Fandom Snowflake: Challenge 13 Memory
Jan. 25th, 2022 10:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithChallenge 13.
In your own space, share a favorite memory about fandom: the first time you got into fandom, the last time a fanwork touched your heart, wild times with fellow fans (whether on-line or off-line), a lovely comment you’ve received or have left for someone. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
My mother read me The Hobbit when I was four. I can still recite the beginning from memory:
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Of course, my parents read to me constantly. They read all kinds of things, but a few of them stand out, and that's one of the most important.
We had squeezed onto the couch together, lying down, and I was getting big enough that we just barely fit. I felt like I was about to fall off, so I kept squirming around trying to find a more comfortable position. Mom thought that meant I wasn't enjoying the book and asked if I wanted to stop. I insisted that I was enjoying it and just needed a better position. So we wriggled around a bit to find something more secure, and we went on reading. You could say ... something Tookish woke in me.
I exist as much in that moment as in this one. Time is not linear.
That experience did a lot to remind me of who I am and what I do. It's part of my love for storytelling and adventure, food and song and cheer, family and teamfamily, poetry, xenolinguistics, worldbuilding, and the awareness that war is usually not worth the cost. It's why I still refer to a museum as a "mathom-house" and occasionally buy things for other people on my birthday. It's where I learned the hurt/comfort ratchet, because every hardship is followed by some chance to rest and recover. That way you can crank the tension much higher without breaking either the characters or the audience.
By first grade, I was reading adult books; probably before then, but I'm sure of that point. In third grade, I read The Lord of the Rings. I was always bored in reading class, so I was reading that under my desk. The teacher grabbed the book out of my hands and said that I couldn't possibly be reading it. I launched into an enthusiastic description of "The Departure of Boromir." The little kids all turned to stare at me, horrified, their eyes as wide as saucers. The teacher handed the book back to me and admitted that if I was reading that, I didn't need "reading class," and I should just read quietly whatever I wanted. She's the only person who ever did that. It was one of many signs that I really wasn't coming at things from the same angle as other people.
These are scenes in my life, as real as the current one. I live in the past as much as the present. Sometimes, like Bilbo dashing out his door, I get a sense that a moment, a decision, is particularly meaningful; a glimpse into a future, or different futures, depending on that choice. A chance to change things, to make a difference, and to do so mindfully. Part of that comes from storytelling, from the ability to parse a sequence of events as a plot with branches and choices.
My mother passed away in December, but in this, she is still with me. Time is not linear.
In your own space, share a favorite memory about fandom: the first time you got into fandom, the last time a fanwork touched your heart, wild times with fellow fans (whether on-line or off-line), a lovely comment you’ve received or have left for someone. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
My mother read me The Hobbit when I was four. I can still recite the beginning from memory:
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Of course, my parents read to me constantly. They read all kinds of things, but a few of them stand out, and that's one of the most important.
We had squeezed onto the couch together, lying down, and I was getting big enough that we just barely fit. I felt like I was about to fall off, so I kept squirming around trying to find a more comfortable position. Mom thought that meant I wasn't enjoying the book and asked if I wanted to stop. I insisted that I was enjoying it and just needed a better position. So we wriggled around a bit to find something more secure, and we went on reading. You could say ... something Tookish woke in me.
I exist as much in that moment as in this one. Time is not linear.
That experience did a lot to remind me of who I am and what I do. It's part of my love for storytelling and adventure, food and song and cheer, family and teamfamily, poetry, xenolinguistics, worldbuilding, and the awareness that war is usually not worth the cost. It's why I still refer to a museum as a "mathom-house" and occasionally buy things for other people on my birthday. It's where I learned the hurt/comfort ratchet, because every hardship is followed by some chance to rest and recover. That way you can crank the tension much higher without breaking either the characters or the audience.
By first grade, I was reading adult books; probably before then, but I'm sure of that point. In third grade, I read The Lord of the Rings. I was always bored in reading class, so I was reading that under my desk. The teacher grabbed the book out of my hands and said that I couldn't possibly be reading it. I launched into an enthusiastic description of "The Departure of Boromir." The little kids all turned to stare at me, horrified, their eyes as wide as saucers. The teacher handed the book back to me and admitted that if I was reading that, I didn't need "reading class," and I should just read quietly whatever I wanted. She's the only person who ever did that. It was one of many signs that I really wasn't coming at things from the same angle as other people.
These are scenes in my life, as real as the current one. I live in the past as much as the present. Sometimes, like Bilbo dashing out his door, I get a sense that a moment, a decision, is particularly meaningful; a glimpse into a future, or different futures, depending on that choice. A chance to change things, to make a difference, and to do so mindfully. Part of that comes from storytelling, from the ability to parse a sequence of events as a plot with branches and choices.
My mother passed away in December, but in this, she is still with me. Time is not linear.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-01-25 05:06 pm (UTC)Your parents obviously released a love of reading that's steered you well throughout life.
My mother passed away in December, but in this, she is still with me. Time is not linear.
I'm so glad she remains close ♥
Thank you!
Date: 2022-01-25 05:14 pm (UTC)Yeah, and whenever someone says, "We're not lost, we're on an adventure," I reply, "Nasty uncomfortable things -- make you late for dinner!"
These two things are equally true.
>> Your parents obviously released a love of reading that's steered you well throughout life.<<
Sooth. The writing has its roots in the reading.
>> My mother passed away in December, but in this, she is still with me. Time is not linear.
I'm so glad she remains close ♥ <<
Very much so.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-01-25 07:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-01-25 09:35 pm (UTC)I can't say I exist as much in some other moment as now, but to my parents' disappoinment I've never been great at living in the now, either. I've improved my productive imagining to catastrophizing ratio, thanks therapy and life experience. But I'm still stuck on things that happened twenty years ago. I know healing from trauma is like that, but I'm frustrated. And feeling guilty for whining so much (of course, I've always felt that way, if feeling like your problems are Not Enough and you're just being difficult is not in the DSM as a trauma response it should be. But there's gotta be a point where it's true.). Even with therapy and self-help articles and whatnot, getting over anything on purpose has never gone well for me.
I don't remember my parents reading to me. They definitely did, but after I learned at like 4 or 5,a combination of my impatience and them encouraging me to Be Mature led to that not being a thing, I think. Or I forgot, my memory of being a small child is not much.
Damn it, I know we had good days, but no nice story comes to mind at present.
Thoughts
Date: 2022-01-25 11:12 pm (UTC)Okay, the free will argument attaches to the linear time perspective. If time is a line, then it is seen as either predetermined or not.
Time is globular. It is possible to move within that mass freely in any direction. It's fluid, ever-changing, full of all possibilities.
Think of gravity for comparison. Inside a gravity well, it looks like gravity is what sticks you to the planet's surface. But outside a gravity well, you can see that gravity actually governs the movement of bodies in relation to each other -- the stars and planets and galaxies aren't stuck together, but are dancing in motion. Two different perspectives of the same source.
From a temporal gravity well, that is, incarnate in a body, time looks linear -- if you don't look too closely. Even here there are clues, from quantum physics to "time flies" to the fact that love is immortal.
Divination is about reading probabilities, what is most likely based on current conditions. Things might change. A leaf approaching a fork in the river could go either way, but is more likely to follow the larger branch. A fish can choose where to go. Some people are like leaves, some are like fish. It depends not only on what they think about free will, but how they comprehend time itself.
>>I can't say I exist as much in some other moment as now, but to my parents' disappoinment I've never been great at living in the now, either.<<
Navigating the timestream is not easy; it takes practice. This includes recalling stored memories on purpose, appreciating the now, and planning ahead. They all require different skills that take time to build. Different cultures have different tools. Buddhism and therianthropy are two examples of places to learn "in the now."
>> I've improved my productive imagining to catastrophizing ratio, thanks therapy and life experience. <<
That's good.
I have a very powerful extrapolative engine in my head. If I don't give it something constructive to do, it will find something destructive. But it cannot simultaneously ruminate on insoluble problems and calculate a speculative ecosystem or plot a storyline.
>> But I'm still stuck on things that happened twenty years ago. I know healing from trauma is like that, but I'm frustrated. <<
Trauma is frustrating. The earlier and longer it happened, the more impact it tends to have. Understand that it changes the brain on a very physical level. We're not talking just about the psychological issues like if you miss the developmental window for a given skill, it is difficult or impossible to learn later. Sometimes imprint vulnerability can help with that, but this culture has very little fluency with creating and utilizing that in healthy ways. The physical changes include both neural development and biochemistry. That makes it hard to do some things, and way too easy to do others -- kind of like how a joint injury might make an arm not go in one direction or pop out of socket in another.
It is not your fault that life in general or other people in particular stepped on your brain while it was growing and now it has scars. You can learn to work with them, or around them, to some extent but they won't entirely disappear as long as you're wearing that body. This sucks, but it also helps remember that it's not a personal failing, any more than if someone had pulled your arm out of socket and then it never quite worked normally afterwards.
>> And feeling guilty for whining so much <<
Self-compassion might help, especially the exercise about "What would you say to a friend with this issues?"
https://self-compassion.org/the-three-elements-of-self-compassion-2/
https://self-compassion.org/category/exercises/
If you were just whining, that might be a concern. Certainly there are people who do that, and they are annoying, and usually their problems don't get solved. But you have indicated that you've worked on these problems, and done therapy, so you're not just whining. You have residual problems from the past. That happens. Its origin in the past doesn't mean it hurts any less. You compensate for it as best you can, and acknowledge that you may not be able to get rid of all the lingering effects. You're not responsible for fixing everything -- especially cleaning up the mess that someone or something made of your brain -- only for making an honest effort to do what you can.
>> (of course, I've always felt that way, if feeling like your problems are Not Enough and you're just being difficult is not in the DSM as a trauma response it should be. <<
I have not seen it, but that is a logical observation and matches what I have seen in many trauma survivors.
>> But there's gotta be a point where it's true.). <<
See above re: whining without making any effort to work the problem. Even if your efforts all fail, the attempt alone gives you grounds to mope about how nothing is helping.
>> Even with therapy and self-help articles and whatnot, getting over anything on purpose has never gone well for me. <<
That's what trauma does. It fucks up your ability to adapt, to change, to move on.
Basically, these guys are assholes.
There are things that can help, though. Therapy works for some people. Others prefer meditation, hypnosis, prayer, or enthogens. Some herbs or medications can fix the biochemistry aspects for some people. Stacking-sorting games address the "stuck" problem of traumatic stress. Timebinding activities can improve ability to put memories in their place and move on. This includes things like timelines and scrapbooks that help sequence events (from the perspective of a linear timeline in a temporal gravity well). For a nonlinear approach, consider collage, which helps show the connections between multiple things at the same time. By creating a reference, you can help your brain function more like you want it to, kind of like using a therapeutic wrap or brace to support a limb with lingering damage. If you haven't found methods that work really well for you yet, just keep an eye on the field and maybe something new will catch your attention. What humans know about this would fit in a thimble, so plenty of new stuff is emerging.
I'm working with this stuff myself right now. My mother passed away in December. A life complete, like a painting, that only now can be seen in its whole. For me, I'm writing down memories and stuff to help mark the transition, to work this into the story of my life. Deliberate, purposeful timebinding to handle a challenging situation. I've worked with these things enough in the past to have a good idea what works for me personally.
>> I don't remember my parents reading to me. They definitely did, but after I learned at like 4 or 5,a combination of my impatience and them encouraging me to Be Mature led to that not being a thing, I think. Or I forgot, my memory of being a small child is not much.<<
Huh. My dad read me The Yearling when I was six. I was reading adult books myself at that age. I just liked reading together, and I liked storytelling too. Different people remember things in different ways, though.
>> Damn it, I know we had good days, but no nice story comes to mind at present. <<
That sucks. :( Maybe ask other people for examples, and record them somehow so at least you'll have those perspectives.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2022-01-26 05:08 am (UTC)>>Think of gravity for comparison. Inside a gravity well, it looks like gravity is what sticks you to the planet's surface. But outside a gravity well, you can see that gravity actually governs the movement of bodies in relation to each other -- the stars and planets and galaxies aren't stuck together, but are dancing in motion. Two different perspectives of the same source.<<
That... almost makes sense. I can sorta buy it, but I can't... I may just not have a brain that can do that right now. Maybe I didn't download that module. But I don't have to understand the big pieces, necessarily, just figure out what I might need to do about them. Don't need to know machine code to use a computer.
>>Some people are like leaves, some are like fish. It depends not only on what they think about free will, but how they comprehend time itself.<<
I believe in free will, but I also believe in Purpose and Destiny. And reincarnation. It's a little scattershot and doesn't always fit together great, but here we are.
>>Navigating the timestream is not easy; it takes practice. This includes recalling stored memories on purpose, appreciating the now, and planning ahead. They all require different skills that take time to build. Different cultures have different tools. Buddhism and therianthropy are two examples of places to learn "in the now."<<
I'm pretty good at recall when I want it, and I certainly think about the future plenty, although resource problems make meaningful planning hard. And I imagine plenty of fiction. The now... I mean, I'm not actually sure how much I want to be better at the now? Like, yeah, I'm almost always considering the future or the past (or fiction), and when I'm not I'm usually either in flow or with my favorite people. And it would maybe be nice to be a little better at not thinking, but there's so much else to do... I've been told a lot of times I should care about it, but mostly not by people whose judgement I trust.
>>We're not talking just about the psychological issues like if you miss the developmental window for a given skill, it is difficult or impossible to learn later.<<
I do sometimes wonder if I just fuckin missed some kind of window on, like, self-care and household management and food management. Like, I don't know of any official thing saying that's a thing, but I get all the theory and it's still fucking impossible for me to do much of it. Then again, all of that is very colored by trauma. I certainly missed the window when one is expected to pick it up, but that's not the same thing at all as missing an essential window.
>>Sometimes imprint vulnerability can help with that, but this culture has very little fluency with creating and utilizing that in healthy ways.<<
"Imprint vulnerability"? I presume this is related to the kind of imprinting ducks do on their parents or whatever, but I'm not familiar with vulnerability in relation.
>>Self-compassion might help, especially the exercise about "What would you say to a friend with this issues?"<<
I mean, I know. Like, I would tell anyone else they need to give themself a break and that they can't do everything, and I should take my own advice, and that makes perfect sense, but instead of actually doing that my brain switches tracks to some other track of mean things. I think it's the one about how I'm so self-centered for ... well basically for existing, honestly. For some reason it's hard to remember right now what the thought process looks like, which is suspicious. I was thinking about it earlier. I suspect it's hiding on purpose. I was thinking that it's similar to this thing I first saw acknowledged in The Body Keeps the Score which is that I can understand why my thought process is unhelpful and illogical, and that just helps me keep it under wraps. It doesn't make me feel much better.
>> But you have indicated that you've worked on these problems, and done therapy, so you're not just whining.<<
I stopped therapy... wow, like, winter 2014ish, I guess? 2016? Ugh, time. My therapist broke up with me because she was shrinking her schedule and she thought I was her most healthy patient, I guess? I get that kind of thing from therapists. I think my articulateness and tendency to intellectualize throws them off. Or maybe she was right, it's not like I know her other patients. Regardless, it was a difficult time. I did look around a bit, but at the time my work was on a very strict 8:30-5:30 schedule, and therapists outside that time are hard to find, even in a large city. Especially since one has to find the right one. And ultimately, I feel like talk therapy has done most of the improvement work it can. It's a decent coping thing, I like having a sounding board, but I don't live with a gaslighter anymore and therapy is expensive. I think movement or art therapy might be able to get at some stuff I haven't been able to touch with words, but that shit is expensive, hard to find, and not covered by insurance. I'd also really love to try that group thing also described in TBKtS, the one where you are with a group and act out a scene as it did happen and as you would have liked it to. I cried when I read about it. But the people who specialize in that live literally hundreds of miles away, and also there's a pandemic on and meeting in groups is not safe.
>>Therapy works for some people.<<
I've found it so. Not so much the exercises, I can't engage in any homework that requires more than trying to redirect my thoughts and reground myself in, like, okay the odds of X catastrophe are pretty low actually because it turns into a failure spiral, but just having an ear I can trust to not be involved in my life is helpful.
>>Others prefer meditation,<<
My experiences with meditation have been pretty negative, but I reach something similar to a meditative state when following a dance routine. Unfortunately, I'd need solo classes with someone who can work with a dancer with mysterious chronic pain to safely get back into it, and I haven't seen anyone offering that skillset at all. Even if they did, affording it would likely be an issue.
>>hypnosis,<<
I'm considering trying it, but anything that involves giving up a skitch of control of my person is not to be attempted without a lot of caution and thought.
>>prayer,<<
I mean, I do pray sometimes, but I'm bad at keeping up religious practice on my own and highly skeptical of organized religion, even Pagan organized religion. Also, Pagan organized religion generally involves a) leaving the city and therefore transportation I can rely on and b) nudity. Yes, I'm a Pagan who can't deal with casual nudity (mine or others', I got twitchy when a guy changed his shirt at a party one time, it's awful) I know.
>>or enthogens.<<
I like to stay in touch with consensus reality, and there's concerns about it making things worse with my particular suite of things. My older brother is really into pharmacology, we've talked about it a lot, and so far it's not been worth the risks.
>>Some herbs or medications can fix the biochemistry aspects for some people.<<
Yeah, it took like three years to hit on the right med, but better living through chemistry is seriously working for me. My latest psychiatrist was willing to up the dose on the bupropion to the full 450, and my depression is, like, so much better, it might even end up cured on paper, like, in terms of the lil survey thing, if this keeps up. Anxiety is still a bitch, and it's not like I'm normal, but I'm like dancing around all the time to whatever music I'm playing at work, I feel light a lot of the time, I'm just straight up more cheerful, it's fucking awesome. It's not the "oh this is what having a memory and joy is like! I didn't know it was possible to feel this joyful!" from when I got on buproprion in the first place. It's more like someone took my baseline mood slider and flicked it up several notches. This makes things much more pleasant but doesn't fix my executive function.
>>Stacking-sorting games address the "stuck" problem of traumatic stress.<<
I do sometimes play Tetris and I tend to do things like shuffle a deck of cards and sort them by suite and order them king to ace when bored, but I haven't noticed any obvious psychological effects besides my brain sticking on tetris pieces like sometimes happens when I play video games for a while.
>>Timebinding activities can improve ability to put memories in their place and move on. This includes things like timelines and scrapbooks that help sequence events (from the perspective of a linear timeline in a temporal gravity well).<<
Hmmmm... this could be a very good idea. The best thing to do with a stubborn plot bunny is to write the damn thing down and get it out. I've joked about writing an autobiography. And maybe I'll feel less compelled to tell the stories if they're written down. It's a lot, but I've worked with large data sets before. Still... outside validation is a huge part of the need talking about this stuff fills. Ideally I wouldn't need someone to tell me that X incident was fucked for the hundredth time, but it seems I do.
>>For a nonlinear approach, consider collage, which helps show the connections between multiple things at the same time.<<
Ugh, collage. It's not something I've enjoyed in the past. Mind mapping has generally been an exercise in frustration, particularly if I'm expected to draw things. But it might be worth trying if I really run out of ideas. I have a hard time with outlines and timelines too, honestly, like, for writing. "Prewriting" in school, high school, writing an outline or a mind map or whatever, was always fucking torturous to get through. One would think I'd be great at outlines. But deciding where the focus belongs and reducing it down is really hard. I do better to write and sort later, but even working with a book I know backwards and forwards and didn't write, outlining is super hard. Timelines get too crowded because I go into too much detail.
>>By creating a reference, you can help your brain function more like you want it to, kind of like using a therapeutic wrap or brace to support a limb with lingering damage.<<
If you wanna stop thinking about a thing, write it down and get it off the mental "must remember" list, makes sense. ]
>>If you haven't found methods that work really well for you yet, just keep an eye on the field and maybe something new will catch your attention. What humans know about this would fit in a thimble, so plenty of new stuff is emerging.<<
So true. People say I have a lot of self-knowledge, and if that's true then IDK how the average person manages. And the mind is in a sort of similar position to physical illness 200 years ago, when they were grouping by symptom with little understanding of cause. I mean, obviously that's a false dichotomy and developing understanding of the bodymind as a whole is even more backward, but I find it striking anyway.
>>I'm working with this stuff myself right now. My mother passed away in December.<<
I did see that, I just felt very weird saying anything when I didn't have anything more useful than general sympathy to offer.
>>I'm writing down memories and stuff to help mark the transition, to work this into the story of my life. Deliberate, purposeful timebinding to handle a challenging situation.<<
That makes sense.
>>I've worked with these things enough in the past to have a good idea what works for me personally.<<
That's useful.
>>Maybe ask other people for examples, and record them somehow so at least you'll have those perspectives.<<
You know, I really should. Like, I've talked to my other relatives about all the stuff I didn't know about at the time that was messed up, but maybe it would be good to talk about some of the things that didn't suck. I know they happened. I spent years utterly convinced the other stuff didn't count because we had good days.
>>I was six. I was reading adult books myself at that age.<<
Same! My seventh birthday present was being allowed to read anything I wanted from the adult section without my parents reading it first. I read faster than they do, so that was a great present. My parents only ever warned me away from like two books. The Lord of the Flies and I think one other that isn't coming to mind right now. And for once they're right, I've looked into LotF and it would be distressing even now. I have no plans to ever read it. I've definitely read as a kid content some people would say I oughtn't have, but I firmly believe it did me more good than harm. My parents gave me a lot of freedom in a lot of areas. In some areas, this worked great, and reading was one of them.