Journals of Lord Malinov

the poetry of madness

temps perdu

Another weekend, come and gone.

The kids yearning to be here, with us, has grown beyond proportion.  The eX has become a living fiasco, floundering and failing in every aspect of her meagre existence.  Still lashing out with anger at every effort to help her, she alienates and unravels, tearing down the structures that keep her secure while assaulting every edifice that comes within range.

How's that metaphor?  Can I mix you up another?

I sang "Letter to Elise" last night at the club.  I've avoided the Cure pretty much since the disintegration struck home, so it was a test of memory and emotion.  Probably more than any song I've done in public, Elise tested my fibre.  I let the emotion wail. 

There was an outburst of applause at the finish.  I don't know how I sounded.  It is difficult to listen from behind the microphone.  It felt good.

For those who are not cureheads, what's wrong with you??? ; )  Disintegration is still the best album ever.  Letter to Elise is a very melodic "I'm sorry and accepting that we are not together" song with lots of room to emote.  I sang the song ten trillion times while commuting, but now it has personal overtones that make me shudder at times.  Singing it in public was an incredible release of anguished emotional stores.

"The greatest thing . . . in all education is to make the nervous system our ally instead of our enemy." - William James.

Since I have to put together a scientific treatise of my discovery, I am immersed in research. 

There is no parasympathetic response for the flight-fight response, i.e., no anti-response, no response to reverse the FFR.  The physical manifestations of the flight-fight response dissipate over time - at least ten minutes in ordinary circumstances.  The only method we can utilize to control the flight-fight response is preventing the invocation of the flight-fight response. 

We can prevent invocation by avoidance or by practicing  to diminish our tendency to invoke the response , typically by graduated exposure. 

The flight-fight response has an exponential-like nature - a calm subject will invoke a substantially smaller flight-fight response than an excited subject. 

Physically calm and physically excited.  The excitement of the body is, in many ways, unrelated to the excitement of the mind. 

Outside of situations of actual and present physical danger, the flight-fight response serves no positive purpose.  Can such a categorical statement be defended?  We'll need to search further for any positive adaptations within the FFR.

There are two stages to the therapy - the translation sessions and the adaptation stage.  I need to conduct extensive clinical studies to determine the norms and limits of these two stages.

  "Tension is a habit.  As we see it, the chronically tense person has practiced tensing and bracing innumerable times.  "Practice makes perfect," and hence he has become proficient at it as he is at playing golf or typing if he pays much attention to these activiities.  He has not, of course, purposefully or knowingly practiced being tense, but the end result is the same.
  We daily see people who are braced as though a lion were lurking around the corner.  It is our belief that they started reacting this way, as a rule, when they were quite young."  - Haugen, et al.

  "Wilhelm Von Humbolt once ventured the optimistic belief that a time would come when it would be a disgrace to be sick and sickness would necessarily be regarded as resulting from perverse ideas.  His friend Goethe expressed this more poetically: "What we nurture in ourselves will grow : that is nature's eternal law."" - Lindeman

  Learning is the process of introducing adaptive modifications to fit a model to experience.  Learning necessarily requires feedback.

There is a spiritual aspect to my discovery.  Disconnecting our minds from constant panic reconnects our minds to ourselves, our bodies and the  whole of our Universe.  Prayer becomes a natural state as an awareness of our place in God's plan becomes clear. 

"Fear is the mind killer.  Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration." - Herbert

I told the boys that they could not escape responsibility by reference to rules.  The responsibilty to be smart trumps the responsibility to follow rules.  Every rule must be questioned.  Every habit must be reconsidered.  Never follow stupidity, I warned.

I paused to contemplate the radical advice I was giving, for the boys would unquestionably be forced to follow the orders of some stupid authority, a rebellion which could always cost lives in the worst case.  How do I reconcile the wisdom of my advice with pragmatic concerns?

Never confuse the stupid person with the system they represent.  A brilliant system can be administered by an idiot - a bureaucratic utopia that keeps our hopes alive - and obediance to a smart system is not the same as following the moron who administers the system.   You don't follow your sargeant because he's  smart.  You trust the command structure to bring the general's brilliance to your aid.

Sometimes the smartest move is counter-intuitive.  This is the razor that separates men from boys, so to speak.  Anyone can walk the path.  How many can recognize the unrecognizable and anticipate the unanticipateable?  Brilliance is also an art.

Because the adaptation stage is necessarily long - avoidance prevents invocation with distance, so discovery that the panic-threat is gone is prevented until the stimulus is revisited - I have no idea how short the translation stage can be and still be effective.  Some of these concepts will be very difficult to test.

Well, I also received a plethora of tools to play with - a new GSR2, some software and the relaxomat.  I'm scouring the bookstores for relevant discussions. 

The kids need to come live here.  I'm preparing that path.   I'm told the eX has a 30% chance of living 4 years, up from the 13% chance originally given.  Apparently the cancer only attacked one of the lymph nodes.  I have no patience for the woman, but I am devoted to protecting my children's mother.  Isn't that a wonderfully vitalizing contradiction of impulse?  My treatment would probably help her significantly, but some choices are beyond my powers.

Enjoy,

M

posted by: Malinov at 16:12 | link | comments |
psychobabble, tales of passing time, she blinded me with science

Comments: