Dualism

[mrissa]

My back is not the back of a dualist -- nor, in all likelihood, the back of a duelist, but that's not particularly important right now. My back, from the outside, is a fascinating map of mental triggers. (From the inside, it's awfully inconvenient.) For example, there is a spot one can press that will make me briefly but thoroughly convinced that I am a rotten excuse for a human being. There is also a spot one can press that will make me believe that I am moderately all right, that other people can see that I try to be a good person, that said efforts are not entirely in vain. This simply from applying a moderate pressure to a particular point -- and if you move that point slightly, the effect is totally different, and in some cases nonexistent. I have an "incessant need to apologize" spot, but if you move your finger even a quarter inch to the right, it will be a "why are you poking me in the back?" spot. With all that, it's a bit difficult to believe that the body and the mind are utterly different entities with largely coincidental connection, and I don't really try.

And those who know me well may now be thinking, ah, yes, she must have gotten her back fixed today. And this is the case, and it is good, and perhaps now I will be able to write a bit more of this book rather than kicking petulantly at the already-written bits and growling, "That never happened." It's not that I'm wrong when I come up with stuff like that; usually the thing I'm growling at really did never happen. (That's exactly how it feels in my head: apparently there are distinctions in the way things never happened. Some of them never happened in the sense of being fictional, which is not a lot of handicap. But some never happened in the sense of being wrong, untrue, and a book can sink under that weight.) No, it's not that I'm wrong in this mood. It's that I'm so unpleasant about it. It's not a good deal more fun to be unpleasant to myself than to be unpleasant to other people, so I'm glad to stop, and to get on with the midwinter frenzy of Making Things. Books and short stories and polenta experiments and possibly truffles, depending on how the night goes. Things! Where before there were merely bits of things! This is very fine.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Oh great. Now I have a tactile map of your back running through my brain. I haven't known you for long and have never worked on your hand much less your back, and it's been many years since I gave acupressure seminars at conventions, but I still keep (if you'll pardon the expression) my hand in. You've piqued my curiosity. No, I don't expect you to do anything about it. But if you see me eyeing your posture sometime, that's why.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

If I think you're giving me funny looks, I won't think anything of it. So you'll have to make sure they're extra-funny if you want me to think of them as funny looks. (I have great faith in your ability to achieve this.)

We are hoping to have kids at some point, and I will be interested to see if/how the back map changes with major bodily change. *geek geek geek*

[one-undone.livejournal.com]

Having been to massage school, I can tell you that it's not uncommon to have those different spots, so I hope you don't worry because of them. :) I've had clients burst into tears during a bodywork session, or have some other equally emotional reaction, such as a verbal outburst during which they begin to rant about something that happened to them a long time ago and which they hadn't thought about in ages -- until the massage began. It's amazing the way the body stores certain things within itself, as though these events were trapped beneath one's skin, awaiting that day when some skillful thumb or palm or heel of a stranger's hand would press it just so and squeeze the long-forgotten emotion to the surface to be dealt with all of a sudden. I find it very interesting; it certainly makes one examine the phrase "what's gotten under her skin?" in a whole new light. ;)

[aszanoni.livejournal.com]

Wow.

This is something that I sort of knew without really being conscious of. Thank you for saying it. The internal not-physical buttons that people can push - those I knew about fairly well.

And M'ris, thank you also for getting your back put back into happy mode so you can happily Make Things... Forgot what else I meant to say, but need sleep, so going thataway again.

- Chica

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, I don't worry because of them. I suspect they are stronger and more conscious than most people's but not fundamentally strange.