Tag: how I tick

Patterns and Rhythms

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There’s patterns everywhere,  in everything, I’m sure but I don’t actively seek them….they seem to come to me. Literature is full of patterns. Life is full of patterns. That’s how I usually write my essays – to find a pattern and then find meaning and symbolism within it.

I’m somehow comforted by patterns – to know that they exist, repeating themselves over and over. It gives predictability to unpredictability, it’s rhythm smoothing.

I detest the chaotic.  I don’t like not knowing about what is happening next. I don’t like not having the option of plotting the day, week or even month.  I don’t like randomness, even though I sort of think randomly (or maybe that’s just me and bizarre connections to things).

It’s true that I’m messy. But when someone tidies it up, it disorientates me, as if it disrupted a pattern that even I don’t really know ever existed. Some sort of pattern that only my intuition knows. That is not to say I find things easily – I don’t really, but I sure don’t with people move my stuff!

Despite my affinity with patterns, I hate math and cannot see the patterns in it. Apparently they’re there – people say there are. But I can’t see it or quantify it. I can’t make sense of the numbers in relation to the figures. They dissipate, empty of their supposed qualities.

I like rhythm, as a form of pattern. I do listen to music (mostly pretty relaxing stuff) contrary to popular belief. But I really like physical rhythms. It’s steady motion calms me. I especially like the motion of rhythm, leaning into the steady vibrating feel of the vehicle (buses, trains, cars). I learnt as a child to ignore my head banging into window as I slept on the school bus and now I find it comforting to feel the motion and the bumps. And somehow in the similar veins of movement, some things can hurt and feel good at the same time.

That is probably why I like riding horses too. I was never really the one to jump – the steady rhythm intercepted with the excitement of the horse, my inability to slow down (and half halt) said horse and the awkward small lurch through the air (in which I half dump my reins…oops).  It’s been a long time since I’ve jumped and I never really went that far in jumping – so I can’t say my recollection is correct. I might jump again with the right horse (after all, I did like jumping the infamously fat and lazy Dory) and if I can get into riding more (I only ride weekly) but I don’t think it’ll ever be my main focus. I like flatwork. Walk (okay, so we don’t actually work a lot in walk but it’s still good). Trot. Canter.  There is less unknown (of course with horses there is always an element of the unknown like invisible aliens in the ring corner that exist in a dimension only seen by your horse). There is less threat of being disconnected, although that does not mean the horse cannot pummel you through the air. At any rate, I never got far enough in jumping to really make an informed comment.

But it’s the rhythm that draws me. The steady beat of each gait (well, if you’re doing it right). Of the breath. Of everyone’s heartbeat, drumming the primeval drum. Every step pulsating, the rhythm steady, yet variable.  And then if  the world is still too empty, I can stop, lean down and let me arms embrace a sturdy neck (I ride English and this is also easy to do bareback – probably less comfy western though…).

The funniest thing about patterns though is that I suck at remembering them short term and I don’t necessarily remember all their details in my head when I try to.  Like I said, I don’t go actively looking for them. They come to me. Sometimes I’ll be thinking and then I think of the pattern of something in the literature and decide to use that for my essay. Sometimes I’ll just be deep and thought and then suddenly, I’ll notice patterns – of ideas, thoughts, visuals. When I close my eyes, it’s what I literally see, that is if I’m not thinking about something else…

Whatever the case. whether I’m looking for it or not – patterns and rhythms are everywhere.  Including how I’m unpopular I am. Hmmphh. (Well, people either like me or they really hate me or I simply don’t exist with the later being the most common and the first point being very, very, very rare…).

We need more unpopular, loner characters who are also good at nothing. I’m tired of characters having best close friends or loners finding love or being really, really, really good at something they love. But that’s another rant for another time.

Confessions of an (Weirdo) English Major

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That’s right. I’m an English major and I have some confessions

  1. I’m a horrible speller, and I’m not that great with grammar. But I’m a horrible speller. 
  2. I’m not good at writing by hand
  3. I’m not a dictionary. (I remember the “general feel” of the word, the meaning but not the actual word! Very annoying!)
  4. I often skim when reading. I’m not even sure if read, I am skimmer.
  5. I don’t remember little details unless I find them greatly amusing or fascinating

Yet I have a B+ average (I occasionally get A-s too). It’s not great. It’s not bad. I think B+ is roughly 80% at my university in English (History is a bit more lenient in regards to percentages  but I still often get B+s). I’m currently finishing my last few classes. So I’m probably not that crappy in respects to performance….

So I have some explanations for these confessions.

Abstraction:the view of from the inside out and outside in

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I never really felt like I really got along with anyone in my family, save for a very select few due to various things. But I think one of these things is the way I think and view the world. I am very much in my own head and often quite abstract. Abstraction is something I often think about and how everything relates to a greater web of things. I can look at something both internally and distanced. My viewpoint is firm, I do like to win arguments (although I suck at them in person). Evidence is good, it augments or discredits the argument. But it doesn’t have to be “real” in the sense of physical or practical. It just has to make sense. However, my viewing angles are malleable. I can think from from various viewpoints – objectively (logically), from one viewpoint or of course, subjectively.

I think with my head, within my head. I’m often not in the moment, having too many connections of the future or the past or possible meanings. Making connections to other things is easy to me and I am naturally cross-discipline in a sense in that way. It is almost impossible for me not to apply other theories from my other courses into each other if they are somewhat related. (I had a lot of fun over-thinking things from my environmental history and human origins archaeology courses).

I effortlessly leap from one thought to the next. As a child, I was amazed at my own ability to connect thoughts to together, to the point that I  wondered how did I get there? I remember thinking about possibility of an action in elementary school (primary I think, the oldest I could have been was grade 4)…and then I stopped at train of thought because it was overwhelming (I was basically thinking about a infinite alternate universes stemming from one action although I did not realize it at the time, of course).

I guess I’m also visual. I can hold moving images in my head and look at something in real life…and be amazed that I am “seeing” two things at once. I don’t know about patterns. I don’t actively seek patterns but they often seem to seek me, somehow.

I usually score quite high in logic on various random “personality” tests.  I even did so on my psych-ed. But I HATE math. I don’t know why I or how I can be so logic, even pattern-based and not be half-decent at math. But somehow, I really suck at math. I never got arithmetic. It is possible that I may be able to do more advanced stuff easier but I don’t know because I couldn’t quite get over the hump that was arithmetic. Algebra was only difficult once I had to quantify something. So basically, the moment there’s a number, all logic goes to hell. Seriously. I even suck at things involving numbers, not math, just numbers. I do reasonably well in logic without numbers.

I’m not a concrete thinker at all. That’s probably why I do reasonably well in school. I’m bad at drilling myself information. I’m horrible at rote memorization (multiplication tables fail!). I guess if I can’t link into to a web of thoughts, it just dies a horrible, forgotten death. Seriously, I would simultaneously memorize and forget multiplication tables (so by the end I, really only knew a handful – the easiest and the latest ones).

But I’m a crazy over-thinker. I also don’t do well with the unknown so that ends up being a common fixation of over-thinking,. I also daydream like crazy, imagining various scenarios. Very little seems to shut the brain down…it’s always doing something! It’s always thinking about something. Argh!  I can probably over-think you out! (If not, then tell me how to stop over-thinking!). When I took the photo of my horse novels  for a recent post on horse fiction, I would up re-organizing the books (wrong order + upside down) and then taking another photo!

Funnily enough, even though I am messy and tend to procrastinate, I always have a need to have a plan. I actually like making plans. It’s weird. I don’t always follow them though. If my plan doesn’t work then I get peeved. Also, if you move something that I knew where it was (somehow), I get disorientated and peeved (where is it?!?!). But the weird thing is, I’m selectively messy. If given the opportunity  I do organize my books (by subject/category, and all numbered series must be numerical). However, I can’t really access my bookshelf now…it’s in my stupid closest so that’s moot!