The primary benefit of owning a car is not the ease with which it allows you to travel from A to B but the fact that it is a culturally tolerated, private, relatively sound proof box, in which to talk to yourself. You can also talk to your cat if you bring her along, or heaven forbid your passengers. But there really is nothing like the ease with which your monologues can flow to the gentle background noise of the road.
Software developers have long known the benefits of talking to yourself, and the pitfalls of being caught doing so. They invented “rubber ducking” whereby you explain yourself to that small yellow totem normally reserved for bath time, and in the process realize your mistakes. And if my mom is any authority on the art, she uses my dad. Why else would she address long screeds about the neighborhood ladies to him from the kitchen, while he is off fiddling in the garage?
I know, reader, you’re expecting this to be a blog about rope, but I just don’t have it in me. I’m stressed and I’m tired, and as a result I’ve been talking to myself. By which I mean talking to you, an imagined audience on an interview show, or my dead ancestors, or the shadows of trees on the walls of old brownstones. Anything really. Today on a walk that I overdressed for, in delayed preparation for yesterday’s weather, I rather talked to the air. It’s a bit of an unhinged ritual – you wear your biggest pair of headphones so that no one will try to bother you, and you walk around the city in this particular way. Not being able to hear anything outside of HeadphoneLand, you crane your neck around. Both ways, up and down, now cross. And you listen to the not-very-evolved successor to the language lessons on tape, language lessons on podcast.
I repeated in a whisper “de muis eet de kaas” as I rounded a corner near Harvard Sq and was presented with the most incredible sight. Let me paint the scene: a man, silver ponytail on the smack opposite side of a very broad face, one of those woven baja hoodies in cream and teal, wrinkled slacks, and a pair of faded red birkenstock clogs. He blocked my path, his mouth opening and closing like a fish, arms gesticulating wildly, a crazed look in his eye. Reluctantly, I pushed the pad of my headphones off of one ear, dismayed the social contract they represented had been so violated, and realized I was having a stroke. I must have been, because it was not in fact a mime doing his fish act, nor sensible bits of the English language normally spoken in Boston, but something totally alien but familiar – just on the edge of what should have been intelligible.
After several minutes of this, some meaning finally formed that I could grasp as he asked me in a disappointed way… do you not speak Dutch? Reader, I do not. And I was forced to admit to this poor lost Dutchman that I was only on episode 3 of the podcast series and therefore would only be able to speak with him about what a very small number of nouns and verbs were doing in relation to each other at this very moment. I’m not stuck in the past, and the future doest exist until at least episode 20. To my disappointment he was not particularly interested in learning what a muis eet, and to his disappointment I’m actually trying to learn Flemish. He wished me luck and we parted ways, myself now convinced that I should have carried a rubber duck in addition to the headphones.
So this is all to say that I have a bit of an announcement about the next chapter in the chronicles of boshai. This move has been in the works for a few months now and the details are just starting to come together: I have the where, Antwerp; the why, work; and the how, airplane. Beyond that, there is only the vaguest outline of a plan and a potentially unhinged confidence in this strange little country of Belgium. This move will also serve as a convenient excuse for all manner of annoying behaviors for at least the next 6 months. If I don’t respond to a message or write a post, I’m sorry, but it’s this move, ya know?
Anyways, there is something here about rope too. Specifically, about how the rope doesn’t matter one bit without the people. I’ve traveled widely and done my slutty rope top game in many a far flung dungeon. I know what dish to cook to convince a doubtful carnivore about the wonders of vegan cuisine (roasted eggplant with garbanzo beans) and I know an equally crowd pleasing recipe for a rope scene that most people will respond well to.
It’s been the dominant narrative for a while now that rope is a conversation, thanks in no small part to the work of Barkas (explained deeper in their book “Archeology of Personalities”). But even though it is talked about it is rarely in my experience actually achieved between strangers. More often you will find that you’re talking to yourself.
And sometimes that’s ok, but there is something here in Boston that I keep coming back to. It seems my strongest friendships still live here, and something hard to place that makes me want to go deeper. On an evening where the new-person jitters had melted away, and a better understanding of who FavoriteBlanket is in ropes. A simple tie that we tapped out on. And something understated in the way she fills the pauses. A waiting that isn’t boredom.
Thanks to you, my friend!
boshai 