Category Archives: gets right up my nose

March 23, 2009 · 11:43 pm

Something’s Up Your Nose…So What?


Lili’s vet referred us to the other kind of Vet, a former Marine, who trains dogs using Japanese, because it becomes the secret code between dog & owner, avoiding that Robert De Niro, head-tilting, “Are you talkin’ to me?” beat between command & response. Like the dog trainer icons on TV, our guy teaches that owners must become the Leader of the (Wolf) Pack, always “walking point” or “taking the con,” in situations where a dog may sense a power vacuum and decide to make a command decision, as to who may or may not pass without a hassle. The dog owner must get the dog to understand, “I’m in charge here. If I say ‘friend,’ don’t you act out ‘foe.'” But constant vigilance is exhausting, so would-be pack leaders adopt labor-saving tactics. The first: Let sleeping dogs lie. The second: Watch for signs of arousal, and prepare to react. Lili’s long, fine back hair stands up like a porcupine’s spines when she is aroused, cuing her designated pack leader to take charge and either permit or disallow a display of aggression.

The parallel response sequence for humans is, first, to acknowledge aggressive arousal. Next, to identify its source; and then to decide whether the situation merits an aggressive response. New fMRI research shows that when the brain’s alarm center (amygdala) is “lit up,” it prevents blood flow to the problem-solving & memory center (hippocampus) and to the “look-before-you-leap” center (pre-frontal cortex). Just by naming the irritant (“Fear!” or “Intrusion!”), the flow of blood can be changed, to help a human to avoid a reflexive acting out of anger and to start working out an alternative response. In other words, we humans would do well to ackowledge our “inner wolf,” to get savvy about the warning signs of its arousal, and then to engage in the parlor game of “What just got up my nose?”

The alternative is to become a werewolf: to be overtaken by unacknowledged (therefore alien-seeming) aggressive impulses, to act them out impulsively, and later to protest, “I don’t know what got into me! That (antisocial behavior) is just not who I am! I’m a better person than that!”

Oh, really? I suggest spending more time observing what stirs up the neighborhood dogs, and less time rejoicing in humans’ degrees of genetic separation from them.

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Filed under aggression happens, gets right up my nose, leading a pack, secret code

March 25, 2009 · 4:54 pm

Hayfever

When our younger daughter went out to Southern California for college, she and her East Coast classmates learned to check the daily UV-ray Index like a horoscope, and to plan their sun exposure accordingly. Back here, many consult the daily Pollen Count, to predict how much Kleenex (or antihistamine) will be needed. Likewise, using the “What’s likely to get up my nose today?” model of Anger Management, it often pays to be forewarned.

Having lived in the D.C. area several times in my life, I have come to expect that driving the Capital Beltway will provoke my anger. Obviously, I know I’m not unique in this. Just observe your fellow motorists on any badly-engineered, heavily-traveled road, and you will sense barely-controlled rage. But the irritant is not the same for every driver. For some it is the intrusion of all the other cars clogging up the artery–“Is your journey really necessary?” For others it is the humiliation of being cut off by that Beemer-driver-with-a-sense-of-entitlement. Some are enduring the pain & suffering of having skipped that pre-journey trip to the bathroom. For me, I came to realize, it was fear. Not the most confident driver, myself, I imagined the Beltway as a nightmarish rink of Bumper Cars, with everyone hellbent on bending fenders. With my amygdala in alarm mode, I would ping among the “F-triad” of not-so-great responses (flee, fight, or freeze). It’s a wonder I never had a Beltway accident, isn’t it?

So, now, armed with insight and foresight, just as I approach the ramp to the ringroad, I say (out loud, so my whole brain can hear me), “Fear!” This gets the wolf in my head to quit howling, thus enabling my pre-frontal cortex to inhibit sudden braking or swerving, and my hippocampus to reality-test about just how homicidal/suicidal my fellow motorists seem to be. (Usually, not very. Not since they caught the Beltway snipers.) I also play raucus rock music, to which I sing along, thus allowing a harmless discharge of excess adrenaline. That’s how the model works.

So, next time you’re facing a heinous car journey, try asking yourself, “What could possibly get up my nose?” It might be any one–or a combination– of the Big Four irritants; but by calling them out, you could keep the wolf from howling (amygdalar arousal) and the werewolf from prowling (going ballistic with road rage).

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Filed under aggression happens, gets right up my nose, limbic system

March 27, 2009 · 10:10 pm

Take a Walk on the Wild Side


Just back from our (almost) daily trek on the high school’s Cross-Country course through the local woods, to teach Lili who’s pack leader. A rough start, as we passed by the fenced-in Girls’ Lacrosse field, and someone’s bored little brother rattled his sabre (well, Lacrosse stick) at Lili, dragging it along the chain-link like a film noir rabble-rouser, and roused her. A 2-second burst of Japanese “redirection” on my part brought her to heel, and we were off into the forest. On the path back out we encountered a couple with two barking Dachshunds and a Lab, so I leashed Lili up and we passed by without any display of aggression (not one raised hackle) on Lili’s part, while the guy shouted to the yapping dog in his arms, “Oh, just shut up, Lily!” (What are the odds?)

During my 6 enchanted years living in Manhattan–one in the Village, 5 on the Upper West Side–similar power negotiations played out several times a day, mostly involving two-legged parties (although a very cool Sociology prof at Columbia sometimes walked his two pet wolves, Romulus & Remus, down Broadway). I loved Lou Reed’s ode to the more colorful performance artists among us. The Sugarplum Fairy was sometimes spotted roller-skating in and out of the deli on 72nd Street (before [s]he made it big at the Apollo). Countless trips on the not-so-velvet-underground from grad school Uptown, to the VA hospital on East 23rd Street, to acting school in Midtown, and back home after midnight, gave me The Knowledge (a cognitive map) of the city, as well as priceless insights into how to avoid (or lessen the odds of) becoming the target of aggressive assault by strangers. My acting school girlfriends & I would swap stories and tips for how to project the most useful power subtext in confrontations with dodgy dudes in tight places: “I am not your enemy, but I am not your victim.”

Common street hassle of the day: “Gimme a cigarette!” [His power subtext: “Are you my victim?”] Savvy response: “You know, I don’t smoke, and neither should you. I can give you the name of a great stop-smoking clinic. Would you be interested in that?” [Your power subtext: “Not your victim, not your enemy. My amygdala is not aroused by your sabre rattling, so my hippocampus can make up as much of this do-gooder spiel as it takes to bore you, until you lose interest in me as a mark, and move on.”] The preparation my friends & I did for such verbal skirmishes included telling each other what “got up our nose(s)” about street hasslers: intrusion and/or fear. After awhile, we reckoned that our power subtext was so “I am not threatened by you,” that even to be auditioned for the victim role was a source of humiliation.

In the playing field, Lili let the little boy “drive her wild.” So I reined her in (verbally) and we did an hour of close-order drill on our walk through the woods. [My subtext: “I am your master. I trump your amygdala. Unless I give you the attack word, stay cool.” The payoff came when we encountered the three canine street hasslers on the path, and Lili, following my lead, just walked on by.

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Filed under gets right up my nose, leading a pack, limbic system, secret code, semiotics

April 13, 2009 · 9:06 pm

"Hashi" (Say what?)


The title above demonstrates the Metalingual speech function [first discussed in the Funny Bone post]. I say the Japanese word for “bridge” [not necessarily on the River Kwai], and you ask for clarification [unless you are Lili, in which case you obediently procede to the nearest bridge]. After mastering all our dog trainer’s Japanese commands [many of which Lili also mastered], I came to believe that I could train Lili to do anything, as long as I could find the word for it in a Japanese dictionary. I have created a monster. We decided that it would be cool [in summer, and warm in winter] if we could get Lili to shut the front & side doors behind her, since she had already figured out how to let herself into the house from the outside, but would leave the door ajar. Ten minutes of successive approximation, using the command “Shimaru,” a clicker, and high-value treats [dried lamb lung, I regret to say], and she has become Carlton, Your Doorman, biffing away at an open door as many times as it takes to slam it shut. This skill loses its charm when one is ferrying in several loads of groceries from the garage, and finds the door slammed firmly in one’s face. There are other commands to avoid this…but I digress.

When I am doing psychotherapy, or even hearing/reading people co-opt clinical terms to signify something entirely different from their original meaning, I get all Metalingual about it. My first bete noire is “schizophrenic.” No, it does not mean “in two minds” about something, or acting in two mutually inconsistent ways. That would be to feel ambivalent about something, or to experience cognitive dissonance. DSM-IV criteria for schizophrenia require delusions and/or hallucinations. If one means to signify a Jekyll & Hyde switcheroo between two radically different behavior patterns, that would be a Dissociative Disorder. See, now you can stop a conversation cold in its tracks, by asking a speaker who throws around the term “schizophrenic” just what they think they mean by it.

Another co-opted word is depressed. Do you mean, like, “bummed out about something that just happened,” or that you blame yourself and think you deserve whatever bad thing just happened? [That was Freud’s original distinction in Mourning & Melancholia.] Like, are you sad that the Cubbies lost, or do you think you made them lose and everyone should hate your guts? It makes all sorts of difference to a clinician, what you mean by “depressed.” [Notice how Phatic I am, when trying to understand what the other person means to say? It helps keep the lines of communication open.] Since another early definition for depression was “anger, turned inward,” it is useful to play our old parlor game, “What gets up your nose [about the thing that is ‘depressing’ you]?” Did you brag to your out-of-town friends that the Cubs were going to win, and now you feel humiliated? Did you put your money where your mouth is, so now you are feeling the pain & suffering of a financial loss? Was it a large wager, and now you fear that the bookie is coming to have his pound of flesh, if you can’t pony up? Until you do the wolf-work of figuring out what is eating you [“What’s up your nose?”], you are stuck in that bad place, where amygdalar overload robs your hippocampus of the ability to come up with any good coping strategies, and your pre-frontal cortex can’t stop you from “doing something stupid.”

I also need to know what you really mean, when you say you “feel guilty.” It’s a Rorschach word, signifying quite different things to each “guilty” person–depending on his or her fear of divine and/or karmic retribution, or earthly punishment, or the humiliation of loss of face [for not having lived up to one’s own code of conduct]. Play the parlor game, yourself, and identify the irritants of guilt, for you. I have no doubt that as I write this, in some neuropsych lab, college students’ brains are being scanned with fMRIs, like hi-tech lie-detector tests, to see who experiences what kind of “guilt”–in what area of their brain–upon learning that they have just fulfilled Milgram’s grim prophesy for mankind: that we would all act inhumanely towards another, if given a compelling enough reason to do so.

My final example: disappointed. Everybody would be out cold on the frathouse floor, if the game was to take a drink every time you read/heard that, in the face of egregious behavior [their own, or others’] someone in the news is “disappointed.” What on earth does it mean? Miffed? Perturbed? Crushed? Desolated? Mad as hell? About to act out aggressively and antisocially? Suicidal/homicidal? In every follow-up article about a shooting-spree-ending-in-the-death-of-the-shooter, someone who knew the shooter says that he/she was “disappointed” about something that had recently occurred. So are we all, I dare say; but we don’t all go ballistic about it. Substitute a more descriptive word, the next time you catch yourself using “disappointed”: and you will be well on the way to “knowing, and training, your wolf.”

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Filed under Freud meant..., gets right up my nose, jekyll and hyde, pragmatics, secret code

April 23, 2009 · 2:17 pm

Backgammon (Bear Off)


While both backgammon and chess are war-games, the former is way older [3000 B.C. vs. 600 A.D.] and–in Geneva Conventions terms–way more soldier-friendly. In chess you can sacrifice all your troops, except the King, in the name of victory; whereas in backgammon you cannot win until you rescue all your troops from their captivity [on the Bar], and bear off every last one of them to safety.

Without getting too name-droppy about it, I was lucky enough to meet [separately] with two of Freud’s analysands [his patients], who went on to become noted psychoanalysts [both now dead–this was in the 70s]; and one of them [can’t remember which] told me that Freud preferred the metaphor of backgammon to chess, for the Game of Life. As we slog through the vicissitudes [Freud’s oh-so-prissy translator, Lytton Strachey, chose this term, instead of ups & downs, or snakes & ladders, or swings & roundabouts] of life, we get stuck in some boggy patches. [If A.A. Milne had been Freud’s translator, more people would have gotten the benefit of the useful bits.] These have to do with tricky dilemmas discussed in previous posts [such as “To be smothered with attention, or to be left utterly alone?” and “To be a Goody-Two-Shoes, or to be a Black Sheep?”]. In our earliest struggles, grown-ups represent the opposing side [the Giants, Freud said, because these battles took place When We Were Very Young, therefore, small].

In each of these skirmishes, we lose a few soldiers; but we carry on with our remaining troops, to face the next dust-up. For some people, these encounters are not so bad, and only a few soldiers are lost. For others, it’s a hard-knocks life; and the Bar is crowded with their captive troops. Freud thought of troop strength as the Vital Force [or psychic energy] needed to confront life’s challenges. Let us think of it as blood to the hippocampus, shall we? Not enough of it, and the hippocampus shrivels up, leaving us unable to remember important stuff or to problem-solve. We lose traction. We are in danger of being gammoned or even backgammoned [losing the Game of Life very badly].

So we need to make like the Red Cross [Crescent, whatever], and negotiate for the release of these PoWs. In backgammon, it’s a roll of the dice–if a useful number comes up, a soldier can be liberated and head for home. In real life, we need to go back–to revisit the hard-knock event–and see if we can reframe it in such a way that we get the captive soldier back. The most current treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder encourages the individual to recollect the traumatic event: to write about it, or to talk about it into a taperecorder and listen to it repeatedly, until it loses its power to arouse the amygdala. Then the “wolf-work” can begin. “What got up your nose, about the event?” “Are you bummed because you lost a buddy, or do you blame yourself for his/her loss?”

As in all real wars, we may never recover all the fallen or captive soldiers, but it is vitally important that we try. Those who say that we should simply “Move on,” from traumatic events, without any attempt to understand what really happened–what we were thinking, what got up our nose–are ignoring human nature and brain physiology. What we have not acknowledged and understood, we are likely to act out–against ourselves and others. Before we can truly move on, we need to look back.

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Filed under Freud meant..., gets right up my nose, limbic system, post-traumatic stress

May 4, 2009 · 3:04 pm

"Chotto matte!"


In 2007, the pre-frontal cortex emerged, from the cinder-strewn hearth of neuro-anatomical and behavioral research, to the dazzling ballroom of the chattering classes–conveyed thither by a New Yorker cartoon. Parents, to their fashionably disheveled adolescent son: “Young man, go to your room and stay there until your cerebral cortex matures.”

Who knew? Turns out Disney was right. There’s a Jiminy Cricket area of the cerebral cortex, that acts like a Hollywood producer–red-lighting or green-lighting various hare-brained scenarios the amygdala pitches to it: “Too risky! Have to run that by legal. Too controversial! We’ll alienate our demographic. Will it be banned in Boston? Condemned in Cleveland? Banished in Baltimore? Better lose some of the obscenity, but keep the gratuitous violence.”

One slight glitch. As the New Yorker cartoon implies, you can’t hurry “Good Taste, Good Judgement, and Self-Control.” [Anyone who recognizes that phrase went to Duke before 1968.] The pre-frontal cortex doesn’t reliably begin to exercise Exective Function until one’s mid-2os. [Results may vary, depending on Nature, Nurture, and Proximal Events.] For the purpose of mounting a legal defense, “Proximal Events” have been known to include temporary insanity, due to jealousy [la crime passionel], circadian rhythm disruption, and/or Twinky toxicity.

Incidentally, in the 1980s neuro-anatomical researchers were publishing articles tracing the pathways of the dog’s pre-frontal cortex to various other brain areas, thereby scandalizing the ethological community, who had insisted a priori, that one had to be at least a primate, dear, to have impulse control. How old were the dogs in the research study, I wonder? Had they matured past that harum-scarum phase, where all rabbits are fair game…well, let’s face it, where all game is fair game? Here’s a fun fact: predator [carnivore] animals have a relatively larger cerebral cortex [and a relatively shorter gut], than prey [herbivore] animals. Not to get too anthropomorphic about it, it takes alot more Executive Function [not to mention Therbligs], to find, select, and pounce on a sentient, mobile animal, than on a stationary plant [pace Prince Charles…who talks to plants…but hunts foxes…oh, never mind].

My favorite nemesis, Big Pharma, is even now working on a drug to hasten the growth of the pre-frontal cortex. There should be a contest, to predict what the adverse side-effects [or unintended consequences] of such a drug will be. Those of us who studied psychology in the 60s recall that in the 1950s the panacea for all manner of “insanity”[ranging from schizophrenia, to mood disorders, to antisocial behavior] was the Pre-frontal Lobotomy, wherein all connections between the pre-frontal cortex and the rest of the brain were surgically severed. Those who studied Filmography, instead, will tell you that Frankenstein was the research scientist, not the monster.

Before that Brave New World comes to pass, the best course of action, for enhancing the self-control of dogs, young people, and those of us with Overactive Amygdala Syndrome, is the daily exercise of what pre-frontal cortex we do have. First of all, make sure it gets enough blood flow [by identifying what is getting Up the Nose of the amygdala].

For what is second of all, readers will have to “Chotto Matte” [Japanese for wait a little while], for the next post.

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Filed under ethology, gets right up my nose, murky research

June 2, 2009 · 7:16 pm

"Das ist nicht FAIR!"


My globe-trotting elder daughter brought me back a German dog journal, which made the transcontinental haul back from SoCal seem to “fly by”–despite a rowdy class of 8th-graders in the cheap seats, two screaming Pre-Ks in front of us, and an in-flight entertainment system on the fritz–as I brushed up my German vocab and translated the HundeTrendMagazin cover-to-cover. My favorite article, with the title as written above [last word in English], summarizes the recent research of Dr. Friederike Range @ the University of Vienna into Inequity Aversion in dogs. [You can read her article, in English, featuring 3 priceless pictures of the “striking” dog, @ http://www.nc.univie.ac.at/cognition-research/animals/dogs/projects. ] Before we get to her findings, she also is co-founder of the Wolf Science Center, whose website is: http://www.wolfscience.at/english/about_us/friederike_range.html. Check out how much “Shima” the Wolf looks like Lili.

So @ the Clever Dog Lab, two dogs who were buddies were seated side-by-side and each asked, “Gib Pfote!” [“Give me a paw!”] Sometimes the reward was a piece of sausage, and other times, a piece of bread. No difference in compliance was noted. Then the black & tan dog was given the bread, but the black & white was not. So, he went on strike: “Nicht mit mir” [“Not with me”] they captioned his averted-gaze body language. Earlier studies with primates had shown that even a distinction in the value of the treat–a cucumber chunk (meh) vs a grape (yum)–was enough to send the slighted monkey into a fury. Not only did he refuse to exchange a pebble for the treat, he threw both the cuke and the pebbles back at the trainer! The dog didn’t appear to get miffed until no treat of any kind was offered to him, while his buddy did get something.

This is a variation on the theme of the Zero-Sum-Game, where the trainer suddenly changes the rules in the middle of proceedings. We go from a day’s pay for a day’s work, to We’re-having-a-party-and-you’re-not-invited. Well, how would you feel? Correction–how have you felt? Who hasn’t been there, done that? They schmize you into believing your school or your job [or Britain’s Got Talent] is a meritocracy, and then they play favorites! All of a sudden, black & white is uncool, and black & tan is all that. In vain, you gave your paw with the same enthusiasm and reliability as your pal. He turns out to be the teacher’s pet! What’s up [your nose] with that?

At the very least, humiliation, innit? Probably also intrusion. The powers-that-be have taken away your rightful piece of bread and given it to old used-to-be-your-pal, Black & Tan, who looks set to scoff the whole loaf…which, if true, could lead to hunger [pain & suffering], or worse [fear]–starvation! So what do you do? If you’re a dog, you avert your gaze and keep all paws planted firmly on the ground. How tame! [Especially compared to the miffed monkey.] This is the canine version of a sit-down strike–a form of passive resistance [when Gandhi did it] or passive aggression [when a disgruntled employee does it].

The very phrase “disgruntled employee” conjures up images of humans who have decided to “Go Postal” and take revenge–not only on the invidious “(bread)-winner”–but on everyone within their line of sight. Dogs, it seems, are more Stoic than that. They simply refuse to perform tricks anymore for The Man.

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Filed under aggression happens, ethology, gets right up my nose, semiotics, zero-sum-gaming

June 24, 2009 · 9:19 pm

"A Highly Trained Individual"


Ever since the Regrettable Incident(s) at the Playing Fields, Lili is on-leash in that area, except for a brief “Ally-Oop” session, where she responds either to that command or to my 3-note whistle, to jump back & forth over an athletic bench or a blue barrel a few times. Now that school is out, a no-nonsense, gruff-looking man has been preparing part of the field we traverse, for a football training camp for Fall Freshmen. Of course, we skirt their playing field; but the boys are always intrigued by the “wolf-dog” as we pass by, offering her catcalls and wolf whistles, trying to get her attention.

I got the vibe that the coach was not amused, so Lili & I just “keep our eyes in the boat” and quick-march by, on our way to and from the woods. Yesterday, as the boys were doing an exercise involving jumping in and out of tractor tires laid on the ground, some of them were again distracted by Lili. So, here’s what the coach told them: “Just let that big dog alone. ‘He’s’ working. That is a highly trained individual.”

How cool is that?

Stand by for the metaphor. Doing daily “wolf-work” [trying to gain mastery over one’s amygdalar arousal, by asking, “Now, what just got up my nose?” then pausing, and redirecting that angry energy into more useful actions] pays off, in the long run. When I first encountered this guy painting stripes on the field, I thought, “Oh, man! Just when school’s out and the fields become “community property” [like on weekends], this grumpy dude [body language, facial expression & failure to respond to my greeting] is making me feel like the trespasser (humiliation, intrusion, and the ever-present fear of consequences for Lili). I considered avoiding the fields altogether, by taking the back path to the woods; but since the last storm, a too-big-to-move-without-a-Bobcat tree [with bayonet-like broken branches] completely blocks the way. [Actually, I was just able to clamber over it, but Lili nearly impaled herself on it; and I got poison ivy on my arm for my efforts, anyway–pain & suffering all around.] So, through the fields we strode on our appointed rounds, shoulders back, eyes front, no Lame Gazelle subtext here: we were neither the “grumpy” dude’s enemy, nor his victim.

I felt not only proud, that the dude had affirmed Lili’s progress, but also sheepish, that I had mistaken his aloof manner for disapproval. What a rookie cognitive distortion on my part, especially given all my years in and around military settings!

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Filed under gets right up my nose, limbic system, power subtext, semiotics

July 1, 2009 · 8:04 pm

"Tie Me Kangaroo Down"


This Rolf Harris song was a big hit in the UK in 1960, as well as my personal anthem [since by then I had figured out that I was a cognitive ‘Roo, who needed to “rein myself in” during school hours]. Can’t resist quoting the timely [and prescient] first verse: “Watch me wallabies feed, mate…they’re a dangerous breed, mate.” Those Tasmanian poppy farmers [well, their parents] had been warned.

This is Dusk, a 16hh QuarterHorse [8″ shorter than Owen]: failed race horse [didn’t like being loaded into the starting gate], successful “A” Circuit Hunter/Jumper [though how they ever got her into a horse-trailer to haul her to all those shows is anybody’s guess], and set in her ways, by the time we owned her. If you’re interested in her pedigree, her sire was “Mr. Clabberdoo” and her dam was…a number. [I mean, literally–no name, just a number.] So claustrophobic was “Miss Clabberdoo” [our barn name for her, when she was being stubborn], that she often refused to come in from turn-out [in a boring, dirt–not gorgeous grass–paddock], to her lovely, warm [in winter] or cool [in summer] stall to eat her delicious food…until dusk. Stable lads galore would humiliate themselves by saying, “Oh, you guys just don’t know how to wrangle a QuarterHorse. I’ll get her in, in no time,” only to spend a fruitless hour coaxing, then chasing, then cursing this otherwise “nice” horse [a term of art that means talented]. Think of the intrusion [total waste of time and Therbligs] her silliness caused everyone at the barn. I finally figured out how to outfox her, based on the common practice of lungeing a feisty horse [having it run in circles, in alternate directions, bucking at will, on a long leash-type thingy called a lungeline] to dissipate all that pent-up recalcitrance. I would walk to the center of Dusk’s paddock and mime the actions of having her on a lungeline, schmizing her into cantering clockwise in a big circle, then counter-clockwise, until she would get tired, walk over to me, nuzzle my neck, and allow me to clip on a short leadline and walk her inside. [This could take up to 15 minutes, but it always worked.]

So, that is how you tie your Kangaroo down, mate. At a physical level, most cognitive ‘Roos are restless creatures, who need to exhaust themselves with a spot of aerobic activity, before they can “buckle down” to the task assigned by The Man. Sometimes [not always] fear and loathing of confined spaces has to do with the loss of liberty to “go walkabout.” If the legs can’t go, at least the mind is free to wander. In my culture, this is called being “away wit’ da Fairies.” It is not (or wasn’t, when I were a lass) pathologized–bemoaned, yes; rebuked, even–but mostly regarded as an inconvenient foible, to be outgrown or outfoxed. In England I was lucky enough to live in a stone-cold house [no central heating], so that a hot, strong cup of tea was a welcome part of breakfast. Then my first class of the day was Physical Training, where we scampered around a cinder track [usually in the fog] until exhausted. What a perfect way for a Kangaroo to get ready to “buckle down” and get schooled. To this day, I begin [almost] every morning with a 50-minute aerobic workout, followed by a strong cup of tea. To quote my younger daughter, it helps me to “linger at the gates” (of the Fairies’ realm), without actually slipping away.

So, are you Clydesdales getting any of this? Like Dusk, cognitive ‘Roos resist time and space constraints. But they can learn to become their own “wranglers,” by putting themselves on a virtual lungeline and getting all the bucking [of the system] out of their system [also known as “doing the Wolf-work” of figuring out what’s likely to get up their nose about acting like a biddable beast of burden], before reining themselves in for long enough to get a productive day’s work done. Robert Frost had a series of exchanges with Carl Sandberg, who wanted Frost to give up the constraints of rhyme and meter, and join their contemporaries in writing verse libre. Frost remarked, famously, that it would be “like playing tennis without a net.” Less famously, he added, “True freedom is moving easily in your harness.”

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Filed under born to run, ethology, gets right up my nose, non-linear thinking, therbligs, understanding shenanigans

July 13, 2009 · 5:34 pm

Chiaroscuro


(Quoted from The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1934 ed.) “[Italian: “light-dark”] noun: Treatment of light & shade in painting; light & shade effects in nature; variation, relief, handling of transitions, use of contrast, in literature, etc. adjective: half-revealed.”

On certain Projective [as opposed to Objective] psychological tests–where there supposedly aren’t any “right or wrong” answers, only “revealing” ones–the subject’s use of chiaroscuro [attention to the shading of an inkblot or an ambiguous drawing] has been interpreted in various ways, over the decades. The earliest developers of such tests [seeming to regard their own free associations to “light & dark” imagery as the norm] came up with: “anxiety about shadowy situations,” “fear of the dark,” and “hypervigilance.” I’m sure Carravaggio and his buddies in the artistic school of tenebrism would be amused to know that they were all Nervous Nellies.

By the time I was in grad school, the received wisdom was that use of chiaroscuro–a tendency to go beyond Black & White perceptions of an ambiguous situation, and instead to take into consideration the nuanced gray areas–reflected a capacity for abstract reasoning and empathy.

Like most things in psychology and real life, it could be both, ya know. Lili is most likely to react with alarm to suspected “intruders into her territory” when the light is tenebrous–at dawn & dusk. Like the lads in the lamppost anecdote, most scientific researchers trope to the light, rather than trolling through the dark alleys of half-revealed clues–even if that’s where the keys to understanding emotions and behavior lie. If we can be brave enough to tolerate the tenebrous subjunctive mood–“Well, I can’t say for sure, but it might be this…”–we can often stumble upon a useful truth.

Something seems to be troubling you. You are snapping at others, and shedding more tears than usual, and what a headache you just got! Oy, veh! Could you maybe be angry at someone or some situation? A little something up your nose? Rather than assume you are coming down with a Clinical Depression or “The Dreadful Lurgy” [aka the ‘flu], why not try a little poking around in the shadows of you mind, to see if you can get some instant relief? The “Always? Not always!” prof I told you about had a simple remedy for sudden-onset headache. “Say the name of the guy whose head you want to bash in!” [“Always a guy? Not always.”] Either the headache will go away right then, or you may be having an intra-cranial event. Are you willing to try it, before setting off for the ER? Maybe you could try it on the way. Just to see.

My favorite source of humor on weekday mornings is The Chris Moyles Show on BBC Radio One. The other day Chris was mildly mocking their light-weight, female sports reporter, who had apparently gotten “high as a kite” on one glass of wine at a Karaoke event they were hosting in a provincial pub. “When Carrie’s drunk, she could pick a fight with her own shadow: ‘Stop following me around, and falling at my feet!'”

Feel free to use it. And the possible headache cure, as well.

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Filed under aggression happens, black and white thinking, gets right up my nose, semiotics