It Feels Like a Movie

I have been looking at interesting neuroscience experiments for the past couple of days, and keep getting lost in the vacuum of “my brain does what now?!!”

I have spent a lot of time on the website You Are Not So Smart, which explains how bits of the brain and subconscious work citing famous and interesting neuroscience and psychology experiments as evidence. It’s all in easy to understand non science prose. Yay.

You Are Not So Smart groups its subjects together under banners such as “Coffee,” “Procrastination,” and “Misattribution of Arousal.” 

I know what your thinking.

Not like Radiolab actually.

It doesnt present it with the same upbeatness/sense of wonder/ emotionally manipulative “CRY DAMM YOU.” There is less “OHHHHH, everything is just a little bit mysterious and wonderful” and more “this is how it is, suck it up.”

It keeps it real. It ruins all the illusions. It’s kind of mean. It told me how many calories were in the signature hot chocolate I use to get from starbucks every day for a year. Its about 500. 

(It didn’t really but it would point at the cup if it could and go “you know that will make you fat, right?”)

But I like it. I like to know I have less control over my actions and brain then I could possibly imagine. I like to know how my robotics work. I like to get my sense of individuality squashed a little. It’s something to fight back against, even if its only imagined fighting back, and i’m actually just deeply conforming (I am on tumblr right?)

It’s nice for someone to give you a head map to explain….

Why do I want to eat cookies when people are mean to me? 

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2012/04/17/ego-depletion/

Why do I have a tumblr? (Other then the abandonment issues/Avengers Gifs)

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/10/05/the-benjamin-franklin-effect/

Why have I not gotten over everyone laughing at me at Hannah Sneath’s Party simply for turning up? Whatever. Someone drove her dads porsche into a field so I got the last laugh. Although I did get trapped in her downstairs toilet for half an hour and have had claustrophobia ever since. 

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2009/11/11/learned-helplessness/

I think the most important take home message from the website is this….

Sugar makes you less likely to make rash decisions. Next time your thinking Tattoo/crazy hair style/Vegas wedding, have a freddo, wait five minutes. You might just have been hungry.

I know little to nothing of the work of Martin Amis, or that of his father Kingsley Amis but I listened to a podcast today in which he was interviewed about both.

You can find it here 

http://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/allan-gregg-in-conversation/id205734182

It’s number 94.

As someone with a father, who likes to write (me not my father) I found it a pretty interesting listen, although it didn’t make me feel inspired to read any of his work although I know I should. It’s on the list.

Here are the two ideas I liked

Firstly, he talks about “failures of tolerance” and the attributes, both positive and negative, are fathers pass on to us.

He mentions how he viewed increasing “failures of tolerance,” in Kingsley as he got older, and how he can see the same ones in himself but is quick to stomp them out. This articulates, better then I ever could, a fear I have about procreating. I fear I will be a dick to my kids the same way my dad could be to me as I grew up. Those little lapses in patience that you pass on like a nasty virus. I fear the pain of childbirth, and the expense of clothing and dropping my child on its head, but mostly I fear being a dick. 

I can picture myself shouting at a smaller version of me

“Why did you put banana skins in the hallway?”

“I was scientifically testing the truth behind segments in my morning cartoon.”

“What did you learn?”

“it’s all lies and the world is a cold dark place.”

“Okay. Well I’m sorry for shouting. I had a genetic tolerance failure.”

“Whatevs.”

The other idea I liked, (which I shall put in quotes to illustrate) is “Literary stimulation.”

Martin talks about his fascination with America, and how he visits the country for no other reason then for “literary stimulation.” He says England is too evolved for writers. His anthropological approach to the culture of America seemed both honest and insulting, like the most perfect back handed compliment. Your interesting, like a bug under a microscope.

I guess professional writers may not always be talking to you for the right reasons.

In summary I like “Genetic Failures in Tolerance,” and feel it could be the title to the follow up of “They Fuck You Up,” and “Literary Stimulation,” and feel it could be where sex is going wrong. 

I got a coffee from a Starbucks in Amsterdam, and the happiest women in the world served me. My eyes were tired and they made her deformed looking, like she was licked by flames, or at least her mother was born into flames.

“Summer I love that name!” She said noting a name onto a coffee cup. Everyone is European attractive. Their hair…

“Macchiato for Maria Bella, what a lovely name!” Now I was down the end of the counter. Next up is Elizabeth! How will they announce mine. Incorrectly I bet. I will be Helen. Well let me be Helen! She is braver then me with a weakness for fruity pastries and she never gave up on long jump.

Reading comic books can make me sad when I feel like diverging from usual superhero canon of work, moving into the more emotional genre of “comic book as memoir.” A cathartic kind of sad. I wanted something highbrow. Jeffrey Brown’s “Unlikely,” chronicles the loss of his virginity and first major heartbreak as a 24-year-old art student in Chicago. Profoundly depressing, paradox? Pseudo sadness. The style of drawing is appropriately crude, delicate or overtly complex drawings would not have served the purpose of a book such as this. Loss of virginity is wholly individual, but the stories normally the same; it’s not what anyone expected. The book comprises of two page strips that document episodes in the relationship, some are obvious, others - you have to read between the lines. I didn’t cry much. It served as a powerful reminder of how much baggage we all bring to the plate when involved with another. A plate full of baggage, emotional, OCD, habitual habits, weird food stuff, you hide it at first but not for long when they find your tinned secrets, tuna and mushy peas, but he cant eat off blue plates. His emotional baggage plate is the colour of boys clothing. He wants boys, I want girls, but we still have time. I need proper insurance first. I would recommend it to those who like to indulge their soppier side. The serious and heartfelt nature of the topics discussed work wonderfully expressed through the medium of comics.  There is something about the words expressed by the author that can only be fully appreciated when combined with visual interpretation. It makes the text richer and makes the reader feel like a film is playing out in their head. I told him that I play films in my head when I am waiting for things, transport, bus, the hairdresser to shut up. She always talks to me about The Vampire Diaries. I won’t read sad comic books when I am happy, and I have been happy for three months. I might have been before. I can remember in three-month increments. I had a phase, hunting for autobiographical comics, soaking up as many different varieties as possible. I can’t remember any of them now. I can remember some of them, but they are vague, blurry, about childhoods and awkwardness but last page the realizations. One was about a diet, drawings of a fat girl gone thin through a food pyramid, the calorie intake expended through gardening. Don’t garden and just do Pilates, run and jump and sweat? Dig a grave or five. I thought she must spend so much time thinking about her diet, but something about the drawings of bread and hot dogs made me want some breaded hot dog. I guess she salivated onto the paper, into the bread making it disintegrate. Read something sadder, he pointed it in my direction, and I had been happy but it was about an art critic who died of a brain tumor, he left behind a wife and a child. He wants boys and I want girls, he fantasies about kindle fires with them, but I just want to maintain my health so I don’t have to get life insurance.

Ten Minutes before Run: Internal battle to motivate self takes place. Reasons to stay on sofa versus contemplation of alcohol intake from previous night. Testing of reoccurring leg injury hoping it will still twinge enough to justify not running. Realising not running means arduous gym workout. Look at tummy and thighs in mirror to shock self into running, tummy from wine evident or excusable?

Five Minutes before Run: Strapping on leg support guaranteed to cut off circulation. Hunt for running leggings and sports bra, inevitably at bottom of washing bag having not been washed since last run and smelling a little like musk and regrettable.

Two Minutes before Run: Trying to work out whether to listen to podcast, music or both. Stand in hallway waiting for podcast to download. Pray for rain.

One Minute before Run: Stand on steps outside of house thumbing iphone for the right music to kickstart this epic journey. Think about route. So bored of the routes. If the music isn’t right to start then motivation will not kick in. Begin to feel slight dread for body and hope this doesn’t hurt or don’t feel exhausted within the first minute making entire run boring and painful.

Run for a bit. Leg not twinging yet. Mostly going downhill so filled with euphoria at ease of run. Listening to Katy Perry. Feel upbeat. Get barked at by dog and secretly hope it chases you so you can use your running habit for practical reasons.

Ten mintues into Run: Leg twinges a bit. Running badly and awkwardly. Aware that support makes left butt cheek look a bit weird. Switch from pop to podcast due to boring surroundings. Tunnel. Pavement. Attempt to acknowledge other runners. Look at their technique. Look at running couples and feel jealous.

Twenty minutes into Run: It’s raining, can’t feel hands but burning up underneath hoody. Tempted to take off hoody but afraid will accidentally die of hypothermia and look like an idiot. Podcast causing laughter and slow running. Get beeped at by men in white vans and become confused due to sweaty red itchy face being unconventionally attractive. Switch to instrumental music.

Twenty five minutes into Run: It’s a hill. Loose motivation. Stop to catch breath after hill and find rap song from woman’s perspective to increase motivation.

Thirty minutes into Run: See weird running runner and feel superior. See group of teenagers and feel like an idiot. Start to loop back past the river. Increase pace to get home quicker and wonder which pub or café to pop into on a nice Sunday walk along here with new acquaintances and relatives. Feel smug at people eating pies. Want pie.

Forty Minutes into Run: Feel appreciation for life and all surroundings, feel one with nature and music. Sprint whenever the music hits the hooky part. Feel affinity with other runners, understand everything that has passed between you and I, and this, this all makes sense. Tell self to run more often and for longer distances. Enter that 10K. Take off hoody and run like a child with beating arms.

Fifty Minutes: Legs twinging. Ran too fast. Blew it all. Hobble home. Start to feel cold and sticky.

I finish a run and on the run I went from feeling pain down my left thigh, tedium, tiredness and the urge to stop to feeling appreciation for my surroundings, thinking of the long walks I must take along this harbour, wondering which café or pub would be best to visit with a newly acquainted friend, a family member, a lover I have yet to pin down. I remember this feeling, it echo’s after I stop running every time but I can never recall it enough at the start to find motivation anything other then lacking. Every day is the same internal battles as I talk myself in and out of doing exercise. As I look at my thighs, my stomach in the mirror and wonder if they can hold out for one more day of inactivity. As I test the ongoing strain that grips my leg, and has done for the last two months, as I put on my support, and my headphones and my song choices, and should I listen to a podcast instead? Every time I step out the door with my keys in my left hand my iphone in my right I am filled with dread, the anticipation of the pain and the removal of breath and the hill two miles away. Why do I do this to myself? My negative thinking is rooted firmly and securely in my brain and it secures itself weighty and heavy on my back, on my feet. But when I stop, when I have a good run, when the instrumental music keys into pick me up just as I fly past a beautiful reflection on the water, I feel like I am in this film where I finally understand everything, myself, you and what has passed between us. I feel wonderful, I feel smugness at the business men sitting outside with lunch and affinity with the lycra clad couples who I pass in the opposite direction. I feel drunk. I wonder what running whilst drunk would feel like. I suppose it would feel amazing for five minutes then nauseating for the rest. Very nauseating.

I will become a far more boring person when I start to date again. I will be marked by the ultimate rejection and it will lead me to be an agreeable undynamic mess of a man. I will be drawn to women of a similar ilk; messy sooty-eyed desperate lumps that want someone to notice them. We will be inoffensive to each other in inoffensive restaurants, and there will be a explosive minefield of upsetting subjects neither of us will bring up, my divorce, her abusive ex husband, whether we believe in God or not…

I want inoffensive conversations with inoffensive women over bland food.

Here are some thoughts. They are not related to each other. I don’t think there is a common thread I can disguise as a point, apart from the fact they are inconsequential.

1) I was in a lift and it opened on all the floors I did not press. Each floor was empty. Bereft of souls on the other side. It unnerved me because I had seen this tension build before. It is a common device used in the world of fiction and my brain grew up there. I hysterically conceded this was a precursor to doom. I wondered if the final floor (my floor) would open onto a nightmare, a vision of Lovecraftian proportions with tentacles and blood and grit.

Granted, it was late at night and I was on my own and I was sleepy, but the sound the lift made as it tore itself apart was swift and final and as though designed to induce terror by a Hollywood technical department. It was a lift with a stock sound. It felt like it was doing it’s job, but with a touch of inevitability. Nothing was on the other side.

2) I was having a discussion with my boyfriend about when we were young, and we started raking over the various pubescent ailments we had suffered from, how we weren’t cool, had bad skin, were overweight etc, and I wondered how all the clear skinned cool girls looked back on this time. I wondered if they felt left out when others around them compared the puppy fat they shed or the pink Lycra cycling shorts they wore or the boy’s hair cuts they thought were a good idea.

Did they say “Tell me about it, when I was young I developed breasts at the appropriate time, knew how to dress, understood the value of hair straighteners and was envied by all, BUT I really wish I had been a awkward gawky teenager because I hear they turn out more determined and successful.”

3) Oral Fixations. In general, but not like that. The correlation I have between putting chewing gum in my mouth, and how long I was breastfed for. Probably too long.

4) What if you felt ugly at school and depended on that helping you turn out to be successful? But you weren’t?

5) I might start writing fake poet obituaries instead of ticking everything off my do to list. I have an app on my phone and its pretty long, get ears syringed, clean camera, go to Edinburgh fringe etc. But if I ticked it all before One Pm on some idle Tuesday then what to do with the day (other then more art, more learning, going to the arbitirum (the tree museum, what is that called?).

Everyone loves putting off inevitable admin and imagining future me will certainly get it done. Catching up means you have less time to procrastinate on things that turn out to be pointless. But fruitful. But pointless.

It is said that this notable female poet was born in the North of the country, but that is up for dispute. Her bones were found in the South of the country, but some suspect they were moved there by her last lover in order to displace suspicion they were responsible for her untimely death.

But whose death is timely or planned? I knew the poet moderately. We frequented the same dinners, the same cafes and the same reading circuits. Sometimes I got to perform my work before her, mostly prose about a childhood spent in warm foreign climates. I moved around a lot as a child.

She was talented, and like so many other notable female poets, was well educated at a high-ranking university. She had the brain to be anything, but instead of being anything (a doctor or a lawyer) she chose to invest her time in words. She discovered her love of poetry in a class and honed it in an extra curricular club. She, of course, had the monetary support and the emotional derision of disappointed parents.

She came from money, and died with none. I guess that’s the most romantic way to die. She spent most of hers on décor. She hated copies; lack of originality. She would only fill her house with costly vintage and originals. She had original couches, artwork and cutlery. I wish I could have visited her dwelling in the countryside to see some of those dying cupboards and tragic mantelpieces.

She hated my work. I walked into a green room at a notable literature festival near Wales to hear her use the word “fluffy,” in reference to my name. She did not respect my tales of sweltering heat and mosquito nets and mud tracks viewed from a four-wheeled car. I suppose she had a point. I played the ignorant and went straight for the free ginger nut biscuits and watery coffee.

She was first published in the 1960’s in a small anthology of authors local to her. Her short poem on the possibility of a life without men was met with smiles, a pat on a head and support from what she would later refer to as the “pointed leftfield.” She hated the leftfield. She thought it was pointed. She thought it highlighted her subject matter as different and effected rather then being just there. She pretended she didn’t court attention but all her follow up work was offensive and contested and debated.

I discovered her at the library during a summer spent in staticness. My family had moved back to the UK and I knew no one my age so was left in isolation, but not loneliness, and would read to fill up time and promise. I was looking for something to really side wind me and she was in a section I had not explored.

The slim volume of poetry confused me at first. I was not educated in the beauty of linguistics and my emotional intellect was only just beginning to flourish. I did not understand the sly references to burgeoning sexuality and although I thought I knew why my older sister cried, I didn’t really know why my older sister cried but I did find a morsel of intrigue in those twelve poems. There was something in it which excited me but I found it difficult to articulate, like explaining the reasons behind your favourite colour or parent.

She went on to win prizes and pass comment and declare how ill at ease she was with these labels, but she kept on appearing on the television and she kept being the mouthpiece, for me, for others.

I tried to write like her, like so many women of my age and ilk and I went to university and tried to carbon copy myself but without the same incentive. My incentive was not my own.

I married a nice quiet man, and she did the same.

Her nice quiet man was a few decades older then her and her work changed and mellowed, filled with love and platitudes, whilst mine became bitter. Hers was a pre-emptive strike against the death of the older man and mine was a postnatal strike against the death of imaginary children.

She mourned her husband before he was gone but she did it with armour off and a best seller in her hands.

He died five years later and her words lost their simple beauty. They became steel cut again. She lost the brief softness of love and found a hatred of God and the ever-turning ball of nature. She was childless and I was barren, but I did not long for children anymore. I wrote, and my husband, the naïve man who was always less then the creativity would allow, encouraged me economically and with regular hot drinks.

She aged, and her work became less relevant. Other people overtook her, and soon her ideas became commonplace and people forgot they were hers to start with. They were foundations that wore down, and I soon tired of her inability to adapt and change. She was the original and the origins were shifting. I began to write of my ex pat childhood and people liked it, the people in the right places. My husband and I kept trying for babies and I never told him I could not produce.

I wrote in volumes and I spoke at schools, theatres and on the radio. I was published in newspapers and all my talk of tigers seen through the luxury of a well-built porch became a part of my ghost children’s curriculum.

She spoke out more and more, and said things that were considered ridiculous, relic and dinosaur like with a focus on the past. She said things hadn’t changed, but others insisted they had. She took on young lovers, and I would see her at these public appearances shepherded around with men I always assumed to be her nephews, but there caresses were more then friendly, more then intimate.

I moved to be near her but after that “fluffy” comment she refused to acknowledge me. When my husband left me for someone else I sat in a café she came into hoping she would offer me a tissue for my tears. Or a pen. Or a knife. But she didn’t, she floated by indifferently, alone or with a young man. Drinking coffee or red wine. Eating spinach or a cake.

When she died under suspicious circumstances people lauded her up again. They wrote about her genius, her unhappiness, her depression and her drinking. They ventured guesses to her private mind and printed them as truth. They started charities and bursaries in her name and they asked me, a natural successor according to some, to write about her influence on me. I did not.

I wrote poisonous words about my ex husband, and his new pregnant wife. I wrote about the plumpness of her ankles, and I compared the child to a mollusc, to a tumour. I sent it to a prominent newspaper, and they published it in a special on post-modern poetry.

They found her newest work, unfinished, and her family claimed it was her greatest, it was going back to the roots and they cashed in her cheques and I found it meagre and wanting. Her poem on the woman in the café who wished to dance on her grave with oversized shoes seemed particularly derivative.