Reflection: A Star for Passing Brain Chemistry

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: Sometimes You Picture Me (2)

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: You're calling to me...

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: Community

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: Underwhelment (Again)

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: Whelment Issues

I found a book Fidget to Focus on the lobby bookcase and have been read it intensely. Ever since college, I have been aware that I identify with some ADHD behaviors characteristics (again) others are simply the polar opposite of me. A relatively new theory, based on brain research: that a person with ADD has some brain systems that process stimuli so poorly that it results in constant boredom, or underwhelment.

I not only sleep well with caffeine in my system -- I seem to sleep better with all around lousy sleep hygiene. I know there are people who can remember me sleeping on the couch of a 16 bedroom co-op, amidst the chaos and the activity. I wonder if anyone sees some humor in the following passage. "Fidget strategies work for falling asleep, just the way they do during the day, the goal being to help us achieve optimal arousal for a given activity. One mother reports that her daughter, who occasionally declared herself too bored to sleep, experimented with different sleeping venues: the floor, the couch, and once even the bathtub."

On the next line, though, I cease to identify with the phenomenon: "Changing where she slept created just enough novelty that the strategy worked every time." There's a general assumption that the chronically bored seek out novelty... But what if one's brain processes novelty so poorly, on an emotional level, that they simply fail to experience normal 'whelment' from it? What if, in order to experience 'optimal arousal' or 'whelment', they have to get a good rhythm going?

To be continued...

Memory: Struggling to Pass Brain Chemistry

I was fixing to publish this piece when I wrote in "Evening Nigh's Year in Reflection" that I would continue to be 'the author of people's lives' (aren't we all?) and that I would strive, in the words of The Moody Blues, to "Say it With Love".

I actually wrote this particularly piece a few years back; at the time, I made several unsuccessful attempts to publish it in lit journals.

I went over Struggling to Pass Brain Chemistry again and again with a fine tooth comb before I added media and resources and posted it to Squidoo. I waited until the piece had received a few comments (also a couple Squid Angel blessings) before posting it here. I wanted to do right by the piece. The piece, in its new incarnation has 10 illustrated text sections; I used stock photos, of course, running most of them through photoeffect programs. Only one text section is new -- it's a short one that discusses the limitations of labels and of medication... and it's accompanied by the same picture you see here in this blog entry.

It's good, from a pragmatic standpoint, that I've got some real publishing credits (lit journal and anthology) but I'm happy to have "Struggling to Pass Brain Chemistry" under the Squidoo domain, dressed up, like various other lenses, in resources and media and one of those little Amazon MP3 modules.

PS Picked up another one from someone -- down in the Philipines, I believe -- who has commented on other lenses, and is part of the new "Angels crew". She not only read, but listened to the whole thing, and what she wrote was really kind. (The volunteer Angels are of course a part of how the site maintains its integrity, too.)

Reflection: Updates

There's only one street in Seattle that's named after people I know -- or appears to be. I cross the street regularly on the 43 or the 48. The sign is a bit washed out in that photo -- it's more so in another picture where a semi is just rounding the corner. The artist, "I'm singing, though rather poorly" will probably be releasing another verse of "Time After Time" soon, so those photos will probably be seen again....

This weekend, it is the pragmatic work-oriented projects that have me very busy. I need to thoroughly wake myself up, as there are more sessions to teach, here on my little computer. I have a little Google site up for my CLEP class. Times are tough in the pragmatic day-to-day ways, too; it's mainly at the request of a particular student that I kept the CLEP start dates as originally scheduled instead of pushing them back some as colleagues are doing. I can open up another session a little later, and it will be less work, as I already have put in so very many hours organizing resources out there in cyberspace.

Some people who know me will realize that it's my fear of crises and bad news, and not just my responsibility, that causes me to "make hay while the sun shines" in a manner of speaking -- work ahead, accomplishing things in the now that might not have to be accomplished until weeks hence, and put in near sleepless days of work before... well, before things can happen that takes the wind out of these sails. Phobic fear is a type of fear that can be planned for -- and, yes, that's a topic I've been doing some writing on, as well! And I'll link to off-site writings again soon.

Reflection: Once More You Open the Door

I knew that it existed -- that old FujiFilm camera with the film not yet developed -- and today I took it to Bartell's. When I went to collect it, the attendant greeted me with, "You have a beautiful cat." That was not such a painful moment as it might seem, as I knew quite well (or at least had a deep suspicion) that Maui appeared in those pictures. What I'd doubted was whether the film, kept nearly a year past its "Develop by" date, would produce discernible images.

Most of the pictures were discernible and something beyond discernible; it was one of the most stunning collections of images Bartell's (or Walgreen's) has ever handed me. There were things I didn't remember until they stared back at me. I've thought to do another verse of "Time After Time" (with more faces from co-op days), and there's fodder for that project as well.

Other pictures were less potent emotionally, but still good illustration material. Speaking of which: At Madrona Grocery Outlet -- I still go there in daylight hours -- I found, for eight dollars, a package of three disposable FujiFilm cameras...

Reflection: Sometimes You Picture Me...

Verse 2 of "Time After Time" begins "Sometimes you picture me..." I imagine a lot of people do picture me sitting in more or less the pose captured in that old photograph. People remarked upon the posture often during the days of co-op (group) living; I think it was just once that someone actually snapped a Polaroid and gave it to me. Body language... it's gotten better in the years since childhood. I watched a little girl in a video, trying to make the gesture, long distance, of embracing someone. That child folded and unfolded her arms several times because she genuinely couldn't figure out which way the arms were supposed to fit together. How well I remember. I remember, too, at twelve or thirteen, puzzling over something. I knew that people generally turned toward a person to smile at them, but I sometimes turned away. I couldn't figure out why I would pivot in the wrong direction. I knew the difference between turning toward a stimulus and turning away -- but that didn't mean my body could differentiate, in a split second, between the two. There were years of my life people were certain I'd been molested. Sure, I came from a family where there was little physical contact, but I was also a child whose body couldn't distinguish 'toward' from 'away', much less how and when to fold itself. There were things that didn't help: the constant apologies that well-meaning others would make for frightening me (when I wasn't even frightened) or the way, when I turned away, the world seemed to, as well.

I'm studying this post much as the man in the photo is studying the picture before him. Will I upload this to the internet? I reckon so. The internet is handy for the likes of me. See, no one can upload their whole body to the internet, and when it comes to those media that can actually be uploaded, I think I express myself.

PS The picture was created by scanning that old Polaroid and uploading it into a frame on the 'Image Chef' site. You gotta kind of hand it to 'em on that one.

Reflection: Okay, I Sang It...

Here's another Animoto short: verse 1 of the "Time After Time" project I was talking about. Okay, I did end up singing it! The artist is listed as "I'm singing rather poorly" -- but this is really for just a few people, and I think they'll see why I'm proud of the piece regardless.

I mentioned before... The "Thinking of You" card that appears in here was given to me by my friend, Bette.

Reflection:...Hear the Clock Tick, and I Think of You...

The card pictured here -- "Thinking of You" -- was given to me by my friend Bette when I came to Seattle. It was one of several things that I scanned for use in a particular project. I decided a while back that I wanted to do a homemade video -- I want to open up, in Windows on my computer screen, faces and places from long-ago co-op days, all to the tune of the song "Time After Time". (The idea grew from a play on words in an earlier post: "You're watching through Windows, you're wondering if I'm okay...")

Well, my free Jing program allows me to record five minutes of screen capture as video, and it will also record whatever audio... that I record into the microphone. Hmmm... It was not actually my intent to sing the song myself; it's not something I was cut out to do...

Reflection: Watching through Windows

This picture is a screen capture done on my computer. I used it for an article about eduFire that I posted on Squidoo. My little netbook is so proud of its first modeling gig!

Now I'm thinking about casting the bitty computer in a video (something personal, not my eduFire teaching video).

A few weeks back, I posted a blog entry with a play on words, drawn from the Cyndi Lauper song, "Time After Time": "You're watching through Windows, you're wondering if I'm okay..." With the same free program that snapped the one screenshot last night, I can also capture up to a five minute recording of my computer screen as video; I'm thinking about opening up places and faces in Windows, to the tune of that song. I've already scanned pictures of both long-ago housing co-ops -- the Spadefoot picture shows snow coming down on an Easter (yes, Easter) morning.

I am linking to the Squidoo page I put up yesterday. It's about an e-learning platform, and most of what I wrote is reasonably serious and informative. I did link to one particularly silly eduFire forum thread. People from long-ago would recognize me in the 'chocolate laptop discussion' -- but they might not recognize me amidst the technology. Ah, but I've learned that technology is very handy for giving a voice to the likes of me!

Reflection: Flashback to Warm Nights...

Here are some lyrics I've loved since I was a kid, with just one little change that reflects our lives in this modern world:

After my picture fades, and darkness has turned to gray
You're watching through Windows, you're wondering if I'm okay

Are you watching through Windows... or using a Mac?

P.S. The next blog entry will probably appear under this one. There's something in my drafts folder that I've been working over.
Alright -- it's there now: 'Further Chronicles (and Audio)'

Memory: Of Artichokes and Desert Rain

Of Artichokes And Desert Rain by Karen Weil
Download now or listen on posterous

Of Artichokes and Desert Rain.mp3 (4096 KB)

So now I have this computer-ito -- and it has this headset-isimo that is almost as big as it is. We plan on doing online tutoring, and also recording some copyright-expired 'kiddie lit' for Librivox. But first here’s audio for a flash memoir that a few people will remember from long-ago co-op days. This was my Audacity test recording and also my headset test recording... I expected to have to erase the recording and try again. But…Well, I was juggling the Audacity program and the Microsoft Works document on the computer screen(ito)… I lost my place a couple times, said “purch forniture”, developed a brief frog in my throat… And then I played it back, and it sounded quite a bit better than I expected. I decided to let that first-ever bit of recording stand, as-is. Sometime soon, I’ll learn how to operate the editing controls -- but here’s “Of Artichokes and Desert Rain”.

Posted via email from eveningnigh's posterous

Reflection: Hyporeactivity

Some people who read this may have memories of me, years ago, sleeping sprawled out on the couch of a 16-bedroom co-op -- a place where both the front and back doors were sometimes left open and people literally wandered in off the street. (You might want to keep that image of hyporeactivity in mind as you read this.)

Fear and excitement are both forms of arousal; from a neurochemical standpoint, they can be quite similar. People differ greatly in their response to novelty -- it's not just a matter of whether they perceive novel stimuli as positive or negative, but of the extent to which they experience an increase in arousal at all.

As for me, I'm like a stereo with a few pre-set buttons: When it comes to those stations that I've pre-set, arousal can shoot sky high; when it comes to most of the rest of the world, including most novel stimuli, arousal levels (both interest and fear) run so low they've literally left people staring at times.