Saturday, 11 May 2013

The Interpretative Matrix

"You will meet a tall dark stranger and go on a long voyage..."

What does that mean, eh? Does it mean you'll meet the love of your life and go on a honeymoon to Bali? Or does it mean you'll mean an ex-military nutjob who'll kidnap you and sell you into slavery in some hellish urban jungle, a thousand miles from home? Or does it just mean a dark-haired, height-gifted double glazing salesman will call, and then, independent of his visit, you'll end up doing a sponsored walk to the Outer Hebrides?

We interpret things based on the available evidence, which usually means our experience of things as they turn out, and we do it largely in retrospect.

That's me right now. I weighed on Tuesday, and was forcibly weighed on Wednesday at the cardiology appointment, and since then, my feet have not found their way back to the Nazi Scales. That means 1) I've been too busy to think about going all mentally neurotic about what I might weigh, and 2) I've been just busy enough to let me obsess about the question every time I pass a mirror, or a window, or a show of myself, or when I happen to drop a hand over my stomach...which I do with an appalling, Miss Haversham-like regularity.

Over the course of this week, I've thought "Hmm...lookin' gooood," and "Hmm...looking OK," AND "Hmm...where's that bulge come from?" and even, at one point, "Waaaaargh! What the Hell?!"

The mad thing is that while I've listed them in some sort of logical order here, I didn't experience them in that order, and I didn't just experience each of these once. Think about ten times.

The point I guess is that what is probably the same stomach has been interpreted by me on any number of occasions in entirely different ways. Who knows what the factual interpretation will be come Tuesday. At least today I managed both the walk and the biking. Spin the wheel, roll the dice, and let's find out, shall we?

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