Featured Post

THIS BLOG IS RATED WWW-MA.

Update 2020-12-16: (True sticky posts banned; click to read.) So, owing to the evolution of the internet, or at least my own approach to it,...

Friday, May 16, 2014

Gentle Platonic Touch — An Article That Resonates With Me of Late. Also: Dinah.

Note: The first bit of this blog post copy/pasted from my own Facebook, with minor modifications.

By Mark Greene: The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men's Lives is a Killer

I posted this link in a private group on what turned out to be the day before my beloved Dinah was discovered, via the nosebleeds, to have a cancerous tumor and was consequently spared any suffering................on her fourteenth birthday. Always a poetic occurrence this last, as any Shakespeare lover will know.

It's possible I doted on "the Bear" some. I'm not a natural dog lover. The Bear was, and is, pretty much THE exception. Docile (not hyper), melodic (not just yappy and loud), capable of learning certain things (like how to dodge people's feet in the kitchen), so delightfully soft, and a true love for her world that shone in her deep, brown eyes. I gave her rather too many kisses, snuggles and hugs for at least my mother's taste. (Especially since I largely ignore the other dogs. Not a dog person, like I say. Please try not to hate.) I wanted to keep my head buried in her soft shoulders for good chunks of time at once, the way I had done with Linus the cat in years prior, but Dinah wasn't quite built that way. It was always a little bit physically awkward.

And I can only really speak on snuggling pets in such a manner.

I ain't ever had a girlfriend at a month and change short of 28. I'm an only child. My mother pretty routinely refuses me when I want a cuddle, hug, head scratch, and so on, usually claiming to be "irritable" or some such thing. (We'll exchange hugs many nights — some of them sincere in the moment.) I don't even attempt to approach my father for such things; he ain't interested. Lately my aunt in Chicago has hugged me with sharply decreasing frequency; I don't think we made any contact last visit, not even upon arriving or leaving. (Maybe in part because the trips/visits have become so routine?) At least my one cousin and her husband give hugs when we visit from ~350 miles apart. Will they still when we're merely on opposite sides of the same metro, meeting for a meal every week (as has been discussed)?

Pretty much all I had to turn to for snuggling (my choice form of gentle platonic touch) was Dinah. I don't feel the connection with the other dogs to snuggle them. This leaves me nearly completely............touchless.

It's not liberating. It's fucking cold and isolating.

I get by, sort of, on the "virtual touch" of ‪ASMR‬ videos, played with headphones on. Read the post below this one, if you haven't already, for more on that. As fine as that simulation of an actual human being around me may be, there remains a gaping void in my living. The society I call home does not like touch. I wonder how it feels to the customers I serve at my job when I manage to make the slightest contact with their hands as I hand them their change. It feels.....a LITTLE awkward, right? I have dared to make the briefest hand-to-hand contact, just to complete an ordinary business transaction. Is that okay?

Are we?

I am decidedly not. Now, minus the Bear*, more than ever.



*I realize there's a band with this name; sadly, I don't know their music.

****



Somewhere in the first night AD (after Dinah), I found the actions — but not the words, so much — to make the Bear my profile pic (linked above) on the 'Book, and also to slowly post captionless photos from different points in her life. A couple of Facebook friends "liked" the pictures as I posted them; I wonder if they understood what I was trying to convey at the time......? Anyway, I've decided to include here the pictures of the only dog I've ever loved. Now with some captions.

My angel.....gone home.....

(...not that I believe in that kind of thing, but, you know...)

Baby Bear. December 2000. When cassettes were a dominant audio format in the house of Adams. (Also, the endless election recall. But, DINAH!)





October 2001. One who knows to stop and smell the flowers. (It occurs to me, the physical photographs that I scanned might be stamped with their "developed" date, not their "taken" date.)





September 2002.



July 2004. Champion of the pillows. Also, ha ha, Ikea project on the floor...



June, 2006.



July 31, 2006. Ten minutes after this picture, I was in a car bound for the airport to England for the only time in my life so far.



That autumn, I let my own beard grow out.

September 21, 2007. So soft.......



December 5, 2007.



January 31, 2009. "Yorkie and Porky", I called them. ("Yorkie"'s name is Stella.) Later, Dinah slimmed down, and newer mini-schnauzer Teddy turned out to be the "porky" one.



July 4, 2009. Hiding from the fireworks on American Independence Day. Only this once did she ever go in the closet like this.



I love those eyes.



Flash forward a couple years, she's lucky if she can hear anything at all.

December 24, 2009. Newton and Dinah. Life is good.



February 14, 2010. PASTA NIGHT! The pasta that hasn't already been served to humans is in the white colander on the counter.



June 3, 2011. Biscuit?



June 11, 2011. Breakfast? Dinner?



January 6, 2014. In prep for selling the house, all the carpet was done away with in favor of hardwood. Soft places for dogs became mighty precious. Kinda like Dinah.



Her final photo appearance: February 22, 2014.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Speak Our Consciences in a Soft, Sharp Whisper

(Previously: Speak of it Only in a Soft, Sharp Whisper (September 2012), and Speak of it in a Soft, Sharp Whisper Some More (August 2013))

Two passing thoughts on the subject of meridian, or "ASMR", before I get to the meat of what's in my mind:

• I have never been terribly keen on describing the feeling of meridian as a "tingle". "Tingle", in my mind, suggests a sort of neutrally extraneous sensation — something like the strongly minty, lingering taste in one's mouth after using a good mouthwash. Meridian, I think, is better described as a euphoric PULSE or spasm. But, I suppose a two-word, four-or-five-syllable phrase is a bit awkward in casual conversation and YouTube comments, isn't it.....

• Although the sensation is more easily triggered on my right side — that is to say, the right side of my back, usually — it tends to be more strongly felt on the left side, once the left ear has heard enough for the sensation to sort of "break through". I guess my left needs to be "primed" a moment before it kicks into full gear. If the "video" to which I've meristurbated (for those who missed it in part two, link above, this original word means "indulged in meridian") has been sufficiently effective, I'll sometimes be unable to fully lean back into my chair without the euphoria in my left mid-lower back asserting itself, a full minute or two after the video has finished. Somehow, my right prefers it quick and immediate; it's yet to linger post-trigger the way it does on the left.

Now, then...

There's a quality, or a trend, I've noticed of late in my lonely, after-hours meridian pursuits, and it rather ties in with my personal politics, which I've revealed on this blog on a number of occasions. It is this: the videos that I'm finding provide the strongest and most effective triggers, and therefore the videos I'm pursuing and "favoriting", are the ones that are crystal clear and unfiltered — breaths go directly in the ear, so strongly that I can practically smell the ASMRtist's breath. Also, I can easily hear and know when they are moving from one ear to the other; they're not just staying totally in one place while they deliver a line or two.

Summarily: The videos that best simulate an actual person being with me, the viewer/listener, are the best.

Try this one on for sighs (sic). (Embedding disabled by request: Air Light - Inaudible, unintelligible binaural whisper 3D)

Despite the Zappa-esque artistic style where different recorded bits are repeated and overdubbed throughout the piece
(Zappa's "Freak Out" especially comes to mind on the grounds that I get meridian off "It Can't Happen Here", which has an up-close backup vocal in the right channel; "No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no, man you guys are gonna be SAFE, everything's COOL."), it is delightfully obvious that the recordings are done by an actual human being. (Not that some ASMRtists aren't human, mind you.) She audibly moves from directly in one ear, to more the back of the neck, closer back to the ear, then to the other ear, and so on. I smell her breath at certain junctures with P and K sounds; as poorly as our language puts names to scents, her breath is simply authentically human — not wholly foul, nor quite the aroma of a good meal freshly prepared in the kitchen — just simply human. Perhaps I remember the smell from somewhere in my past — a casual, unmemorable encounter in my far too numerous days of academia wherein I was in enough distance of a young girl speaking to catch a whiff. It's lively. And real. The combination of humanity, artistic endeavor, and, of course, super-effective meridian triggers, make this quite probably my all-time favorite "merideo" (ASMR video).

And so my political side flares up. Where are all the people in my life who would be willing to speak to me so intimately and closely? Our culture doesn't quite encourage that, does it? Occasionally, somewhat rarely, I feel meridian wholly by accident when being spoken to normally from about arm's length, as happened while I was receiving instruction on working with produce on the opening day of the discount grocery at which I'm working for about three more weeks until I move to greater Nashville. How did I manage to feel meridian in a joyous, happening atmosphere like that of a store's grand opening? I don't know. But, anomalies like that aside, nobody's exactly going out of their way to be in an intimate setting and tone with me, are they? And it's totally weird and un-American to sort of "nudge" anyone in that direction. Ideal meridian conditions do tend to lean toward the same kind of conditions that are often reserved for romantic endeavors — two people otherwise alone, in a close, quiet space. If I've ever been part of anyone's romantic endeavors, they have failed to tell me about it in all my nearly twenty-eight earth years.

I'm reminded all over again of how I'm completely alone and how our society seems to encourage that kind of thing. Get a steady job sitting at a desk all day. Drive to and from that job — the lone occupant in your vehicle. Squabble with your spouse, kids and parents at home; your connection is purely biological. Modern western culture, with all its endless flavors, passing technology and varieties, has pretty much fragmented us as people. We see too many differences between each of us for us to overcome them, and we don't make good connections anymore. At best, I get generally friendly people giving generally friendly greetings and offers on which they'll never follow through. We're just going through the motions, cogs in the machine, our teeth slowly eroding.

I wonder about the lives of the ASMRtists. The ASMRtist ranks are pretty well dominated by women — just an occasional male along the way — making videos in their own rooms or studios, with only themselves in them. What kind of families do they have? Are they romantically involved with anyone? They most all seem like they could easily sway a mate or two from the crowd, such kindly faces with sweet, soft voices. Do they often get to experience an actual live-action trigger from a human being in the same room? Will I get to meet anybody like this? ASMRtists are spread all over the globe. Air Light, who undoubtedly knows and understands the basic mechanics of meridian, is......Ukrainian, I believe....? I follow people in Russia, Deutschland, the UK, Australia, and probably some Americans, although that doesn't exactly narrow anything down. Is anyone near Nashville? Meet for a malt at Mike's some time?

I'm a lonely meridiot—
fringe and unfocused
a random poet
a runaway train
without a platform
a purple square
on a Rubik's Cube
a round peg
on an unstrung guitar
I got a
        way with words
a cat
      burglar
in an open desert
I adapt to survive
but can I live?

Um.......what the hell just happened to me? All right, yeah. So, I think I may attempt to produce a piece of ASMRtwork for YouTube. I may just read this series of blog posts. My microphone is horribly cheap — and naked. Listen for breaths that pierce. And hopefully trigger. (I have, in the past, gotten meridian from my own voice on "Thirst (Ambrosia)". Is this okay?)

Swell Saturday, cyber citizens,
~C.A., from Chicago~