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I Lift My Lamp Beside the Golden Door
Jul. 5th, 2011 12:25 amMy first day fully off work in exactly a month. Mom and I put in a vegetable garden on my balcony, which included transplanting Rosemary Rosemarie and Oregano Port Arthur. I will have to decide on new indoor plants, but that is for another day. Otherwise, we watched several first season Friday Night Lights episodes, since this seemed like a patriotic thing to do.
I miss Ciro. When he's not around for an extended time like this, I can't feel correctly; there are not only fewer emotions available to me, but I have trouble expressing the ones that do exist; my full range of emotional expression is snapping at things/people for exactly one sentence, or an abrupt stilted description which I doubt seems truthful.
I will feel, sometimes, overwhelming empathy that ends in either wonder or regret, but I have no capacity to show this to people. It is like trying to convey something abstract without a shared language, only the missing language is emotional. It is hard to fathom not being able to convey basic statements like "this food is good" or "I am sleepy because it's too hot," or to simply sit in a room with someone else in a way that relaxes them instead of makes them anxious. It seems outside the realm of humanity, like something one could only fail at by not trying. But there is a blockage or chasm.
My speech is more and more monotone as time goes by, and my gesture vocabulary barely exists; I find it a challenge to shrug, point, or make eye contact. I don't believe I am making facial expressions often. I talk less and less because I sound angry even when I try to say things without emotional content: what time is dinner? Should we buy this pot or this pot; I like both.
It is frightening to only be able to be a person with the help of another person, who sometimes goes away. I should be better at it by now, but as I get older it doesn't get easier to make these expressions and connections alone; I'm just better and better able to notice they aren't there and other people are disappointed. And it becomes harder to relax and trust myself to do it. I would say it's like stage fright, but there's no adrenaline involved. Just paralysis.
Finished reading The Left Hand of Darkness, which I'd thought I read years ago but had confused with The Lathe of Heaven. (The problem is that Ursula K. LeGuin wrote far too many excellent and influential books; if she'd restricted herself to being less brilliant, I would never have had this trouble.) I identified with Estraven, predictably, and was sad the main narrator reacted to the character as so alien. Have moved on to reading Perfume, which did not work as a film but is so far delightful as a book.
Wrote a bit more of the Unidentified Objects script, although I don't really know which script I'm going to tackle seriously next. Did a bit more research/sketching on the Lancelot backstory for the Arthur project.
--
"I am not hopeful, yet all events show cause for hope." - Estraven
I miss Ciro. When he's not around for an extended time like this, I can't feel correctly; there are not only fewer emotions available to me, but I have trouble expressing the ones that do exist; my full range of emotional expression is snapping at things/people for exactly one sentence, or an abrupt stilted description which I doubt seems truthful.
I will feel, sometimes, overwhelming empathy that ends in either wonder or regret, but I have no capacity to show this to people. It is like trying to convey something abstract without a shared language, only the missing language is emotional. It is hard to fathom not being able to convey basic statements like "this food is good" or "I am sleepy because it's too hot," or to simply sit in a room with someone else in a way that relaxes them instead of makes them anxious. It seems outside the realm of humanity, like something one could only fail at by not trying. But there is a blockage or chasm.
My speech is more and more monotone as time goes by, and my gesture vocabulary barely exists; I find it a challenge to shrug, point, or make eye contact. I don't believe I am making facial expressions often. I talk less and less because I sound angry even when I try to say things without emotional content: what time is dinner? Should we buy this pot or this pot; I like both.
It is frightening to only be able to be a person with the help of another person, who sometimes goes away. I should be better at it by now, but as I get older it doesn't get easier to make these expressions and connections alone; I'm just better and better able to notice they aren't there and other people are disappointed. And it becomes harder to relax and trust myself to do it. I would say it's like stage fright, but there's no adrenaline involved. Just paralysis.
Finished reading The Left Hand of Darkness, which I'd thought I read years ago but had confused with The Lathe of Heaven. (The problem is that Ursula K. LeGuin wrote far too many excellent and influential books; if she'd restricted herself to being less brilliant, I would never have had this trouble.) I identified with Estraven, predictably, and was sad the main narrator reacted to the character as so alien. Have moved on to reading Perfume, which did not work as a film but is so far delightful as a book.
Wrote a bit more of the Unidentified Objects script, although I don't really know which script I'm going to tackle seriously next. Did a bit more research/sketching on the Lancelot backstory for the Arthur project.
--
"I am not hopeful, yet all events show cause for hope." - Estraven
