Better Than Dead

For as far back as I can remember whenever I’ve closed my eyes in preparation to sleep the faces of strangers appear in my mind’s eye—like on the cinema screen behind my eyelids. They stare down into my face, quite close. Sometimes they back off and I see details of their clothing—from many different eras, but mostly the 20th and 21st centuries. (As I write this the vivid memory of a blonde curly haired girl in a red fifties-style flare dress with large white polka dots comes to mind. Her hair was just above her shoulders, and she wore a white headband. She looked to be in her twenties.)

These people almost always have serious or concentrated expressions. I can’t recall an instance of them smiling, though sometimes they just have a curious neutrality. It’s as if they want something from me but I never know what. Maybe just to give them a spot of attention? They know, I’m convinced, that I see them with my eyes closed but not with my eyes open and want to get that attention while they can, though sometimes they seem genuinely surprised to be perceived. They never stay long, and I rarely feel anything menacing, just their passing flare of interest before they move on. These are people I’ve never seen before in my life or since. It isn’t a nightly occurrence, but a fairly frequent one.

I used to think this happened to everyone. Diana Gabaldon even talked about it in one of her Outlander novels. But when in my latter years I mentioned it to friends—“You know that thing where sometimes when you close your eyes you see the faces of strangers?”—they were incredulous. “No,” they said, “that’s never happened to me.”

So I realized that my eyelid friends were one of those things—like styles of thinking—that we assume are universal, a part of everyone’s experience, because we only live inside our own heads and can’t know how others perceive the world. I didn’t learn until fairly recently, for instance, that not everyone has a constant running monologue in their head.  I started seeing articles about it. I was dumbfounded. It made me think of my friend who has synesthesia. She didn’t realize when she was little that not everyone had specific colors attached to each letter in the alphabet or that sometimes words had a vague flavor to them. The chatterbox in my mind doesn’t drive me crazy because I’m used to this state of being but it is always narrating. (Okay, yeah, when I’m in a worry cycle it does drive me crazy, but I’ve developed coping mechanisms.) (And yes, my synesthesia friend also has a running monologue in her head.)

So I wasn’t worried about all those strangers clamoring for my attention. I didn’t know any better for most of my life and once I knew it wasn’t that way for everyone I was curious as to what it was but still not alarmed. I did wonder if it was some weird way of seeing spirits of the dead but didn’t really pursue that. Until I mentioned it to a witch acquaintance I had at the time (we’re no longer in communication) who practiced necromancy.

“Transient spirits,” she said. “They are attracted to you because they know you can see them, but you have to be careful. They can suck your energy, make you sick, and do other harm if you don’t protect yourself.”

For the first time in my life I became uneasy with them. She was a necromancer so she had to know more about this than I, right? Forget the fact I’d never perceived harm from these folks, I took this unsolicited advice to heart. From that point on whenever the strangers showed up I’d say, “You’re not welcome here. Go away.” Poof! They were gone. Their visits got less and less frequent then stopped altogether. But the funny thing was I missed them. I felt bereft of these “companions,” as if something essential had been taken from me. Worse, that I’d taken it from myself on the advice of someone who was just guessing.

I started saying to the Great Whatever, “I welcome all spirits who mean me no harm,” but the damage had been done. They didn’t return. And, of course, I don’t really know if they were spirits at all. They could have been an aspect of my active imagination and I’ve wondered since if that’s a component in why I sometimes struggle more with my creative work then I used to.

I want them back, those strange transient companions. It’s not the only time I have forcefully shut down an “ability” because I got uncomfortable, but that’s a story for another day. Today I’ll just say that the mind is a curious enclosure and we all live in an illusion of the world to one degree or another. We can only perceive the world as our minds allow us and can never truly participate in the thought processes of anyone else. Perception is a closed circle—or more precisely, perhaps, a labyrinth in which we wander endlessly.

Random quote of the day:

“Whatever a person frequently thinks and reflects on, that will become the inclination of their mind.”

—Buddha, Dvedhavitakka Sutta 6

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Our life is shaped and determined by our thoughts. Usually we are only half conscious of the way thoughts direct our life; we are lost in thoughts as if they are reality.

—Jack Kornfield, “Let Go of Unhealthy Thoughts,” jackkornfield.com/wise-thought/

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Desus and Mero, Beyoncé, or the Marine Corps Marching Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“A thought is an arrow shot at the truth; it can hit a point, but not cover the whole target. But the archer is too well satisfied with his success to ask anything farther.”

—Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts and Aphorisms

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.”

—attributed to Christopher Morley

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

No, not that closet. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that closet.)

What I’m talking about is the closet of my own mind. Or spirit. Or something. See, I’m an introvert who has always needed a certain amount of alone time in order to stay sane. Far from the madding crowd and all that. I like reading, and thinking about what I’ve read, and consuming media, and thinking about what I’ve consumed, and above all else, freedom from the horrors of small talk. I like talking to people, I just abhor chit chat. Elevators have always been an especially torturous circle of Hell for me. I like having real conversations: sometimes silly, sometimes serious, but real.

I wouldn’t say I’m a wallflower, exactly, because I also like to dance, even if I have to dance by myself—like nobody’s watching. But at any party not featuring music, and not featuring a number of my friends for real conversation, I am likely to be the one sitting next to the ficus benjamina in the corner.

I can fake extroversion when necessary—which explains much of my working life—but if forced to an excess of it I tend to collapse like a soggy noodle at the end of the day. I’m never so glad to shut the door and commune with my solitude as on those days when forced to overplay the extroversion card.

I used to think there was something wrong with me and the way I am. I was certainly told this enough times by extroverts. One time I and a close friend of mine, L., who is also an introvert, went to a “psychic” for a reading. She read us separately, L. first, and when she got to me she said, “You’re another closet person, just like your friend! You both need to get out of yourselves and become part of the world!” L. and I completely took this to heart, berated ourselves for being such mutants. But you know what? We were part of the world, not just the same world this so-called psychic inhabited. We went out and did things, saw things, had fun, but sometimes we just needed to go back to our rooms and think over all that stuff and regenerate our energy. We weren’t extroverts. So fucking what?

Of course, it took me a long time to get that perspective. Perspective is a funny old thing that can change many times over the course of a life. L. and I were talking about this just today, how in high school we spent a lot of time in our rooms listening to music or reading, doing our art, thinking about music and reading and art, peering deep into the strange heart of existence, occasionally going out and doing stuff and having a good time, then circling back to our solitude. And I, for one, was not unhappy with that except when teased about it by the extroverts. All those pom-pom girls and rah-rah boys.

In our twenties, L. and I thought we needed to change the way we were, to get out there and live life like that psychic told us to do, like the pom-rah crowd said we should. I can’t say it ever made me happy trying to force myself to be something I wasn’t, always thinking I was wrong for being who I truly am. I’m glad my perspective has changed again.

There is nothing wrong with the closet I inhabit. After all, good friends and good conversation are just a text away. My closet is messy, but other than that it’s a place where I can read and think and do art and listen to music and podcasts and try, now and again, to have a real and meaningful conversation with the numinous.

Random quote of the day:

“I’m not sure it is possible to think too much. You don’t refresh your mind by partying in Ibiza.”

—A. C. Grayling, “This Much I Know,” The Guardian, July 4, 2009

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Any profound view of the universe is mystic in that it brings men into spiritual relationship with the Infinite….Rational thinking, if it goes deep, ends of necessity in the irrational realm of mysticism. It has, of course, to deal with life and the world, both of which are non-rational entities.”

—Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought (tr. Antje Bultmann Lemke)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Orville and Wilbur, Katy Perry, or the Avengers. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“We think in generalities, but we live in detail.”

—Alfred North Whitehead, “The Education of an Englishman,” The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 138, 1926

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Lucy and Ethel, Justin Bieber, or the Kardashian Klan. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.”

—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Locked Rooms and Open Doors

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Lucy and Ethel, Justin Bieber, or the Kardashian Klan. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.