when i think about my thinking, i don’t like what i think. about my thinking. i think.
Driving back from Rhinebeck last Sunday, I tried to pay attention to my thoughts while letting myself have thoughts. And you know what? My thoughts are often like old people, by which I mean this: Have you ever taken a very old person out for a drive? They say what they see, right? Toyota. Look at the trees. 55 miles per hour. In fact, that’s a funny bit from a Billy Crystal movie (we’ll always have paris? something like that….his father in law sings the Toyota commercial over and over). So we’re driving along, and here are my thoughts:
red leaves
Taconic Parkway
traffic
knees
trash
yellow leaves
Not “wow, look at those beautiful red leaves, I love fall!” Just “red leaves.”
Then I started wondering what my thoughts sound like in my head. When I speak, I have a drawl and characteristic ways of saying words – awl for oil, I aspirate the wh- when I say what when where why (i.e., I don’t say wat wen were wy. Why? Because there’s a frickin H in there y’all!!), pilla for pillow, yella for yellow, winda for window, etc. But in my head the thoughts are neutrally spoken, there’s no accent, I don’t think awl, etc.
This morning, perfectly coincidentally, I clicked over to the RadioLab website. I used to listen to the podcast regularly during my commute, but without a commute, I’ve fallen out of the habit of listening. Also, I can’t listen to words while I’m editing, so I’m way behind on RadioLab and This American Life and all the others I love. So anyway, I visited the RadioLab site and saw a recent short program on……………THINKING! I put it here, in case you’re interested:
Here’s their description of the program:
Jad talks to Charles Fernyhough about the connection between thought, inner speech, and the voice in our heads.
In our last episode, Words, we got into a debate about whether kids can think before they have words. For this podcast, Jad revisits that question with Charles Fernyhough, who tells Jad about a theory developed by a Russian psychologist named Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky’s theory describes how words and thoughts move from speech outside our heads to speech inside our heads. We also talk to someone who hears other people’s voices in his head, and ask Fernyhough about whether Vygotsky’s ideas could shed light on this surprisingly common phenomena.
It’s short, and interesting, so I’m happy to share if it sounds interesting to you!
This morning I was thinking about the difference between thirst and hunger. The words for satisfying those needs have such a different feeling to me. Thirst is quenched, or slaked. Hunger is met or satisfied or fulfilled. Quenching and slaking have such a powerful feeling to me, something vigorous and vivifying. They even include powerful and hard consonants – a lot of K in there. We die of thirst before we die of hunger; it’s a more fragile need, maybe; a more immediate need. An image of thirst might readily be someone in a desert; that’s a common tv and movie trope, for sure. For me, though, the pertinent image is a neglected houseplant. As long as you don’t neglect it to its death, it can be pretty quickly revived by a deep soak. It doesn’t take very long at all before the leaves plump up and abandon shrivel; before faded color disappears into a more vibrant color; before wilted structures stand up straight again.
Continue Reading–1 words totally
This morning I was thinking about the difference between thirst and hunger. The words for satisfying those needs have such a different feeling to me. Thirst is quenched, or slaked. Hunger is met or satisfied or fulfilled. Quenching and slaking have such a powerful feeling to me, something vigorous and vivifying. They even include powerful and hard consonants – a lot of K in there. We die of thirst before we die of hunger; it’s a more fragile need, maybe; a more immediate need. An image of thirst might readily be someone in a desert; that’s a common tv and movie trope, for sure. For me, though, the pertinent image is a neglected houseplant. As long as you don’t neglect it to its death, it can be pretty quickly revived by a deep soak. It doesn’t take very long at all before the leaves plump up and abandon shrivel; before faded color disappears into a more vibrant color; before wilted structures stand up straight again.
We hunger for more, hunger for blood, hunger for God, hunger for your touch (the Google dropdown recommendations for the “hunger for” search, except that last one comes from the Righteous Brothers 
). We thirst for knowledge, God, freedom. It’s interesting that God is in both lists, which I suppose speaks to the centrality of that need for something beyond ourselves, whatever you may call it.
Anyway. Just thinking on a Sunday morning, and that’s not just a stall tactic to avoid grading stats papers. I swear.
in the bleakness of night, i go to extremes. don’t you?
If you ever find yourself awake in the middle of the night – I mean, waking up in the middle of the night after being asleep – this experience is probably familiar to you. Thoughts can seem entirely profound: life is to be lived! I never truly understood that – life is to be lived! And then, in the light of day, the profundity just isn’t there. Well, yeah, life is to be lived. And thoughts can seem entirely bleak and hopeless, too. Problems so huge, woes unresolvable, pressures unbearable – but when the day comes around, they really don’t seem so awful. I finally learned to say that to myself when I’m lost in the dark: even though it feels hopeless, you know it’s going to seem much better tomorrow, during the day, even if that really doesn’t seem possible right now. It doesn’t stop the paralyzing thoughts, but it does help me make it through to the morning without totally freaking out. I have had the experience of profundity gone banal, but much more often, it’s the bleakness of problems that haunts my middle-night waking, and it’s a very strange state. I lie there in a kind of suspended way, with thoughts swirling all around me, like electric chaos. My eyes are open, but I don’t feel anchored in any way.
Why is that! What is it about the middle of the night that can drive thoughts to the extremes like that? I don’t think it’s just the quiet, or the dark; I have gone into my office during the day, closed the door, and lowered the blinds so it’s pretty dark, and find that my thoughts just get clearer. I think the push to extremity must come from something within us, something about the contrast from the sleeping state. Maybe something FROM the sleeping state. I don’t know – do you have any ideas about this?
a mishmash of thoughts, plus a picture of monkey socks
A random mishmash o’ stuff today:
* It’s been a hell of a week – 12.5 hour workdays, which were nowhere near enough. By the end of each day, I was still too far behind, how does that work?
* I saw a friend I usually see once a week, and the evening I was on my way to see her, I thought ‘man, it feels so long since I saw her!’ It took me the whole trip to realize that I hadn’t seen her in 2 weeks, and that’s because last week I was on vacation. In Honduras. Last week feels like forever ago. And not real.
* Until this moment: for my vacation, I took the electric kettle, a huge coffee mug, a plastic cone for making one cup of coffee at a time, and a stack of filters (plus a bag of fresh-ground really good coffee). So every morning on vacation, my routine was to make a cup of coffee and drink it on the porch and knit. So this morning, I just made my coffee and poured a cup into that particular mug. The vacation feels real, I remember it. And I wish I were there.
Two sides of me:
* The not-so-nice side – I always get really mad on the subway when an adult with small(ish) children expects other adults to give up their seats so the kids can sit. What??! Kids have all the energy! They haven’t just worked a terrible job all day, they’re not stressed out, their backs don’t hurt! I’m sorry, if you’re 4 or 5 years old and there’s enough space for you to very safely stand and hold onto a pole, I am going to keep my seat. Bite me, adult giving me a dirty look.
* The nicer side – I have a friend who had a major stroke last year and who is currently in the darkest place of suicidal depression. She’s very brave but she doesn’t know that (or anything good) right now. So yesterday I wrote her an email that included this: “The bravery of us poor little frail people in this world, going forward as if we know what we’re doing, going forward as if it’s all somehow guaranteed (until something happens and we’re reminded that it’s not……but we go back to our old habits of thinking it’s all guaranteed). It makes me feel quite tender toward humanity whenever I think about this. Here we all are, with all our troubles, with the pain and trouble that we all bear in one form or another, with our small joys and our fragile hopes and plans. Here we all are, tiny little specks in an unimaginable infinite, on a tiny little planet whirling around a tiny little sun in just one little galaxy, here we all are, doing our best. GREAT. Now I’m starting to cry. I think we are all amazing, and that includes you. And I guess, then, that it must include me.” See? I can be kind towards people. Just don’t ask me to give up my seat to a 4-year old.
Finished the monkeys – will block them and get them in the mail to Katie first thing Monday morning:
one's a little smaller than the other - i'd bet the smaller one is more tightly-knit and therefore the one i knit here in Manhattan. looser = vacation.
blocking the monkeys to make them closer in size to each other; actual color is closer to the photo above this one, which came out weirdly golden.
I have a 3-month plan: I am putting all my ducks in a row, getting everything lined up to quit my job in 3 months. Period. I’ll teach, as much as I can; I’ll do writing and statistical consulting, as much as I can; I’ll try to do developmental work and rewriting on manuscripts for publishers, as much as I can; and I’ll make things and sell them, as much as I can. I’ll pare down my expenses, as much as I can. I cannot persist in this job that sucks the living life out of me. I’ll be 52 in November, and I say uncle. I want to have a life that’s not just bearable and happy on the weekend, you know?
This week, 3 people at work quit. Two of the editors in my group are going on interviews and will leave the second they get another job. Granted, I don’t know everyone on my floor, but everyone I do know is looking for another job. No exception. My boss even told me that she suspects our brand new assistant is already looking for another job. My company is based in the U.K., and there, it really is an enormous honor to work for this company. People stay with the company their entire lives – so very proud to work for this company. And I get it – it’s an amazing amazing and old company! It published the very first book. BUT (1) it doesn’t hold the same cachet here, (2) the Madison Ave experience is 100% different than the experience on that lovely lane in that beautiful town in the U.K., and (3) publishing is under such pressure now due to the economy and the transitional moment between books and online presentation of [free] content, we’re all turning into diamonds from the pressure.
Anyway. Lots to get done this weekend! No easy traveling knitting right now, as my knitting time is turned entirely to the wedding shawl. I’d hate to carry that in the subway – snowy white cobweb-weight wool, complicated Estonian lace patterns. My only other knitting alternative right now is the lettuce-green Ishbel, which is also a bit hard to do on the subway. So this weekend I’ll get back to the shawl, and I just have so much other stuff to do towards my eventual release to freedom. I feel myself getting lighter, just thinking about it.
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