SOME SORTS OF PEOPLE

Rather than face a new campaign in the springtime wars of my last 
post, I left my home to the birds and bees for the afternoon and 
went down to the nudist beach again. Took an even longer walk from 
the distant carpark than usual to visit the site of a 1920s iron 
ore mine that processed rocks erroded from the cliffs above the 
beach. I didn't know that iron ore and sandstone went together 
actually, but apparantly they can. Not much left now but scant 
foundations, earthworks, and a dry dam where some people have built 
a weird spiral path in the middle out of rocks and sticks. The 
track through there isn't much longer than my normal route, but 
quite steep. Still no sign of the old "RAAF prohibited Area" I was 
trying to locate.

At the start I passed a couple of women turning down a different 
track and engaged in a passing exchange that counts as a rare event 
of attempted similar-age female conversation in my life, sadly 
perhaps a significant boost to the year's monthly average. Later I 
realised they were proably attempting an ill-advised route to the 
other, better clothed, end of the beach because the lower carpark 
was probably full and it seems a shorter distance by road than by 
that steep track along the cliffs. I doubt they made it there in 
flip-flops.

After relaxing on the beach in the perfect (for me) cloudy but warm 
weather that I rarely manage to catch, swimming somewhat limited by 
big waves, I thought about my social relationships on the deserted 
tracks I walked back along. In many ways I'm not the typical sort 
of person to walk among flip-flop wearing women and admire dam-bed 
artwork. But although I spend most of my other time programming, 
tinkering with electronics, or educating myself on topics of 
science, technology, or history, I've never really had proper nerdy 
friends besides internet aquaintences. Some friends I had at school 
were more in that sort of artsy/adventure bent. One guy I talked 
with a lot was on drugs and made up all sorts of progressively 
unlikely stories about his sexual encounters. No interest in 
computers or electronics at all but we had a common understanding 
there, a way of thinking about things besides the issue of what we 
were actually thinking about.

I think I get along better really with those sorts of people, who 
usually share very few of my interests. That guy and another one of 
my friends went on to art school and we lost touch. I don't know 
what direction he took from there - art, drugs, or something 
completely different, but it seemed at the time that we were set 
for such different paths there wasn't much point even trying to 
stay in touch. If I were to pursue a talent of mine that fits in 
the vague part of society those people inhabit I guess it would be 
music. I've always had a sense for it, and I'm regularly singing to 
myself or writing down potential lyrics, but the prospects of 
making a living off it seem bleak. Still it would be a way to meet 
people, or more to the point, meet women.

 - The Free Thinker