Math, swing and loneliness

This is a really whiny blog of a more or less intelligent person

[talkingtotheblues-blog]

Please. Something neurobiological would help a lot. I don’t feel anything except being sad, tired and envious most of the time. The emotion I’m looking forward to now is calm. Do you know how sad it is? I want chemistry. I want something passionate. I want the stuff that keeps people from breaking up even when they understand it’s the right thing to do. Do you have any idea how much it would help me now? How much it would help me to stay in love with you? Because I’m having troubles with that. I’m having troubles with being in love with anything at all. I’m having troubles feeling something even remotely as strong as being in love.

[talkingtotheblues-blog]

You know why “Friends” and “How I met your mother” were so popular? Not because they’re funny. (Although, you have to give it to them, they are hilarious). But because so few of us actually have friends. Friends that tell you that you look like crap when it’s important. Friends who tell you that you look awesome, even if you look like crap, when the truth will upset you more than help you. Friends who you tell about your love life and who come into your flat and steal your food. Friends who won’t let you do stupid things and lecture you as if they were your parents. Friends who would do stupid things together with you, if it’s fun. Friends you can ask random weird questions and get immediate weird answers. Does anyone really have such friends? Or is it just a piece of fiction like love at first sight? If it is, that’s very sly: everyone knows love at first sight isn’t real. But a lot of us hope that total friendship is. What if it isn’t? What if every man is an island?

[talkingtotheblues-blog]

Invitation

Imagine your old friend from high school calls and invites you to her wedding, and you two are going to meet at a cafe for a chat and also so that she could give you the invitation.

You come to the cafe, they tell you that your friend is already waiting for you, but the person you see at the table is a comlete stranger. You’re quite sure that you have never seen her before, and she looks nothing like your old friend. Yet she smiles, greets you and starts talking as though everything were fine. While you’re trying to figure out, how she could change that much over the past year since you last saw her, she mentions things about you and your high school days that only a close friend would know.

When you’re almost convinced that either she’s had some plastic surgery or you have some sort of rare disease where you can’t recognize faces, she stands up to go to the bathroom. You compliment her absent-mindedly on her pretty heel-strap sandals, and then you notice her feet. You distinctly remember that your friend’s index toes were longer than big toes, the so-called Greek foot. It was the first time you’d seen that kind of foot structure, and you joked about it together. But this woman’s feet are quite ordinary. It can’t be her. It’s someone else.

What happens next?

[talkingtotheblues-blog]

The voices from beyond the grave

Startup idea: using speech synthesis technology to create speech synthesizers based on the voices of dead people. A grieving relative brings you all the video and audio recordings they could find of the deceased, and your company carefully finds all the necessary allophones (sort of like sounds, but smaller and more variative), tonal patterns, laughter and stuff in the recording and then builds a speech synthesizer that can pronounce anything in the voice of the deceased.

I know it sounds twisted, but if you think about it, it’s like having a picture of someone you lost on your mantelpiece. An auditory portrait. It’s quite a technological challenge, but looks doable, since speech synthesis (unlike speech recognition) is already well developped.

[talkingtotheblues-blog]

History in schools should be taught in another direction: from modern to ancient times. You first tell the kids stuff about today, which is easy, because they now a lot already. Then you tell them what happened thirty years ago, and then explain how those events led to our today’s world. And so on, until you reach ancient Egypt when you’re finishing the last year of high school. Because right now most people with a high school diploma sort of remember Alexander the Great and the falling of the Roman Empire, but have no idea when WWI began and ended, why Pearl Harbour was attacked or how the Soviet Union dissolved.

[talkingtotheblues-blog]

Most people seem to manage

I haven’t read much of Terry Pratchett. But I have one favorite quote from “Guards! Guards!“ - it’s about how the two dragons, a magical and a real one, are going to exist together.

   “Where do you think they've gone?' he said.    'Where what?' said Lady Ramkin, temporarily halted.    'The dragons. You know. Errol and his wi - female.'    'Oh, somewhere isolated and rocky, I should imagine,' said Lady Ramkin. 'Favourite country for dragons.'    'But it - she's a magical animal,' said Vimes. 'What'll happen when the magic goes away?'    Lady Ramkin gave him a shy smile.    'Most people seem to manage,' she said.    She reached across the table and touched his hand.”   

And while it’s beautiful, it’s also a little sad. Magic does go away. I’m happy right now, I’m in a long-term relationship, and I’m definitely in love. “So what are you whining about then?”

Well, it’s the butterflies. They’re gone. Isn’t it scary, when you are in a serious relationship and think how you might never fall in love again? Never have the magical feeling of unlimited happiness, when you haven’t yet told anyone, and you are trying to guess whether your feelings are mutual and - oh god - you think they are? The feeling of digging into a completely new and exciting person, like into a fresh new book, not knowing what will happen. How high it gets you every time you meet, look at each other, write a letter! And while it’s true that what you have now, in a serious relationship, is also amazing and probably more lasting and more deep, it almost never gets you this high.

I miss the romance. Single people post photographs of lovers, curled up in bed together, or stroking each other’s hair, or doing other cozy stuff - but when they have all that, they will miss other things. The first kiss. The nervouvs guessing whether the other person is now thinking about the same thing as you and whether it’s time to just stop saying silly things about the weather and kiss him already. They will miss being shy, uncertain and excited. It’s like looking at your pet and realizing you’ll never see it as a kitten again. You love it, but you’ll never see it as a kitten again.

If only you could fall in love with the same person again. Because that’s what you really want, eventually. You don’t need other people. You need this one. But you miss the feeling so much. So eventually you write into your blog and whine a little, waiting for it to go away. It will go away. Everything does.

[talkingtotheblues-blog]

Us ugly girls

Actually - no. I’m not ugly. But have you ever seen a woman who thinks she’s beautifyl enough? Even the most beautiful ones sometimes feel insecure. Veruschka, a German model, remembers meeting Audrey Hepburn in a photostudio. She heard Audrey say “Make me look like her“. Can you imagine? Someone as perfect as Audrey Hepburn, wanting to look like someone else.

But that’s the most beautiful woman in the world. If we talk about me, my insecurities are far from groundless. I used to have extra weight in school. I still have imperfect skin, small breasts and wide hips. That doesn’t mean nobody likes me. I’m grown up now, I have a nice exterior, an interesting personality, I’m friendly and more or less intelligent. I have a boyfriend, I don’t hate looking in the mirror. I know the looks are not the most important thing, but...

But there’s still that girl inside me. The one who never got the attention. The one who never got invited to dance. The one who never got anonymous love letters. The one who could never flirt. The one who nobody ever tried to pick up - yes, that’s true (except for a couple of weird immigrants). I mean, I’m fine with the fact that not everyone falls in love with me immediately and wants to spend the rest of his life with me. But sometimes... That little girl’s still sad. That she never got the chance to meet, date, accept confessions, get invited to the movies. She wants to be one of those girls with perfect smiles, with beautiful features, full lips, long legs, attractive laugh, who have the luxury of choosing, rejecting, flirting, getting courted. Who have a bunch of guys around who would be happy to, only if she let them.

I have no idea why, but I never had that. I still don’t. I’m not married, no ring on my finger, but there isn’t anyone who is trying to talk to me, or get my number, or just say a random compliment. I don’t care if the men only think about getting laid when they do this - it’s still very important for a girl to feel she’s wanted. And I don’t. And I suppose I’m not the only one: small girls and adult women, single, married and divorced - we all feel it sometimes. The need to be wanted by someone. To interest. Does it happen to guys, too? Do they get upset, when they see that they can’t make anyone tick?