I started writing a reply to a comment. . . and it was quickly morphing into a full blown blog post. . . so I moved it here.
To catch you up to speed, here is the link to the comment from Ophelia (Myself). The part in particular I was responding to was this:
i know when i relate to people, sometimes it sounds self-obsessed. or so i’ve been told. yeah, i kind of am. i think it comes from feeling alone. personally i love it when people tell me about themselves and i can say YES!!! ME TOO!!! so that’s where i’m coming from. i’m just so pleased to find you.
The entire comment is great, so if you have a moment, it’s worth the read. (And unlike my novels, it’s relatively brief) : D
It pulled on a topic that’s been pacing in my head the last week or so, trying to gain an entrance (or exit. . . guess it depends on whose perception you are looking at) and this seemed to be it.
So here I. . . it (?) . . . goes.
If you haven’t noticed, there’s a couple of things I have a difficult time keeping straight/consistent in my writing. (And if not, then I’ve just done a good job in curbing it and probably need to stop that to really let loose.)
1) Pronouns/1st person, 2nd person, & 3rd person.
2) Tenses – Past, Present, & Future
I was a self taught reader. My mom said I somehow already knew how to read by age 4. I always aced literature, spelling, English. It was always 2nd nature to me. But what I could *not* seem to ever get right in my writing, are those two things.
For me, this actually ties into the “self-obsessed” accusations I heard once upon a time.
When I’m writing or even communicating in general. . . there is *something* that is going on in me that I think may go beyond what the average person is experiencing in the same situation. That may not be true, but I think I can at least safely say, I’m more aware of this *something* than most people.
I was seeing visualizations of it while driving in the sunshine this afternoon. I saw communication in general, as a river flowing. I was standing in the middle of it. I cupped my hands and filled them with this water, and lifted the water out of the running river. The water I held, represented an idea or thought. Maybe a blog post. It was a temporarily suspended snapshot of an understanding in that moment. I could observe it, describe it. . . do anything I wanted with it. . . and for that moment. . . it was completely true.
As soon as that moment is gone, and the water has slipped back into the river. . . it’s gone and has changed and has new connections and layers added to it. Words, communication, thoughts, ideas. . . have a life of their own. They are fluid, ever moving, ever changing, dynamic. As soon as someone has a great idea and publishes it or gets it printed. . . it’s already outdated in the ethers and long since moved on and morphed.
This river. . . connects and runs through everything. It collects, retains, learns, and relays everything it has learned to everything else. The wispy web threads I’ve spoken of before, are a part of this.
When I’m communicating, voicing my opinion, thinking, have a distant look in my eyes as I look off into space when I’m talking to you. . . that’s where I am. I’m in that place where this river runs.
When I’m there, I’m not Jenn. I’m not any one thing. I’m not a nobody. . . I am a presence. . . but I have no. . . single identity that I would be able to give a name too. (Oh the irony kills me. . . the river energy I am describing is Gemini. . . Gemini is the universe’s label maker. . . and yet when I’m connected into it. . . I lack a label.)
I’m also in a place of *no* time. It just is.
So as I ride this literal etheric information super highway, I skip around from perceptions of I, She, Us, You. It naturally and freely comes out depending on what thread I’m cruising down as I search or am pulled to the location that holds the information I am conveying or trying to explain. Same thing with tenses. Sometimes I’m in current time, sometimes I’m in what we would consider the past. . . and sometimes the future.
During all of this, I always have a thread or something that anchors me here and stays present and aware that I’m in this place and time. . . that I’m writing, that I’m a female. But, that’s about all I’m aware of from *here*. If I become TOO aware of who and where I am at present. . . the connection into the information weakens. What this means, is that if I give in too much to being aware of what I’m saying and how I’m saying it so that it doesn’t offend someone. . . I am not able to stay connected into that space of no time and no me. (Btw, this also accounts for 99% of my spelling/grammar errors which I am continuously having to edit the posts to fix.)
Some of the reason for that, is because I am actually trying to translate from “ether energy speak” to English. If I start adding to it, “You know, if you keep speaking in this manner, people will take it as you lecturing them and stop listening.” it can start becoming the straw that broke the camel’s back. I can’t do it. It doesn’t feel good or right to do it. It literally. . . messes with my flow.
So back to the comment regarding being self-obsessed. I feel this is a matter of semantics. I don’t even know if that’s a proper use of that word, but it’s what came in.
It only sounds like I’m self-obsessed. All I’m really trying to do, is keep consistent so that I make some sort of linear sense to others and can communicate what I feel, know, see. As I’ve said before. . . until my late twenties, I did not understand or comprehend that I was a separate individual from others. I am perfectly at home with using the “royal we” perspective. With switching between I, you, me, her, him, they. . . Because I’m not attached to it. It doesn’t mean to me what it means to people in general. It’s not important to me really, at all. But people in the past have thrown such a goddamn fit over it, that I’ve tried to understand and use it properly.
If I use *I* and *me* too much, I’m self obsessed. If I use *you* too much, I’m supposedly telling others how they feel. If I use *us* and *we* too much, I’m trying to be a guru or make people follow me.
It’s enough to make me want to start beating my head against the wall, because all of the focus is on something that is so. . . irrelevant in the big picture, that the actual message goes unheard.
The tenses (past, present, future), I’ve never really had anyone have an issue with it – I just understand that it can be hard to follow what someone is saying when they are leaping all over like they’re in a perpetual time machine while they talk.
People on the autism spectrum (always think of rainbows when I say that) have trouble communicating verbally. They tend to think in pictures/images. They can see straight into your soul, but don’t know how to socially interact with you without there being some level of awkwardness and discomfort.
But it’s not for the reasons people think.
How would a line, describe its world to a dot.
How would a square, describe its world to a line.
How would a cube, describe its world to a square.
How do you translate from one way of being to another, more limited. . . linear way of being?
How do you describe something that is new and more than the world everyone has previously known? Where do you find the right vocabulary? How do you even get someone to pay attention or realize that even though you may be using the same words as them. . . you are trying to convey a richer, bolder, expanded meaning. . . when those people are so sure they already *get* the meaning of the words you use.