Woke up around 9:30 after a strange jetlagged night where I got up and did quantum and got to sleep around 4. Shook my head with a bit of exhaustion, but a breakfast and shower did wonders.
Working a bit on quantum homework, got distracted by some wikipedia articles on Lie algebras (finally I know what those are!) and algebraic structures in general. Then I went to make my move against Jude on chess.com and ended up reading an article about Kasparov’s take on DeepMind’s AlphaZero vs. Stockfish. He was really insightful–I was pleasantly surprised by the depth and computational sophistication of his analysis. So I read the wikipedia on Kasparov.
Went down and made myself some delicious toasted tortillas, chatted with Giacomo and his friend from Finland. I broached the idea of maybe spending some of the two weeks after my rental contract expires and before my final exam sharing his room–I knew Abhi had done the same for a couple days. He immediately invited me in for the whole period (whaaaaa?!) Wow. That’s awesome. I’ll probably still check with Daniel and Alexis to spread the load, but it looks like I’m set.
Walked to the gym, not ran, because I had to finish a carrot. Man, those things take forever to chew! Got some good hooping in–in the beginning of the first game I played really well against mediocre defense, scored a lot of points. Played about 90 minutes and then rolled my ankle minorly–I was pretty tired so I took it as a signal to bail, do a bit of weights, and then get home.
Did more quantum work against a surge of frustration with my inability to stuff basic linear algebra background far enough up my craw to stick. Soon it was time to meet Muriel for dinner :) I took a 30 minute nap first, which was great.
Met Muriel at the Polibahn and we decided to hit a Bierhalle for a tasty dinner. Muriel was in a good mood–she’d just finished her last paper, and we fell to chatting (in English, which was fine by me for this relaxing Friday evening).
We walked a bit looking for a mythological Bierhalle Muriel had heard was good, then returned to the places we’d started at. We checked out a place where the music was really loud, bailed. Ended up at the Rheinfelder Bierhalle where I’d gone with Julie and Joan. Ordered some beers and after a long menu analysis with some translation decided to both get the Cordon Bleu (with minestrone and salad!) What a feast! We talked about our breaks, plans for the near future, more about dystopian technology and Black Mirror, about some other movies and books. The conversation was vibrant so Muriel led two more Series A rounds of beer (only 2.5 dl though :P). After we’d finished the last of these, Muriel led the way to a bar which was really cool, lovely atmosphere, a candlelit expanse with just the right volume of music to damp out conversation outside a yardstick’s radius. Somehow the conversation turned to narratives and tropes, and my quest for a new personal character. The verdict we arrived at was something like that I should bounce between personal characters as my infinite-game self saw fit, never taking any of them too seriously, because the gap between any character and the “multiple shades” of my base-reality self would be too wide.
Why is this post called “Figurative Fencing Match”? It’s because this evening was a superposition date non-date, and for the first time in my life I was comfortable with that. The metaphor that allowed me to do away with my binary relationship classification fixation, I owe to my mom, and its subtleties I owe to the Bellingham Bay Fencing Association. In fencing, the interaction between the duellers is characterized in large part by their relative distance. First distance is close enough to score a touch on the hand and forearm; second distance is close enough to score points on the bicep and knee, and third distance is torso, head and feet.
I dismiss the disturbing analogy with the commonly used, but simplified, misogynistic, and generally annoying first, second, third base model. In fencing, unlike baseball, forward and backward motion through the distances is possible, and distance approximately correlates to the vulnerability of the fencers to each other. Strangers stand outside first distance–outside of a daring and doomed fleche, they are mutually invulnerable. Stepping into First distance demands a response from the sparring partner in defense of their forearm. It is this step, the opening of the first vulnerability, that is the heart of fencing, just as the ante, the vulnerability laid down in advance of information, is the heart of poker.
The response triggers a counterresponse, and so on. The interaction moves smoothly back and forth through the distances and the vulnerability levels–moving from first distance directly to third makes you more vulnerable than your sparring partner (like if you ask someone out in a weird context without knowing them well).The moves and responses can be parries (~= friendzoning moves) counterattacks (~= upping the mutual vulnerability), even invitation (inducing vulnerability in the hope of provoking attack).
The game is far too complex to plan out–a fencer who thinks he can follow a preplanned advance-parry-disengage-advance-lunge sequence will quickly founder on the shoals of unforeseen counterresponses. Instead, a fencer must react opportunistically, deciding what she is willing to expose in order to target her sparring partner’s vulnerabilities, or what is overexposed and needs defending.
Ok, you object, fencing is like baseball in that it is zero-sum and adversarial. Fair. But a fencing match is not about what happens when a touch is scored and the light comes on. It’s about what happens in the bustling, evolving, tentative and delicate superposition of action and intention in between. In this sense, the game is not zero-sum at all. Each player is trying to make things as interesting as possible without getting hit (might be a good life goal). To this end, vulnerabilities are deliberately exposed to provoke the sparring partner to expose their own in attacking it. As the duellists learn each other’s patterns, the thought process and moves become ever more complex, until either a touch is scored, or one player backs out beyond first distance and breaks off the flurry.
This model, for me, fits a lot better than the dancing metaphor. A dance is ambiguous and relatively structureless (lacks a notion of distance or vulnerability, or else these are (happily) obscured by agreed upon dancing convention). The most important takeaways of Figurative Fencing, for me, are these:
- Richness of interaction
- Delicate balance between exposure and opportunity
- Small invitations and initial attacks to first distance are both the necessary, beating heart of the sparring, and by design, not particularly dangerous or significant in themselves (as the ante in poker is small).
The date/not-a-date zone is comfortable, because it is barely first distance. It is rich and complicated, because of the balance that must be maintained. It is exciting, because of the flurry of opportunistic responses hesitating on the tip of the foil.
Aaaanyway, I probably should move this long verbose idea to my actual blog (not my journal!). But lemme finish the story! I try a simple outer second distance gambit of undisclosed nature, get an ambiguous response, am so happy with my shy patient optimizer self for the boldness that I step back to outer first distance with a smile.
Walk Muriel to the railway station, get a little tandem singing in on the way. Exchange hugs and tentative intention to meet again, then I start walking up the escalator. A few seconds drift through the tunnel, and I pause in stride and turn my head.
Heheheheheheheheheheheheheeheehehe
No amount of complex analysis could allay my grin–I’d timed a perfect Pride and Prejudice-style lookback! Muriel was stepping at the very moment through the train doors and turned her head up towards the elevator as she stepped.
With that, I smiled and sung and laughed my way back to Culmann. There I met Anna just in time for a kitchen cleaning. We destroyed the task with some energy, landed a high five, and headed to 2+, where I adjourned for a long journal writing session.