I did not leave the house yesterday. While I always enjoy a day like that now and then this was more of a concession to my recovery from surgery. I’m tempted to say it had benefits; that the level of discomfort in my abdomen decreased significantly. I have to remind myself that such self-reporting is not reliable. Do I really feel better or am I just saying that my level of discomfort is best? Am I fooling myself? If I have improved is it because I took it easy or just due to the passage of time? I don’t know and I’m not suggesting this as a guide to anyone else’s recovery; I’m just reporting my subjective experience.
I picked a good evening to stay home. The Mets were on ESPN so I could watch the game from the living room, where I usually spend my time. The TV there is not connected to cable, but to ROKU. I can watch ESPN but not SNY. Unfortunately the Mets lost to the Dodgers. The difference was defense.
I’m going to continue to be introspective and write about myself, not the outside world. When I do that I always hope that in exploring myself I discover, or help My Gentle Readers learn more about the outside world; to see the universe in a grain of sand. I’m the sand.
Bill Buckner died yesterday. I don’t usually comment on Facebook about celebrity deaths, the individual has to mean something to me personally. Bill did as he had a key part in one of the greatest moments in Met history. That’s why I initially wrote about him. But then I was more affected by what others were saying about him. Buckner was a mediocre ballplayer; his lifetime OPS was 100, dead average, which is not enough for a poor fielding first baseman. Yet I read a torrent of posts about how great he is. People were cherry picking stats that looked good because he played for a very long time, 22 seasons, to say that he was great. I found it very difficult to not responds to this as recognizing people that are exceptional is close to my heart.
The need to distinguish the mediocre, from the good, from the great, from the super great is built into my brain. These are distinctions that I constantly make and care about. It’s not just about baseball, it’s about everything. There’s a stupid game I play by myself when walking where there people. I keep track of how many women I pass that are attractive, and how many strikingly beautiful. What matters to me is not the raw number but the ratio between the two. If I were a better nerd I’d keep a record of this from day to day and come up with a definitive answer. I don’t. But from what I have done in my head I calculate that about one seventh of the attractive women are strikingly beautiful.
I do the same thing with music. I’m always bothered when even good artists are lionized as great through social interactions. I know very well that these things are subjective. My not liking an artist does not make them objectively bad. But I can see where an artist is in the fat part of the distribution curve, not that different from many other artists. When people treat those as great it bothers me. I’m OK with artists like St. Vincent whose music I dislike having a large following. I don’t like what she does, but she is not just one of the crowd.
It’s how I am with my relationships with people. My friends are great people but the strength of my connection varies and I’m always keenly aware of who is on the narrow part of the curve. That’s fluid to some degree, familiarity can breed contempt, but it can also strengthen bonds. Yet there are those that I rarely interact with that I think of as special. They are friends in far flung places that for some reason that defy analysis make me happy by existing.
It’s true of works of art, books, movies, and TV shows. I had books that listed every episode of Star Trek, Twilight Zone, and Doctor Who, and in each of them I graded each episode or in Doctor Who, serial. I have a need to classify, the bad, average, good, great, and truly special.
The one area I hated doing this was grading students. My judgements had real life impact on people and as I know that I’m a human and therefore prejudiced, I disliked doing so. The one exception is the exceptionally good students. They deserved to be recognized.
Do I make these distinctions more than others? I’m not sure how I would determine that. I know in music that there are people that are satisfied by an artist being competent, while I demand more. But how common is that viewpoint? I’m not sure how you’d even determine that. All I’m trying to do now is give you one more data point, myself.
Now to make breakfast. I hope it’s exceptional.
Wise Madness 