Neuromagic

I'm fascinated by what scientists are learning about the mechanics of the brain. Sleights of Mind by Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde is the latest of a series of books I've read on this topic. It describes magic tricks in terms of neuroscience. I highly recommend it.

So much of what we perceive, so much of what we think we know, is illusion.

Ego Intent

A psychiatrist once told me that I have a "fragile ego." I don't like the sound of that. I am myself. It's true that I tend to be avoidant of other people, elusive and evasive. This is something I struggle against. There are many things I want to say, but I still feel a need to be secretive, to hide, to never let anyone know me. The compulsion to communicate conflicts with the habit of concealment. That habit I learned as the child of abusive parents. It was a survival strategy, and it worked. I escaped that environment. But the lessons I learned from my parents do not serve me well among ordinary people.

So I communicate in spasms, awkward and unwieldy with words. I'm choosing to use this blog as a kind of therapy for that, a place where I can communicate regularly without anxiety or stress. Whether or not anyone reads this. There's so much I want to say, and I don't think I will be very good at saying it at first. This is an experiment and maybe it will work.

Stranger than True

I find it strange how people relate to strangers. For most of human history, encounters with strangers were rare and intense. Casual contact with people I don't know is harder for me than for most, but I imagine it's hard on everyone - a source of subliminal anxiety and fear. My husband, who has Asperger's syndrome, is largely unencumbered by social pressures. I find that fascinating, and I wish I could learn it.

People talk as if Asperger's people have no empathy, but that's not true. In many ways my husband is kinder than I am. He just doesn't like lies, or saving face, or covering his ass.

Which is why he is unemployed. He's a brilliant man, but - so far - too odd for people to hire. His father wants him to get SSI. Because telling the truth is a mental illness.

Fairfax dreams

Nobody seems to understand why I hate living in Fairfax. But the truth is simple - these people are snobs. There is a lot of positive emphasis on multiculturalism, but that's just a kind of liberal sparkle on the intrinsic capitalist attitude.

I don't like politics, I especially don't like being so close to the center of politics. There's a sense of shady ventures taken with callous cruelty - it disturbs my dreams. Some nights, in a hypnogogic state, I see faces and images of people shifting and striving for ascendancy, domination, clout, control. People I don't know, people I have never met.