Grand Admiral Thrawn is a fictitious character in the star wars novels by Timothy Zahn. A brilliant strategist, he gains insight from the art of his enemies into their psychologies and ultimately, their weaknesses.

I read the book by Zahn about Thrawn's military origins. Then I went to Barnes and Noble to hang out and, after perusing for approximately five minutes, picked a book off the shelf which looked vaguely encouraging and bought it. Right out. I have bought four books from Barnes and Noble in the past four months. I bought The Prince, Outbound Flight, and Blink without looking beyond the cover. I bought Shadow of the Hegemon after finishing the rest of the series, but not having read it in two years.

Thin-slicing is something I have always been good at. Blink was very informative in that it taught me how I do this and, more importantly, the criterion necessary for correctness in a certain thin-slicing field.

And I read (present or past) it immediately after reading the origins of Thrawn, whose thin-slicing skills are mythical. And yet...

I have spent the last two hours studying art and art history. The connections I have drawn between the art and the culture and what I know of the culture's military defeats are rather... astounding. I destroyed the will of our conservative friend who lives across the hall to enforce his homophobic stereotypes with a paragraph of non-continuous conversation steering. I never made a point, simply clever and witty comments with ironic overtones, sarcastic undertones, and seemingly no tones of their own whatsoever. And suddenly, Male Figure Skating stopped being a thing worth mocking to him and my roommate and became a thing of silence and skill. Perhaps not beauty, but worthy of respect. And then, the most amusing part; it was not even shown. We had watched the replays with the volume turned down, and the event was merely stated as a prelude to entirely american, heterosexual sports.

Which the guy from across the hall had no interest in either watching or mocking.

I have managed to convince myself that I live a charmed life. The funny thing about being convinced of this is the utter and total sense of confidence; no matter what happens to me, there is a lesson to be learned, because I was not intended to have anything bad happen to me. I shivered down the sidewalk until I remembered that the cold is an excellent experience in various muscle contractions which otherwise are nearly impossible to consciously stimulate, and while trying to work on focusing my eyes beyond where my eyeglass prescription says they can go I noticed that I was once more striding through the driving wind and snow with my calculatedly military gait, oblivious to the bitter wind. And even after I noticed this, I remained oblivious to the wind that I was certain was still blowing all around me, but had ceased being of any import.

And the only time all of this that is being created around and for me fades is around Arity and the vestiges of my past which still haunt me. Arity is the only one who I still meet with on a daily basis. It is becoming more and more difficult for me to tell whether I love her for it, or hate the constant regressions. The complications of the matter are not helping.

I've been brought to the point of tears three times today trying to decide. It remains the lone point of contention. And for once, a point which I cannot bear to focus on long enough to make a decision on.

Four times.

The growing discipline and strategic aspect says that she is nothing more than a set of fetters, holding me back.

But things are never so simple as that.

I believe she defined love as a singular obsession romantically and sexually. I wish she were wrong in her assertion that it is possible.