Silence is underestimated.
Tag: #random
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There is a Rage Against the Machine song called Freedom that includes, in a quiet moment of the song, the words, “anger is a gift”. This is so true, and I have experienced the subjective truth of that today.
I have been stressing lately; life has just been throwing one ridiculous curveball after another. I was at my breaking point. Another curveball is lobbed my way and smacks me in the nose. I got pissed. I was white hot, livid. I don’t usually get like that. Ever. I mean, the dogs were walking slowly around me with their ears back and heads down because, I imagine, the rage was actually palpable. I put in my headphones and started blasting some angry music while taking care of what needed to be done, stewing in my hatred for life at this point. 10 minutes…. 20 minutes…. An hour has gone by now, and I feel calmer than I have in weeks. I apologized to the dogs and told them I love them.
I suppose there is something to be said for actually sitting with your emotions for a while and just letting them exist without trying to just make them stop or go away. Let them have the life they want. Yes, it can suck, but an hour of sitting with my anger is far better than the weeks of misery and anxiety I’ve spent trying to suppress it and pretend it didn’t exist.
That said, today, anger was a gift. And some days, so too are sadness and fear. I think the key is to sit with them – let them exist – and then, take inventory of what you have to work with and move on with what needs to be done once their visit is over.
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Who were your favorite and least favorite characters from this movie? And I’m talking about from the original animated Disney film, not the more recent live action version, which I haven’t seen. I ask because something I saw this morning reminded me of the croquet game they played, and of course, my mind spiraled down the proverbial rabbit hole, which is, actually, rather appropriate for this train of thought.
Anyway, I imagine a lot of women would say that when they were little girls, Alice was their favorite character, and maybe they changed their mind later in life, but I didn’t think that way. I was fascinated by the Cheshire Cat. He was always smiling, and seemed to speak in riddles. Why was he always smiling? And why couldn’t he just say whatever he wanted to say? He was, to me, a puzzle to solve. I would rewind the movie and watch the scenes with him over and over trying to figure it out.
My least favorite character was probably the Mad Hatter. He was mean to Alice, though in a different way than the Queen of Hearts. With her, you knew what to expect. He seemed nice at times, but other times was just rude and…. icky. I’m sure there’s a better word for it, but thinking about it from a childhood perspective, that’s all I can come up with. He made things confusing in a frustrating fashion, asking questions and never letting Alice answer, then getting mad when she got upset. I did, however, enjoy the idea of celebrating un-birthdays.
That’s all. Just a dose of Saturday randomness. Back to studying now!
Have a great weekend!
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I must admit, the ellipsis is one of my favorite forms of punctuation.
I use it often in my personal writing/journal, or in text messages. Less often in blogs and rarely in my professional writing. I believe it to be a very powerful tool in writing. It indicates missing words, or a pause (in thought, at least for me), and can entice readers to read on. To see what they are missing.
There is really no point to this, I just wanted to talk about the ellipsis, because I honestly think it is fabulous and underappreciated as a punctuation mark.
That is all. Carry on, and have a wonderful evening!
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I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of lucid dreaming. Mostly, I just have very strange dreams, but some pretty terrifying nightmares too. I actually have a collection of writings about my recurring dreams over the years that I thought to publish one day…. dreams for another time, I suppose. Anyway, the thought of being able to realize that I’m dreaming and exert some measure of control over the scenes playing out in my mind is just – wow. That would be phenomenal.
I’ve had dreams where I realize that I’m dreaming, but once that thought is fully formed in my mind, I wake up and the experience is over. But not last night….
I began dreaming shortly after falling asleep (I think). I was home in the dream, and Sandy was running around doing dog things. She barked once or twice, and I look over and see this spider, and feel an immediate sense of horror. I’m not a fan of spiders by any means, but as long as they are away from me or the dogs, I generally don’t care much. This one was different. I could almost feel evil emanating from it, or malintent. I don’t know how to explain it.
Either way, the spider was shaped in such a way that its legs spread in front and behind it, and you could overlay a perfect figure 8 on top of it with the center of its body being where the figure 8 crosses itself. It wasn’t like any spider I’ve ever seen, and yes, I have since done an internet search and it looked like an elongated version of a St. Andrew’s Cross spider, but with a smaller abdomen, and thicker legs with a little more distance between the legs in each pair. It was probably 3 or 4 inches long, maybe? The odd thing was that its body was weird… it almost looked like it had two abdomens, one at the top and one at the bottom, no head or anything.
In the dream, I thought, I hope the spider leaves the dogs alone; we don’t have benadryl handy and I don’t want to have to rush anyone to the vet for a spider bite. Right then, the spider jumped onto Sandy, and somehow I knew that it intended to bite her. It was then that I realized I was dreaming. The spider was crawling up to her neck, and I was trying to get to her to knock the spider off and kill it, but suddenly my legs were sinking into the floor. I could barely move. Time felt like it slowed down and I was watching things in slow motion. I could feel my heart rate and sense of fear increasing, and I just said to myself, “it’s ok, this is just a dream, Sandy’s not actually in danger, I just need to get to her and kill the spider. I wish I could just float instead of being trapped in the floor.” And voila, I was floating! I imagined a rope, and then used that to pull myself closer to Sandy. As soon as I touched Sandy and went to knock the spider to the floor, I woke up.
What an intense freaking experience!! I knew I was dreaming, I held on to that knowledge and was able to influence the events of the dream with my thoughts!
I need to research this a bit and see if there are ways to induce lucid dreaming, because I absolutely loved that feeling and am so curious as to what kinds of things I could co-create with my subconscious!
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I have witnessed a lot of these lately and I don’t quite know what to think about it.
There was a point in my life when I was absolutely sure that everything happens for a reason, and that coincidences were just subtle ways for the universe to prod you a bit or whisper in your ear, or some form of energy flow that some people could pick up on more than others. Everything in the world or in life had a purpose, it was just a matter of going with the flow to see what new adventures were in store. Now, I’m not so sure about any of that. But, either way, coincidences do happen, and I had gotten to a point where I just chalked it up to randomness and the simplicity of unrelated events (with related qualities) that happened at or around the same time. No big deal, right?
Lately though, it’s just too much, and something that I can’t seem to just shrug off.
I see a quote in one place while doing something, and then see the exact same quote somewhere else, while doing something completely different a few days later, and said quote is completely relevant to my life at that moment. Or, when I’m reading some stuff on discipline and ways to hone/improve it, and then come across a different quote that reinforces the value of being disciplined. A couple of times, I wrote a post or two about a particular topic, and then that same topic ends up being a prompt from Day One or the Weekly Prompts Wednesday Challenge. I mean – come on. Seriously? What gives?
Back in the day, I would have taken this as a sign that the universe was speaking to me; telling me that I was right the whole time and that everything does happen for a reason. And I would feel validated by that. Craving that validation, my mind starts to drift in that direction, but then, my logic kicks in and says, “But wait, is it really that? Or is that just what you want to believe, and you’re looking for an excuse to believe it? Look at the facts, the data, all the times that a thing was literally just a thing and there was no reason behind it. What about that?”
*sigh*
I don’t like this. I don’t like not being able to figure out the answer. Math? There’s an answer. Lots of ways to get there, perhaps, but there is a verifiable answer in any case. Physics (talking macro level mechanics here, not quantum theory) – there is an answer. If you add 2 plus 2, it is always 4. If you drop a 5lb ball from 120ft, you can figure out how long it will take to hit the ground, and that answer will be the same on paper or in practice. This shit, though? This has no right or wrong, no verifiable answer. No one that I know of in the history of humanity has ever really figured this shit out. If they have, they need to share with the rest of us! And if they died with that secret, shame on them!
Now, to be clear, I love searching for the answer. I love thinking, pondering, writing, researching, exploring, experimenting. I love solving problems and figuring out answers. But that gut wrenching feeling of what it would be and what it could mean to not find an answer, to never know? That’s the part I don’t like. I’ve never been ok with the idea of “it is what it is” or “that’s just life”. Fuck that. I want answers.
This actually reminds me of a Nine Inch Nails song… “I Do Not Want This” from Downward Spiral. Not really related to the topic here, but it popped in my head.
Anyway, back to the topic. Coincidence. I was just about to go to the dictionary and pull over some definitions, but I don’t know that that’s going to be helpful here. The definition of the word is not going to tell me why they happen, or why they seem to have personal significance. And so, I find myself right back to the same place I’ve been for months – years, really. Asking the question, “why” or “what’s the reason?” and having no solid answer, and no lead to finding one. It’s exhausting but invigorating at the same time. I just. I don’t know. I think I need to sleep on it some, maybe my dreams will inspire a different approach in the morning.
Until then…. good night!
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Random memory time!
I believe my true interest in science was sparked by an incident when I was maybe 5 or 6 years old.
I was in the kitchen/dining room area with my mom and sister, who was about 2. We had this spiffy division between the kitchen and dining room with stools on the one side, where my sister and I were sitting as my mom was doing something with wrapping food and putting it away.
As a curious toddler, my sister picked up the saran wrap thingy in her clumsy hands – and if you’re old enough, you remember the super sharp, giant teeth that the little cutting thing on those packages had! Anyway, instinctively, my mom grabbed it away from my sister, and sliced her finger open in the process. My dad was at work, so she went to the hospital with us in tow.
At first, I was bored, but when the nurse came in, she cleaned the area with iodine and such, and said the doctor would be in shortly. I hated the sight of my own blood (it would take several grown men to hold me down for a blood draw at 4 years old!), but I found the sight of my mother’s blood fascinating because she was so calm. I didn’t understand how she could just sit there, not screaming and crying. When the doctor came in, I asked if I could watch, and he said yes. He examined my mother’s finger, and showed me the blood vessel running alongside the bone in her finger, and explained she was very lucky the blade didn’t nick that blood vessel. He then stitched her up, and I couldn’t gawk at her internal anatomy anymore, but I was hooked nonetheless. I remember just staring at my hands later that day, wondering how I never knew that there was this whole other world inside me!
That was the moment that science took hold of my mind and made me crave any and all information I could find.
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Quote of the day.
“If you want to make a difference in the world it means you have to be different from the world you see.”
– Hatebreed
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Calm. This is something that most people like and perhaps even strive for. It is the absence of disturbance.
Or is it?
Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am a calm person. I’m not overly emotional most of the time. Even if I’m incredibly angry, or even excited about something, I don’t usually show it. I’m not one for public emotional displays. I have been in situations that most would describe as simply fucked up, if not horribly chaotic, but kept my composure and did what needed to be done in the moment. I am the epitome of the interview catchphrase “I work well under pressure”.
I explained how I do this to someone once. I likened it to clinical detachment, which is the term that the medical field uses to refer to what a doctor does to remain objective when treating a patient. I don’t know jack about how they are trained for that, however. But, I can give you detailed facts of what happened in any given situation; I just lock the emotions out and stick to the logic and the facts. Emotion and logic don’t mix well – kinda like pure sodium and water. It’s a violent reaction between two elements – something to avoid. So, I bottle things up, I shut them down, I compartmentalize, I bury them, save them in a little box stored for later – whatever euphemism you want to use for flat out not dealing with the emotional side of something. Is this healthy? Probably not. But it works.
And, let’s be real here. That calmness, in many ways, for me or doctors or whomever else, is simply a façade. I can’t speak for everyone, but I do know that inside my mind, where no one else can go or hear what’s going on, it can be an outright hellish place. Brimming with disturbance and chaos, depending on the situation.
That said, I’d like to challenge the idea that calm is the absence of disturbance. I would say that it is the absence of objective evidence of disturbance.
For example. Imagine a lake on a sunny, mildly breezy day. The lake is “calm”. There may be a few ripples here and there, a random family of ducks swimming around, whatever. Objectively speaking, just about anyone would say that the lake scene you have imagined is a calm one. That’s not necessarily the case, however, and depends greatly on point of reference. From above the surface, yes, everything looks calm. But under the surface? There are life or death battles between rivals going on; predators on the hunt, prey terrified for their lives, hiding in the depths. There may also be explosions of new life depending on the time of year.
The same can be said in fields such as physics or chemistry. What is observable from your perspective is sometimes not at all the reality of what is going on.
Being calm is a strength in many ways, but, like so many things in life dealing with humans, people don’t always realize exactly what they are witnessing. There is a great deal of effort involved in maintaining that calm, in cultivating the mindset to achieve it in the first place.
The next time you see someone or something that is “calm”, take a moment to realize and appreciate that appearances are not all they’re cracked up to be. That there may be so much more under the surface that you are not aware of and not even considering.
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I get gut feelings sometimes. I think everyone does.
This can be about a person or a situation. My gut feelings have helped me avoid some rather unpleasant things, and been the cause of winning several hundred dollars with my last dollar at a casino, leading to a marginal net gain for the day. My gut feelings have also, at times, amounted to nothing more than amplified anxiety, so there is that to consider.
There was one particular situation where I didn’t listen to my gut, and I will live with that regret for the rest of my life because it had a very real, very severe impact on someone else.
I don’t know where gut feelings come from, and could probably write pages or talk for hours discussing the possibilities, but I’m not prepared to do that right now, I just wanted to put something out there on this topic. Maybe spark some thoughts for someone or some discussion. 🙂
Back to my drink and some random Saturday night research!
Have a great night!
A Peculiar Cerebral Tangle 