Archive for July, 2007

Thinking Like This

Published at July 21, 2007 in Mind, Personal and The World. 1 Comment

Nobody thinks like I do.

That’s a strong statement, and while not entirely true, it’s close enough to use as my premise. Everyone, at least for a while, wants to be different, special, or unique. Many of us succeed, and many of us slide into something like conformity anyway. That’s usually how it works - we all have our bits of “unique” attributes. Due to pressures from friends, family, or more probably the ‘real world’ in general, we slide these aspects into a sometimes strained relationship with the rest of ourselves - pieces of the whole of The Rest Of The World. To an extent, it has to work this way, at least for most of us. We’re not ready to give up our cell phones, canned soup or antibiotics to live in any of the few remaining wildernesses and be very ‘unique’ there. In many ways, we have more freedom to pursue these often esoteric branchings of personality and creativity when the basic needs of body are met. Unfortunately, it’s often difficult to match filling those needs (Work) with doing what we love (Play).

That’s tangential, though. My ‘uniqueness’ is different.  I’m not talking about my creative endeavors, though those are related. I’m not talking about work either, though it certainly connects as well. What’s different is how I think, what that looks like from the outside, and what it means about how I relate to people. I’m sure most folks can relate, and I don’t mean to say that I’m somehow alien. I’m different in degrees, not fundamentally.

I’ve described my thoughts as “rapid fire” or “free association.” There is an substantial amount of noise in my head at any moment - three or four fragments of vectors of analysis of something, a few ‘verbal’ lines running at once. Sometimes I hear more than one song playing at once. None of this seems ‘external’ - it’s all clearly internal “monologue,” fortunately for me I’ve got a clear delineation between internal and external, at least usually. This is especially good, because the signal to noise ratio in here isn’t great.

Once I latch onto something, however, many of those vectors and lines of internal conversation will coalesce into one thing, one general direction or pattern. Many, but not all. If you’ve spent time with me in person, you’ll know what I mean when I mention getting “excited” about something. I can become hugely animated about something, and in that moment, I have intense and ultimate passion about it. I can stay on one subject or object like this for a fairly extended period, or I can branch out in rapid, ADD-like tangents., probably thanks to the not-tied-up vectors of thought. This is probably the most clearly visible aspect of what’s “different” about me, and it’s caused a lot of people to try to come up with labels to describe “what I am.” Thanks, but as I age I realize it’s not entirely that simple

My rapid-fire tangent-following is, I imagine, related to my intense desire to cross-reference everything to, well, everything else. It’s a pretty large project, and it’s not exactly, well, sane, nor is it entirely conscious, but more than one person has made the observation. It’s also in line with how my memory operates - if a fact is isolated (a date, a single chunk of information about something, or maybe a conversation) I’ll usually forget it - but if I can correlate it to something else, it’ll be locked in permanently. Certainly this is why people use mnemonic devices, but my ability to lose declarative memories and remember stuff that relates is pretty skewed.

This is a tough post to write - it’s hard to try to open up my skull and share it when this stuff is so internal and so ingrained, but there’s one thing that’s easy to explain: being like this is lonely. I haven’t met a lot of people who seem to be like this at all. In that, it’s actually difficult to find people I can converse with easily. Oh, it’s easy enough to find people to rant at, and some people seem to rather enjoy my company, so I can only imagine that such asymmetry isn’t inherently unpleasant for everyone - but I don’t know a lot of people who operate at this pace, or with this level of chaos - or intensity. I’ve met one, or maybe two - and both were fairly subdued compared to me, though in many ways far more brilliant. (Perhaps self control and meditation are worth looking into… )

I have hope, though. There are billions and billions of people out there. (Thanks, Carl Sagan. ) It’s impossible that there’s nobody like me. I just need to find a few of us. Then we can move out and start a commune in the forest, and not have to deal with that Real World thing. We can just rant and ramble at each other endlessly… or at least until we all die of some common bacterial infection due to the lack of running water and antibiotics.

Er, maybe being almost-unique isn’t such a bad thing.

Extreme Kitsch

Published at July 8, 2007 in Personal. 0 Comments

Yesterday was pretty great - I went hiking with some friends, but the real highlight of the day was my discovery of a spectacular kitsch object.

On the trip up, I noticed something on the side of the road - it looked like a horn. My friend suggested it might be a bell. Being the mad musician I am, I decided to get off at an exit, loop back, and try to grab this Mystery Musical Thingy.

This necessitated a walk along the highway, which was somewhat unnerving, and not helped by the Freshly-Roadkill’d wild turkey I had to walk past. At least I’m a more visible target… right?
Fortunately, my worries quickly disappeared as I approached the Horn/Bell/Whatever. When I first saw it from a distance, I thought it was a horn half spilled out of its case. As I neared, I realized it was actually next to a book. Great, I thought, a book and a horn, what a find! As I drew even closer, I saw there was a cord, and a lamp. Even better, a horn, a lamp, and a book!

Book Horn Lamp

Imagine my surprise when I discovered this wasn’t a pile of three discreed items at all, but instead, this was some sort of unlikely Horn/Book/Lamp amalgamation. Those of you unable to view the attached image will just have to imagine, because this is a pretty amazing piece of… er… something. I almost want to get a brandy snifter, a leather recliner, and a small library for my “den,” and smoke a pipe while watching the stock ticker under the pale glow of this… thing. You get the idea. It’s an amazing mix of “refinement” and “horrifying trashiness.” But the photo speaks for itself.

Oddly enough, the horn does work, in that if I make farting noises with my lips in one end, they come out amplified at the other. Given my horning skills, that’s about the most I could ask for from a highway roadkill Horn/Book/Lamp.

Now I just need to find a suitably awful shade… and maybe a smoking jacket.

Where there’s smoke, there’s oven.

Published at July 1, 2007 in Personal. 0 Comments

I’m in my lovely new apartment, and I do mean new. Nobody’s lived here before - the previous residents were pigeons, and before that, decades ago, this was a commercial building. So, everything I do here is a first - including filling the place with acrid smoke.

Since I’ve moved in, I’ve been doing that whole unpacking thing. One of the things I discovered was a bag of tortilla chips, so I decided a great “christening” activity would be to make nachos! I fired up the oven - preheat to 375, as per my own tastes when it comes to melted cheese. In a few minutes, the oven started smoking.

2 hours, 4 stingy eyes, two fans, one concerned passerby, one Google search, and one smoke-filled living room later, I’ve discovered that many new ovens have a “breaking in” period, during which they’ll burn off the nasty things used to construct them - oils, solvents, paints, etc.  Occasionally this also includes things like “tape the contractors forgot to remove” and things like that - but I’m firmly planted in the ‘this is normal’ mindset right now.  If I thought there was something wrong with the oven, I’d have to contact someone ‘responsible’ for that sort of thing, and then I’d probably end up oven-less, or looking stupid.  Neither of those two are appealing, so I’ve got this thing on a self-cleaning cycle, and while the fans aren’t doing a good job of getting the smoke out of the apartment, at least it appears the oven has stopped producing the nasty stuff.  (That does assume that the mix of strange chemicals in the air hasn’t so impaired my judgment that I’m no longer capable of noticing smoke pouring out of an oven.  And if I were an alien invader, in the form of smoke, that’s exactly how I’d handle taking over the earth.)

You might be wondering why I have all these fans and still have a ton of smoke here - it’s actually very easy to explain.  I can’t open the windows, because the hinges and handles haven’t been installed yet.  I didn’t know you could get windows without those sorts of things, but apparently all that stuff gets thrown out the window (pun unintended, I swear) when you’re dealing with a “historic building.”  Hinges and handles be damned - what’s important is that the outside of the building remain largely unchanged.  This would be more understandable if this were an attractive brownstone, or a late 1700s whatever… but this is more of an early 1900s industrial nightmare.  But, it’s historic, so the ugliness is sacred.

I’d keep writing about this, but I can’t really see the screen so well anymore, so I’m going to be stepping out of this place for a bit.  Don’t blame me if the smoke aliens set up their Earth outpost in my apartment - I just wanted to make nachos.