Examining A Strange Moistness

There's one of those things that people say. Something about wearing someone else's shoes. I don't believe in repeating things idly, but I do think I believe that sentiment. I think one thing we should not, under any circumstances do, is wear someone else's hat. The shoes are kind of icky, but the metaphorical shoes of the metaphor will probably not have athlete's foot or a strange moistness to them. Probably it's about having some perspective. The hats though, the hats. It's one thing to try and see from another perspective. That's a good idea, nay, a necessary one for living peaceably among plants and animals and men. It's another thing entirely to attempt the interior of another's skull. That stuff's encased in bone and goo for a reason. Think with me here, if you could really and truly have front row seats to the action in a loved one's cranium would you take it? I don't think I would. It would blow my mind. Literally. I think there would just be some sort of high pitched humming and then zzzzzt! nothing. It kind of blows my mind to be inside my own cranium sometimes.

One time I told a friend of mine that I just wanted to crawl inside his head and take a nap. He said that it would be a dark and lonely place to sleep, crowded with baggage and possibly clowns. I changed my mind. No thanks.

So, I'm in the car today by myself just prattling on something like this:*

Why do all the deejays in Seattle think it's cute to do that shambling, self-conscious thing with the erm, uh, well, yeah and pauses too long to be on air? Is that a thing? Am I so old that that's a thing now and I missed it somewhere? Hey wait, did he just say Emmy Lou Harris and John Prine? What?! Oh nuts. It was a "just before that, you heard..." situation. This is why I don't listen to the radio. It's so fleeting. I'm always missing something crucial. I could have heard that Emmy Lou Harris & John Prine cover that I've never heard of but instead it's this twaddle. What's the Cracker song? How does that go? "What the world needs now is another folk singer, like I need a hole in my head." Earnest girls with big glasses and bangs. Heh heh. Hey, remember that time I heard the deejay say "with a deep nod to Black Sabbath, a retrospective of Thai death metal, circa 1978" and then I had to get out of the car? That left so many unanswered questions. Oh look, the personal fitness place closed down. Those are kind of like folk singers in this town. Never send a girl to do a man's work. I didn't even know there was such a thing as Thai death metal. What in the world does that sound like? How can there have been a Thai death metal history stretching at least back to 1978 and I'm just now.... what? Wait. What was that?! NEVER SEND A GIRL TO DO A MAN'S WORK?! What does that even mean? Why did I think that?! What does that have to do with anything? and so on.

This, of course, took place over the span of about 15 seconds. Imagine that for about 20 hours a day and then sometimes while you're sleeping except with pictures and sounds, too. But the thing is that you can't imagine that. Because I can't imagine it and it's coming from my brain. The whole notion of a brain thinking about itself can send me right around the bend on the right kind of day. What I have obsessed about for the rest of the day (other than how could I have forgotten that Christian Slater was in Prince of Thieves? Would I rather Robin Hood sidekick Christian Salter or Heathers Christian Slater or ooh no! Pump Up the Volume Christian Slater. (Larissa, if you're reading, get to Googlin'!) and also writing in the second person - can it be done in a way that is neither tedious nor confusing?) has been the fact that my very own brain injected a piece of complete misogynistic nonsense into a perfectly normal afternoon.

Now I have to consider the following: Is it a message from my subconscious? Have I had enough/not enough/way too much coffee to drink today? Is that a line from a movie? If so, why did I watch a movie like that? If it was a movie that I watched with such bad writing that I can't even remember, why did that just lodge itself and then pop up later like a bit of Christmas ham from a molar? Am I hearing voices? No, that was clearly my own voice, my own head voice anyway, so why would I say that to myself? What about John Prine led to that crazy bit of free association? And of course, the ever-important consideration: do I need a nap?

So back to the shoes. Used footwear aside, sometimes we think we know. We look with our eyes at the outside of that cranium and the skin and hair that encloses it and we judge. We do. We don't mean to sometimes, but we do it. She gave me a dirty look, he didn't say hi, she shut the door in my face, would it hurt to run a comb through that mess? and so on. We listen with our ears and our hearts and I believe the most of us try to honestly hear and understand. But we don't know. We think we know, but we don't. We can't crawl inside that goo and take a nap or be scared witless. But we can know what inhabits the strange interior seascape of our own mottled universes. We can know that we don't even understand all of that strange moistness that belongs to us, so why do we presume to judge the ickiness of another based on such dodgy evidence as a raised eyebrow or a smile that's too tight? Why, oh why? do my pajama pants smell like a junior high boys' locker room?! I just washed them.


*The following paragraph is as close an approximation as I can get to the babble of consciousness in my brain while I was driving. It may not make a whole lot of sense to anyone, but that's kind of the point.