Mar 08 2005
Me times three.
Odd contemplative moment. Am I the only person who judges distance based on body parts?
Get your minds out of the gutter, folks. I’m serious here. I was absolutely horrible at judging inches until I pulled out a ruler and confirmed that it’s just over an inch from my thumbtip to the first knuckle. Since then, I’ve got a firm grasp on the concept, and I can eyeball measurements pretty easily. If you’re talking about a foot or so, I think in terms of my own foot. The right foot is 11.5″, and the left is a little more than 12.5″. Between them, I’ve got a solid concept of what a foot should be.
When you go beyond a couple of feet, I think in terms of my own height. I’m 5′10″, so I think in increments of 6′ with a few inches taken off at the end. Thus 18′ would translate as “me times three, minus a bit.” What’s truly frightening is that I’m very accurate with anything that’s within what I think of as my personal sphere. It may take me some time to translate my math into real-world numbers, but I can feel how far something is and recall that feel even years later.
Anything beyond 18 feet or so (me times three, hence the subject line) is too far outside of my personal sphere. The scale breaks down at that point, and I don’t feel it in the same way. It becomes an abstract instead of something visceral. I’m still pretty good up to 30 feet, but that’s entirely a conscious thing.
To carry the idea further, I think this directly relates to my studies of martial arts. I don’t remember having the same feel in middle school, mainly because I felt very awkward in my own body back then. I became more comfortable and started developing this concept of distance when I was in high school. I was studying Tae Kwon Do at the time. Strange as it may sound, I used to think in terms of distance from my eyes or from my head.
Over the years (and through different arts) my perception has moved lower. (No, dammit. Not that low.) Now I really do think from my dan tien, the body’s center just below the navel. I think the number one contribution to this was Aikido. It changed the way I walk and quite possibly the entire way I move. Judging distance, I find myself reaching not with my arms but from my center. Ask me how far I was from something, and more often than not I’ll close my eyes and “feel” how far I had to reach.
What’s really strange is that I didn’t think about this until today. One of my friends on deviantART asked how far I was from an alligator in one of my Everglades shots, and I gave her much more of an answer than she probably wanted. (heh)
I’m a freak. Sue me.