I'm observant. It's not some natural talent I've had since birth to spot things. Or whatever talent I did have only took me so far until I started trying to be observant.
In my Contemporary philosophy class, there are seven students including me and we sit at an oval table in a small (like ten feet by fifteen feet) room. Usually Professor Ray sits at the head of the table with me on his right and the Sexy Ostrich on my right. Yesterday, he didn't.
He sat on my right, which blocked Sexy Ostrich's perfume or deodorant or natural wonderful body odor. So now the set up is Professor Ray on my right, to his right Sexy Ostrich, then Middle Aged Lady, Idiot at the end of the table, girl who pays no attention, shaved head girl, and the philosophy major that uses his coat as a blanket for all of class and sometimes naps in his chair. I'll get to describing each more, but for now I want you to realize my unique position. Generally in a class, I'm in the back corner and I can see the back of everyone's head and the professor's face. But because everyone was to the right of Professor Ray except for me, I could see the back of his head and everyone else's front side. If everyone focused on Professor Ray, I could've gotten away with murder. It'd have to be quiet murder, but whatever.
So he was talking about Eliminativism (possibly the hardest school of thought to say because of all the damn i's) and I scooted backwards every time his hand flailed in my direction and threatened to backhand me. He likes to gesture while speaking. And I wasn't close to him to begin with, but I eventually was about four feet away and safe from his powerful theatrics. And I really was watching him and paying attention, but past his strong chin and wind-ruffled hair, I could see Sexy Ostrich brush her hair across her forehead so that her bangs had a swoop. I think I've mentioned her before, but I'll explain it again. She's from Austria, and in German Austria is Osterreich which looks like Ostrich. And she's sexy.
Her mouth opened and she stared at the table but it didn't look like she was interested in the cement-colored speckled tabletop. She was thinking. She had a loose grip on her pen and if it wasn't already pressed to her notepad, it would've fallen. Her eyes jerked like she had watched a cricket hop away. When Professor Ray paused to breathe and wiped spittle from his lips, she asked "So is Eliminitavism saying low ontologically ranked items don't exist or..." she trailed off and Professor Ray answered, "Sort of!" and went on to explain somethings I don't feel like repeating.
So she jotted down what he said, and she looked up at him out of the corner of her eyes. This isn't some new ground-breaking observation. People are very aware of the eyes' tell. Professors use it to track who's listening and who has something to say but is maybe unsure of it or too shy to raise their hands. House M.d. directors use a close-up on Hugh Laurie's face about once an episode where he's talking about something irrelevant with Wilson and suddenly the Epiphany horn sounds in his head and he rushes off. So it's not uncommon, but still amazing to see the eyes in sync with the thoughts churning. There's also quite a bit of eyelid action, but it's mostly just twitching. If you ever have a chance to see it, and haven't already, watch and you'll be able to tell pretty quickly when someone's reached a conclusion.
A little later, Sexy Ostrich heard something that piqued her attention and again her eyes are turning with whatever arguments are working themselves in her head. And I waited for her to open her mouth a little wider and prepare to say something, but she didn't. Instead she leaned back in her chair and folded her hands over her winter-soft tummy (my polite way of saying she had gained some weight which isn't at all bad. It was well distributed in the proper areas).
Middle Aged Lady is a piano teacher with kids and she's kind of pretty. But she spent the entire lecture scribbling furiously and scowling at her paper. She'd write down the definitions, the quotes, the key ideas, the analogies, and even the drawings that Professor Ray did on the whiteboard. She'd stop every so often and glance just above her notebook. Her arm was on the table and the notebook laid on that. Her eyes did similar things to Sexy Ostrich's, except she never said anything. And she didn't make eye contact with Professor Ray and so he didn't notice her suppressed ideas.
Then Idiot. I hate him and he is an idiot. It's why I hate him and call him Idiot. His eyes were fixed on Professor Ray at all times and his hand was to his bearded chin. This guy looks like a serial killer/pedophile/rapist. He's got the trifecta going on. He wears glasses, like me, but his rest on the end of his nose like he's a geezer. He wears casual-dressy shirts all the time, but they're open and beneath he has a v-neck white T-shirt. I haven't and won't see him today, but I guarantee he's wearing that under his black zip-up hoodie. He always wears jeans, which isn't weird, but his look like they haven't been washed ever. His opinions are always stupid. That's right, stupid opinions. But I don't blame him for being stupid. I blame him for not knowing he's stupid. Anyway.
In class he interrupted Professor Ray. Not with some insight into the working of Constructionists, who we were now talking about, and not to ask a question for clarity or discussion. No. He said, "Sounds like they're tripping on acid." What? Constructionists say that Justice, God, Morality and other such intangible theories are just a matter of peoples' opinions and that they don't really exist except in our mind. It's wrong or useless or whatever, but it's a valid approach to the world. And then he snickered. If you've ever seen a good production of Charlotte's Web the play, directors often have Templeton snickering in a devious way. Idiot's snicker would've guaranteed him a role as Templeton.
Professor Ray just moved on and so will I since I don't feel like dragging Idiot's reputation through the snow and mud until I look like the asshole.
Next around the table was the girl who wasn't paying attention. She gets no fun or descriptive nickname like the others, because she's not that interesting and I don't know her and I don't want to call her the fat girl. But she was fat. She wore glasses and had her notebook on the table, but she wasn't writing. She instead spent all of class twisting the cap of her blue highlighter, around and around and around and around. And her pink and green and yellow highlighters were lined up next to her notebook. But she wasn't listening. She wasn't even looking at Professor Ray except when her eyes darted upward because he had asked a question of the class.
"So how can anyone say Justice really exists and it's not just a product of our feverish imagination! I can say stealing is bad, but if everyone said and agreed that stealing was good, would it be?"
Only then did her eyes convey to me that her mind was scrambling to squeeze out whatever it had just subconsciously soaked up. Luckily, he didn't call on her because Idiot made another stupid comment.
"Only on the weekends." Can I kick him?
Next is Shaved-Head Girl. She is about five feet tall, in heels, but she'd never wear heels. She is a lesbian, but not the kind you see in pornos. She is round and on the ground, as in fat and short. But she's very nice and has the occasional worthwhile insight, which if you've ever been in a philosophy class you know is pretty rare. She'd write things down whenever Professor Ray raved about it, but occasionally Professor Ray would just say, "And well, there's nothing else that we can say at this time about the immaterial Mind moving the material Body." Which is a fine statement, but not something note-worthy. But she'd write it down! Why? I could tell. Her eyes were sunken in and hard to read, but if I had to guess, she wasn't writing what he had said and instead something that had occurred to her. Since she stared at her notebook or the table or glanced at the clock, it never seemed like she focused on the class and instead let her mind go where it may. I understand that. I do that.
Then there's the Philosophy Major. He was across the table from Professor Ray. He has long brown hair, lots of zits that have been popped and scraped. Sometime they bleed. He looks like he hasn't shaved because he doesn't need to. I'm baby-faced as well, but his skin looks teenagery. But he's well-read enough to bring up other philosophers' opinions and relate them to the topic at hand. Like we were talking about Quietism (first we spoke of Realism then moved on to Quietism). "What I hate about Quietism with Ludwig whatever," an Austrian Philosopher whose last name is impossible for me to remember even with my year of German and Sexy Ostrich crush. Philosophy Major couldn't remember it either though. "and Descartes, is they say just shut up when they could be proven wrong! I mean I want a theory. Explain it to me, man!" After he said this, Professor Ray responded, but Philosophy Major took his coat off the back of his chair and draped it over him like a blanket. He had his hands underneath and his head slumped to the side. Professor Ray spouted more and more about Quietism, but to the whole class so Philosophy Major took a nap. For the rest of class, he seemed asleep. He'd twitch, a myoclonic jerk I think it's called.
I think I will too
Tangent Alert!: Descartes (I think it was him) proved that mathematically it is impossible to touch a wall. Wherever you start from, before you can get to the destination, you have to go through the halfway point. So You're 8 feet away, then 4, then 2, then 1, then 0.5, then 0.25, 0.125, 0.0625, etc, until you are infinitely close to 0, but you can never reach 0 because no matter how often you divide something in two, it'll never be zero. I like this idea. You can apply to people, how you can never really know them or something.
More unrelated stuff: Listen to her. I'd like her to be famous and on the radio so that all the trash currently on the radio can realize they're trash by comparison. So I'm spreading her goodness to my corner of the internet, which is about as big as the corner of the house of a mouse of low income. I probably listen to this song five times a day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0NCJslBkss&feature=related
-Cantwhistle
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