The Ink-Pot and the Palette

One of my great teachers sent out her quarterly newsletter the other day, and in it she recommended a little exercise for the new year:

Consider in a playful and loving way what symbol or image arises when you imagine being YOU, fully and completely. When you are expanded and unlimited, joyful and brilliant, ask, "When I am my True Self, I am like...?" Notice what comes to mind. It could be a feeling, a word or a metaphor.

She provided an example from one of her clients, who discovered in herself "a Guardian, a Healer, an Architect."

( Me? Not so much. )

This is the best scene ever written for television. Was anyone else as bowled over by it as I was?

( Elementary 2.09 )

There have been quite a few well-meaning Joan Watsons in my own life over the years who accepted me as I was while rooting for me to become nicer. Some of them had letters after their names and billed my insurance by the hour. And I was fully on board the "cure me of being me" train for years.

What else could I do? I'm not a brilliant detective or an attractive and financially independent white male--things that allow all versions of Sherlock Holmes to withstand the consequences of being fundamentally--what's the word? Attachment-disordered? Spock-like? A wee bit sociopathic? Introverted? Poorly-socially-networked? A natural loner? An edge-dweller?

It's a strange minority position to be in. The scene emphasizes the strong belief among more connected humans that we edge-dwellers could join the majority if we just tried a little harder.

So we try, most of us, most of the time. Often our livelihood depends on it. If I'd been born a couple of generations earlier, the need to conform to a "marriageable" standard of nice-girl behavior would have been nearly a matter of life and death.

None of this is to disregard the advantages I do have in life--I have them, I make use of them, and I'm grateful for them. (As it happens, I think my combination of coldness and competence has just plain scared employers into keeping me on and paying me a salary all these years. And now I get to retire.)

Nor am I advocating for antisocial behavior. I'm not completely separate from the continent, and yes, the bell tolls for me, too. I abide by common please-and-thank-you standards, and what I care about, I care about deeply. I experience enjoyment and pleasure in non-evil things like laughter and food. I'm capable of love, albeit to a limited extent: I let things and people go much more easily than others do. I've tried not to, but I just don't care as much as I "should."

Jason Tracey, who wrote this episode of Elementary, has perfectly captured the tension between the edge-dweller and the more connected among us, and that's no small thing. But the scene goes a bit further by explicitly stating the edge-dweller's acceptance of himself and the consequences of his nature. Sherlock knows--and does not regret--that his nature is what makes him good at the singular thing he's really good at.

That's what made it revolutionary for me.

I only met my paternal grandfather twice. The first time, I was about three. He took me for ice cream. I wanted “green” which, to my West Coast and three-year-old mind was self-evidently lime sherbet. To his East Coast sensibilities, it meant pistachio. I cried all the way home. He said, “Damn kid” and “How the hell am I supposed to know what green ice cream is?” (This is a famous family story, often repeated--I doubt whether I actually remember it directly.)

It was barely a thing. It was a toddler crying over ice cream. Boo-hoo little special snowflake. But it was also a grown man normalizing rage and contempt for a grandchild he would only meet once again in his life. I must have deserved it. I was stupid. I should have known better. People will get mad and say bad things, and maybe shake me a little, if I don’t “learn to like it.” These are the preconscious proto-reactions of a three-year-old child.

( Unto the third and the fourth generation )

In my research into attachment "disorders" I came across this article about cold people in Psychology Today.

If you've gotten into a relationship with a cold person, the article says, "hopefully you walked away." "Avoidant-dismissive attachment disorder" (characterized by aloofness, coldness, lack of affection, self-absorption--the list is long and decidedly not neutral) is caused by faults of "maternal caretaking". One commenter on part 2 of the article calls for finding and sterilizing women with this disorder, presumably to curb the creation of more people the commenter might feel uncomfortable with.

It's just one pop-psych article, written in a comment-baiting style, so I don't take it too seriously. But its strongly biased language and illustrations caused some disparate ideas to coalesce in my mind--ideas about myself, heredity, types of people, and the peculiarly American drive for "self improvement" that has dogged me all my days.



( Detached, haughty and stand-offish am I )

To every wonderful person who has dared to be my friend I say thank you, from the bottom of my cold (but deep) heart.

And to the name-calling institutions and individuals who can't get past the fact that I'm not the kind of lady you're comfortable with, I say NOT SORRY. FIND BETTER WORDS, OR STOP TALKING ABOUT ME.

I tried to knit this:

(Arpeggio by Maria Leigh on Ravelry)

It appealed to me because its design embodies a high order of complexity. Everything about it is difficult and demanding--the stitch, the construction method, the shaping, the sizing, the finishing. It's hard to cast on, hard to bind off, and unforgiving for every row in between.

I thought I could do it, but I couldn't. Everything difficult about it was, for me, actually impossible.

( Like a lot of things in my life, this isn't REALLY about knitting at all. )

After listening for at least the fifth time to Margaret Lynch's training session on healing the second chakra, and feeling as frustrated by it this afternoon as I have the other times, I decided to do some tapping.

I work alone (and type really fast), so I've developed a method of recording as I go. The "tapping" is as much fingertips on keyboard as on actual meridian points. It seems to work.

( EFT for the strange )

I don't follow anybody's standard protocol, I just raid Gary Craig and Nick Ortner and Carol Tuttle and Pat Carrington and Margaret Lynch for parts, and construct my own. The basic structure, however, is standard: negative setup statement repeated three times (with some choices inserted), followed by all the short negatives that pop up, until I yawn, or sneeze, or feel the emotional intensity drop, or get really bored. Then some positives, all while tapping around the points.

Then, if you're me, repeat till you can't stand it anymore, then call it a day.

I've been like a convert to a new religion lately. Dressing Your Truth is my latest thing, and I've been running around trying to resist the urge to put all its precepts into practice, right now, perfectly, in my clothes, hair, makeup, accessories, jewelry, bike, home decor, and blog style.

( With my Freeze Ray I will stop the world. )

Have you ever noticed how the most shocking nightmares, when viewed through the I'm-awake-now-thank-God lens of Jungian-esque analysis, are the most useful? And how the message is often pretty uplifting?

It's been years since I did any particular dreaming. I had a series of terrifying seizures which always came on first thing in the morning, and always in the context of trying vainly to remember a dream, so I became highly averse to remembering dreams. But just the past couple of weeks I seem to have taken it up again.

The one I had this morning between cat-letting-out and actual waking was a humdinger involving ice and high places and someone falling to her death and me hanging on for dear life so I wouldn't do the same thing. A wake-up-screaming nightmare.

And yet as soon as I was fully awake I recognized it as an ego-death kind of dream. I've been releasing lots of things, and ideas, and goals lately. Part of me falling to her icy death is a pretty apt symbol.

Still...rainbows and non-creepy butterflies tonight, please.

This wanted to be one of those posts where I complain about my job, but the problem isn't my job, it's my brain. I'm losing my ability to act like the kind of person who can do the kind of job I have.

It's not a rant-post obliquely glorifying my unique brilliance compared to the dull plodding minds of my coworkers. Nor, conversely, is it a guilt-post, confessing my secret fear that I'm not smart enough and I Will Be Found Out. Everybody's a Special Snowflake and everybody's flawed.

What it is, I think, is the beginning of an inquiry into either a developing neurological disorder or a basic thinking style which I can no longer cover up. I'm not sure which.

( I don't have nearly enough information yet. )

The center of my recent trip to the United Kingdom turned out to be the four days I spent at Ashwhin Retreat on Shapinsay.

I had no particular agenda for such a retreat; I just felt drawn to it in a profligate, "what the hell" kind of way made possible only by a windfall (in this case, the sale of my car).

( Ashwhin on Shapinsay )