Look to the mountains and I'ma take you to the sea

[sovay]

Every half-decent day we get lately makes me think that I should be at the sea. Today is cool and light-filled, breezy and brushstroked with cloud at the horizon. Last night after the rain there was a smell of salt that came in with the morning, like a seagull's cries. I hurt too much and slept too little. I feel landlocked.

I had to run an errand this afternoon, which took me past the post office in Winter Hill. Like a surprising number of buildings in our immediate vicinity, it used to be a movie theater. So did the ex-Star Market and the now-Cambridge Health Alliance. All closed—1918, 1923, 1963—before I was born. I couldn't buy a ticket for any of them without a time machine, or without being a ghost. And I thought suddenly that all I am doing when I study the lost cities of film noir is a kind of hauntology, but then I think most things I do are a kind of hauntology. I don't say it in criticism. I don't want to make myself nostalgic for nothing but not now and I don't want to subscribe to a perpetual year zero. I want to know what's under me.

1. Shofar has posted a submission call for their next special issue: What's Jewish About Death? They are looking for creative work as well as academic articles.

2. Courtesy of larryhammer: Rupert Brooke, "Sonnet Reversed." I had no idea when he died on his way to Gallipoli that he was in danger of growing up to be Edwin Arlington Robinson.

3. Whatever else you are doing today, take a few minutes for Margaret Noodin's "Miidash miinawaa zaka'iyan sa: And you have set me on fire." The rest of the article's title is "Translating Sappho into Anishinaabemowin."

Imprecision upsets me. I don't like misrepresenting and I don't like being misunderstood. I don't like discovering that I have conveyed wrong or incomplete information, not just because I feel like an idiot, but because I feel I have contributed materially to the overall inaccuracy of the universe. I had to make peace years ago with the fact that in order to have any commerce with other human beings I had to feel as though I was lying slightly about something all the time, but I still don't enjoy it. I really don't enjoy this administration.

Comments

[justice_turtle]

’in order to have any commerce with other human beings I had to feel as though I was lying slightly about something all the time’

Oh lord, I feel you. In my case it’s especially because of the unlikely trajectories of my backstory, which I can either explain at too much length or elide too smoothly, but... yeah. In so many contexts: what you said. That. *frames words to put them on wall*

[sovay]

In my case it’s especially because of the unlikely trajectories of my backstory, which I can either explain at too much length or elide too smoothly

That's why I have no good answer when greeted with "How are you?" I understand it is a social ritual. All most people want is a check-in. I finally started answering, "I'm alive," which fulfills the ritual criteria without either TMI or dishonesty.

(I could have said that things being wrong upsets me, but I suspect that is true of most people, and the trouble starts with the different definitions of wrong.)

*frames words to put them on wall*

I am glad they are useful.

[kore]

Hahaha, even before I got clinically depressed while at a job I loathed "How are you." And the way people kind of LOOK at you if you don't answer. I would just ignore it, which got me a reputation, lol.

[ethelmay]

My husband answers, "Still standing," with varying degrees of cheerfulness. (I forget whether I've said that here before.)

[lauradi7dw]

I’ve been mentally going through vanished cinemas of Mass Ave, more or less, Cambridge, wondering which ones existed after you were born. Surely the Janus (sort of where Staples is now). Some incarnation of the Harvard Square on Church Street, which was a double feature rep cinema when I first encountered it, plus Saturday midnight Rocky Horror including audience participation. The Central Square Cinema, famous for the five year run of King of Hearts, closed in 1980, but the Orson Welles hung around until its fire, in 1986.
I don’t actually know how old you are.

[sovay]

I don’t actually know how old you are.

I was born in 1981.

spatch and I were just talking about the Central Square Cinema. The Brattle is showing King of Hearts, though not for that long.

[kore]

She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes -- (I had to actually memorize that for a Viclit grad seminar.)

[sovay]

She is older than the rocks among which she sits

That is a really nice thing to hear in the middle of a miserable week.

[rosefox]

I think your final paragraph nails part of what makes the current political situation so especially difficult to handle for me and a lot of other autistic folks. The constant challenging of reality is nails on the mental chalkboard.

[kore]

Yeah, the whole "is this truth/is this reality/what is actually happening" thing is really demoralizing, and disorienting.

[sovay]

Yeah, the whole "is this truth/is this reality/what is actually happening" thing is really demoralizing, and disorienting.

I don't even find it upsetting because it's confusing. I find it upsetting because it's wrong and they know it's wrong and they say it anyway. The world is as it is and they say it's not. It makes me want to scream. Like when you take the time to explain a position to someone with the facts on your side and the evidence in front of their eyes and they still equivocate: "I don't know, it just doesn't feel right" or "I understand what you're saying, but I can't agree." Only it is worse, much worse, because this administration doesn't even bother with the fig leaf of regret. Just a wall of denial. Maybe this is what Goethe meant when he had the Devil call himself der Geist der stets verneint.

[sovay]

The constant challenging of reality is nails on the mental chalkboard.

Yes. It's exhausting.

[lilysea]

in order to have any commerce with other human beings I had to feel as though I was lying slightly about something all the time

I relate to this:

I constantly find myself saying

"I have a migraine" or "I have a headache" when what I really mean is one or more of:
- brainfog;
- mental exhaustion;
- emotional overload;
- Anxiety;
- PTSD;
- aphasia

that causes me to need not to and/or be unable to talk to

the taxi driver;
cashier;
person in line in front of me at the grocery store;
person on the bus/train.

I do genuinely get migraines, but often "I have a migraine" means "I am incapacitated for another reason which is harder to explain and which you may not accept/believe"

[kore]

I personally think that's perfectly fine. A lot of the time I'll tell people I'm "tired," get a laugh, and then I'm safe because they will go on about how exhausted they are too.

[sovay]

I do genuinely get migraines, but often "I have a migraine" means "I am incapacitated for another reason which is harder to explain and which you may not accept/believe"

I hear you. I hope people at least accept the statement and back off.

[moon_custafer]

I decided long ago that the most useful accepted social lie is not “I’m fine thanks,” but “I’m from (name place where one has most recently lived, or lived the longest stretch, rather than spending ten minutes telling one’s entire life story).” Of course that’s a white-privilege thing; I gather everyone else gets “but where are you really from?” if they try to take that shortcut.

[sovay]

I decided long ago that the most useful accepted social lie is not “I’m fine thanks,” but “I’m from (name place where one has most recently lived, or lived the longest stretch, rather than spending ten minutes telling one’s entire life story).”

I have to say, my first response is that this sounds like a regional manners difference, because telling people where I live or where I was born has never stopped them from asking other intrusive questions!

(I used to be asked frequently where I was really from.)

[moon_custafer]

Oh, telling people "where you're from" doesn't stop them from asking further intrusive questions, it just slightly lessens the amount of work you have to do in response....

(I used to be asked frequently where I was really from.)

It's quite possible you were pinging some sort of radar. Which I realize is creepy.

I’ve heard you on a podcast, but can’t recall whether you have one of those “bookworm” accents – not that I’d notice, because so do I, and so do most of my friends.

[selkie]

You are oftentimes a time traveler and have been respectfully credited as a ghost; I suspect you could get tickets, but the question would be returning after the matinee. And not eating the popcorn.

Also, and I say this as a person whose life story has been squooshed into a palatable narrative arc for many a year as far as public consumption goes, and who presumably can tell a good convincing story about fake things: what you're feeling is expressed by William Goldman writing as S. Morgenstern.

"We are men of action; lies do not become us."

[sovay]

You are oftentimes a time traveler and have been respectfully credited as a ghost; I suspect you could get tickets, but the question would be returning after the matinee. And not eating the popcorn.

Good point. Even if it had real butter.

"We are men of action; lies do not become us."

Thank you.

[lilysea]

Another lie I frequently find myself lying is that I've recently had a cold/flu or stomach bug, rather than telling the strict truth, which is that one or more of my chronic illnesses

- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
- Fibromyalgia
- Chronic pain
- Anxiety
- PTSD
- migraine
- and others

have flared up to the point that I couldn't function.

I do this because

a) medical receptionists accept temporary illnesses as reason for cancelling medical specialists appointments without having to pay $200 for the missed appointment, but not chronic illnesses which fluctuate in severity;

b) I don't want to be told about
krill oil
tumeric
comfrey poultices
exercise
positive thinking
that my chronic illnesses don't exist

c) I don't want to have to reveal that level of medical information to the person I'm talking to

[sovay]

a) medical receptionists accept temporary illnesses as reason for cancelling medical specialists appointments without having to pay $200 for the missed appointment, but not chronic illnesses which fluctuate in severity

That does feel like a fundamental misunderstanding of the way that chronic illnesses work.

b) I don't want to be told about

Oh, God, yes.

c) I don't want to have to reveal that level of medical information to the person I'm talking to

Also yes. I wish there were so much less casual conversational assignment of the burden of proof.