Antisocial

https://humansoftumblr.com/these-17-people-wanted-to-avoid-socializing-and-so-they-did-these-super-sad-things/

I love to see people refusing to socialise even more than me.

I don't hate people (generally, usually, mostly).  I even like most of them most of the time.  But I've long felt this need to "comply."  Even people who think they understand, don't.  Today's conversation... Person 1:  "Hopefully the evidence of the damage being apart will encourage more people to be face to face after we can do so."  Me:  Or at least learn how to chat and skype.  I miss chat.  Hardly anyone does that anymore, it's all texting or facebooking.  Nothing personal anymore.  Person 3:  "I don't think that's good.  Personal is better."

Say what?

Because I don't want to place any sort of (additional?) wedge between us, I replied nicely.  But honestly?  She doesn't get me.  We'd had a short ... okay, I ranted to her today about this subject, about how everyone feels some crazy desire to force everyone else to socialise and accept children running around and feeling like crap.  In person conversation, mind you.  Then this.  First, I /said/ nothing is personal any more, meaning chat is mostly gone (aside from texting - that's a separate issue for me that I'm working on).  Facebook is social networking media.  Not the same.  You can use the chat client, but it's a distracting piece of crap at times.  A blackhole.  Don't get me wrong, I love getting lost in there.  But it's designed to entrap you.  It's impersonal.  It's about shallow little likes and tiny bursts of ego-stroking that damage young developing brains.

I'm developed as much as I'll develop.  I still fight against the urge to panic and flee when I'm in crowds or groups.  It's a complete overload on my senses.  I get exhausted.  I stop hearing well enough to participate.  I spend days planning for this suffering - eat well, poop well, pee well, take vitamins, sleep enough, list everything I should bring I might need to stay sane like a thing of tea and a snack for the road so if I get hungry I don't act like an idiot because I can feed myself enough to cut that short before it affects my ability to function overly much.  And that's assuming it's a good day.  Usually, I hide as best as I can, get dragged out anyway, only to be what I consider ignored.  On top of that, it usually requires travelling.

So I've decided I'm no longer going to outings unless they're outside and I feel like it.  No more situations inside.  No more kids.  Instead of getting angry about it, I need to simply say no.  "But we'll miss you" my ass.  You don't talk to me anyway.  Not more than five minutes.  So why do you want me there at all?  We can do that on the phone.

It's unnatural to talk on the phone, via skype, via chat.  Yes, it is.  I'm not natural.  I was born with a computer implanted in my brain.  Okay not really but it feels that way.  My memory is unnatural.  My early photographic memory was unnatural.  My tendency to think twenty things at once and work on problems in my sleep and lucid dream and foresee what's going to happen five seconds from now as I talk and observe ... all unnatural.  My ability to intuit gadgets was unnatural.  I am, like my mother used to tease me, an alien.  I have been living like this for years, and I don't want to shut people out completely, I just want to not have to be in their direct presence every time we socialise.  I want to enjoy socialising instead of being overwhelmed by it.  I'd like to not have to drive an hour or something to go watch someone who specifically requested my presence sit on their phone ignoring me.  How is what they do any more natural than what I'd love to do?

There are other people that get it.  Otherwise that link at the top there wouldn't exist.  I'm not totally alone in this.

So on the way home I decided I simply would stop doing things I didn't feel like doing.  Problem solved.  I've hidden in bathrooms, by walls, wandered outside to hide, tried to initiate conversations and failed, found other loners to sit with in silence only to be pulled back to the herd, felt stupid, felt inadequate, felt ignored, felt like some crazy selfish asshole.  Well wait a minute.  Why is my going there to suffer on their request selfish?  Why aren't they selfish for insisting I do it their way after many explanations about how I feel in these situations?

Well!  Why, indeed!  So just don't go!

It's a slippery slope, though.  I watched my mother do just that for years and eventually she was so isolated she hated all people all over again.  I don't want THAT.  I just want to avoid /groups/ and those "friends" who totally ignore me when I do visit...*  So... I'll need to compromise to remain somewhat social.  Go see /a/ friend, make more of an effort to see /family/ - but one at a time.

* I have two particularly special friends I would drop everything for to go be with and simply sit near.  This is unusual.  They don't sap my energy.  I could literally watch one do artwork and the other cook or look through her ebay finds or something.  Or just stare at them.  Or stare at my feet.  For some people, knowing them causes time to stand still.  In a good way.  They also happen to be, like my husband, the least judgmental people I have ever known in my entire life.

Now, the funny thing - My most awesome husband in the entire world put forth the effort tonight to get back into chat for me.  After fighting with Google for a while (chat requires chrome, go figure), we've been chatting back and forth for a few hours now.  God, I've missed this.  Much easier than either doing interruptions where my entire train of thought is interrupted or complete silence without any talking at all.  Now little blurbs can occur spontaneously without derailing.  I love this.  All visual.  We can still go watch tv together but as we're doing our thing this... wonder... is there to keep us somewhat more connected.  Little pings of "hey, I'm thinking of you, I'm still here."

It's late and I'm exhausted.  It did feel good to get out and walk and chat.  But even that... The overzealous notice-everything was turned on full throttle.  Just in case I was exposed and just in case someone else was exposed (to covid) I kept trying to maintain distance as we walked together.  This person doesn't notice things easily.  But I notice everything.  So amidst avoiding wet spots on the ground (so my mesh shoes don't get soaked) and the traffic proximity and the public proximity and the noises and the wind and snow and other people and listening to conversation I was only me-only alert to ensure we all avoided getting too close to one another, and avoiding breathing downstream to another even.  I can't shut this off.  This is why being with people is exhausting.  I'm constantly worried about "fixing" what they don't see to avoid some issue.  It makes life unenjoyable for me.

Cats.  Soft, fuzzy cats.  Yes.  And bed.  And tomorrow, tea.

-nv

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Interesting pen!

https://glassdippen.com/products/vintage-style-glass-dip-pen-with-wooden-pen-cap-for-everyday-journal?variant=32181473476711

Pretty, kind of a cross between something I'd have in Chinese tea sets or next to a fancy goblet of wine...

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Poem: Ticking

TICKING
2019071401 - c2019 wlc

There was no clock like that in sight
Despite the ticking in the night
I ran away from the way you smiled
You were reviling and reviled

You used to read me bedtime stories
Finger moving on the page
With sight and sound of orange cups
I heard your voice subdued in rage

Ghosts had haunted you and I
Sometimes it was kinda funny
Hypocrisy... its embers glowed around us
Even when the days were sunny

It doesn't matter how much time goes by
We cannot seem to let our demons die
You were always Mum to me
You were all that you could be
And even death can't take that away
I still feel you every day
At times I feel you're even more
Than you could have been before

Now I carry all our ghosts
Sometimes I swear you're by my side
I hear myself and think of you
Understand the need to hide

For days, I seethed in raging tears
So many times life made us weep
I sat there reading bedtime stories
As you tried to go to sleep

But as you left, the way you smiled
Hatred for us both, exiled
I watched as the clock stopped right
Before the early morning light

Happy Harmonies,

-Whitney

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Bloom and Washi tape

Hardly post on here anymore, but let's see if I change that with my more newfound interest (art).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-on-wet

I think it's safe to say this "wet on wet" method has been my primary for many, many paintings, even when I was doing acrylic before watercolour - it was not until this year that I finally looked up the difference, in fact, and had to try watercolour for myself.  Anywho.  More recently, I've begun to allow things to dry because of the "bloom" mentioned under Techniques:  "In the medium of watercolors, wet-on-wet painting requires a certain finesse in embracing unpredictability. Highly translucent and prone to accidents, watercolor paint will bloom in unpredictable ways that, depending on the artist's frame of mind, can be a boon or a burden."  You're telling me!  I tend to work betwixt the two when I'm trying to do something specific.  For example, sky... I'm not particular about it usually, because skies are skies to me.  They're hard to mess up.  So unless I want the sky a very specific way, the colours can mix in there however they want and I'll blend them out once everything is on there.  Detailed objects such as trees or critters, on the other hand, require more paint from me and I tend to paint them more directly.  So I may allow some drying as I mix the paint thick and then slop it on there.  It really depends on what I'm looking for, I suppose... but to be fair, simply experimenting and knowing what materials react in which ways and whether you can use it to your advantage or not is just another tool in the toolbox.  Unpredictable or not.

Kirsty Partridge's youtube channel (Kirsty Partridge Art, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSl51TSNCxLQJqLTQp0B6Cg) explained how to keep washi tape from ripping the paper when you pull it off.  Well, I never thought of using it for painting before, so suddenly I got clued in... instead of covering the entire canvas (paper), or having uneven paint lines, washi to the rescue!!  Then one day I was painting inside the washi lines and Dale goes, "Oh, nice frame."  I stepped back and looked.  Washi tape DOES make a very nice frame, especially when it was selected with the resulting painting in mind.  I always used it in my planner as a border... why did I never think to use it as a frame for a painting?  Now I use it for multiple scenarios.  Also, that's a reminder of how beauty is in the eye of the beholder... and how subjective art can be.  He didn't know the technique and he didn't care nor did he need to.  He was appreciating it the way he saw and understood it.  What seemed to him on purpose was advanced planning on my part to do something entirely different.  In the end, I kept the tape on the paper and wiped off the excess paint with a wet rag.  Now it looks intentional (except it's hanging off the edge of the page, but whtaever).

The thing that is so inspiring about art is the same thing that is so inspiring about computers, languages, history, maps, music, legos, and pretty much any other specialty:  It has its own set of terms, tools, and a countless array of ideas.  It's versatile.  It's interpretive.  It's creative.  And it offers an excellent learning curve that can be utilized by young and old, novice and expert alike.  It does not discriminate.  Most people love some kind of art whether they create it or not.  It's one of our most human qualities, this need to express, create, and appreciate.  Yet despite how basic it can be, you can get so deeply into it that one day you're sitting there going, "If only I had a piece of compressed brown chalk, or white charcoal, this would be so easy to accomplish without leaving xyz and working around it."  Or:  "They should make charcoal with pigment /in/ it so I don't have to keep adding coloured pencil to the-- HEY!  They DO make that!  That sucker's going on my wish list!"  Or:  "Ohhhh...THAT's why they have such a selection of papers!!"  lol

Art.  Gotta love it.  This one is from yesterday.  Note the washi "frame" as a border.  :)  Also note the "bloom" that's so notable in the ground and mountains near the bottom (there is some in the sky also, but this worked to the effect I desired - I wanted it to look rough and stormy, and that's exactly how it bloomed for me).  The only thing in this painting I had not anticipated was in the sky.  Sometimes, I'm finding that this 140lb paper, applied with watercolour paint of just the right consistency, will result in an odd textured crackleature once dried.  If the paint is heavier, it dries smooth; if wetter, it looks watercolourish.  Have yet to recognise the precise moment when the paint is of such a consistency that it will dry that way.  Is that bloom?  I may ask an artist friend of mine that is studying this stuff.  She may know...

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It is... A new year.

Guess I had nothing interesting to say.  Just felt like playing with the Staedtler Triliners and the need quickly moved toward Tombow ABT brush markers.  I always find it fascinating how one medium can literally take five minutes to morph into a scene while another takes about two hours to morph into something like this.  Maybe once I'm more acclimated to the brush markers' blending capabilities, I'll learn a few shortcuts to make it look more seasoned with less work.  In other news, I really like the neon aspect of this particular Staedtler triliner colour.  Wow is it... well, neon!

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zentangle

In Junior High, Mum had noticed that I often wrote words on paper and would then trace around them over and over (spacing in between lines) until they overlapped.  Sometimes I'd add shapes in there to add additional visual interest.  Usually it was in black ink, but sometimes I'd do colours.  Or paints.  Or whatever.  Anywho, she watched me at one point and commented that I must be subconsciously keeping myself from going crazy.  Her opinion was that I was reorganizing my brain by doing that tedious work over and over like that and it was a sign of how much of a mental disorder I must have.

At the time I just shrugged that off as whatever you say, I'm busy enjoying myself over here.  But now, I took out the nice new box of Staedtler triliners (thank you K&F and N&J!) and thought huh, I wonder how zentangle got its name?  Because, I remember zentangle from when Mary took some class and showed me the elements of it... and also remember thinking of how similar it is to my previous line-workings of years past... which I occasionally still do.

Zentangle.com's explanation was of interest.  It's basically meditation using repetitious shapes and "tangling" them together.  While there, I found an interesting design and decided to copy it, and as I did so to some extent, remembered all of the above and found it ironic.  Mum said I was crazy and drawing this way was a symptom of that.  Meanwhile, people everywhere are doing zentangles as a way to simply relax and meditate, often to better cope with the stresses of their worlds.

I guess Mum was right about one thing:  Such repetitious work does indeed allow the brain to reorganize itself.

Oh, and today's zentangle.  :)

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Doodlesketchaintingours

A friend of mine handed me a Derwent Sketching set one day last year and I said, huh, haven't used charcoal in a very long time (i.e., not since high school art class made me and I thought this stuff is messy, screw dat give me paint).

Well, I couldn't say no to such a beautiful set and ended up loving it.  Doodlesketchaintingours has become my latest obsession.  Since that day, I've not only played with charcoal and graphite.  Oh, no.  I've also discovered oil pastels, watercolour, different paper types, watercolour pencils (metallic and more normal like), waterbrushes, metallic markers, tombow dual-tip brush markers, and.. get this.. erasers.  Did you know different erasers do different things?  I didn't, either.  I do now.  And I also discovered this lady here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSl51TSNCxLQJqLTQp0B6Cg

(Kirsty Partridge)

There is something very magical about just applying pigment and watching it come to life.  I have no idea how it happens, but it does.  The other day I walked into Michael's (bad place for me to go) to get a specific black Tombow marker.  I ended up with Derwent watercolour pencils, a waterbrush, and a much-desired (and needed?) mixed media sketchbook that actually opens flat but keeps everything together.  So I ended up with this dock/sky/water/shore/rocks picture straightaway.  These pencils are awesome.  You sketch it all in, shade it to your heart's content, and then apply a waterbrush to blend the strokes all together.  It makes some pretty cool stuff.  At any rate, it's my friend's fault.  I've been into art stuff for some time on a lower level, but now that I've found the higher-quality art supplies... I've been spoiled.  Now I'm actually /interested/.  Not good.  I had enough hobbies.  Didn't I?!?!

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Lots o' stuff.

So.  Lots has happened since my last post.

First, my mom died some weeks back.  Yeah.  Hadn't spoken to her in twoish years.  A tad more than that, but I forget exactly when.  She'd said some things to me that made me realise we were very very noncompatible people and that I could not be around her anymore or I'd be torn asunder.  It took a good, solid year to get over a lot of that.  She never called me, and I kept myself from calling her, knowing she'd never call to apologise or anything.  Exactly as I wanted it - I couldn't be hurt again.

The year after that, I was doing a lot better with it and that was a good thing because a kidney stone began growing in me that kept fooling doctors into thinking it was something else.  I got laid off amidst that crap, and the pain was steadily increasing despite various therapies, money spent to no avail, and time spent trying to "fix" what I couldn't fix.  Eventually, I had surgery to remove the .8mm bugger.  I remember so badly wanting to call my mother before the surgery.  But I didn't.  I knew that if I did, she'd just say something like, "You've always been so whiny, try childbirth."  I had contemplated suicide within weeks of starting my new job because the pain had gotten so bad.  Months of increasing pain apparently can do that to otherwise upbeat, positive people.  I mean, "Meh, I got laid off, I'm talented, I have connections, I'll get hired somewhere."  And I did!  and I loved it and slipped right in well before my typical six months of figuring shit out.  Yet there I was, frustrated, dealing with all this new stuff, learning the ropes, arguing with vendors, and sitting there in four hours of solid pain.  And the thought was a good ten minutes.  I didn't do anything obviously.  But I found myself sitting there, contemplating the how, and deciding that particular how was too risky and I'd end up in a hospital with a smashed in face on top of existing pain I was trying to escape.  So I consulted a doctor who brushed it off because he hadn't lost hope (in determining what was causing the problem) and he wouldn't send me to a pain management counselor.  (He has since been fired.  It took me months longer to determine that I needed to do that... in fact, my mom's care in the hospital was what helped me figure it out.)

I cannot imagine having called my mom during those two very major things.  On top of that, a former boss died, and I absolutely adored him.  I could only imagine her:  "Oh my God, and that's just someone you worked with.  You don't even talk to him now.  Here are the tissues."  Fuck you, Mom.

Well, I got the call that she was dying.  I had imagined this a lot over the two years prior to it actually happening.  I wondered, "Is this really the right thing for me to be doing, to be not calling and making amends for the umpteenth time?  Should I call her, because once she's gone, it's too late?  Am I a bad kid for taking care of me and not begging her to forgive me for things she said?"  And the answer was always, "I'm ok with it.  She has made it obvious she cannot be anyone I can be around.  I cannot be who she wants me to be, either.  We need to stay apart.  I think we both know we each love the other.  But we just can't be together.  Ever.  Again."

I got the call Tuesday.  I went up on Wednesday when I found out she had lost consciousness and was slipping faster than they'd expected.  She died on Saturday morning.  She never regained consciousness.  But, that friday afternoon, I read to her.  At one point, I looked at her gaunt, drugged, sleeping face.  I said, in our former joking manner, "You bitch, you just liked me to read these tonguetwisters to you so you could laugh at me!"

Her eyes opened to slits, and I swear to God, she smiled.  In disbelief, I blinked, and she was gone again.  Did I imagine that?  I may never know.  But I don't think so.  I think she woke just long enough to acknowledge my memory of what our lives were once like.  Back when we were acting like idiots together instead of adversarial adults.  She knew I came back for her.  And that was enough.

I watched a shadow walk into her room a few hours later.  I tried to get Dale's attention but he was on the phone with his own mother and didn't notice me gesturing.  I didn't dare to move.  I stared at it until it faded.  It stood in the middle of the room.  Eventually I could only see it by looking to one side of it.  What the hell was that?  I got worried.  I had never seen that before.  I had watched two other people dying, and that thing never showed up.  Was that the grim reaper?  Was she about to die?  But she didn't.  The thing faded eventually.  Then I realised... I couldn't feel her anymore.  I always thought... I always thought that I'd know for sure when she'd left this world because hey, she's my mom, right?  But no.  Just a vague sense that she was kinda sort of not there anymore.  But she was still alive.  People can't leave their bodies when the bodies aren't dead, right?  Even the blue-sparkly aura had disappeared.  It had been there since I arrived on tuesday.  The last time I'd seen that, my mom's sister had just died.  Before that, it had been my friend's father.  Mum was always one to go against the mainstream, but to this extent?

My cousin woke me up at 1 something am to tell me her breathing had changed and I needed to get up.  We stared, embracing, waiting for it.  She stopped breathing.  I had nothing.  Maybe I was too close.  Maybe my sense of this stuff was too worldly now and I just couldn't feel it.  I don't know.  But I absolutely didn't know for sure that she had died.  My cousin had to tell me.  I glanced up at the time to always remember.  We left her there.  What was left of her.

Sometimes I remember these hours and cry.  But, having gone through her stuff that week, I realised that I was right.  It had to be this way.  I wish I could have been stronger for her, but I am who I am, just as she was who she was.  I have no doubt that she loved me and was proud of me, and I know I love her.  I miss the good times, but I needed to grow up on my own, I needed to find who I really am, and I sometimes bitterly wish she could have been there... but she couldn't.  What I hope beyond all hopes now, is that she is no longer riddled with all of her demons from the past, and can be the person I always knew her to be, and way more.

A lot has happened over the past couple years.  I got in a final fight with my own mom, the only parent I ever knew.  I lost my job, and got a new one.  I had surgery for excruciating, months-long pain.  I lost someone very close to my heart.  And then, I lost the one person I have always wished I could be around and finally gave up on.  My own tormented Mum.  Truth is, I lost her years ago.  But her death has brought me more peace than I could ever explain.  Tears, sure, but... not only a relief that she'll never put me down again, but also, relief that she isn't hurting anymore, either.  So I can finally just feel the love part of what she was, instead of the tormented little girl that was inside her.  The part that truly mattered, in the end.

And that is all.  For now.

~nv

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Bible limitations

Growing up, I would frequently be told that if I wasn't reading the Bible, I wasn't following God.  I would just as frequently counter with "God can be found everywhere and you're limiting Him by stating that."  Or somethings to those effects.

There was always a large part of me that knew I was purposely avoiding the Bible because of the evil that was wielding it.  The controlling negativity was like a forcefield around the Book, and when curiosity got the better of me, I'd hide with it so I could read without a dramatic overture into my salvation (and the subsequent loss of it).  It wasn't about my turning toward the light or whatever, or being born again, or saved, or whatever.  I knew that was already done far earlier than I could ever explain.  It was about wanting to read a book, satiate curiosity, and to experience this sense of wonder and comfort and calm.

I still avoid the Book much of the time.  Not as purposely, mind you - that evil has been dead to me for two years now, and nobody cares if I read it or not (well, except a certain friend of mine, but she has scarcely a dribble of power over me compared to the power I gave my biological mother).  Nonetheless, the awareness of this avoidance still plagues me.  I can now acknowledge it more openly to myself, but I still don't make it a point to read it.  Then again, I counter, I know a lot of it.  Its stories were drilled into me rather effectively, despite all doubts.  But, I remind myself, when you hear a song about God or read anything having to do with Him, your first instinct is to bolt.  That's true, I admit.  I still harbour fear and resentment deep within for that one who would have had me turn away from Him.  "God can be found everywhere, you know," I then sense.  "After all your words, you are now the one limiting Him."

Something about casting the first stone?  I daresay, it's true.

My non-religious mother-in-law gave me a book called "Love Does" by Bob Goff.  It came with a warning that it is somewhat religious in that the guy talks a lot about God, but it was a good read nonetheless.  Her taste in books often mirrors my own, so I figured what the hey, and began reading.  Wonderful, lighthearted, happy, joyous, optimistic - this God-loving fellow has all of that to share and then some.  This is the opposite of what "she" would have read, yet here it is, God in all His glory, talking to me through this weird, witty, unflappable, undaunted, unhaunted lawyer-authour.  I frequently find myself stopping to smile and reflect on how happy I am that I didn't simply turn this book over to my religiously fanatic friend - although I will gladly turn it over to her once I'm done - I strongly suspect this is one book we would both enjoy.  Perhaps even discuss.  Probably not the last part, but maybe.

"The original sin is to limit the Is.  Don't."  Richard Bach wrote that in "Illusions:  The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah."  That has stuck with me since the first time I read it.  It resonated deeper than any bass string could ever have resonated.  It has helped me to get farther in life, because I know that I get in God's way an awful lot, and that one-liner helps me remember to get out of my own way so God can guide me towards what's best for me in the long run so I can do my tiny little part in whatever Plan is intended.  It tends to have the side effect of helping me be happier, too, and life seems generally easier.  Not to say I don't still stress over stuff like a normal human being, but because of that one-liner, I allow the stress to consume me knowing that it's normal and it will be over at some point so I can get back on track.  And I always do, somehow.  Some times, it takes longer than others.

This "Love Does" book, well, the guy says something I also liked.  He'd always thought you had to be someone special to be used by God.  Now he knows you just have to say "Yes."

It is perhaps ironic that the only items I have any desire of which are my mother's are her Bible and an orange cup, the last surviving cup of four.  The orange cup, because it's butt-ugly in its own pretty way and reminds me of the time she shattered one and made me clean it up because she had let so much rage build up that it exploded one day in the eighties.  The Bible is more curious.  It should represent everything I hated about her, yet it doesn't.  I have very fond memories of curling up with it and gently flipping through the thin, golden-edged pages, marveling at the Old English spellings and soaking them in at a young age.  It strongly influenced how I spell today, although I only realised that in the last ten years when I leafed through it some time ago and saw those spellings.  All those comments, arguments!  That's not how you spell colour, I was constantly reprimanded by both teacher and peer alike.  Most certainly is one way of spelling colour, I'd state unwaveringly, knowing it was also in the little red dictionary I carried with me everywhere I went.  But for years I could not figure out where I first saw those spellings or why I automatically went British on my fellow Americans.  Then one day, talking to Mum, there it was:  I picked up her Bible and leafed through it.  "Oh," I said.  What, she said.  "This is where I got those from."  "What?"  "'o-u' in colour, favourite, neighbour.  It's Old English.  This was my first book."

She likely believes my first book was a children's story she read to me when I was little.  She taught me to read very early on.  I remember those lessons, the ones she'd give me before she turned on me, back when she still had enough love to share with a wee one.  But I've considered her Bible my first real book for as long as I can remember.  It has always been there shining at me with its soft yellow-white glow, even when she'd wield its contents as she might a sword.

Why do I limit the Is so?  Why did I ever allow her to steer me away from that book?  Why wasn't I strong enough to read it in front of her?  Dunno.  Point of wonder, but then, back then, I was a happy soul shoved in a torturous cage of fear and isolation and oppression.  My internal fire was scarcely an ember, buried in sand, awaiting the day a pocket of air would appear to fan it back into an inferno that could eventually settle into a firmly warming crackle.  It simply wasn't time at the time.  I'm human, is what that boils down to.  Just like every human else.  :)

~nv

The Muse

Mom used to tell me I was tone deaf and quite frankly, she told me lots of things that were untrue about myself.  It took a long time to undo all her teachings and of course I still struggle with some of them.  It's made easier without her around trying to reinforce them all the time.  If it had been up to her, I'd be a single mom with five kids, no teeth, no friends, and would be living on welfare while taking care of her and telling her how awesome she is while believing I was the worst person on the face of the planet (which wouldn't be a huge leap from everyone else, really).

Eff that.

Instead, I took the useful skills she gave me - and yes, I know these may be somewhat contradictory - and put them to use, then built upon them.  Reading, love of learning, fierce independence, and the ability to think well ahead of many people... these have served me well.  She didn't want me to have my faith, she wanted me to have hers, but I somehow kept my beliefs anyway and never let her tempt me away from my own sense of that.

I have, with much awareness, kept my awareness of my intuition and observational skills (also a contradiction, since I find it difficult to notice and remember people's appearances, such as whether they're skinny, fat, black, white, etc), and had the nerve to build relationships with other people.  Even to the point of having my own reputation (it seems to help me, but I'm still not sure exactly what I'm known for, and I kinda don't really want to know but I hope it involves honesty and customer service in some fashion).

While my self confidence still struggles, I have mostly boosted it with a lot of help from chosen family, and many friends and colleagues over the years.  I have made personal choices to keep myself on the right track, to take care of myself and not forget my roots and the easy pitfalls I could have made if I hadn't climbed out.

It still struggles, though.  If I trust someone, and my instincts tell me they're wrong, but they insist they're right, I will go with their words over my own instincts.  And whenever I know inside that I'm hitting notes properly, I'm never sure that I really know.  There is always a part of me that wonders... is it just that Dale and his mother are tone-deaf themselves or so sensitive to my delicately fragile self-esteem that they tell me what I want to hear?  Are my friends unwilling to burst my bubble?  Is my own voice teacher lying to me to avoid her own failures?  But then I listen to a newer recording, or to someone online who I like the voice of, or watch as I'm spot-on with my phone's little measuring app... and I think, what the hell.  You may still have some moments, but by God, you're far from tone deaf.  You can do this.  With the amount of practicing you do (very little), you have come along amazingly well.

After weeks of not practicing, I managed to sing a song I'd practiced with my teacher some time ago, thrice, and got most of it with pretty much no effort... and I flipped the page upside down the first two times and simply changed the words as I kept up, as if I'd been doing it for years.  "--and the page is upside downnnn... remind meeeee to reprint this stupid little page... oh my that's so much betterrrr..." and I laughed a bit as I kept up, and then got back on track, catching little moments of slipping off a bit but just continuing on, not caring.  You know what?  Not everyone can do that.  Not everyone knows.  There was a time /I/ didn't know when I did that.  I may not be Mariah Carey or Celine Dion or Whitney Houston or Vienna Teng, but damn, that's pretty cool.

So after the lesson, I'm wandering around the house singing to Vienna Teng's "Gravity" and remember the bread rising in the oven - someone wanted to try some of my pan bread some day.  They may be back here with Dale later, so I figured I'd at least have it ready for cooking just in case they hung around before I had to leave.  Can I just be a normal person and make it as I always do?  No.  I toss it on the grill.  Of course.  I tried making some at camp last week and it came out awesome.  Never mind that we had charcoal, not gas.  Never mind that it was out in the open air, and I could position the rack well over the coals and still keep some heat on it.  Oh, no.  Plop.

Seems to be ok.  I shut off the gas and left it in there once the outside was hard but pre-burnt.  Then me in my infinite wisdom wandered around the house wanting lunch but not wanting to make it.  I could see it coming.  The flour came back out.  Next thing I knew, I had sour cream and butter mixed into what I'm guessing is a scone base.  It ends up on the griddle, the big greasy smooshed together pile of crumbly mess.  What was I thinking?  That will never flip.  I'm surprised it didn't totally fall apart.  I can hear myself tsk tsking my creative little child.  I could also hear it in the background, loudly wondering why it wasn't being listened to.  The parent!  That was the parent.  I remember those lessons, the parent, child, and adult... yup, that's a parent all right.  Eventually my spidey senses went off and I ventured back out to flip the mess.  I was right.  It was a little burnt on the bottom, but salvageable.  It flipped in piece.  Wait, what?  And that patient silence simply pushed my hand in the direction of the knob.  I shut off the gas, closed the lid, and walked away.  How long do I leave it out there?  No answer.  I will know when it's time.  She'll tell me.  I didn't even glance at a clock.

Is the child the creative one?  She did these things in an automated, non-thinking fashion, out of a simple decision.  It isn't even will, exactly.  It's simply intent.  There were no words.  It was a sheer line of singing accompanied by hands squishing flour and butter and sour cream into crumbles, taking note of the texture and being vaguely aware that I may need to clean that out from under my rings later.  She may be a child, I'm not sure.  She must be, because she is not the adult since she has desire, and she is certainly not the parent because she's not a bitchy I-told-you-you-suck mother.  She is the one I often call The Muse.  I like her.  A lot.  But she tends to come out on her own when she damned well feels like it.  She is never malicious, she just does whatever she feels like doing at any given time.  She is the one that tells me when I *must* write, she is the one that knows how to make my voice sing with feeling.  She knows how to play along to a song on the piano without studying first, and she's the one that makes me go do it as if I'm in a trance.  She can paint birds, cows, trees, landscapes, Sinclair's eyes, and sketch Dale's face with a light curtain partially obscuring it.  The Muse can make scones from scratch without a recipe the first time.  She tells me how to make bread and refuses to listen to directions.  Refuse isn't quite the word... she simply ignores instructions.  And she is very much in tune with my intuition.  I often think of how glad I am that she's not malevolent, because I swear she can do anything.

Mom may have inadvertently helped The Muse to form.  Leaving me alone for so long to my own devices, what else could have formed?  I was trapped in my own little world of not understanding people, of what boils down to an inner silence.  I had thought, and little interaction, and I was ok with that much of the time.  So later, when this little being was told to be someone else... the growth on the outside might have been listening and trying to conforming and being frequently scared and sad, but The Muse just sat there wrapped up in her little blanket having conversations with Love in her silent little way.  If that's my core coming out when it decides to, then it's no wonder I'm so damned strong, no wonder I was able to break away from the poison of my upbringing and be who I am now.  Nobody can tell Muse what to do.  She simply doesn't acknowledge restraint or direction from anyone other than herself and what I label as God for lack of a better name.

Oh, and... as I finished that last sentence, I overheard the very end of Richard Marx's Part of Me.  Something seemed off.  It didn't raise my little hackles as being /wrong/ but it was decided different.  My first thought was that his voice went flat or something and someone overlooked it and left it in there.  But no.  After four more listens, it finally hit me.  Double-tracking!  Sure enough, "Cause you're a part of meeeee" has at least two of him in it.  Elated, I let it finish and my head snapped back up.  WAIT!!  The second one had at least three, maybe four... I don't know... but it's even more obvious, and this time they're decidedly different notes.  Yeah, no doubt, different friggin' notes.  Wait... if that-- that means--

I'd been having problems singing along to the chorus piece of his "When You're Gone."  I found myself singing something other than what's on my sheet music, even though the first two pages seem fine and match up.  Sometimes pieces of it later on also match up, so I had no idea what I was doing wrong.  I told my voice teacher about it and she suggested I not use the word, "Wrong," because she'd heard me singing "different" notes in various chords before with other exercises or whatever.  We'd concluded after a while that I wasn't necessarily flat or sharp when I lost where I was, but that I was hearing an entire chord and my brain wasn't sure what part to sing so it selected something even if it wasn't the part that should be getting sung as the main melody line.  Sometimes it's one of the vocals, sometimes it's an instrument near the vocals, but it was never wrong, just a different part of the song.  It wasn't the melody, forsooth, so what's the difference, one might say.  But... it IS different.  It's far from being tone-deaf.  It's hearing too many things at once and not being able to decide which tone is in the melody and which ones aren't.

So I listened to When You're Gone and sure enough, he's multi-tracking in various pieces of the chorus (and after that), but not in the part I had no trouble with.  I should have know.  I thought it was the rasp, or the way the track was mixed.  But now that I'm aware of it, it's so friggin' obvious that it's there!

Doesn't mean I know which notes they all are, but at least now they're distinct enough to know they are different.  I've made a note for the teacher and have happily moved on.  Richard Marx is an awesome singer, but either he or someone on his team at the time knew that doing this would make his song that much more interesting and... rich.  It's no different from layering instruments together, or playing chords on a piano.  It's just that voices don't natively do that, so my brain is all confused.  Frankly, it's amazing that any of us can deal with any of that at all - sound is simply vibration, and for our brains to pick up vibrations from an ear drum and translate it into different instruments playing different vibrations at the same time... that is intensely awesome.

Aight, off we go then.

~nv

past desires vs wisdom

For years after becoming successful - to me, success is being happy - I had this deluded notion that I would be able to share all of my success with my loved ones. For the most part, this was true. Dale's mom, dad, and stepmom all enjoy coming down to our house for gatherings and such or just to visit. I have a handful of close friends who particularly enjoy my hosting (company) from time to time. Other times we go places like shows or rent a house for events or whatever. We find ways to see our peoples.

One of my biggest dreams was to share my happiness with my own mom. I often imagined her on the back deck watching wildlife or on the porch watching the birds and feeding squirrels. I would imagine her face as she'd gaze down the road from her room upstairs, enjoying the way the mountain that Dale and I got married on drifts down and meets the edge of the road. Or the way the sun moves across the yard. I would spend hours thinking of how happy she would be here, so peaceful, so serene. We would take her to the pond and spend time there in nature when the skeeters were not too miserable. We might even eat hot dogs and beans over a campfire. She would play with the cats and enjoy their company and make the occasional cream of wheat with lumps and we would laugh first thing in the morning and she would read books while we were at work and maybe she would eventually make friends with our next door neighbours.

I thought that if I provided a safe, supportive, happy home with everything she needed to eat and live, that she would finally enjoy some happiness in life. I could make her happy.

Then she told me, point-blank, to stop giving her gifts. By then I had begun to face reality that she would never change, that she was simply a miserable human being who enjoyed hurting me and even more than me, herself. But at that moment, I was given a very valuable lesson that didn't hit me until just now. And it was so obvious all along, but I refused to see it.

She had dreamt of me with upswept hair and pearls about my neck once, and was disappointed when as a kid I sat there farting at the breakfast table. She dreamt of me with false teeth, no friends, no one but her in my life. She wanted for me everything and more that she had - contempt and distrust for others, depression, fear, past rape by her brother, emotional abuse, and neverending catering to her every whim. She wanted me to be stoic and never express pain or the depression she said I had. I was never to be angry, to matter, to care about others, to let others in. I was to be hers, and hers alone, her sounding board, her mirror, an extension of her contempt for others, and extension of whatever she felt like being any given minute. I was to be the devil. I was evil incarnate. I was her future preacher. She wanted me to be to blame for her mistakes, for our bunnies' deaths, for her walking out on jobs, for her failures to provide for herself and get off the system she purported to hate and distrust.

And I. Totally. Disappointed her. Like so many children do, I was selfish and went off on my own to become an entirely different person than she had tried to shape.

I woke up at, ironically, 4:04 this morning with scattered imagery and a relaxed state of mind and all of a sudden I had figured it out.

I am my mother! I am obstinate, driven, intelligent, ornery, passionate, creative, strong, and fiercely independent. She decided early on that she would never marry into a world where she was abused at home. I have leaned on God to give my child everything that I could not.

My child is me.

All the years of imagining what it would be like to watch my mother's dis-ease giving way to her innate sunny disposition... and all the while, I was watching myself, not her, grow into the person I wanted her to be my whole life. Someone happy, loving. Someone I could depend on to keep me going, to support me, to help God set me back on my path when I would be led astray.

I will never have that one human being that gave birth to me love me for who I am, or to watch the sun streaming through the trees in the back yard, or set over the mountain where I made a commitment to one of the greatest people on earth official. She never wanted that. Any of it. She kept trying to tell me, and wouldn't stop trying to tell me. She had to be blatantly blatant about it for me to finally listen: Stop giving me gifts. Like, duh. She didn't want to be happy, ever, and really did not appreciate my shoving it down her throat. All of that disgustingly happy stuff is what I wanted for myself! I am the one sitting here watching the sunrise each morning and revelling in the life I have made. For me. Not her. She already has the life she wanted.

You really cannot make another person happy. You can only give yourself the world.

-nv

POEM: Windows

Wheels were turning in the night as the ocean fell

Over the edge of the world and the joy of birds

Echoed in the darkness

Yesterday lit the distance on fire

It burned until the embers lost their glow

A new world was born amidst the chaos

Rainy nights made pools reflecting the stars in the sky

The hand outside my window lost its nerve

And shriveled into indistinction

Another nightmare of the past

Sometimes I think of you and our memories

I laugh at some and cringe now and then

And I think, whatever happened to the love inside

Did she really ever have it

Or was she always --

I look out the window at the snowy fields below

The sun sets the fog aglow

Mountains lit up against a morning sky

There's a knock at the door

I turn to face the joy again

When the shoe fits...

I kicked off a boot, put on a shoe, kicked off a boot, and put on a –

 

GACK!  THAT'S THE BOOT I JUST KICKED OFF MY OTHER FOOT!  THAT FEELS HORRIBLE!!

 

 

consistency

I've recently begun using tasks in Outlook again.  It occurred to me that I kept feeling irritated by where they are when to the side of the inbox.  Why?  I finally figured out that it's because I want them to the left, not the right.  Like I have my notes in OneNote.  Details of tasks often end up in OneNote, and I have folders/notebooks and tasks to the left.  The workspace is on the right.

 

It's a subtle thing, and inconsequential really, but if Outlook had the ability to move that thing to the left, I would probably be happier.  Weird how such things bug people!

 

Anywho, back to work… just had to drop a thought.

 

-nv

Music

There are some things I've long "known" about my musical abilities (or lack thereof) because of what people have told me.

1.  I'm tone-deaf and totally lack the family's musical ear (mom).

2.  I have an annoying singing voice (okay, I told me that).

3.  I sing way off key (mom, and it wasn't off key, it was flat or sharp; so  much for her knowing what a "key" is).

4.  I can't sing (mom, probably 6th grade chorus teacher, several friends).

5.  I have rhythm - esp. when dancing (friends, a couple strangers at a bar once, people driving down the street back when I dance-walked to work).

I don't practice regularly.  I go through spurts of practicing.  Music, like sound in general, is both confusing and intensely interesting to me.  Sometimes it makes sense.  Sometimes I can't tell what the hell is going on.  I have long wondered if studying music so intensely at times also helps me with understanding people.  It's like it causes my brain to condition itself to zoning in on what it needs to in order to decrypt all the crap going on around me.  Noisy rooms are like songs full of instruments all playing at once, but in a form of discord.  To be able to pull out one instrument from 16 is to isolate one voice in a room full of humming lights, fish tank pumps, water trickles, a cat's toenails walking through the next room over, cars driving by, static of a speaker as an iphone sends out signals to its carrier, and the fan of a computer.

The latter, of course, being CAPD.

I started some time ago also suspecting that CAPD may have something to do with my music issues.  But then I see how someone else is so good and find out they practice a lot.  So I tell myself it's because I lack self-discipline to make myself practice.  Sure, to be sure, that's part of it.  But...

Then there are times when people tell me things that contradict what I've always "known" about my musical abilities.  Or lack thereof.

Examples:

With colleague, who is also a musician, listening to the Beach Boys... Me:  "Wait, in that song that I just heard for the first time ever, was that an augmented chord they just played?"  Him (rewinds):  "Yes, how did you know that?"  "I took music theory ten years ago..."  "But... How the hell did you even hear that the way they did it?"  "Dunno, just sounded like one.  There it is again!"  Strange look, as if I'd just grown three heads, but with confirmation that I'm right.  Yet I can't tell if a note is higher or lower than another note at times?  Seriously?

Piano tuner comes to tune the piano.  Me:  "These keys here are especially out of tune."  "Yes, they are.  Not by much, though.  Good ear."  "Oh, that must be why they keep changing on me, then."  "What do you mean?"  "Well, like these two... sometimes I know they're flat, other times I swear they're ok, and other times I swear they're sharp.  They must be going back and forth depending on if it's dry in here 'cause they're just starting to slip out of tune?"  His eyes pop open.  "Have you ever LOOKED at the inside of your piano?"  "Yeah, sure."  He opens it anyway and points at one of the sets of strings.  "That's this."  Hits a key.  I nod, noticing that it's hitting three strings.  I hadn't really noticed that before but it doesn't mean much yet.  "See how it hits three of the metal strings?"  "Yeah...?"  "This key is all three:  flat, sharp, and spot-on."  "So... every key on a piano does that to sound right?"  "No... all three strings, when properly tuned, should sound exactly the same.  When ANY of those strings are not spot-on, it's out of tune.  Each string can go flat OR sharp.  So... you've been hearing all three of those but you were right each time for one of the three strings.  Most people can't identify that."  "Well, I didn't.  I didn't know each key's strings had to be spot-on!"  "But you heard each string nonetheless.  The keys you pointed out are all exactly as you described - flat, sharp, and spot-on."  "Oh!"

Dale's playing an unfamiliar song on the computer.  "Hey, that little bass piece sounds just like this song over here I haven't listened to in five years.  Here, let me show you."  "What the... how did you even recognise that let alone remember..."  "I dunno, just did."  (several times this has happened.)

Randomly, I'm listening to a song (familiar or not) and I suddenly get up and start playing along on the piano.  "When did you learn that one?"  "I haven't yet and I'll probably forget how in two days."

Sometimes I'm at the piano and I just start playing whatever my fingers feel like playing.  I chalk this up to digested music theory and experience.  But then I make a mistake and I cringe.  It sounds wrong.  I am not always sure how to correct it, but I know it's wrong.

And now, singing instructor:  "Singing in parts is very difficult.  You have to be able to hear only yourself and keep yourself going even if other people around you are floundering... you have to be able to focus in on only one thing in the midst of all that other stuff."  Light comes on. That's CAPD.  OMG.  That IS CAPD.  I hear everything at once and have to work to focus on one thing.  And quite likely, every time I hear something, it sounds slightly different to me.  Just like a word.

I cannot be tone-deaf.  Otherwise I wouldn't be able to hit any notes at all, nor tell the minute differences between a set of strings for one single piano note, even if which one I hear varies from day to day.

What, then, must be happening, is that I hear (and was always on some level very aware of) /more/ detail in music than the majority of people and it confuses the shit out of me, just like normal sounds do... like speech with background sounds.

My voice /is/ trainable.  It's a muscle.  But I need to work way harder than some people because when I hear a note, it may sound different from day to day, just like speech does.  Studying music has indeed helped me isolate voices as well as tones, and probably vice-versa.

What a revelation.  Screw you, Mom.  I am NOT tone-deaf.  I DON'T suck.  If anything, I'm way more fucking advanced and the rest of the world just hasn't caught up to me yet, you self-righteous ass.  Not that it helps much with a world full of music that is run by people who don't hear things differently each time... but still.

Now if only I could always hold that fucking note...

Babymetal

Wow, I LOVE this group... excellent working music.  Good to dance to, too!

On Being Human

Many of my colleagues have been awesome over the years, but they take
the cake when I do something incredibly stupid and get a snicker with
"happens to the best of us." It takes a very sad human to put you down
because /they're/ human, a normal human to put you down because
/you're/ human, and a very special human to point out we're all /only/
human.

It is very easy to remain bitter about how others treat you, and very
hard to move on. It doesn't mean you can't move on, though, it just
means that the longer you hold yourself back, the longer you remain
miserable and angry and keep hurting other people, even those you love
most.

I used to think that forgiving someone and accepting them for who they
are was the same as constantly reminding yourself of this whenever
they gave you the same old shit. This is apparently wrong. You
forgive, you accept them as they are, and you move on, becoming more
of who you are yourself. No matter how much you love someone, you
can't love them fully by allowing them to walk all over you and put
you down. It is impossible.

You can dangle the carrot, but the horse has gotta want it or it'll
just rot off the stick.

~nv

APD: Hemisphere integration

I still often research APDs out of sheer curiosity to see the experiences of others and what's being done in the field, so today I ran across this... I found it interesting because while I'm not fully ambidextrous, I ate left-handed as a kid and my mom thought I was left-handed until I picked up a pencil with my right hand.  Most of the time, I've been right-handed, but have encountered many instances where I've confused people because they think I'm right-handed but I'm doing something left-handed... like shooting a bow in gym class, for example, or putting (golf) left-handed some days and right-handed others, or forgetting I'm right-handed and jotting something down with my left hand because the paper is to my left.  I seem to go through cycles of intense wordsmithing, logic and organization with random bursts of artistic streaks - even in music, which I generally suck at.  I've known for a long time that the two hemispheres of my brain cannot match the standard idea that one must control one set of skills and be dominant over the other, because... they /don't/ do that.  I have skills across the board that bubble up and then disappear, one second as if I'm naturally talented at something and the other, like I can't even do the basics of what I know I've done.  It's beyond mood although I call it that to avoid confusing people; it's either can or can't, and it changes.  And it can change fast, too, depending on how much "fuel" was spurring me on.  As if the ability has a tank and the tank feeds the ability until it runs out of gas, then too does the ability, and suddenly a new one pops up revving its engine.  It can last minutes or hours.

So, to read this little blip below, gave me a moment of ponder... but I think they may have oversimplified it, if there's anything to it at all.  I have excellent long term memory about some things, as Dale will attest to... right down to the chalk under a table, things people pissed me off about as a kid who wasn't speaking well yet, and the now-faded images of a 300-page-book I memorised by the time I was eleven or so.

All that said, however... I /will/ say that when I've been studying music and sounds for long periods of time (weeks), I notice a reduction in how bad the APD is.  People start to make more sense.  But, it's not permanent... the more computer-oriented I get, the less I can "get" people again.  I was also reading somewhere recently that right-hemisphere APDs often mean that the affect child may talk "flat" or "monotone" - bingo - and have difficulty discerning tone or meaning even if they understand the words themselves.  I found that interesting, too.  The thing that always bothered me about APD, though, is that I have always been a STRONG reader and an excellent speller.  It's the audio portion that sucks ass a lot of the time.  Apparently, I've been doing what many professionals do - shoving a list of symptoms at myself, comparing, and going, 'But they don't match up exactly.'  The thing is, it's not exactly a disability.  It may be classified as one, but I've compensated naturally for it, worked around it, and frankly, find it amusing... even though I still dislike crowds and still say the wrong thing often enough to be endeared to people as quirky, strange, and geeky even if well-intentioned.  Not everyone with auditory processing problems fits into a neat little box.  Some of us leak out and spill our rays of sunshine all over the other neat little boxes, whether the other neat little boxes like it or not.

ANYwho... the blip:

The next area of auditory function we need to assess is long-term memory. Can the individual learn auditorily and retain that information? If a child is having problems remembering math facts, etc. this is usually associated with what we call auditory dominance. We have found that to have good long-term memory, an individual should have all skilled functions on one side of the body, thus establishing what we call a dominant hemisphere of the brain. If the individual is right-handed (and the individual should have a dominant hand for all skilled activities and not be ambidextrous), then that individual should be right-eyed, right-eared and right-footed. Note which ear the individual uses for the telephone, which ear does that individual turn towards you to hear more clearly, to which ear does that individual bring an object to hear slight sounds like a watch.

Lack of a dominant hemisphere of the brain causes reversals, whether visual or auditory, and stuttering and long term memory problems.

-nv

And... he won

Buddy me jig.  Argh.

Dale is three points behind me. ..

... and we just went to round ten.  Ut oh.