Evening Nigh Reflections

Reflection: State Boards

2012-01-31T21:51:00.000-08:00

Writing articles that require me to spend a lot of time on state licensing boards... Occasionally, I laugh out loud. And it isn't just when one declares that candidates must meet the following "eight (9)" standards. State boards seem to have their own character; some become characters in my mind. One will give detailed instructions about the documentation that a person must send to prove a name change; another will treat the process much more cavalierly. One included, in the frequently asked question section, things like, "You mean you're evaluating the ability of my state to..." (I gather that out-of-state applicants were not always happy campers.)

Ah, but the state of Indiana has managed to come across as chipper and cheery. I see that they write 'copy':

The Behavioral Health and Humans Services Licensing Board is excited to offer this new testing opportunity to all future mental health counselors in the State of Indiana and as always, “we work to keep you working.”

2011-12-31T21:54:00.000-08:00

Home again... and home again. I went to Arizona to, among other things, cultivate relationships with the little girls before they stop being little girls.

Two red-haired girls. Their mother, my sister-in-law, has honey colored hair, a mixture of blonde, brown, and red, though I don't think she was ever a true redhead. In our family... well, I know there was a great aunt on my mother's side who had red hair; I believe there was also a redhead in that generation on my father's side. I was the only redhead for two generations.

The elder one... Well, I knew I wasn't overstaying my welcome in her eyes. She was glad to have an someone to play with, read her chapter book, direct activities. The little one... well, maybe she'll like me when she gets older. A year and a half ago, she buried her face in her father's chest when she saw me; this time, she buried her face in his chest. In the interim, she learned to speak complete sentences intelligibly, but she hasn't yet reached the stage of abstract thought...or of doing a lot of focused activity. For her, familiar faces are the best ones. And Daddy knows best.

Reflection: Flexibility Revisited

2011-09-22T20:22:00.000-07:00

I am revisiting once more the concept of flexibility: How is it that I appear unusually flexible -- indeed hyperflexible -- to friends, yet never scored well on test of flexibility? I was sub-par throughout all my years of P. E., and was, in fact, the worst person in my class in gymnastics activities, performing like a person with joint limitations. (Flexibility wasn't the main reason I was eventually placed in adaptive P.E., but let's just say it wasn't helping.)

Sometimes it takes years to define the perimeters of something; some crucial detail eludes me. Here goes: Tests of flexibility are generally done with the legs straight/ extended. It appears that, for me, though, the ability to bend at the waist depends, to an unusual degree, on also having bent legs. In P.E., students are asked to sit with their legs extended and then touch their toes. The act of sitting with my legs extended is in itself uncomfortable; my range of motion in this position is pretty limited. But if I bend my legs deeply -- sitting on my feet, say, or sitting in yogi position -- then everything changes. I can not only bend my body flat against the ground, but I'm so comfortable I could sleep that way. (Sometimes I do.)

Pictures taken here and there, across my life, are suggestive of loose joints. If you look at the picture in With Legs Crossed, you'll see a small child with some unusual posture. In that pose, it almost looks like my legs detached. Either that or they were pretty durn short... which they weren't. I doubt I could do a toe touch, though, even then. By the time I started school, at any rate, that task was way out of reach.

Once again, I've got to get on my soapbox and say that it's not just about physical capacity. If we look at how a person acts in one context, striking as it may be, we can get into some trouble generalizing or making predictions about how they'll perform in other contexts.

Reflection: Those (Very) Protective Anti-Virus Programs

2011-09-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

September 18 was the day Toto's free trial of McAfee ran out (or so it told me). It was hard to use the little netbook in the days leading up to September 18 as McAfee kept flashing dire warnings. I felt I had things under control, but the security program knew how to tug at my heart strings.

On the evening of the 17th, I looked up security programs, some free, some in the neighborhood of $30 to $40. It seemed like the free version of AVG did less than it used to -- understandable, I suppose, in a freemium world. Still, the free program would stave off crisis. Windows gave us a firewall, and AVG would at least momentarily give us our anti-virus; later I could decide if I wanted to purchase something additional for Toto and Snookums.

Now here is where things got curious: AVG proceeded to download more than it indicated it would -- or so it seems. (It wouldn't want to see anything happen on its shift.) Also, it is the 20th now, and McAfee is hanging around longer than indicated. It appears it is thoughtfully giving me a grace period. (Will it win my heart yet?) It put up an icon that we were in a state of alert (no protection? low protection?) But when I plugged my camera in, it warned me that there was this device connected... and did I want it to scan the thing? Perhaps McAfee has downgraded itself, but it has not left. I picture it like the Cheshire cat -- some part remaining.

Choices, choices... I guess most security program companies offer some sort of free download that's separate from their trial. Some offer more, some less. McAfee has a curious program that will let you know whether the security program you currently have installed (whatever it might be) is behaving properly. It will tell you things like, "CA Security reports that things are peachy keen. But if you want even more protection, you can upgrade to McAfee TOTAL Protection now." Snookums-the-Netbook has one of those programs. So far I have not felt the need to get Toto one.

photo: pittaya

Happy 2nd Birthday

2011-08-27T20:06:00.000-07:00

I missed this baby's second birthday earlier this month. The blog, not the little one in the picture who has long since grown.

Ah, there have been overextended days: writing 1,500 words of paid articles, a day, working elsewhere... It's lighter now. It can be hard, when I haven't blogged in a while to decide what's that one worthy thing that I most want to put up. I frequently have my 'evening nigh reflections' and yet there are times when it is difficult to post. There's something about critical mass. f I post regularly, I don't have this "It needs to be something momentous feeling". But the most important motivator, for me, is the sense of being read. Blog posts can be siphoned off into emails...

But: Moving into this third year with ENR, I have, for the first time, a little digital camera. That makes online writing easier. A couple thousand words a day is feeling less intimidating. Snookums has an external keyboard and needs to be plugged in, but Toto is on the go. There's still a lot of writing to do... too much at times. But this blog is still my baby... grown now to toddlerhood.

Reflections: Beautiful Minds

2011-08-27T14:34:00.001-07:00

Beautiful minds? you're thinking. But that's a pair of... feet. Yes, and those are confident feet, many would say. (I'll tie this together in a moment.)

I'm still doing readings each week on a Blog Talk Radio show, and an interesting theme came up this week. I don't really like the term, erotic capital, but the concept makes sense. There are a mixture of traits that together go a long way to creating interpersonal attractiveness. The host brought up something interesting: He said it really came down to confidence. I would surely agree that the purely physical was only a small part of this nebulous thing, that the charisma and mystique were created more by the things a person did: how they dressed and otherwise 'put themselves together', how they carried themselves, how they interacted. I would surely agree that those things are often associated with confidence. But it doesn't mean they equal confidence.

I'm thinking back to the movie "A Beautiful Mind" which I saw nearly a decade ago. That woman... oh, she had that nebulous thing. The way she blazed into his office -- the fictionalized John Nash's -- when he was an up and coming professor. At first, I didn't like that woman; she seemed shallow. But, oh, did I like her as the movie progressed. I talked on and on about her that evening: the woman who dug both feet into ground when things went crazy.

Is there a biological reason for people for people to be attracted to confidence? I daresay there is. What about associating that blaze with standing one's ground? Ah, perhaps there is. The problem is that a lot of the things on the it list -- the erotic capital list -- have as much to do with polytropism as they do with confidence.

Reflection: Still Here

2011-07-31T21:53:00.000-07:00

Signing a lease one more time. Moving into a second year in an under-200 square foot studio that has been better to me than its larger predecessor. My favorite apartment/unit ever, if you go back a bit, was an attic. But this little room with the corridor and the separate bathroom: It's of a scale that's easy to decorate. And putting it online motivates me to do just that. My problem has never been finding the wherewithall to function; it's finding the motivation. It's hard for me to do things because they feel comfortable or because they create aesthetic pleasure. It doesn't click; it doesn't connect. The question has already been: But who will see it? Who will it please? I can't live life as a tree in a forest. If no one hears, I don't make a sound. If no one watches, nothing is tidy. There's this great need to be observed by loved ones. And the great motivator has always been: for you. Living my life online makes me live it brighter and more according to custom.

So, understanding that, maybe it wouldn't come as such a surprise to persons from long ago co-op days that one of the niche topic areas I have moved into, on Squidoo and elsewhere, is designing small spaces. This is the recent Squidoo page that has gone the highest: Shabby Chic Studio Apartment

Memory: After All These Years

2011-06-04T01:48:00.000-07:00

Something I will never forget: the sight of Brazil nuts -- those really huge ones -- working their way slowly down into the fingers of a food handler's glove.

It was a dozen years ago. We were on our way to a potluck hosted by one of the members of our poetry group. He was scooping edibles out of the bins at Ray's Ranch Market. I called his attention to the fact that, well, most things made it into baggies, but he was scooping the Brazil nuts into something else... like maybe a glove out of the box on the counter.

He realized, hey, I was right. "Well, we can't let this go to waste," he said. "That wouldn't be environmental of us." He got a twisty label and wrote the bin number on it. He used the twisty to seal the wrist of the glove up neatly.

Something else I will never forget: the look on the face of one of the poetry group ladies when he sat the Brazil nut glove down on the coffee table amidst the other hoers d'ouvres.

I repeated the story the other day. "That was in my manic days," he said. "I don't do things like that any more."

"Mellowed?" I asked.

"Medication," he said.

Ah! I remember how he arrived in the woods for a camping trip, coincidentally, on the first day of hunting season. He briefly had the idea of playing his guitar real loud and scaring the bears away. "Would I give my life for a bear?" he'd asked.

I repeated that story. The bears deserved it, he said, but he didn't have the guts.

He has talked about visiting a couple times over the years. And finally did. He was here for a week recently. We went out to the beach at Discovery Park. He climbed over a little log fence so he could see better over the cliff. I called his attention to what the sign said about staying this side of the fence. "I didn't see it," he said, "Well, don't tell Seattle parks."

Oh , there's a few things maybe to not tell Seattle. He likes to press flowers see...

It ain't a bad thing, though, is it? Still crazy after all these years

photo credit

In Between: Tunes our Minds Play

2011-05-28T14:32:00.000-07:00

I never know what song I will hear in Walgreen's -- or what my ears will tell me I heard. I have located the song now on Youtube, and the refrain is "Burnin' for you". Ah, but what I heard (over and over and over) there in Walgreen's was "I'm done running, I'm 32."

Reflection: The Writing Life

2011-05-24T22:33:00.000-07:00

I am making (kind of) a living writing these days, but it's not quite the type of writing I might have imagined once upon a time. For those of us who do write for wages, that is often the case. I have a friend who makes his living -- really -- writing articles about women's clothing.

In these parts, though (in my studio apartment studio, I mean) the theme is, "You look in an associate's, but you'd look better in a doctorate. Oh, too large? We have that in a bachelor's and a master's as well. "

It may not be my adolescent image of the writing life, but I like writing articles about nursing. I believe in the cause, and there's endless information. (To think, less than a year ago, I didn't know the difference between an ADN, a BSN, and a DNP. Now I can distinguish the AACN, the AANP, ANA... And, ah, I have a talent for locating white papers and project proposals and endless lists.)

But it's nice to do those other types of writing, too, the ones from the days of once upon a time -- and the ones I picked up along the way. I am slowly pulling them back in.

Reflection: Supine

2011-05-10T20:03:00.000-07:00

That's quite an old picture, but it relates to the (soapbox) topic of the day.

I am lucky to be (for the moment at least!) earning most of my income at home writing. It's not just for mental reasons that it's easier. Some days I do several hours of work laying down. It's very common for me to research laying on my side and then compose paragraphs in my mind while lying very still on my back. After a while, I will sit up in and type quite a bit in a short time. If it appears that I spend half an hour immobile and then half an hour writing furiously... well, often I have been working the whole time, and far more efficiently than if I forced myself to sit up at the computer.

I imagine there are people here and there who have been diagnosed with chronic fatigue, or migraines perhaps, who have low muscle tone in their necks. For me, it's not bad enough to be a migraine -- the discomfort just toes the line between tiredness and headache -- but when I was a child, I called it a headache... and I was ignored. I remember that when I started morning kindergarten, I complained of daily headaches. It was because my teacher got after me when I rested my head on the desk, and my neck simply did not want to hold head up for three hours at a stretch.

I still feel better physically when I don't have to go too many hour at a stretch with my head unsupported. I even suspect the neck issue plays some role in the body ache issues I get sometimes -- like maybe it adds a bit of physical stress and brings my endurance down. I've always (when I've had the option) done a fair amount of my mental work lying down... especially the composition stage of writing. I have a great verbal memory, so I can do that! Yet to display so much of what looks like immobility... I imagine that has contributed at times to people seeing me as less mentally capable than I am.

Reflection: Always a Rose

2011-04-30T23:40:00.000-07:00

Listen!

A bit more audio today! I like the surprising little twist at the end of this poem -- "Always a Rose" quite a round-about little expression of love. I had recorded it on Audioboo, and when I visited it today, I saw it was wearing a little 'tweet badge', tweeted, it appears, by the Audioboo company.

I'm still doing a weekly poetry read for a friend's BlogTalkRadio, but I've been doing it live, so it's extra discipline to record... but I'm getting into the rhythm of writing 50 paid articles, and still doing the other projects. I've done a lot of recording very recently.

Memory: Two Seattle Icons

2011-04-23T23:15:00.000-07:00

Why a memory and not a reflection? Ah...

Times have changed, and some familiar Seattle icons are among the casualties. It's easier than it used to be to get hooked up to the internet -- if you don't have your own service, you can get ninety minutes on the library computers or take a little portable computer to any one of a number of coffee shops. It's a different world than when the Online Coffee Company opened their doors. In March 2011, they shut those doors -- yes, all three locations, even though the original Capitol Hill location seemed busy enough when I would go there. Major economic problems. Maybe they expanded too much. not anticipating the difficult economy, not anticipating the changing world.

As for Twice Told Tales, the glass on the door of the U-District store is broken now. It didn't take long after they moved out for that to happen. But the note says that they're moving online, that the Capitol Hill branch will stay open in its physical form... and not to worry about the kitty cats, they found them a good home.

Reflection: Soundbite

2011-03-29T23:24:00.000-07:00

I have been doing poetry (and occasional prose) pieces on this BlogTalk radio show for a while... live since January. I will include a piece here. I have been listening to shows tonight and cringing a bit. There was one show where there was no co-host and I talked quite a bit... except that I giggled more than I talked. Sentence. Giggle. Sentence. Giggle. That was hard to listen to. "Shut up, Karen, and read!" I was thinking.

I went back in the archives a while for this:

Listen to internet radio with Alex Crabtree on Blog Talk Radio

Reflection: Occupational Therapy with Cyber-Slime

2011-02-23T22:59:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I am struck by how much my netbook is like me. I have determined that the dear netbook has a processing disorder... no, no, I am not talking about its hard drive, I mean more of a sensory processing disorder. It's hypo-responsive to some stimuli.

It happened off and on for a couple months: There were several keys that would sometimes be difficult to use and then sometimes go out altogether. (Ever tried to paste in periods at the end of sentences?) Ah, but then it would be fine again, completely fine.

When one of the afflicted keys would go out, they would all go out. When one of the afflicted keys would return, they would all return. I wondered if temperature changes were causing condensation. It appeared to be something more than dirt, and yet -- here's where the story starts to get strange -- I learned that it really liked the yellow cyber-slime I bought to clean it. I mean, it really liked it. I mean, those keys could be the cleanest ones on the whole keyboard, but if I took a moment to massage them with cyber-slime, voila, they worked again! Like magic! Over and over again, the trick worked. As odd as it sounds, it's no coincidence. It might take a few therapy sessions over the course of a day before the keyboard is ready to work smoothly for an extended period, but then things will really kick back in gear and it will be fine for a long time.

I am actually at a bit of a loss to explain this. Is something slightly warped or out of shape? Or... Well, I've heard that occupational therapists sometimes have some success using sensory materials to rewire the processing systems of children with autism or SPD. Whatever the underlying cause, it appeared that my netbook just needed a little occupational therapy.

Now here's something that relates (though it doesn't involve netbooks or cyber-slime). I've added quite a bit to it recently, and it's probably the best job I've done telling my own life story on a Squidoo lens or a webpage: Memoir of a Hyporesponsive Child

Reflection: The Illusion of Privacy

2011-01-29T21:11:00.000-08:00

There are parties downstairs at my apartment building a couple times a year. We munch, we chat. Someone that I have spoken to at those occasional gatherings -- and said hello to on the elevator now and then over the years -- said a curious thing. He said he has wanted to talk to me at times, but I seem like a private person.

Private? That is very much not how I see myself (and it is probably not how people see me who communicate with me mostly online). It tends to floor me when people say that. I think the misconception stems from people mistaking indifference for resistance. I am not more resistant to people getting in my face; I am simply more indifferent... to those who don't.

Once again, it's underwhelment masking as overwhelment. I am drawn (when I'm drawn) to people who are more intense than the norm, more emotional, more over-the-top, and often more needy. Interaction has to simply sizzle. Normal interactions tend to pass below the threshhold needed to... to stir up anything at all in me beyond the intellectual awareness that, hey, there's another human in the vicinity. The irony is if that person had been more in my face, they might have broken through that false veneer of privacy. Some people have created strong bonds that way. The illusion of privacy is more apt to vanish if you're the kind of person who (marvelous in my eyes!) can't contain your energy within your own borders.

Reflection: Different Ways of Experiencing

2011-01-15T16:40:00.000-08:00

I think a lot of people, at this point, have at least heard of the brain chemical dopamine. Among the many things it does... Well, I've heard it described in this way: It makes things pop out from the background and seem relevant. It intensifies them. (The picture on the right, which had quite a lot of local contrast added, is intended to represent higher dopamine perception.)

Me, I perceive things more like the picture on the left. I know -- I mean, I can tell -- I don't have normal dopamine processing. As an example... The ayuderdic herb, mucuna pruriens, is one of the only things that naturally contains the most direct precursor of dopamine. It has legitimate medical uses. Some people, if they weren't used to it, would find that it made them more than usually cheerful or confident. Some would find that it sent them right over the edge into anxiety, agitation, mania -- like caffeine, but likely worse. (Some of the disorders that frequently show dopamine overactivity: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety.) My reaction to mucuna pruriens is that is calming and sometimes sleep-inducing. I consider it a preventative measure when it comes to bad dreams.

Sometimes coffee brings me down, too. Going to sleep on stimulants is not an uncommon reaction... for a person with ADHD. I don't have ADHD, but there are common threads. There's a theory that people with ADHD procrastinate so that they can add excitement to a task, so they can stir up enough stimulants in their brain that they are actually able to do the task. Me, I don't do that. It's when it comes to human relationship, very specifically, that I behave as an underwhelmed person. I have consistently, across most of my life, been attracted to people who are far, far more emotional than the norm, who are simply over the top. I have consistently been attracted to situations -- human situations -- where the stakes were high. My emotions are aroused. My bonding impulses come more strongly into play. Low stakes human situations fail to motivate me to the point where... where I can function.

I think it would fly in the face of logic, for a lot of people, that my reactions to certain substances would be characteristic of the underwhelmed as opposed to the overwhelmed. And yet it seems so obvious to me. I am the polar opposite of the hyperaroused person... when it comes to just strolling around. (Though yes, I do respond in intense, 0 to 90 ways to a very few things -- the same ones, predictably, year in, year out... Hey, do you think the light in the corner stands out maybe even a little more on the picture on the left, where there is so little contrast. maybe that's why I calm a little on stimulants. More of the world starts popping out a little and commanding my interest.)

Reflection: The Fear Response(less)

2011-01-12T12:54:00.000-08:00

We were at the bus stop by the main drag of the U-District when the 43 came up the road, wearing the wrong sign, like it was going toward Wallingford. A woman seemed to get very excited; at first I thought she was frustrated because she thought she was on the wrong side of the street. "It's going toward..." I said.

She called me the B-word several times. "That's what you are!" she shouted... or maybe she didn't quite shout, but she said it loudly. People around us heard. I'm not sure what all she said. Her face was pretty near mine.

Most people, I imagine, would not have felt actual fear in that situation. Yet I think there would have been some physiological response, some quickening of the pulse, some startle response somwhere. I was aware, once again, how in me there was... just nothing.

Humans are designed to have a fear response that precedes conscious thought. This is how nameless fear -- that I'm afraid, but I don't know why sensation -- begins. It's strongest in the trauma-disordered, but it's in most of us to some extent. I'm hard pressed to think of a time -- even one time in my life -- when I felt nameless fear. The conscious awareness of exactly what afraid of tends to precede any physiological response.

I've read it: Neurologically, attraction (and I mean the word in a broad sense!) is a close cousin of fear; they're both changes in arousal levels, and they often involve the very same chemicals. We're supposed to undergo these subtle little changes in our arousal levels. They're supposed to be highest in response to novel situations. In novel social situations, my arousal levels don't change. They are so low that... I would say they'd make folks' heads swim, except that folks don't see the situation for what it is.

I don't experience nameless fear, but there have been times I have been irresistibly drawn to those who do. There have been times someone has behaved inexplicably toward me and instead of standing there impervious, like I did with the woman at the bus stop, I have experienced emotion at the level... the level that I love, love, love to experience emotion. And then I have wanted to dance that person off on a white horse.

I do experience intense fear. Mostly it's aroused by the fear of losing those who manage to evoke strong emotion in me.

Evening Nigh's Year in Reflection 2

2011-01-01T21:44:00.000-08:00

And so we have moved into January, I commented to the summer basil. Many people would, I imagine, say that it is the basil plant's presence here in January that seemed most improbable. It appears I have not an annual but a (very) tender perennial. The tender perennial would take some work to maintain through winter even if it had not had an encounter with the Crips... I mean the thrips. Oh, but I decided to care for a basil plant, and a basil plant is just not the sort of thing to object to being cared for. And so here we are: Scraggly and speckled, we make new green leaves.

Ad so this is the second annual... well, not Year in Review, but Year in Reflection. Some of my favorite soapbox posts this past year have been, once again, on the subject of attachment: A Loss of Pliability, A Glimpse of Heaven, and The Kitty Carryall Metaphor -- a piece that feels like more than a year ago. This very related one one goes back to a time early last year when I was attacked and had my purse stolen: Situational Strengths There are others that wear that favorite label "Soapbox Post". Though...

It has sometimes been a struggle to write regularly on this blog in recent months. There is a three-fold reason: There have been weeks that I have freelanced 70 or 80 hours a week. I have done well with the writing, but there is a separate project that... well, I did not even get paid for. I learned, if I didn't know already, that I have trouble tracking information across the columns and rows of a spreadsheet -- which maybe relates to Mirror Writing. I'm getting more efficient at the writing thing, and working on pulling all my other writing activities back in -- though tiredess has a flu-like pain spreading once more into the shoulders and fingers.)

There are times I have wondered if there was anyone out there reading. (Or should I say who is out there reading?) And there are times, conversely, the blog posts have gotten channeled back into letters. This blog grew out of Letters to... (Who was it years ago who said he preferred the letters over the stories, to publish the letters?) Conversation on a Bus came straight out of a old letter. And the writing, the 'soapbox posts' and other things, can still be siphoned off into letters. (It Was Then That the Fox Appeared)

But this blog is in my resolutions. I'm contemplation re-enrolling it in day camp. (It did a Creative Every Day Challenge last year, with weekly sharing sessions and show and tell, but it didn't attend real often.)

In Between Reflection: Resolute

2010-12-31T23:59:00.001-08:00

11:59 on December 31, and I am resolute, which is not quite the same thing as having resolutions.

Uwavering is part of the definition of resolute, according to Dictioary.com. Resolute, unwavering: Those things, I think, are a part of who one is for good or, as the case may be, for ill; thus they're different than the commitments one makes, or tries so painfully to make, at the beginning of a year. Ah, but I may have some of those too, though... and coming up in a bit here is Evening Nigh's Year in Reflection 2.

Memory: Across Three Generations

2010-12-23T23:05:00.001-08:00

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Here is a bit more Animoto animation, created the same night as the video of my two nieces. This one showcases three generations of my family, beginning with my mother's youth and continuing on chronologically to a picture of a toddler Chelsea. I was actually a little surprised when I watched it as one picture I thought I had included did not appear. Wow, is there a big chronological jump before that last picture! I had meant to include a family portrait taken when my brother and I were in our early 20's. Ah, well!

Reflection: Chelsea's and Callee's Video

2010-12-23T22:41:00.000-08:00

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

A video featuring my little nieces. Several of the shots were taken by me on Easter. There are a few from Christmases gone by.

In Between: And Where am I?

2010-12-16T23:45:00.000-08:00

This week, I am writing fourteen research-based articles, in addition to a little work elsewhere. It's taking some addition to do that much contract writing and still do posts and lenses. But I have a lot to say... some posts saved that are started, but not finished, and so many letters to mine for tidbits. This little blog is my communication outlet for friends and loved ones from afar. keep checking in on me?

Reflection: Under Polka Dot Skies (Again)

2010-11-24T16:20:00.000-08:00

This blog opened with a picture of a snowy Seattle, under polka dot skies. One of my early Squidoo lenses, Step Into Seattle, began with that picture, and the line, "I don't live in a land of polka dot skies..."

As you can see from the upper left corner of my picture, polka dot skies have returned to Seattle -- meteorologically if not metaphorically. This picture was taken early Monday before the snowstorm really got going.

That evening, I chose to take a bus out to a tutoring appointment, despite the predictions. The buses have chains, so they do better than cars. It got bad, though. The bus lost its traction, and once the driver got it stopped, we all had to get out. I walked from 25th & 55th to 15th & 45th.

I will note that luckily we had broken down right across from a Circle K, which has a really nice coffee bar, so I was equipped with a 16 ounce cappucino on the journey. I cut through campus because it seemed safer than the viaduct, and sure enough I was soon walking in the wrong direction. But I encountered a group of people and one lived near me, so I walked with her on the trek through campus.

There wasn't really a point where I felt seriously frightened or even regretted not having canceled the tutoring appointment. I do have some wariness of walking at night, but the world wasn't even dark tonight, with the fine white mist blowing. Campus was otherworldly. I was almost home by the time my hands got seriously painful or numb.

Reflection: With Legs Crossed

2010-11-06T10:45:00.000-07:00

I have been sitting here, working on a stack of freelance 'cert' articles, this time on the subject of yoga. I have been sitting with my legs crossed and my feet elevated in such a way that... well, the netbook does fit very nicely wedged between the balls of my feet. It's a healthy position for the netbook, too -- good air circulation so it doesn't get overheated.

I haven't found equivalent ways to celebrate any of the other health professions.

Things have been crazy time-wise. The articles are rather a blessing. One very different freelance gig was a disaster; it taught me after 35 or 40 hours -- that my eyes can't track across the rows of a spreadsheet. It's been a lot of 12 hours, but much of it has been at home. (Doing a little teaching, but couldn't be out in the schools too much and still get done what I need to.) Sometimes I go out to Online Coffee the first hour they're open, to get a free hour on their computer with the purchase of a coffee.

It's getting a little less wild, time-wise. SquidAngeling is over for the season. No more trying to read spreadsheets. Writing gets a little faster, too. There are a couple blog posts I begun, but didn't finish. They may appear under this one later.

This morning, I learned that if one wants to train to be a yoga teacher, they may have to, say, do a handstand in the middle of the room. I would have made a bad yoga teacher, I will note. Joint flexibility is high -- muscle flexibility and strength very low. I'm gaining the vocabulary needed to discuss many things.

Reflection: A Loss of Pliability

2010-10-22T20:49:00.000-07:00

A soapbox post -- not the one I was planning, but a very 'me' one. I have hesitated sometimes to mention the cat -- aware of people here and there, just freezing at the mention -- but it has been a long time since he died. For a time, I would go to a support group at the humane society, and I was aware how some people hesitated to bring another animal into their life because they were afraid they would love it and it would die. I was aware also how people would sometimes interpret things I said that way -- like once when I was talking about how maybe it would be better to get a foster animal. Someone heard in those words that I was afraid of getting attached and having an animal die. No. The pair bonding impulse in me is so strong that... I have never in my life even one time that I can remember resisted any attachment because of a fear of being hurt. Quite the contrary. I can't imagine being hurt by the people around me because I can't imagine loving them. But that's not because I don't mold myself to others' shapes. It's because I do it too much.

When I was a little kid, I was like Play-Doh fresh from the can. By the time I was a teenager, the pliability was down. I wrote before about the classic storybook image of the little girl who can only love her doll, and not even another doll someone buys for her that looks just the same. Up to a point, that tendency is part of the beauty of being human. But too much of that is a barrier to normal living. It's normal for a person who's been married to someone for thirty years to say, "I will never love again," and be a perpetual widow. It's not normal for a young teen to already be moving in those directions -- finding it progressively more difficult to love, not out of fear, but out of doing it so completely (We're not even talking romantic liaisons here!) that anything else just gets a "But that's not my rose!" reaction.

So many issues people have are normal -- even good -- traits and drives that are just upregulated beyond the norm.

This picture was titled "Helping Hand". But what do I title it? "A Loss of Pliability"!

Reflection: A Time for Angeling

2010-10-05T23:57:00.000-07:00

Ah, there's an essay I want to write in the next day or two, on something dear to my heart (back on the soapbox again). But first...

I've written at different points about the SquidAngels, who 'bless' and boost rank on very high quality lenses. And now, a few days short of one year on the platform, it's my season for 'angeling' -- the first one, at least. The terms have gotten shorter, but people now have the opportunity to cycle through for repeated tours of duty.

I've 'blessed' more than twenty these first two days, but one has been my particular project.

Here is where I am linking to the blessed lenses: Squidangeling Season.

In Between: If You're Human, I Apologize

2010-09-30T18:07:00.000-07:00

I do need to get another phone. It's happened occasionally forever (colloquially) but it's been worse for a while. It used to be that sometimes, especially if the phone had been off the hook at some previous point, that I'd pick up a ringing phone... and it would keep ringing. Jiggling the cord -- pushing it in further -- would get it going, and I'd take the call. But now... Someone called several times in a short span of time. I don't think they were an automated subfinder because there were no jobs posted when I logged on to the online version. If you're human, I actually didn't mean to do that that time. It did make me anxious, those several attempts.

PS I have a different one lugged in now.

Reflection: A Star for Passing Brain Chemistry

2010-09-27T23:17:00.000-07:00

Talking about purple star lenses again -- but I'm not bragging. It's the stories surrounding the stories that I want to talk about. Someone gave Struggling to Pass Brain Chemistry a purple star. I wrote that story, as some will remember, four or five years back. I later made the choice to self-publish it on Squidoo. Putting it up on Squidoo... well, that gave the story some things it wouldn't have had otherwise, and I'm talking about something more here than giving it a music soundtrack. The comments on that lens... they're a substantial part of why I put it where I did. It went on Squidoo to collect acceptance, and Squidangel blessings. It did that. And a while later it got its purple star.

Those purple star awards... I'm not the only person on Squidoo who has gotten several in a short span of time since it became a pay-it-forward program. I also want to tell a story about... well, not about the first two, but about what I was doing when I got the email notifications. I was checking the one email I don't get scared to check, and I was looking for an email from almost the only friend who has that email address. (And why not? He is on so many shared networks. He couldn't die or do anything noteworthy without it hitting all the major networks. What's an email? But I digress.) Anyway, though there are more purple stars than LOTDs ('lens of the days') in Squidoo-land, it's still considered something of an honor, and boosts your rank and all that. So a lot of people would have reacted (do react) with some excitement -- to the first at least. My response was, "But I'm not looking for a purple star! I'm looking for for a note from..."

Still monotropic after all these years: Laser-light and not incandescent. It's about what I'm looking for, and what I care about, and not what the world chooses to give me. This (the end of this paragraph is an edit, some time later) can sound snobby of me, but no. In 'real life' people have sometimes thought I was not altogether there because I didn't respond to something in a normal ways... like maybe I didn't even hear or observe. I just don't tend to have normal emotional responses to things -- good or bad -- if it's not something that was on my radar. I'm not 'deflected'... though I can surely act if I get inspired.

There are a lot of words I didn't know when I first penned the "Brain Chemistry" piece. But, with the exception of folks' names, I've changed only a few. I may not stand by the labels worn in those days, but I stand by the rest.

Reflection: The Art of Research

2010-09-23T21:57:00.000-07:00

I was wondering what the appropriate post was to follow that last one. I decided to share a bit of writing (something I have been doing quite a bit of actually). I started my first hired freelance gig just about a week ago. I've done 10 articles so far for $15 a piece. The articles take some time to research, but it's a pretty good beginning gig, the sort of thing that it would have helped to have in the summer when things kept falling through. Now... well, I make a lot more in an hour subbing in the schools, but jobs are still a bit scarce in the 3rd week, and... it's tough sometimes. There have been times... ah, but that's a story for another day...

Now then. I have a few tabs open to research on cardiac sonographers -- job description, certification requirements in different states -- but before I tackle another set of articles, I want to get this posted. Yeah, I'm writing about medical licenses. As a sample of research and writing in the medical field, I had sent a link to... well, it was actually first ever Squidoo lens.

The lens I'm posting here today is also research-heavy. It goes back about 6 months, was an award winner recently -- a different kind of Squidoo award. The"purple star" award on Squidoo is now done as a "pay it forward" receive one and then nominate another lens thing. It was quite a few months ago that Addy first dropped in on Reclassifying Mental Disorders and wrote a comment I kind of had to laugh over. 'Bout a week ago she paid it forward.

Memory: From a Time Before Time

2010-09-13T17:19:00.000-07:00

I have a memory of being in the bathroom with my mother, at a time when I had not yet stopped being her perfect little girl. I think she might have been checking me and my long hair for ticks -- a summertime ritual in Virginia. "When I'm 40, you'll be 80," I declared.

"80 is very old," she said, and even then, I knew that was a message that she might not make it to that far off time.

She did not. Not quite.

Some months back, I wrote that my mother's Alzheimers -- or whatever neurological disease caused the progressive loss of function -- had reached the point where she could no longer talk or be cognizant of her surroundings, and that she was asleep or half asleep most of the time. My brother thought then that she'd live only a couple more weeks. But she lived more than five months, slipping the rest of the way away only this morning.

Reflection: Going Around in Triangles

2010-09-09T23:46:00.000-07:00

I have written about the different (contrasting) things that people have thought they've seen in my posture: Sometimes they've seen fear. Sometimes they've seen flexibility. There's a fair amount of illusion in both those perceptions, and it occurs to me those two contrasting illusions are actually coming from a common source.

I bend my arm inward, or upward, at the elbow, and again at the wrist -- a posture that forms a triangle if there's space (or a cat) in between. I do something similar with my legs. Lounging around with limb-triangles pointing off in all different directions, or tangled up with each other in the position that teachers call criss-cross applesauce... well, that looks flexible. Standing with that same sharply bent wrist and elbow-- ah, now the pose looks fearful and self-protective. But strumming a guitar with my arm in that triangle, perception changes yet again. Now I am simply told my posture looks a bit off. Finally we have an observation, devoid of false inference.

There's a picture of me even younger, eleven or twelve, holding a bell pepper out toward the camera -- a little bitty girl holding a little bitty lightweight pepper -- and you see the same tight, popping muscles you see here in this picture. There's another picture of me that age with (ack!) bare upper arms, and you notice something else -- that there's such low tone in the upper arm that it actually looks concave. Women tend to know what their worst physical feature is! Mine are my arms: such obvious muscle tone irregularities if I don't hide 'em with sleeves.

Muscle tone irregularites ... There's your flexibility. And there's your fear.

Memory: It Was Then That the Fox Appeared

2010-09-05T17:04:00.000-07:00

I tend not to link to the more social communities I belong to -- a few people who read this may have a sense of the reasons why. Today, though, I am going to embed a little audio clip.

This is from a group that is not Squidoo-affiliated, but has a core membership of Squidoo people. There is a writing network, and a weekly BlogTalkRadio show that generally has a guest. I do audio clips for the weekly show: One week, it was one of my short memoir pieces; one week it was flash fiction by our guest, but most often it is a public domain piece.

I looked in on the platform that the crew uses to send messages, and saw that this week would be a recap -- no guest -- and that my audio clip from The Little Prince would be replayed. "Sentimental," the message note, and I smiled.

I wasn't very pleased with that clip, as I don't really have character voices. After several attempts at the fox's voice in which I succeeded only in losing the emotion, I let the voice go. I didn't listen to the show the week it first aired. This time I did. Since it was liked enough to get a replay, I guess I shan't cringe.

Ah, but that is not why I am a bit nervous about sharing this on this bloggy woggy.

Listen to internet radio with Alex Crabtree on Blog Talk Radio

Reflection: Sometimes You Picture Me (2)

2010-08-31T13:10:00.000-07:00

This picture is made from a snapshot someone took back in my co-op days. I uploaded into a frame and used it in a personal post, some months back, about body language and illusion. It was one of the few posts that I've written that I hesitated to publish. One of the ways that people have misinterpreted body language is that they've thought they saw fear in contexts where it didn't exist. Of course there are also more harmless illusions created by body language...

In co-op days, a housemate (I generally don't name names, but it start with 'J' and rhymes with 'mud') said, "You must have been so good at gymnastics when you were growing up."

I laughed. "In all my years of PE, I couldn't touch my toes -- couldn't even come close."

"How could that be?" he said, in his Mud-like manner (bemused, but not disbelieving).

It took me the better part of a decade to come up with a partial, non-scientific explanation about something that's mostly a 'nothing issue'. The interesting thing isn't the explanation; it's that it took me so long to come up with any reason at all that sounded plausible -- as it has been with some far deeper life issues. I tend to know in advance when my words are going to sound flat and unbelievable and I've made the choice in those situations to simply... not try. There are reasons, other than fear of not being accepted, to be mum about who you are.

Put yourself for a moment in my... leotards. Imagine: When people watch you, day after day, carelessly turn yourself into a human pretzel, it's gonna sound hollow and clunky when you say that in PE, you were gasping and wincing trying to bring your fingertips much more than halfway down your calves. (How can that be? I mean, really, how can it?)

Now you're not losing opportunities in life because you create a false illusion of flexibility, but other false do illusions carry with them losses. Yet it can take years to explain away those illusions in ways that don't sound hollow and clunky when they hit the floor. Because you yourself don't know how something can be, only that it must 'can be' because it is.

As for the toe touching thing, this is my partial explanation. It was always was difficult for me -- more so than the average person -- to bend at the waist when my legs were straight. It was always easy for me -- more so than the average person -- to bend at the waist when my legs too were deeply bent. Just put together a bit funny, I guess.

Reflection: Strong Bonds

2010-08-28T17:01:00.000-07:00

When I put a new blog, I tell this one here it'll always be my #1 commitment in blog-land. When I contemplate a little pot of meandering rosemary, I tell the basil plant, it's my precious little one, it and not that other plant. And as for the netbook... it's this netbook, this, this one I'm committed to.

There's research now that attachment is actually a drive, related to pair bonding, and supported by its own neurochemical system. It's not normally as strong a drive in humans as it is in certain other species, but like other drives, it can be out of whack and out of proportion. (We know that drives can cause strong impulses that can't be explained at the logical or macro level, but do we realize how many small -- well, often small! -- drives we humans have within us?)

What I see in genetic testing is the chance to talk about things that I haven't been able to before -- kind of like web writing, but opening even more doors. (And, yes, there's a little more I know than what I write on the blog at this point.)

Reflection: Basil Plant (Again)

2010-08-24T11:59:00.000-07:00

Google advised me that my basil is a delicate perennial; it can probably survive winter inside with a flourescent light upon it. The sky will grow grayer and dimmer when fall sets in, but insufficient sunlight has actually not been its problem lately -- no, more nearly the opposite. The plant wilts with too much bright direct sunlight, especially if it's soil is either too wet or too dry. I'm figuring it out. The basil wilted again yesterday, but today, resilient thing that it is, it has again plumped out its leaves.

Google also gave me a heads up that incadescent light might have some effect -- that me leaving th light on way too much might be causing it to grow spindly or stalky instead of bushy. My 'leafy green Space Needle' has gotten a bit funny looking, but it is green and very much alive. Sitting several feet from the window, it is engaged in the task of making new litttle baby leaves.

Reflection: The Time You Waste For Your Basil Plant

2010-08-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

There is a basil plant. I think she has tamed me.

Let me say this: I do not have a green thumb. I have neglected plants in my time. I seldom have a plant at all except the summer basil -- and I have neglected summer basil before.

But this one... The basil plant and I live in a room with two windows facing the afternoon summer, in a city where even in the sun, the cloud cover often doesn't dissipitate until noon. I set the basil plant atop the dollhouse, so it can be right up by the window. Sometimes I move it around a bit in late afternoon, chasing patches of afternoon sun. I poke and stir at the soil to check tht is is very slightly moist.

Two days ago (the last really sunny warm afternoon) it got hot in that room. I couldn't work on the netbook -- on sunny afternoons I can't see the netbook. Closing the blinds wasn't an option as the basil plant thrives on sunny afternoons -- because a good afternoon photosynthesizing followed by a night recouping and rebuilding restores that basil's firm umbrella-like leaves, but it's quick to get droopy when conditions aren't favorable.)

What is it about this basil? It's simultaneously so vulnerable and so resilient -- but so, I imagine, are the others if I got to know them. This, though, is the basil plant I took pictures, this is the basil I wrote about... To echo The Little Prince, in herself, she is more important than all the other basil plants.

Postscript (a day later): Trader Joe's chucked their basil plants last week -- they weren't doing so well. I was thinking this morning -- looking at the rainy sky, at the droopy leaves -- that my basil plant wasn't going to make it more than a few days. But it looks so much better tonight -- and will likely look even better by morning. Today was actually a mostly cloudly day, but I realized that with the window open, I could set the plant directly on the sill with the rail of the day bed to hold it in place. There it sat except when the lowering sun sent some bright rays into the room and we chased them.

And now... nightfall. Goodnight, netbook. Goodnight, basil plant. And (outside the still open window) Goodnight moon.

Reflection: The Hand Holds the Key

2010-08-17T22:14:00.000-07:00

My little finger wanted me to write this.

Today I was out walking when I became conscious of my middle two fingers tackling the little finger, yanking it so it was perpendicular to it's previous position, and holding it down. The little finger was very appreciative: Ah, that felt good!

No, I'm not just writing this to be silly. I came up with a phrase for something. It occurs to me that some of my postures that are the oddest -- and most comfortable -- are variations of "bend and lock": First bend a finger, arm, leg inward and rotate it differently than the way it grows out of its socket. And when it's rotated to wear it feels comfortable, grasp it, lay on, wedge it somewhere -- yes, somehow lock it into place... but not for long, because a lot of other things are waiting to be bent and locked, too. (Hey, the little finger had it's turn.)

The things we can look at and only think we see. You might look at me and notice that my fist was clenched, but fail to notice the reason: One clue is apparent when you look very closely and observe that the other fingers are curled around the little finger, holding it in that perpendicular position.

Happy Birthday, Dear Evening Nigh Reflections

2010-08-12T00:22:00.000-07:00

Evening Nigh Reflections began on August 12, 2009. The first post -- no, the first two posts -- went up that day, on public computers. And so the blog turns one today!

I've put so much online since the inception of this blog: notably 68 Squidoo pages. This summer this blog was joined also by a sister Blogspot blog, Audio Reflections.

But Evening Nigh Reflections is still my baby.

My most used tag this first year has been "soap box post"-- used over 40 times. I don't do any analytics on this blog, but the LinkWithin widget that makes the related posts thumbnails gives me some clues about which posts are (relatively) popular in tiny spheres. Some show up as "You may also like..." under a lot of posts in the weeks after they're written. The Kitty Carryall Metaphor was one of those. And from an even earlier time: Netbook Attachment/ Beautiful in my Eyes was a 'frequent flyer'. My Widget's Under the Weather, on the other hand, has hardly shown up as a "You may also like..." post at all (possibly due to some modesty or embarrassment on the part of the widget in question).

Some other theme strands: Well, I'm not going to link directly to either of the posts with the off-key singing, but here's one of the posts that began the "Time After Time" theme: Watching Through Windows.

Browsing back through the posts, I noticed that earlier Animoto videos -- most of which had soundtracks by real artists in the Animoto library -- had vanished off my Blogspot posts. They're all still on Animoto, though, and it looks like I can re-embed them using their new codes. I just re-embedded one on Mauicat Tribute -- a tribute to a kitty that a lot of folks know died in June of '09.

I messed up the formatting of the post a wee bit, but once a blog has any subscribers at all, it's probably best not to republish it a bunch of times.

On that note, oh, what a year. And "Happy birthday, dear blog, happy birthday to you."

Reflection: Basil Plant to the Foreground

2010-08-06T23:58:00.000-07:00

New digs... down one floor only. I'm in a smaller -- but sunnier -- apartment in the building I've lived in for most of my time in Seattle. Now I want to speak about that basil plant, looming large in the foreground. Today it is sitting atop the dollhouse, right up by the window, soaking up Seattle sun. Yesterday afternoon it did the same. If I had a little Fujifilm camera handy today, what a shot I could get: the basil plant against a segment of North Seattle skyline... kind of like a little green leafy Space Needle. (The Space Needle isn't actually as downtown Seattle skyscrapers, and it is not in fact downtown. Photographers like to take pictures looking down from Queen Anne Hilll.)

I've done something now a bit surprising to those who know me: I haven't exactly set myself up as Martha Stewart, but I do have this page on Squidoo, One Room Living with tips and pictures. And yup, things are much more spiffy when I'm armed with a camera, a scanner, an internet connection... It's the monotropism thing again: I function at a much higher level when I have a reason, a real reason, for everything I do. It's more comfortable doesn't tend to cut it as a reason for the likes of me.

Hard to Keep Me Off the Internet...

2010-08-03T12:19:00.001-07:00

It is hard to keep me off the internet. My phone and internet have theoretically been moved to my new room today -- I moved down a floor in the world! -- but there are some obstacles in the way of actually getting ethernet up and running. This is after all a 1920 building. The phone jack, which of course wasn't designed for ethernet, almost appears... well, walled over. The apartment manager, Jack, is going to come up later to remove the old phone jack and try to install the ethernet one. Hopefully Jack will have the jack -- and the internet -- working later today.

So where am I typing this post from now? No, not the local library, which doesn't open til 1:00 on Tuesday. I am typing from... my new mini-studio on floor 3. It juts out a little into the alley, see, and I am a little closer to the free wi-fi zone on 'the Ave' a block over. Close enough to... I am sitting on the day bed by the window enjoying a very week internet connection, courtesy the city of Seattle. This city-of-Seattle-sponsored-freebie wouldn't do at all for, say, internet teaching -- that's reason alone for ethernet -- but if I don't mind pages timing out quite frequently, I can engage in some internet activity!

I think it may help to raise the (adorable) netbook more to window level, but I do want the (adorable) netbook perched in a very secure position. So I have my arm and the netbook resting on... no, not a lap table... a large stuffed bear.

Speaking of which... I was taking some pictures of my 'recording studio' and the studio, in general, but there is another little obstacle. The computer that's hooked up to the scanner at Online Coffee is down. Actually all the computers in that corner were wearing "Out of Order" signs this morning. But... there is another Online Coffee with a scanner that doesn't work as well, but, last I knew, was working.

It can also be hard to keep me from scanning pictures if I have a mind to do so.

Now if only everything else were so easily solvable... using will alone.

In-Between: Moving (One Floor)

2010-07-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

In an attempt , to fund my med tests (and life in general) it's down one floor and a station in life, in a manner of speaking -- though it's nicer in a way, my new studio-room.

I had witty things to say, but my mind is so very tired. When the dust settles (literally!) I'll still have the same number.

Reflection: Online, On the Air... Of the Air

2010-07-24T23:50:00.000-07:00

I've had Audio Reflections up for nearly a month now, and just today I formally announce it/ link to it. Hmmm. Ah, and some things I still hold onto yet. A writing group I belong to -- kind of an offshoot of Squidoo as its Squid-founded -- is beginning a weekly 'radio' show on BlogTalkRadio and I am doing some reading/ voice stuff... like some poetry intros.

I linked to a recording of this nifty little poem, "To Any Reader" (aka "Child of Air") some time back, but here's the version I recorded with intro:

Listen!

Tardiness... I also put up one of last months'blog posts today... ah, I mean 'twas saved some weeks, but not published. This one also contains a poem, a rather evocative one.

Reflection: Kyrie...

2010-07-13T16:13:00.000-07:00

Kyrie Eleison: a Greek prayer. Across a lot of my life, I have closed letters to particular people with "God bless". Since the word "blessings" carries such a unique meaning in Squidoo culture -- and one can't necessarily go about it for general purposes -- well, I thought I should look up a new blessing.

I didn't now the spelling of "Kyrie Eleison" well enough to enter it the search engine and find out... how to spell it -- but I did find the phrase promptly upon typing "Carry a Laser" into Google. (Carry a laser down the road that I must travel, Carry a laser through the darkness of the night...)

While searching through my files for a picture for this post... I had no awareness of having I clicked on any music files, but I guess I must've because Windows media player popped up and (aptly) began playing Joshua Kadison's "Born to Shine":

...Got on the bus today... didn't get off I just knew I had to take a ride... a strange man sitting right next to me said, "I can feel what your eyes can see, don't you worry, brother, everyone's doing fine"... something must have changed cause somehow everyone seemed blessed.

I am your reflection, and you are mine, all of us reflections of the light divine, so shimmer, little one, you were born to shine...

Indeed.

(Editorial Note: The next post may crop up under this one -- again.)

In-Between Reflection: Still in the Game?

2010-07-10T23:56:00.000-07:00

"But we are still in the game/ If we should lose there's only us to blame..." I am lifting Dan Fogelbers's line pretty far out of context here.

In those practical areas of life... I interviewed at a new test prep school in Bellevue, who told me she'd add me to the roster and contact me when she had students for me, worked with a new CLEP student, and am in the process of possibly picking up some lucrative classes elsewhere (auditioning, so to speak?

These are dry months in more than one way. But.

Reflection: The Sweep of the Harbor Tide

2010-07-06T22:40:00.000-07:00

Listen!
I did put up that other site: Evening Nigh Reflections has sister, Audio Reflections, who is doing mostly public domain poetry, and is of a more pragmatic mindset than this one.

I've learned a lot from 'Squid-people' about putting things up on the internet that support one's pragmatic existence: one's teaching, writing life... The new site is doing the 'Professional Squid' Challenge: a post a day for 30 days. (I know: Professional Squids?)

But I am not so pragmatic with my attachments -- online as elsewhere. I love this blog! (And as I say that, it wags... well, not its tail, but its header, perhaps.)

In-Between: New Friend Selection Technology

2010-07-01T23:21:00.000-07:00

If you read the following announcement at face value and use the definition of friend that sufficed for centuries -- well, I think it's pretty funny:

"Facebook's new photo tagging feature selects friends for you."

Memory: From the Days of Steve Salamander

2010-06-29T23:13:00.000-07:00

Listen!
As we near another July 4, here is a ghost of a July 4th past: "Your Hometown" -- an excerpt from "Til Steve Salamander Returns" The story was composed my first summer in Seattle and published last summer. More than a little bit of my heart is in the story... and the place and the characters therein.

P.S. Working in HTML mode on this one because of the embedding code. Having quite a time getting that photo sized right -- so no photo for now.

Sunday Evening Reflection

2010-06-27T19:27:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday evening, and Bartell's is closed. You know online writing is a big part of your life when you have the lentils, you have the spinach, you have the garlic... but you lack a disposable camera to record the process.

Photo essays are motivation to keep a reasonably clean kitchen. So is moving from my current apartment, as I noted in a previous post.

I write several places on the internet, and am kind of sorta beginning to have an online community that stretches across sites. But that's not why I've written less on this blog this month. Ah, no. It's that there are things I can't discuss and things I can't not discuss -- and here and there posts that I simply don't want to cover up too soon.

This blog here is my baby. This blog here is my tenuous connection to... important parts of my life. That clock picture got inadvertently left out of a video I put up a few weeks ago.

Once again -- another post will probably pop under under this one.

Reflection: Flower Phone

2010-06-27T16:34:00.000-07:00

A poem by Robert Frost ironically (for me) titled "The Phone". Ah, but here the phone is not a phone but a flower who seems to convey tidings from a loved one.

I recorded this a while ago, and there it sat in my drafts. I don't think I've posted it yet on my public domain poetry site, where I've been posting pretty much a public domain poem a day -- no, not a pace I'm going to keep up forever, but good for getting the site off the ground. It's doing the "Professional Squid" blogging challenge... 30 posts in 30 days.

(I know...Professional Squids!?)

Reflection: Summer Sunshine

2010-06-22T17:33:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning from one of those scary dreams where someone died and I'm not sure who. With Benadryl in my system, I went back to sleep for quite a while -- and the next dream cut through some of the turmoil but not all.

Long later I woke up to Summer Sunshine. Step Into Seattle Farmers Market was today's Squidoo Summer Sunshine winner -- $99 to my selected charity (the Grameen Foundation) and $99 to me. Well -- the person yesterday evening who I gave almost the last $.50 in my purse to for a crucial phone call said the karma would come back. He said the karma comes back when you think you can't take another step.

The next blog entry might (once again) appear under this one. Some posts I start but don't finish right off.

Reflection: Living Spaces

2010-06-20T23:19:00.000-07:00

Decisions -- and moves, too, most likely. Times are tight, oh yes, and putting out money for medical tests is surely the straw that could break the...

Priorities: One does what one needs to do, and what one feels they need to do. And so I've been looking up alternate housing situations.

There are times I have found myself missing the big old attic that I lived in for a while before my current studio. There were stairs right there in the unit, so it wouldn't have done once my cat got old. Now, though...

I called on a room (elsewhere) and ultimately was also shown a nicer room that shan't be renovated for a month or two. Perhaps I will. There's some safety in having options.

Reflection: The Fox and the Roses

2010-06-16T21:12:00.000-07:00

Sometimes human interaction -- mine -- does seem like something straight out of The Little Prince. Here and there there's a fox; here and there there's a rose... Oh, and there are are a lot of other roses, too, growing together: roses who may be beautiful in their own right, but to whom I have a tendency to say inside my mind,

"You are not at all like my rose... As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."

"One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose."

I may say it inside my mind... oh, but that doesn't mean I have never let that attitude seep out and show itself on the outside. There were times over the years when letting it show got me in some trouble.

I've been writing to a fox as of late. Some of my letters over the years to different people... well, they can be almost like blog posts. I may soon post excerpts from a letter to a fox. And the post may appear under this one (as I actually begun it before).

Photo Credit

Reflection: People as Poetry

2010-06-15T23:31:00.000-07:00

Some of my blog posts grow out of letters. This one grows out of a letter to... well, I started to say "someone you don't know", but do I really know who might be reading on a particular day. It started with... No, it didn't start with, but it included a quote from an author who said poems are to be read --not analyzed -- as they're images from their creators' eyes.

About that quote: I am going back and forth on whether people are slightly like poems in that sense. On the one hand, I do sometimes get into reading people to unlock mysteries. On the other hand, they too can be seen as images from the author’s eye. One surely can get into trouble when they analyze and take apart and go on the basis of what they think they know as opposed to listening to the gestalt.

That picture of me writing is from many years ago -- I scan various things that I might use for photo-illustration, and sometimes I just go on a search through them.

Reflection: Those Who Hide Too Well Away

2010-06-12T21:36:00.000-07:00

Another thought in the form of a poem:

We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout
But oh the agitated hear
Til someone really find us out...

Audio Reflection: Keepsake Mill

2010-06-08T23:31:00.000-07:00

My folks couldn't have envisioned this when they took that picture years ago: By gummit, that old photo is talking! Actually, it's reciting "Keepsake Mill" -- a poem that (though you wouldn't guess from its somber tones) actually comes from a volume of classic children's poems; it's one of a couple poems where the author, Robert Louis Stevenson, steps out of his 'child's garden' and speaks from across a span of a great many years.

It's a pragmatic thing in a way, finding more ways to put up audio online. I can put up another site/ domain with my InMotion hosting, and I hope to have Audio Reflections up within a few weeks. The site can give some support to other things I have on the web, so it's a practical move as well as a pet project. You know I'll maintain it! (I can get too exhausted to write, but I seldom get too exhausted to read aloud.)

This particular poem is also for people in my life, and those I miss. Speaking of which... The phone just rang, and I didn't answer it. Oh, bad me! Of course I'm not avoiding anyone -- just news of them. (How very... me.) Got to ease myself back into gear: Breathe in, breathe out, center...

But here's a poem, a slightly abridged version as I needed to get the piece down to sixty seconds (without going at too ridiculous a pace).

Reflection: Scrub Scrubbing Away...

2010-06-05T21:44:00.000-07:00

In one of my first attempts at magazine publishing (my brother and I had a magazine company that summer and gave our parents a subscription) I gave my mother and father step by step instructions about how properly to clean house. I know, I know... It seems a likely story.

Flash forward to the present: After 5 hours this weekend of cleaning -- appliances, walls, floor, windows -- does my studio apartment sparkle? Heavens, no! When it comes to the insides of cabinets and drawers, the clutter will make it quite a job -- I can't actually scrub 'til I can 'see ground'. At some point, I may need to bite the bullet and actually sort things. (I am much less fond of filing, sorting, and trashing than of scrubbing.) Of course, when it comes to the inside of stove and such the scrubbing itself is quite a job -- and I need to replenish my supply of abrasive sponges. Off I go again...

To what does the apartment owe this flurry of cleaning? Truth is, I think I'm going to need to move somewhere cheaper. The cost of some medical tests? Well, in an extended season of difficult times, that's the last straw in some ways. If those tests are so very important to me... well, looks like it will take some sacrifices elsewhere.

I still have my 'bad news shield' up as I rush about, busy-busy, trying to accomplish things and to put up some insurance again the dry season. I do need, very soon, to lower the shield a wee bit and let in a bit more of the world, and those people I love. Ah, now they're the ones that can make me fragile -- and sloppier and less accomplished. (They're worth it, though.)

Reflection: Perched Here in Seattle

2010-06-02T19:41:00.000-07:00

I wanted to leave that previous post up a few days because there is (very much!) a message in it to a few folks. I may have quite a lot to write come tomorrow, but today I will say just a wee bit here. Because... Well, I worry about people when I can't reach them. So if anyone returns the favor...

As hard as I may have been to reach lately (if anyone but the Subfinder is trying!) I am right here in Seattle. And -- though my mind is quite far away -- I'll post a link to a bit of the land outside my window: Step Into Seattle Farmers Market

Getting ready to meditate now...

Reflection: You're calling to me...

2010-05-29T09:58:00.000-07:00

I thought this was a very good time for the artist "I'm singing, though rather poorly" to release another verse of "Time After Time" -- even if the artist is singing rather more poorly than the first time. (And even if one of my photos seems missing.)

Read on...

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Reflection: A Note to the Person...

2010-05-28T21:25:00.000-07:00

A note to the person who's voice filled me with so much panic:

An intake of air -- Oh -- and I held the phone away from me and began to cry. And after a little while I was aware of the dial tone.

Of course I am talking to you. I am not talking to you tonight.

Memory: Conversation on a Bus

2010-05-27T06:44:00.000-07:00

On the bus, there were 2 people ahead of me -- separate seats. I was sure they were both men; they had men's voices. Everything they said I tried to assimilate into my original assumption: 2 men talking.

One of them talked about a change in appetite.

"Are you pregnant?" the other asked.

"Heck, no," came the reply. My assumption at that point: They were clowning around. It did seem they kept the joke up a little long, but what the hey...

The one said soething like, "In another 20 years, when I'm too old to have kids..." Again I was a bit puzzled. I mean, can't men have kids at any age? But maybe he meant in another twenty years he'd be too old to raise kids...

It took me rather a long time to challenge my original assumption: that here were two men talking.

Reflection: Stimulating Relaxation

2010-05-24T18:51:00.000-07:00

Counterintuitive as it is, I find these things calmative: coffee, mucuna pruriens supplements, as well as some energy drinks (depending on the formula). The "Caffeine calms me!" response is surely not unheard of-- but mellowing out on stimulants is more typical of ADHD than it is of anything I've ever been diagnosed with. So in a way, I have a biogenetic marker for ADHD, even though I don't fit the phenotype.

Here's a different sort of explanation for the phenomena: Stimulants activate the "flight or fight" systems in many people; that's why we say they're bad for anxiety. But I have hardly any "fight or flight" response in me at all; while many anxiety-disordered people have abnormally high arousal levels, mine are very abnormally low. My anxiety is actually monotropic vulnerability; it's a matter of putting my eggs in one basket (and often a flimsy basket at that). So... if a substance like coffee can stimulate enough interest/ arousal that I focus outward on things other than my own particular obsessions, well, the overall effect is going to be calming.

People who've known me over the years know I have this thing about coffee -- and that I did long before I had any explanation whatsoever for the fondness!

Coffee Picture: Gregory Szarkiwicz, Free Digital Photos

Reflection: Uploading Oneself to the Internet...

2010-05-22T18:51:00.000-07:00

I did an online test of my netbook's internet connectivity speed. The upload speed was slower than the upload speed, yes, but not by as much as is usually the case. The upload speed measured at close to average for all computers with similar ISP addresses, while the download speed was markedly slower. What does it mean that the netbook has a much better upload speed than download speed? It (like me) shows, relative to the general population, marked adaptation/ preference for uploading itself to the internet as opposed to merely downloading.

Reflection: Farmers Market Scenes

2010-05-20T11:50:00.000-07:00

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

I tried out the Animoto 'air' template on this one, though I think I prefer using the traditional (or nontraditional as it were) Animoto template. A majority of the pictures here were taken in or near the U-District Farmers Market; a couple were taken in or near the Capitol Hill Farmers Market. There is, however, one major 'imposter', a themed picture far removed in space and time. It's not the cat -- that very sociable feline greeted me a couple blocks from the Capitol Hill Farmers Market and would have been happy to let me take a whole roll of pictures of it, had I been so inclined.

There is a "Summer Sunshine" contest on Squidoo -- create a page and set the royalties 100% to charity. Every weekday during the summer, they're picking a winner -- $99 bonus to the charity, $99 to the writer of the page. I haven't put a page up yet, but I'm planning to showcase the Seattle Farmers Markets, and set the royalties to a microenterprise or hunger charity.

The song for this little farmers market musical slideshow is "(Love is) Better Than Money". Ironic choice, or not so much? I dunno. I had actually selected the song for my farmers market slides a long time ago, but I had to get some "fairer month" photos before I put it up. I'm not sure which month the U-District Farmers market sign photos were taken, but the other farmer market photos represent December to May. So... now I'll probably get the page up by the weekend.

Reflection: Irises Crossing

2010-05-18T10:37:00.000-07:00

I enjoy things more when I see some big reason for doing them -- when they seem, to me, to fit into a personal grand design. My first summer in Seattle, I roamed all over with my disposable cameras. That habit surely did fall away. But now, with so many goals -- personal and pragmatic -- tied to what I put on the internet, I go roving with Fujifilm cameras again. It's not a chore; I enjoy it -- yet at the same time, I require a reason to enjoy.

Seattle is still a beautiful city, even despite... The snippet of (my) song lyrics that appears on the sidebar of this blog -- the lyrics that this blog derives its title from -- include the lines, "I cry for disappointed dreams/ For things you would not give to me/ But in between you're beautiful.." There's a bit more of that on the Evening Nigh Reflections opening post.

I just got a roll of film developed, and scanned some things this morning. I didn't intend to photograph the crossing sign along with that iris, but I kind of like it. I chose not to crop that one.

Reflection: Up a Down Staircase

2010-05-15T15:58:00.000-07:00

I checked my mailbox today -- some of it. (I do recognize of course that many people complete this activity on a regular basis and don't feel the need to brag about it online, but 'check mail' is one of the main activities rendered difficult by my bad news phobias.)

I've been arguably on something of a roll the past few hours: Not wanting to live life as a fugitive I went to King County Library to pay some library fines. When the lady behind the counter looked up my account, she was really staring for a moment. No, it wasn't because of the size of my fine (not that bad actually) and no, the matter had not been transfered to any other agency (neither collections, nor the FBI, nor the mafia...) No, she was staring because... well let's just say there's a limit to how long they hold onto things there, but if I'd gone in sooner, I would have left with a picture ID.

While the activities of the past few hours have been arguably exemplary, they do, I realize hint at pockets of dysfunction. I also want to say (and this is important) that I do feel uneasy about some missed calls. I try to make myself frequently reachable through at least one communication mode. I may need to get a new phone. When it's been off the hook (and sometimes I do knock it off accidentally) I tend to lose the next call. There are times when I jiggle all the ports and cords and still don't get connected -- it's happened too frequently in the recent past.

Reflection: Don't Let the Party Dress Fool You

2010-05-14T02:13:00.000-07:00

Don't be fooled by the party dress and mary jane shoes! The Squidoo web page that that picture appears on has willpower like you wouldn't believe.

There has been a thread going on Squidoo about how having an eBay module on a webpage may cause the page to fall out of the Google index or be ranked very low. Some say this is an unintentional bug (that the eBay module is generating some kind of weird code). Someone did an experiment and removed the eBay module to find the page rise again. Anyway, A Paper Doll Childhood is one of several of my pages that took a hit Google-wise and took something of a dip in terms of visitors. By the time I removed its eBay module this morning, it had fallen fell a few thousand spots in the internal ranking system.

But here's wear it gets curious. When I looked in on it this morning, its stats were kind of paltry in terms of visitors, but it had risen back up a few thousand places in the internal ranking system -- and was once more seated at the top of my personal 62 lens Squidoo stack. (Yup, find the line, "This member's top ranked page is ______" and there you will find the page with the paper dolls smiling out in its little pink dress and patent leather shoes.) Hmm, how does it do it? Maybe the page got an "angel blessing" -- something that can raise Squidoo rankings. Sometimes, though, I am hard pressed to explain just how that page manages to be so successful. Sometimes I think it has a will of its own. (Perhaps it is reading the Law of Attraction?)

Anyway, the larger lesson is one I frequently return to: Appearances can definitely belie intenal strength.

Reflection: Community

2010-05-09T21:33:00.000-07:00

That's my mother long ago with a group of Eastern Airlines pilots -- a big part of what was then her community(and, I will note, a different world than any that I knew her in). I myself have been a part of different communities at different times: a dorm, 2 co-ops...

I don't think there are more than a few people who really have an idea of the cascade of events that led me to find myself finding myself online. There's pain in the cascade of events, and there's a lot that's not ideal. But there are times I have had reason to love some of these virtual communities and some of these still-real people!

Now then... about another another community not quite so long ago as to be rendered yet in black and white: At my latest scanning session at Online Coffee, I also scanned one more photo for use in a second verse of "Time After Time".

Reflection: Good Hands

2010-05-06T14:11:00.000-07:00

I did find out what the disenrollment letter. One of the first they does now as part of their recertification process is send a letter to verify a person's address. If the letter is returned -- and the address is not verified-- the person is disenrolled. The person can appeal, though, if they think there was a mistake. Despite the budget and the fact that they want and need people off the program, I think I have a good chance of being re-enrolled. I'm still here (and I got the second letter -- obviously).

Well, these thing do evoke some anxiety in me. But as for silver linings in silver and oft-chilly lands, today I was at the University of Washington Medical Center as an uninsured person. I guess it's the first time that I've ever been there for any medical evaluation or treatment; I've been there as a visitor. I do strongly feel that they're the best medical facility around -- they treat people well.

Reflection: Missing Things

2010-05-01T19:00:00.000-07:00

You wouldn't recognize me from the picture, huh? Indeed it wouldn't have added much to the birth card the state of Virginia issued, even if technically it had been a photo ID. I'll get back to that idea in a moment...

In a way, this is an addendum to yesterday's post. And oh my, do I have things to add. I got something in the mail that was startling -- and I was telling myself that it appeared to be in error and there was a good chance I would get it straightened out. After prowling around on the internet, though, I'm not sure the correspondence had anything to do with either negligence or perceived negligence on my part. It may have to do simply with changes in legislature.

Apparently, for the first time, Medicaid is going to be extended to people who don't have children (as in single people with incomes less than 14,400). I think I did read somewhere that Basic Health was going to disenroll people with who were Medicaid-eligible, even if they weren't currently on it, but I can't find the information on the internet now. So here I am with a generic letter saying that my payment due is now 0, the reason is disenrollment, and to file an appeal within 30 days if I thought there was an error.

Well, I definitely feel it's better to get disenrolled for reasons other than one's own negligence or error. (Has the government really done something so useful with dollars as to extend that safety net?) Still I would consider it far from ideal to have to go on a program where the income is capped so very low (133% of the poverty level as opposed to Basic Health's 200%). It's not good to be wanting/ needing to get one's income up beyond what it currently is...while simultaneously needing to have such a very low income.

Here I am in the midst of all this medical testing, which brings me back to... that picture. I've got a stash of photos for a geneticist. But UW genetics sent me a mailing telling me what to bring to the appointment; they want to see my pictures, yes, but they also want to see my ID. Dang. I brought back that official birth card from the State of Virginia, issued in '72. But it's not a picture ID, and even if it was... Well, hey, if I still looked like I did then, the doctor wouldn't need to see pictures.

Reflection: As April Draws to a Close...

2010-04-30T23:21:00.000-07:00

Just a few general updates here as April is slip sliding away. Getting ready, during this next week, to go to a geneticist and a job interview -- in no particular order. Times are the tightest they've ever been, but... now think about it. What was the biggest reason I needed thousands of dollars in reserve? The kitty, of course. There's no one in my care right now, and money is... well, money is just money.

Now it's a silver-gray Seattle morning and I'm busy with my online life: a get-together for online tutors, updates to my pages on Squidoo. One of those webpages has seen 69 visitors this week -- I think that's the most any has seen in a single week thusfar. I do add links to some of my webpages writings there on the sidebar from time to time.

In-Between Reflection: Honk If...

2010-04-29T20:50:00.001-07:00

It's nice to have a bank where they know you, especially when you're without an ID and such. Oh, at Wells Fargo, I'd say they they know me.

Anyhow... I was at the bus stop in the University District when a bus went by wearing a "Honk if your bank is terrific." Hmmm, but I don't drive, and I would look pretty silly on my own there honking like a goose.

Reflection: Dream Spaces

2010-04-25T22:31:00.000-07:00

Before I talk more about dreams, I want to backtrack a bit. I haven't hung out much on the forums on the eduFire much for months, though I've logged in regularly for business (and I've been on the Squidoo forums). Now here's the reason for the disappearance off the one forum: Some people do know about my fears of things happening to people. When I started to expand my social contacts so much online... well, I was a little anxious about it. So many people to keep track of... and things happen to people, and people die.

I'd been hanging out on that platform a couple months when a fellow tutor who was really active on the forums sort of disappeared. There was a thread going on about the disappearance for some time -- weeks at least. People who communicated with him through other platforms (email? Twitter?) said he wasn't answering. I heard he'd been quite ill... Well, it was then that I started getting squeamish about hanging out on the forums there. I was on one day and a post someone wrote about what she'd learned from the guy, by gummit, it sounded like a eulogy.

Flashforward to today. I logged in to the system for a class that actually I did't think anyone was coming for and perhaps with my touchpad, I glazed over some link I didn't know I touched. I found myself on the class page of the person I did orientation with. He had new strategizing class for tutors. I thought oh, I'll sign up for that, need to get back to socializing over there -- ah, and for some very pragmatic reasons. So I looked at the attendee list, and I saw... the disappeared tutor.

Now here's where I return to the theme of dreams. It wasn't the night before, but the one before that that... well, here's a bit of the dialogue:

"You haven't been on the platform for so long."

"No, you haven't."

Reflection: Where All of the Walls All Continually Change

2010-04-24T11:18:00.000-07:00

Picture this: I go into a school to substitute teach. Someone in the office makes a gesture to show me which way the class is. I walk out of the office. A moment later, the person calls to me that I'm going in the wrong direction. Seems like I'm not paying attention, huh? Ah, no. A slight change in direction can disorient me. I can't look back and see the person who was doing the pointing -- there's now a wall separating us -- and so the gesture the person was making no longer has any meaning whatsoever to me. I can't place the gesture in in its proper orientation in space, I can't place the person in her proper orientation in space, and very likely I can't tell you which way which way the desk in the office was facing. I can still tell you where the office is -- I can still see the door if I turn around. But give me another minute, and a couple more turns, and I won't be able to where the office was. (I mean, where it is -- I know that things do have fixed locations in space, even though the world seems, spatially, "Just like a maze, where all of the walls all continually change".)

Yes, there are moments when that contributes to making a bit of a bad impression, or having some management troubles. Kindergartners, unlike, say, fourth graders, may be so meek that they won't tell me which way to walk down the hall even when I ask them to. But if we have to turn around ("Why are we going this way?") to correct a mistake, there may be some little issues. ("He got in front of me!" "I was there!")

Most of us aren't homing pigeons, but there are neurons that fire in our brain to help us record locations and find our way back. A normal human (like a normal mouse) will also show an ability to form cognitive maps or neural representations of place. They don't have to walk a path in a particular direction to understand it from that direction. And yet that ability can be missing -- even when cognitive/ reasoning skills are intact.

Reflection: The Experience of Reward

2010-04-20T18:40:00.001-07:00

An understanding of the brain can help us understand some basic funky little things, like why we might bite into a hard candy when ostensibly we want the taste to last. The candy releases neurochemicals into our brain, and so the biting may give a bigger rush. So what is it about really -- the taste or the brain chemicals?

If we accept that a lot of things may ultimately not be about our senses but rather about the chemicals released in our brains in response to our senses... well, then we can begin to understand so much, like what happens when the process goes awry. People realize, because they've witnessed the effect on peers (on TV if not in real life!) that drugs have a detrimental effect on the reward/ motivation system. Most of us, though, have less experience with people whose brains that work like that naturally -- people whose reward systems aren't triggered normally by their senses, but instead respond to only a limited set of stimuli. (It doesn't occur to a lot of people that that way of being even exists at all.)

I told a friend once that what looked like excessive fear on my part was actually monotropic vulnerability. I'm not sure the distinction was clear. I meant that if a person's reward system is triggered in unnaturally strong ways by just one or two stimuli -- and if they fail to respond to other supposed rewards -- then an unnatural amount of their attention is going to be focused on those one or two things.

picture credit

Memory: Mauicat Tribute 2

2010-04-18T13:27:00.000-07:00

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Here's a second little Mauicat Tribute video, which includes a couple photos that were brought back to Seattle from my brother's house just recently. I'll add this video to Maui's Squidoo page later. The Animoto music library includes two songs by the artist, Angie Arnesault -- I used one for the first Maui video, and planned all along to use the other for the second. (I've used other artists from their library for my Seattle videos.) Sometimes the job Animoto does with what I upload and select is... just stunning. The Animoto shorts are free, but if one has enough themed photos for a full length song, it is surely worth the $3. (Of course there are also more expensive memberships for artists and others who want to use Animoto to promote their business.) One almost has to make some things free to compete on the internet -- but I would like to give Animoto a bit of support. They've done beautifully with my kitty pictures here.

Now I want to say something about that lovely kitty cat who died last June. You know, when he was six or seven, vets first started finding abnormalities in his X-rays and in his lab work; the results were conflicting, and they waffled what system was implicated, and whether anything was seriously wrong or it was more of an anomaly. He seemed very healthy then, and I know there were people who thought I was overanxious and/or that the vets were just after my money. Ah, but, I didn't think that kitty was going to die immediately -- I just feared he wasn't going to get as far as the average cat. He didn't. The life expectancy for an indoor-only cat is about 16; he made it to just 13. There surely are times I've felt guilty, but I know he reached double the age that he was when they first discovered things that were 'out of range' his heart size, his creatine and calcium levels.

Now I hope I didn't detract from this lovely little video by including those comments in the same post.

Reflection: My Dreaming Mind(s)

2010-04-15T21:59:00.001-07:00

Having read quite a bit of brain science -- and quite a bit about those different parts of the brain that have to work together -- I can understand how a person could have a 'divided mind'.

My mind is less divided than most, more singleminded -- except for sometimes when I'm asleep. See, I have generally a very responsible mind when asleep. My sleeping mind isn't obsessive like my waking mind, and it tends to avoid topics that might upset me. And my sleeping mind occasionally seems to know far more than my waking mind -- it knows things I honestly don't know how it knows -- and I have a habit of listening to it and taking its messages quite seriously.

Occasionally, though, when I've had the wrong thing to eat before bed, or when something is physically wrong, my mind can get a little hyper... and then it wants to explore/ try out negative possibilities. What if... it asks. Ah, but then another part of my sleep brain is like... Uh oh, oh boy, we can't have this! And that second part goes around trying to clean up the mess. (Think of Sleeping Beauty, where the banished fairy says the princess will prick her finger and die, but then another fairy says oh no, she won't die, she'll just sleep for a hundred years.)

Reflection: A Global Netbook

2010-04-13T13:17:00.000-07:00

The picture is of my six-year-old niece with my netbook, taken when I was in Arizona. I was tutoring ESL via petite netbook this morning (a Cambridge student of Chinese background).

Just occasionally someone sends a session request via eduFire for a subject I don't necessarily promote a lot, like conversational ESL. I thought I might encounter difficulties this morning -- or issues regarding mechanics being in and out of the apartment (loudly) replacing the pipes -- but no, it went quite smoothly. (Hey, one needs to earn a bit of money to survive -- and it's been tough.)

Now about the talented little netbook that does tutoring... it has a Squidoo page: My Acer Netbook (Snookums). One of the first I put up after getting my giant squid status.

Reflection: A Face in This World

2010-04-10T13:34:00.001-07:00

Here I am at about two, sporting no nose, or at least no nasal bridge. (I told my first lie about the time I turned four, and sure enough, in pictures taken around that age, you can see that my nose was growing...)

Seriously, though, I had commented in an earlier post that I wanted to bring back some infant/ childhood pictures to possibly take to a geneticist. I'd said I was interested in seeing, among other things, just how underdeveloped that nasal bridge had been. Photo details don't show as well scanned/reduced, but I located some things that grew the little spot of conviction in me.

Anyway, some stuff I look up online is kind of scary. Why then is it so important to me to pursue? I don't quite fancy the task of explaining. Ah, but what keeps playing in my head is a line from "A Place in This World": "Now I'm looking for a reason, roaming through the night to find..."

It's funny, I always thought the lyric sounded like "a face in this world". Well -- I sure have looked closely at a lot of little faces lately: studying online images as well as photo box archives (and niece's noses).

Reflection: Synchronicity (Once in a Lullabye)

2010-04-07T15:53:00.001-07:00

Back in Seattle. I did see my mother when I was in Phoenix. A month ago, my brother would have been quite surprised to know that that she would have lived anywhere near this amount of time, still waking enough from a late Altzeimer's slumber to take in a little water and nourishment. I had read that people may respond to music when they respond to little, so I sang something we used to sing in the car when was little, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". (Of course my mother has not known who any of us are for quite a long time.)

On the way back to Seattle, I was thinking about it, and "Over the Rainbow" was going through my head. But then it was being sung out loud, too -- quite near me there in the Greyhound bus. A bored little girl, just four or five, was singing to amuse her mother and herself.

There's a land I heard of, once in a lullabye...

Photo: Tina Philips, Free Digital Photos

Reflection: Quality of Life

2010-04-04T17:35:00.001-07:00

My brother and I had an interesting conversation. See, I still haven't gotten my ID replaced, and it's caused some minor inconveniences. So Kevin asked me if I would save time if I was more organized. I suppose I would save some time, yet I see no impact whatsoever on my quality of life. The real impasse, understanding-wise, is this: My brother -- and I suppose most people -- have an assumption that it somehow impacts my quality of life whether I'm convenienced or inconvenienced, whether I'm comfortable or uncomfortable, or clean or dirty, or whether my purse is stolen or not stolen. Why would my quality of life be different either way?

I think some people who are labeled as high-functioning autistic-- including some who are very highly accomplished in their particular field or area of obsession-- share this trait. They almost can't be motivated by their senses. And... they almost can't be motivated by anything but their own particular cause or obsession. I think the difference is taking place at a neurological level.

I think that relates to... Well, I think people mostly just assume that everyone sees it as more pleasurable for a loved one to give them flowers than to run around and squawk like a chicken. I am perfectly capable of understanding that it's supposed to matter to me. The fact remains -- it doesn't. (More about that in a previous post: The Kitty Carryall Metahor).

Reflection: Home Visit

2010-04-02T20:02:00.000-07:00

And here I am in Phoenix. I haven't developed my latest pictures, so today's picture is a Greyhound bus station. Soon there will be pictures of the little nieces, Chelsea, 6 and Callee, 2.

I have been cruising the internet with a kindergartner today. Chelsea selected the paper dolls that she wanted printed out and read some online storybooks: "Monkey sees a red balloon. Monkey sees a green balloon..." She also explored some of the pictures I have saved on my USB stick. My brother says tomorrow he'll find me those long-ago pictures I need.

Reflection: The Paper Doll Page Rides Again...

2010-03-30T13:51:00.000-07:00

Remember when I said paper dolls weren't such a funny topic for a Squidoo page? Well, putting the paper dolls online up was rather a pragmatic Squidoo move, actually. I have 54 lenses at this point (a 4 lens cushion above what I need to apply for Giant Squid status this round) and for several weeks now my top lens has been A Paper Doll Childhood. (It peaked at about a 3,000 lensrank, and is closer to 4,000 now.)

If a person interacts on the Squidoo forums and leaves comments on others' 'lenses', from time to time other Squidoo-ers will click through onto their profile. Many people browse through the lens list and visit whatever topics interest them; some, though, are more inclined to check out your top-ranked page. I would say that male Squid are less likely to drop in on a lens about paper dolls, though. It's generally quite a girlie crew that comments on that one.

Not today. Today someone wrote that he was going to be the first and possible only guy to leave a comment on my paper doll lens. He mentioned that he was trying to make a living as a freelancer and that he liked to read other people's internet writing and see what worked for them.

Well, here is one life lesson that can be drawn from my experiences with Squidoo: There is a place for people to simply be themselves. Paper doll pages can do quite well. The lens that made Lens of the Day and thus peaked highest (briefly in the top 1,000) was quite a personal one, Making Sense of Monotropism. That lens has had its champions.

As for making money with online writing, though... well, at this point it's a few dollars here and there. It's on the rise, but it's still quite low. Times are tough -- and tight -- for so many reasons. Putting out the money for a Greyhound ticket is tough. But I've got most of the remaining pieces to my kindergarten-aged niece's dollhouse packed, I've got a shoulderbag case for Snookums-the-netbook to ride in... and it looks like I'll begin my Arizona trip in a few hours. I'll be gone a week or so.

Reflection: Does Your Nose Dip Low?

2010-03-28T11:58:00.000-07:00

Have you ever felt the need to document your ... nose? I do. I want the early history of my nose.

But no, that's not an old baby picture of me. That's a baby niece. Observe that she was a cute baby. Observe, too, the nasal bridge: the slope that rises up (and down) right there between her two eyes. Both my nieces were born with nasal bridges! I've seen those things on early pictures of my cousins and my brother, as well.

As for me... the pictures I have are small, they're less clear than ideal. I think there was very little in the way of nasal bridge -- it was low, ah, but how low did it go? I don't think anything I can dig up (medical records long gone) is going to get genetics testing actually paid for by insurance, but there are things I want to see.

My brother tells me the old photos still exist -- more than the paltry few in my possession -- and I have a use for them beyond digital storytelling.

It's Spring Break. I'll talk to my brother again in a little bit, and I think I'm going home. A hard journey in a lot of ways.

Reflection: Netbook Attachment II / Beautiful to my Ears

2010-03-26T22:01:00.000-07:00

I read somewhere that if a netbook quieted down when you picked it up, the noise was probably coming from the fan, and not the hard drive. So does that mean netbooks are like babies -- they seek human contact and go hush-a-bye when you hold them? (Or do you suppose it has more to do with circulating air?)

The netbook in the picture is mine. It was christened Aubrey, but it answers to Snookums. I have thought at points of doing a Squidoo page for this here netbook. It could recommend some products/ security programs, and I could include some blog posts where it appears as the charming creature it is.

Perhaps I shouldn't personify it too much, though... I've been concerned about it this week. It's a bit noisy, though not as noisy as the noisy Acer netbooks people have seen fit to post to YouTube. If it were to need a major new part... ah, well, better than getting a new netbook.

Snookums, you and I are going places! This here is the best netbook because... well, rather than give you pragmatic reasons I could give a mishmash of stuff straight out of The Little Prince and The Velveteen Rabbit. Seaking of which... do you suppose there might be a Blue Fairy for netbooks, a fairy who swoops down and gets them eventually, and says thing like, "You have been an absolutely awesome Acer Aspire One netbook. Before you were real to Karen. Now you shall be real to everyone."

In-between Reflection: The Phone

2010-03-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

I don't do it on purpose. Sometimes the phone doesn't work right, and I can't hear anyone on the other end. These incidents seem more likely to happen soon after the phone has been off the hook for a while. I'll wiggle at the ports, and I may end up connecting or I may not, but usually I won't hang up unless there's a hang up on the other end. Today I did. They were on for so very long. I kept saying, "This isn't working right... Hey you can all back." I replaced the phone on the receiver and an uneasy feeling came over me, born perhaps of dreams. I didn't do that on purpose, you know.

Reflection: Without Direction

2010-03-21T22:37:00.000-07:00

I got on the bus the other day, rummaged through my purse for coins, and then instead of rotating my body forwards and dropping them in the coin box, I rotated my body backwards and almost dropped them on the meter. The bus driver noticed and laughed in a good-natured way, saying "This way". She probably thought I was new to Seattle or seldom rode buses. Oh no! But I wasn't psychologically disoriented either. I was spatially disoriented. The only way I can explain it was that bending slightly and then righting myself involved change of direction, and even that very slight change of direction could cause spatial disorientation. I no longer had a sense of which direction was which.

Would it blow people's minds to know that I've lived in the same apartment for years (and though I take the stairs instead of the elevator on a fairly frequent basis) I have no idea which staircase will take me to which part of the first floor? Outside I memorize routes to and fro while failing to connect the to with the fro. I don't have a sense that I'm transversing the same small area. When I turn a corner, once I get over the disorientation, I am simply walking forwards. Ask me how the forwards I'm walking now relates to the forwards I was walking a minute ago, and I may not be able to tell you.

The situation can't be explained by profound distraction. That also doesn't explain why I have the best memory for conversation of anyone I have ever met, (recording things that seem at the time to have no significance, and then reciting them years later) yet fail to remember basic visual information about my surroundings unless I explicitly narrate it to myself. (It can be embarrassing at moments, like the times when I rode home regularly with a co-worker and, when asked to fetch something from the car, realized I had no idea what the car looked like.) I've heard people who are autistic say that they struggle to recognize faces -- in some cases, they may recognize only a few people in the world by their face. Well, I have a much better memory for faces than cars!

My brother said he'd make phone calls to see about me getting the genetic test I feel I want. I want him to really buy into it

Reflection: The Difference Between 'Illogical' and 'Not Logical'

2010-03-19T23:49:00.000-07:00

Can everything be classified as either logical or illogical? I don't think so. I think a lot of people call behavior 'illogical' when it is merely 'not logical' -- and that there is actually a huge difference between those two things. So much of our experience, whether we're normal or not so normal, is not about logic at all -- it's about drives and impulses and changes in arousal level (perceived as either interest or fear).

Is motivation logical? Well, it's mitigated by logic -- hopefully-- but that's not the same as being driven by it. There's quite a bit of evidence of brain reward systems running on chemicals (ie dopamine) in kind of a 'ka-ching ka-ching' fashion. There's scientific evidence of reward system irregularities being implicated in various disorders. Is a person less logical because they fail to experience reward or motivation in the more typical ways?

Ah, and then there's the issue of drives. Just about everyone has heard the term 'drive' applied to things like sex, but there's also a drive toward monogamous/ faithfulness, supported by its own system of neuroeptides. (Some of the early research on that came from studying prairie voles, and why it was that they formed pair bonds and nurtured their young for a long time when other related species didn't.)

Of course I've also written recently about the issue of sensory processing -- having the 'volume of the world' turned up unusually high or turned down unusually low. Ultimately... I think it's illogical to expect others' non-logical parts to operate the same as our own!

Reflection: The Distance Between Obsessions

2010-03-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

I've talked so much now about how it is that all my life people have misinterpreted the reasons for my own actions. Well, I'm partly to blame for that, and I'm not the only one who has mis-authored their own life. How many of us have hidden our motives and the inner workings of our clockwork, not just from our friends and acquaintances, but from the doctors who would prescribe treatment? We do it out of fear.

Think about this: As long as people see my obsessions as primarily fear-driven, as avoidant or away obsessions, they at least won't be frightened of me Nobody's frightened of such a mousy person -- and so there are times I've wanted to cast myself as the 'mousy person'. At the moment people see the toward in my obsessions... well, do you know how often across decades of my life that I've been afraid of people seeing me as scary. See, you will find heroes, yes, but also some dangerous people in that population of people who are driven single-mindedly by their own obsessions.

There is fear in me, oh, yes, and that's art of why I am so compelled by 'the distance between obsessions' -- by the way the towards tower like mountains above the aways. There are things in my life I won't cross through just because someone is holding my hand... yet I will barrel through if there's something on the other side that drives me enough. I think it's less true that I'm plagued by unwanted obsession as that I'm dependent upon obsession and single-minded drive. That's surely a part of the reason that I have trouble seeing anything as truly desirable that I won't allow myself to be knocked down and smeared with blood over.

That picture of course depicts The Little Prince. I've always identified with the book and seen in it the positive side of a particular way of being. I've got some analysis of The Little Prince on Squidoo and it's done pretty well as of late.

credit: Musicienne, Flickr

Reflection: Mirroring Abilities and Disabilities

2010-03-14T09:49:00.001-07:00

My left hand is proud of its schoolwork and delighted with the comments and smiley face that the right hand left for it in red ink. (Do you see the title there in gold gel marker?)

Seriously, though, this relates to some issues that are important to me. I just put up a lens on Squidoo titled Neurological Disorders: Differing Abilities and Gifts. I've got some lenses featured on it that are my own, and also half a dozen that are by other Squidoo 'lensmasters'. (A lot of us do feature or link to each other's writings; it's a way of helping one another... and the site.)

I've read different statistics; I believe one thing I read said that Squidoo was one of the top 100 websites in the U.S. -- and it's very much in the black in these trying times. It can be a good thing to work not only to increase one's share of the pie, but the size of the pie -- especially when one finds many pages that are quality and that they believe in.

Among the premises of that page I just put up: that multiple anomalies tend to reflect an underlying condition, and that anomalous brain structuring may come with mirrored disability and giftedness (usually in a metaphorical sense... and not quite so graphic as what you see in the picture).

Reflection: Mirror Writing

2010-03-12T05:49:00.000-08:00

I had wondered for a long time if a particular thing was normal... It's not that I really cared whether it was normal, but I was interested in what it could tell me. I don't think I'm a lot more adept with my right hand or my left, but my right likes to go right and my left likes to go left. Well, I learned a new phrase on Squidoo: "mirror writing". I came across a lens about it, written by an internet friend. I knew I had some proclivity at it, but wondered just how good I was. I put a pencil in just my left hand and wrote as fast as I could, just about as fast as with my right hand. A couple of the letters I actually thought I was making in the normal direction as I went along, but when I looked back, every single one of the 26 was mirrored.

Apparently if one can write easily and naturally with either hand but in opposite directions you're a "mirror writer". And mirror writing is yet another anomaly that sometimes happens on its own in an otherwise normal person, and sometimes occurs as part of neurological disorders that cause autism or mental retardation.

I figure there are people who have been defeated by me at Boggle who would be quite surprised to know that I would have trouble mirroring even the simplest gesture of someone who's facing me. I would see that their head was tilted, but determining which way and then telling my own body to do the same thing... that would be a major struggle. People assume someone who can read forwards, backwards, and upside down that must have at least a normal ability to differentiate one direction from another, but that's not always true. I will say that I am much better at such skills than when I was a kid.

Some people get frustrated that people see them as "dumb" because of their spatial skills. My problem was never that anyone thought I was dumb. No, they'd see me as so smart that there just had to be a psychological reason for everything. (If someone's IQ tests low and they're in adaptive PE because of coordination and spatial problems, people assume they don't get a driver's license because they don't have the skills. But if someone's IQ tests high and they're in adaptive PE because of coordination and spatial skills, people will see their not getting a driver's license as one more piece of evidence that they're cowering in fear of the world.)

I could be dead wrong on leads I follow, so I avoid saying too much. I will say that there are people who have a corpus callosum (the part that connects the hemispheres of the brain) that bends at an abnormal angle through the brain's language center, but fails to reach as far as the motion center at the base of the brain. There was one study of children with this disorder that found that the wider the bending angle the more over the top the storytelling behavior -- the more bent those children were on capturing an audience and hooking them. And that is but one example of a weakness that comes with a mirroring gift.

Memory (From Before My Time): Women Who Flew

2010-03-09T20:23:00.001-08:00

The woman in the musical slideshow is Bessie Coleman, a famous aviator from before any of our time -- I think somebody selected a stunning song for that video. Bessie was African American, but I do see a bit of resemblance (appearance or aspect?) between some of her pictures and long long ago pictures of my mother.

One of the more surprising things about 'the mother I never really knew' is that she earned a pilot license. I have a new piece on Squidoo titled Pioneering Women Pilots . The name may change to "My Mother and Other Women Who Flew" particularly if my brother is able to put his hands on enough artifacts.

Reflection: A Glimpse of Heaven

2010-03-06T12:39:00.000-08:00

A new section of online CLEP begins today -- I'm expecting probably a couple students -- and I think it's understandable that I've shut out news from the world (taken the phone off the hook) these few hours before. Here I sit writing... and I want to write more about my 'underwhelment' theme today. It can be difficult to know what another's experience is like. Sometimes it's hard for me to tell to what extent I'm experiencing or feeling things less than others -- and to what extent I have a stronger need to feel them.

Understand: Some of us need a lot of 'whelment' to function optionally. It's not that I want another human to cost me or bring me pain, but it's hard for me to imagine experiencing real pleasure in human interaction that isn't based on the willingness to incur tremendous cost. I don't see that there's that much pleasure or excitement in flirting with another person. And I don't see that there's that much comfort in a hand on the shoulder. There some, yes, but compared to the strength it takes to get through this life the comfort seems awfully flimsy. As for people getting highs from stuff like sex... well, to me it seems not much of a high compared to looking at another human in an "Anything for you" way.

Being really, really 'whelmed' -- whelmed by obsession, whelmed by love -- that's what I depend on. Some of us are made of pieces that seem contradictory or paradoxical til you look. I don't let others put me through things because of low self esteem. I let them put me through Hell because with that willingness to go through Hell comes the only glimpse of Heaven that I've ever seen.

Reflection: Across Miles and Years

2010-03-04T12:59:00.000-08:00

My brother was at the hospital most of the time for the last week my father was alive. I went by Greyhound and got there later than I should have; I did spend the last two nights there -- and gave him water from a water dropper the last night.

And now... here I still sit. Kevin reports that he's rarely over there with himself with Mother -- even in those brief semi-awake moments she has no idea who he is. She hasn't known that for a long time. (It's been well over a year and a half since my father died, but even then she was beginning to ask us, "Do you know that my husband died?" She still knew he was her husband, then, but she wasn't clear on him being our father.)

Tears in the morning... diphenhydramine and chamomile in my system when I went off to work. Chamomile has mood brightening effects, as well as preventing body aches, but it doesn't make me sleepy. That's my brain for you: Chamomile in the morning, caffeine by night. Every substance that I react strongly to you better believe I have done a major internet study of -- but until the blood and genes there's a limit to how much I can say for sure.

Reflection: Memoir of...

2010-03-02T12:45:00.000-08:00

I've been continuing to ask what it's appropriate to post this week... and I've been continuing to put up memoir.

Ravenna-the-big-old-computer didn't explode when its monitor did. I was able to retrieve a flash memoir, "Playing With Fire", and use it as part of a Squidoo lens, Memoir of a Hyporesponsive Child which continues the 'underwhelment' theme. I'd written some time back in "Tagging: A Metaphor for Monotropism": "This is just a theory, but it seems to fit. Deficient in body signals, deficient in the very mechanics of attraction (interest) and repulsion, I just want my favorite. I just want whatever it is I've tagged as my favorite."

I didn't know how much scientific evidence there was to back up the idea of hyporesponsive sensory processing and high-intensity thresholds. I didn't know the key words to enter, but a week or two ago, I stumbled into some material. So this resulting piece is a combination of memoir and scientific ramblings and annotation.

My brother will remember the girl who appears in the opening module of this Squidoo lens, though I did change the name. He asked me if he could access my lenses from this blog. Well, not all of them -- and especially not easily -- but I'm going to add some more to the sidebar list shortly.

Reflection: News

2010-02-27T23:09:00.000-08:00

My brother called yesterday to say he that it looks like our mother isn’t going to live much longer; I had known that there comes a point where dementia — or the disease that causes it — takes away not just memory but the basic neurological functions necessary for life. It’s good to hear from my brother — I don't think he realizes that I am the type who would feel frightened when I don't hear from him, but instead of responding by calling I would respond by not calling. I don't think that he realizes that there are a few people in this world who perennially trigger my protectiveness and fear of bad news, and that he's one of them. That's why I used to tell people that if anything happened to anyone in the family, it had to be my brother who called. They didn't really listen to me... until more and more it got to be where he was the only one who could call.

I'm asking myself what it's appropriate for me to write on the internet this week -- what would a normal person write. This is a week for memoir. I'd told myself long ago that when I finally heard from my brother (assuming I did) "Best Superman Brother Ever" would go up on Squidoo. I did that. I got my old computer, Ravenna, going; it's sluggish, yes, but I can retrieve the creative writing pieces from "My Documents". There is a piece of flash memoir that focuses on the granddaughter of a neighbor from back when I was small. I wanted to incorporate that into a piece that I put on Squidoo connecting it to some of my recent readings and thoughts. I hope people think that it's okay for me to continue with that plan this week, even though that piece doesn't focus on family.

Squidoo (Best) Ever Project: Best Superman Brother Ever

Reflection: February Blossoms

2010-02-25T20:43:00.000-08:00

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

The theme that I've been writing about lately... Ah, I'll be back to it soon. But first here's this Animoto short: February Blossoms. (Realize these photos were taken all across the month of February -- we're way past some of what you see pictured here.)

I think I'm ready now to put "Step Into Seattle: Spring" on Squidoo. As my first year in Seattle drew to a close (long ago) I wrote a poem which included the line "the order in which pink things blossom". I think "the order in which pink things blossom" is a pretty good thing to showcase on Squidoo... especially for a person who it behooves to get quite a lot written and posted. Barring trauma/bad news, it looks like I likely will make the spring (March 31) deadline to have my lenses reviewed for 'Giant Squid' status. The requirement is 50 high quality lenses; I'm at 37 now.

Reflection: High Intensity Threshold

2010-02-23T19:57:00.000-08:00

A quote to begin this post, from "Regulation Disorder of Sensory Processing": "These children require high-intensity sensory input before they are able to respond. They are quiet and watchful at times and may appear withdrawn and difficult to engage."

If ones sees someone with that withdrawn, difficult to engage manner, it may not be that they're overwhelmed by sensory stimuli or social interaction. Quite the opposite. They may be starved for the very the things they seem not to respond to -- starved largely by their own neural wiring. They may have such a high threshold for intensity that most of what's around them passes below that threshold... too far below to motivate an emotional response.

I have sometimes gotten 'Squid Angel blessings' for pieces that I haven't specifically asked for them for. It's when I really, really want people to see a piece that I do post it on the angels forum. It's been quite a while. I did it with the monotropism piece, and I also said something on this blog, to the effect of 'friends, please be my squid angels, too' -- meaning help me with my goal of having people see this.) I'm doing that again. Here's Processing Disorders: The Understimulated Brain.

Photo Credit: FreeDigitalPhotos

Reflection: Underwhelment (Again)

2010-02-21T09:41:00.000-08:00

I've got some big time fears in some areas, but not others. Different forms of fear can be dissociated from each other in striking ways: social from nonsocial anxiety, and phobic or narrow fears from vigilant or paranoid ones. It's only when friends realize this that they can consider that I'm not overwhelmed but seriously underwhelmed by most social situations. There's some evidence of underwhelment, I think: I lived five years in a dorm and seven years in housing co-ops. I frequently slept on the couch in the common area of a sixteen bedroom housing co-op --by day, amidst frequent chaos and confusion. Since girlhood, too, I've been drawn to people with very intense energies, including those who are majorly hyperactive and those who are clinically bipolar.

I know friends have tended to look to my childhood seek answers for some oddities. Ah but what if, in some ways, I am what I am not because of my childhood, but despite it. When I was fifteen, my foster mother commented that I wasn't an introvert but rather an extrovert trying to get out. Both my parents said that in our earliest years (quite a bit before the photo you see here!) it was my brother, two years my senior, who was the painfully shy one. I was the friendlier child, the bolder child, the more outgoing child. (I don't think I was truly outgoing, actually, but enough so that I stood out in contrast to my brother.) My father said in later years that he wished he'd known to be concerned about me -- that he hadn't because I acted like a child who could take on the world.

I have to take care how I explain the next thing, so it doesn't come across as arrogant: People vary in how they process stimuli -- in how much neural activity takes in response to particular things. What's overstimulating to one person may be felt as a mere blip by another. So I think some things just trigger a milder neural response in me than they do in a lot of people. It seems to me that the majority of social situations (including those that have the potential to be sexual) don't have that much at stake -- it just seems to me they hold neither aversion nor the promise of real reward. (I know that I stand in contrast to a lot of people when I express that.)

Don't we all try to make sense of one another's behaviors using our own as a guide? People who are overwhelmed by, say, a party or a date are not going to realize I have a sense of underwhelment -- of too little being at stake. There have been so many times when people have been sure they saw overwhelment in me, when something very other was going on inside. For instance, I don't get overwhelmed by the thought of changing for another person; in most situations, I'm too underwhelmed -- I have too little a sense of anything really being at stake -- to experience strong motivation. And that's actually very painful for me. I don't thrive in situations of too little 'whelment'.

Reflection: Situational Strengths

2010-02-19T09:10:00.000-08:00

I put a couple paragraphs on my squid blog, too, about yesterday's attack and having been dragged still hanging onto the purse. Alex first interpreted my description as having frozen and that was why I wouldn't let go even when someone was dragging me; I wrote back that that wasn't quite the case, that the keys belonged to the office at the apartment and I had obsessively drilled into myself not to lose them. It seems that in a moment of crisis I protected what I had obsessively drilled into myself to protect, and that took precedence over fear that I was or should have been feeling. I can't remember experiencing fear except in connection with maybe losing the keys. It's kind of bizarre that I was in that zone and hung on so tightly to the keys, which are so much less of an obsession than a human attachment or pet...

I will say, though... A lot of people see my obsessiveness as fear-driven, and it certainly can be, but there tends to be something underlying fear that is larger than the fear, and that something is attachment. Maybe it's because people don't see the attachment driving the fear that that they get surprised by the crazy levels of strength that can pop out.

I am thinking of somebody who told me once to grab his wrist and "hang on tight" -- and then did this tai chi thing where he spun around and broke my grip... or would have except that I was still holding his wrist. That kind of floored him, so he had to do the whole thing over again. (He did the same thing six more times, and I did the same thing six more times.) See, it was because of who the person was that the symbolism of the whole thing wasn't lost on me -- that it bacame more than just a party game to me. I got this notion that if I could just hang on everything was going to be okay, and I was going to hang on tight, so help me ---!

I sure don't like to get in the kind of situation I did yesterday, but I will say that a part of my attraction to obsession in other sorts of situations is because I've tasted before the kind of strength that "This I will protect if I bleed" can find in me.

Yesterday I made wrong choices; I am kind of puzzling over how much danger I might have put myself into. I also imagine that I should have let their professional fix the knee. I said it wasn't any worse than taking a fall, but I was overlooking that I did get once an infection from a fall that I took a few years back.