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...

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.