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raybearmiss
v. missed, miss·ing, miss·es
v. tr.
1. To fail to hit, reach, catch, meet, or otherwise make contact with.
I was batting .500 this weekend in connecting with people via phone or person. I managed to find my phone half the time it rang, though other times it was left in closed bedrooms or at worse, between a car door and the seat, dangerously close to the three-inch puddle of rain water near the curb. I only hid from the phone once or twice and I even proactively made some phone calls. I did not call my mother, nor did I e-mail or regular mail her anything. My in-person interactions had slightly better averages than my phone, though there were certainly moments of failing to reach, catch, or meet people's attentions or matching people's energies either because of wildly different emotional or sober states.
2. To fail to perceive, understand, or experience: completely missed the point of the film
I don't understand my own reactions and responses to situations sometimes. I don't so much fear someone asking me how am I doing as why am I doing the way I am if I don't have a neat explanation. Though shrugging my shoulders and saying fine with a slightly puzzled look on my face seems to be evading or hiding, especially coming someone so analyzing as myself, more often than not it's just expressing what I'm feeling -- missing the point of what's going on around me. I'm not experiencing perhaps the way I anticipated and so now I must regroup. I'm the king of ambivalence -- not in anyway miserable, though not necessarily enjoying myself at all. It's a vegetated state that occasionally one intentionally induces through such mediums as television and video games and bars and reading mediocre men's magazines. I slip into this phase occasionally on weekends, in part because I so look forward to the large stretches of time but then suddenly I worry of my own inability to fill them. This is never actually a problem. Ever. It's impossible to miss the point of weekends.
3. To fail to accomplish, achieve, or attain (a goal).
I missed being a wunderkind. At the ripe old age of nearly-26 it's impossible for anything I accomplish to get the extra commentary of "he's so young and brilliant and prodigy material". I'm mostly okay with this. Okay, I guess there are a few things that could happen at this age that might slide into this category, but the likelihood of me winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in the next year or so is approximately negative thirteen billion-to-one. Now that I've let these dreams go of early achievement, perhaps I can get down to the business of finding a livelihood I actually enjoy.
4. To fail to attend or perform: never missed a day of work.
I missed a cook-out this weekend. I missed watching the new episode of While You Were Out. I missed an apartment-warming party on Saturday evening of two somewhat long-lost friends. I missed doing laundry. Well, I didn't miss it in the definition 8 version of the word miss, but I did fail to perform the task of cleaning my laundry. But my list of things accomplished and attended is still longer, which means I've realized has become my definition of a non-depressed weekend. I need to now work on having non-depressed workdays, which means moving more items off the To-Do list and onto the Done list and perhaps I won't board the five o'clock train with such a deep-seated feeling of dread and anxiety, when I should excited and happy in anticipating the things in the evening I looked forward to all day.
5. 1. To leave out; omit.
2. To let go by; let slip: miss a chance.
This list is missing a paragraph for number five.
6. To escape or avoid: narrowly missed crashing into the tree.
I missed Mother's Day. Not because I forgot and failed to perceive or accomplish or avoid. I avoided any celebration and escaped from any tiny voice declaring any sense of obligation. I also narrowly missed crashing into a brick wall of bitterness or anger, which get thrown up as a way of helping me feel less guilty about not attending or making contact. I don't need to be angry or mad at her to not call her. I can just not call her and it is what it is. I almost escaped all thoughts of the existence of the symbolism of the day until I caught Snoop Dogg wishing happy mother's day on the Prevue Guide channel.
7. To discover the absence or loss of: I missed my book after getting off the bus.
I stop and examine "Missing" posters. I analyze the quality of the photos and how recent they are and wonder if I have recent photos of loved ones that would suffice should they go missing. I wonder what it would be like to see yourself on a poster, being summed up in a terse inaccurate way with your high school prom photo xeroxed next to a casual picture of you on the couch opening a gift during your birthday. Would I recognize myself next to the words with basic stats that don't tell me a thing in how to help spot this real missing person who's family and friends are trying to find them? Sometimes everyone appears to be 5'9" with brown hair. I never notice eye color on people unless there's a stark contrast (fair hair/skin people with dark eyes and vice versa).
How does it feel when someone is missing you and you can't be found? Or don't want to be?
8. To feel the lack or loss of: Do you miss your family?
The irony is not lost on me. This example's not even really ironic since I was expecting it. Experiencing the lack or loss or sometimes both, this is what is meant by missing. This is what I would think as the first definition, the one used most frequently, not at the bottom of the list, relegated to the pile of secondary and alternate meanings. Though miss and missing are words probably used more frequently than I remember, I just don't notice their presence except when it comes to this meaning. It's suddenly an active verb, not a passive state-of-mind. It's a reaction, sure, but can become so forceful, so powerful that it overpowers the significance of the first action that induced it.
I try to tell myself that missing is about adjusting, changes of states. It's not about holes and gaps and being filled, no matter how it feels or how many songs and poems and bad metaphors tell me otherwise. One can't compare "I miss the old logo of this soda" to "I miss my dead cat", but what about body parts? Or what about people so present in your life that it begins to feel as if their surgically attached to your brain, who have been part of your subsconsious from the beginning of memory formation?
What of "missing your mother" as well as missing a lover or an old friend? What sort of posters would I make to describe them, even if I wasn't trying to get them back?
v. missed, miss·ing, miss·es
v. tr.
1. To fail to hit, reach, catch, meet, or otherwise make contact with.
I was batting .500 this weekend in connecting with people via phone or person. I managed to find my phone half the time it rang, though other times it was left in closed bedrooms or at worse, between a car door and the seat, dangerously close to the three-inch puddle of rain water near the curb. I only hid from the phone once or twice and I even proactively made some phone calls. I did not call my mother, nor did I e-mail or regular mail her anything. My in-person interactions had slightly better averages than my phone, though there were certainly moments of failing to reach, catch, or meet people's attentions or matching people's energies either because of wildly different emotional or sober states.
2. To fail to perceive, understand, or experience: completely missed the point of the film
I don't understand my own reactions and responses to situations sometimes. I don't so much fear someone asking me how am I doing as why am I doing the way I am if I don't have a neat explanation. Though shrugging my shoulders and saying fine with a slightly puzzled look on my face seems to be evading or hiding, especially coming someone so analyzing as myself, more often than not it's just expressing what I'm feeling -- missing the point of what's going on around me. I'm not experiencing perhaps the way I anticipated and so now I must regroup. I'm the king of ambivalence -- not in anyway miserable, though not necessarily enjoying myself at all. It's a vegetated state that occasionally one intentionally induces through such mediums as television and video games and bars and reading mediocre men's magazines. I slip into this phase occasionally on weekends, in part because I so look forward to the large stretches of time but then suddenly I worry of my own inability to fill them. This is never actually a problem. Ever. It's impossible to miss the point of weekends.
3. To fail to accomplish, achieve, or attain (a goal).
I missed being a wunderkind. At the ripe old age of nearly-26 it's impossible for anything I accomplish to get the extra commentary of "he's so young and brilliant and prodigy material". I'm mostly okay with this. Okay, I guess there are a few things that could happen at this age that might slide into this category, but the likelihood of me winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in the next year or so is approximately negative thirteen billion-to-one. Now that I've let these dreams go of early achievement, perhaps I can get down to the business of finding a livelihood I actually enjoy.
4. To fail to attend or perform: never missed a day of work.
I missed a cook-out this weekend. I missed watching the new episode of While You Were Out. I missed an apartment-warming party on Saturday evening of two somewhat long-lost friends. I missed doing laundry. Well, I didn't miss it in the definition 8 version of the word miss, but I did fail to perform the task of cleaning my laundry. But my list of things accomplished and attended is still longer, which means I've realized has become my definition of a non-depressed weekend. I need to now work on having non-depressed workdays, which means moving more items off the To-Do list and onto the Done list and perhaps I won't board the five o'clock train with such a deep-seated feeling of dread and anxiety, when I should excited and happy in anticipating the things in the evening I looked forward to all day.
5. 1. To leave out; omit.
2. To let go by; let slip: miss a chance.
This list is missing a paragraph for number five.
6. To escape or avoid: narrowly missed crashing into the tree.
I missed Mother's Day. Not because I forgot and failed to perceive or accomplish or avoid. I avoided any celebration and escaped from any tiny voice declaring any sense of obligation. I also narrowly missed crashing into a brick wall of bitterness or anger, which get thrown up as a way of helping me feel less guilty about not attending or making contact. I don't need to be angry or mad at her to not call her. I can just not call her and it is what it is. I almost escaped all thoughts of the existence of the symbolism of the day until I caught Snoop Dogg wishing happy mother's day on the Prevue Guide channel.
7. To discover the absence or loss of: I missed my book after getting off the bus.
I stop and examine "Missing" posters. I analyze the quality of the photos and how recent they are and wonder if I have recent photos of loved ones that would suffice should they go missing. I wonder what it would be like to see yourself on a poster, being summed up in a terse inaccurate way with your high school prom photo xeroxed next to a casual picture of you on the couch opening a gift during your birthday. Would I recognize myself next to the words with basic stats that don't tell me a thing in how to help spot this real missing person who's family and friends are trying to find them? Sometimes everyone appears to be 5'9" with brown hair. I never notice eye color on people unless there's a stark contrast (fair hair/skin people with dark eyes and vice versa).
How does it feel when someone is missing you and you can't be found? Or don't want to be?
8. To feel the lack or loss of: Do you miss your family?
The irony is not lost on me. This example's not even really ironic since I was expecting it. Experiencing the lack or loss or sometimes both, this is what is meant by missing. This is what I would think as the first definition, the one used most frequently, not at the bottom of the list, relegated to the pile of secondary and alternate meanings. Though miss and missing are words probably used more frequently than I remember, I just don't notice their presence except when it comes to this meaning. It's suddenly an active verb, not a passive state-of-mind. It's a reaction, sure, but can become so forceful, so powerful that it overpowers the significance of the first action that induced it.
I try to tell myself that missing is about adjusting, changes of states. It's not about holes and gaps and being filled, no matter how it feels or how many songs and poems and bad metaphors tell me otherwise. One can't compare "I miss the old logo of this soda" to "I miss my dead cat", but what about body parts? Or what about people so present in your life that it begins to feel as if their surgically attached to your brain, who have been part of your subsconsious from the beginning of memory formation?
What of "missing your mother" as well as missing a lover or an old friend? What sort of posters would I make to describe them, even if I wasn't trying to get them back?
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no subject
Date: 2003-05-13 05:07 am (UTC)