tell me about your mother

anna freud und ihre Über-Ichs

2010-10-31T21:44:00.000-07:00

you dig up my liver, addendum

2010-10-31T09:06:00.000-07:00

20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words from Around the World. I am particularly fond of l'appel du vide, which describes the instinctive urge to jump from high places. Maybe I'm up in the night, but who hasn't experienced that? Sometimes English is starkly inadequate.

you dig up my liver

2010-03-12T12:21:00.000-08:00

People everywhere tend to describe powerful emotions metaphorically in terms of a part of the body. But in which part of the body and with what sensations people's emotions manifest themselves rather depends upon which language they speak.

Botox causes impairment in the grokking of negative emotions? The source article is yet to be published in Psychological Science, but here's a masses-friendly scoop in (urp) Psychology Today.

Having experienced the usefulness of temporary Stoicism, while acknowledging that it has been a tool rather than a preferred state of affairs, I am nonetheless surprised at some of my own internal railing at Nussbaum's arguments. Nussbaum here counters an age-old view espoused by Stoics, Christians and Kantians alike: emotions are disruptive and subversive to reason, they arise from parochial needs and interests and therefore the life well lived is the life in which the things of this world are left behind for a higher sphere beyond accident, pain and desire. On the contrary, Nussbaum writes, human beings enter the world dependent on objects beyond their control, most notably their mothers, and emotional development is a response to this fact....In her ''neo-Stoicism,'' the pain and partiality of emotion are a value-laden mode of thinking that must be accepted if we are to create a just and compassionate world.

Babies: Cute little blobs of potential, or active participants in relationship? [Also might provide some explanation for the remarkable urge to sock a particularly expressionless ex right in the kisser.]

2010-01-06T07:01:00.000-08:00

thanks, b.u.

To live at all is miracle enough

2009-12-29T13:29:00.000-08:00

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. Richard Dawkins

thanks, a.p.

attachment theory, happiness, and larry david?

2009-12-27T10:01:00.000-08:00

"Happiness" seems to be the topic du jour, and soon one will be able to watch Alanis Morissette, Larry David, and others discussing the finer points. PBS will premiere This Emotional Life, a three-part series, on the 4th of January. I am pleased to note that the first episode looks to be heavy on attachment theory. Also pleased that the so-called "negative" emotions will not be ignored. Pleased, simply, that an entire series (albeit a brief one) will be devoted to emotion. I concede that including celeb banter will, no doubt, make this complex topic friendlier to the masses. Finally, both pleased and apprehensive about the series' treatment of pop psych & self-help. I won't deny having high hopes & suppose I'll be weighing in as the episodes are aired.

j'aime le parfum d'odeur, j'aime l'odeur de parfum

2009-12-17T00:00:00.000-08:00

Air, effluvium, efflux, essence, flavor, graveolent, musk, noctuolent, osmagogue, perfume, redolence, scenting, scenty, snuff, stink, tincture...

Space smells funny. Astronauts have struggled to describe the smell of space: "burnt gunpowder or the ozone smell of electrical equipment." This I find far from satisfying. So I'm trying to imagine what it might smell like based on, well, what it's made of. Which brings happy strings of thought and consequent anticipation of proper, lovely fluffy blanketed & pajama'd sleep.

No one else smells like you.

I love a good underarm as much as the next gal, but perhaps not piped through a monstrous dental apparatus. An exhibit I'd travel to see, nonetheless.

Schizophrenic sense of smell. There did seem to be a smells-are-weird theme among the late night schizophrenic hotline callers. Unrelated or not, people with certain flavors of schizophrenia may have deficits in smell identification.

My cat's breath smells like cat food. We demonstrate for the first time that most women, and some men, deliberately smell their partners' clothing when they are apart. [McBurney, M.L., Shoup, S.A. & Streeter, D.H. (2006). Olfactory Comfort and Attachment Within Relationships. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38, 2954-2963. doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00420.x]

More interesting (and not so patent that one wonders why bother collect data at all), though no one could successfully feign surprise here: The ladies possess superior sniffers. Furthermore (despite suspicion about methodology & interpretation), who could deny the chin-stroking "hmmmm" factor of a positive correlation between emotional sensitivity and sense of smell?

If you have one appetite, he thought, you have them all.

baryshnikov / cage

2009-12-11T08:42:00.001-08:00

much less creepy than slim goodbody...

2009-10-15T15:41:00.000-07:00

...and i get to see them perform next month.

Wait

2009-10-12T12:04:00.000-07:00

by Galway Kinnell

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

dope!

2009-10-06T07:44:00.000-07:00

Sweet, sweet dopamine. It's what makes new love feel so intense, so important, sometimes even plunging new lovers into pseudo-psychosis. It's why cocaine feels good. It's the big cheese in addiction [some would say one could develop an addiction to cheese via the dopamine/reward system]. It's also involved with motor control pathologies such as Parkinson's disease, but that's a topic for some other blog. For your reading pleasure, a selection of dopaminergic gems:

Dude! It's a freaking visible synaptic vesicle! The report (with images and a cool, techie video), and a lay friendly-ish play-by-play.

Smartass protazoans and horny, suicidal rats.

Finally giving attention to a book I purchased five years ago. Patience, please with the long turns: Dopamine is involved in the impact of early social interaction on the brain structures associated with emotion regulation (of course there are other factors, but this post is dopamine-centric).

The author (Schore) suggests that early maternal deprivation shapes the development of actual brain structures. You know, the brains we'll have for the rest of our lives. [Maternal deprivation = Infant stress that goes unregulated by the mother/primary caregiver - which doesn't have to look like an emaciated orphan rocking back and forth in his lonely crib, but any significant lack of attunement and responsiveness to an infant's emotional cues. The implications of some common parenting practices should thus be of concern.]
Implications for later functioning may include impairments in attention and focus, hyperaggression, and other emotional dysregulation (possibly including depressive and/or manic states, anxiety, substance abuse - which is, after all, exogenous emotional regulation -- "self-medication" if you like).
Even interpretations of later social interaction can be impaired: 1) failing to perceive the salience of social interactions, or 2) misinterpreting them. I'll explain: 1) Your friend's face bears markers of sadness, but you are unable to perceive them and thus cannot respond to his/her sadness, and are baffled as to why s/he is upset with you. 2) You tell your spouse/girlfriend/lover that you are angry with her. She asks for clarification. She may well want to understand you with the loveliest of intentions (or may simply be clueless and need some assistance), but the warped "lenses" through which you view certain interpersonal interactions leads you to believe she is attacking you, and, if you are dating a shrink, that she must be using her voodoo shrink powers to psychoanalyze you, inaccurately, and without your consent. [Don't get any ideas; this is a hypothetical situation used here for elaborative purposes.]

A peculiar feeling: Mussels and their dopamine glue?

take the stairs

2009-10-06T07:11:00.001-07:00

thanks, r.t.

disorientation tastes like spinach

2009-10-06T06:53:00.000-07:00

...and it could make you smarter.

...the same results were evident among people who were led to feel alienated about themselves as they considered how their past actions were often contradictory. "You get the same pattern of effects whether you're reading Kafka or experiencing a breakdown in your sense of identity," Proulx explained. "People feel uncomfortable when their expected associations are violated, and that creates an unconscious desire to make sense of their surroundings. That feeling of discomfort may come from a surreal story, or from contemplating their own contradictory behaviors, but either way, people want to get rid of it. So they're motivated to learn new patterns.

sagan & hawking, a lump in my throat

2009-09-26T15:44:00.000-07:00

thanks l.

calming visual representation of relationships among scientific paradigms; irritating failure of the tiny laptop monitor

2009-08-31T13:35:00.000-07:00

found

2009-08-28T07:54:00.000-07:00

Rendered in shades most gentle to the eye, including octopi. Volume III: Mollusca-Annelides-Crustacea-Arachnides and Insecta.

A Ubiquity of Sparrows

Unremarkable site design (rather lack thereof), but I shan't shoot the messenger. Cold war propaganda (my favorite is the cautionary to Russian musicians), Czech poster art, and newsy unsettling ephemera.

heavy paper, moments reconstructed in memory, bergamot, the pause at the end of an exhale

2009-08-11T11:08:00.000-07:00

a life less posted

I Am Sitting in a Room

2009-08-10T12:41:00.001-07:00

by Alvin Lucier

thanks B.

Happiness

2009-04-30T18:17:00.000-07:00

by Jane Kenyon

There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

Thanks

2009-04-28T21:37:00.000-07:00

by W.S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

By Reader Request

2009-04-25T14:40:00.000-07:00

Homage to Roy Orbison

by Irene McKinney

If I can touch the voice of Roy Orbison
singing "only in dreams" and if I can

swallow the sweet pudding of his song
then why shouldn't a piece of music

fill in for human contact? Maybe it does
for a second or two, but life is long, or we are,

in our minds, and the singing we do gives us
a taste and not a meal. And what would

happen without it? Would we reconcile
since there would be no contrast, no lift of

Roy's dulcet tones to guide us up to immense
heights of one-pointed ecstasy? So why not sing

as hard and deep as we can? Why not feel out
the song-nerve and trace its trajectory?

I think that in the voice's rise
and wail we finally wake and hear the voice

of an angel. "Sweet dreams baby" Roy throbs.
If so, we go past abrasions and promontories

of broken stony sounds, and emerge up here
where the guitar is a guru, and where Roy's

sweetness is the rule and his sense of form
shapes up this shard-filled life. "Move on

down the line." So there, do it, dance in
a strange way and who cares. When the

listeners judge by their sweetness gauge
and their sucked-in breath at "crying over

you," will anyone care that he dyed his
black hair and had false teeth? I thrash

and shout like a teenage girl for the duration
of the song. "I got a woman mean as she

can be." (I think that's me.) He told me
that anything I wanted he would
give it to me, and you know? He did.

Jamesian

2009-04-23T18:15:00.000-07:00

by Thom Gunn

Their relationship consisted
In discussing if it existed.

Transit of Venus

2009-04-20T11:59:00.001-07:00

by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon

The actors mill about the party saying rhubarb
because other words do not sound like conversation.
In the kitchen, always, one who's just discovered
beauty, his mouth full of whiskey and strawberries.
He practices the texture of her hair with his tongue;
in her, five billion electrons pop their atoms. Rhubarb
in electromagnetic loops, rhubarb, rhubarb, the din increases.

Sensationalism

2009-04-15T07:45:00.000-07:00

by Larry Levis

In Josef Koudelka's photograph, untitled & with no date
Given to help us with history, a man wearing
Dark clothes is squatting, his right hand raised slightly,
As if in explanation, & because he is talking,
Seriously now, to a horse that would be white except
For its markings--the darkness around its eyes, muzzle,
Legs & tail, by which it is, technically, a gray, or a dapple gray,
With a streak of pure white like heavy cream on its rump.
There is a wall behind them both, which, like most walls, has
No ideas, & nothing to make us feel comfortable. . . .
After a while, because I know so little, &
Because the muted sunlight on the wall will not change,
I begin to believe that the man's wife and children
Were shot & thrown into a ditch a week before this picture
Was taken, that this is still Czechoslovakia, & that there is
The beginning of spring in the air. That is why
The man is talking, & as clearly as he can, to a horse.
He is trying to explain these things,
While the horse, gray as those days at the end
Of winter, when days seem lost in thought, is, after al,
Only a horse. No doubt the man knows people he could talk to:
The bars are open by now, but he has chosen
To confide in this gelding, as he once did to his own small
Children, who could not, finally, understand him any better.
This afternoon, in the middle of his life & in the middle
Of this war, a man is trying to stay sane.
To stay sane he must keep talking to a horse, its blinders
On & a rough snaffle bit still in its mouth, wearing

Away the corners of its mouth, with one ear cocked forward
    to listen,
While the other ear tilts backward slightly, inattentive,
As if suddenly catching a music behind it. Of course,
I have to admit I have made all of this up, & that
It could be wrong to make up anything. Perhaps the man
    is perfectly
Happy. Perhaps Koudelka arranged all of this
And then took the picture as a way of saying
Good-bye to everyone who saw it, & perhaps Josef Koudelka was
Only two years old when the Nazis invaded Prague.
I do not wish to interfere, Reader, with your solitude--
So different from my own. In fact, I would take back everything
I've said here, if that would make you feel any better,
Unless even that retraction would amount to a milder way
Of interfering; & a way by which you might suspect me
Of some subtlety. Or mistake me for someone else, someone
Not disinterested enough in what you might think
Of this. Of the photograph. Of me.
Once, I was in love with a woman, & when I looked at her
My face altered & took on the shape of her face,
Made thin by alcohol, sorrowing, brave. And though
There was a kind of pain in her face, I felt no pain
When this happened to mine, when the bones
Of my own face seemed to change. But even this
Did not do us any good, &, one day,
She went mad, waking in tears she mistook for blood,
And feeling little else except for this concern about bleeding

Without pain. I drove her to the hospital, & then,
After a few days, she told me she had another lover. . . . So,
Walking up the street where it had been raining earlier,
Past the darkening glass of each shop window to the hotel,
I felt a sensation of peace flood my body, as if to cleanse it,
And thought it was because I had been told the truth. . . .
    But, you see,
Even that happiness became a lie, & even that was taken
From me, finally, as all lies are. . . . Later,
I realized that maybe I felt strong that night only
Because she was sick, for other reasons, & in that place.
And so began my long convalescence, & simple adulthood.
I never felt that way again, when I looked at anyone else;
I never felt my face change into any other face.
It is a difficult thing to do, & so maybe
It is just as well. That man, for instance. He was a saboteur.
He ended up talking to a horse, & hearing, on the street
Outside that alley, the Nazis celebrating, singing, even.
If he went mad beside that wall, I think his last question
Was whether they shot his wife and children before they threw him
Into the ditch, or after. For some reason, it mattered once,
If only to him. And before he turned into paper.

THE CROWDS CHEERED AS GLOOM GALLOPED AWAY

2009-04-13T06:29:00.000-07:00

by Matthea Harvey

Everyone was happier. But where did the sadness go? People wanted to know. They didn’t want it collecting in their elbows or knees then popping up later. The girl who thought of the ponies made a lot of money. Now a month’s supply of pills came in a hard blue case with a handle. You opened it & found the usual vial plus six tiny ponies of assorted shapes & sizes, softly breathing in the styrofoam. Often they had to be pried out & would wobble a little when first put on the ground. In the beginning the children tried to play with them, but the sharp hooves nicked their fingers & the ponies refused to jump over pencil hurdles. The children stopped feeding them sugarwater & the ponies were left to break their legs on the gardens’ gravel paths or drown in the gutters. On the first day of the month, rats gathered on doorsteps & spat out only the bitter manes. Many a pony’s last sight was a bounding squirrel with its tail hovering over its head like a halo. Behind the movie theatre the hardier ponies gathered in packs amongst the cigarette butts, getting their hooves stuck in wads of gum. They lined the hills at funerals, huddled under folding chairs at weddings. It became a matter of pride if one of your ponies proved unusually sturdy. People would smile & say, “this would have been an awful month for me,” pointing to the glossy palimino trotting energetically around their ankles. Eventually, the ponies were no longer needed. People had learned to imagine their sadness trotting away. & when they wanted something more tangible, they could always go to the racetrack & study the larger horses’ faces. Gloom, #341, with those big black eyes, was almost sure to win.

The Room

2009-04-12T16:54:00.000-07:00

by Mark Strand

It is an old story, the way it happens
sometimes in winter, sometimes not.
The listener falls to sleep,
the doors to the closets of his unhappiness open

and into his room the misfortunes come --
death by daybreak, death by nightfall,
their wooden wings bruising the air,
their shadows the spilled milk the world cries over.

There is a need for surprise endings;
the green field where cows burn like newsprint,
where the farmer sits and stares,
where nothing, when it happens, is never terrible enough.

Blackberry-picking

2009-04-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

by Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

Meditations at Lagunitas

2009-04-11T06:07:00.000-07:00

by Robert Hass

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

thanks, S.

Blackberrying

2009-04-09T11:44:00.000-07:00

by Sylvia Plath

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.
They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks ---
Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.
Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.
I do not think the sea will appear at all.
The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.
I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,
Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.
The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.
One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.
From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,
Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.
These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.
I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me
To the hills' northern face, and the face is orange rock
That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space
Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths
Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

Today you attend a lecture about the history of fires.

2009-04-07T19:47:00.000-07:00

In his travel blog Volcano Pilgrim, Craig Arnold [see Incubus below] documents his "five months in Japan as a wandering poet", with haiku and haibun. Don't go running off -- his haiku is a pleasurable surprise (though I shouldn't be surprised -- Craig possesses an admirable array of skills). I've decided that his consistent self-referencing in the 2nd person is either affected and off-putting, or earnest and a compelling literary device. Regardless, who doesn't like to read about volcanoes, Tokyo, food, and the despair of being yet unable to answer the question of one's capability to love.

Excerpt from Volcano Pilgrim, 03.29.09:
At Tokyo Station, you are at last hungry enough to overcome your shyness and sit down at ramen counter. It makes it easier that noodle soup is the only thing on the menu. The only contribution asked of you is your choice of broth: soy or miso? The noodles are tasty, especially when doctored with pickled ginger, red bean paste, hot sesame oil and ground sesame seeds, and for a few minutes you are absorbed by their taste and texture, warm and full and complete. Halfway back to your hotel, though, the sadness catches up to you again, as you gradually remember how it feels to move through the world alone.

Two Uncertainties

2009-04-06T12:31:00.000-07:00

by Paul Hoover

There is eternity to blush in.
—Djuna Barnes

Around the attic bird, the century is silent;
gathers utter ghosts in scattered dust displays.
Afloat in that window, not even a star approaches like a dog.
Nothing is left to desire; rain in open cars,
gasoline fires. History is ending.

We are not, however, among those voices off.
We are the ones in prose whose form
is finally shapeless, except for these constraints.
With the labor of planets turning,
please bind us to a version of ourselves.

thanks, C.

328

2009-04-05T18:10:00.000-07:00

by Emily Dickinson

A Bird came down the Walk --
He did not know I saw --
He bit an Angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,

And then he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass --
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass --

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all around --
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought --
He stirred his Velvet Head

Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a Crumb
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home --

Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam --
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon
Leap, plashless as they swim.

The Kiss

2009-04-05T18:09:00.000-07:00

by Stephen Dunn

She pressed her lips to mind.
—a typo

How many years I must have yearned
for someone’s lips against mind.
Pheromones, newly born, were floating
between us. There was hardly any air.

She kissed me again, reaching that place
that sends messages to toes and fingertips,
then all the way to something like home.
Some music was playing on its own.

Nothing like a woman who knows
to kiss the right thing at the right time,
then kisses the things she’s missed.
How had I ever settled for less?

I was thinking this is intelligence,
this is the wisest tongue
since the Oracle got into a Greek’s ear,
speaking sense. It’s the Good,

defining itself. I was out of my mind.
She was in. We married as soon as we could.

Anastasia & Sandman

2009-04-05T13:52:00.000-07:00

by Larry Levis

The brow of a horse in that moment when
The horse is drinking water so deeply from a trough
It seems to inhale the water, is holy.

I refuse to explain.

When the horse had gone the water in the trough,
All through the empty summer,

Went on reflecting clouds & stars.

The horse cropping grass in a field,
And the fly buzzing around its eyes, are more real
Than the mist in one corner of the field.

Or the angel hidden in the mist, for that matter.

Members of the Committee on the Ineffable,
Let me illustrate this with a story, & ask you all
To rest your heads on the table, cushioned,
If you wish, in your hands, &, if you want,
Comforted by a small carton of milk
To drink from, as you once did, long ago,
When there was only a curriculum of beach grass,
When the University of Flies was only a distant humming.

In Romania, after the war, Stalin confiscated
The horses that had been used to work the fields.
"You won't need horses now," Stalin said, cupping
His hand to his ear, "Can't you hear the tractors
Coming in the distance? I hear them already."

The crowd in the Callea Victoria listened closely
But no one heard anything. In the distance
There was only the faint glow of a few clouds.
And the horses were led into boxcars & emerged
As the dimly remembered meals of flesh
That fed the starving Poles
During that famine, & part of the next one--
In which even words grew thin & transparent,
Like the pale wings of ants that flew
Out of the oldest houses, & slowly
What had been real in words began to be replaced
By what was not real, by the not exactly real.
"Well, not exactly, but. . ." became the preferred
Administrative phrasing so that the man
Standing with his hat in his hands would not guess
That the phrasing of a few words had already swept
The earth from beneath his feet. "That horse I had,
He was more real than any angel,
The housefly, when I had a house, was real too,"
Is what the man thought.
Yet it wasn't more than a few months
Before the man began to wonder, talking
To himself out loud before the others,
"Was the horse real? Was the house real?"
An angel flew in and out of the high window
In the factory where the man worked, his hands
Numb with cold. He hated the window & the light
Entering the window & he hated the angel.
Because the angel could not be carved into meat
Or dumped into the ossuary & become part
Of the landfill at the edge of town,
It therefore could not acquire a soul,
And resembled in significance nothing more
Than a light summer dress when the body has gone.

The man survived because, after a while,
He shut up about it.

Stalin had a deep understanding of the kulaks,
Their sense of marginalization & belief in the land;

That is why he killed them all.

Members of the Committee on Solitude, consider
Our own impoverishment & the progress of that famine,
In which, now, it is becoming impossible
To feel anything when we contemplate the burial,
Alive, in a two-hour period, of hundreds of people.
Who were not clichés, who did not know they would be
The illegible blank of the past that lives in each
Of us, even in some guy watering his lawn

On a summer night. Consider

The death of Stalin & the slow, uninterrupted
Evolution of the horse, a species no one,
Not even Stalin, could extinguish, almost as if
What could not be altered was something
Noble in the look of its face, something

Incapable of treachery.

Then imagine, in your planning proposals,
The exact moment in the future when an angel
Might alight & crawl like a fly into the ear of a horse,
And then, eventually, into the brain of a horse,
And imagine further that the angel in the brain
Of this horse is, for the horse cropping grass
In the field, largely irrelevant, a mist in the corner
Of the field, something that disappears,
The horse thinks, when weight is passed through it,
Something that will not even carry the weight
Of its own father
On its back, the horse decides, & so demonstrates
This by swishing at a fly with its tail, by continuing
To graze as the dusk comes on & almost until it is night.

Old contrivers, daydreamers, walking chemistry sets,
Exhausted chimneysweeps of the spaces
Between words, where the Holy Ghost tastes just
Like the dust it is made of,
Let's tear up our lecture notes & throw them out
The window.
Let's do it right now before wisdom descends upon us
Like a spiderweb over a burned-out theater marquee,
Because what's the use?
I keep going to meetings where no one's there,
And contributing to the discussion;
And besides, behind the angel hissing in its mist
Is a gate that leads only into another field,
Another outcropping of stones & withered grass, where
A horse named Sandman & a horse named Anastasia
Used to stand at the fence & watch the traffic pass.
Where there were outdoor concerts once, in summer,
Under the missing & innumerable stars.

Incubus

2009-04-04T06:28:00.000-07:00

by Craig Arnold

The chain uncouples, and his jacket hangs
on the peg over hers, and he's inside.

She stalls in the kitchen, putting the kettle on,
buys herself a minute looking for two
matching cups for the lime-flower tea,
not really lime but linden, heart-shaped leaves
and sticky flowers that smell of antifreeze.
She talks a wall around her, twists the string
tighter around the tea bag in her spoon.
But every conversation has to break
somewhere, and at the far end of the sofa
he sits, warming his hands around the cup
he hasn't tasted yet, and listens on
with such an exasperating show of patience
it's almost a relief to hear him ask it:
If you're not using your body right now
maybe you'd let me borrow it for a while?

It isn't what you're thinking. No, it's worse.

Why on earth did she find him so attractive
the first time she met him, propping the wall
at an awkward party, clearly trying to drink
himself into some sort of conversation?
Was it the dark uncomfortable reserve
she took upon herself to tease him out of,
asking, Are you a vampire? That depends,
he stammered, are you a virgin? No, not funny,
but why did she laugh at him? What made her think
that he needed her, that she could teach him something?
Why did she let him believe she was drunk
and needed a ride home? Why did she let him
take her shirt off, fumble around a bit
on the spare futon, passing back and forth
the warm breath of a half-hearted kiss
they kept falling asleep in the middle of?
And when he asked her, why did she not object?
I'd like to try something. I need you to trust me.

Younger and given to daydreams, she imagined
trading bodies with someone, a best friend,
the boy she had a crush on. But the fact
was more fantastic, a fairy-tale adventure
where the wolf wins, and hides in the girl's red hood.
How it happens she doesn't really remember,
drifting off with a vague sense of being
drawn out through a single point of her skin,
like a bedsheet threaded through a needle's eye,
and bundled into a body that must be his.

Sometimes she startles, as on the verge of sleep
you can feel yourself fall backward over a brink,
and snaps her eyelids open, to catch herself
slipping out of the bed, her legs swinging
over the edge, and feels the sudden sick
split-screen impression of being for a second
both she and her.
What he does with her
while she's asleep, she never really knows,
flickers, only, conducted back in dreams:
Walking in neighborhoods she doesn't know
and wouldn't go to, overpasses, ragweed,
cars dry-docked on cinderblocks, wolf-whistles,
wanting to run away and yet her steps
planted sure and defiant. Performing tasks
too odd to recognize and too mundane
to have made up, like fixing a green salad
with the sunflower seeds and peppers that she hates,
pouring on twice the oil and vinegar
that she would like, and being unable to stop.
Her hands feel but are somehow not her own,
running over the racks of stacked fabric
in a clothing store, stroking the slick silk,
teased cotton and polar fleece, as if her fingers
each were a tongue tasting the knits and weaves.
Harmless enough.
It's what she doesn't dream
that scares her, panic she can't account for, faces
familiar but not known, déjà vu
making a mess of memory, coming to
with a fresh love-bite on her left breast
and the aftershock of granting another's flesh,
of having gripped, slipped in and fluttered tender
mmm, unbraided, and spent the whole slow day
clutching her thighs to keep the chafe from fading,
and furious at being joyful, less
at the violation, less the danger, than the sense
he'd taken her enjoyment for his own.
That was the time before, the time she swore
would be the last—returning to her senses,
she'd grabbed his throat and hit him around the face
and threw him out, and sat there on the floor
shaking. She hadn't known how hard it was
to throw a punch without pulling it back.

Now, as they sit together on her couch
with the liquid cooling in the stained chipped cups
that would never match, no matter how hard
she stared at them, he seems the same as ever,
a quiet clumsy self-effacing ghost
with the gray-circled eyes that she once wanted
so badly to defy, that seemed to see her
seeing him—and she has to admit, she's missed him.
Why? She scrolls back through their conversations,
searching for any reason not to hate him.
She'd ask him, What's it like being a girl
when you're not a girl? His answers, when he gave them,
weren't helpful, so evasively poetic:
It's like a sponge somebody else is squeezing.
A radio tuned to all stations at once.
Like having skin that's softer but more thick.

Then she remembers the morning she awoke
with the smear of tears still raw across her cheeks
and the spent feeling of having cried herself
down to the bottom of something. Why was I crying?
she asked, and he looked back blankly, with that little
curve of a lip that served him for a smile.
Because I can't.
And that would be their secret.
The power to feel another appetite
pass through her, like a shudder, like a cold
lungful of oxygen or hot sweet smoke,
fill her and then be stilled. The freedom to fall
asleep behind the blinds of his dark body
and wake cleanly. And when she swings her legs
over the edge of the bed, to trust her feet
to hit the carpet, and know as not before
how she never quite trusted the floor
to be there, no, not since she was a girl
first learning to swim, hugging her skinny
breastless body close to the pool-gutter,
skirting along the dark and darker blue
of the bottom dropping out—
Now she can stand,
and take the cup out of his giving hand,
and feel what they have learned inside each other
fair and enough, and not without a kind
of satisfaction, that she can put her foot
down, clear to the bottom of desire,
and find that it can stop, and go no deeper.

Sonnet 6

2009-04-03T10:25:00.000-07:00

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Is he native to this realm? No,
his wide nature grew out of both worlds.
They more adeptly bend the willow's branches
who have experience of the willow's roots.

When you go to bed, don't leave bread or milk
on the table: it attracts the dead--
But may he, this quiet conjurer, may he
beneath the mildness of the eyelid

mix their bright traces into every seen thing;
and may the magic of earthsmoke and rue
be as real for him as the clearest connection.

Nothing can mar for him the authentic image;
whether he wanders through houses or graves,
let him praise signet ring, gold necklace, jar.

trans Edward Snow

sonnets

It's that time again, for pretty projectives, the occasional evocative description of interpersonal turmoil, and far too many cosmological references.

2009-03-31T21:10:00.001-07:00

We Feel Fine?

2009-03-27T19:35:00.000-07:00

We Feel Fine is a fascinating polyamorous relationship between programming, psychology, and art. A bot searches public blogs for the phrases "I feel" or "I am feeling", and harvests the complete sentence surrounding said phrase, e.g., "I feel sheepish for willingly allowing him to use me to replenish his narcissistic reserves," or "I am feeling excited to watch my dissertation co-chair on Oprah today" or "I feel guilty for using him to replenish my narcissistic reserves." Available identifying information about the writer is also harvested, and linked with the feeling statement when it is published, database-style. What results is an ability to search for feelings by age, date, geographic location, gender, even weather. The authors have created six "Movements" from which to experience the messiness, some messier than others (if you are going for messy, try "Madness". Less messy? Try "Metrics").

Emotion dysregulation or vocational saturation? Sometimes I am so consumed by emotion (mine and others) that I would like to subtract it from my experience, if only for a couple of hours (much longer than that and I'd feel frightened, though then I'd be feeling, which would take care of it, no?). I don't want to feel numb, per se, as numbness feels like, well, a not-nice feeing. Being in a state of "flow" (which is not really considered an emotion, rather a state of operations - pardon the imprecise language here) seems like a good alternative (though sustaining it seems not only impossible, but perhaps also ill-advised).

One coping method I've used for those annoying periods of emotional saturation is to read about winners of The Fields Medal (sometimes referred to as the Nobel Prize for mathematics). Though I try to limit my focus to their work, I nonetheless usually end up wondering about their inter- and intrapersonal lives, which inevitably elicits a stirring of The Feelings. So, partially to my chagrin, it's only partially effective.

Emotional State 3A: It has recently been brought to our attention that some of you are stuck in emotional state 3A, Consumed by Fear. Though we have made a number of announcements recently about the need for an emotional-state change, and had hoped that this would be a relatively smooth and uniform process, we understand that 3A is a particularly robust state and that many of you may need further guidance on how to proceed...

Escalation of osculation. Time and oranges.

2009-02-20T08:52:00.000-08:00

Apparently it's not a given that kissing is important in courtship & mating, though (at least in the particular studies reported here) not as much for men. The consistently delightful VS Ramachandran suggests that kissing stimulates mirror neurons that, ostensibly, "promote empathy and reduce inhibitions". Obviously (to me, unfortunately not always to those I have smooched), empathy and reduced inhibitions is important for certain types of good, ahem, interpersonal relating. Why some people don't like kissing, or are just plain icky at it, seems like a societal issue, or at least one to which one should apply a good deal of introspection (and more practice with a vocal collaborator). Such folk are not going to last long in my dating pool (though, unfortunately, even the rare seemingly divinely endowed kissers have not yet found a way to stay afloat). Though it does make me wonder about the kissing plebian's state of mind in regard to attachment. It does not seem unreasonable to assert that someone with a dismissive state of mind would not want to get all mooshy and gooey (and empathic and uninhibited) with the kissing and would prefer to go straight to copulating. And then drive off onto the lonely highway. Likewise, someone with a preoccupied state of mind might want to kiss and kiss and kiss until repetitive lip injury occurs. Perhaps there's a study there!

On an entirely unrelated note (though good kissing and pondering this topic are not so dissimilar, at least on some level), here's a delightful, interactive article on time space, travel, using oranges and other household items as educational props. Perhaps good date night material, before the smooching. Or a Family Home Evening activity!

Econometrics of sex & 'happiness'

2009-02-10T14:44:00.000-08:00

...the economists compared the levels of happiness produced by a vigorous sex life with other activities whose economic values had been calculated in prior research, allowing them to impute, in dollars, how much happiness sex was worth. They also estimated that increasing the frequency of sexual intercourse from once a month to at least once a week provided as much happiness as putting $50,000 in the bank.

New York Times Week in Review: Sex May Be Happiness, But Wealth Isn't Sexiness

The Insiders

2008-12-31T17:28:00.000-08:00

Cormac McCarthy Writes a Letter to The Editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican, by John Kennan

thanks monstromo for the alert!

overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out

2008-12-30T21:07:00.000-08:00

Arthur C. Clarke wrote, in addition to many books, stories & such, 2001: A Space Odyssey (along w/ Kubrick). Apparently very unhappy with how it all turned out, poor Art. I myself have not yet seen it; holding out until I can see it on the big screen.

Charlton Heston. Had he not starred in one of the best films of all time I might not have such a tender spot for the ol' curmudgeon (Michael Moore's melodramatic exploitation of the early-Alzheimer's era Chuck likely contributed to the smooshiness).

Albert Hoffman. What my teenage years would have been like without the work of this man, I can't say. Died a centenarian. Believed that natural scientists could not avoid becoming mystics. Worked in cycle after cycle with ergot fungus, one compound resulting in methergine, an effective treatment for puerperal hemorrhage. The 25th compound was lysergic acid diethylamide. [Interestingly, during my own puerperal strife I had a healthy injection of methergine that resulted in reminiscent physical sensations, sans psychedelia. Now *that* was trippy.]

David Foster Wallace. No, I have not read Infinite Jest, and I'm not sure I'll ever read it in its entirety. But I appreciate that he did nearly everything, including writing, including tennis, and hanging himself (though this is the work I would have preferred he leave off in favor of writing another article for Gourmet about lobster season). Though I will never, ever appreciate the endless "brightest stars are always horribly tormented" eulogistic ranting all over the internet.

Martha. I miss her.

barf on xmas eve

2008-12-24T23:12:00.000-08:00

Discussing forming a sibling book club; Brother suggests Vonnegut. I say 'Vonnegut makes me barf', and continue with the ways in which Vonnegut makes me barf, until Brother misunderstands and thinks my discourse includes the phrase 'insolent barf'. Someone else contributes 'insouciant barf'. Ultimately decide on a Cormac McCarthy novel. More on that, later.

After the discussion including insouciant barf, the topic turns to food, and Father invokes The Beets and The Peas. Reminiscent of last year's culinary challenge of creating a dish using mushrooms and grapefruit, Brother presents another culinary challenge using the aforementioned barforifics. More on that, later.

I suggest to Manfriend we make a pleasure trip to Costco: Interesting exercise in patience, people watching, and manipulating the emotional states of shoppers by making unexpected eye contact with strategic facial expressions ensuing. Plus there's all the stuff to look at. Purchase a large quantity of toilet paper. Manfriend is more animated with the shopping cart than expected, but no one is insulted. The scrapbook supply aisle reeks of a recent barfing. All in all a pleasant excursion.

Withered Leg Reunion. Decide that some songs could be comprised of the title sung over and over and over, with generous refrains of "Oh Lord!" To make this topical, we should definitely do a number about barfing. And The Lord.

Smart People, Geekines Ensues

2008-10-18T16:53:00.000-07:00

Viewed irritating Smart People, and was consequently compelled to watch again only slightly irritating Good Will Hunting. SP lacked the aesthetic chops of GWH (the former full of caricatures & contrivances, but it was geeky fun to see such a clear example of copy process* in the overachieving, misanthropic-but-lonely daughter), but the ending was more plausible. There was no indication that the wounded, once basically capable, interpersonally pricklish professor experienced major personality change, only that he finally thawed some as a result of important relationships. "Will Hunting", on the other hand, went from emotionally broken to 'healed' and gloriously in love in what was portrayed as only a few months. But his character didn't merely need a thaw, he needed long term, interpersonal, reconstructive therapy, which, of course, is incompatible with a movie timetable. The therapy wasn't "bad" per se, but the catharsis model (muck about until the traumas are uncovered and at last have a good, healing cry) doesn't work so well. Certainly not for changing the 'wiring'. And certainly not a helpful ending for us saps who get all dreamy over the intellectually gifted but emotionally/interpersonally bereft.

*Excerpt from abstract: Studies connecting childhood experience and adult psychopathology often focus on consequences of abuse and neglect. Copy process theory (Benjamin, 2003) states that constructive as well as destructive experiences shape adult behavior with surprising interpersonal specificity. Childhood perceptions and social learning are encoded in memory and then “copied” in 3 basic ways in subsequent relationships: Identification (behaving as he or she behaved), Recapitulation (behaving as one behaved when with him or her), and Introjection (treating oneself as he or she was treated). From Critchfield, K.L. & Benjamin, L.S (2008). Internalized representations of early interpersonal experiences and adult relationships: A test of copy process theory in clinical and non-clinical settings. Psychiatry: Interpersonal & Biological Processes, 71, 1, 71-92.

You are what you ate

2008-10-17T07:17:00.000-07:00

Nice, skeletal sum of attachment theory, childhood into adulthood, invoking (at the end) the linguistic implications of adult attachment (i.e., the stuff I look for when coding Adult Attachment Interview transcripts, and when I listen to patients talk about their parents/early experiences/contemporary intimate relationships). Maybe a little jargony for the layperson, but sparsely so.

The child seeks the caregiver's security and protection for many reasons, but particularly in moments when he or she is frightened or in danger. Thus, careseeking often takes place in moments of high affective arousal, arousal that is then--optimally--regulated by the caregiver And by virtue of her role as regulator and container of that affect, the mother's response to the infant's affect becomes a part of that affective experience.

Children quickly figure out how to seek care in a way that will minimally disrupt their vital relationship to their caregiver. One of the things they must learn in this process is which affects are tolerable to caregivers, and which are not. They learn this via the repetition [...] of a particular relational drama around the expression of careseeking. Over time, their efforts to regulate their affects in such a way as to maintain their primary relationships become organized into what attachment theorists refer to as attachment patterns [....], characteristic ways of seeking care from and preserving closeness with the caregiver. And it is these ways of protecting the other and ultimately the self from affects that disrupt careseeking and caregiving that become internal representations of attachment or -- in analytic terms -- central aspects of psychic structure.

Because the survival of infants is dependent upon success in their careseeking efforts, these are psychologically and physically critical events. Without proximal care and containment, infants cannot function [...]. Thus, they must shape themselves (and their experience of affect and arousal) to ensure that their needs are met. They must obtain care, at whatever cost to their functioning. Aspects of self-experience, and especially affective experience, that preclude the maintenance of attachment relationships are disavowed reversed, fragmented, or dissociated. Knowing, thinking, and feeling emerge within the context of maintaining vital connections, [snip]. Children quickly learn what kinds of thoughts and emotions can be borne within the context of their primary attachments. It is within his or her earliest relationships that a child's core sense of self in relation to arousal, to affect, and to careseeking is laid down [...].

In adults, these same patterns are reflected in the way an adult regulates affect within the structure of narrative. Early moments of regulation live on in the structure of speech, of thought, and of affects. When we listen carefully to the contradictions, dysfluencies, and disruptions in narrative, we are witnessing the representation in language and thought of early dyadic experinces of disrupted careseeking and dysregulation.

From Slade, A. (2007). Disorganized Mother, Disorganized Child. In D. Oppenheim & D.F. Goldsmith (eds.) Attachment theory in clinical work with children: Bridging the gap between research and practice (pp. 226-250). New York: Guilford Press.

Links!

2008-10-13T20:14:00.000-07:00

Mail Goggles. Unfortunate Google has not yet created something similar for text messages, instant messaging programs, and live-in-the-flesh behavior. Oh wait -- that's called 'impulse control'. Also a shame Google has also not yet conjured up a program what does away with stabbing regret, heel calluses, and vanity sizing.

interactive artist daniel rozin works in a very particular artistic milieu, making mirrors from unreflective surfaces. one of his creations, 'the wooden mirror'...uses 830 square pieces of wood which are hooked up to an equal number of small motors which move the wooden blocks according to a built in camera. the camera picks up movement in light and somehow transfers the signal to the wood. the result is an eerie representation of reality depicted in tiny wooden pixels.

While I'm not going to advocate communal bathing rituals for all (i.e., almost everyone I know), doing this falls in the top five most pleasant experiences of 2008.

Yes, a tiny N (qualitative research), but I feel like sending the authors of this article devoted to ambivalence a greeting card.

It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. NYT piece about Palin's "pom pom palaver".

2008-09-30T17:46:00.000-07:00

Editor's note: Compelled to remove photo of Sarah Palin to preserve the blog's tenuous aesthetic. You can view it here.

ABSTRACT: People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.

Kruger, J. & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 6, 1121-1134.

Full text (pdf)

in summary

2008-09-27T11:59:00.000-07:00

Both theist and atheistic purviews are relatively easy to cultivate. I can, if given time and the proper inputs, develop religious beliefs and the conditions for which so-called religious/spiritual experiences occur. It may be that I have an atheistic baseline; after all, atheism does not preclude feelings of wonder and awe, or even the sense of being part of a larger whole (though, despite ideological wishes to the contrary, this is not an especially familiar feeling).

Creating the circumstances in which infatuation and potential love-type feelings are likely to occur is not so difficult as one would imagine. It's those (rare) occasions in which I've been unexpectedly smitten (meaning socked in the guts such that normal functioning is impaired) by an unlikely party that continue to leave me baffled, psychoanalytic explanations aside.

Whether it sounds clichéd or not, raising a child has been the most important, most valued endeavour of my life. My own psychotherapy falling second. Developing intimate relationships with a select few, over time, though we may share physical proximity only on occasion, is either tied with the psychotherapy or a close third.

Over the phone this afternoon, my son successfully coached me to operate the dagburnt VCR at L's house so I could watch the Presidential debate. So I'm a mother; it's really real.

Habitual responses to others, no matter how socially desirable or seemingly noble, feel more and more empty. This includes the desire to soothe, to assist, to make comfortable, the care-taking instinct. Not that any of these things are inherently undesirable, but I'm wary of my own proclivities.

State dependent learning bites. I haven't had a satisfactory dance experience (aside from tango) since moving out of my house.