i feel like i've had a really good day, even though nothing of note has happened, and even though, objectively, i've wasted just as much of this day as any other. the weather has been great, but i've been indoors procrastinating and studying, so that doesn't really explain it.
i have this feeling that something is slipping away from me: that something is the urge to dichotomize. as regular readers and casual acquaintances know, i always draw up these dualities. for me the fun lies in the categorization. so i think i'm going to throw off a few more before i go supernova.
thesis: there are two types of people, people who try to be cryptic and people who try to be explicit. i'm not saying that either is better; there are good and bad ways to be both.
the cryptic person tries to say just enough to bait others into asking questions, or into figuring things out. i can think of two good subtypes here. one subtype is the sort of person who explicitly draws up cryptic barriers, as a test -- a method of finding out who's intelligent enough to get it, so that in a sense only smart people can appreciate them. it's a good way of winnowing down the pool of potential friends. the problem, of course, is that you're counting on your combatant to realize that there is a puzzle to solve in the first place, since all of this is taking place inside the sphere of general social interaction.
the second subtype is the person who says things in the hope that someone will be interested. it's not really trying to seem mysterious so much as it is wanting the other person to start the conversation. i can think of many examples of this subtype; it's more common than the first subtype, which requires great on-the-fly planning.
meanwhile, the explicit person attempts to actively engage people in thought. i typically admire this sort of person; they decide what they want to talk about, and they start talking about it. this person is more likely to be a pariah than the cryptic person, and indeed most stereotypical maladjusted no-indoor-voice math people fall into this category.
here's an example of the same passage in a weblog written by the cryptic person and the explicit person.
yesterday i went down to fisherman's wharf with a friend. we walked around for a while; there were lots of tourists there, and seeing that many types of people always makes me think. we talked about life for a while, and got dinner at this great little restaurant. i think i'm going to go driving tomorrow. i'm not sure exactly where, and i might decide to be there overnight. if you have any ideas, let me know.
yesterday karen and i went down to fisherman's wharf to gawk at the tourists. it always impresses me how people from all over can congregate in the same place despite having so few common interests, and how despite the potential for societal sharing and advancement very few of them ever meet each other. because even though they're travelers, they are here for a specific reason. it's a missed opportunity. karen talked to me about her new boyfriend, and i was disappointed to have him seem like a nice guy. it's not that i'm interested in karen -- i'm not -- but i wish i could be happy with such a person. but i need adventure and excitement. tomorrow i'm going to take this into my own hands and go driving around the countryside. i'm excited. there are so many nice things to see around here -- the drive down 24 and 680, the drive up the coast, the drive down the coast, the drive on 92 to half moon bay, and so on. and if anyone wants to come along, i'm sure you'll enjoy it just as much as i do.
now, it's obviously very difficult for me to write as the person i'm not (the cryptic person, mostly), but hopefully i've gotten the point across. i try to be an explicit person; i enjoy trying to get things across to people in as evocative a way as possible. adrienne claims that i don't speak english, but i would claim that this is because i speak something even more natural than english: the language of dactyls and alliteration and eliding and all of those technical linguistic terms. the meanings certainly matter, but i think we all know from personal experience that it's hard to pay attention to the meaning when the form is drab. i learned this at an early age, and again via the painful guillotine of that existentialism class.
i think what surprises me most is that i can almost entirely classify people into these types, or at least easily say where they fall onto the continuum. and this is why i (used to?) like dichotomies so much, because each dichotomy means that you can spend time thinking of people, which is, for me, lots of fun.