Academic

I found this recently. Thought it would fit in here.

November 20, 2004
Friday afternoon talk

The speaker asks “Is proprioception of
where is your hand necessary?”
And says, “The relative velocity vector
should be added
to the desired
velocity vector
Multiply it by Time to Contact to get
the interception point”

It was an overcrowded room. There was this one seat at the table.

I am breaking a rule, as unknowledgeable youngster sitting at the grown up table. I try to look like any of it is remotely interesting. Not stultifyingly boring and far far over my head. Mopey love songs drift through my head. I notice Professor C____’s red sweater, very close to me. I want to reach out and touch it but not her.

Some folks are sleepy. Prof. M_____'s eyes cross and drift, his will power is visible. He squints hard to stop the comfy lure of sleep.

One man in the back, next to Prof. W____, tilts his head back just a bit, mouth open. He could almost be looking pensive, dubious, investigatory. He could be inspecting the slide by looking at it down his nose. Look again. His eyes small, smaller, smaller, now nearly shut. He is a lullabye to watch. I can’t look.

Now the speaker is on to how to catch in virtual reality.
The difference in the artificial environment vs. the real world
Late starts, fewer retreats, but more inaccurate
More fluent, straighter path but imagining (?)
in a virtual environment is not an accurate predictor
of how to catch and hold and grasp in life.

I let go.

I carry it around with me. It’s like having a whole city in me. When I was young, I could feel it coming, feel life coming. So much energy, good and bad. Boston was invisible from my window. But there was a glow that made the night horizon look like perpetual sunset. Highway sounds floated in through the windows at night. As cars passed on the street below us, headlight squares drifted across my ceiling in strange and unnatural paths. They used to frighten me when I was very little. I didn’t relate the sounds and lights with their proper causes and was left to wonder what they were. I would hold my breath until they passed. These nightly intruders were terrifying and unpredictable. I didn't hide under the covers because I believed someone had to watch, to be on guard, or at least to witness.

At some point between childhood and adolescence, my fear shifted to excitement. A thrill at the thought of a world completely separate from me continuing as I slept. The evidence of these places intruding into my small life was still a little frightening but becoming also tantalizing. I imagined I could feel the whole adult world, the real, the actual, and the possible an unfathomable number of lives already in progress out there on the other side of my flower papered walls. My walls were covered in small red flowers, arranged in rows which merged and split to form a pattern of brick red bars. I cannot wait to get out. I knew someday I would, but knew also that I'd always feel that moment, all of those moments, of heightened awareness, of anticipation, of screaming building giddy and horrifying and elated blooms of potential life.

My trip ends. I am returned to my seat, entirely in this room. It’s been at least a half hour. 4:48. The sleepy faculty are all fully awake, sensing an end nearing, alert for the final lap of the talk. A young woman I’ve never seen inspects her finger nails. I think it is a woman. The speaker says there’s three unexpected results. I would have guessed more.

The woman to my left strokes the back of the man to her left. She is also someone I’ve never seen.

The young woman (?) is still picking at her hands. She stops, glances this way, and I notice she looks amused. Or it could be that she’s chewing something, holding it in her front teeth and prodding it with her tongue. My wrist hurts. I’m writing on an old playlist. I wonder what people think I am writing, then realize that I don’t sense that anyone in here is thinking of me, my writing, or what it is.

Also, someone in here smells like low tide.

The speaker’s talking about “gaze centered movement” and I hear “gay centered movement”.

Prof. L____ lurches around in his chair. It’s 4:56. Prof. M____ hums assents and nods here and there. He’s warming up for questions. My hand hurts terribly but I still write or I will sink, drift, and spread out across the room. Then when we are done, I will have to spend extra time gathering myself together, pulling myself together. I’d rather not drift so far to start with so close to the end.

It is 5:00 and the speaker has started a NEW topic. He’s gone from catching to hitting. I want to jump up and scream HOLY SHIT! “I still have ten minutes I fink” he says in what now seems to me to be something he must believe is a charming accent. Several people glance at their watches.

The woman (?) is sitting next to another woman who is every bit as sallow and orange haired. But the other is older and more clearly feminine. The side of her face that I can see shows a raw doughy fullness common to many middle aged white women. Her clothes include a lavender mock turtle neck and a grape blazer. The two of them seem to be sharing a joke. I am quite certain at this point that the younger one is stifling a giggle and not chewing a seed or a finger nail. The older one has gum, but between the rhythmic swings of her soft sizable jaw, her lips are perturbed by mirthy tugs and squirms.

It’s 5:07. I am rapidly losing my patience and I start to diffuse. My center has dropped, not out but shifted. I feel the space in the pit of my stomach, around my diaphragm. It’s hollow and shakey, and spreads to my head. A physical uncertainty, like I could fly apart at any moment.

It’s 5:10.