Journalling Tactics; Ruminations on a topic; Reporting on external events; Reflections on emotional self-realizations

I've noticed for some time that the journal entries vacillate from essay-like ruminations on a particular topic to reports on external personal happenings to reflections on my emotional self-realizations.

I actually find the ruminations the most satisfying. Usually I'm commenting on some discovery or some connection I've made. In many cases it may be mundane, but it's the spark of insight that I find thrilling.

Like recently, as I dug through the long-sleeved tee shirts at Hudson's, it suddenly struck me that the there was a one-to-one relationship between color and size. For example, mediums were pink; large, light blue; extra large, beige; etc.

Long ago, I remember reading one of Shakespeare's plays in high school, and I noticed that some scenes ended with "exit," some "exunt." I wondered about this and then caught the fact that it corresponded to the number of people leaving the stage. A single person was "exit"; more than one, "exunt." I even remember that another student asked the teacher about this, and she didn't know.

The most recent was the relationship about Dr. Gates essay on the civil rights march on Washington of 1963, the gay rights march of 1993 and Josephine Baker.

My external world is ice-bound. I don't do a lot of things that would prove interesting. The most I can do is to note something curious, unusual or amusing.

Or something that most people would find insignificant. Like observing toads or lizards in a plant bed. I think there's a magical quality to these wee beasties. Or watching through my window the lamplight on the trees and utility pole.

I don't do anything that would be considered exciting. And oddly enough, I've detected that such events may be talked about a few times by someone but then rarely referred to again.

It's as though, it was strictly external, and the memories remained in the cerebral cortex but then rapidly disintegrated.

This is by far the most perilous.

It may reflect some "fresh" examination of my ongoing depression. Or it may be speculation over some other emotional state.

Of late, I've recognized that many of the dreams I remember, deal with "unresolved conflict."

Again and again, I have dreams about being assigned a project without the instigator knowing all the facts, or later realizing that work is missing some crucial elements. This always leaves me feeling frustrated and angry.

(The article at Wikipedia about the Rapid eye movement stage of sleep, during which the most vividly recalled dreams occur, mentions that the brain's activities are so close to those during waking hours, that the "phenomenon is often called paradoxical sleep.)

Something that I noticed several years ago was that in doing a routine task, one that you do almost by rote with little conscious thought, is that my brain becomes besieged by the most virulent of emotions: anger, rage, fury, hatred, hysteria, delirium. As though, some form of self-absorbed cankerous rabidity is eroding awareness.

This is not to say, these events are solely connected to routine tasks, for they can appear at other times too. But I tend to associate them more with habitual tasks.

One other component I want to mention is that you are seized by some form of neural myopia: everything else is forgotten, only this reaction exists. And I also think this happens at an external level. Your field of vision becomes limited, a circle only a few feet in diameter.

Let me use some examples when this happens: driving, folding or hanging clothes, raking, picking up debris, washing dishes, cleaning something, trying to go to sleep, or trying to get up. Any action in which the brain is in a semi-indolent state.

I'm certain that this may be an offshoot, or even the cause of my depression. The meds allow me to create and maintain a circus tent of "normalcy." But they are by, no means, foolproof.

PAX! Erin Go Braugh!