That old metaphor, which I heard a couple years ago, buzzed, on a bus around xujiahui, and the huangpu river, maybe going down to the meiluo cheng, about the one part of the brain, the cortex, inhibiting the thalamus, or a simlar brain area, as the cause of, our neurological correlate to depression stays with me. Before that, I recall some similar notion, native to my own speculations, about the roots of our depression. I mean me and my brother's depression. And maybe I can say me and my uncle and my brother. And maybe this applies to the satelite of people I know who were abused, violently, and in anger.
The thing is, however, I'm depressed. The self-pityying, unaccountable, vague connotations of that term are such as I wish to avoid. So I'm immobile, in such a way that I think this would be described as low grade chronic depression.
I don't know where to start or which way to go in telling you this. But let me start where I'm at where I am now. I'm sitting in front of the kitchen window, sitting straight up and typing. I have earplugs in and a sleeping mask on. the door is open and the cats are wandering in and out, after being in all day due to the rain.
The reason I need to blind myself and deafen myself is because this is the only way I can feel comfortable to type most of the time. The only way I can block out....
Whatever I'm blocking out. The immanent distractions, the will inside of me that is constatly veering off in any which direction, that cannot put itself into any one thing that I deem productive or necessary.
To do anything, generally speaking, I need a gimmick. This gimmick is unsusually some audio lectures, books, music, or caffeine, anger, or lateness..
The blindfold and earplugs started last year 2009 or so in Shanghai. In the apartment off of zhanghyang lu, with the tiny dining room. I would blindfold myself and try to cover my ears enough, since i didn't have earplugs. Towards the end of our stay in Shanghai, I would do this while Emma's parents were milling around the house, and often I had takien some of the little balls of hash from the small plastic gum containers that I used to store my hash in.
Bakuin and susan, my cats were with me then as now. I often had one of my glass jars that i like to use as cups. I would have a big glasss jar of tea or coffee, or chocolate made by melting eighty percent choclate with some water and creamer.
The blindfold and the earplugs leave me alone, allow me to be in here, free from the outrside. It's the outside that I can't hanle, that leaves me dead. The outside me leaves without any identity, without any being. It leaves me at the mercy whims, the urge to gratification, pleasure , and the urge to consume.
In the middle of that sentence, i reacted to the wine i heard through my earplugs and pulled one out. It was nothing in my immediate zone of interest, something form outside, a neighbor using some machine to cut or weld maybe. But I decided it was an acceptable time to get up and try being in the world. I checked the mail. No mail.
My attention is waning now, got stuck on gimmicks, the idea of gimmicks.
I have alot of gimmicks. The idea of god is a gimmick, sometimes i've felt a presece in my mind that I associate with god, what other people know as god. This was a different prescence than the conversations I'm always having. I have those too. A typical example is the one I had last ight with my therapist. It was in the midst of another conversation I was having in my head. I realized I was doing it, and thought of telling my therapist. Then I was having a conversation with him about it. Then I was telling him that even thinking about telling him would make me have a conversation with him about it.
About the conversations.
Than I thought about how this extraordinary bent in me ought, in some conventional biography of a great man, lead to the production of some skill, some advantage. This would work if I was some trial lawyer, or a politician, or an interviewre on tv. Or if I was a writer, hahaha. [While editing this I notice that what I was thinking at this time, last night, was also that I couldn't utilize the conversations as a skill, and this was a difference between me and the great men in the imagined biographies.]
So is that it now? Am I clear?
What do I want to do? Work on the Beast book. That's the one I want to to work on, but I don't feel it.
I guess now writing this post has become a gimmick
The other gimmicks I can think of right now are other people helping me, and schedules. The schedules are what I have the most trust in now, as escaping the bad parts of other gimmicks. As for other people helping me, sometimes I have sort of a daydream about a motherly figure helping me to write, setting out the implements, like notepaper and a laptop, a special laptop just for writing that I think of getting, and sitting these down on the table just so. And it's on a special writing table, and taking my hadn and guiding me to the table. That's embarrasing, but I think it's a clear reflection of the lack of a motherly figure in my life.
It's embarrasing but even so it's so strong, a motherly figure,a white lady would be nice, and so would a black lady, in her late thirties to fifties, maybe a little plump, and neat in appearance. It's embarrasing, but every time I think of it, the desire is real.
Oh yes, a life of gimmicks. Is that what I've been trying to get around? Whith all the Brcue Lee, Daoist, Buddhist fascination I used to have? Is that what all the self help and psychology is about? No, it's primarliy about understanding, about extravating myself from the unseen influences that abound in my mind. It's about making sese of the lives we lead, of the spectum of minds that make up my social world.
Where do i go from here? I wnat to stop writing now, as if this blog served a purpose and I'm ready to move on.
Where do I go? Stand up. If I stand up, this may be dissapoiting in that it leads nowehre? I don't like the idea of finishing this blog, since I need to edit it, which requires taking off the sleeping mask and letting the light and the objects aroud me in. I dont want anymore auditory visual stimulus going on.
I don't want to hear Phil Hendrie or Christopher Hitchens or any of that stuff I liten to all day and night. The only thing I can think to do is bring the blaket from the couch and put it over my head and the computer, so I can limit the range of intrusion and edit this blog, publish it and.... I don't know what comes next.
I can't really say I want any of those gimmicks, or that the absence of gimmicks is the solution. For any solution is in itself a gimmick, I sense.
I have to go the bathroom.
I will get up, and them i will come back witht he blanket and edit this blog ad publish it. I want somethig to listen to while I'm up and about. I will lisen to soemthing. I will take off my sleeping mask and use the other cpomputer to listen to something. I'm using Emmas computer, and my computer is at the other end of the aprrtment, buy the door, on a chair.
I'm back, but I'm not using the blanket. Maybe I'll go get it in a minute or so. I'm eating strawberries. This is a gimmick, as it gives me a sense of doing something healthy. Eating potatoes is a gimmick, as food impulse keep me going. I'm going to cut up a potato and fry up the pieces. I wish I had ketchup or eggs to go with it. This is my second potato of the day.
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