the woman on the radio said this other woman could be disarming in her silence and i can’t stop thinking about it. the idea of silence being disarming and what that means. i don’t think i have ever heard a person’s silence being described this way. of course, i am familiar with the “disarming smile,” a not uncommon phrase. but never silence, at least not that i have heard. silence from another person is often interpreted in a negative way, as a discomforting or even menacing response. or silence implies apathy, or it only raises more questions in the other person’s mind. the 3rd edition of the american heritage dictionary offers this definition of disarming: “tending to allay suspicion or hostility; winning favor or confidence.” the one comes to the other bearing arms, full of rage, and the other responds with silence, which then disarms the one, strips them of their rage, perhaps even draws them in close as a new ally. but why. what is the mechanism at work. that is what i want to know. is this somehow related to the idea of “a quiet confidence.” perhaps we all need to learn to disarm with silence. the world might then be a much more pleasant place.
All posts in category neuro-nonsense
to disarm with silence
Posted by sean on May 13, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/05/13/to-disarm-with-silence/
scatterings
i like to see chaos subsumed into order. long grass growing tangled then trimmed. but only in certain places, like next to sidewalks, not in parks where i am walking. no, not there. not when i am sitting facing a field and the man comes on his mower, chasing me away, following me through the park, more and more mower men, an onslaught of men joined in mechanised noise and motion. that is what i don’t like. i like to see spread-out papers form themselves into a neat pile or disappear into the recycle bin. bare surfaces. something emptied and discarded. this is not a manifesto, by the way. this is just a monday morning [note: it’s actually now wednesday—ed.]. a morning i rode in rain. traffic altered my route and i passed the central police station, a thriving death star hive, battered tie fighters buzzing in and out from the flight deck, looking to crush, to destroy, to subjugate the populace, meting out their brutal mutilated form of “justice” with truncheons and guns.
last friday was a special day for i heard my first wood thrush of the year. o, how i love the ethereal songs of the thrushes! there is no sweeter music in the forest for me. i used to wake to their flute music every spring and early summer morning, but no more, no more. now, if lucky, it is the much lesser song of another thrush, the ubiquitous robin. not to disparage the robin, but his song is nowhere near as transcendent as the wood thrush, the hermit thrush, the swainson’s thrush…
yesterday i went to a class that was like jungian personality types but with colors and a few more bells and whistles. i am blue-green and my conflict sequence moves from green to blue to red. there are all these diagrams that look like someone made them with a spirograph. they are quite pretty but i don’t know how i feel about being plotted on a triangular graph. there i am…a black dot straddling the line between two types, far off from my fellows (in the group report, i am a clear outlier, there are no other dots near me). there i am…moving across the color scheme as conflict escalates, crossing axes with impunity. look at me go…
Posted by sean on May 1, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/05/01/scatterings/
digging in the shade of the vowel tree
Sylvia Plath wrote of
intolerable vowels
entering her heart
but what of ruthless
consonants headed
to our brains.
We all know about a-e-i-o-u and sometimes y. They may be intolerable but their numbers are small. And they are more easily made to do our bidding. The consonants, in contrast, are legion and their rigidity stifles. Perhaps the only way to harness their true power is to one-by-one start taking them away.
Anna Kavan wrote:
I had only learnt how to be friends with shadows; it might be too late to learn the way of friendship in the sun.
Friendship in the sun is a mirage. The way to it is false. The sun fades color and one day it will kill us all. Shadows make easy friends: we pass through them as they do through us. Few stay long. It is their nature. Sometimes it feels like it is in all our natures to expand and contract, pull away and grow close, like a squeezebox played by a jittery ghost.
Kafka wrote:
No one will want to lie in clouds of mist with me, and even if someone did, I couldn’t expel the mist from my head.
This gets at the heart of the problem, I think. One feels an isolation and maybe a desire to connect, sometimes even a desperate mania. But who can share a dreamy solitude? By definition, no one. And if it was at all even possible, the mist remains. How could we find each other. How could one’s dream self operate in reality? The pilot seat in your head is unlike the one outside of it. Out there, we cannot twist the knobs, adjust the instruments without consultation, without repercussions, without the sun blinding us. In the shadows, the mist, these difficulties melt away.
Jung wrote:
A man can hope for satisfaction and fulfillment only in what he does not yet possess; he cannot find pleasure in something of which he already had too much.
Yikes, Carl, that’s bleak, even by my admittedly generous standards. In fairness, on the next page of Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Jung also states: “The needs and necessities of individuals vary. What sets one free is for another a prison.” So I guess one could argue that for some people overindulgence sets them free, although I don’t think that’s his point with the former quote. I think it is about anticipation. Jung is talking about this concept in the context of the development of analytical psychology, and yet it stands out in the text as such a sweeping statement. But I don’t think this aphorism or whatever you want to call it can be universally applied. Certainly competitive eaters don’t find pleasure in the 18th hot dog in a row that they’ve shoved down their throats. But can Jung honestly think that attaining the love of another person does not lead to satisfaction and fulfillment? I mean, I will grant him that unrequited love is an exquisite thing, and possibly more intense on the whole than many long-term relationships. But no satisfaction and fulfillment for those in love? I don’t know, maybe he is not including love or other emotions here. Maybe he is referring strictly to material things, in which case I willingly concede his point.
Édouard Levé wrote:
The full weight of depression comes on between 1-5 PM, particularly when I am home by myself. Mornings and night are more filled with promise.
Filled with promise. Is that what we are after? Moments filled with promise? Is it merely the anticipation we crave, what Jung says we can find satisfaction and fulfillment in? Anticipation can be tantalizing, I’ll admit. But how. How can we be satisfied with mere promise. Inherent in promise is a pledge to fulfill at some point in the future, not at the moment of the promise. Like an IOU. Is it the step we take to accept the promise that is meant to satisfy? Is it the mental and/or emotional trust fall we allow ourselves to take? If so, what of broken promises. Do those negate the previous gain in fulfillment? Well, do they, Jung? If he were here, I’d have more than a few questions for him.
Levé also wrote: “Above a certain height I like what I see. Below it I don’t.” I suppose we can read this on a literal or a metaphorical level. What is the certain height. And is it a chronological point, a philosophical one, a spiritual one. Who knows. I think we can safely say, though, that whatever the certain height represents, it changes between individuals. Remember how Jung said what sets one person free is another person’s prison. Some people don’t like what they see above a certain height, while others crane their necks for a peek. Some spend their lives craning for that view, but some are content to not look. They don’t want to know…they look away in fear, shame, embarrassment, whatever.
So what is the conclusion. Is Kafka’s mist the same as Carson’s foam? Sometimes it’s a strain to make all the connections. Certainly reading and writing are key decoder rings. Endless battles, ceasefires, sneak attacks, and truces with the vowel and consonant armies. And maybe the ladder stretches high enough to see above the mist. I think others have ladders high enough, too. If we squint hard enough we can probably see each other, mouths flecked with foam, across the scorched battlefield strewn with bloody words and mangled sentences. Hello there! I do not have rabies. I am merely seeking the sublime. Perhaps you’d care to meet in the mist and discuss for a few moments. I’ll be waiting.
Posted by sean on December 17, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/12/17/digging-in-the-shade-of-the-vowel-tree/
the bus to paradise passed me this morning
Some people never stop talking about their plans. They are dead serious. Just you wait, they say, as if they know you are already silently doubting them. Or perhaps it’s because they’ve been scoffed at so frequently before. Regardless, their plans are solid. However, according to my own sloppy research conducted using keen observation techniques backed with unscientific predictive modeling, these people never actually go through with their plans. But…there are questions. Is it the constant talking about the plans that keeps them from hurling themselves off a bridge? Does the mere daily mention of these grandiose plans sweep away the dark cloud of futility hovering nearby? Are they in denial? Does the bus to paradise ever stop to pick up these passengers?
Other people keep quiet about their plans. They may mention them in passing on occasion. But there is no big to-do about it. When you ask them about their plans they are sometimes evasive. Rarely do they go into details. It’s as if they don’t want to curse the plans by talking too much about them. In the meantime, we grow complacent about these people. We expect them to remain in stasis. Sure, in the back of our minds nests that tiny kernel of knowledge that these people do indeed have plans. But the infrequent or even non-mention of the plans lowers our guard. Therefore, when these people suddenly follow through on their plans everyone is flabbergasted. How did they do it. We didn’t even know. She seemed so quiet. He kept to himself. And no, I’m not talking about mass murderers, although it’s possible the same theory applies. When did these people get on the bus? Were we not looking when they slipped out the door, paid their fare and boarded?
Are you ever overcome by a feeling of being left behind? All my life I have plunged forward with only brief stays in the morass. But the longer one lingers in one place, the more departures one suffers. Now, I certainly understand the value of living in the present and how that factors into this discussion. I’m not interested in plumbing those depths for the eight thousandth time. I also recognize that I am a person to whom satisfaction does not come easily. I’ve made a lot of progress in coming to terms with this. As part of the process, I’ve developed my own specialized coping skills (note: available for hire). This is what we’re supposed to do as we get older. Learn how to live the day-to-day. If we don’t, there is trouble.
I fear this has now veered off-course. I did not intend to get confessional. Let’s blame it on the bus, broadcasting its glowing word of promise above the driver’s head, passing me by as I neared my destination, teetering on the edge of the always tenuous cliff of Monday morning, hastily rigging together the tatters of my ragged hang glider, preparing once again for a flawless take-off into the unknown.
Posted by sean on November 19, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/11/19/the-bus-to-paradise-passed-me-this-morning/
sorry but this person is dead and could not answer*
In the calm before this storm Foxtrot yet wanders the sky, shining its central eye into my hidey-hole. State of emergency in a place riddled with emergencies, a place where every day is an emergency and we pack our kits in our minds just to make it to day’s end. Listening to songs about erasing it all and hearing the calm outside. And we wait for wind. And we wait for rain. But right now all I hear is you breathing, on the floor, in black-and-white pose.
What will come in another day. Another two. I don’t know. It’s a time of year I do know. It’s the beginning of another end. I used to not even think about it. There have been so many other moments. But can you name just one. I see so many in my mind but I doubt I even lived them. Spectators spectating, dissolving from others’ memories before they are even written across the cerebellum. And the brainstem builds our dreams. And it also tells us we are hungry. But can it know when we are hungry for our dreams?
A long time ago there was a band we went to see in the bottom of a funeral home or maybe just a church. This band’s name was Sarabellum. We huddled on the green carpet and watched and learned. This memory of Sarabellum remains imprinted, though not on my cerebellum, more like my cerebral cortex, likely the prefrontal. So many lobes, so little time.
Where is that liferaft of hair I built. I will need it when my basement floods. I will need it when we are gone and all that is left are the strands of your hair I find everywhere. I will need it to ride out the crescendoes of noise trying to drown out all other sounds. I will float on sound, on my raft, like Huck Finn, down the Mississippi metaphor. And maybe someone will sing this song for us when we are gone. Maybe when this song erases everything else, it will keep on playing and never stop. And it will be us and we will be it and that is all.
*Google Image Search leading here, where this image does not exist
Posted by sean on October 28, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/10/28/sorry-but-this-person-is-dead-and-could-not-answer/
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