Friday, February 18, 2005

Sense of Knowing

I love having epiphanies. Especially epiphanies about people. When you find out the reason why they are afraid of bunnies, or whether they act scary to keep people at a distance, or finding some clue as to how open minded they are. When I lived in the dorms, there was one guy Matt who lived at the end of the hall. He was very quiet, tall and carried his weight in a way that let everyone know not to mess with him. I stayed clear, until one night in the computer lab. I was typing a paper on Emily Dickinson and had a personal volume of her work on the desk. Matt sat down at the computer next to me and said "Oh, Emily Dickinson, I have that book." I stared at him. I stared at him over my glasses as they tilted down my knows accusingly. "Uh huh." I reply, knowingly. "What?" He asks, thinking he crossed some invisible poetic line of privacy. I then revealed how my entire perspective of him had changed. That I recognized the way he acted around other people, but really he was a big softy. He never denied it, and I take great pleasure in the fact that within a year Matt changed his major from Mechanical Engineering (straight A's btw) to English. Boo yeah! An epiphany I had somewhat recently occured with an older woman. I am quite aware of the difference in generational views, so whenever I was first around her I guarded what I said and how I acted. She was quite soft-spoken herself and seemed to shy a little bit around me too. Until I saw it. Very decorative, wrapping around her finger like a ring. It was a tattoo. And, it wasn't a tattoo that she got in her young days, but when she had grandkids. Her not wearing a ring over her tattoo that morning tore down so many walls for me. I immediately struck up a conversation and it has since led to many more wonderful ones. May you recognize any epiphanies walking by you.

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