whatiwas

a couple days ago, i was chit-chatting with my grandfather about his own interpersonal communication style, noting his silence and humility.

"well," he said, shrugging as he wiped the kitchen counter, "i've always found that, the more a person speaks, the more likely they are to reveal what they don't know rather than what they do know. i try to stick to that philosophy."

i didn't think much of it, or the rest of the conversation, one of those little heart-to-hearts that leave me with food for thought but are, ultimately, typical for a person like me and a person like my grandfather, until the dyed redhead, now an only slightly less-attractive blonde, approached me at the bar and said something to the extent of "is that how things are going to be between us?"

i apologized amiably for more-or-less ignoring her and Heather in recent weeks. telling a half-truth (one probably closer to the real truth); that i had some of my own issues to work through and didn't really want to have them deal with them.

she looked at me, confused for a moment, then asked if i'd received what she'd written me.

equally perplexed, i said i hadn't.

she sat down and proceeded to talk about how, a month or so ago, she'd stumbled upon my journal (presumably my livejournal) and had read an entry from October . she said that my speculative commentary on the nature of her sex life offended her.

i apologized for her feeling offended, quick to qualify by saying that i didn't feel sorry for anything i'd written or thought, but she persisted, carrying on in insisting that i should somehow choose my words more wisely before putting them out on the internet for "the whole world to see" and disparaging me for speaking as such about someone who had tried to be "nice" to me and get to know me better.

(i'll be the first to admit the fallibility of my memory, but it tells me that she made no unusual attempt to be communicative with me in any way, leaving such a chore to Heather, which subsequently gave me the impression that she felt, at best, indifferent to me and, at worst, annoyed.)

i shrugged my shoulders and apologized again, and was about to feel genuinely sorry for thinking what i'd thought before she asserted my words were the product of some deep-seeded "misogynistic" attitude.

immediately, my grandfather's words popped into my head. i felt the smile pulling my lips taut and didn't fight the impulse. i related to her his words, attributing the philosophy to him, and instead asking her a simple question: "what do you think?"

not getting a straight answer, i began to lose my patience and pointed out that i'd made some inferences out of context about her behavior and had, apparently, been wrong. the same logical standard could exist for her attitude about my feelings toward women on the whole, if not her, based on her taking my words equally out of context. (forgive my grammar.)

for that matter, i wondered to myself whether or not i had actually named her by name and resolved to check when i got home (as anyone who follows the link will see, i don't). nonetheless, the only person who had any right to be confronting me about what i'd written would have been Heather, who was both explicitly named and depicted rather unfairly (although, i would argue, not inaccurately).

retrospectively, even that argument is ignoring the greater truth: that this is my fucking journal, inherently doomed to at least some small measure of subjectivity (one which i try painstakingly to illuminate). to put it in the plain, yet fantastically accurate words of Dr. Bill Cross: my discourse is not nirvana; my perceptions are that and nothing more.