I'm not always aiming for positive emotions...

Sometimes it's hard to explain why I am drawn towards certain kinds of creative writing, visual art, and photographic art that others might view or interpret as gross, gory, unsettling, disturbing, or even offensive, because there are various different reasons, sometimes fused together and somewhat different depending on the piece of art.

One of those reasons is that earlier on in my life, I feel like I experienced quite a few examples of people choosing to hide (or avoid knowledge or awareness of) parts of reality that they found disturbing. I understand not revealing certain disturbing aspects of reality to little kids (but also some little kids don't even have the privilege of being able to avoid certain disturbing aspects of reality), but I also think that some adults would rather act like disturbing aspects of reality don't really exist forever. On one hand, that's an individual choice, but on the other hand it's a choice that not everyone has the privilege to make if they're surrounded by a different part of reality.

With my own poetry/art OR poetry/art by others that I choose to share, I'm not purposely aiming to shock or offend, but I'm also not aiming to keep it calm or pretty or avoid the unpleasant or bothersome. There are a variety of different kinds of poetry/art I'm drawn to in some ways, but among those, I've always been drawn towards some dark, unsettling, and disturbing. Why? I don't know exactly or maybe that's because there's a variety of different reasons, depending on the art and other factors. Sometimes because it stimulates my brain and catalyzes creative impulses. Sometimes because it has a strong affect on my emotions (and I'm not always aiming for positive emotions). Sometimes because I'd rather feel angry than sad. Sometimes because I'd rather be made aware of/attempt to confront something disturbing or disgusting than stay unaware of it, hidden from it, or choose to just ignore it. Which is not to say I never ignore things. Sometimes I do.

I would never personally kill an animal, but I've taken photos of dead birds and dead baby bird fetuses before, not because I thought it was shocking or titillating but partly because it's a small but unsettling part of reality that many people would rather just walk past and ignore. Also because I'm so disturbed by death or by life just visually disappearing.

Some years ago when I had my dog put to sleep (which in my opinion is a pretty disturbing phrase and a very difficult experience) and then brought his dead body back to my house, I was drawn to take a few photos of him, because that was the last time I was going to see his body. I had loved my dog and I had taken tons of photos of him when he was alive. But I only snapped one really quick one after he was dead, because my parents were over and that might have freaked them out and seemed ridiculously weird to them. They liked my dog too, but everyone processes and handles these things somewhat differently. I guess I'm drawn to someone incorporate death into art, since I'm so into art, and if something still exists in art then it doesn't seem entirely dead?

I'm much more disturbed by the idea of death/non-existence and the uncaringness of death itself and by people just tossing dead animals in a big trash heap like they're garbage than I am of people photographing that unsettling part of reality and presenting it in order to provoke thoughts and feelings (which is part of what I think art does).

With this interconnected small series of poems I'm currently in the process of working on, one of them is trying to express a difference between fantasy horror films and documentation of real life violence, in terms of some people implying it's not a good idea to watch too many horror films but also implying that we should try to ignore many aspects of real life violence. I'm having a hard time with the poem for some reason. Who knows? Maybe semi-sorting through these thoughts of mine here and then copying and pasting them next to my poem-in-progress might help me finish it soon. Or maybe not.

Long Self-Expression

I don't want to accidentally come across like I'm carelessly writing off other people's thoughts/feelings when I post about a personal pet peeve, so here's a much longer form of personal expression. I'm not asking anyone to agree with me or join forces with me (although as always, anyone who wants to offer their thoughts/feelings/commentary on this is welcome to do so). I'm just making a substantial effort to express parts of why I feel the way I feel, act the way I act, and communicate the way I communicate. Also, I know there's nothing perfect about me and nor do I want there to be (and also, I know there's always room for personal improvement and personal growth). But wherever I'm at, I do want to try my best be an open and honest communicator, even if I make mistakes.

I will honestly admit that I don't relate to "groupthink" or groups in general. I don't feel like I fit in to any particular group and I don't desire to force myself to fit in anywhere in particular. (Although I do realize to an extent that might be a kind of white privilege - and that other people might not have as much of an opportunity or choice to focus on themselves as individuals). It's not a matter of whether or not I agree with the overall points of a group. It's more like the bigger the agenda of the group, the less room there seems to be for divergence or free thinking or individual thoughts, feelings, personal expression (which is my preferred form of expression). At least that's my perception/impression of groupthink and groups in general.

In addition to that, another main reason I don't like groups on social media is they seem prone to leading towards group attacks. Even if something significantly substantial is initially expressed, what is the significantly substantial point of a group of people that seem to feel similarly all responding/reacting to that point of view in a way that causes the point of view to be overtaken by lashing out at anyone who feels differently AND lashing out at people who feel similarly, but just don't express their thoughts/feelings the same way. I don't know if I'm doing a good job of describing this and I'm sure I've done it before too - the lashing out. I've made mistakes, even to the point of accidentally ruining friendships, because I expressed my point of view in a lashing out sort of way. I try not to do it quickly or carelessly or frequently though. And I've never done it in an attempt to catalyze a group attack - because then it sometimes starts to seem a little bit like mob mentality (in my opinion). Like when someone else on the thread expresses a sentence or two from a different approach/point of view and quickly gets slammed and made fun of by whole handfuls of other adults. I don't garner any enjoyment from making fun of someone based on a few sentences (but some people in group attacks certainly seem to) and frankly, I don't see how that furthers any particular cause.

Me saying that group attacks make me uncomfortable is not me saying that they're right or wrong or silly or foolish; but they make me uncomfortable because even if they started out by questioning a situation that might have deserved to be seriously questioned, they often end up also angrily attacking people who just feel a little bit differently or people who don't respond to things the same way or who don't understand things the same way etc...

In my opinion, based on my own online experience, this sort of thing seems to happen most often in the realm of conversations that get political and people start attacking other people when they don't even know the details of the other person's point of view. Here's one example. During election season, I had posted something on my facebook wall that ended up leading towards a political debate sort of conversation. I don't remember the details of the post or the conversation, but I do remember that a man I casually new in real life (but new nothing about his political sensibilities because we had never talked about that), came onto my wall and made some sort of angry, aggressive, anti-hillary comment under the commentary of a few women who were making pro-hillary comments. The women didn't bow down and succumb to his negative aggression, they commented back, and he got angrier and more aggressive, as well as racist and sexist and violently hostile. I was about to attempt commenting on the situation, but then my phone rang and I ended up having a 30 minute or so phone conversation with my mom. I could hear my computer beeping away in the background (indicating that more and more comments were being posted), but I wasn't in front of my computer for half an hour or so. When I got back on my computer, the man (who as I said, I had known casually in real life) had unfriended me and blocked me, even though I hadn't made a single comment on any of his comments, because I hadn't been online! So I guess he unfriended and blocked me because two of my online friends (who I barely knew at all) had offended him? And he just assumed I felt the same as them, even though I hadn't said ANYTHING yet? (I mean, I'm glad he unfriended me, because his comments were angry, aggressive and hostile, as well as racist and sexist - but my point is I was quickly unfriended/blocked without even having expressed my own point of view yet.)

Something some people may or may not know about me (sometimes I think I talk about it too much; sometimes I think I don't talk about it enough) is that about seven years ago, I had an unexpected stroke, which resulted in some brain damage. I healed wonderfully for the most part (I honestly think it was my strong passion for and drive towards poetry and creative expression that seriously helped me heal), but my reading and writing will always be significantly slower than it used to be - and certain things that used to come naturally to me require a lot more concentration to achieve. For example, I just had to dictionary.com whether "heal" or "heel" was the right spelling there and that's something that would have come naturally to me in the past. I have to do that a lot with basic words, to remind myself of their spelling and of their meaning. While writing this, two words that I looked up that my mind was off-kilter about their definitions were "reaction" and "legitimate". (I also looked up "groupthink", which I didn't even realize was an actual word and the definition of that was "the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility" - and after I read that definition, I felt confused about how anyone could view that positively, because that definition sounds awful to me).

Anyway, here's where I'm going with this. In the past, my brain used to understand certain types of academic language significantly better than I am able to understand that type of language these days. For example, I used to love reading really academic book reviews and so forth. In the present, one arena in which I have a particularly hard time with words is the political arena. In the past, I could express my political viewpoints in a specific and detailed way; now I cannot. That doesn't mean I'm clueless or that I don't know how I feel, but I have a hard time expressing it - and I have a hard time understanding and categorizing political talk that involves real words combined with jargon and rhetoric and propaganda and political correctness and shady fine print and true/false/fake etc... I feel a little bit embarrassed to admit this, but it's true. My brain does not entirely understand and can't reasonably handle that stuff anymore.

At the risk of embarrassing myself even more (although I'm not entirely sure why I feel ashamed about this, because it's not my fault that my brain has this flaw - and frankly, I'd rather have trouble with corporate style political language rather than with individualistic, creative, poetic language), when I try to understand political language, I have to look up word after word after word. This is one of the reasons I rarely participate in political conversations on social media. Sometimes, after I find out a words definition, it's still difficult for me to interpret its usage or POV in certain sentences or bigger pictures. And sometimes in the social media group attacks where political stuff comes into play to an extent, I honestly don't understand a lot of what is being said. Last week or the week before, I had to look up "fascism" to remind myself what it meant - then a few days later, I forgot and had to ask my boyfriend to remind me what it meant - and now I've already forgotten its definition again. Even when I look up its definition again, that doesn't mean I can easily interpret its usage in every sentence.

On one hand, it upsets me and causes me to feel sad that I'm not as intelligent as I used to be (at least not on an academic or political language sort of level). On another hand, I feel like it has made me less judgmental based on the fine print, more open-minded, and more focused on how other people act/react rather than how they talk. Unique creative expression is still extremely important to me - but so is open-minded, non-judgmental discourse, in which we don't all have to feel the same way, act the same way, and talk the same way, etc....

On one hand, it bothers me that part of my brain might have below-average intelligence and even though I still feel similarly to the way I used to feel, I can't express certain things as well. On another hand, I'm glad I can still express my own thoughts and feelings and that I can still express myself creatively/poetically/artistically. And on another hand, my different brain seems to have shown me that sometimes people who use a lot of academic language might not understand (or might not care) that the main people they're communicating with are other people who use a lot of academic language - because a lot of other people don't even understand what they're talking about because of their language. (Of course "academic language" there could be replaced with all kinds of other words too, including "political" and including "poetic". I write a lot of poetry that a lot of people don't understand, because it's not there style of expression. I'm not criticizing poetry language or political language or academic language per se; I'm just pointing out that a lot of people don't understand certain kinds of language; and why be condescending towards or enraged by someone who doesn't understand things the same way you do? - unless they're unwilling to listen to or try to consider other points of view).

Back to looking up words, if you don't already know what it means, you might be interested in looking up the word "aphasia". I have a certain mild form of aphasia as a result of my brain damage. That might be a part of the reason why it seems like I post variations on the same things fairly frequently. Which also sort of embarrasses me, because what if almost everything I say is another variation of the same, a repetitive mess? What if I think I'm being uniquely genuinely creatively expressive but I've said it all before and before and before, ad infinitum (I was pretty sure ad infinitum made sense there, but I had to look it up to be sure.) ?

Back to political language, since I have a difficult time with that language these days, I sometimes wonder/worry if some people think I'm keeping my mouth shut about certain things because I'm conservative. Well I am most certainly not conservative, politically or otherwise. I am not someone who doesn't care about marginalized groups, marginalized voices or about marginalization (and I hope my posts don't give the impression that I'm marginalizing important/significant things, because that is certainly not my intent).

As I said, I'm not very good at expressing myself or explaining myself politically but I can try. I consider myself Independent/Democratic/Liberal but not extremist. I don't automatically "unfriend" people who have a different political (or other) point of view than me, although there are times I've been strongly tempted to. I think women's rights and minority rights are hugely important and even though I try to be open to different points of view, I have a hard time understanding and cannot at all relate to why anyone voted for Trump. I am extremely anti the "pro-life" movement or any movement that indicates that the government should have any control over people's bodies. I certainly don't think racism or sexism or LGBTQ-phobia should be ignored (or made worse) by the government. Police brutality disgusts me. But aside from attempting to express my own viewpoints like that, I'm not good at describing things in political language. Even though I'm not extreme or an activist, I don't discredit activism. I think it's very important and meaningful that some people are able to understand the details of larger scale movements and work hard in support of others.

Occasionally people seem to interpret my wall posts as attacking them or belittling their point of view, but I'm not trying to attack or belittle any individual or any particular group. I just don't like group attacks. I realize there are very valid reasons for some of them, but then they often start going all over the place and making it harder to identify with or understand the overall reasons, at least for me

yet another variation on...

When I'm talking out loud, I think I use the words "um", "like" and "literally" too much. I don't really know why I use the word "literally", because I don't really think anything is exact.

I also use the words "maybe" and "I guess" a lot.

I guess maybe I'm not very adherent or stringent. But hopefully that doesn't make me wishy washy.

Anyway, I looked up the definition of "literally" and here is it's informal definition.

"used for emphasis or to express strong feeling while not being literally true."

That's kind of a funny informal definition and I guess that makes a little sense in terms of me using it, because I sometimes sound emphatic and I'm pretty expressive and feeling-based. But sometimes I think too much of what I express is either accidentally exaggerated or overly repetitive.

I think my voice sometimes sounds more confident than I actually feel too.

And yes, I realize this might be yet another variation on the sort of thoughts/feelings I've been repetitively expressing lately.

and so on and so forth

 I used to think that there was always a very valid and potentially powerful point to creative expression via poetry and art (and sometimes I still think so and still feel that way), but a lot of my creative expression is very personal (which I'm usually fine with, because that's how I write and create).

But lately I've been thinking that even if my poems are a meaningful form of expression for me personally, they might not have much of a larger purpose (and they're still valuable to me if they don't but...) I mean, who wants to hear a middle-aged, middle-class white woman go on and on about her body issues and her anxiety and her depression and her anger and her relationship issues and her uncertainty about whatever the heck love is and so on and so forth?

Granted, I'm technically poverty level, but I don't feel poor, so I'll always consider myself middle class. Granted, I'm technically disabled, but I don't directly focus on that in my poetry and sometimes it upsets me when people seem to encourage me to focus MORE on my disability in my poetry, because maybe I already AM focusing on it in an indirect, semi-abstract sort of way. Sometimes I think that me feeling like I barely exist and that I'm not particularly meaningful is a sort of side effect of the brain damage of my stroke, because I don't remember feeling so pointless when I was younger, but maybe I always felt that way, or maybe I would have felt that way when I got older anyway, whether or not I had undergone such a brain fluke.

But it makes me feel a bit weirdly uncomfortable if people seem more interested in my brain damage rather than my poetry - because of those two parts of my life, I most definitely prefer the poetry, whether or not it interests many others. 

something or other

I never really related to adults who seem to think/act as if age and life experience makes us more important and fills us with vastly meaningful knowledge to place upon others, whether others asked for that knowledge or not.

Maybe it's partly a parental thing (I don't know; because I'm not a parent - and I also know parents who don't act this way), but whatever it is, the people who seem to think that their own knowledge will really empower others often seem to start acting that way before they're even 30 years old.

As for me, sure I can share my own thoughts and feelings and ideas related to/derived from my own life experiences with others to an extent, but I'm not going to act like I'm some expert on anything, because ultimately, I'm just me. I've never felt like an expert who gains enough powerful knowledge to tell others what they should or shouldn't do for themselves - how they should feel, how they should act, who they should be. How about they just be themselves and don't be too stagnant?

I mean, if anyone asks me a question, I'll try my best to answer, but not from some angle that seems to imply that my way is the way everyone else should think or act or feel.

I don't think of my own life experience and knowledge as steadily increasing and rising up (or down), I feel like I'm mostly moving in the same slightly contorted semi-circle shapes, sometimes slightly rising, sometimes repetitively falling, but mostly just semi-circling, but trying not to be too stuck.

Even with my poems and art, I'll feel really excited when I initially write a new poem, but usually it doesn't take long after that before it doesn't feel new; it feels more like I'm repeating different variations on the same subject again and again. I hope I'm not too stagnant or stuck - but I think it's more of an always moving mentality, even if I'm repeatedly moving in similar directions.

I actually tend to love when people share their own genuine thoughts, feelings, experiences, and ideas in personal passionate expressive sort of waves.

But back to those who feel the need to share their own seemingly vast knowledge in an expert-like sort of manner, who the heck knows everything they need to know in life when they hit a certain age? NOBODY.  In fact, I don't think anybody knows everything EVER.

Maybe people who tend to limit their own lives in certain ways feel the need to limit other people's lives in similar ways too. 

But what do I know? That's just my own opinion on something or other.

I’ve never liked the phrase GO WITH THE FLOW

You didn’t like the way I dressed – you read some of my poetry and cried – you were upset by my taste in books – & many times when I expressed a different opinion/point of view than yours, you seemed to think that opinion/point of view of mine was created by or heavily influenced by other people rather than being my own opinion that happened to differ from yours.

That started a very long time ago. I remember it happening a lot back when I was in college. If my opinion wasn’t the same as yours, you seemed to think my opinion was created by/influenced by/controlled by others. For one small example, when instead of being anti-abortion, I became pro-choice, you seemed to think that must have been due to somebody else, rather than due to my own opinion changing as I became an adult.

Since you’ve often seemed to think I’m someone who is overly influenced by others (and since I have always disagreed with that perspective of yours about me), part of me was overly worried/concerned about the chance that you might be using my post-stroke situation as some sort of excuse to rid me of someone/something you had never really liked – and since I don’t want another adult to make a choice for me too quickly (or at all for that matter, because I don’t think adults should try to make lifestyle choices for other adults – offering opinions is one thing; but repeatedly telling someone what they should do is another thing), it took me longer to make my own choice.

I tend to be a slow decision maker anyway, even about little things – and when it comes to a big, major lifestyle decision, I sure don’t want to make my choice too fast. For the most part, it is up to each adult to make their own choices when ready/willing. If it took me too long by some people’s standards, oh well. Lots of things take me too long by some people’s standards and it is important to me to try my best to stay attuned to my own standards/thoughts/feelings/perspectives.

I strongly dislike it when I try to express how I am feeling about something and the person I’m talking to interrupts me and says something like, ‘No, that is NOT the way you feel’ as though I am making up my own thoughts/feelings or as if they think they might be more aware of my own thoughts/feelings than I am. WTF!?! Yes, I have lots of mixed feelings, but that doesn’t make me a faker, a lying person, or a person who wants someone else to tell me how I should feel or how I do feel.

Let me express myself my way.

***

(Woke up in the middle of the night a while back and felt compelled to write those notes on papers beside my bed and have now decided to post them here. They probably sound semi-random, but I wanted to write them down again and then throw the papers away).