Insomnia III

Well shit. That didn’t work.

Two nights in a row was good. Decent effort. Ain’t happening tonight it seems.

I should write something dull, mundane to deter you from reading. I really am enjoying using this damn keyboard, it’s a damn fine keyboard. I’m thinking about having a coffee but the coffee machine’s too loud. So I’m thinking about going for a drive into town for one and that is just absurd. Not so much because it’s late, more so that it’ll likely wake me up more. The drive, not the coffee.

Shit I forgot to start a Notepad parallel save. Done now. I love doing that. For all my usage of the idea of parallel simultaneous thought, I like that I have a physical abstract of it, though it’s more about replication/duplication than parallel simultaneous different thought. OK so that doesn’t work at all.

That’s interesting.
We set out to say a thing when we know we aren’t going to say it, instead we know we’re taking the opportunity to sideline the original subject in order to insert another. Insertion. I’ve discussed memory insertion before, or if not discussed, it’s been mentioned more than once. I remember that.
…
OR DO IT? etcetera.
See?
Bloody grand, that.

This is turning into a SOC piece so I’m going to save it and keep going.

Save.

You’d think insomnia would be an easy thing to detect by now but no matter how long I’ve been subject to it, I’ve never been able to read it. Most of my life I’ve simply waited to go to sleep. Some times the onset of fatigue is gradual, and I can induce sleep fairly early. Sometimes I just keep going until it happens, which can take a fair while.

Yes yes, and my parents tried to tell me to establish a pattern, to go to bed at the same time every night no matter what and it should eventually precipitate sleep at that time. I’m sure that works for some people. They also told me it’s better to be out of bed if I know I’m not going to sleep so there’s that.

Tonight I figured it out when I conjured a particular section of a music piece in my mind and needed to search my memory for what it was. I figured out it was the end section of Yoko Kanno’s Smooth In The Shell, a bonus compilation of music from Stand Alone Complex that came with the multi disc collection on a USB stick. The track is forty-nine minutes long. Instead of cueing it up to the last ten or so minutes, I just played it from the beginning and thought fuckit, the whole thing is great, and it’ll amplify the ending.

I wouldn’t have made that decision were I fatigued in any way, I’d have just gone straight to the end and probably switched off to go to bed. At the moment, thirteen minutes in, I’m wondering what I’ll play next.

Save.

Eventually I’m going to have to stop faffing about and write something of import. Perhaps of less import to you and much more import to me, which is generally the way it goes. I love translating, but my current frame isn’t on the abstract at present, it is very much concentrated on critical analysis, mostly for the fun of it. Also because I have resources and a need to use them. I’m beginning to understand the kind of resource I have and how it changes during cycles. This energy is no good for translation, it’s barely good for processing and I’m keeping away from even reading my previous translation work.

So when I say I can see, I do mostly mean during low cycles, but I guess I can see now too, just that I’m seeing something else. A whole bunch of things. Things that I can engage critical thinking on and from which I can extrapolate really interesting things.

I realise this may turn me into a bastard, which I accept. It’s a bit of a thing and I just have to live with it. No, I don’t want to change because that would mean not doing it and I can’t not do it. Unless I can find something more engaging, I’ll probably still be examining people and iterating about them (drink!). I can appreciate that it sounds very ‘judging’ (don’t get me started – just – today’s not the day), that makes sense. I can see why you’d think that and today I’m not going to attempt convincing you otherwise. Just know that it’s more than that, or rather know that I’ve told you it’s more than that so if you can’t really push past it, you need to trust me. Well, you don’t need to, but it means something if you don’t. It means something if you do, naturally, but if you can’t trust me that it’s not what you think it is then that’s cool, everything is fine, the land is green and good. You may notice the fence or you may not, either way, it’s there and that’s a part of what happens.

See, like most of the bullshit I go on about, many of my devices are common to humans, it’s just that folk tend to be less aware of them because you tend not to engage your cognitive abilities when regarding your own behaviour. Some of it may seem deplorable but the perception of that may be greatly distorted due to historical social norms. Culture plays a massive role in the translating of all actions and the perceived morality you may cast onto them. Culture is inevitable. It’s also not always the best tool with which to craft your own tools of process and iteration (drink!).

Save.

This evening in my detailed discussions of culture and behaviour with my brother, the mechanics of acceptance arose. We touched on it and engaged on it briefly, but it’s a stupendously interesting and intricate mechanic, many faceted and as fragile as it is potentially affirming… by affirming I don’t mean emotionally encouraging in a positive sense, I mean in its ability to affirm something and affix it in place with a concrete hold. Fantastically dangerous stuff.

Many of the emotional processes we engage are wonderfully volatile. They’re extremely powerful, extremely fragile, almost always explosive and almost always cementing. That’s a lot of cement we lay down over time and it’s easy to lose track, I think we do. Then there’s the mechanic of breaking it down but do that too often and you leave yourself overwrought, exhausted and listless. It takes a lot of energy to break that shit down when it’s rock hard. What do you do? I guess there’s a bit of a thing about the way you approach what you lay down and how viscous and/or solid it is, how long it takes to set, whether it should set at all, the hazards of leaving it in a liquid state.

Oh but for the delicious juxtapositions of our emotional demands at times! We demand consistency, predictability but then also impulsiveness and improvisation! We demand safety and assurances yet surprises and thrills! We demand zero risk and also zero boredom (I rather liked my explorations in the mechanics of boredom). We demand a new challenge every day yet we despise the challenges each day offers us! There is so much demand of the external when we are so volatile in the internal.

Save.

At some point perceived threats become real threats, then fears of something conceptual are validated via experience of something real. Our sense of adventure is then checked against mitigating harm, mitigating risk, strategising, anticipating, which may or may not escalate into paranoia. I suppose there are degrees of paranoia and we have a defined difference between paranoia and fear, but I think paranoia is appropriate. We cultivate that paranoia, then the devices we engageto keep that in check are another layer still. While the stimulus was external, all the mechanics are now internal, and the iteration is now governed completely from internal dynamics. Taken to extremes in one direction, we get PTSD which is a very real thing. Neurochemically, we are capable of accelerating into something very close to this all on our own, such is the mind’s power. Nevertheless many of us probably won’t go quite that far, yet what we’re left with is still arduous.

I don’t much talk about joy. Joy exists. It’s interesting, very interesting, actually I realise I do discuss joy, just mostly in person with the people I interact with on a daily basis. Critical thinking is good for joy, it does reveal a lot, there’s much to reveal, much to learn. Maybe I should talk about that later, it’s just that it’s… less… mysterious. The origins of joy are fairly clear, well, at least for me. I understand very well what makes me happy, from what I derive joy. Having a revelation that I’m deriving joy from something entirely new is a magnificent experience, but it’s much more clear than coming to understand I’m iterating fear from something I didn’t expect to. The feat then, to me, becomes more interesting and I tend to want to learn about it (regardless of a solution in sight etc., this is almost non-relevant to the examination and iteration of it).

This is getting boring and I’m at the end of Smooth In The Shell. I hope you’re happy.