Bodily Betrayal

Watched some @BPS. You should watch the first segment ¹I think you should watch all of the ADs, but given their typical view counts of 30-50 that’s probably a bigger ask than I imagine. To me they feel not only like time well spent but like a useful tool for getting other people to think about emotions, to consider the challenges of their own disabilities, and to imagine a life that includes more … Continue reading of this one: https://youtu.be/3wspTzh7ipY to see them talk about auto-ethnography ²https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoethnography. Which I think is part of what’s happening here. Obviously I’m not — and don’t intend to be — terribly formal about such any process that goes on here. My goals are always to make my own life better and to communicate with you. But I do think the framework of research might be useful to me for a whole series of reasons.

For one thing I like doing research and think I’m decent at it, so it’s a comforting idea to think I might help myself with self-research. It also lets me frame therapy as collaborative self-research, which fits the way I feel about therapy (i.e. not very social) and in particular the LI methodology we’re using. I like to imagine that I might build and provide access to tools for analysis of ourselves and our social lives, as I discover ways to accomplish that. And that I might be a resource for your own self-research by carefully knowing you and responding to your inquires (if you ever made any).

I also finally hear @BPS yelling for my participation. They do it all the time in a bunch of ways — they imagine much of their art through the lens of performance and direct audience reaction. But I didn’t see how that’s the same as they yelling I do, or the way in which I’m being a hypocrite. And one of my main motivations is to not be a hypocrite. So I’ve decided to participate regularly with @BPS. I’m one of a few dozen people who regularly watch all of ADs and I have lots of things to say about many of them. I tell you some of those things, and Shanda even more. I could tell @BPS about my reactions without much additional effort and perhaps help each other with our research. So I did, starting today. And I intend to keep it up.

I was thinking about my hair today ³and also some simple and great face colors from @BPS in Detroit: https://youtu.be/0V4Gz_ghbI4 Not to mention their new clothes.. I could definitely achieve something like @EI’s buzzcut patterns [fig 1] as part of my own head art. I’m actually pretty good with the little clippers — I’ve got a set that are just 7 mm wide — if I can figure out what shapes I want. I also like the idea of a coloring-book head, so I have someplace simple and pre-shaped to add some color to daily head life.

Shanda had lots of Screed feels about ELIZA. Mostly making her sad about me. Which for me rates above “disgusted” but below “no reaction”. Both because my ideal is always for people not to think about, and because the one role I’ve really embraced is the one where I remind people that it could always be worse. I’ve done it for myself for so long and now I can finally share it with you. Mostly its hard not because you feel bad about me, but because it keeps you from being connected to me. I share emotions and it drives people away because I’m always too much.

Friday was pretty good. I was caught up on work and had no trouble getting to robots on-time. Had time to choose an appearance too, orange and blue from head to toe. I talked about oppression with Stochastic and nuclear engineering with E. Speculated for a minute about gas explosions as art and how to shape them. And Shanda was home when I got back, with a whole collection of weekend food for our lounging convenience.

Saturday went well. It was nice to lay around with Shanda an actually not be busy. I had some weed in the morning and lounged around thinking about @BPS and ranting at M ⁴Which I appreciate you putting up with.. I was pretty light sensitive though, and generally not feeling great, and I had a hard time when we took the dog out at like 2. I laid down for a while to recover afterward, which helped but also started a cycle where it was harder and harder to get Shanda’s attention. You were physically present but you were not very interested in how I felt. Plus the anxiety loop you got into with Dog. Things were okay but we’ve had better days, both individually and together.

And then I fell down the stairs. I was able to keep my orientation and avoid toppling but I could not arrest my fall and slid all the way down to the basement. This is what I get for wearing socks and non-rugged pants. I’ve got some abrasions on my left arm and right hand, and I tweaked my back pretty bad from the bouncing and my (partly successful) attempts to stabilize myself with the handrail. I’m mostly okay if I keep my back relaxed and my body supported.

Getting care about this did not go well. Shanda isn’t really prepared to offer emergency help. You took some instruction and did okay with like, fetching things, but you can’t pay attention to me as a person while you’re upset. Which means you can’t really help because you aren’t checking to see what would do useful or if you’re causing harm. It also means I can’t have any emotional support, and that I have to remain in-charge of both me and you throughout the crisis. It’s not a great time. It’s part of why I feel like I can never count on help being available. Not even help getting other help; if I needed emergency care I would have to make that decision and coordinate it myself. I would really love to not feel alone like this, like I have options other than being 100% in-charge or 100% uncared for. Like I wasn’t going to die alone woods just because I made the mistake of showing an emotion when I needed help. Or at least like you could take care of yourself so I could focus on self-rescue.

None of which interacts well with my instinct to not expect or get any treatment. It’s hard enough for me to imagine that I should cover damaged skin or splint broken bones as opposed to just cleaning/setting them and being careful to not disturb them until they heal. Or that I’m allowed to use any of the emergency supplies I own on myself; there might always be a bigger emergency where I need them more (things could always be worse). And this is all stuff I could get used to. It will make me slower for a while, but I’ll get used to it.

Shanda wants me to stay home and not work. Which I’m doing. I wish that helped me actually get care. My problem isn’t that I can’t find time ⁵I do have trouble in that I imagine I’m “faking” if it’s still technically possible for me to do the tasks I otherwise had planned. I don’t need to stand or move for work so it should be possible for me to work, right? I can just prop myself up and type with my good hand. It will be slow but there’s no reason I need to take the day … Continue reading, or that I’m afraid of treatment, it’s that I don’t expect it to make my life better. That if it did I’d feel less secure about future access to care because my brain is super sure that I will never have enough in total. Like relationships I expect my health only ever gets worse – more pain, less function — and that I should compensate by learning to care less about it. That there’s a lifetime supply of healing and that I should try not to use it up on things that aren’t going to kill me. Sure, my wrists might never work right again but I should ration my treatment in case I need it for something like my foot, which I need much more. Then again, if my foot is broken I might want to save treatment for my leg, because I could get by without a foot but it would be hard to get by without a leg. Things could always be worse.

So on Sunday I sat very still, waited most of the day for Shanda to recover herself after I triggered her so badly, and watched most of S1 of The Sinner (USA Networks). That show is 100% feels, 40% the failings of the “justice” system, and 80% about the danger of isolation (via family or law or anything else). It’s about childhood trauma and religious abuse and the stories we tell to make our own lives livable. It wants to talk about trying to save your siblings and hating them for it. About failing to save your siblings and hating yourself for it. About paying attention to things other people refuse to see, and about not being able to pay attention to similar things in yourself. It makes me worry that I’m only 2 steps from being Bill Pullman, and relate to some of the ways his care is misunderstood by people outside of it. It makes me worry that I’m only 2 steps from being Jessica Biel, and not nearly attractive enough to get even the shitty handling she does. It can be intense but it’s worth watching if you’d like to imagine that art could help you feel the feels. If you’d like to imagine that sharing with the right people is maybe a way to put another step between you and self-destruction ⁶You should try to imagine this anyway. One of the ways you could make it happen is by discussing media like this with me..

@BPS had a lot to say about embodiment: https://youtu.be/z-Wo8oqrQ1g which gave me lots of the thinks. Particularly in relation to art as research, and self-research as a something more than narcissistic navel-gazing. The concept of embodiment they describe helped me tie it all together. One of the reasons I can’t have self-expression — that I can’t understand any of the needs in column 3, or that I couldn’t have colors – is the oppression of my previous life, and the repression I turned it into to survive. That’s not easy to deal with, but I have understood technically how it works and can at least think about it and work on it even if I can’t magically fix it.

@BPS talks about different types of embodiment for a creation. Consider a landscape painting. It is embodied in geography, as a thing you can physically observe separate from any part of painting. It could be embodied in a photograph used in reference while painting, separate from the landscape, reduced to a framed plane, but also including the choices of the photographer in selecting that framing and in their actions in capturing the image (for example, driving or hiking to a location). It is embodied in your mind as you envision the design, which might be informed by your direct observation or photo or sketches but has its own aspects and lacks any physical representation. It is embodied thought your movement in creating the painting, the use of your hand, in muscle memory and in the tools you use. And eventually it is embodied in a bit of pigment and backing.

The only version of that embodiment I’m comfortable with is the cognitive one, where it exists in my head without any physical realization. And all the rest of them feel like a thing that would corrupt the art with my physical existence. Just like I corrupt people with it. Just like I ruin myself by existing and being observable and sharable instead of being isolated as mere thought, visible only through explicit communication or action. When I talk about this people often assume I want the isolation because I’m afraid of social reaction — that people might not like what I create or share and so I want to protect myself from them by keeping is secret. And certainly I have social anxiety in the way, like everyone does. But as I noted above I feel like I know the shape of the oppression/abuse/repression and that, now that I’ve blown though my supply of fucks, am actually fairly capable of dealing with that aspect in many cases.

The part I just noticed though, is that I hate my own physical embodiment, and that I translate that self-hatred into a fear that I will corrupt things around me in the same way I imagine my body corrupting my (somehow separate) self. It’s why I fear being in the same room as you even though I don’t fear being in public ⁷Again I’m not trying to deny the existence of social anxiety bits in my life, just to pull those bits apart from this thing, which is not inherently social and does not depend on the predicted or actual responses of others to make me feel bad.. I am not afraid that people will respond poorly to my face colors, or that my poor technique limits my expression, but I’m afraid that using my hand to apply it will ruin it even if I were an expert. I fear that the only “safe” way for me to express myself is through a completely reproducible process — I could build a robot to paint my face and be much happier with that. Even that just sort of kicks the can down the line though, because I’d have to algorithmically create the design it paints, not out of a need for perfection but because even pixel-editing would require me to involve my body in some way that couldn’t be accomplished via telephone or keyboard. I wrote at @BPS about this in a slightly different context in the comments on their video: https://youtu.be/z-Wo8oqrQ1g

There’s more to all of this. And new things that I don’t know how to jam in here. But these get harder and less useful as direct self-reflection the longer the bake. I spend more time editing and searching for connections and worrying that I’ll never get to the next one since I can’t even get through this one ⁸This is another thing @BPS worries about in the linked videos — getting ADs out daily instead of coalescing them. I don’t know if their struggle is mine, but it’s hard either way.. Luckily there’s a new one almost every day. So for now I’ll leave you with this: @JCVIM knows how I feel about Easter bunnies [fig 2].

ZiB

• 

•