How To Think in anticlimatic

I keep having these mini psychotic breaks throughout the day.

Some random memory, or a piece of a memory, will fire- like ringing in the ears- singular at first, then overwhelming. I have a creative enough imagination that can rush to fill any gaps in direct memory- then multiply what’s there until it has blossomed a kernel into a fully animated dream. One in which I find myself displaced from reality and trapped therein for any number of moments.

Lately my mind has been regressing to one of two chairs I used to sit in when I was 10 or younger, and what was on the television in front of me in those two chairs. My great grandma, who lived upstairs, had this fuzzy boxy sitting chair with lots of soft knotty hand knit coverings and throw blankets on it. Sometimes I’d sit there and watch TV with her after dark. Sometimes she’d sit there and I’d sit behind on the sofa. That tinny sound from an 80s era television. I remember what she used to watch- golden girls, three’s company, murder she wrote. I remember the world they those programs all shared. This odd adult world that was already long dead and gone, even as I sat there expecting to inherit it completely someday.

While I might not have direct control over where my mind goes, I have learned how it operates on a tactical level. I like to think of ideas geometrically, as unique shapes- or a unique collection of common shapes. Beyond the fancy dressings of every idea there is a skeleton of sorts- a fundamental framework with which the content is attached.

For example, say there is a feral cat that you see in the alley out back from where you live, and you decide to seek out an idea, for purposes of generating arbitrary stimulation and meaning, to help you come up with a way of petting the cat. Step one: name the tactical purpose of the idea. Step two: shape the idea by testing variations against reality for success.

Tried lunging at the cat to hug it. It fled immediately. Failed. Acted aloof at the cat, drew its interest instead. Idea amended: aloofness is good. Act too aloof, the cat get bored and leaves. Re-amend: aloofness is good in small doses. And so and so forth.

Once the cat is finally pet, and we have a complete list of working instructions, don’t bother remembering the details. Instead, treat it like an unsimplified fraction and reduce it as much as the data can allow. Reduce “how to pet a feral cat” into the deeper “how to earn the trust of a strange creature” and put that one in the memory bank instead. Observe how it has a distinct shape and pattern of lines directly tethered to reality. Maybe it’s three triangles attached to a rhombus with a number of spikes and a squiggled letter D on the top right. Whatever it is to you, it’s distinct, and remembered.

It’s important to start with things you can gather immediate data on, or else theory will just spin untethered to anything substantial. But from enough direct simple data, substantial things can be woven.

Now say you see a young woman in a social setting and wish to begin getting to know her. New idea sought: “how to date brunette across the room,” which we can immediately reduce down to “how to earn the trust of a strange creature,” and lo and behold, we already have the recipe for that. Little bit aloof, but not too aloof. Come bearing gifts and positive attention. Be patient. Respect space and boundaries. Procure endearment. Procure affection. Procure intimacy.

Having a catalogue of these idea skeletons, and comparing every new idea with the skeletons of every old idea, constantly in real time, like a kaleidoscope of probabilities and possibilities, is the best way I’ve found to digest the world around me and move through it with effectiveness.