivid in my memories and equally important. I didn't have the safety of the distance to sift out the important events from the more prosaic ones. I couldn't see the forest from the trees, so to speak. So, I stopped writing about the immediate things and let it sink in for a while. This eventually led to not having enough material to put down on paper because the intensity of the events was gone; they no longer were asking to be narrated. (I realize that many would aim particularly to have the entirety of an experience narrated, but I was trying to distill it somehow.)

Eventually I erred on the side of neglecting the travelogue too much, and the stories were never told, although at times I feel like going back and retelling the few events that were meaningful enough to have stuck in my mind for years.

There's a story somewhere here, I'm sure.

i wanted to keep a travelogue of my recent excursion to montreal, but had the same misgivings. so i just jotted down quick notes about events i thought i would want to remember later. not how i felt about them, but just a line or two about something i thought would be funny later on. i used a pda, so i was able to make the notes while walking down the street or standing in line or whatever. i think it worked pretty well. while writing the full version, i was able to recall and write about all the things i wanted to, and i had to think about the essence of the moment i was trying to capture.

In essence, using those short words and sentences as a trigger for the memory, to reawaken the feeling of what it was like at the given time. I found that happening as I recounted my adventures this weekend.

Which reminds me, I need to finish the story...

Ah, yes. PDAs will change the way I go about this from now on. Indeed.

One of my favorite parts of the dinner was when you took the second turkey out of the oven, and it was so tender, that it disintegrated. You had the funniest look on your face, uncertain whether to keep using the knife and fork to carve it, or just get a spoon.

I think that the mocking and dissection of Buffy was a great part of my enjoyment of the communal watching--to me, it meant that the not-yet-converted were really paying attention and were being drawn in, against their will and better judgment. "Mo-om, I HAVE to save the WORLD!" "AGAIN!" I was also pleased how those old episodes stood the test of time.

As for people not mixing--you had two tribes competing for the same space, with different values and modes of speech. Speaking for the dark tribe, I have to say that we tried to win them over with bribes of ham juice and allusions to strengths and attributes. These things take time, and the mixing won't be done with extremely episodic visits to the Oasis de Sangria. When two groups hitherto unintroduced meet, the tendency is to keep distance and avoid touching, so as to preserve the neutrality of the shared ground. No contact=no conflict.

Perhaps the solution is a series of one-shots, with different members of each tribe.

My least favorite part of the evening was that point when I looked at my watch, and ceased to be in the moment, and started thinking ahead.

...it meant that the not-yet-converted were really paying attention and were being drawn in...

Don't jump to conclusions so fast! I was merely spectating hoping to catch a glimpse of some girl-on-girl action. They obviously played the wrong season.

Time Travel : The day of thanks

I'm not insular...

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