Tricks of the Mind

I often feel like my dreams are trying to tell me something. Not ominous messages from the deep unknown or anything so mystical, but simply insights from my subconscious mind. I'll have arguments over religion, lose my job, find out a loved one has died... little, emotional pushes to prepare me for inevitable future events.

And this morning I had one of those dreams, perhaps inspired by this recent sketch. In my dream I was walking through an unfamiliar and lavish apartment, filled with sketchbooks and unfinished paintings. And I understood that these pieces were all mine from many years ago, but all I could think as I looked at them was "I could never paint that." I became very frustrated flipping through half-finished works, each grander and more ambitious than the last. And I knew I could never finish them and I kept thinking, "How did I ever start this?" I woke up depressed. I often say this to myself, that I was a better painter 15 years ago than I am now. That I was a more creative artist. No one agrees with me - I think this is just one of my own particular angsts.

And it wasn't until a half an hour later that I finally understood what the real message was. I was thinking of the last painting I had looked at in my dream: an 1820s table surrounded by laughing guests, each person based on myself and horrible people I once knew (the frivolous and petty upper class of Regency London being an astute visualization of the villains of my own social past). And it abruptly occurred to me that I *could* paint it, if I wanted to. It would just require a lot more time and preparation than I'm accustomed to.

It was in that lucid moment that I realized that I am constantly sabotaging myself with inhibitions. I never try anything too big or too ambitious. A mental block far below even my conscious thought process just crosses those ideas out and says: "No, that's too hard for me." In drawing my comic I have often found myself forced to draw things because the story calls for it - difficult angles, buildings, trees, cars (*shudder*). And I do it because I have to. And it's painful and I fail a lot. But in the end I do it anyway.

And that's what's different between the artist I am now and the one I was when I was younger and couldn't draw worth crap. I never told myself no. I think that's a pretty damn brilliant insight. Way to go, subconscious. You deserve a cake.

I often find myself watching my brain at work, puzzling over its various quirks. Note that I say *it*. Julia Sweeney mentioned something of the kind in Letting Go Of God, that we seem perversely incapable of viewing these innerworkings as being ourselves. My brain is a little machine, it isn't me. Except that it is. And I am afraid that I am not possessed of a sleek and efficient device like my MacBook laptop. No, my brain unfortunately more closely resembles a particularly badly-designed Rube Goldberg contraption, clicking away with little marbles and dominoes flying every which way. Kinda interesting if you are into the whole steampunk world, but not terribly useful if you are trying to take an exam on Etruscan politics or recall all the Roman emperors in order.

One of the things that most amuses me is my word recall. I have a pretty extensive vocabulary due to the many, many books I have read over the years. But it's not very accessible, as each word requires a tiny brain hamster to crawl through a maze, down a zigzag ramp, ride an elevator up, and then swing through the air to the correct elevated platform and ring the red bell. The yellow bell means the hamster gets flattened by a large Monty Python foot, and - alas - my brain hamsters are not too bright and I have lost many of them to the foot, resulting in me standing slack-jawed in the middle of a conversation and completely at a loss for words.

But, thankfully (I guess), I can usually manage to retrieve a word from this process. Most often not the right word, but a word nonetheless. And it's generally a word that is pretty close to almost being what I wanted, so if I send the hamster back a few times more I can sometimes find the RIGHT ONE. I wrote down some examples from today.

Searching...
1) dog-tagged. NO
2) dog-earred. NO
3) ear-marked. YES!

Searching...
1) black list. NO
2) white wash. NO
3) blackmailed. YES!

As I'm sure you can see, this means that most conversations with me can be quite entertaining as I dance around (sometimes quite literally) trying to find the right word. And then a hamster dies and it all comes to a painful, stuttering halt.

This is why I prefer to use email. And why I never answer my phone (sorry, Mom and Dad!).

My life is very compartmentalized. When I drive home every evening, my job disappears and I don't remember it until the next day when I'm driving in again. I have trouble understanding the most basic programming languages at home and I can never remember errands I meant to do when I'm at work. I pity the person who calls me at home to help fix something: my groggy, unhelpful "uh-huh"s must really make them want to scream.

This Monday was a particularly amusing example, when I started humming a song as I walked out to my car (All That Money Wants) only to find it in mid-play on my MP3 rotation from last Friday. It freaked me out for a second there (especially since I was synced up with it - it literally started right where I left off as I turned the key).

I started thinking that maybe my brain is like the MP3 player or my laptop, where half my brain goes into sleep mode, just waiting to wake up at the same spot. Like a perfect VM option, each boot sector is saved with its last-used session data. (And now you can tell I'm at work, what with the computer terminology).

This particular configuration in my head is usually pretty helpful, since it means that I am better than most people at leaving work behind and enjoying my time at home. But there is one catch: I can't paint much when I have a job. For some reason, painting breaks the partition. Days after I just can't work with computers AT ALL. I finished my last painting several months ago and I spent the next two weeks at work just staring at my screen pretending to work because I could not for the life of me figure out what I was supposed to be doing. I'm lucky I didn't get fired.

I don't think this is a right-brain/left-brain thing (I don't buy that crystal-rubbing voodoo bullshit). It's just that twisting my brain around for painting is a very specialized arrangement and it tends to throw everything else out-of-kilter. It's like when you learn two foreign languages and you try to switch between them. There is a period there where every time you reach for a word, you get it in the other language. Thinking in color and viscosity and texture is just not compatible with math and if-then logic.

I need a command-m option for the brain. But for now I just have to reboot the hard way.

We all know smells are powerful memory triggers. Even the most miserable childhood becomes a little rosier when reminded of pumpkin pie or homemade bread. But this makes me wonder: why do good smells only remind us of good things?

For example, I love tea. I've been drinking tea in big-gulp quantities for the last three years, all day, every day. And whenever that blueberry smell drifts up as I steep the packet, I sigh and think happily of all my other wonderful days drinking tea... wait a minute! Those weren't wonderful days! Those were long, stressful working days where I was yelled at, ignored, humiliated, insulted, and usually underpaid. So why is it that every time the tea comes out, I only remember the cozy rainy days snuggling at home with my cats?

I started examining a lot of my favorite smells. Pumpkin pie is top of my list, but I can't figure that one out because I remember quite distinctly that every Thanksgiving of my life was a horrible experience full of screaming kids and food shortages and elder siblings attacking my personal idealogies. But nonetheless my pumpkin pie soap makes me think of delicious turkey dinners and being so full I can't button up my pants. Apricot reminds me fondly of the apricot tree I had as a child. Yes, the very tree full of disgusting, wormy apricots which I had to peel and split for my mom's canning, whilst grinding my teeth down as hard as I could to keep from screaming. Boiled eggs make me think of eating dyed eggs on Easter morning, despite the fact that most of the eggs I've eaten were on miserable school mornings when we were out of cereal and it was the only food item left in the house that I could cook. Frying bacon and maple syrup waffles makes me think of a happy Christmas morning breakfast... despite being yelled at every Christmas by my dad for not being grateful enough or polite enough or helpful enough.*

Certain unpleasant smells do bring back unpleasant memories, like the wet, scorched stink of our old fire-damaged books. Or the cleaning product smell of cleaning soot off of walls. Or the nasty perfume of the woman at church who used to insult my clothes when I was a kid.

But it seems pretty consistent that in my head, good smells only tie themselves to good memories. I guess that's a useful thing - I can't count the number of favorite songs and movies I've given up once they were tainted by bad memories. At least I know that a breakup or a snide remark can't ruin my favorite foods.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm...

 

*All completely justified. I was a wretched little monster of a kid.

I hear dreams of flying are almost universal among humans, like dreams of teeth falling out or going to school naked. But I've never had a flying dream. Instead, for as long as I can remember, I have had this dream of falling.

It's a very specific dream: I am driving up a steep mountainside on a switchback road. I am going very fast and I have a passenger or two in the car with me (this part varies, depending on whom I'm living with at the time of the dream). I hit one of the corners and it's pretty close, so I slow down. But no matter how hard I hit the brakes, it's not enough for the next turn, and the car just sort of *slips* off the edge. And down we go, in a calm arc, just like a cartoon. And I'm not scared, but I feel this terrible regret, that this is the end and that I was responsible.

Not surprisingly, I have a terrible fear of switchback roads. I suppose I could be sensible and interpret this dream in a Jungian fashion and point out my fears of being responsible for other people, or perhaps the lack of control I feel over my own life. Maybe we can bring my mother into it somewhere, hmmm? But no, I've always been very literal and mystical about the dream: this is how I'm going to die.

Ten years ago I was driving back roads to visit the Grand Canyon when the road all too abruptly went from dull and flat to one little sign noting a speed decrease to a sudden, terrifying drop. I slammed on the brakes and there it was: the mother of all switchbacks. My nemesis. http://www.midwestroads.com/otherstates/mokidugway/. It was a good thing that it was such a rapid drop in elevation, because I don't think I started breathing again until I hit the bottom.

I didn't die, of course.  You'd think that would have helped, but my dreams are actually worse now (more video footage to draw from) and driving down even tiny switchbacks sends me into flashbacks.  Someday.  Someday that cliff is gonna get me.  And you'll know what I'll be thinking when I go down.

Oh no, not again.

Every now and then I have romantic dreams involving media stars.  The weird thing is that - apart from my occasional Danny Elfman fantasy - they are never about people that I am even remotely interested in when awake.  A year ago I had this dream about the actor who played Frasier's brother Niles, David Hyde Pierce.  And the fact that I thought the character's name was Miles and that I had to look up the actor in Wikipedia should reinforce my claim that prior to this dream, I had never, ever, ever had the slightest romantic interest in this actor.

Nonetheless, I had this nice, little dream where we met and fell in love.  A simple, straight-forward affair with none of the drama of a Harlequin Romance and not even the lengthy development required in my personal dating experiences.  Dinner, a nice kiss, done.

But for the next two days I was infatuated with David Hyde Pierce.  I thought he was so adorable and sexy.  I wanted to see more films with David Hyde Pierce.  I wanted to watch old Frasier reruns.  It was shameful.

And then, as abruptly as the infatuation occurred, it disappeared.  On the third day I woke up and if offered David Hyde Pierce or a piece of peppermint (which I'm allergic to), I probably would have opted for the peppermint, because at least it's a pretty color.

So I take this as a cautionary lesson in love.  It can be nothing more than a simple, sleep-triggered, neuro-chemical reaction which only lasts as long as it takes your liver to filter it out again.

 

Everyday when I go home southbound on 405, I am alarmed by the sight - out of the corner of my eye - of a man standing by the freeway wall.  Since I am usually driving 60 MPH... okay, 70 MPH, and I have little desire to vear into other lanes while twisting my head to take a second look, I had never quite seen the man closely.  But I could tell you that he was fairly tall, wore faded blue jeans and a white shirt, and was standing, watching the traffic pass.

Well, the other day, after many months of passing the man, traffic was a bit congested from the rain and I was going slow enough that I decided to take a good look at the man as I went by.  Turns out it was a gray-blue access door with a little white stick-figure man symbol painted at the top.

I find it amusing that I was able to subconsciously (or even below the subconscious), process this figure in the second it flashed past, identify it as man, in blue and white, and then hand the data to my conscious brain which then added all the rest.  And it's even more amusing that even now - when I know perfectly well it is just a door with a tiny white man symbol - I continue to see the man every day when I drive past.  I'm waiting for someone else to see him and swerve in alarm.  Or maybe it's just me.

 

Addendum 02-16-2006: Okay, so I was behind some really slow bastard yesterday and I got another look at the man.  Turns out the man on the sign is RED with a white background.  So I am just crazy.  More on that later...