The Runcible Blog

What was the first word you spoke today? Do you ever pay attention to that initial bit of wind tickling your vocal cords? Maybe it's more significant than we consider.

After thinking about it recently, I believe my first word is usually "hello." Sometimes I sing when I wake up or during my commute, but more often than not, my mornings are silent until I arrive at work. If I buy breakfast in the cafeteria, I might talk to Mark, who works there. Usually, though, I just say "hello" or "thank you." He says "have a nice day," and I say "you too." But by then, the first words have already passed. If I don't buy food first, then I say hello to whoever is in the office at the time. Most often, it's simply "hello" to start the day.

There are days when the first word doesn't come until late in the afternoon, if at all. That's when I'm most conscious of the first word. I sometimes imagine that my words are just bottled up inside, and that when I finally get around to speaking them, it'll be some kind of epic moment. Or I think that if I don't speak for a long time, the first word will come out cracked and sound alien. I might even forget how to make the sound I intend. But of course, it never happens that way. I say, "vegetarian burrito" or "rigatoni with sauce and cheese" or something similarly mundane. I might pause slightly and think, "hey, my voice still exists! It's the same as before, and nothing impeded its articulation."

It's really quite amazing how seamlessly we are able to transmute the voice of our constantly-buzzing thoughts into a physical manifestation as pressure nodes through air. No wonder speaking becomes such a trivial, mindless effort — when the capacity to excrete thoughts into the physical world arises so naturally, what prevents us from spouting off every half-thought that dribbles through the brain?

Part of the answer is that we need to make sense of the proto-thoughts before they're even able to be communicated. If you try to snatch the typical stream of thoughts in your brain and immediately speak them, they probably sound like gibberish, or at best, tangential and fragmented. We're just so good at congealing the stew of thoughts into communicable packets that we take for granted the computation involved and just how messy the thinking realm is compared to the speaking realm. Speaking is the act of temporarily decreasing the entropy of the mind, and as such, every speech increases the entropy elsewhere: in my mind and in yours, or through the air, knocking some far-off butterfly from its path and setting a typhoon in motion.

Often, the part of my brain that speaks lags behind the rest. I struggle to vocalize the stew of proto-thoughts. Either they seem incapable of ordering correctly, or too many thoughts appear at once. This can be very frustrating, especially when someone else is counting on my ability to communicate. If somebody asks why a program misbehaved, I might understand immediately and intuitively why, but putting the understanding to words takes much more effort. It's like preparing an airplane for landing — you can't just flip all of the switches and cut the engines at once; you've got to be meticulous to transition from the flying world to the ground world. Someone who doesn't practice landing enough is going to have a tough time putting the plane down smoothly, just as someone who speaks infrequently may have trouble expressing his stew of thoughts.

It's important to try not to be frivolous in thought or speech, and even though one's first daily utterance doesn't need to be something profound, I think that being aware of one word can help carry an awareness throughout the day. At the very least, recalling the first word could be an intriguing experiment of self-discovery. Do you wake up and swear at your alarm clock? Do you turn over and greet a lover? What is the intention behind the word? How present are you in that moment the word leaves your lips? That's the key: by being completely present in this one, first word, you might make a difference in someone's life. Then, be present during the next word, and during the next thought. Finally, treat every moment with the same respectful awareness until the effort falls away and the clarity of your speech matches the clarity of your thoughts.

Hey, I might try that!

In my fourth week since starting kickboxing, I decided to experience a new set of aches and pains by learning Jiu-jitsu and grappling. I've been going to the gym almost every day and have gotten used to the ebb and flow of different specific injuries (tendonitis in my foot, blisters and cuts on my feet, strained groin or hip), but wrestling is showing me an exciting and unpredictable level of hurt. Today, my lower back feels like one big bruise, and I'm walking around like I've got a peg-leg.

The range of skills I've been learning outweighs the immediate discomfort, though. In the general grappling class, we do falls, throws, takedowns, and free sparring, while the Jiu-jitsu classes teach specific submissions and footwork. The free sparring is the most exciting and frustrating part for me. As a beginner, I'm usually in a defensive mode where I have to squirm around to prevent the other guy from getting into a dominant position. I've found that I'm reasonably good at defending against people more knowledgeable or slightly bigger than I am, but when it comes time to capitalize on all of that squirming, I don't yet know what to do and end up losing any brief advantage I had. Jiu-jitsu emphasizes using your opponent's force against him, whether that force comes from a strike or from his own joints (most submissions are simply achieved by pulling a limb in an unnatural direction; by aligning it correctly, one needs hardly any force to do serious damage). Similarly, every position or attempted submission has a corresponding escape. Even if someone is sitting on top of you with his weight on your torso — probably the worst place for you to be — there are ways to turn the situation around and end up in a more neutral position. Or if you're being choked and the choker doesn't have quite the right position, he can struggle forever without succeeding because you can move your body to alleviate the pressure. That's why the mantra is "position before submission": Jiu-jitsu is like a chess game, in that if you put all of the pieces into the right places, the outcome plays itself out effortlessly. What makes Jiu-jitsu more complicated is that the entire time you're thinking about the body mechanics and trying to find the right opening for a submission, your opponent can be punching you in the face, pushing on your liver, or generally being very distracting.

The grappling classes seem to have more serious students than the level 1 kickboxing classes. You can take kickboxing only for the cardio workout or be content to work on technique by kicking a bag thousands of times, but grappling requires a bit more of an investment. The folks I've met in the grappling classes seem to know each other's names and are willing to help each other improve, while many people in the kickboxing classes might as well have headphones and blinders on. I'm sure that the fact that Jiu-jitsu involves close physical contact (like this [which is a good example of a "rear naked choke with hooks". she'll have a tough time getting out of that one...]) compels people to get to know one another, but it's an interesting social difference to note. Also, there are no women in the grappling classes and only a couple in the Jiu-jitsu classes (which are slightly more geared toward self-defense). From a self-defense perspective, that's a little disappointing because I would think that women, in particular, would want to know what to do if they're pinned by someone stronger. Kickboxing is pretty much useless when someone is sitting on top of you.

I'm still working on finding a good training schedule with a mixture of kickboxing technique, conditioning, and grappling. The classes complement each other well — kickboxers without ground fighting skills are likely to lose in a real fight because most fights end up on the ground, while Jiu-jitsu fighters who focus on wrestling have sloppy or weak punches and kicks. Of course, I still don't know whether or if I'll ever use these interesting skills in real life (it's funny that Jiu-jitsu instructors seem to have found themselves in lots of street fights over the years, while I've never been in such a situation and don't intend on looking for any bar brawls. go figure.), but my curiosity and fascination haven't waned yet. Plus, there are still parts of me that remain to be injured.

pet peeve: using the word "crash" as a euphemism for "sleep."

Substituting crash for sleep doesn't make the act of sleeping any hipper, contrary to popular usage. Why is it acceptable to say, "I partied so hard that I had to crash at my friend's house," while it would be awkward to say, "my grandfather usually crashes around 6pm, after eating dinner and watching the History Channel"? In the former case, there's at least some tenuous relationship to the original definition of "crash," but people also try to stretch the meaning to apply more to situations like the latter example. For instance, if I invite someone over for tea and crumpets, and my guest is too tired to go home, he'd be silly to say, "hey, dude, may I crash here?" There's no crashing in that situation. I'm sorry. Unless you come stumbling into the door, knocking things over and peeing on the floor, you're not crashing. Perhaps you're settling in for a long winter's nap, resting your eyes, having a bit of a doze, or paying a visit to winkin' blinkin' and nod. But you, sir, are not crashing.

Instead of worrying about using the euphemism tastefully, just don't use it at all. I don't want to hear about anyone crashing unless we're talking about airplanes or automobiles. While it may not be as edgy just to sleep, the word works perfectly well on its own.

In general, I'm irked when people hijack usurp commandeer words and misuse their alternate definitions. So, knock it off, you dig?

(tune in next time for the complete list of words that Dave does not speak because they make him feel uncomfortable to hear out loud)