I didn't think this could happen, I've been blogging way too much lately trying to keep D.I.D. afloat so tonight I kicked back and got reacquainted with my solo effort, Musings of Tong. So I pumped out one blog post, an hour of conscious streaming of ideas later, I suddenly feel like blogging again here. Funny how suddenly deciding to learn to backflip, reading a little Sun Tzu and churning out facebook statuses as a last resort to recall the secrets of the universe being yielded to me in this state of nirvana to deal with whatever life brings tomorrow... well today now, at least for normal people, I'd only call it tomorrow if it was after I'd slept, which is ridiculous because I'm perpetually succeeding sleep, unless it's the figurative sleep of death, which I'm preceding but may be enduring if I look at a figurative death...
It's getting close to 2am alright...
Well anyway today I rediscovered the unrivaled joy of looking through windows. I don't know what it's like for other people but I assume window watching is one of those things you know you did as a child. It's not one of those ever present memories, but it definitely triggers a memory of the pastime. I suppose if you remember now, I'm right.
I spent a good forty minutes seven floors up just watching the world today. I'd consider it some form of transfixing regression. It was a sort of innocent voyeurism. I know how weird and probably even disturbing it sounds but there's an deep satisfaction to be had in watching other people's lives unfold, even in the brevity of forty minutes. I don't know whether that stems from the escape of their judgement or recollection of early years when one could only partake in the world via it's visual experience. Actually having just finished Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, I'd liken it to the creature's witnessing the everyday life of the De Lacey's (If unfamiliar, the creature learns language and almost all there is to know of humanity through secretly observing a small family living in a cottage, it's free from judgement and even develops sympathy towards them but once it becomes known to them is shunned). Overall it seemed like a learning experience.
I was amazed by how long I could maintain an interest in a pair of men setting up a table in their backyard. Everything you see from a distance becomes more trivial, I think it comes from further alienation from the people themselves. It's childish, but I found myself developing personalities and motivations for these two individuals. It became a sort of one way introduction, I could only judge and never know this pair. One would assert dominance in the procedure while the other seemed to follow. The dominant one seemed to indicate with his arms before moving the table and was the first to place a chair around it. The other just seemed to follow along.
I didn't just watch them for the entirety of my viewing. I had a somewhat clear view of a train moving along the horizon in the distance. I trailed it along for what would have been a good five to ten minutes. This was when I was interrupted. I found it interesting that until that point I hadn't actually questioned my motives at all. All it was was someone asking me to pass on a pair of letters and then promptly leaving. Suddenly my mind became awash with questions, what did he think I was doing? Was I being invasive all that time? Now I was the one assuming assumptions were being made. I think it was on Musings where I asserted my opinion of the self being constructed not by other's perceptions but by the perception of this perception... sorry, confusing... think of it like developing an opinion of yourself based on what you think other people think about you. Well suddenly I'd been seen by someone else, my intentions stopped being pure (if a somewhat ignorant purity) and I started to become more perceptive of whether I was being watched. Of course I'd made assumptions on other people, surely it was my just desserts to have them made of me. However, I hadn't shaped my subjects with my views, they were completely unaware of my presence. I had been given reason to question my course of action by another. Now do you see a difference?
In all honesty, I don't know what I'm doing with this post, I only wanted to relay the experience so I'd remember it and assumed that possibly someone could take an interest. I guess I was making a point about some of the quirky points I psychoanalyze day to day... probably not healthy, but whatever.
Well I'm not sure what to draw from this, maybe go look out the window for a while, you might enjoy it. If that seems weird to you then maybe this is kind of a disturbing admission of stalking justified only by it's pure if even existent intentions. Or maybe it's just the fact that another's judgement shouldn't have to shape your own all the time.
Well, let's just put this one down as one of those 'draw your own conclusion' deals...
... or I should just go to bed and spare you all from these kind of posts becoming more prevalent...
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