This old picture of my mother also appears as an illustration in the excerpt, My Mother's Black Dress. Another personal writing I linked to: something outrageous I wrote in childhood, on a topic which my brother surely put me up to. I've continued to put up links to other things. As for the Perusing Psychology site, I have no special interest in the article that appears on top. But the site is quite dense, and contains links to about a dozen other psychology/ neurology sites - I like sites that are portals to a lot of information. On that note, there was a cartoon up at the Online Coffee Company: "Scientists discover portal to the outside world." The portal was a door, and outside the door were some bushes. Point well taken.Sunday, August 30, 2009
In-Between: Scientists Discover Portal to the Outside World...
This old picture of my mother also appears as an illustration in the excerpt, My Mother's Black Dress. Another personal writing I linked to: something outrageous I wrote in childhood, on a topic which my brother surely put me up to. I've continued to put up links to other things. As for the Perusing Psychology site, I have no special interest in the article that appears on top. But the site is quite dense, and contains links to about a dozen other psychology/ neurology sites - I like sites that are portals to a lot of information. On that note, there was a cartoon up at the Online Coffee Company: "Scientists discover portal to the outside world." The portal was a door, and outside the door were some bushes. Point well taken.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Reflection: A Metaphor for Monotropism
In She Got Up Off the Couch (and Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana), Haven Kimmel writes of her older brother: As a small child, her brother would wheel a tombstone around in a wagon; as a teenager, he decorated his room with wall-to-wall stolen fossils. Ignoring the attention of a succession of popular girls, he ran off, at 18, with a girl who was true but 'other'.
Sounds kind of monotropic to me.
Being monotropic... it's as if you got born with a giant power cord growing out of your back. Plugged into an outlet -- a suitable obsession -- your energy is high and the level of drive and dedication can seem surreal. Unplugged... well, appliances just don't work so well unplugged.
Being monotropic can mean there are times when you're growing up that people see you lying there immobile, and imagine you need a knight-in-shining-armor. But it can be hard to be a knight-in-shining-armor to a person who runs on obsession the way an appliance runs on electricity. (It's a little like hoisting a toaster oven up onto a white horse and expecting it to start doing something.)
Sounds kind of monotropic to me.
Being monotropic... it's as if you got born with a giant power cord growing out of your back. Plugged into an outlet -- a suitable obsession -- your energy is high and the level of drive and dedication can seem surreal. Unplugged... well, appliances just don't work so well unplugged.
Being monotropic can mean there are times when you're growing up that people see you lying there immobile, and imagine you need a knight-in-shining-armor. But it can be hard to be a knight-in-shining-armor to a person who runs on obsession the way an appliance runs on electricity. (It's a little like hoisting a toaster oven up onto a white horse and expecting it to start doing something.)
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Reflection: Wearing My Brother's Hand-Me-Down Genes
It seems my brother and I are destined to go through life liking the same composers and wearing the same legs... and also maybe, somewhere in the recesses of memory, loving the same book.
I was thinking about my brother -- both the similarities and the differences -- as I wrote the last post. Not much of a reader, my brother loved just two books in his adolescent years. One of them was The Young Unicorns, by Madeline L'engle. My brother and I arrived at an independent conclusion a year or two apart: that book was special - it was the book. I'm not sure whether our mutual devotion came down to shared experience or shared genes. I would say we each carried that book with us through the years, but it's not quite true. (First I lifted my brother's copy; then it fell apart.)
Dance music was big when we were kids, but neither of us like it -- except for one song, the same song, "To the Beat of the Rhythm of the Night". It was independent conclusion we both reached -- possibly during the year we actually lived apart. And then there was the matter of a certain composer, whose name I forget. The conversation began with a discussion of a 'classic' Air Supply song... The statement, " 'Out of Nothing at All' doesn't sound like any other Air Supply song," causes some people to look at me like I descended from some other planet only a few moments earlier. When I made that statement to my brother, he said, "No, it doesn't does it?" and told me the name of the composer.
Then he wanted to know whether I liked a series of other songs... "What about 'It's all Coming Back to Me Now'?" he asked. I told him I loved that song, despite not liking other songs by that singer (whose name I also tend to forget). Same composer, my brother said. He tried to explain what was unique about that particular composer's music, but I already knew.
However much may be different, and there are volumes of differences, there are hints of something shared: In an earlier post (Modeling the Latest in Hypertoic Arm Posture) there is a picture of my brother and me as little kids. Our arm posture contrasted (I was the whacky one) but by gummit if we didn't have the same legs!
And now, I might add, my brother has two little girls with the same hair as that long-ago little girl. The years fly. My older niece started kindergarten this month.
I was thinking about my brother -- both the similarities and the differences -- as I wrote the last post. Not much of a reader, my brother loved just two books in his adolescent years. One of them was The Young Unicorns, by Madeline L'engle. My brother and I arrived at an independent conclusion a year or two apart: that book was special - it was the book. I'm not sure whether our mutual devotion came down to shared experience or shared genes. I would say we each carried that book with us through the years, but it's not quite true. (First I lifted my brother's copy; then it fell apart.)
Dance music was big when we were kids, but neither of us like it -- except for one song, the same song, "To the Beat of the Rhythm of the Night". It was independent conclusion we both reached -- possibly during the year we actually lived apart. And then there was the matter of a certain composer, whose name I forget. The conversation began with a discussion of a 'classic' Air Supply song... The statement, " 'Out of Nothing at All' doesn't sound like any other Air Supply song," causes some people to look at me like I descended from some other planet only a few moments earlier. When I made that statement to my brother, he said, "No, it doesn't does it?" and told me the name of the composer.
Then he wanted to know whether I liked a series of other songs... "What about 'It's all Coming Back to Me Now'?" he asked. I told him I loved that song, despite not liking other songs by that singer (whose name I also tend to forget). Same composer, my brother said. He tried to explain what was unique about that particular composer's music, but I already knew.
However much may be different, and there are volumes of differences, there are hints of something shared: In an earlier post (Modeling the Latest in Hypertoic Arm Posture) there is a picture of my brother and me as little kids. Our arm posture contrasted (I was the whacky one) but by gummit if we didn't have the same legs!
And now, I might add, my brother has two little girls with the same hair as that long-ago little girl. The years fly. My older niece started kindergarten this month.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Reflection: Kitty Cat Dreams
In The Irrational Season, Madeline L'engle wrote of a student who asked her if she really and truly believed in God with no doubts at all. She replied, "I really and tuly believe in God with all kinds of doubts."I wrote in an earlier post that I would tell the story of the 'cat dreams'. Today I will do that. I have to exert some caution in telling the story because different people interpret it differently. I think that most folks I know have some belief in anomolous communications, but some people would surely say this is irrational. I think there is something in each of us that says that can't be or else that must be - and that 'something' colors how we interpret things, from other's personal experiences to studies that attempt to be scientific and controlled. I remember in college, a professor recounted a study where people prayed for plants [mung beans?] and the prayed-for plants grew better. At the time, I was upset by the implications, and I did so want to hear about the flaws of the study! In the past ten or twelve years, I've become very interested in the science behind anomolous comunication, from dreams to prayer.
With that said... It was right after my father died, I think, that the Midnight and Seafoam dreams started. The cats I grew up with would show up in dreams that weren't even particularly about them. Considering the general illogic of the dreams, my math skills were good: "How old are you now, Seafoam? Twenty-eight?"
The dreams went on for a year and accelerated to something like one a week. One I remember well: Midnight bolted across a road as I watched, frozen. When she got across, she turned into something like a cat mascot and bear-hugged me. A few days before things came to a head with Maui, I had a dream where I was reliving the chronic illness of one of them, and taking it much harder than I had in real life (as I hadn't lived with them for years, and Maui was very much my baby by then). The last thought before I fully awoke that morning: This visit will be the last.
I walked though everything believing in God with fewer doubts than usual.
I walked though everything believing in God with fewer doubts than usual.
Memory: A Fictional Farewell
This post is a bit long. It contains the last scene of a story. I wrote the first draft of this scene when I was 13, and simultaneously far too young for my age and far, far too old. This was the too-old me. I still need this piece. It still speaks to me:
...The last thing I did before Ann and I left to go back to the city was say good-bye to Darwin. I held the puppy up over the porch so that his warm amber eyes shone down into mine. "Darwin, don't ever forget me," I said. I felt a breeze on me then, cooler than it had been all summer, and it brought back memories. I knew if I wasn't careful, it would carry me back where it came from: back to the fire escape, to the skating rink and the feel of warm breath on my hands at dawn. I knew when I felt it that I wasn't going to pine over Darwin forever. But the thought made me angry, and I went on recklessly: "I'll be back, you know," I said. "I'll be back every summer as long as you live, as long as I live." I was crying. "... as long as there's the earth even..."
I knew when I said the words that they weren't entirely true -- no more true than telling Germaine the things we'd do when she got out of the hospital, or making my brother promises in a language he couldn't comprehend -- or, I supposed, than telling anyone you loved that you could take care of them forever. But I loved the sound of those words. "You know what I think, Darwin?" I said, "I think you don't have to remember someone to go right on loving them."
I looked at that puppy for what might be the last time. In my mind, I could hear Ann's words: "You've touched Aaron, you've done things for him, and on some level, you've affected him." She was talking about my brother, but she could have been talking about... this dog here. For a moment, I had this image of Darwin and me, all spread out on a table like jigsaw puzzles, and our pieces were everything we'd ever been, and everyone we'd ever loved. If that much was true -- if only that much was -- then what I was saying now wasn't so much of a stetch.
I stood there a moment longer, straddling belief and disbelief, and I could feel my breath come faster. "So even if I don't come back right away, even if you have time to forget me, you better not stop loving me... You hear? Hey, dog!""
Darwin wriggled and squirmed in the sunlight.
...The last thing I did before Ann and I left to go back to the city was say good-bye to Darwin. I held the puppy up over the porch so that his warm amber eyes shone down into mine. "Darwin, don't ever forget me," I said. I felt a breeze on me then, cooler than it had been all summer, and it brought back memories. I knew if I wasn't careful, it would carry me back where it came from: back to the fire escape, to the skating rink and the feel of warm breath on my hands at dawn. I knew when I felt it that I wasn't going to pine over Darwin forever. But the thought made me angry, and I went on recklessly: "I'll be back, you know," I said. "I'll be back every summer as long as you live, as long as I live." I was crying. "... as long as there's the earth even..."
I knew when I said the words that they weren't entirely true -- no more true than telling Germaine the things we'd do when she got out of the hospital, or making my brother promises in a language he couldn't comprehend -- or, I supposed, than telling anyone you loved that you could take care of them forever. But I loved the sound of those words. "You know what I think, Darwin?" I said, "I think you don't have to remember someone to go right on loving them."
I looked at that puppy for what might be the last time. In my mind, I could hear Ann's words: "You've touched Aaron, you've done things for him, and on some level, you've affected him." She was talking about my brother, but she could have been talking about... this dog here. For a moment, I had this image of Darwin and me, all spread out on a table like jigsaw puzzles, and our pieces were everything we'd ever been, and everyone we'd ever loved. If that much was true -- if only that much was -- then what I was saying now wasn't so much of a stetch.
I stood there a moment longer, straddling belief and disbelief, and I could feel my breath come faster. "So even if I don't come back right away, even if you have time to forget me, you better not stop loving me... You hear? Hey, dog!""
Darwin wriggled and squirmed in the sunlight.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
In-Between: The Audio Broadcasting System
If I were a widget, I would advertise Joshua Kadison's Venice Beach Tracks.
I'm doing two things here: I'm posting the song "Carousel Horses" - which I downloaded free off the artist's site some time back - and I'm "conducting a test of the audio broadcasting system". I think I will have to have my own computer up and running before I can do my own audio -- read something and link to it -- but here's a haunting, lovely song. My favorite part is the "crazy lady on the bench, always looking out to sea," who saw the carousel horses get away -- "she saw them running free."
I'm doing two things here: I'm posting the song "Carousel Horses" - which I downloaded free off the artist's site some time back - and I'm "conducting a test of the audio broadcasting system". I think I will have to have my own computer up and running before I can do my own audio -- read something and link to it -- but here's a haunting, lovely song. My favorite part is the "crazy lady on the bench, always looking out to sea," who saw the carousel horses get away -- "she saw them running free."
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