- 6:20:35 PM by Dodd
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- An archive of streaming video about the history of comics (plus a whole lot more).
- 5:22:08 PM by Dodd
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- I certainly know where Mark and Sklutch are coming from - I'm like that only too often lately.
In my case, it's been a constant thing for as long as I can remember - the solipsist impulse; the frank - if brief - disbelief that all these other people could really exist yet I know nothing of them. Oddly, it hits me most often on the freeway. "Who are all these people? How can they be going about their lives and doing all the things they do?" And, for a few minutes, I simply cannot believe it.
But that's not all. Serious emotional trauma - which I don't have often, but have recently - adds another element. "Fuck these people and their placid, normal little lives" might sum it up were I not so firmly aware that all but the unluckiest of them have had their own emotional shocks, as well. So that's not it. No, it's deeper; a resentment, maybe, that I am still forced to deal with them.
And, so, I tune them out. Not consciously, but it amounts to the same thing. I get sick of them and they seem alien to me - even the ones I know best - in much the way Sklutch described. I usually describe it as a feeling that I'm sitting next to myself, watching myself and them, and feeling profoundly disconnected from all of it. I have less to say and far less interest in banter and small-talk. It erodes my soul; what would in another emotional/psychological state sustain me to some degree becomes toxic and impels me to the one thing that's probably worst for moving on past the shock that caused it all: It makes me want to just be alone. A lot.
Mad, horrible fantasies concoct themselves without need of encouragement from me. They press themselves upon me and crowd into me. I sometimes indulge them, knowing that while doing so may have cathartic rewards the risks are very high. I am ashamed of them, and revel in them. The shame of the things that I think pushes me further away from desiring human contact even though I know full well that no-one else knows the content of my fantasies (I know a few who can guess at it, but - strangely or not - I feel no shame in their company). Perhaps this explains the need to append a punchline; it takes the air out of the shame. Or maybe it's just that, having become umoored from my own connection to others, I need some way of reducing the psychic burden I feel I am placing on others should I talk about any of this. I don't claim to know.
I begin to feel as though I am incapable of connecting to anyone else at all. I feel after meeting anyone new that I have made a complete mess of it and being told later that they liked me just fine rarely dispels that impression. Because my empathy is short-circuited, I begin to founder. At some point, I lose even the hope that I will crawl back out of this place at some point. 'Time heals all wounds' perhaps, but it does so on its own schedule and no amount of self-knowledge will speed up the process (in fact, it probably impedes it - those not "cursed with self-awareness" are also not cursed with the solipsist impulse).
Venting helps, of course. It clarifies and distills. But it doesn't solve.
- 3:16:24 PM by mark
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- Read this. Seriously.
- 3:30:51 AM by sklutch
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- [Musings]
Mark's "jitter" post struck a chord with me this evening/morning when I read it. I've always had this...issue, I guess it'd be called...where I can feel myself "sliding" away from connection with the rest of humanity. It's not a violent shift in perception, I just feel my viewpoint alter and the people around me suddenly aren't my friends and neighbors (or even the annoying bastards they might be grin), but strange creatures that are jabbering at me in some unknown tongue. I can't even process their body language and facial expressions, it's as though a bunch of naked gorillas have mysteriously begun shopping at Hot Topic and driving around in my friend's cars. It doesn't usually last long, objectively it's probably only five seconds, but while it's going on I can look around nothing makes any sense, anymore. And then it all syncs back into motion, and I'm getting the "Where the hell did you just go?" look. I used to wonder if I was insane, but after leaving the shelter of high school [and, yes, I know how strange that concept seems...since it's pretty much universal that high school was a living hell of Fear-Uncertainty-Doubt for everyone but the social elite] and knocking about the country a bit, I'm pretty sure that we're all crazy...we just agree which particular brand of crazy we can use as a framework to get along without mass murder.
Speaking of violent death, while comedians are getting mileage out of it, the "quiet guy" with a dozen people buried in his basement has my sympathies. I've pretty much been labeled a "nice guy" for most of my life...hell, even when I was "rebelling" in my teenage years, I didn't go to overboard with it...just a little fast driving, boozing up my junior year, and a passing acquaintance with demolitions. It's probably one of my most bitter recollections, but my freshmen year of college resulting in my having 78 female "friends". I counted them up one long, lonely weekend. I've never understood how the supposedly "sensitive" side of the race can misuse the term "friend" so blatently...and then look so shocked when I take offense. Really, all you're telling me is that you perceive me as an asexual entity...one great for unloading your relationship problems, but my loneliness is of no concern to you. (okay, so I'm getting a bit personal with this, but if you don't like it, go the hell away...I've carried this particular cross for long enough...) I think that's why I like my present circle of friends as much as I do...when I'm having a bad day, they ask what's up. It might be just to defuse my "emotional land mine", but it's still a chance to vent. Besides, when we're all hanging out together, airing out our bitterness, we amuse the fuck out of each other...if you can't start laughing, you'll die. Either quietly, without fuss...or by SWAT team in bell tower somewhere.
I wish to hell sometimes that I had superpowers...preferably of the "super scientist" variety...like the characters in an E.E. "Doc" Smith book...
I just want to leave the whole Earth to rot in its short-sighted, grubby little desires and float serenely in Zero G...laughing while the actinic strobes of nuclear fireballs devour the foolish, before I set my course OutBound to see what I can find...
- 2:04:57 AM by mark
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- A note from Gary Larson
- 12:57:14 AM by mark
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- There comes a buzzing in the brain that can't be ignored. Out with friends, laughing and enjoying the sights, you feel it coming over you. Just a hum at first, back of the brain, moving, jittering, buzzing. It ticks at you like a clock, every move of the hand a little longer, every turn of the spring is slower. The world moves away from you, pushes back from the table and excuses itself.
The buzz is demanding, the ticking insists, the distance widens. Colors push to grey and garish, all saturated out or blooming with rough color. No smooth tones to soothe your vibrating hands, no soft textures to take the jangle out of your ears. The rubber bands are back, connecting your neck to your legs, hunching you up, weighing in on you soul.
Do you go out the friends, ache and pretend to enjoy the loud and far away bar-life? Do you slink back to the house and look for solace in music or lights and pictures? Do you crumble under the incesant noise, break under the pressure? Do you let it get you or fight back the best you know how?
Today, I pour it out in electrons, pressed like a flower between keyboard and hand. The buzzing, the ticking, the humming, the distance each fall away before the focus I find in this little website. Every ache I put down here is one less I carry around, one less that chips away at me.
The old tunes help too, never forget the power of an old song to tie you down when you feel your brain try and lift out of your skull. And don't ever give in to the urge to take the edge off the things you write. That is the real evil out there, kids. If you type something pure and true don't add a joke at the end and pretend it was all a big lark let it hang out once in a while. It is good for your soul, even when it buzzes so loud you can't hear your life happening.
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