How are you?

It's a fairly basic question.

Or so I hear.

But it gets me every time.

Stumped like rain forests, as Francis might say. It surprises me, how I continue to be surprised, over and over, by the same things.

a baby playing peek-a-boo.

Now, some people, hesitate over this question because they know the answer is supposed to be, "fine" but perhaps they are not fine, they are depressed, and sometimes you cannot say you are depressed when people ask, because they are not really asking and don't really care.

This is not my problem.

I am perfectly capable of telling someone-- I am ragingly homicidal, not that you care.

My problem is just that I become confused by the question. Each time. Even though I have worked this all out before...

How are you- still hits me each time as-- How is it that you are? How ARE you? How are you YOU? How are you existing? How do you BE?

And so I get very distracted by that answer and my How.

How are you feeling? What is your current physical or emotional state? Questions like THAT don't slow me down at all. But even though I KNOW- How are you- is one of those questions, I can't skip to the end, I have to take the scenic-synapse-route.

What's up? Is another one that throws me off. I have seen human #1 say-- What's up. And then, human #2 replies with-- What's up. And then they change the subject...

So I think-- What's up-- might be my least favorite one, because it can just mean hello. But then other times it can mean-- How are you?

But, back to peek-a-book.

The really LOVELY thing about synapses stuck in a loop?

Looping back lovely things is lovely. is lovely. is lovely. is lovely. is lovely. YAY CAKE!!!!

CAKE. pony? Chicka!

Each of those three-- CAKE, pony?, and Chicka!-- trigger a happy-slap to the brain.

Cake and pony both have to do with a time I was sad, and then a friend cheered me up. The memory of the YAY!! of the moment, somehow got attached to those words for me. Very Pavlovian I suppose.

Anyway, cake and pony started from a specific event, and they are now on their way to being Chicka's. Chicka does not have a story attached to it, it is just a word I yell or mutter when I am feeling happy. After awhile, the happiness must have stuck, because now Chicka has the power to incite happiness, not just express it.

Garret and I can be driving/riding in a car. I might feel annoyed or neutral or anxious. Then, he yells, CHICKA!!!

instant HAPPY!!! i laugh. then, sometimes if i am mad, i swat it off like a fly and try to focus on what i was CHICKA!!! laugh! on, on... on what i was talking about before Garret deciCHICKACHICKA!!!! laugh! what? what i was CHICKA!! laugh. ok. yes, yes. chicka. ok, chicka.

My brain may have to run a lot of laps around Whazzups and How r u's... but it can remain entertained by the thought of CAKE!!! for a good twenty minutes.

I have a frightening temper, but it can not stand in the face of someone sweetly asking me, Pony?

And I can still feel a delightful little jolt of surprise when people pop out from behind pillows, and I get to laugh myself sick as a baby, content to watch the trick for hours.

hol

we watched some tv the other day. (you, garret, and i.) a 1 hour show from the science channel about the hawking paradox.

i firmly refused to believe information/things can cease to exist anywhere, and think they must just be somewhere else, not bliped out of being completely. you and garret were more undecided. well, less adamant anyway... you like to oppose me for fun sometimes.

and this was fun, or a close thing.

so, mid-show, you were very much on hawking's side, because you thought all this erasing indicated time travel to be quite possible, as the past was not even THERE and quite able to be re-written, no re- about it.

i liked some of this train of thought, but still could not swallow it Hole, as AMANDA was. and were, and will.

(the show then ended with hawking saying that he was wrong about information, it doesn't get destroyed, but only because there are parallel universes, and everything with a black hole in it will eventually disappear, including the black holes, leaving only the one universe.... amanda does not think this is the wHole picture either.)

no. what amanda liked best was a side comment and not a point at all. there are millions and billions of black holes, that we can see in space, of varying sizes... with infinity going both ways, there could be millions and billions of black holes in this room, in your cup of coffee, inside your head.

INSIDE MY HEAD!!!

garret was not too excited. he just said- yeah amanda. you probably have more in you head than most people.

but you liked this idea almost as much as i.

and, in case a black hole sucked the memory from your brain already... very possible since this all occurred inside my head... i thought i should tell you the story.

GUESS...

NO.

she screams, she screams, she screams. amanda hates people. amanda hates guessing. amanda hates the word GUESS, and people who want her to guess, and people who say "guess what..." and don't ever complete the thought until 5 minutes later, and amanda* hopes serial killers find these people and slowly kill them, and revive them, and them kill them again, and that the nice serial killer will grin at them and say... GUESS what I am going to do to you next....

because THEN i bet they would get to feel what it is like to have your brain not shut off.

like amanda, when someone annoyingly says, guess what i saw when i opened the refrigerator...

and her brain starts to yell at her...

mold! mouse! cheese! milk! eggs! light! cold! ketchup! mustard! mayo! dead-guy! brain! tongue! roast! fish! chicken! money! phone! sandwich! butter! juice! orange! celery! lettuce! leftover-gravy...

all too-fast, too-fast and panicky because she does not know. and she does not like to not-know.

and the yelling does not stop until the sadist says... nothing.

which is extra upsetting because her brain had not thought of that answer yet.

i don't want to guess. i don't want to have to run through all the possibilities. and if someone says guess, that is what i have to do. if they don't just TELL me, i have to think of every possibility before it is safe to let that thought go.

and even then, amanda can't really be SURE she has though of everything, and she might have to wake up 2 weeks later, thinking MEATLOAF! because she left it off the list.

so.

i want that nice serial killer to find them.

and smile at them.

and say- guess what happens next.

and see if they can NOT-think about it.

jerks.

(*freudian typed my own name as aMADa four times before i noticed and could then spell it amanda. plus, kept spelling brain as bain.)

Sea Writer, Sea Writer, See-Righter, Sea Writer...

rachel, who is not really a rachel but a Joey, reminded me about amanda today...

so i came to see her. and talk to us.

i am thinking of ick and telepathy and z-coil shoes...

now, this is obviously just a blog about me and not a heavily trafficked site, but i put up the little google ad thingys in the beginning, and now i LOVE them.

in fact, most of the reason i have not written a blog since the last one is because: talking about those springy shoes made Z-coil shoes appear. Magic!

...the computer is sending me secret messages. :)

change of subject.

i was in florida for christmas. it was happy and warm. i got married.

garret is getting smarter about asking me the right questions... like instead of, "do you love me?" asking stuff like-- "do you like it better when i am here" or "would you kill people for me?"

i need more tangible yes/no questions.

OH! a very sad thing i found out is that black panthers do not really live in the florida everglades. i am highly traumatized by this. at least, there are no documented cases of them, just people who say they have seen them, who are probably wrong, and saw a black bobcat or something.

and that even "real" black panthers (leopards or jaguars) are actually a very dark brown.

i think i shall stubbornly go back to believing in black panthers until i forget this fact.

Spring

but what springs from my mindspring is... just that. it's a line from an email a friend wrote me. and i woke up 8 minutes ago, back at 3:25am with it running through my head. what springs from my mindspring what springs from my mindspring... i like the turn of phrase.

i have been thinking about it for a couple days because i'm not sure what kind of spring he was thinking of. and i haven't asked because then i would know, and it's more fun to play with it instead (for the moment). what springs from my mindspring, what springs from my mindspring...

See, the first thing that sprang to mind when he sprung the mindspring on me was a metal coil kind of spring. Exploding from the head like a Jack-in-the-box Athena.

Later i thought of those stupid looking shoes that have a big exposed spring coil attached to the heal, you know, put a spring in your step. I don't think that is their actual advertising slogan but it should be. That was a very satisfactory thought, as Athena was now able to bounce forth in springy sneakers.

When I woke up just now it was a teeny little spring. The kind that you feel compelled to press together when you autopsy a pen, and that can ZING quite a distance when it pops out of your fingers. It is probably the image i got because i have been wound too tight like a spring and the pen has a connection to writing, and here i am writing. I am unwinding the spring.

But before all that, back to 3 seconds after reading what springs from my mindspring, my second thought was that it could be the water kind of spring. Water gushing up and soaking in and spreading out works well in the analogy too.

Perhaps Winter is the problem with my mindSpring... mandaBear in hibernation.

The Smear my Dear is in Your Ear

they cut the tree down across the street.

and now there is too much sky. too much sky is in my eye. and today is Rain. i like rain. but today is Rain and cold and blurry. blurry, blurry, slurry. everything wrong and melty. the world has gone sideways and wrong. sense and perspective are in the wrong place.

maybe i am having a skitzophrenic episode. i am paranoid and feeling like i have special communication abilities with machines. there is an Army in the washing machine and a Gossip in my computer. logic and illogic keep flipping, spinning.

garret keeps talking at me-- What's wrong? Why are you mad? Let's talk and make up. But i do not want to talk. i am not mad at him, or i was/am not until he forces his existence into my awareness. i am neutral in his general direction. if only he would just HUSH. he keeps TALK TALK TALKING and he is loud and clang. loud and clang and scrape my brain. and- Can I give you a hug? Why do you get mad when I touch you? and because it HURTS it HURTS. and i don't know. just is sandpaper-bleed-scrape-grate right now.

we went for a walk and the sky was wrong, and the trees were wrong, and the clouds were wrong. wrong and too close and just LOOKING at them was like a bad little shock.

Por que? Por que. Por que? Por que.

and he keeps teasing me, for all my idiot-ness. which i AM mad about for the second i remember it. i am mad because it scares me, it scares me when i do stupid things and when i am crazy and paranoid, and when they world looks wrong, and all my head will do is sing Seuss at me, and the world melts on windows and even though i know this is a Look, it Sounds wrong all the same. The Smear is in my EAR.

and i do not like it.

it is like... sometimes my internal Volume Control dial gets spun. and the new reality is in a different place than the day before. and sometimes everything goes too quiet and numb and i can not hear or feel as well, and then i NEED crush hugs and lots of talking and energy to help me adjust it back. but today is not that day. today is the other direction. and everything is TOO MUCH and i need creepy tip-toe voices and NO TOUCH!