Sunday, January 11, 2015

What is in Your Head? (Part 1)

I know we all know more than we know we know.

I know that it is just a matter of hauling it up. Bringing it out. Of getting it to the surface somehow.

Like an expecting mother is rarely wrong when she dreams of the sex of her unborn child. Did you know about this? She knows… but she could never explain how she knows if she tried.

How the hell does she know?

And like somewhere way down inside the sticky folds of your brain lives the combination to the lock on your locker from when you were in sixth grade. You could find it if only you knew how. Maybe with drugs. Maybe hypnosis. Maybe with electric prods poking directly into your skull.

It’s in there.

But be careful. You can’t just go around getting stuff out of your brain the way you get oil out of the ground. Popping holes. Drilling down. Washing the remnants out with high pressure injections.

Believe me: I have tried all that, and all it got me was these weird eye twitches and I can’t ever make right-hand turns anymore.

But even so, I once solved the Great, Great Mystery of Why-My-Ex-Left-Me while sucking nitrous oxide in the dentist’s chair. Or rather, that was where the Great, Great Mystery solved itself. Where it revealed itself to me.

And when I was in school, all the answers to test questions were in a Universal Answer Key that I stored on a shelf in my head.

These days, I use the services of Tarab. He’s a demonic hallucination – but a wise hallucination – who comes to my bedside while I sleep. Tarab tells me things that I don’t know I know.

But Tarab cannot tell me where my brother is today, and the Universal Answer Key shows nothing. Nitrous oxide won’t tell me, hypnotism won’t help me, and electric prods could never hit the right spot.

Tarab does not know because I do not know.

No part of me knows where my brother is.

But I believe that part of Aesop does.

He will deny it, of course. He will say, “I’ve wracked my brain but I still can’t think of a single lead!”

There is nothing in my hands. There is nothing up my sleeves. And for my next trick, I will find my brother using only his ex, one large spliff, and a couple of blind spot drawings.

Because I know Aesop knows more than he knows he knows.

(to be continued…)
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“Life is only a Rorschach ink blot, you know.” – Alan Watts

30 comments:

  1. I saw this 49 seconds after you posted it. Does that help?

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    1. I imagine you're just always checking for my updates.

      It's not easy to stalk someone from 14,000 miles away.

      Delete
  2. Insights come to me in waves. Maybe something to do with the lunar tides...

    However, my beer induced insights are wrong 94.6% of the time

    --------

    Woman / Mans intuition, may come in the form of a dream, deja vu, a funny feeling, all three, or something else. Never doubt this feeling. Ever....

    Contrary to common belief, it's not just women who harbor this mysterious instinct. Men can be powerfully intuitive. They have the same capabilities as women. But in our culture, we view intuition as something that's warm and fuzzy, or not masculine, so men have often lost touch with those feelings.

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    1. Sure! Guys have to use intellect and logic and tear through everything.

      I'm more than a little guilty of it myself. I think there needs to be some balance, though.

      Delete
    2. off topic - remember this

      When I was young and naive, I used to pay some attention. I listened to WORDS spoken authoritatively into microphones. To my still-dewy ears and my still-dewy brain, they seemed like the WORD Terrorists. Terrorists of the WORD, twisting meanings to fit agenda or whim.

      Delete
    3. Whew, that was like half a decade ago. Maybe more.

      I need to go get some of those old ones out of cold storage. That girl seems so much wiser than the one who writes these things now...

      Delete
    4. Vox boasts about the traffic it got from reposting old articles

      Vox:
      In a five-day period, we ran 88 of these stories, and collectively they brought in over 500,000 readers. That was great to see. The articles generated a lot of positive feedback, and some pieces that writers really put a lot of work into but that didn't attract much readership the first time around became hits.

      What was interesting — though not completely unexpected — was that no one even seemed to notice that we were flooding the site with previously published content.

      Delete
    5. Yeah, and I think I could do it, because very little of what i write is time-sensitive. I don't write things about whatever is in the headlines.

      No, that would be way too easy, and I have to make everything as difficult as possible.

      Delete
  3. I think somehow we all have some insight buried deep within us that allows us at some point in time to know certain things. I knew when an aunt passed before I was told and she wasn't even sick that day. It just entered my mind for a split second and I never gave it much thought until I actually found out later. I think it's how connected we are to certain people. Liked what you wrote Katy.

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    1. Thanks!

      Of course, I could be completely wrong about all of this.

      But I'm not much of a touchy-feely, "It's-all-for-the-best-and-everything-happens-for-a-reason" type, so I'm sticking with my hypothesis for now. Especially in light of the remaining portion of the story!

      Delete
  4. Katy. Would you like to speak with my God? As my therapies begin today, I fully expect the Great He/She/It to pay me a visit soon. I'll ask that you be visited and send you a bottle of Gram's potions to limber-up your reflexes in advance.

    As for your brother, that you seek his whereabouts at all--much less with the aforementioned involvements--speaks highly of you.

    Fuck Walmart!

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Hi, Mooner!

      My motives for seeking my brother are probably questionable. I won't go into them now because there's a chance he reads this blog.

      As for God... I need all the help I can get. Always.

      Delete
  5. We only think we want to know what's hidden in the dark, sticky corners of our psyche. Once revealed, mere mortals rarely recover, and many go completely mad.

    On the other hand, those who start off from a position of relative madness tend to find balance with all the information they discover.

    Choose wisely, grasshopper. Are you mad enough to handle epiphanies?

    ReplyDelete
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    1. I never trust people who seem too well adjusted or one-dimensionally wholesome.

      I love the dark parts. That's the only place you ever find new stuff!

      Delete
  6. My wife has fantastic intuition that is never wrong. Me? Not so much. I definitely think there's something to that whole "women's intuition" thing.

    Sadly, she still hasn't used it to win the lottery for us, but I guess I'll let that slide... for now.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. I think guys tend to be too left-brained, logical, etc.

      I shut down the logical part of my brain years ago and make all my decisions straight from the gut. The results have been catastrophic, of course, but at least I can say I'm using my woman's intuition.

      Delete
  7. Replies
    1. Exactly. It's the same principle.

      That would work for most people, but the guy whose brain I'm trying to pick for info about my brother wouldn't go for something like that. I have to convince him that it's a reputable way of getting information out of him or else he'll get skeptical and it won't work.

      Delete
  8. AAaaaaAAaaAaah! I was wondering...in my last comment...if we'd get to this. Also, it's a damn good thing I've been reading for a while, otherwise I would need a work cited page to catch all of the past references.
    Also, you may be wrong, I think, not only should I tell less of what is in my head, but I am pretty sure that I know less than what I think I know.

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    1. Hey, Pickeope!

      I do try and balance them all out. You'll get a general interest post about a vagina with teeth or something, and then one that requires a little more background.

      Because I'm a pro at this.

      Not like those other bloggers who use their soapbox to insult old people.

      Delete
  9. I find it really cool that we say "spliff" in South Africa too.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. I might be the only Texan to use the word "spliff" ever.

      I have a friend from Trinidad who uses the term (specifically for a marijuana/tobacco mix), and I've picked it up.

      So I guess South Africans use the same word as the Caribbean potheads.

      We don't have a word for it in Texas. If asked, in Texas we'd just say, "What would be the purpose in ever having to make reference to such a thing, son?"

      Delete
  10. Answers to my biggest problems come to me in sleep too. I wake up and forget them though.

    Jay

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    1. Secret of life, right there and written out before you, but you forgot to write it down in time.

      Which actually might be the Secret of Life: "Write it down before you forget." Can never go wrong with that advice.

      Delete
  11. I wish you die and go straight to hell, where the devil can and will fuck you like the whore that you are for the eternity to come!!

    Stuff your green status light in your whore hole, and go talk to your fuck buddy for the next eight years, and show how big an asshole and brainless and shameless slut and whore you truly are !!!!

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Awww, you sure do know what to say to a girl, Sean.

      I've changed my mind about you. How can I get you into my life with all your sweet, sweet talk?

      Delete
  12. I don't know much of anything about our brains and how we hide crucial pieces of information from ourselves. I do know, having followed this story for sometime, that if there is anyone who needs to have a few holes drilled in their head it is definitely not you.

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    1. Thank you? Although, really, what use is a brain at all if you don't poke around in it just to see what happens?

      Delete
  13. This is a good point. Though I subscribe to the notion of starting with other brains first.

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    1. You lawyers are always trying to play it safe, though.

      I was just thinking this week about how I could transform this page into one where I just post lawyer stories. I think I have more than enough, working for them for so long.

      Sadly, Dallas attorneys would get away satire-free.

      Delete

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