Tablesaw!

I wake up slightly to the sound of the river passing over my head, water that would cause flooding and gridlock and agony for the city while I slept. My body is wrapped in sheets and quilts, and my eyes flick between a grey cloudy light and black cloudy dark, and my mind drowns in the sound of rain, and my soul is disgorged like an overbloated corpse from the sea of dreams. A sudden splash of impetus twists my body like a rag, and my arm falls onto the empty side of the bed, resting on something other than mattress. And for a less than a moment I feel a warm body, peaceful, her oblivion to the tempest outside offering me a sweet, second-hand solace, a warmth to fold myself into. Soon enough, though, the form defines itself: cold, small, rigid. It was my dictionary, left at my side during a recent bout of insomniac solving.

Thank you, Life, for interrupting my dreams with a taunting metaphor. No, really, it made my day.

My life isn't empty. But it's not as full as it could be. And as long as there's an empty space next to me, it'll be filled by whatever's handy, usually from my bookcase. A book has many things to offer me, of course, but what have I to offer it?

With my new computer and many new things around my house, I've been disinclined to continually update, which saddens me a bit. To give myself something to post for a while, I've decided to put up dome of the word puzzles that I've written for the Enigma, the publication of the National Puzzlers' League.

The puzzles that grace the pages of the Enigma are unique. The majority are called flats and involve a set of words or phrases that interrelate somehow. For example, if you change the fifth letter in the word "irrigate" you get the word "irritate;" this is called a fifth-letter change. (Simple enough, then.) These words form the answer, also called the "base", to the flat.

The kind of base forms the title of the puzzle. The text of the puzzle is written in verse. (I don't know why, they just are.) Each time a word from the base would be used in the verse, the baseword is replaced with a "cueword." Cuewords are usually easy to spot because they are in ALL CAPS and often clash with the rest of the verse. Using the irrigate/irritate example, a sentence might go "Whenever I have to ONE my crops, I get mad and TWOed." (Note the way that "irritate" was conjugated. This applies to making plurals as well).

To make things easier, the flat comes with an enumeration that tells one how long a word is and whether it's capitalized or not. The enumeration also includes tagging that will tell you which dictionaries to find words in. As a default, the NPL uses Merriam-Webster's Tenth Collegiate Dictionary, which can be found online at www.m-w.com.

More information on all of these topics can be find in the NPL Guide, and I'll give more information as it becomes necessary. For now, here's an easy puzzle to get you started, from last year's December issue:

DELETION (6)
At TreeForever, fake perennials
Built to last through bicentennials
Leave small bits of plastic offal
On the plant floor by the troughful.
Pity, then, the lonely runt who's
ONEing up by sweeping ONE TWOs.
=TABLESAW, West Hills, CA

(This flat is a deletion, which means that "ONE" is a six-letter word, and "TWO" is a five-letter word that can be found by removing one letter from "ONE". Both words are in MW's Tenth Edition, and neither is capitalized. Good luck!)

A body at rest tends to stay at rest; a body in motion tends to stay in motion.

That's how I feel about me and sexuality. I can usually identify myself in one of two states, very broadly and somewhat inappropriately named "sexual" and "asexual." When I'm in "asexual" mode, everyone around me seems pretty much equal. I talk to people I need to talk to when I need to talk to them. I usually stay focused on my own thoughts or on the abstract ideas; I like looking at buildings and nature. I also like listening to or watching the news. When I'm in my "sexual" mode, I am very aware of the bodies around me. I take special time to notice the form and face of every woman in my line of sight. Sometimes I study them and wonder who this person is as I drive by never to see her again. I find myself smiling a bit more when dealing with saleswomen. I listen to lots and lots of music.

What I find most interesting is that, for me, there isn't all that much difference between the two "modes." That is, each one offers benefits and drawbacks that balance so well that I don't usually mind which one I'm in. While being "asexual", I conserve a lot of mental and emotional energy and am often able to accomplish a lot more in a faster period of time. If I'm really stressed, even if I'm in a "sexual" period, I'll switch back to "asexual" to get everything done. I learn a lot, and get a lot of logical thinking done. Most of all, I usually remain very balanced, emotionally.

Of course, this doesn't offer me some of the thrills I get when "sexual". And I'm not talking about "sex", I'm talking about the brief feeling of elation from the scent of a beautiful girl I pass on the road, or the soft touch of a pretty cashier handing me my change. Yes, there are the pitfalls of heartbreak, but even before that, though, I find myself paying for these thrills with attention. Moments of elation are wonderful, but they can wreak havoc on a long train of thought. Swiveling my head to catch of the glimpse of the woman whose face obstinately remains concealed behind hair prevents me from realizing that I just passed the restaurant whose hours I wanted to check.

Overall, then, it all comes out equal. Dangerously surfing the sea of complex human relations for the rush of adrenaline or stoically passing over the undercurrents of sexual tension dedicating one's self to a longer journey, I find that I get out what I put in. And since I enjoy both outcomes, I tend to let my Fate and Whimsy shift me between the two.

I bring this up because I'm noticing a shift in the last few weeks from "asexual" to "sexual." First, I noticed that my flirting had kicked up a notch. Quite a few notches, actually. I didn't quite notice this at first. Most of my flirting is verbal, as is quite a lot of my interaction, and the verbal componenet of flirting, for me, is much like solving a cryptic crossword puzzle: listening to the conversation, testing out possible double meanings, shaping the words to fit my will, the will to compliment a women. So at first I thought I was just flexing my verbal muscles for a newly appreciative audience. But that wasn't all.

I started "noticing" women to a much greater extent. This probably would have gone unnoticed except that, at the time, I was still finishing up Museum Piece (Shoot, I still have to write about that). Remember how I mentioned that "asexual" mode can accomplish more linear thought? Well, my train of thought was getting noticeably disrupted by the women in my vicinity. No one particularly stunning, just women, around, making me wonder about them instead of wondering about how to finish my poem puzzle.

If I needed confirmation, I got it the other day when I felt my body noticeably change as I exchanged my chair at Bed Bath and Beyond with a very cute, petite girl whose eyes I held for longer than was necessary for a business transaction.

So, what now? Well, I enjoy it and get distracted more often. It's a fair trade-off like always. And maybe, this time, I'll even be able to capitalize on it and bring myself back into the dating world again.

This is, mostly, the tour I gave at my housewarming party, for all of you who were unfortunate enough to be unable to attend.

( Come on back )

Coming soon, in Part Two: my bed, my computer and the now very famous working toilet in a thrilling action sequence!

The housewarming party commenced at 6:00 p.m. when I set up my cheese board.

It ended at 2 a.m. when wjukknibs went home.

In between, there were about fifteen people, in various shifts, including my family, my landlords, some friends, and cruciverbalist and spacebanana, whom I met for the first time.

The house is warmed, as am I. I want the world to walk through my house and see how wonderful it is. Come on, I'm talking to you. Buy that plane ticket; hop into that boxcar; hotwire that car; pole that raft up the Mississippi; drop the ballast from that balloon; lace up those roller blades; initiate that countdown; hop, hop, hop to it on your pogo stick. Make your way here. You're welcome.

In going through my boxes of stuff, I occasionally find something of interest. I was struck by this essay from my Junior year of high school. Here it is, retyped from the hard copy and submitted for your curiosity.


Tablesaw
English III (H); Period 1
Feb 23, 1995

"But What About Tablesaw?"

One of my friends at school told me about a Psychology class that she was in. The class was discussing popularity; the idea being expressed was that in order to be popular, one must conform to the desires of peers. One student then raised his hand and asked, "But what about Tablesaw? He's popular and he does whatever the hell he wants."

I never considered myself a popular person. According to Webster's, popularity is the state or quality of being "commonly liked or approved." In my experience, popularity has always been gauged by TV; the more sitcomesque one's life was, the more popular he was. I was never captain of any team; I didn't really like sports at all. My life in general was decisively less than spectacular. Accordingly, my years in grade school were spent out of popularity.

In the fifth grade, after moving to a new school and with adolescence raging towards me, I gained acceptance into my Mecca, and began my pilgrimage. First, I tried being really smart. I was resented after that. I tried making fun of the teacher after that. It worked for a while, but whenever I stopped, my popularity drained away. As a last resort, I went punk. The details of that experience make me shudder. I was left after seventh grade with only one year in which to achieve the golden mitre of popularity before my graduation.

However, during the summer I took part in a Pre-College program for gifted students. I'm not quite sure what happened, but I made friends there faster than I had in my entire life up until then. During those three weeks I didn't have to change myself to fit any norm; everyone there was so extraordinarily different that there was no norm. I was, as everyone else seemed to be, popular.

My experience left me as high as a kite, and when I returned to class in September, I realized that I cared about my classmates' opinions of me about as much as I cared about navel lint. I tossed conventionality to the winds and for that year I did what I wanted to do.

When I started high school, I found, to my dismay, that the people there weren't incredibly different from those in grade school. But after a few months, I discovered, to my relief, that I was not alone. There were others who felt the same way that I did about being accepted. (There weren't many of them, but they were there.) I developed friendships with these people, the only real friendships I have ever had with my classmates.

But during the three years in which I have coexisted with my high school, my aversion to popularity has had a paradoxical side effect. Like the fool in a court of kings, I have become popular. Admittedly, my name is not synonymous with fame, but as shown by the anecdote that launched this essay, I am considered by many to be popular. I may never be "commonly liked or accepted," but I am respected as being unique. And in a school where almost everyone can be classified as belonging to one stereotype or another, the question must be asked: "But what about Tablesaw?"

I'm taking a break from putting things into boxes. Not only because I'm a bit tired and need a breather, but also because a little while ago, I took a few things out of boxes.

I have a box that I'm keeping for a friend. It's a box of evidence of a relationship. I've had it for years now, and I've never really looked at it, but today, while I was evaluating what, from my life, to keep and what to discard, I was drawn to the small cardboard box of mementos. I flipped through. All in all there wasn't much, but there was a large stack of communiques of various types, neatly stacked.

I didn't read the emails. I didn't want to or need to. I was already struck with how meticulously clean they were. They didn't seem to be folded or crumpled or to show any other marks of mishandling. They were pristine except for occasional stray notes, doodles, and periodic underlining of the text. It surprised me that my friends had been able to organize these aspects of his life so delicately, ultimately making it possible, then, to put it all into a single box to be given to someone else for an indefinite period of time.

I simply don't function like that. It's hard enough for me to keep my financial information in the same place where I could be expected to find it within five minutes. But I couldn't decide to be jealous of my friend's ability or glad that I lacked it. On the one hand, having that information organized, one can always refer back to something. On the other hand, always having the information at hand means, in a physical, or perhaps geographical, way, being unable to forget. There's always something there to remind you.

I have mementos from past relationships. A few are on display, like the only picture I have of a girl from Montana, but most are hidden behind, around, below, within the maze of information that is around me at all times. And it's times like this, when I'm moving or cleaning or otherwise sifting all of my possessions, that these physical memories, stored outside of my brain, come back through my fingertips and speak.

Somewhere in that room, or possibly in boxes somewhere that I packed months ago, there is a picture of an old ex-girlfriend, exer than Ex. She's in high school, getting ready for, I think, Homecoming, wearing a green dress and looking lovely despite an obvious weariness in her eyes with the process of having her parents photograph her before the dance. Attached to it is a photograph taken of the two of us in Georgetown on some night out with a group of friends. I'm wearing a winter coat and my insulated arms hold her close; her black leather (faux-leather?) jacket wraps around my arms as well, and the dark clothing with the night flash makes her clear face luminous beneath mine. And when I find it, as I always do, I'll hold it in my hand and remember when I held her in my arms, when I fell in love, when we studied together and I couldn't stop staring at her pale shoulder, off of which her shirt had slipped, when we first kissed, sitting on a bench on the Washington Mall, when I cried, when she embarrassed herself and my friend in front of me while drunk, when she lied to me. And when I find it, as I always do, I'll ask myself whether I should simply let it fall away from me, into a dustbin and out of my life. And when I find it, as I always do, I will place it carefully into whichever pile I've designated for things that I'm not sure what to do with, where it will be covered by stray notes, or postcards, or newspaper clippings until I find it again.

A browser crash has saved you from reading about the trouble I had getting to the house wherein was held the bimonthly meeting of the Los Angeles members of the National Puzzlers' League. Of the lost text I wrote, here's what it's important to know:

• I don't remember things like teams and order exactly, so bear with me.
  
• There was lots and lots of traffic getting to Conundrum's house near LAX.
  
• NPL members use pseudonyms called Noms that we use in conversation and that I shall use in this report.
  
• The first game was written by Music Man and was a "Stage II" game, named after the eighties board game of the same name.

( Stage II, by Music Man )

( Business Meeting and LaConic '05. )

( The Case of the Heptaphobic Hooligan, by Bluff )

( Make Your Own Treasure Hunt, by everyone )

( Puzzle from NoCal whose name I forgot by Iolanthe, Wrybosh and someone else who I forgot )

( The answers )

MonNYTX: 3:40. During the on-line NPL chat, there was much time comparison. I did adequately, considering that some solvers finished it in 2:15.

I didn't sleep well today. Here's the only bit I remember clearly. Keep in mind that it was printed in (a magazine?) and I was actually reading it in my dream. I can't remember the names of the boy and the girl, so those two are bracketed.

[Boy] was in the tower. He was having a meet cute with [girl] during a band nice. They started practicing together, he on his violin, she on her trombone; but eventually they moved on to others and the tower became a hurricane of noise. veek walked in on it accidentally, and had to play the role of Therese, who is easily duped by the couple. She threw [boy] a line, and he missed it. Threw two more before he finally caught on. Soon, he and [girl] were gigglingly bemusing veek, while she amusedly let them.

The sat for hours talking about their lives. "I've played at least three instruments for as long as I can remember." "Me too!"

They made beautiful music together.

Recently, I've been thinking about the Northridge Earthquake. It's not because there was a very minor tremor just a few hours ago, it's because of another LiveJournaler, whom I am reluctant to name directly.

This person has a major crisis going on in her life, leading to much angst, quite a lot of it centering around whether or not she's doing the best thing or acting in the appropriate way. I don't know her very well (for values of "very well" equal to "at all other than what I've read, really"), so I'm reluctant to say anything directly, but I'm still thinking about it.

I can relate to a lot of what she writes about, not so much the specifics, as the instincts and reactions to crisis. Whenever a major crisis happens, my instinct is usually to get out of the way. Whenever an argument arose in the house, I just walked out and into my room, letting the others sort it out. The first time I consciously noticed was when my mother had a cancer scare, and I spent days and days in my room reconstructing every jigsaw puzzle I had.

But it's one thing to say, "Everyone reacts differently to a crisis," and quite another to see it in action.

( January 17, 1994 )

The fact is that people don't always bind together in a crisis. They do if they need to, of course. Sometimes immediate survival depends on it, but most of the time, people bind together because that's what they feel they need to do, instinctively. They try to connect with everyone, and quite a number of people also say, "no thanks, I'm fine, thank you for asking," and just move them along. Major crises don't bring people together, they just make everyone crazy at the same time instead of spread out randomly.

When a crisis is only happening to yourself, and all of your friends are in a non-crisis mode, it's easy to feel like an aberration. And when someone else is responding to an entirely different crisis, it sometimes seems even more alienating. But when everyone is acting like a temporary lunatic and everyone knows the reason why, it's simpler to see that your own personal insanity is, if not normal, expected.

On the day of the quake, I saw a couple try to bribe the man at the 7-11 to get extra bottled water. Everyone was lined up outside the store and the manager stood at the door taking the orders and keeping the money while to helpers searched the aisles and back rooms to find supplies. Certain things were limited, though, water, ice, batteries and food to a certain extent. (I assume the magazines had no limit.) But really, no one in line was upset at this couple. That's just how these people react.

So whenever something really awful happens, I try to just let it happen. Trying to change the way I react just leads to inaction. And locking myself in a room and mastering Tetris eventually helps more than trying to be out and about while also being absolutely miserable in addition to everything else.

Addendum: While trying to find photographs of the damage to Topanga Plaza, I found "Twenty-One, Counting Up" by Harry Turtledove. Three months between me and the protagonist made this an eerie read.