On Meeting People Twice

Most people would agree that they do not stay the same. As all live and circumstance in which we live are in a constant state of change (whether we are highly aware of it or not), meeting people at one point in time, may be entirely different to meeting them at another.

I had an experience where this happened last year. I met someone rather serendipitously , almost four years after I first met them. Not only had they changed (particularly their appearance), so had their circumstances. So had I changed, in both these ways too.

The first meeting was at a party, with the theme of black and white. He was dress as a pirate, and I looked like I was meant for a American marching band.

The point of our connexion that night was not drinking. He had just given up for good, and I was on a self-imposed twelve-week hiatus.

We sat on the floor in a room away from the main party for a while. I don't remember what we talked about, but I remember being impressed. I also remember wishing that he was not already seeing a distant friend.

The Second connexion came through university. We ended up in the same class. At first, I didn't release it was the same person. He was not a pirate. He did not have a septum piercing anymore. He had just shaved his head. Our original proclivity for conversation still existed, despite the time and the changes, yet it was if I was meeting someone entirely new.

Alistair

Alistair, I don't know how to spell your name, Alisdair.
Alistair, you're lying shirtless on a fold-out couch and I only just meet you a moment ago -
Sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea. It had cinnamon and peppermint as its flavours.
And I reckon, it was your talk of taking down the wall,
between the kitchen, and the living room, that got me really thinking.
I kept smiling in your direction, because that's the way I tread ground with new persons -
Softly-softly, with men particularly.
You're my friends new house-mate. Sydney once knew your name, but now Melbourne - 
A year since moving. Construction the object of your study.
I try to approach new ways of asking of you, trying to avoid the same old questions.
You're tired, you're hungover, we talk about cities and solar power.

Trevor

His face folds into pensive creases. He is thinking, he is thinking. Is he even thinking of the question that remains unanswered?

"I can't really describe my job" He says, finally. "I sort of do a bit of everything in this office, research, policy..." He trailed off.

I seem to have the same conversations these days.
What do you do, where are you going, where have you been? All questions run end to end. All seem to have similar answers when they are asked, but perhaps that's because I continue to ask similar people.

University students seem to be the primary fodder of thought at the moment, as life revolves infinitum between class-home-homework-sleep-work-class.

I end up agreeing with him in a sense: I can't really describe what one of my jobs is either.

"It's sort of having conversations with people, employing basic psychology a lot of the time, and facilitating the ways in which they can work themselves." I say, lines I have rehearsed now, because the same questions are being asked of me.

Kelly

She wrote my name at the top of the page of her diary, next to the day and the date. 

The conversation had begun in the way which I have been seeking to create them myself, but she was the creator. 

She asked me, somewhat bluntly, in the slow-syllable way she spoke, what my name was. 

Drawing a border around the word she'd written, she then asked what I was doing here. 

It was a strange way to phrase a banal question. Her straggly, mouse-coloured bun nodded with her as she listen to me explain my orientation within university. 

She started a bachelor with a major in ecological major - a stream which was such down within a year, due to lack of interest.

I am taking a cultural-studies major, something that has also been consigned to the flames of history. It's all 'specialisations' now; psychology, journalism, digital media, multimedia.

The 'Aims & Objectives' paragraph on the Bachelor of Arts website reads 

'The Bachelor of Arts degree is designed to produce graduates who are able to contribute effectively and professionally to a dynamic global economy'

She traces another line around my name in her diary as we share a silence.

Tyron

Tyron is a double-bass player. He plays with various bands and artists. As it stands, he's performed at 5 gigs in the last 3 days, 3 just today. 

Tonight it's with The ReChords, at The Gem, a pub with the sympathy for Elvis adornments and wooden fixtures.

Tyron looks sheepish as he stands with a friend of mine and I, outside smoking in the new dark.

"I'm sorry, I don't think I remember your name" he says.

The buxom lady depicted on his forearm flexes as he extents his hand.

"Oh no", I say, "I don't think we have ever exchanged names! I'm Monique."

He looks relieved.

"Good to meet you."

On Trying to Meet People

There is a distinct mood that comes over you when you try to meet people. I have some to notice this when I decided to begin writing about the people I meet. The thing is, when you focus on something, you begin to see the subtleties.
The subtleties that are now screamingly apparent, is the fact that in my normal operations of life, I don't come to meet a lot of people. Perhaps I interact with some, but in terms of proper 'meeting', there are very few.

At the risk of have a rather bare-bones blog about the people that I meet, I came to realise as I started it, that I was going to have to challenge myself to actually go out and meet people instead of sitting in the proverbial corner.

I have never been much of a 'meeter'. I've always been more on the shy-side of socially inept. Once when I was working at a restaurant when I was 18, it took me three weeks to say a single word (more than Hello) to a new chef (although, that may have been because I  found him attractive).

Deciding to try to meet more people presents more questions and problems:

What is actually 'meeting'? Is it having a conversation or is it talking to someone for long enough/in a way in which you end up exchanging names? 

Have you still not met someone if you spend an entire partying discussing with someone about the philosophical complexity of whale song but don't get their name?

The reverse is a problem too. Have you really met someone if you just get introduced and don't back that up with further interaction?

And, trying to meet people makes things a bit like a chore in the mind. It's a bit forced, a bit orchestrated. While I was out last night, i thought 'I should probably try to meet someone so I can write about it.' But to actually do that it more complicated than you think. 

You can't just strike up a conversation with anyone. Or can you? I might try that one today...

On Shyness and Meeting People

I used to be very shy. I took me a long time to say hello to anyone if I was not introduced. When I was introduced, I then didn't say much.
I was that child that hid behind her mothers legs. As I got older, I suppose my shyness became somewhat tamed. I remained though, lurking, and I admired people that made it all look so easy.

On the eve of beginning at film school when I finished high school and turned 18, I cried rivers in fear of having to meet people and make new friends. But, as it came to pass, through film school, I met someone that changed my life for ever, particularly in my approach to meeting people.

We are still friends to this day. Through our growing bond, I learned to adapt some of her qualities when it came to interaction with new people. If I could distill it to a brisk sentence of set of rules for all shy people to apply, I suppose it would be something like this:
1) Treat everyone the same
2) Pretend like you have known them your entire life

If you suspend all thought for just a moment, and see a human for what it is, just another person, before you judge what or who they might be, it is easy to say 'hello' to them.

Humans have such amazing abilities to create walls, which we interpret and respond to. What I am referring to are the semiotic codes that we read from people and make judgments from. Clothing, vernacular, accessories, body language, tone, facial expression and so forth all mediate our experience of people. Through interpreting these codes, we then also place our own experiences and interpretations of what that person will  be like from the messages they are sending.

If for a moment we can be acutely conscious of these restrictions, we can then suspend them, and just see a person as a human. This distinction makes the initial ice-breaking moment much more easy to initiate.

I'm still not a specialist at meeting people. I still get scared, stay quiet and hid, but sometimes, I can transcend that, and it's all a character building experience.

Meit

Meit was pink and green and dancing. He moved amongst other rainbowed, flexing bodies, shimmering in the midday. 

There was a crowd; people on their lunch times pausing to watch the spectacle. They danced in circles, each taking a turn in the middle, singing the Hindi words over the top of thudding pop music. 

"This is Holi" Meit told me, when I asked what it was all about. 

"Tell me the story!" I tried to be heard over the music.

 "You want to know what it is about?"he asked grinning. "Yes!"

Meit dipped his fingers into powered dye of deep-mulberry pink and dusted my cheeks. "This is what it's about."

And he was off again, writhing to the middle of the throng. Specks of power fell from my face, settling to blush my chest as I smiled. I looked back to the watchers and the distance they granted those freed in celebration. I wore the colours for the rest of the day.

John

I met John. This was the first time I have really gone out of my way to approach someone outside of class to get to know them. I saw him walking down the platform with the sun in his eyes. I had my shoes off, my headphones on; feet communing with the bitumen surface, Radiohead softly filling my head.

I'm more often than not, one to wait for people to come to me. Not out of any elitism (although, sometimes I tell myself it's so) but more out of fear; fear of rejection, of the unknown, I suppose.

John is in my philosophy seminar. We'd exchanged some ideas that afternoon across the classroom, and I wondered further about some of his assertions. 

He talked about economic approaches and how they could be reconciled within a more humanistic philosophical model; something with a real-world basis.

I slipped my shoes back on and turned off my music, walking over.

"Hi" I said.

The train came and we'd already covered where I lived, and that no, I wasn't Canadian (he picked up on the strange fact that I have a habit of elongating my 'ere' - as in 'here' and 'where' - sounds).  Within minutes we were getting existential, both trying to comprehend some of the concepts which had been presented to us that afternoon.

The conversation oscillated between commonalities and lofty rhetorical questions of reductionism, Hegel, dialectical patterns and the world of becoming.

He's from New Zealand, although the accent has been beaten out of him, by people always asking him to 'say things'. 

He 'sells alcohol to people'; a dry characterisation of a job within our society which made me smile. No dressing it up with 'I'm a barman.' Straight to the essence of the matter: implying  his uncomfortable status of the larger implications of his employment.

He lives in Airport West so we took the same train that snaked slowly through the city loop, out towards North Melbourne, were I was to get off. As I made to do so, our conversation closing with the knowledge that it would most likely continue at our next class; he shook my hand, and I smiled.

"Enjoy." I said.