Feeling random

[sen_no_ongaku]

The way to navigate a crowd, or any cluttered field in constant motion, is to not let your eyes focus on any one thing. Instead, pay attention to how the negative space is changing, read the dx/dy of the emptiness between a million small things moving at random.
__

Something I love about intense competition, whether it be baseball, poker, or Soul Calibur, is the (very) occasional moment of zen, when the next 5-10 seconds somehow become incredibly obvious. "Obvious" isn't even the correct word -- it's as if the near future is, in a way, already the past, immutable. Changing it would be not so much impossible as inconceivable.

In particular, while playing baseball:

* as a catcher, knowing that the next pitch would be crushed as my pitcher was in his windup. I think I actually said, "Oh shit!" as the ball left his hand. It landed over a 30-foot-tall fence about 350 feet away to dead center field.

* as a catcher, calling for a head-high fastball, knowing with every fiber of my being that the batter would swing and miss.

* at the plate, knowing that the next pitch would be a curveball, and that I would line it to right field for a base hit.

* in the outfield, running to catch the ball during the pitcher's windup -- before the batter made contact -- and ending up in the right place to pull in a deep fly ball.
__

Anyway. If you got this far, I'm curious if other folks have experienced something similar.

Comments

[archaica.livejournal.com]

Is that the same as driving from Connecticut to Massachusetts but not remembering the intervening drive?

[archaica.livejournal.com]

(Actually I have tons of moments like that, where I usually have to break myself out of that cycle of pre-rememberance, because I have a bad feeling about what's about to happen)

[sen-no-ongaku.livejournal.com]

Are you asking this question seriously? I can't tell.

[archaica.livejournal.com]

No, not particularly. I was at first, but then I actually grokked what you were talking about.

[sen-no-ongaku.livejournal.com]

Ah, indeed.

I'm curious as to what you mean by "cycle of pre-rememberance".

[archaica.livejournal.com]

Well, I sometimes get these very very intense feelings of deja vu, where I'm absolutely certain that the present circumstances I am in will lead to a particular result, through some sort of, as I said, "pre-rememberance." It used to be that I would just go with that feeling, but now when I have it, I feel as though I can change it by acting differently or trying to figure out a different course for my actions to take.

[sen-no-ongaku.livejournal.com]

Huh. For me, deja vu feels like a kind of temporal dizzyness -- not about premonition per se, but that I've already experienced what is happening *right now*; the circumstance I'm getting at is more about a clear understanding of what's about to happen in the very near future.

What length of time do your pre-rememberances cover, generally?

[archaica.livejournal.com]

It's kind of fuzzy, really - it is the sense that "actions X that you are taking now will lead to result Y sometime in the near future." That could be anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 days in the future. It's kinda nebulous.

[archaica.livejournal.com]

It's kind of fuzzy, really - it is the sense that "actions X that you are taking now will lead to result Y sometime in the near future." That could be anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 days in the future. It's kinda nebulous.