jeff is kind of a geek.

**most recently edited on 5/10/2013**

you might be thinking, "well, what does that say about you?" and you'd be almost right; i've accepted the truth about myself and my dork nature; still, i'm not a geek.

just so we're all clear, my personal definitions of geek, nerd, and dork are as follows:

-a geek is someone who is extremely into something; the thing could be anything: baseball geeks are just as plausible as computer geeks.
-a nerd is someone who is a math or science geek, which is often accompanied by above average intelligence and/or an inability to relate to others; you'll notice that by this definition, nerds are a subset of geeks.
-a dork is someone who isn't afraid to (or doesn't know any better than to) let his/her geekiness or nerdiness shine.

sometimes jeff and i have difficulty executing a "normal" conversation (i expect this is typical among dorks and geeks hanging out together). specifically, we have the tendency to be a bit particular about extent in our conversations, even when it seems unnecessary or ridiculous, or both ("on a scale from the best thing you've ever tasted to the best thing you ever thought you could taste, where does this lie?"). alas, that's us in a nutshell, especially together - ridiculous.

jeff and i first started hanging out to fill a music-sized void in our lives, but the amount of time we spent together increased rather quickly. one of the best things about being a dork/geek is that doing essentially nothing is considered a way--even a preferred way--to have a good time. we would hang out with no agenda and just let the conversation take us wherever it could go, which would inevitably lead at least one of our arguments of extent.

now, when i say argument (do i, by any chance, mean... argumanatee? nevermind...), i mean it in the least loaded way: a discussion governed by logic for the purpose of attempting agreement. there was never any hostility...mild vigor at most.

packed with plenty of such arguments, our conversations lasted for arbitrarily long periods of time, with tangents, and tangents from tangents, even such that remembering original points was often nontrivial. on and on, around and around we would go, spiraling into our point, which was not necessarily of any real importance. these discussions were fascinating to us, if for nothing more than their absurdity and our conviction to them. for not us, however, they were about as entertaining as listening to two halves of a conversation in two different foreign languages. except for the rare instance of getting so absurd that we were actually amusing to listen to--or even just to hear: "i feel like i look like i feel like he looks like he feels when he says that" (jeff has channelled dr. seuss on many occasions), our conversations mostly had the effect of being boring for everyone else. this effect became especially pertinent when, eventually, we were regularly joined by my now-wife, whom we'll call "lizzie." lizzie is a little bit dork and geek (and nerd) actually, but to a significantly lesser extent in the respective cases, so for her, little of what we said mattered, or even made any since for that matter.

so much to lizzie's dismay, jeff and i slowly trudged onward, determined not to miss a thing, regardless of the importance of said thing or the difficulty in communicating it. at the same time, jeff and i consequently began to develop better-than-average understandings of each other's perspectives on various subjects, as well as ideas not far removed from those subjects. furthermore, the scatter-shot of topics involved began to span a rather large space in our minds, thus we began to really get each other, in a way that usually requires years of close friendship. it was almost as if we were actively learning to be friends with each other, rather than just waiting for it to happen naturally (though it could be easily argued that, for us, this was "natural").

after just a few months, it was as if we had been friends for years. additionally, given that we are graduate students in physics, most of the understanding we gained for each other was highly tailored to the quantitative nature of our academic circumstances. it was more like the hypothetical strong bond you would form with a coworker, if only there were a better reason than "we work together" to desire such a thing. in more obvious terms, the depth of our friendship was highly specialized.

this unusual bond, and our continued persistent quest to cover any new ground which revealed itself in our antics eventually led to what i have to believe is a rather unique phenomenon. consider for a moment, the inner-workings of communication between two individuals: the whole point of you and i communicating is for me to pass some idea, mental picture, etc from my mind to yours or vice versa; theoretically, it's a simple matter of information exchange, right?

but i said "theoretically." we all know from experience that sharing what's on our minds can range from easy enough to virtually impossible. half the time i don't understand what's on my own mind, much less can i share it effectively. i see this as one of the fundamental dilemmas of being human.

which brings me back to my point: the connection jeff and i went on to form has given us the ability to systematically minimize information loss in our communication. as long as the subject is sufficiently related to prior conversation, each of us can hand over any idea in mind to the other, virtually unscathed. it's not always quick or easy, but it works beautifully, often with staggering precision.

that said, the process by which we went from {beginning to poorly utilize crude versions of this method} to {actually being systematic} was a long and treacherous one. i'll spare you the gory details (sadly the same can't be said for jeff or lizzie), but i will tell you about the most interesting consequence of that process; indeed, it is my main purpose! derived from a "discovery" of mine and an unrelated happy accident or two--not to mention years of perseverance in exploring the depths of communication and the mind, the manatee is both the main subject of this blog and the most important tool of the process of optimal communication. the story of it's birth is my next and last point of prologue.

it's a funny thing, falling in love...

i like to think of love as an action (not that kind of action); to me, love is an act of recognition, a realization that someone or something outside myself is as real as i am. this sort of realization is always "heartfelt," as they say, because it changes us: love changes our minds and our view of the universe, forever. i think what people usually mean by "love" is the reaction to that realization, which makes me want to start a trend of defining emotions based on their causes rather than their effects. words like "happy" and "sad" and "angry" are minimally useful and aren't that descriptive; personally, i'd rather hear the story of why you feel that way.

with that in mind, i know we don't usually say that we fall in love with our friends, but i want permission to start doing so. intellectually, it's essentially the same process, taking our minds to that place without our consent (we can't change our friends or lovers or even our interests without changing who--or at least how--we are). obviously there are drastically different hormones released in the other case, but that clarification is usually not needed in context.

on that note, i have, several times now, watched myself fall in love, each time to a higher degree of resolution; from such observation, i've gained much insight as to why i do love, or have come to love, certain people. not surprisingly, as that understanding grows, understanding of myself grows as well.

when this period of reflection started several years ago, i was dissatisfied enough with my life that my exploration was largely uninhibited; asking myself seriously probing questions and accepting the often-ugly truth was not only condoned, but welcomed, even encouraged. after all, at trying to understand why i would get involved in such destructive and absurd situations, i had already failed me not once, but twice.

this odd abortion of pride and tendency to crave truth over everything else (including happiness) ultimately left me much more aware and less afraid of myself. i felt like i was in this full-blown learning mode, where everything i did and everyone i met was an experience from which new understanding could be gained. for all my schooling and knowledge, it was the first time i felt any wiser. little did i know that i was barely scratching the surface of self-awareness, but i'll save that for another time.

ultimately, two crucial relationships came to pass that would kick-start my journey from that awkwardly raw awakened state to where and who i am now. the first was a classic example of falling in love with a girl, with just enough of a spin on it to open my eyes in a whole new way. our romantic involvement was cut short for both personal and circumstantial reasons (aka we were fools), but the relationship continued to grow in unforeseen ways until i had all but redefined my notions of love, reality, and even god. we shared the same sort of unabridged wonder for the world, and through simple exchanges of relatively few words with this other person, i had convinced myself that, even though i couldn't put my finger on it, there was indeed something more to this world than is implied by the usual agnostic naturalist beliefs i held at the time (disclaimer: it will become clear in time that i mean nothing magical or otherwise supernatural by this). even more importantly, this wasn't a decision based more than slightly on faith; in fact, to some extent, i had deduced it, reasoned it logically from accepted naturalist premises and this new empirical--albeit subjetive--evidence.

that said, at the time, i could at best only hint at what that "something more" actually is. it took an even closer and more unusual look at an entirely different encounter to finally see that which is hidden in plain sight, literally right in front of and all around us.

i've been seeing things...

it turns out you don't need a built-in network cable/jack like the creatures in avatar to "see" things the way they would. my roommate and i were floored by the inclusion of the concept in the movie, given that we had already stumbled onto the idea and were attempting to develop the ability in some crude manner.

"seeing things" was only one of many aspects of the ideology in the film that floored us; it's discouraging to me that so many people thought the movie too obvious or unoriginal, given the uniqueness of some of the deeper implications of the world of the na'vi. then again, i suspect even james cameron himself didn't really know the full extent of what he had stumbled onto. perhaps i'm still missing something obvious myself, but even if so, i like to think that art, especially really good art, often holds much more truth than even that of which its creator is aware. i've even found this to be true of my own stuff from years ago.

for my roommate--let's call him "jeff"--and i, these run-ins with seeing things have only increased in frequency since. it's not terribly interesting by relative standards, but i'm actually seeing my keyboard right now as i type this; jeff has a whole new connection with his car (standard transmission). sometimes we see these things incidentally, sometimes we go looking for them. turns out seeing is not even such a hard thing to do, with just about any perceivable thing at all, once you know where to look. of course, it seems that first step of knowing "where to look" may be a difficult thing to learn. indeed, i suppose that's why i'm writing this. after all, i basically found it by accident, and even that came after i had unknowingly honed myself into someone capable of such a thing for at least many years. i'm expecting that for most people, it takes, at least, a lot of learning and a little luck (maybe even a quantum of faith?) to focus one's mind's eye on something quite so ironically elusive.

so here i am, trying to become a teacher of a thing i've only just learned myself. perhaps it's foolish to expect that a few months' head start is adequate, but the good news is that in some sense i am, as they say, only the messenger. this thing all but leads itself, and so it will reveal itself, to me and to others, in due time.

time to upload my mind

i'm running out of disk space...it's time to recruit an external drive.