If your narrator is ahead of you, warning you, is that anxiety?
Temple Grandin’s book on Animals in Translation first exposed me to visual thinking. I am verbal and can use vocabulary as a weapon when I am angry. We can use words in combative ways, but I slip behind some barricade, pull out all the complex vocabulary I know, and pile it on, slinging it out. I don’t intend to, I do. I am surprised I’ve used the words that come out.
Temple Grandin, the autistic writer and consultant, stated she thought in pictures and I have often wondered how that happened. Until it just happened.
When I lie down to sleep at night, I close my eyes and it can be as if I flipped a switch to run a double-feature movie — sometimes. I don’t steer the images with my thoughts. I follow the direction the pictures lead. They come from the dream closet. They might be based on memory or experience or out of some collective unconsciousness I don’t know and are not typical in my thought process. For example, when I just paused and closed my eyes, I saw a gray dragon on a green-gold painting in a Chinese style. I have no idea where that came from.
Listening to books — how do you read?
Maybe it’s one of the reasons I enjoy listening to books as opposed to reading them — although there are multiple reasons I listen to books.
I first listened to books when I walked, and I had a self-imposed rule to exercise when I listened to a book. But then I had a book I couldn’t stop. The plot and the pacing were so engaging, and I broke the rule and that limitation was over. Then I listened to books when doing something else — like driving. I could concentrate on the book in my car, and not be distracted by other people or events.
Now I listen to books at night, when I turn the light out before I sleep. I am older, and my eyes don’t adjust as well at night and get fatigued before the rest of me, so listening works.
Listening to books at night is like going to the movies; the pictures can roll along with the words.
I attend a critique group where we read others’ work and respond to it. A writer with a first-person point-of-view has a main character who is always watching himself. The narrator is self-critiquing his thoughts, actions, and words. This narrator who stands alongside the self is a source of anxiety. Very funny, but quite a tension with the self, who is of course the same person, but not quite.
I saw the movie Inside Out 2, but I didn’t like it. Maybe the teen girl’s behavior represents how anxiety feels to some others. Not me.
But then, I am old. I am the oldest one in the critique group.
I learned to practice mindfulness, experiencing each moment as it is happening later in life. This practice isn’t universally present, but habit can help it be more present than not. When I am fully present, the internal narrator and the internal pictures are in the background, not in front of mind. It is why I like improvisation in music, writing, or the simple rituals of life. It’s what is happening now, not a neat plan for the future.
It is why I like being retired. Working could be a source of anxiety, with little ability to control what happens. Bosses and regulators thought preventative actions could keep bad things from happening, but even if we prevented bad things 98% of the time, the 2% rate kept me anxious. If one could anticipate every possible outcome…
When I am in a dentist’s chair, I routinely go to a happy place. I started this practice years ago because who can stand the drilling and filling or whatever else is happening at the dentist’s? I think of myself walking in the sand in the ocean waves, warm, or at dinner after picking out the day’s catch from a boat dockside. I’m choosing between red snapper and rock bass while the dentist talks about possible root canals. He is distant, behind a surgical mask and a plastic shield, obscured by the light beaming directly into my eyes when I open them.
Maybe the dentist would be surprised that I slip into deep meditation in his chair. He is a good-looking guy, the best-looking dentist I have had, but he wears weird dentist glasses, besides the surgical face mask and a plastic shield, so what’s the point of having a good-looking dentist?
Mindfulness is the opposite of anxiety, according to mental health specialists.
It’s why I like the improvisation of jazz, although a friend with anxiety claims that jazz makes her jumpy. I like the improvisation of writing, the conjuring of words, the creation of a new world.
I envy the rare person I’ve known who has synesthesia, a mixing of symbolic thinking, like numbers that have colors.
It is a grand mystery, how we each think, how feelings shape thinking. And thinking shapes writing, helps move it along, and helps identify what we think.
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