Friday, July 18, 2014

You are More Than a Vessel for Bad Pate´, OR, Brain Deconstructed



Full disclosure: You may have done, or are still doing, stupid stuff, but deep down, you are a smart person. Everyone has the potential to build a super collider, but some of us choose to put a paperclip in an electrical outlet.
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Quite a lot has happened since my last post. The short version is I think I had a mental break down/upgrade/low-grade epiphany/self-exorcism kind of thing occur. While my brain reassembled, and writing struggled to come to me, it gave me time to get a more holistic view of what is going on in the world.
Wow. My timing is, and continues to be, impeccable.
This isn't my first trip Being Undone, so I feel a bit seasoned when it comes to falling apart and then coming back together again. It's just my version of picking myself up after falling. Everyone has their version. Some of us are professionals. The point is to Come Back Together [comments about Enlightenment redacted].
But I'm rambling.
I've noticed recently people seem to be overwhelmed (more so than usual). We're bombarded with so much information. Unless you know what is and isn't crap, you're getting it too fast powered by too much emotion to process it properly. Domino Effect- 40. Mob mentality-30. Common sense-15. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
I've begun to actively seek information from sources that do not rely on over stimulating the senses to get attention. I've noticed the subtly of that tactic.
A large chunk of the beauty of what is emerging is that we are figuring things out. We are sorting out for ourselves what we do and do not deem okay, and we are getting there, not really on our own but On Our Own. You see someone touch a hot skillet, you learn that touching a hot skillet may not be a wise choice. You see another way to pick up a hot skillet. Hark! An oven mitt!
The key is education, and it's very simple. Everything has a history to give us context. Most of the time, the history is fascinating. For example, rarely does a war begin out of the blue with the first shot. A series of things led to the first blast.
If you had to place a label on my household, it is liberal [comments on the current political system redacted]. My husband read two biographies, one about Richard Nixon and the other on Barry Goldwater written by Rick Perlstein. My husband read the biographies because he wanted to understand the origins of the modern Republican Party so when he watches/reads/listens to the news he has a better idea of what the hell is going on with a portion of our political system. He's done this with other political, religious, social, etc. topics. My husband is a quiet, technological, hermit genius. He's cool like that.
One of the best things I've ever learned about not believing in something I learned from the 1st true nonconformist I'd ever met. He said (and I'm paraphrasing because it's been at least 15 years), 'I believe if you're not going to believe in something, you should read and understand why you don't believe in something before you choose not to believe in it. The same goes for believing in something.'
Watching all the beauty and horror in the world has helped me have an angle of perspective I didn't have a few weeks ago. Solutions show up in my consciousness. I think the joy and challenge for me, as it has been for other writers, is to take the clay and work it into stories for people who want to have a conversation and let the talk go where the talk goes. Sometimes the truth of reality is too much and to place it in a palatable medium of fiction makes the fact of real life easier to deal with when we're bombarded with "reality" TV [comments on Reality TV redacted].

More thoughts are sure to follow.