Insight Into Creativity: Art Transliteration

       ⚠  Warning—this aesthetic philosophy deep-dive might be too inscrutably byzantine for you.

call-back to Under-Overwhelming essay

          Pretentiously vainglorious prefaces, titles, and abstruse words (like these) serve the same purpose as height-requirement signs at theme parks.

          To those who’ve chosen to jump off this cliff, heedless of the challenges, I commend you for your open-mindedness, willingness to try your brain at new concepts, and your marathon-level attention span (if you make it to the end).

          And to those comfortable within this ken: I thank you—up-front—for perusing the word-imagery fabrications of a philosopher-artist such as myself.  Please bear-with my liberal application of monsieur em-dash, madame hyphen, and cousin parenthesis.

hover for brief description �🔗 click for magnification or link

          Transliteration normally refers to slowly transcribing/translating—one character, word, symbol or hieroglyph at a time—one language into another.  Because art and poetry can seem like a foreign language, I’m going to crawl around inside my own gulliver and explain how I created both the two-dimensional artwork and poem titled: woad poem.  (Links are provided to add superfluous details or permit examining referenced artwork.  Did I mention this is a deep dive?) 

It Begins With a Mote of Detritus With Pearl-Potential:  Unsurprisingly, first ideas about a new creation can be born-out-of (borrowed from) works of others, or inspired by the artist’s earlier work.  When I saw this strong-contrast image of a nude—in December 2019 (while scrounging for creepy images for the collage AULDLANGSYNE's Mailbox)—I recognized it would be perfect for a future artwork and got out my butterfly net.

Architect’s Eye, Engineer’s Ingenuity and the Passion of a Serial-Killer:  When my time-to-create gland woke-up from a nap, I “found” about 50 similarly-stark images and began to experiment—slicing, smoothing, spinning, and fine-tuning.  After many days of failing to get even a tickle of that solving-the-puzzle feeling (I never became fully-absorbed) I stopped trying to hammer-tune this crap craft into something aesthetically pleasing to me.

Disappointing Creations Need Titles Too:  First I stared at it, then wondered about it, and—eventually—understood what failed to happen: I’d enjoyed the process of finding “just right” image slices, but received no spark during sculpt-construction.  I was enthralled by the building blocks but I disliked the structure.  So, I devised a jarring meta-title: imagine a suggestively-confusing title here.  (Meta because a title asking you to think of a title, is eating its own tale; and jarring because the adverb-adjective sticks in one’s word-smithery—it is not really the opposite of confusingly-suggestive which slides smoothly from eye to lizard-brain, but not-not the opposite either.)

A Realization-Reenactment (Focused on Aesthetics):  While doing the aforementioned disappointed-staring and title-devising, my attention kept returning to the left-side of the artwork.  What was drawing my eye?  Was I merely recognizing the first found-image pearl in that section?  Maybe a change in distance?  Thumbnail mode caused my interest to definitely be re-piqued, but, in close-up, the miasma of interlocking/overlapping shadows, edges, silhouettes, and flimsy fragments of fifty female photo-montaged forms forced my curiosity to flee (whew).  But, the leftmost portion—no matter if distant or full-screen—remained intriguing and its abstract-composites continued to tantalize.

A Literal Return to the Drawing Board:  With the leftmost portion as a focal-point, I restarted the cut-stitch-paste-gluing engine.  This lasted for a few daze.  After becoming deeply engrossed in the process, trimming and/or deleting about fifteen of the most detailed original images, changing the color pallet on at least ten, and totally redesigning the size and focus, the resulting artwork works.  For me.  And that’s all a creator can use to determine finish-quality.  It is appropriately asymmetrical, contains both blurred and crisp details, and the rest is mere suggestion, hint, and supposition.  Pleasing to the eye.  Maybe a smidgen-creepy, but that adds to the allure.

The More Difficult the Self-Challenges the Less Challenging the Self-Difficulties:  Sounds like an aphorism, but challenging myself is a successful way to keep creating.  My art keeps me learning.  I decided to craft a poem to accompany this artwork, incorporating a phrase I coined in a letter:

...The little things are the big things.  The big things might be able to take care of themselves, but ‘death by a million tiny cuts’—as metaphor—has an antithesis ‘bliss by a million tiny kisses’...

Critics Refer to This Next Part as a Pointless Tangent; I Prefer to Call it a Brief Aside:  I think it helps to think about a few claims made by Nietzsche in his 1872 work, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music:

...the existence of mankind only appears to be justifiable when it is viewed as an aesthetic phenomenon...
...the highest form of artistic creation depends on some form of tension between opposing forces...

          Nietzsche's book is a dense, complexly-expansive, review of classical Greek dramatic theater and music.  Fourteen years later, in 1886, it was republished as The Birth of Tragedy, or: Hellenism and Pessimism with a second preface—written by Nietzsche himself—titled An Attempt at Self-Criticism.  (The first preface, in both, was written by the composer Richard Wagner . . . yes that Wagner, of antisemitism infamy.)

          I found this excerpt from his self-criticism poignant, not only because he describes yours-truly, but he appears to be describing (with sarcastic self-deprecation) his “target audience”:    

...artists with analytical tendencies with a capacity for retrospection (the type whom it’s always necessary to seek-out but with-whom one never wants to seek) who are also full of psychological innovations and artist’s-secrets...

The Nuts and Brain-Bolts Leading Up to My Two Dimensional Artwork waod poem:  My artwork descriptions, above, are definitely synopsis after-the-act.  I was not thinking about how my mind was working as it was creating.  (I understand some with less high-functioning autism are hampered by meta-meta thoughts-about-thoughts and—unfortunately—get bogged down, can't climb out of their own way, and suffer because of it.)  In looking back, I recall that my odd-intuitive-creative neurons (my only nod to NEFND in this essay) encouraged my imagination, which influenced me to begin with the strong-contrast nude I caught in my butterfly net, which—in-turn—eventually led me to craft the final “found image” collage-compilation from dozens of (fair-use-borrowed or copyright-stolen*) erotic images.

          I cropped the blackspace, mirror-flipped it, imagined the word poem reversed-upsidedown would approximate the word waod.  [Climbing deeper: Actually, my thoughts snag-focused on the ash diphthong in the word aesthetic and, subsequently, I zoomed in on the visual near-symmetricality of m-w and p-d...which came very near (rch-close) to a voila moment...and a title was born.]  Then I added the words, as title, at the mirror point and extended a small amount of white-grey to the left-edge's mirror point (literally a point) because I wanted to “break the rectangle rule” just a tiny bit.

The Bizarre Gears-and-Gristle-Soup Beneath the Circuitry of the Poem:  With this, I had a tall, thin, abstract image, which I could place vertically—adjacent to my as-yet-unwritten poem.  I also had a title.  And, I had the phrase: bliss by a billion tiny kisses.  That was all enough.  Because, by focusing on what I possessed, I discovered my theme.

 

          My life is not unlike many other people’s lives:  I have my share of missed opportunities and lost connections.  So, I would write a poem about tying together all the disconnected plot points.  Years ago, I wrote a short story about dénouement (where I only explained “what the characters were doing” in the final paragraphs).  So I began with:   

rarely are there anymore breathtaking dénouements in this place outside of

          This place? . .the world . . . the Internet . . . this blog . . .  or . . . 

 

          Intentionally ending in a dangling preposition (a broken grammar rule) causes the reader to assume the next line will complete the phrase (even though there is a large paragraph-break space between lines) and the brain is already filling in the gap: ...outside of Hollywood blockbusters? ...outside of novels?  ...outside of where!  And, I begin the next line without explaining.  The first line of the poem is an example of a hanging plot point, with a link to a relatively long story about dénouement (but one would need to know the definition to appreciate any of this).   Second line also ends in a preposition, but the phrase is completed in the third line.
 

yet as I crafted an important series of sentences for my son I stumbled on

bliss by a billion tiny kisses  (the antithesis of death’s trillion tiny cuts)

          Since I linked a word in the first line, I chose to do it again.  My second link was to the definition of idiom, which stumbled on and coin a phrase, are examples of.  My third line breaks the pattern (does not end in a word which normally begins a phrase) and, instead of linking to the definition of a word, links to the description of a ancient torture technique called Lingchi, which I point out is the opposite of my bliss by a billion tiny kisses.

          My forth line, however, does end in a preposition, and I continue the pattern by describing two more different types of cutting (the first medical the second figurative).

 

barely realized unless our split-brained attention is riven; focus forced into

          The fifth line continues the phrase begun at the end of the forth (with no links) but contains a line derived from my previous essay pertaining to underwhelming and overwhelming events: in that essay I posit that momentous events aid in the formation of long-term memories (which is also connected to this deep dive's first image).  More important to this poem, in this line, I begin with a statement and turn it into a question which suggests we all fail to take notice when we happen to do something for the first time in our lives (like thinking about how this poem was word-smithed).

novel-for-you non-momentous events; happening right now, or isn’t this a first for 

 

          I end the fifth line with a preposition but complete the phrase in the sixth line (which wasn't my only use of alliteration; another example: series of sentences for my son I stumbled) with a question about the composition of the poem itself.  I then begin another sentence which relies on the reader understanding the unwritten connection of what the pronoun it is referring to (which is: the poem itself):

encouragement and compliance of contemplation of this composition?   Today it’s

          In the seventh line I continue the sentence with the idea that when I posted the poem it would be at the top of my blog (metaphorically the capstone) which is a series of stories one-atop-the-previous (like a totem pole)—two different metaphors in one, referred to mixing metaphors, which is also a grammatical no-no.  And I provide a link to who was president when I began the blog in 2004:

s n a p p e r h e a d ’s totem pole capstone, which was begun in forty-three’s day

          The eighth line begins a new sentence, which jars the brain slightly, because line seven did not end in a period and this line did not begin with a capital letter (the intent is to force readers to engage level 2 thinking and read slower).
         

tomorrow waod poem’s intricate reflection collage silhouettes will be unburied 

 

          The ninth line proposes a distant-future presidency when people (myself, hopefully, included) will re-read this poem and wonder at the poet’s prescience (2028 or 2032).

while conducting future memory mining exercises during AOC’s presidency

          The tenth and eleventh lines, are thematically connected to previous ones (time-frames related to US presidential administrations), which might-be building toward a plot?  Maybe, possibly?  [Obviously this was written before-during Trump’s first impeachment, otherwise it would have been plural (impeachments).] 

which requires every one of us to live thru overwhelming/underwhelming

events during The Buffoon’s impeachment and then place their recall 

 

           The twelfth line alludes to the similarity between our human ability to recall memories and the Internet’s ability to recall items (like this poem) using keywords.  This line, again, ends in a preposition.

codes in squire where they may get dusty but never so unused as to 

 

          While the thirteenth line (and the fifteenth line) completes the prepositional phrase begun in the twelfth line (and the fourteenth line), the fourteenth line breaks that pattern by beginning with a preposition–both showing and telling the reader: one way to point out one’s awareness of man-made grammar rules is to intentionally bend them.  And, then, suggests a related idea: that morals are also man made.  

draw attention to bending the ground rules while recognizing they exist 

 

for the sole purpose of being broken — morality may be completely inside of 

 

          After the dash in the middle of the fourteenth line, a statement begins (about where morality might be found), which then becomes the beginning of a question in the fifteenth line (about the woad poem artwork’s sexual imagery . . . considered immoral by puritans), there, the poem intentionally causes a mental hiccup.  The reader sees the question: would the artwork, but “hears” would the art work (as in: would the art succeed if it were less delicately prurient?)  My aim was to ask: would it accomplish the task of catching-and-holding the attention of viewers if my art was more blatant—and I provide a link to a NSFW example, for those who might be in need of what I mean by blatant.  Which is answered by the poet-artist-myself at the end of the sixteenth line. 

creative words generated by millions of imaginations but would this artwork if 

 

less delicately prurient or without its attention catch-hold — I suggest it would not 

 

          The seventeenth/final line is a call-back-bookend bringing the poem to a close by returning the POV back to first-person (begun in the second line).  It also intentionally causes another mental hiccup wherein the reader is "tricked" when assuming the end of the sixteenth line completed the rhetorical question (it posed to itself) and, then, realizing the answer has continued (into a different/unasked question).  And that answer explains that this poem, this art, is only important now to those who read it or look at it.  Which is my closing to say: thank you, to you, when you view.

 

          The art and the poem were—like every creation of all creators—immensely important to me, at-the-time, when I was creating them.  But, then my brain moved on.  To the next idea, the next instinct-driven concept, and it (my brain) uses the ideas that got stuck-plastered in place from the creating-sculpture-thoughts to inform my next thing.

be valued any less by me, its creator, who considers every view, by you, a tiny kiss

* Subject for another day’s essay.  “Most-people” are unable to be objective and always bring their personal agenda to a fair-use versus copyright debate.  I always try to give credit to creative people, even when all they do is screech “mine.mine.mine.”  (But I realize I do not have to pay my landlord with the proceeds of my creativity.)  I disdain people artists like Lars Ulrich and champion creatives like Aaron Swartz.  Which indicates where my personal agenda lies, and that I'm aware of my place in the phalanx of “most-people”.  

 

odder pins and flypaper ideas:

 

twilight zone artwork de-construction

where philosophy fodder comes and goes

 

final word: ...you know the rules and so do I...

Winter Wintalf-a-bet

          Living in the northern states, and enjoying the winter, takes a certain mindset.  While I do not live north of the US-Canada border, every sentiment and insight succinctly spewed (in the above Letterkenny three-minute video clip) isn't spurious and should satisfy.  Seriously.

          While 2021 has my spouse currently watching every season, I—on the other mitten—have caught a few clips and greatly appreciate its/it's amazing writing, but find some element of my brain's wiring prevents me from feeling almost all of the funny.

          I don't think my sense of humor is governed by my Asperger's, but maybe some element of qualifying membership in nefnd holds my humor sensing device hostage behind my continual attempt to concentrate on catching every quip as they blur past my slow-on-the-uptake grey matter.  This is not new to me.  My comedic radar has been on a three-to-five second delay my entire life.  I rarely am the first to get the joke and I'm absolutely never able to be quick-sarcastic or in lock-step with your double-entendres.

          If the above clip happens to tickle your funny bone in a manner you find satisfying—then, allow this to be my "you're welcome"—there are 61 episodes available for you to binge (as of Dec 2020) on hulu.

          'Don't have hulu,' you say?  We're stream-cherry-pickers.  We have (or have had) almost all of them.  BUT.  We pause, unsubscribe, and cancel them all on a rotating basis.  I cancel Amazon Prime for months at a time and then re-subscribe.  I cancel hulu every three months (3 months off / 1 month on).  You get the picture.  As soon as we spend too much time searching?  Cancel.  Paused.  Unsubscribed.  And then Uncancel/unpause/subscribe to a different "channel".   I find this saves us about a c-note/benfranky/hunnabukz a month.  Again, you are most welcome.

more:

No eye contact Asperger's

ABCD films to binge watch

Valuable Values Are Values Adhered To

          As this won't-be-missed year comes to an end, I thought it might help to explain (to myself) how philosophy reading might have provided an actual, recognizable, benefit.  I began by writing about values (mine) and ended with a better (bitter?) awareness of hypocrisy.  

          Before posting this, I needed a relevant image.  For grist, I cut/pasted the entire third paragraph of this essay into a search engine and randomly selected an image.  [I suspect the primary reason a page from the US Senate's 1988 record topped my search results is my paragraph contains several dots (⏺) and the page has an incongruous annotation about bullet points at the bottom.]  The entire page of the congressional record is filled with hypocrisy:  from the existence of an opening prayer (not much separation of church & state visible here) to its content (family values)—to its faux concern regarding the popularity of the USSR's then-president Gorbachev—to complimentary words regarding ex-US President Nixon (impeached/resigned 14 years earlier)—to statements about US's support of 'guerrillas' fighting against the then-USSR in Afghanistan. 

          I have "discovered" that reading philosophical writings can help put today's routine, normal, questions into a "deep-time framework" because most theo-philosophizers of yester-century and/or yester-millenia asked themselves questions which are eerily similar to those we ask ourselves today.

• Whathefucq is happening in this ugly world?
• How can I get along with all the terrible humans who share this planet with me?
• Where did we come from?
• Where does all of mankind go from here?
• I know what I am, but what are you?
  

          Many of the wise thinker's attempts at answers to these questions, however, have the same effect on me as yesterday's sunset—comfortable and calming as it enters my eyes and strikes my emotional chime-bones but quickly fading as I try (and fail) to describe it.

 

          They were one or more of the following:

• Complex thinkers who enjoyed learning from others.
• Orators getting paid to give speeches.
• Authors attempting to become famous.
• Diary-writers writing for their own benefit.
• Letter-writers hoping to mentor or teach their frequent correspondents.
• All.  very.  ignorant.  men.

          Ignorant in an unable-to-imagine-tomorrow's-question, kinda-way—not in an unable-to-excel-in-school-or-teach-the-class, kinda-way.  Almost all of these wise idiots were also, in some way hamstrung or constrained by their:

• geographical location
• relative, chronological, placement in history
• cultural/societal/religious hierarchies
• individual privileges and prejudices

          Although many of these men were aware of the limits of their knowledge, some thought (and wrote and then proclaimed aloud) that their writings were the best and final answer—without a hint of sarcasm or awareness of hubris.

 

          I am aware of my insignificance.  Doubly daunting when considering this documentation of my thoughts—relative to the magnitude of thoughts to be found on the internet—and then more-so when contemplating the exponential growth of the internet over the coming centuries/millenia (where these words will be digitally housed until who knows how long).  I could go on with 'triply so...' but to what end?

 

          There is, maybe, an infinite magnitude of questions which I will never be wise enough to think of.  Describing the unknown-unknown is paradoxically as simple as writing the two hypenated unk-unk words, and as complex as thinking about their definition. 

 

          I am at-this-moment attempting to get a mental grasp of all the ways that my being a:

• cis-male
• Caucasian 
  
• US citizen 
• alive in the "burgeoning information age" of the late-20th and early-21st centuries
• lower-middle class (relative to my contemporaries)
  
• politically progressive (whatever that means)
• intentionally possessing no obvious superstitions
• unintentionally possessing several situational privileges 

          And how this "mixture of me" has formed any number of unasked for prejudices in my brain's functions.  However, my awareness of some of my biased thought patterns makes me able to curtail many behaviors which otherwise might be considered "impulse-driven" or "innate" but which come into conflict with my chosen values.

 

          This logical description of how I identified a personal value explains why I adhere to it:

• I despise hypocrites who intentionally behave in a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do and/or a 'holier than thou' manner.
• Even observing recordings and/or listening to accounts of hypocrites words/actions can cause me to feel uncomfortable.
• If I find myself in a situation where I have to interact with people whom I despise, I feel various levels of anger and distrust toward them.
  
• I never want to mentally wrestle with feelings of self-anger or hatred.
• Because I never want to think of myself as a hypocrite, I am vigilant of behaviors which might result in a dichotomy or require justification of negative behavior to myself.
  

          This—Never Be A Hypocrite In My Own Eyes—is one of my (maybe my largest) core value.

 

          My ability to meet my own standards pleases me.  Makes me happy.  Or, to be more specific, I am so much more content with my life when I do not have any cognitive dissonance to contend with.  When I compare who I want to be with who I actually am and never need to, then, explain to myself why the jigsaw puzzle pieces do not smoothly and easily fit together . . . I feel virtuous in my own head.

not sated?  here's more:

on hypocrisy

on personal values

 

on becoming self aware

Asperger's Trait: Hyper-Focus (lack of eye-contact) Explained

          Some fellow-nefnd—who posses the Asperger's trait commonly labeled: hyper-focus, which is sometimes referred to as an extreme attention to detail and also, usually, confused with the symptom lack of eye contact—are unable to exercise control over their brain's focus or attention the way neuro-typicals are able.  Which, simply put, is one of the many reasons Autism is considered a disability.  I may consider hyper-attention to be my normal, but I recognize that being able to switch it off (without closing my eyes or turning my gaze toward a blank wall) would be hugely beneficial.  

          To aid in my explanation, I provide this photograph.  One early-Spring, first-covid19-quarantine, day-trip took us thru:  Granville Reservation, Texas Falls, the Robert Frost Wayside, and passed a well-maintained roadside cemetery East of Vermont 116 or North of 125 (memory fails which).

          The relevant point:  I was driving over 35mph (60kph) when my eyes landed—for a half-second—on these light blue doors about 100feet (30meters) away.  Because I can not shut off my brain's hyper-attention I became aware of the unusual (for the US) ventilation holes drilled into the doors and then returned my focus to the slight curve in the road.  Four seconds later, I recognized we were passing a cemetery and immediately made the connection with the doors/ventilation holes leading underneath it (presumably they lead to a place for the storage of lawn care, snow removal, and grave digging equipment or tools).  So, I turned the car around and went back for this photograph.

          If the ventilation stars were pointing up I would have still made a mental note as I glanced at them; no choice—can't turn my focus off—my inner awareness, if it were a monologue instead of images, would be an incessant hubbub of chatter grabbing for my attention.  However, short term memory would have over-written two regular stars as routine with some later, more overwhelming, images [like the flock of a dozen wild turkeys near Hinesburg or the road-sign to St George (I was in the process of creating that artwork at the time).  The turkeys and sign made it into my long-term memory but not into a camera].

          All it took, to turn a routinely-forgettable mental image into a sufficiently-overwhelming one, was the person drilling those ventilation holes to turn their template 36 degrees—thereby, causing me to spend a few seconds imagining foolish candlelit goings-on betwixt some weed-eaters, tarps, and a backhoe; a few minutes to take and upload the photo; and a few hours writing this explanation.

          Thank you ventilation hole-driller.

more memorandums on mind and memory:

...Asperger's traits and nefnd...

...ponder who you are...

...self awareness...

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. 

          Imagine each of your answers as fitting into their own circle.  Each circle will have a different size depending on how important they are to you (someone who mountain bikes and skis and reads books and loves foreign films and enjoys to travel will have a much larger circle for their pass-time characteristic than someone who watches TV after work and sleeps late on weekends [both may be equally content]).  Imagine all the circles on top of each other—a Venn-diagram of "who you are in your own mind."  Add more circles (I only listed five characteristics . . . there could be dozens).  

          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.

          Have you decided that this is not something you need to do?  Then—two things—I am amazed you read this far, and ask you to consider this last question:  When someone says, “How're you?”  Do you think they want to hear what's going on in your head at that moment?  That they want to know about your headache?  They are really asking for you to talk about the strange dream you had this morning?  Or are you capable of realizing they are just doing that everyday-'merican-faux-polite thing and savvy enough to just answer with the expected: "Fine. How bout 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:

personal values in a poetic vocabulary lesson 

Tingle Power - Memory Tool

 Hypocrisy — An Invaluable Discriminator

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:

modicum of self-awareness

 

lack of eye-contact

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 stole from a woman named Judy Singer).  [It ain't stealing if you give credit where it is due.]:

     ●     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 claim their lack of eye contact is because holding eye-contact makes them distressingly uncomfortable or that they feel a mental impulse or pressure to look away (I understand this explanation, but I determined what causes it—in my brain—and how to make mine go away).

          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.

Re-collecting Memories ❹ the fourth dozen

← the first dozen

← the second dozen

← the third dozen

1996       37         Fort Drum, NY - CW2 - first home purchase - two acres, two outbuildings, two-car garage, no landlord, no neighbor noise - discover pleasures and pitfalls of home ownership.  Self-sufficient.  Knowledgeable.  Finally all grown up.  Now I'm fully qualified for my "adulting credentials". 
                            Fort Drum, NY - CW2 - sister sues our deceased step-father's estate - half sister is executrix - despicable greed dominates my entire immediate family - rift(s) in family relationships are irrevocably widened - attempt to distance myself.  Adrift.  Confused.  Disdainful.  Unaware (eventually, I become aware).

1997       38         Fort Drum, NY - CW2 - observe the northern lights - green or red-tinged green aurora borealis a half-dozen times (distant glow as well as slowly undulating close-up ribbons).  Amazed.  Serene.  Entranced.  Lucky.
                            Stuttgart, Germany - CW2 - temp SAC - conduct preliminary investigation on a recent allegation of a 50-year-old US war-crime (from WWII) - informed US soldiers shot and murdered German POWs (interview two eyewitnesses and a survivor).  Disillusioned.  Ashamed of previous service members.  Embarrassed by my own naïveté.

 

1998       39         Fort Drum, NY - CW2 - witness a massive meteor storm - cold and mostly cloudy night (about 1am EST) - meteor showers, normally measured in meteors per minute or hour — I witnessed hundreds per second for about 20 minutes (until clouds blocked the sky) - the event was so unknown/unusual I didn't know what I was seeing - call everyone to ask what they see - no mention in local or national news the next day - still no mention of a massive meteor storm in 1998 on the internet - Awestruck.  Overwhelmed.  Dumbfounded.  Wonder if this was an unexpected, once-in-a-hundred-lifetimes-event, hidden from most people who could have seen it by 99% cloud cover.
                            Fort Drum, NY - CW2 - struggle shiver-slog thru devastating state-wide ice storm - most of northern NY state without electricity for a week (my house for eleven days) - millions of trees broken, thousands of power-lines down, hundreds of blocked roads, damaged windows, burst pipes (wood stove = lifesaver).  Stressed.  Challenged.  Extremely uncomfortable.  (Albeit, there was a certain beauty in everything covered in thick ice).

1999       40         Wiesbaden, Germany - CW2 - obtain PADI certification during two-week Jamaica vacation - scuba dive with sting rays - moray eel - catch crabs in make-shift net.  Skill-thrilled.  Excited.  Proud to become a member of an exclusive explorer club. 
                            Wiesbaden, Germany - CW2 -  learn I possess 50% of Asperger's Syndrome traits - knowledge of the label is initially very discomfiting - I tell no one.  Different.  Odd.  No longer "just" an uber-introvert.  (In 2015 Asperger's is re-labeled part of ASD, but I've gotten comfortable wearing the label for over a decade, so informing others to explain lack of eye contact, hyper-attention to detail, and my disdain for small-talk, just makes things easier.)

2000       41         Wiesbaden, Germany - CW3 - scuba dive vacation - Red Sea, Egypt - sharks, turtle, eel, giant purple-blueish clam, thousands of jelly fish, night-dive, wreck-dive, drift-dive, deep-dive - also visit Caro, Valley of the Kings.  Pleased.  Excited.  Lucky.
                            Wiesbaden, Germany - CW3 - excruciatingly painful ear infection - no doctors provide sufficient medicine to help (neither local emergency room nor military clinic) - four days of hell - can't get out of bed - infection returns in a month - then one medic (exception proving the rule) gives me a Z-pack - cures it in a day - reconfirm my distrust of doctors.  Fear return infection.  Angry.

2001       42         Kosovo - CW3 - 30 day vacation in Australia - tree house in rain-forest - outback hike - deep-sea fishing - snorkeling lizard island - scuba live-aboard Coral Sea and GBR - Sydney - Cairns - bat cave - wildfires - cane frogs - fruit bat - deadly plants - feed tree possums!   Mind-expanding.  Wonderfully entertained.   Perfect retirement present to myself.  Over-inundated by unique beauty, new information, and first-time experiences.   
                            Kaiserslautern, Germany - CW3 - every aspect of my life for the last six months of my career =  worst of entire career:  housing (3rd floor stairwell apt) neighbors (rude-noisy) job (paper-pusher) commute (90-minute autobahn one-way) supervisor (dull clock-watcher) office (tightly shared with 3 coworkers) home (tightly shared with unemployed/unhappy wife, divorced step-daughter, and her child) stress (all of the above and 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, retirement postponement "stop-loss" possible / retirement planning / vacation planning) creativity (nonexistent).  Light at the end of the tunnel kept me sane.  Teetering on brink of mental exhaustion.  Surrounded by careless-people and people who don't care (there is a difference).  Lonely.  On edge.  Frayed.

2002       43         Prescott, AZ - Retired - nomadic for 6 months - remote camping - camp sites - motels - friends / family - purchase a 5th wheel trailer - explore the sunny SW states of  TX, CO, NM, UT, AZ, NV - hike with my cat, Gus.  Relaxed.  Unfettered.  Perfectly retired.  Mentally rested.  Creativity returning slowly.
                            Prescott, AZ - Retired - waking-blackout for two hours - consume too much of the wrong-stuff at the worst concert of my life.  Sheepish.  Foolish.  Garrulously stupid.

2003       44         Prescott, AZ - separate and file for divorce - discover (like a color-blind person being handed a pair of enchroma glasses) that I'd become mostly unaware of the extent and depth of my own unhappyness - no longer emphatically absorbing the ever-fluctuating moods of an never-contented spouse.  Ecstatic.  Never a moment of regret or disappointment.
                            Phoenix, AZ - new relationship - great company - good communication - move to where she works - willing to keep myself occupied until she's ready to move away from the hot-terrible city.  Happy.  Cautious (new-relationship training-wheels).  Pleased with our joint-luck of finding each other.  Wonderfully compatible. 

2004       45         Phoenix, AZ - start s n a p p e r h e a d - creative outlet without demands (except those set by myself) - learn HTML - begin digital composite found-art (garage is 120 degrees = too hot to paint).  Comfortable.  Satisfied.  Fully engaged with my imagination.  Creative engine revving back to high-speed.  Fantastic state of mind. 
                            Phoenix, AZ - flip a car at 60mph during the worse hail storm ever experienced - only actual car accident in my life - one minute everything is fine and the next, I'm upside down in a ditch - unconscious for a couple seconds.  Physically injured.  Mentally in shock.  Emotionally thankful we were not more injured.  Traumatized. 

2005       46         Phoenix, AZ - week in San Francisco - two weeks in Mexico - constantly creating, learning, exploring, reading and spending whatever time possible with a fantastic bestfriend-girlfriend.  Where has this feeling been all my life - shared love between two simpatico close-confidants is unequalled.  Amazed.
                            Phoenix, AZ - Pam undergoes major surgery - multiple teenager problems with law enforcement causes her stress - significant discord with her mother - upheaval at her job.  My emotions are (by empathic connection) buzzing.  Want to help; helpless when I can't.  Confused.

2006       47         Payson, AZ - month of traveling - perfect night (cabin, hot tub, light-bulb chicken, home-made-salad, visiting house cat, canoe on a moonlit lake, stone fireplace) - Saranac Lake, NY.  Sated.  Calm.  Giddy with the perfection of it all.
                            Payson, AZ - 5th wheel trailer living - cats stressed by too much proximity - her kids uprooted and unhappy with their fathers - her job search's unfruitful - future financial insecurity = stress.  Slightly un-creative.  Un-moored.  Disgruntled.  Unable to focus.  Supportive.

2007       48         Payson, AZ - sirius radio "chill station" becomes new favorite - in car - in home - outside drawing with antenna headphones - Pam's new travel-work permits me to accompany occasionally.  Chilled out.  Pleased.  Contented.
                            Payson, AZ - mega-drunk at a party - suspect something more than alcohol was in my glass - emotions racing - unreasonable anger for no reason - terrible things said - unconscionably long and bleary drive afterward - Stupid lucky.  Aware every mile I drove that I was never more-eligible for a DUI (or a hearse) in my life.  Angry at myself for being aware that I was behaving so reckless as I was driving as well as after.  My rare "that's not who I am" event; a self-embarrassing event I don't like to recall.  This is my answer when asked, in a party-game, for a "worst regret" — I'd return in a time-machine and tell myself not to drink at this party (especially not from the open jagermeister in the freezer).
                                                                                                                              the fifth dozen (coming soon?)