So, after that last post on RJ I only have one thing to say:
No, I don't want to be RJ. I want to be more like Tim.
Oh, imagine clever Tim making quip after keen quip as eternal as the truth, while clumsy RJ babbles the words out of bounds, ephemeral and forgotten.
Oh, imagine thoughtful Tim receiving (without asking) the best seats in the opera house for coolly expressing his opinion to an aristocrat, while dispirited RJ, obscured, sits in front of the orchestra with the rabble for his embarrassing ignorance of Puccini.
Oh, imagine workmanlike Tim running miles before dawn in the sand, while lazy RJ waits for the late alarm to engage in futile calisthenics and check out from his hotel just in time.
And imagine, finally, an exhausted RJ going home from Venice early (in defeat, upon a private jet), a baseball cap not nobly crowning but merely covering his bald, well-intentioned head with a slight sideways slant, the better to reject perfection, while persistent Tim flies the very jet, his first solo flight across the Atlantic, having recently received his pilot's license after months of diligence.
I bought in. I'm staying in Venice for as long as the itinerary says to. I'm proving through revealed preference that I want to be more like Tim, as opposed to (and specifically for the purpose of opposing) being like Rj. It's so exhilirating to buy in and--actually the itinerary says we're leaving tomorrow morning anyway never mind.
June 22, 2011
RJ Character Sketch
Day I - Venice
On the flight: Not enough legroom, overpriced airport food, mediocre airline food, not enough sleep, slept a long time when I arrived, baggage-check problems, altering my behavior under the assumption that the TSA cannot distinguish an orange from an organ. It's bad sitcom or stand-up material or Kafka. There's really not much to say. It was uncomfortable, but well within most people's tolerance for discomfort. I don't even find it entertaining but I've called this a travel blog and therefore I must share banalities. It's why the camera obscura principle was discovered, it's why Twitter exists, and it's why I'm typing these words at 0055 on a screen instead of preparing my body for another walking trek through the canal city.
After so many pieces on here in which RJ and his personality were the feature, or at least the backdrop, I think I've distilled the essence of Richard Jefferson, most derided member of the once-legendary Spurs of San Antonio. You see, I barely know a word of Italian and here I am on vacation in Italy, stumbling: stumbling even in my effusive politesse, stumbling especially in wit, without music to create or social situations to control. My strengths are not many in this country yet, like a community organizer at a rough dive or a pick-up artist at a political convention. There's upside there (a gift for language, some study tools), but the upside would come from habits I don't know that I could deliver on. Sure, there are things I can do to mitigate this stumbling in the short term, but most of them boil down to saying less, doing less, and staying along a narrow path constructed by my wisers and superiors. Similarly, being a short trip, there is no obvious benefit to a long-term plan for learning languages.
On the flight: Not enough legroom, overpriced airport food, mediocre airline food, not enough sleep, slept a long time when I arrived, baggage-check problems, altering my behavior under the assumption that the TSA cannot distinguish an orange from an organ. It's bad sitcom or stand-up material or Kafka. There's really not much to say. It was uncomfortable, but well within most people's tolerance for discomfort. I don't even find it entertaining but I've called this a travel blog and therefore I must share banalities. It's why the camera obscura principle was discovered, it's why Twitter exists, and it's why I'm typing these words at 0055 on a screen instead of preparing my body for another walking trek through the canal city.
After so many pieces on here in which RJ and his personality were the feature, or at least the backdrop, I think I've distilled the essence of Richard Jefferson, most derided member of the once-legendary Spurs of San Antonio. You see, I barely know a word of Italian and here I am on vacation in Italy, stumbling: stumbling even in my effusive politesse, stumbling especially in wit, without music to create or social situations to control. My strengths are not many in this country yet, like a community organizer at a rough dive or a pick-up artist at a political convention. There's upside there (a gift for language, some study tools), but the upside would come from habits I don't know that I could deliver on. Sure, there are things I can do to mitigate this stumbling in the short term, but most of them boil down to saying less, doing less, and staying along a narrow path constructed by my wisers and superiors. Similarly, being a short trip, there is no obvious benefit to a long-term plan for learning languages.
June 20, 2011
Turning this into a Travel blog.
I'm going on vacation today, and so now this will be a travel blog of my trip to Italy and Greece over the next few weeks. I will post...well, not pictures, nor journals. In fact, I think what I'll post are fictionalized basketball vignettes that name check recent events in basketball to which I will add local flavor that really will amount to setting, while seeming to have a different style than normal which will mostly be a product of learning two new languages in a touch-and-go way and internalizing authors that I normally wouldn't set aside much time for. So basically what I'm saying is that I will post more often because I will be on the road a lot and having a lot of new experiences, but what I will post will only tangentially relate to those experiences and have mostly to do with the change in habits associated with long travel periods. I will post inconsistently in time and general quality, not more so than I have in the past, but I will have the excuse of a busy itinerary in case anyone calls me out, and since you don't have my itinerary, any excuse I make will seem at least plausible and even if it seems implausible it will be functionally impossible to doubt.
--Alex
P.S. Posts I've planned:
--Alex
P.S. Posts I've planned:
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