Coincidental Floss
Aug. 20th, 2008 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress. It is wrong then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences, but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty."
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Every day I walk pretty much the same route home from the Metro station in pretty much the same hour-long evening window. And yet, in the year-plus that I have been living with my girlfriend, we have never once bumped into each other unexpectedly along this route. Not on the train platform, not in the shopping mall thoroughfare, not in the apartment lobby.
Altogether, we've been dating for more than three years and I've known her for four. And I've never inadvertently run into her a single time. I have never seen her when I wasn't expecting to see her. Not on the street, not on the mall, not in a restaurant.
The closest we have ever come to meeting by chance is when one of us accidentally dials the other person's cell phone.
Maybe there is some logical or quantum physical explanation for this, or maybe it's just a weird coincidence. (Can it be a coincidence if we're talking about a non-incident? Would it be an anti-incidence?)
It's especially frustrating since there are some people, with whom I am not cohabitating, that I seem to see all the time. like Gigantor, the seven-foot-tall guy who teeters around like one of those stilted circus performers and has to duck dramatically when entering Metro cars; or Bones, the seriously scary anorexic-looking woman ever-clad in spandex who is very obviously in need of physical or psychological intervention; or Quarterback, the middle-aged guy whose wardrobe consists entirely of officially licensed NFL merchandise.
You might suggest that I simply recognize these people more frequently because their respective appearances are so striking. This article does not hold water; nothing gets my attention more reliably or consistently than a good-looking girl, and my girlfriend is totally foxy. Trust me, I would notice her.
(Hasn't audio-cognitive research confirmed that our brains eventually become wired to pick out our own names, even amid excessive background noise? Doesn't it follow that we would just as quickly recognize familiar images in a crowd?)
Maybe it is just an anti-incidence. But if I have to come up with a rational explanation for it, I'll just assume that, at the end of the day, I am so purposefully single-minded about getting home to see my girlfriend that I don't see anything around me unless they get in my way. But that doesn't explain why I always look at the Auntie Anne's Pretzel counter as well.
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Every day I walk pretty much the same route home from the Metro station in pretty much the same hour-long evening window. And yet, in the year-plus that I have been living with my girlfriend, we have never once bumped into each other unexpectedly along this route. Not on the train platform, not in the shopping mall thoroughfare, not in the apartment lobby.
Altogether, we've been dating for more than three years and I've known her for four. And I've never inadvertently run into her a single time. I have never seen her when I wasn't expecting to see her. Not on the street, not on the mall, not in a restaurant.
The closest we have ever come to meeting by chance is when one of us accidentally dials the other person's cell phone.
Maybe there is some logical or quantum physical explanation for this, or maybe it's just a weird coincidence. (Can it be a coincidence if we're talking about a non-incident? Would it be an anti-incidence?)
It's especially frustrating since there are some people, with whom I am not cohabitating, that I seem to see all the time. like Gigantor, the seven-foot-tall guy who teeters around like one of those stilted circus performers and has to duck dramatically when entering Metro cars; or Bones, the seriously scary anorexic-looking woman ever-clad in spandex who is very obviously in need of physical or psychological intervention; or Quarterback, the middle-aged guy whose wardrobe consists entirely of officially licensed NFL merchandise.
You might suggest that I simply recognize these people more frequently because their respective appearances are so striking. This article does not hold water; nothing gets my attention more reliably or consistently than a good-looking girl, and my girlfriend is totally foxy. Trust me, I would notice her.
(Hasn't audio-cognitive research confirmed that our brains eventually become wired to pick out our own names, even amid excessive background noise? Doesn't it follow that we would just as quickly recognize familiar images in a crowd?)
Maybe it is just an anti-incidence. But if I have to come up with a rational explanation for it, I'll just assume that, at the end of the day, I am so purposefully single-minded about getting home to see my girlfriend that I don't see anything around me unless they get in my way. But that doesn't explain why I always look at the Auntie Anne's Pretzel counter as well.
