radfrac_archive_full (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
radfrac_archive_full) wrote2004-11-28 09:11 am
radfrac_archive_full) wrote2004-11-28 09:11 am
only difference is, he files a report
I was at a party with psychology majors last night.
My Dream, by Radiant Fracture
I'm participating in a psychology experiment. I'm in a room, and the experimenters are going to send in a series of robots and animals. I have a checklist, and I record which one appeared and my reaction. The professor (or possibly my mother) is sitting in, working at a desk in the room.
The tests enter, different forms coming at random -- a humanoid robot, then a small mechanical one, like a dog made of an erector set, then a real dog. I watch them all, and interact if they approach me. I play with the real dog.
The last humanoid robot comes in, and is more naturalistic and interactive than the others. I observe it for awhile, and then it says "Excuse me," and begins to talk to the professor. I go out into the hall and listen, and it dawns on me that this isn't a robot, it's a grad student; that none of the humanoid robots are really robots, but people in disguise. Of course, I think to myself, we don't have the technology to create such realistic androids. What was I thinking?
I go into a room full of people who've also been participating in the experiment. They're mostly psych students (which is true to life). I talk to a woman about our experiences, and we compare notes. Our reactions were similar. "No salutations," we agree. "No goodbyes, no questions about how they were feeling." We didn't apply any of the rules of human politeness to the 'robots'.
In the dream, I feel embarassed and faintly horrified, because the experiment reminds me of the famous one in which people were told that they were administering electric shocks to unseen victims, and went on pressing the button even when the dial showed a lethal dose.
I comfort myself that at least I was kind to the dog.
* * *
I've discovered a new street vortex in Victoria. Grumpy Bastard tells me he's known about it for some time. "I can never find my way around Oak Bay," he says. Fool that I am, I thought I could, but I had not factored in the powerful Energetic Distortions of the Greater Victoria Area. He notes that there is one out near the naval base in Esquimalt as well.
You may argue that all of Victoria appears to be a nearly-inescabable vortex, and I'll grant you that, but I'm speaking of specific and fairly well-defined (as much as such a thing can be) areas of town in which the laws of spacetime are obviously distorted.
I'd gone to the Oak Bay library branch to get their copy of London Orbital, which is mad Iain Sinclair's memoir of walking around the M25, the nightmarish highway that runs in a circle around London. Ironies are thick on the ground. Pray pick yourself a bouquet.
I set off for home on a perfectly familiar route, thumbing through a book of self-guided walking tours that I'd picked up on a novel-research-flavoured whim. I discovered that I was on one (tour) already, or to be precise that I had just walked half a block past one, so I doubled back and followed it. This was not the problem; it brought me out, after a number of savoury miniature adventure courses, at a familiar place -- the sports field near the Oak Bay marina. I decided to cut up and back into the streets in order to get home faster. And that is when I stumbled into the vortex.
You could accuse me of just Getting Turned Around; of confusing what was on one side of the field with the other, even of having a stunningly bad sense of direction. I submit, not that these are untrue, but that they are inadequate; when I set out, I knew exactly where I was, and I remind you that I was carrying a book of walking tours. I've walked safely through Oak Bay before without any more trauma than an overdose of faux Tudor.
Things seemed perfectly sensible for a time, rainy and grim but interesting, until I came to a park I'd never seem before. Although I was tired, I thought I'd climb up into it -- it was one of those patches of Garry Oak meadow, with golden grass and steep bare rock wearing through the earth. I crested the hill and followed a little path down the other side. I could make out a bit of view through the trees, and thought "It must be misty in town today -- I can see a fog over Oak Bay."
Then I stepped into a clear patch, and the terrifying truth revealed itself. Oak Bay, Uplands, and UVic had all sunk under the ocean and been replaced by a quiet bay lined with surprisingly tranquil houses. Or else I had no idea where I was.
Vortex.
There's quite a friendly one in Fairfield that I don't mind walking through at all, though I always leave a penny at the gate and a penny when I leave, to let the Fairies know I want to come in and I want to go home. There's a nasty one in Uplands I wandered into one night looking for a bus stop. I had a map on that occasion too, even if it was only a bus map. I wish I could impress upon you that it doesn't matter. You could have a Global Positioning System positronically implanted in your brain, an army compass and a beacon in the sky at True North. The only way out of a vortex is to give up control, and follow the spiral through the middle and out the other side.
I won't get into the Long Walk Home, especially since it could have been a lot shorter if I'd remembered I could catch the bus in front of the Oak Bay Beach Hotel instead of taking the endless walk of doom through the golf course. I did pass the Snug, the OBBH's pub, where coincidentally the Peacock would take me for soup the next day, in solidarity with me and with all aimless wanderers, everywhere.
* * *
In related navigational news, I've been thinking, hey, why not ruin that last post by explaining it?
I told you I'm a critic, and when we don't have someone else's work to talk about, we simply devour ourselves.
I've felt a bit like a velvet painting of a crying clown this last little while, except my makeup isn't as good. I keep posting rabidly cheerful messages about my great future, trying to convince myself that I'm convincing everyone else that things are just Super, and that this concatenation of allsort luck, weird timing and unpredictable free will is Just What I Planned All Along.
I thought finally, what about trying to post on the other side of things? Not to give it undue importance, but to give it a place in the park with everything else. You can't get a good mood swing going without the up and the down.
I thought if I could do it well it wouldn't be just self-pitying ranting. (Ahem.) It would be a useful record of an emotion -- maybe not quite as useful as my Walking Tour to Victoria Vortices, but something I could look back to and be as glad to have written as the cheerful stuff.
Annnyway it may just be self-pitying ranting for all that, but thanks for participating in my Experiment. (Which was in no way a test of anyone else's reactions, I hasten to add -- just my own. You all have been lovely, though. Thank you. There wasn't anything I wanted you to do, or any particular reaction I was looking for. You are lovely all on your own.)
{rf}
My Dream, by Radiant Fracture
I'm participating in a psychology experiment. I'm in a room, and the experimenters are going to send in a series of robots and animals. I have a checklist, and I record which one appeared and my reaction. The professor (or possibly my mother) is sitting in, working at a desk in the room.
The tests enter, different forms coming at random -- a humanoid robot, then a small mechanical one, like a dog made of an erector set, then a real dog. I watch them all, and interact if they approach me. I play with the real dog.
The last humanoid robot comes in, and is more naturalistic and interactive than the others. I observe it for awhile, and then it says "Excuse me," and begins to talk to the professor. I go out into the hall and listen, and it dawns on me that this isn't a robot, it's a grad student; that none of the humanoid robots are really robots, but people in disguise. Of course, I think to myself, we don't have the technology to create such realistic androids. What was I thinking?
I go into a room full of people who've also been participating in the experiment. They're mostly psych students (which is true to life). I talk to a woman about our experiences, and we compare notes. Our reactions were similar. "No salutations," we agree. "No goodbyes, no questions about how they were feeling." We didn't apply any of the rules of human politeness to the 'robots'.
In the dream, I feel embarassed and faintly horrified, because the experiment reminds me of the famous one in which people were told that they were administering electric shocks to unseen victims, and went on pressing the button even when the dial showed a lethal dose.
I comfort myself that at least I was kind to the dog.
* * *
I've discovered a new street vortex in Victoria. Grumpy Bastard tells me he's known about it for some time. "I can never find my way around Oak Bay," he says. Fool that I am, I thought I could, but I had not factored in the powerful Energetic Distortions of the Greater Victoria Area. He notes that there is one out near the naval base in Esquimalt as well.
You may argue that all of Victoria appears to be a nearly-inescabable vortex, and I'll grant you that, but I'm speaking of specific and fairly well-defined (as much as such a thing can be) areas of town in which the laws of spacetime are obviously distorted.
I'd gone to the Oak Bay library branch to get their copy of London Orbital, which is mad Iain Sinclair's memoir of walking around the M25, the nightmarish highway that runs in a circle around London. Ironies are thick on the ground. Pray pick yourself a bouquet.
I set off for home on a perfectly familiar route, thumbing through a book of self-guided walking tours that I'd picked up on a novel-research-flavoured whim. I discovered that I was on one (tour) already, or to be precise that I had just walked half a block past one, so I doubled back and followed it. This was not the problem; it brought me out, after a number of savoury miniature adventure courses, at a familiar place -- the sports field near the Oak Bay marina. I decided to cut up and back into the streets in order to get home faster. And that is when I stumbled into the vortex.
You could accuse me of just Getting Turned Around; of confusing what was on one side of the field with the other, even of having a stunningly bad sense of direction. I submit, not that these are untrue, but that they are inadequate; when I set out, I knew exactly where I was, and I remind you that I was carrying a book of walking tours. I've walked safely through Oak Bay before without any more trauma than an overdose of faux Tudor.
Things seemed perfectly sensible for a time, rainy and grim but interesting, until I came to a park I'd never seem before. Although I was tired, I thought I'd climb up into it -- it was one of those patches of Garry Oak meadow, with golden grass and steep bare rock wearing through the earth. I crested the hill and followed a little path down the other side. I could make out a bit of view through the trees, and thought "It must be misty in town today -- I can see a fog over Oak Bay."
Then I stepped into a clear patch, and the terrifying truth revealed itself. Oak Bay, Uplands, and UVic had all sunk under the ocean and been replaced by a quiet bay lined with surprisingly tranquil houses. Or else I had no idea where I was.
Vortex.
There's quite a friendly one in Fairfield that I don't mind walking through at all, though I always leave a penny at the gate and a penny when I leave, to let the Fairies know I want to come in and I want to go home. There's a nasty one in Uplands I wandered into one night looking for a bus stop. I had a map on that occasion too, even if it was only a bus map. I wish I could impress upon you that it doesn't matter. You could have a Global Positioning System positronically implanted in your brain, an army compass and a beacon in the sky at True North. The only way out of a vortex is to give up control, and follow the spiral through the middle and out the other side.
I won't get into the Long Walk Home, especially since it could have been a lot shorter if I'd remembered I could catch the bus in front of the Oak Bay Beach Hotel instead of taking the endless walk of doom through the golf course. I did pass the Snug, the OBBH's pub, where coincidentally the Peacock would take me for soup the next day, in solidarity with me and with all aimless wanderers, everywhere.
* * *
In related navigational news, I've been thinking, hey, why not ruin that last post by explaining it?
I told you I'm a critic, and when we don't have someone else's work to talk about, we simply devour ourselves.
I've felt a bit like a velvet painting of a crying clown this last little while, except my makeup isn't as good. I keep posting rabidly cheerful messages about my great future, trying to convince myself that I'm convincing everyone else that things are just Super, and that this concatenation of allsort luck, weird timing and unpredictable free will is Just What I Planned All Along.
I thought finally, what about trying to post on the other side of things? Not to give it undue importance, but to give it a place in the park with everything else. You can't get a good mood swing going without the up and the down.
I thought if I could do it well it wouldn't be just self-pitying ranting. (Ahem.) It would be a useful record of an emotion -- maybe not quite as useful as my Walking Tour to Victoria Vortices, but something I could look back to and be as glad to have written as the cheerful stuff.
Annnyway it may just be self-pitying ranting for all that, but thanks for participating in my Experiment. (Which was in no way a test of anyone else's reactions, I hasten to add -- just my own. You all have been lovely, though. Thank you. There wasn't anything I wanted you to do, or any particular reaction I was looking for. You are lovely all on your own.)
{rf}
no subject
(Anonymous) 2004-11-28 08:13 pm (UTC)(link)Bee
Ah, now I know the spot
(Anonymous) 2004-11-29 08:11 am (UTC)(link)The Uplands, on the other hand, I believe to be more of a black hole from which almost nothing escapes, but this is perhaps a nicety for physicists to explore and explain if they dare. I believe I mentioned my experience with the Garry Oak meadow/fen in the middle of that venerable neighbourhood. It is quite impossible that the area I was lost in could be as large as it was, so I know it defies normal space/time functionality.
Was pleased you encountered no anomalies on the way to my place yesterday, and hope you found few after leaving, though I note you made no return visit as advertised. Ah, well. Also had a fine time at The Snug. The problem with having a vehicle is one misses many of those vortices. I don't think they're quite strong enough to draw in a steel box filled with determined speed demons. Much better to walk whenever possible. Enjoy your meanders. You are never lost if you're not worried about your destination. And, if you're lucky, when you least expect it, small Scottish towns just might throw themselves in your path.
\i/
related ramblings
(Anonymous) 2004-11-29 09:08 am (UTC)(link)speaking of humanoid robots and positronic brains, I made the mistake of watching "The Bicentennial Man" last week. I knew it would probably be a mistake, and in my defense all I can say is, I have gone there first and now can warn you - don't, for the love of dog, if you have any respect for the original Asimov story, watch this film. (My apologies to the actors and everyone else concerned, but I can't help it. The story, which is classic Asimov, was butchered.)
...
I was going to mention that you can ask your local library branch to bring in for you anything from any of the other GVPL branches (well, except reference material I suppose) but then you wouldn't have had the ramble and we wouldn't be reading about it now, so I won't.
...
Coincidentally, while pulling books off the shelf today to put on hold for patrons (at the Oak Bay Branch, too), I came across Alain de Botton's "The Art of Travel" and remembered that I want to read it. Also Edmund White's "The Flaneur", which is (broadly) about rambling around Paris so if you haven't read it yet, you'd probably like it. (also Adam Gopnik's "Paris to the Moon" but I think you said you've read that already?)
...
Do you realize that 100 years from now, fans of yours who are making pilgrimages to Victoria will try to recreate your route through Oak Bay, and will have internet sites, not to mention conferences (or the dog) where they debate the exact path you took? future academic reputations could well be made or broken in this way.
...
And finally, it strikes me that you wrote "The only way out of a vortex is to give up control, and follow the spiral through the middle and out the other side" and that's a pretty good image for how to get through the confusing, wonky, frustrating bits of life, too.
musingly yours,
the Inland Sea