elfination

I’m lonely. I crave companionship.

At the moment, I want to sit somewhere comfortable, listening to someone talk about … something. I want to listen to a talk about chemical engineering, or a thesis presentation about artificially-mutated nematodes, or maybe just go to a lecture for a class I’m not taking and listen to the professor. I want to be comfortable, and I want to be allowed to build molecular models while I do it, or draw a picture, or work on some beads, or… do something similarly creative with my hands. I want there to be a stream of potentially useful information (and let’s face it, I’m a packrat, just about anything is potentially useful in my book) around me, while I process my own thoughts - picking out useful pieces from the stream to file away, maybe asking questions if it’s VERY novel. I find that working with my hands while learning enables me to process information in ways that surprise even me.

In short… I want someone to read to me while I play with my toys.

Is it so wrong to have this desire, as an adult? Is it so unusual? I don’t want a TV to blast randomness at me, I want there to be some sort of more personal interaction… but the “interaction” needn’t be complex. I just want to be in the presence of someone who has information to give me.

I would be happy to listen to a discussion of lichens from New Zealand that are used to produce a blue wool dye. Or maybe the nuances of plasma physics. Or the evolution of CAULIFLOWER… I don’t care. Just… SOMETHING.

But it’s not polite to take up space in a classroom where you’re not supposed to be. It’s not polite to draw pictures while your professor talks. It’s rude to build models in a thesis discussion. YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO PAY ATTENTION! Oh, but I am… really… I am…

And so, I’m alone with my computer, which is something that I can interact with. Something that requires fine manual movements (typing)… but also something that requires 100% of my attention, something that won’t play FOR me… something that will only play WITH me. It has music, I’ve heard the songs before. It takes so much time to find something to listen to, that just the process of settling down and getting to that point is enough to knock me out of the mood…. and it’s not a PERSON, it’s a THING. Yes, it’s a source of constant novelty, but it only does that with direct input from me… and it has zero appreciation for whatever my manual dexterity might create during our interaction.

I don’t want to sit around watching someone else watch TV. I don’t want my head to be filled with dramatic garbage… I just want a story, from someone who cares whether I exist or not.

I miss Patton, my botany professor from Tulsa. He was often good for this, and he understood my need to create something with my hands while listening to him.

I’m lonely, and I see no real way out of it.