snow on asphalt – trees
pertness – nude ’tween neck and knees
fingers – rule of threes
image excerpt by Craig Morey at MoreyStudio
Haiku 装飾 舗装 5-7-5 俳句 Asfault Ernate
snow on asphalt – trees
pertness – nude ’tween neck and knees
fingers – rule of threes
All the Albans
o that quiet closeout dimming pretty wonderful February day
as we carefully creep, using don’t-fall-shins, in St Albans Bay
not a-top the crack-solid homonymous bay of Lake Champlain
but on its shore in the village bafflingly bearing its samename
as we slush thru a concentrated current of babypoo sewer gas
I must wonder why St Albans Town surrounds with all its mass
fools following foolish footsteps — severe imagination-dearth
or, did Albans Town gouge Albans City from mid-self in mirth
Albans: Point, Bays, Shire, Town, City & English protomartyr
lost their mind and their head (summer add a boating harbor)
guillotine blade St Albans Town, jurisd-enclave St Albans City
taxservice puzzle-zones: could smell a source of winter shitty
other Vermont uniquenesses:
ÔSTARA's Mailbox
Santa Claus' Mailbox
Serling's Mailbox
some image excerpts by Jamie Wheeler, SALLY MANN, Caroline Jensen, and muyestillo
Serling's Mailbox
some image excerpts by Jamie Wheeler, SALLY MANN, Caroline Jensen, and muyestillo
modicum of self-awareness
Normal is everyone.
NEFND is actively not recruiting.
Consider yourself a nonmember of the nonexistent fellowship of the neurodiverse? Then, I have your nonmembership card. Tell me where to send it.
When you pushed the button to power the object, which you are currently looking at, you were thinking concretely. This is me—as writer—drawing attention to the fact that you—as reader—are touching tangible objects (even if you are floating in space's micro-gravity, without clothing, listening to a galactic podcast of these words, your entire body is touching the nitrogen-oxygen compound, which you are breathing in). The objects you are touching exist. Time is passing as you read. All this is your individual empirical reality.
(Even if someone ink-on-paper-ized this essay for an unfortunate someone with no electric-power)—everyone's brain gathers information from their senses. All empirical knowledge is gained from our senses. Time may pass at different speeds for different people (a scientific fact for the hypothetical person in space compared to the hypothetical person reading by candlelight) but that fact is not empirical. That fact is an abstract concept.
If you can think abstractly, when you were reading the two previous parenthetical phrases (which both began with the word even) you briefly pictured—in your mind’s eye—a naked person floating in space, breathing Nitrox, and a person on earth reading by candlelight.
If your mind’s eye did not engage—there may be another way to determine if you are capable of abstract thought.
Think about what makes up the person who is you. Consider your past thoughts and actions as well as your plans for your future self. If what you visibly 'look like' to others / in a mirror / on social media, intrudes into your thoughts, push those images into the background. Where do "you fit" into the following characteristics:
- What are some of your personal values? How important are they? List five in order of importance.
- Specifically: If you value honesty in yourself (and others) how often do you catch yourself being dishonest? Do you force yourself to tell hard truths or do you slip into easy white lies? Do you apologize when you have been untruthful or do you find excuses for continuing to be dishonest?
- Some examples of values: trustworthiness, work ethic, punctuality, empathy, spacial-awareness, quality of your listening and observing, health awareness, spend-thriftiness, forthrightness, selfishness vs selflessness, mettle.
- Think about a few pass-times or hobbies which are important to you. Do you set time aside for yourself and the mental/physical endeavors you enjoy or are you a "people pleaser" who prefers to participate in the pass-times of others? Are there any changes you might prefer to make when considering your current dynamic?
- Are you happy? Content? What is your well-being most connected to or influenced by? (e.g. wealth, education, love, creativity, career, self-awareness, geographic location)
- What is it about yourself that most pleases you?
- When / where / with whom are you most content?
- What (within your control) could you change to improve your situation?
- Future planning plays how important a role to your present self?
- How often have you accomplished previous plans you made?
- If you think planning for your future is important, but rarely accomplished previous plans, are you Ok with this conflict between desire and outcome? Is there something you could do to alter this pattern of behavior?
- What habit(s) or routine(s) do you least admire in yourself?
- Examples: procrastination, addiction, ability/inability to "say no", ability/inability to confront or accept confrontation, openness to praise and criticism, laziness, gluttony.
In my previous article on Asperger's I stated, '...NEFND only requests its nonmembers strive to possess a modicum of self-awareness...', By considering the above characteristics you have not only thought abstractly about yourself, you began the process of becoming self-aware. The next step involves focusing on details.
Everyone's characteristics (like in my analogy of a Venn-diagram) change when they are viewed as a whole—one on top of the other. Some characteristics are completely covered by others (e.g. nobody knows your flavor of sexual fetish unless you share it). Other characteristics are at-times hidden and other-times not-hidden because of timing and opportunity (the only people who know you suck at Karaoke are the other bar patrons).
Your examination of the gestalt that is you requires a willingness to determine what part(s) of your behavior(s) could be causing friction with people around you (or, within yourself). Improving your own well-being is not simple. But the first step is becoming aware that you have the power to improve you.
Final point: When a human resources employer asks you to, "Tell them a recent challenge that you have overcome," they do not want to hear another applicant explain their struggles with being a perfectionist; they are just trying to determine if you are self-aware. They want to hire people who are open to criticism, can apologize when they make a mistake, and are capable of empathizing with co-workers. Become self-aware. Then your answer to that question can be a brief explanation on how you overcame that challenge.
more values and abstract thought observations:
NEFND
In a prior article about my Asperger's traits I explain the impetus behind the design of the nefnd emblem. At the risk of redundancy, the acronym NEFND—approximately the word for named or for committee in Icelandic (Íslenska)—only requests its nonmembers strive to possess a modicum of self-awareness, humor, and a functioning conscience. There are millions of proud qualified-nonmembers; I am one.
The nonexistent fellowship of the neurodiverse (NEFND) recommends—to qualified and unqualified alike—that the engendered behaviors, resulting from the differently-wired neurons of qualified-nonmembers, be considered prima facie routinely accepted. Normal is everyone. Qualified-nonmembers should not be coerced to conform to the behaviors of unqualified-nonmembers, nor should attempts be made to fix, repair, or cure their (our) non-pathological behaviors.
At the risk of being crudely re-redundant: normal is everyone. Nefnd is actively not recruiting. If you consider yourself a nonmember, you are. Non-membership cards are a cut-paste-print away (albeit, the clear plastic 2.5 inch squares will require you to contact me - I am giving them away - I will mail you one).
more nefnd details:
fanart
my idiom du jour : off beaten path – local hidden gem
Rec Area DeForge : off river road – nearby an old dam
thine idiot (yours) : part match DeForge – haw an hem
cause now I’m tore : will it lose – now empty of 'them'
je ne sais quality-lore : with an over-full tiny lot – when
off⇡path⇣app explore : Bolton Falls – a picnic idyllic glen
distant from : Bolton VT – an' Duxbury dislikes this poem
from last October : I share – my best friend's leaf spectrum
other seasonal art-poems
Haiku 小道 5-7-5 俳句 Path
hey there below | moiaq ajayf hau
D’Abord Stalactite de Glace
Winterfall
other seasonal art-poems
Haiku 小道 5-7-5 俳句 Path
hey there below | moiaq ajayf hau
D’Abord Stalactite de Glace
Winterfall
anger avalanche (remembered and explained)
In 1983, I received orders from the US Army. I was to be stationed the entire next year in South Korea, separated from my then-wife and infant son. My wife and I decided to find an apartment for the two of them in my home town, where she could work during my year overseas. Fortuitously (I thought when I learned of it) my step-father and mother were planning an upcoming two-week vacation without my 15 year-old half-sister (because she'd be in school). I asked my mother if my immediate family could stay in their guest room during that vacation, in order to apartment hunt (I assumed they would welcome an adult and car for errands and emergencies). "No," I was told. "Your sister has been promised unsupervised-use of the house. Her boyfriend has a car."
Wow. Unexpected financial stress (paying for a motel in my hometown while four bedrooms sit empty in my family's house) combined with parental favoritism (always visible, rarely this overt) and jealousy (rarely an unsupervised hour when I was in high school...but she's permitted a fortnight) became anger. Sticky anger.
Over the next several years I didn't reply to the handful of letters sent by my mother or step-father—all I recall in the letters was their ruminations on my lack of religion and their lack of an apology. During those years I divorced my then-wife, my sons were adopted by her second husband, I married a Korean woman, and completed a few more overseas and stateside tours. Eventually (six years later, in 1989) I wrote my mother and step-father and asked to visit and introduce my second-wife to them.
Using racist verbiage, the gist of my mother's answer: 'You are welcome. She is not'.
Which caused my anger to avalanche.
Many years later (in the 1990s) after realizing my mother's bigotry only explained the last few years of our estrangement, I chuckled-to-myself over the memory of that long-forgotten sticky anger (from 1983) and pondered how those years may have been different if I hadn't stopped communicating with them.
Had I only been angry because my immediate family member(s) were never welcome in my parents home? Did I hold my anger because my mother and step-father never apologized? Would one have occurred without the other? If I'd never expressed anger and never expected apologies, would those decades have been estrangement-less?
Is the party who causes someone else to be angry always responsible for an apology? Is someone else getting angry at you sufficient reason to be angry back? If so, who should apologize first? How do insincere apologies fit-in here? Does just blurting the word 'sorry' (like a bed-wetting preschooler) ever suffice for anything more serious than accidentally stepping on someone's toes? If not (most have a keen eye for hollow apologies) how does one clearly and concisely communicate one's contrition? If one is not sorry for feeling anger at the above described decades-long series of being treated terribly by a parent, as I was, what is the fix?
Over the decades I've come to realize that, for my mother, it's always others who are unreasonable and always those same others who express unwarranted anger—while she never has reason for apologies.
Which has taught me I'm not so much my mother's son—I can, and do, say I'm sorry.
I wrote the above paragraphs of this essay in 2010. I was unaware what a covert-vulnerable narcissist was at that time. As a teenager, I knew my younger sister was a classic narcissist, but did not know covert narcissism existed nor that my mother had all the traits of a covert narcissist my entire life.
When someone asks me to explain "the benefit of knowing psychiatric labels" I tell this story. Knowing that my mother's behavior can be objectively detailed—as it fluctuated over the years between that of an un-diagnosed sociopath (glib charm, need to control, no conscience) and an un-diagnosed narcissist (no empathy, no remorse, manipulative, pathological liar)—removes my response to her behaviors from the equation. "Bad parent" explains nothing; "my mother is a narcissistic-sociopath" fills in all the blanks. It also provides insight as to why we have been on-and-off estranged for 40+ years: when I would point out her traits, she would terminate contact until enough years would pass that I would re-initiate contact and begin the cycle over. That ended when I "discovered" her mental disorder.
I can feel maudlin or morose when I see, or hear about, people enjoying the company of their extended family—it's a form of envy; a recognition of something missing in my life. But, then I focus on the decades of intentionally non-harmonious behavior which was always on theatrical display, by every one of my blood relatives, and smile in recognition that it's all behind me.
Because the answer to all the rhetorical questions I posed to myself (above, ten years ago) is that none of it was ever my fault; her fake anger and constant lies were all acts of manipulation.
Someone with no conscience and no empathy can never "miss" the bonding of extended family any more than the computer I am typing on misses me when I turn it off. My mother has never thought about any of her family members when they are not either sitting in front of her (because they came to visit her, never her-them) or on the other end of a phone (because they called her, never her-them). If she ever initiated contact, it was with hate-filled chaotic manipulation as her goal. Learning how her mind works effectively de-fanged and de-clawed the paper tiger.
To sorrow I bade good-morrow, and thought to leave her far away behind; but cheerily, cheerily, she loves me dearly...she is so constant to me, and so kind. — John Keats
The Un-Named "90 day Google Experiment"
I have no reason to suspect a correlation-causation connection between the post I happened to write 4 days ago (on 1 Feb 2020) and the fact that average page views have now returned to their pre-Nov 2019 levels.
It is certainly only coincidence that yesterday I had exactly 707 views; last month I had over 23,000 views; in the last four months they totaled about 100K, and that the unnamed "google experiment" ended at 0100 today, 5 Feb 2020. Baseline appears to have returned to zero. During the "experiment" baseline hovered around 40, which means that at any given moment 40 people on-average were viewing something on snapperhead.
From now on, I expect views may exceed the pre-Nov 2019 level of an average of 20 per day, but I suspect that can be attributed to a slight increase in interested readers/viewers who have either bookmarked or RSS subscribed. I estimate that number to be ten to fourteen people. And, I base that figure on a small-but-noticeable increase in post-specific comments during the "experiment".
Hello to you twelve viewers! Welcome back. You were in a crowd (a throng, if you will) for the last few months, but those members of the "experiment" are elsewhere now. And, they were never really here. Not like you are.
Thank you for your continued interest. If you are still reading this most-ancillary of ancillary diatribes, you might also be a member of the nonexistent asperger's-are-us fellowship. One way to know if you are a member is: did you notice that I didn't use a capital A in the nonexistent fellowship's name? Did you brain-hiccup for a microsecond? (Did it glitch again when you read the word you in the previous sentence and thought it should-maybe be your?)
Yes? Did you remember—sorry, of course you did; you remember everything (both a blessing and a curse)—that you can receive your nonexistent fellowship membership card if you let me know via email or comment or em-tele-pathic focus? I haven't actually designed it yet. And, yes, that did you remember bit was faux authorial-courtesy. Wrap your grey-matter around that. But the nonexistent fellowship card could exist outside of my imagination if there were a demand (for it to exist).
If you did not have a brain-hiccup, nor a glitch, weeell. See. Asperger's is named after a person. People's names are nouns, which are normally capitalized (in English)*. I also appreciate your views as well. I was being facetious when I mentioned e-t-p focus. That is not a real thing. I made it up.
While some of us do share a heightened, empath-level, ability to "read" people (because some of us are inordinately hyper attuned to details, and you-we-everyone constantly communicates non-verbally much more clearly than with your-our vocal chords) we do not have a supernatural ability to transmit our thoughts to others with the traits that have been labeled Asperger's. Of course we do not.
We are all nonmembers of the NonExistent Fellowship of the Neuro-Diverse (NEFND) ** and we are actively not recruiting.
The portion of traits I possess—that Mr Hans Asperger, grouped into a small umbrella-term autistic psychopathy (in his 1944 paper about social-isolation; which came from an idea he stole from a woman)—are, today, known by the eponym Asperger's, and are only a small faction of traits encapsulated by the nonexistent fellowship of the neuro-diverse (name, logo, and acronym contrived/devised in this paper; which contains the massive umbrella-term: neurodiverse, I appropriated
● Hyper-sensitive olfactory system. Smells influence my emotions. Good smells are amazing for short periods of time. Some of my favorites are Lilac, Lemon Myrtle, Cinnamon, Creosote, Honeysuckle, Petrichor, and Wintergreen. Bad smells can be stiflingly or jarringly uncomfortable for even the briefest moments. My worsts are Alcohol-based-powdered-Rose-Petal (some cheap perfumes and talc body-powders); nicotine and alcoholic-drink-based-sweat; and any strong body/breath odors caused by bacteria. When I notice the odors, if I can not move a sufficient distance away, I feel my anger rising. Other feelings caused by bad odors: headache, melancholy, lack of appetite, inability to focus.
● Hyper-focused on visual details. When looking at something new, my eye is drawn to minute flaws (easily overlooked by most people). Over time, I can become accustomed to these minor irregularities and eventually I can either stop noticing them, or at least stop being bothered by them. This makes me very task-oriented. Once engaged, I can get lost in the creation or the work.
● Intentional lack of eye contact. Related to my visual-detail hyper-focus, I lose my train-of-thought when/if I stare at a person's face. I can look people in the eye when they are talking, or if all that is required of me is to answer brief, simple questions, but if I am engaged in an interesting conversation with someone, I have to turn my eyes to a blank space when I formulate my words. If I look at a person's face, my mind begins to constantly interpret every muscle movement, glance, expression, and tick—an apt analogy: I find it difficult to think about what to say next when you are shouting at me with your body language.
● Urge to collect. I learned to control my desire to compile items, which provide a pleasurable visual stimulation, very early in my life. I decided that I would only collect items which fell within a very small set of parameters (size, material, cost, and quality) and then reinforced and updated those parameters as I matured (and my aesthetics changed). I, currently, have four collections: spheres, knick-knac objet d'art, small green stained glass, and Buff-style hats.
● Disdain small talk. When I read about the Asperger's category normally labelled: Possesses low social skills, lack of empathy, inability to read the emotions of others, all I can see is that it was written by an extrovert who believes their way of life is how everyone should live, that they think it's vastly important to be the life of the party and to have hundreds of Facebook friends. I can read the emotions of others (even while they are staring at their phone) although at least half of people with Asperger's can not. I would not use the term lack of empathy in this context—I simply say: I do not enjoy associating with shallow, unintelligent, vapid people. I am not on Facebook, nor on Twitter. I hold you in disdain is not the same as I lack empathy for you.
● Verbose. I attempt to curtail my rants. I try to edit and shorten my stories. I am not always successful. I enjoy "burying the lead." It seems anti-climactic to tell my BFR story with the intro "how would you like to hear about how an octogenarian got my HMMWV out of a ditch in Korea?" or to start my Clatsop State Forest camping tale with, "Have you heard my mountain lion story?" I enjoy painting a verbal canvas. I am verbose.
● Above-average intelligence. I don't include this one when asked to list the traits face-to-face. It seems weird that I don't mind being pretentiously disdainful of ignorance, but when pointing out that I'm smarter than most, I shirk away from what feels like braggadocio.
Normal is everyone and that encompasses a wide range of neurodiverse people . . .
Some neurodiverse (qualified-nonmembers of nefnd) have Asperger's traits and can be hyper-sensitive to light, touch, tastes or sounds (or a combination of some or all). Because these qualified-nonmembers recognized a need to explain their hypersensitivities to the unqualified (as they grew up) they may claim:
- Sunglasses at night are "because bright lights cause migraines".
- Don't eat certain foods because "they are allergic" (I enjoy telling people I am a super-taster to explain my avoidance of specific foods).
- They "dislike crowds" or "are afraid of germs" (instead of saying that casual touching, shaking hands, or being bumped by fellow-concertgoers makes them extremely uncomfortable).
- They "hate that music" (instead of saying anything at that volume makes them nauseous).
Some have balance issues, awkward gaits, or vocal atonality. Most of which can be explained by a lack of self-awareness, combined with an early childhood learned-trait to never compare ones own behaviors to that of anyone else (because most unqualified preschoolers are hobgoblins), and a decrease in concern for what all other people think (because they tease you when you tell them what you think).
Some share Asperger's traits (comorbidity) with "neurological disorders" [I use quotes because yesterday's or today's pathological disorders have been, are, or will be, considered normal (e.g.: depression, anxiety, OCD, ADD, dyslexia)].
Many with Asperger's are too far along the spectrum to self-analize, quantify, recognize, and/or take steps to ameliorate the more debilitating traits they possess—because of an incapacity to recognize decreased quality-of-life behaviors (e.g. extreme collectors eventually become "hoarders" and the overly verbose, incapable of differentiating/filtering their thoughts and internal dialogue from conversational topics, become "ramblers").
* Did you read my first use of the prepositional phrase in English and instantaneously wonder what languages, if any, don't capitalize what is referred to as proper nouns in English? And, when I did not expound with a list of languages, here, are you - now - going to look it up? I have a free clear-plastic nonmembership card for you.
** The Icelandic word for named or for committee is (approximately) nefnd. Of course I would know! Doesn't everyone extensively research their prospective brand name, acronym, and logo? An acronym which means Named in some other language (or even Committee, which is a visual treat to my brain—three double letters) oh the irony.
Why Redux
I rarely look at my blog's statistics. My reason for writing these pages is more about the act of creating than who my audience might be. I occasionally enjoy looking back at my thoughts from yestermonth; and in a decade or three I'll have a massive record of who I was. (Hey...stranger things have happened! Just because my male ancestors on both sides all died before reaching social-security-age...doesn't mean the grim reaper has already penciled-in my reservation. *he says, mentally knocking on wood*) If I do survive until then, I intend to re-read and peruse this s n a p p e r h e a d to combat or stimulate my senility.
Today, I learned from my blog's statistics that the post I wrote on 20 November 2009, Life-Mission: Possible, has been read (or at least visited)
I can understand why some of my other posts have been (and will continue to be) so-often visited; they contain adult oriented, often searched, keywords.
When a page contains more than a couple anatomically explicit words, which your average cock in hand mouth-breather thinks are somehow connotative of sex, it might blow your mind the bucket load of ass-hats who flock to that page. You get the idea...I don't need to include words like cum, cunt, or fuck to pull in page views...hell...this post (now that it contains all these naughty bits) may surpass 512 visits in less than a month. The icing on the cake (albeit the word fetish would help it become a shoe in) to guarantee that it becomes the post-with-the-most is a lurid image (or threesome). Not even a good or explicit pornographic picture, just a light to attract the porn moth's attention. Maybe just a black and white snapshot which looks like something it isn't.
I THINK YOU KNOW WHY
I wrote everything above this point in the summer of 2011. Three months ago, my views jumped from a daily average of 20 to a daily average of 700; the only change—on my part—was an increase in creativity. Although my art, poems, and personal perspective essays related to philosophy had increased slightly, I do not think that is the reason for a exponentially-large increase in views. I suspect google made some change in a counting-algorithm and now they count every image as "viewed" if someone scrolls past it in an image search, rather than requiring them to click on it.
At this point (early 2020) I get more views of my art and poems (and those containing elements, fragments, and composites containing the nude female form get more views than my stories and personal perspectives).
For those who still assume this B&W image is what it is not...the crease is actually between two people. You can just-barely see the bottom person's neck and their right shoulder and the top person has the bottom person in a head-lock (that's the top person's left shoulder).
Here is a statistical snapshot of cumulative views - 1 Feb 2020:
This original post (2011) - Why?: 80Life-Mission: Possible (2009): 1,942Kirby Archer: an Infamous Friend (2007): 4,298pareidolia-apophneia (art - 2009): 38
greypopcorn (art - 2008): 21
straits of ujod (art - 2019): 2,217tang.abstract.houghts (art - Nov 2019): 1,709Santa Claus' Mailbox (art - Dec 2019): 1,881KEEP CLEAR (ent. rhetoric - Nov 2019): 2,080GRAB BAG REDUX (story - Nov 2019): 2,493GRAB BAG (original story - 2011): 57
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