Searching for words...

[andygates]

I open a my tape-safe and need tape 162: it's in week three, so it should be just here. Ah, here it is, lovely.

I'm listening to a blues track and we all know how this riff goes, and there it is, ba-dum-de-dum. Lovely.

I'm in the pool and the T-bar comes up: two strokes to the end and stretch, and yes, there's the lip, grab and kick off.

There's a very specific feeling of comfortable satisfaction about expecting a thing to be just so and then finding that it is, as you hoped, just so. Now, there are words like schadenfreude and phrases like l'esprit d'escalier to describe other specific feelings, so there must be one for this. But you know, I'm damned if I can think of it. It's not smug, that's got the flavour of zero-sum about it; it's not content, that's too passive. I'm stumped and it's been torturing me for days.

...and unrelatedly, we have a new user called Stale Rygh. How would you pronounce it? "Stale Urgh" doesn't seem likely; "Stahler Regch" is more fun but probably just as bogus.

Comments

[flitljm.livejournal.com]

Don't have an answer, but recognise the feeling of 'rightness', which also has a flavour of appreciating your own competency in your environment.

There's a conversely startled feeling when a thing not being exactly where it should be. The light switch is not where it ought to be. You'd thought there was another step there but it's already the bottom of the stairs.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

It's called "flow".

When you come we're going to play swim golf.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

It's very nearly flow.

Swim golf? How does that work?

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Your "handicap" is made up of adding the number of strokes to the number of seconds it takes you to swim a lap. It's supposed to be 50m.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

50m? Like the Edinburgh pool, you mean? I'll bring my swimmies! But you've only explained the handicap (I'm guessing mine at 62 and yours at more like 38)... how does the game work?

On a little lunchtime reflection, it is flow: more precisely, it's the realisation that you're in a state of flow. And that means we're in Tao territory, so there's got to be a word for it. There just must be!

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

38?!

I don't think so. I'm about to go and find out.

The game is to decrease your handicap.

[fox-uk.livejournal.com]

Sounds a bit like being zoned without being IN the zone.

Lovely word, zone. Even if it doesn't rhyme with scone.

You could always make up words. It's sounds like the freedom you achieve from having everything exactly where it should be, everything ballanced around you, so how about equiliberated?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Zoned in the scone zone. Wasn't that a direct-to-video Culinary Sci-Fi classic from '82?

[fox-uk.livejournal.com]

You're thinking of "Night of the Living Bread"

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I'd probably go for 'Sta-layh Roog' and it'd undoubtedly be wrong.

I know the feeling you mean. There's probably a word for it in German.

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

There's probably a word for it in German.

And if there's not, you can knock one together in your shed.

[skean.livejournal.com]

One of the translations for "satisifed" is "zufrieden gestellt".

"zufrieden" on its own can mean satisfied as well, so the "gestellt" is adding something to it. Its the past participle of "stellen", to set, so I rekcon it could be rendered as "set in(to) a satisfied state"

Gods, I need a nap. Then some coffee. An another nap.

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

...and unrelatedly, we have a new user called Stale Rygh. How would you pronounce it?

"Stale Rye." Not to be confused with his cousin, Dayold Pumpernickel.

Re: Gods, I need a nap. Then some coffee. An another nap.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

He works on the Helpdesk.

[ehutch.livejournal.com]

Tumble and then you will really be in the moment! Running yesterday morning in the pouring rain and mud did if for me and then again today doing TI in the pool and feeling the clean surge with each stroke. Never again will I bludgen up and down the pool... I rather suspect that hill work (or should that be hell work) on the bike tomorrow will not give me the feeling of zen one-ness.

BTW swim golf is a TI thingy - great fun and you can borrow the book.

[skean.livejournal.com]

How did you learn to tumble - self taught or did you get someone to point you? Its my project for this winter but I'm making little progress....

[flitljm.livejournal.com]

Hang on, this is a concept in the real world? I thought it was just D&D.

[skean.livejournal.com]

It comes in very useful for Triathlon you see. Speeds you up if you can do it well. You must have seen it on TV? Olympics maybe?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Thus far, an attempt to tumble puts me in a weird orientation, not in the moment! I'll have to scour the TI book though.

Hill work is good for you. It builds both quads and character. And nobody can hear you swear, so you can curse and spit your way uphill and nobody will be the wiser.