Accepting Furrowed Brow Syndrome

WARNING: long, rambling blog post below. Proceed with tolerant attitude.

Well…

It didn’t TOTALLY suck (that’s the most flattering phrase that I could type with sincerity). It has left me today with much to consider, analyze and conclude upon. Feels great to be back! I haven’t formed many solid opinions yet, this is my plotted time to direct and sort the leftovers of my attempt to think simple, amusing thoughts and leave it at that.

First off, I realized that I needed a method in order to control this process that would surely be a bit of a shock to my brain waves. I was abruptly stopping what flowed and darted and took on a life force of its own. Now, I was leashing, rather, reigning my wild horses. I was dork of all dorks and wrote down my thoughts. Whatever they were (and believe me they left me bewildered) I wrote them and then left them, not elaborating and not coasting on until I reached a new slightly relevant, more appealing topic. Not so simple.

I have them here now, but am hesitant to expose them, as they are so ridiculous I would be full of embarrassment. I will share a peek though, a really itty-bitty glimpse of what went down on my Not-Serious-Me-Notation Sheet.

They range from:

“Living life in la dee dah fashion… super hard so far.” to “I just walked Selma Lu Mela. Found myself saying things like “Nice job Selma. Good poop. You just did a very good poop.” I said this aloud.

Then, I became wobbly:

“I’m attempting to stare blankly with no desire to analyze even the simplest things. While I look at a white wooden house with black shutters amidst a clear brilliant blue sky, I am intending to be simple in thought, yet I find myself thinking of the contrast between absorbing information just as it is and absorbing information to twist until I find a solid conclusion of belief about it, free of holes of hypocrisy. I realize I am failing as I compare and contrast my new way of thinking to my typical way of thinking. Note: need to lock my slammed door to my mind.”

I forge ahead:

“All of a sudden weird segments of music enter my head like “One, two, three, four, get your woman on the floor. Gotta Gotta get up to get down.” and “Eye of the tiger”. Where were those bits of randomness stored, I wonder? I move on. Hastily, I might add.”

“I have gone through a 10-cup pot of coffee before 4:15 pm.”

“I just completely lost track of 1 hour and 20 minutes. No comprehension of time suddenly.”

“Someone read blog… jitters in tummy.”

“New In Town” with Renee Z. Netflix movie just came in the mail! Nick’s definitely gonna be pissed.”

“It is splendid. I have just been invited to attend a bunko party that openly never even attempts to play bunko, yet still is named a bunko party.”

“My little wasp is not buzzing his wings. Might I have thoroughly exhausted him? I think I made contact with my broom twice when directing him to the window. Maybe my broom shuffle was more like a mid-air squash to him.”

My mind is getting anxious at the strange absence of Beth Banter and I begin producing even more sporadic mental remarks:

“George Foreman really killed it with that lean mean grilling machine.”

“Why am I writing these down? Because, I am reminding myself to stop my thoughts. Nip in bud.”

“Why is Billy Bob Thorton on my tv screen? I can’t figure out whether I like watching him or not. He’s good, but… does he make me squirm? Think so.”

“There is something entirely satisfactory in the moment of scratching a mosquito bite. It goes beyond skin deep, it is a whole body experience. Then, there is no going back. Once scratched, mosquito bites haunt and antagonize until they die in battle.”

“Billy Bob gave way to credits rolling. Sigh.”

“Hard water stains are my rival.”

“I never have the appropriate ratio of stuff to space.”

“I have ushered many baby frogs from thresholds and scarabs from pavement to earth today. I was particularly fascinated with watching the scarab and thinking of how Egyptians used to view this action of scarab pushing sand as symbolic of the god of the sun pushing the ball of fire across sky.”

“Late night jog with Selma Lu Mela… she was frightened of everything in the dark and needed encouragement. Otherwise, pretty brainless”

“Shaq vs. Justin Beeber or Beiber is on the tele screen and I am now near brain dead. This makes this conquest remarkably easy. Is it all about sitting in front of the television and watching these odd, only slightly entertaining (and mostly in a mocking way) shows? Fastest way to no thought is reality tv. No offense to anyone in charge of or amused by RTV. Only personal jotation here. This, I invented… jotation. Similar to notation, but without the thought required to make note, just jots. This is a much needed term now that I am blank in the think tank.”

Yes. So. Moving on.

Today:

I walked home from the gym this morning. It was quiet, as usual, in Edenton, and the only interruptions Jack Johnson and Jamiroquai faced was the crescendo and decrescendo of the locusts. It amused me. I would hear one, then two, then what sounded like masses of locusts screeching, and then they tapered off again. Sorta like a circular water sprinkler rounding your way and then back. I began focusing on this rather than Virtual Insanity (this is a song… to clarify) and relishing in the fact that this noise placed me in the South no matter when and where I heard it. It is an earthy tune, relaxing and a bit mystical. It is always accompanied by heavy air, like a misty white veil, draped over the trees and just hanging all around you. You can feel it. Thick, dewy air. And it holds something inside it, like a secret. It’s lethargic and spooky. Voodoo and folklore are secrets whispered in the rustling leaves and the legends are as mysterious and widely accepted by Southerners as the Egyptians belief in a scarab pushing the sun across the sky. I don’t find the South free of faults, I’m sure no one does, much like any other place on Earth, but this noise brings me home. Not to birthplace, but to home. The comfortable, easy place I can find my way around in the dark.

I am now half way down the sidewalk and notice just one strand of a spider’s web. Just one, spanning from tree limb to somewhere I can’t see and it is so delicate. It looks like a strand of crystal, the way the light bounces off of it, and right now…. I realize my mind is relaxed. It pleases me. The frenzy is here, for sure, because I am rattling many tunes at once, but it is just me being, not trying.

Thinking carefree thoughts is not peaceful or without effort, in fact it was like the most defiant and self destructive process I’ve purposefully entertained in… who knows… can’t remember. But, I reach the door to the Cotton Mill (where I live), triumphant. I think hard about even the most meaningless things and it doesn’t have to matter, it’s just me. The happy me. The me that I believe I will look back on, when I’m the bigger, broader soul of me, and smile at the fact that I tried. I imagine myself saying, “ You didn’t know all the answers, and you didn’t get it all right, but you tried hard and you thought hard, and you looked inside more than outside to find the truth of all that is… and that is good. That is living, your version of it anyway.” I think this makes God happy with me. I do not trust and accept blindly information coming from ‘the mouths of man’ professing to know answers on the ways of the eternal soul, I will listen to thoughts and debate, and take it inside and let it marinate, while I make some sort of conclusion of what I believe. I leave myself complete liberty to change my mind. I do this whether thinking about God, or thinking about mundane nothingness. I can go with that flow now and know that stopping my thoughts is fighting a natural law.

Conclusion: If I need relaxation, I shall stick to playing in my closet, getting a pedicure or yoga. Otherwise, deliberate away, because interfering with the electrical showdown in my brain leaves for a very dull day.

So what if I start a sentence, and mid way through insert another sentence, to then pick up where I left off in the first and continue that initial stream of thought. Nick is okay with it. Family is okay with it. Friends are okay with it. Dogs adore it and just tilt head from this side to that side to this side… Nick doesn’t even opt to have a “man cave”, a term I’ve grown to despise since every lame dude on HGTV uses it repetitively. He hangs with his gals and even when he plays the golf course, he does not choose to keep his distance from my jumbled self… he asks me to come with! And if I did stop pondering so much, I not only would have nothing to think about, but nothing to write about, and ultimately nothing to believe in.

Tomorrow I think I’m going to post this email back and forth between my mother and me. It was good, juicy thought and now that I am publicly embracing “my head”, I feel compelled to show example. I do think 30 brings loveliness, I don’t know myself more… that’s not it. I realize that there is so much more me to get to know than I ever knew before. No more shutting the door.

Me versus My head

I’m trying to shove my head out of the seriousness it nestles in and devote my day to carefree, purely amusing thoughts. Should this be hard? As I write this, I am focusing on relaxing my furrowed brow that suggests I’ve been under intense concentration or am perplexed, but I am not particularly ---- right now. It occurs to me that I have this furrowed brow constantly. In fact, trying to flatten my brow muscles and let my jaw fall slack is requiring more coordination that I thought it would. Vicious cycle. To free myself of an intense expression, I must concentrate intensely…

I turned thirty this year and have realized 30 brings with it the ability to stop excusing yourself for the little ways that make you… you! (When I say ‘you’, I guess I really just mean me, because I don’t know if this is shared sentiment.) Fitting into the world is less important and finding what fits nicely into my own world is my new outlook. Quite refreshing. So, I no longer try to be funny, or get frustrated at my poor… really poor joke telling skills. I no longer feel offended when I meet someone along side my sister and they ask, “What happened to you?” as they take in the obvious difference in height. And I accept that I am serious, in general, remaining somewhat aloof, consumed with the frantic thoughts that are buzzing around my head as I try and navigate my way from one to the other, snatching them down to study, and in the mean time not hearing anything the people around me have just said. A friend I adore said to me once when we were having lunch, “I really love watching you do that, by the way.” When I asked her what she was referring to, she said, “You know, completely zone out. I just watch you go away to wherever it is you go, and then you’ll pop back.” This friend gets me and we feel sure we were friends in another life. This trait of mine is not necessarily a positive one, as it most likely irritates the shit out of my mother and my husband, the ones who have to deal with my chatter and aloofness, and who have the task of trying to understand me as I verbalize all of the whizzing thought flashes.

Perhaps, I reveal too much here. I have no mental disorder; I am just stuck in my head. My diving coach used to tell me the same thing. “Beth, you think too much. Just do it and stop thinking.” I sported the furrowed brow even then.

My sister is not like this. She’s happy-go-lucky most of the time. My parents are not like this. It’s just me. But, that’s okay. I prefer it this way. There is no other way to be for me; it’s my nature.

Luckily, my husband is serious too. Although, he thinks in a completely different pattern than I do. It’s point A to point B. Cut out the fat. Straight and direct. He probably only zones out when I’m analyzing our entire lives. He has this look he gives me when I’m going overboard with loop de loop thoughts. He turns to me really slowly with his mouth slightly open, his eyes slightly crossed, as if his face has lost all control and he has no effort left to process my words. It’s a funny face. Makes me laugh and makes me either sum it up or shut up. I get it done when he gives me this look.

This carefree day is going to be difficult I can tell. I usually sit here and write… about life, death, love, loss, and human nature, that kind of stuff. Or I read about politics and how we “are so dumb, really dumb” as Antoine Dodson would put it. I have fits at all the liars in ties coming across my television. I cry at all the abused animals and children. I have bouts where I feel I need way more education on the ways of the world and interrogate my husband for all he’s worth. Or, I do what I did this morning and exhaust myself running around my home with a broom in the air chasing a wasp. I opened the window, had my glass and piece of paper on stand-by for trap and release purposes, and tried my hardest to direct the (increasingly weak) wasp out the window. I finally gave up when he situated himself in between the molding and blinds that are a good 20 feet in the air. And, yes, I saw myself. I was very aware of how ridiculous I looked. But, these things fret me. I attach feelings to even wasps. Little sucker’s going to die up there if he doesn’t cooperate.

I think the only possible way for me to achieve my goal of laid-back-Beth is to immerse myself in my pups. Selma Lu, for one, is the silliest, quirkiest creature I know and if I follow her lead she’ll take me to the land of carefree. Although, she has the mother-of-all furrowed brows. China is fearless, we all could use a bit of that. I’ll let you know how it goes. That’s assuming anyone even reads this… and they make it through the entire entry… and they care about my head and what’s in it. I have a feeling I’m not going to like this at all, but we’ll see. Open minds are learning minds. And to get out of mine, opening and then, slamming a sound proof door is strategy number one.

Crumbs for Thought

A crumb falls on the floor, like many more, but what makes the difference is this crumb… it has become more than merely a morsel; it was thought escaped and lost. Who’s gonna come and snatch it up? Who’s sniffing and snatching your thoughts away, taking them as their own and leaving you with nothing but an empty, aching mind? More painful than starvation, is your loss, this mindless existence. Carry on, idiot. Walk blindly through ignorance, not understanding that this is not bliss. It is not knowing the difference.

Contentment is a virtue they say, but I challenge this, if I may; why not call it appreciation instead? Appreciate and strive for what’s in sight in your creative mind. Contentment may be your masterful disguise of dying. Wither and wilt away in your stagnant, static day or shoot farther; go past more. Go where you dream and feel no guilt for not settling into the gray mass of everybody else.

Grasp your identity. It is your thought. It is your dream. This is who you are.

Energy it may take, but nothing more, to keep your crumbs from hitting the floor.