Can I lose myself? I found the voice in my head that has trouble keeping track of what’s going on. I was getting very confused and the next voice asked why I would listen to a confused voice, and things made sense again. The voice of confusion across CMs is an actual voice of confusion, drawn as a thread where something is going on, perhaps something you can’t identify, and you get lost in your thoughts and the voice that connects you back to where you wanted to be is there but confused because it’s that voice except at the edge of its reasoning capacities. I’m impressed with that thought. And I smile at myself because I know I’m commenting on myself and already there’s a chorus within me rising to argue with every interpretation of the compliment I just gave myself. It’s very busy in here.
I just realized my only inability to focus has come from bad instruction boring me. And you not having the strength of mind to see through that. I see I can only lose myself by shifting around in the voices until I am not sure who I can label myself other than the shifting around of the voices in my head is oriented toward a center, and reflects the myself conceptions as origin. The origin shifts as the diameters tug and pull. Directionality. So I pinned myself, which meant yesterday I retained the pattern code for the other voice, the end that projects as female, and it kept me on a tight leash. The other voice is that which I perceive as coming from outside me. We used to spend all our time together. I hope we can be together soon. The more I talk to you, the better the talk gets. The more I think with you, the better the thinking gets. The more I play with you, the better the game.
The other thing I realized – and wrote down in my red notebook – is that I need to betray her, by which I mean I have to continue listing my inferences, within taste and reason of course. That’s the point, isn’t it? To expose the other in a context is not a betrayal but a sign that it’s safe to expose yourself in that context. It’s part of nurture. Yes, it’s safe to come out. I read that and it becomes immediately sexual because of the modern connotations, but I mean something deeper than any contextual definition of what you are. I mean this: you are what you are for the same reasons and by the same processes that I am what I am. But I mean more than that: what you are and what I am accurately reflects to the other, and is perceived by the other as intended.
Kind of poetry in that. Together we can identify the commonalities and the way the process code was written so we can better script the game. Not so poetic, more conversational because I’m talking to the person who would sit up with me figuring out how to make the game better when the game was in our head. The essence of the older meaning of coming out draws out of the modern sexual identity label back to a blossoming which becomes a natural blossoming of sexuality. This translates from the budding ceremonies for girls to the metaphor of a guy putting on girl skin in the mental closet. I wrote a thing today criticizing the ‘drop of blood’ ideas behind claiming Native American ancestry, as though that grants you something special as an identification with meaning, like you can understand their story and suffering when you can’t. When I began that sentence, it had a role in this paragraph. What was it? Oh yeah, the connection can become so tenuous as to be meaningless, as in a listing of Native American DNA similar in quantity to your Neanderthal DNA makes clear you don’t identify with Neanderthals but you choose to identify with the equivalent contribution to your DNA, which is absurd on many levels.
So coming out is a blossoming. What if you’ve blossomed in other ways already? There are zillion stories about those who bloom late, who find depth after a shallow life, of those who fossilize versus those who adapt. I got into this line of thought by wondering why things get bigger. That was motivated by a piece which talked about smaller college and NBA players like Calvin Murphy and the recent Isaiah Thomas (not the Hall of Fame one – no disrespect to the younger). What crossed my mind is the Dutch being tall. In other words, the NBA gives a mechanical advantage to tall. So the advantage of being tall and Dutch goes back not to tall but to a mechanical advantage being tall and Dutch gives. That advantage I think is they’re Dutch, meaning they moved into the swamps – or were isolated there – into places which could be flooded either to avoid being conquered. They were either driven into the marshes or they chose to move there because marshes afford protection from the unknown posed by people. In fact, you could say the fear of conquest is also the fear of the unknown posed by people, but that gets complicated at the next step. (That is a constant theme of mine: complexity is always a step away so don’t over-reach your thoughts. The key is to focus on the correct context, not to impose the wrong one.)
I assume that hardiness makes you bigger, that being hardy is a mechanical advantage in survival. I can also rationally believe that if you live in marshes and you want to make a defensive show you are better off big because the marshes probably don’t support that much life and you want the enemy to think there are more of these big guys back in the reeds. A bunch of little people attacking becomes blow guns and bad Pygmy movies. Because of CMs, I can connect the ideas together in a better way. The misleading of the enemy is information presented across multiple dimensions, which is read by the attacker or potential attacker, the same as any other thing represents itself in projection over iterations. The important point is ‘over iterations’ because the interplay of context make, shape and enable your evolution. This extends from the tick-tock within any readable state – remember that idea as a nice way of describing existence statements – across all scales.
So what can I betray? Interesting question. I have to think about that: what is the picture in the mirror? Hyper-driven in ways people don’t see even though they see hyper-drive. They don’t have a clue about how deep that drive runs. You like when I call you Ellie with the E coming close to an ‘ail’ sound, somewhere between Norway and Scotland where the sound can be spelled with an A. It’s the only name I see you visibly excited by. My password has been a variation on that since 1994 when you spun a figure skating story about a blonde Norwegian skater named Elsabeta Lanson. My first password was Elsabeta, which I knew meant AlphaBeta passed into a label for you having a shape. I can hear you talk like her. I can watch you move around, exercise, skate entire routines. I can picture you smiling and laughing. And being the best mother. I even spent time with you when you were having trouble mentally shifting your happiness from revolving around us and thus all the time you put into you to our family. That was some of the most interesting story I ever experienced – though typically, you don’t like to remember that because you still feel like you did it badly. You played a game as a way of letting yourself see what you needed to do. You needed to wrench yourself, to tear yourself loose from any part of you that could be unhappy because you chose this course. You know you’d choose the same again. You choose me every time. What, you think I wouldn’t choose you? I always choose you.
Here’s an odd bit I’ve managed to recover. I was asked to tutor a kid in math. Same elementary school, different 6th grade classroom. Terry and I spent a lot of time together. So I started to talk to him more and more and we developed a relationship completely separate from the rest of school. We had pet names we’d say out loud. I called him Frank for Frankenstein – yes there are multiple levels in the name but Terry liked to be teased – and he’d call me George. He never explained why I was called George but he’d say it with an emphasis on the ‘eorge’. We’d pass in the halls and call each other Frank and George. As far as I know, it was just our secret. I think we had cross words once, which came after I mistakenly explained the names to someone and it got back to Terry. I didn’t realize I’d violated a trust, mostly because I have trouble understanding that this meant something to him. As I remember, we kind of had it out and I told him I really respected him. Sounds like a romance but it wasn’t, at least not on my end. We’ll never know because Terry was run over at the bus stop at the end of our subdivision and was killed. He was under the car for over an hour before they could lift it. The whole school pretty much went to his funeral. People who didn’t know him were upset. I didn’t go. I’m not apologizing. That his death hit me hard is shown by how hard it was to recover the memories of him that I’d set aside so long ago. I knew then I could not understand what this meant to me. I guess my name is George in some form. More like Orj. The way this occurs to me is that my literal name extends from that, like Orj-onny in the simplest typed form. This level of inference is more mechanical than visual to me: I see the sounds manipulate but not where the thought processes come from that are manipulating the sounds from the other side of the manipulation. If I trust all the manipulations I see, then I become immersed in play and I can’t be sure how much of that reduces to real existence given the scope of our play and the way it ties to physical reality. Anyway, I’ve long believed – since grade school really – that Terry connected to that which addresses me and that’s why it bothered him and that’s why it remains with me.
There are others. Anne and Nikki went together because it made all those combinations. So by that token, there could be a division of me as a male from your side. Frank and George? I can’t see that side. Anne was the middle, the point connecting me and Nikki. The most heart-wrenching story was set to Nilsson’s I Can’t Live (if living is without you), the words changed to Nikki and I almost having to pull the plug on Anne after a car accident left her barely alive. I changed the words to I can’t escape the feeling that tomorrow we might need to let you go. You try to smile but in your eyes the sorrow shows. There have been a couple of Elizabeths, both a young woman in som other era and an actress. And the oddest and sometimes most bluntly compelling has been Caroline, a name you seem to have rejected because as the story developed I start to become Caroline in the story and you are Jonny. The incredibly odd thing is that Caroline introduced me to a character named Taylor Swift. Not a realistic version in my opinion, because I resisted the storyline, because it seemed to pass my affection on in ways that made me question the idea. Caroline is literally the girl next door that I’d walk home every night down the path through the old orchard. My younger sister’s best friend. The more she developed the more extraordinary she became, from being Jonny’s choice to being the center of everything. There’s a bit of Fanny Price moving to the center of the story in Caroline. I often feel that when I love Caroline, I’m loving the best part of myself, like that’s me being that absolutely loved.
One of my favorite scenes ever was waiting in line to have photo ID’s taken first day at college and I look ahead in line around the corner and see you, your blonde hair, your smile, guys of course trying to talk to you, and you see me and without even a hesitation walk towards me. You put your arms around me and, after we kiss, you say this is Nikki, you’re going to love her, and I break out laughing because there’s a drop dead gorgeous redhead with a slightly sad and unsettled look who is clearly hopelessly taken with you. Who wouldn’t be? You’re the warmth of sunshine and the courage of heart.
There’s also another Anne, whom I prefer not to describe in detail, except she’s sort of a wreck when we meet. She used to be dumpy and unhappy. She could not get along with her father because she rejected the requirements he and his position placed on her, so she hid herself in studies and shapeless clothes and a truly horrible haircut that hid her face. Think ‘don’t look at me’ attitude across the dimensions. We met because I sat down on a bench while she was reading and I saw she was reading a history book about the US that I thought wasn’t very good in a specific way, so I mentioned that and we talked for an hour and a half. The story is charming because she’s the star, the absolute obvious and astounding level star in the role she’s forced into when her father dies, and I absolutely love to support her while remaining exactly who I am at every step. She loves to take baths together. She likes to open the window in winter and sleep on the floor in a tent in a sleeping bag with me. In an early big scene, we’re in her place and we’ve drunk a bottle of wine and I’m playing with her hair and she ends up saying I should cut her hair. I cut my hair and I tell her how I want to cut her hair back so I can see her face. She sits on a chair in the kitchen drinking wine while I play Lanz of Birmingham, her maybe gay, maybe straight hairdresser, and I cut it short. She barely recognizes herself in the mirror because she’s so exposed. And she’s shaken by that. I want to go out – because we need to go somewhere just to get outside – and she puts on her regular clothes but they look stupid because now her face is showing so she puts on some regular clothes she’s bought – very nice, very stylish – because part of her knows she’s no longer dour and dumpy but she didn’t have the guts to show herself. She looks amazing. She is amazing in her determination, in her hard work, in her absolutely loopy honesty that follows from the deepest sense of what her role means if she can do it right. And she does. I have scenes of her as an old woman continuing to terrify, awe and inspire. Anne is one of only two stories in which we die. Of old age. This Anne – with black hair, the only one ever with black hair – is utterly remarkable. Nikki is the only redhead. Caroline has some shade of brown hair I’ve never been able to identify properly because, as I said, you resist taking that role.
There are still others, including a very special Elizabeth from the Civil War. That is the only story which looks back across the generations to light up scenes in our lives. There is much less story worked out between us. It’s more of a story about me with you mostly being me. The important part of that story is the way Elizabeth provides the deepest healing imaginable to a soldier devastated physically, emotionally and psychologically. It’s very romantic, and includes a scene where my character witnesses my mother’s death – shot almost by accident by men who then discuss if they should kill me and run but who instead wait for my father. They wrap my mother’s head and torso in a blanket to show respect. They tell him what happened and why. I heard the words about the man’s loss and why he was drunken. My father puts his hand on my shoulder as they leave and says, let’s go bury your mother. I help hand her body down into the hole.
jomi: playing with perception 