“This Swirling Storm Inside” series of
articles
2013
2013 Dec
Dec 03 Tue
Thoughts swirl around my brain at close to the speed of light, and collide and interact in ways it can be very difficult to keep track of. It’ll start off quite predictably. I’ll think the thoughts I’ve thought before. Then things will go a bit berserk. Thoughts accelerate: they speed up (frequently), they slow down (occasionally), and change direction (all the time). It’s exciting, stupefying, unnerving. Grey matter matters a lot to me. Grey antimatter too. I think about thinking quite a bit, initial thoughts multiplying such that I sometimes think conservation of thought is violated, but, despite it being more elusive than a Higgs boson, there is always a rational explanation in the end.
Perhaps it’s something to do with the school trip I’m on to Geneva, where the European Organisation for Nuclear Research has its headquarters and a lot of its equipment. Perhaps the talks on the decays of muons are re-kindling a love of Physics within me. Perhaps the fear of being knocked down by a tram - of which there are many in Switzerland - is whetting my senses. Perhaps I should be getting on with the Latin essay I still haven’t written. It’s in for next week.
But let’s return to thoughts on thoughts, as I so often do. We have now come full-circle: thoughts, Higgs boson, Geneva, muon, thoughts. I meanwhile have gone full-circle many times in writing this article. And some multiple of three-hundred-and-sixty degrees later, what are our results? What conclusion - if any - can we draw from our investigation?
Sometimes my brain feels like the Large Hadron Collider.
Dec 18 Wed “Oxymoron”
This and Dec 20’s article were actually written in May 2014. But I moved them to the same month as 2013 Dec 03 because I felt the themes were similar.
My head is hot, my heart is still
inside my chest so that’s just brill.
I’m so aware but I don’t know.
I’m too damn slow to take it slow.
I cannot focus: too het up.
Can’t let it go. It won’t let up.
This frozen heart has scalding veins.
No reason reigns when rains take reins.
The rising downpour in my skull
is out to make a bright boy dull.
And I don’t mean to boast or brag,
but what right have I to be sad?
I’m bright and dull, entranced by boredom,
a wise old beast, a foxy moron!
My home is feeling very strange.
Once contented, now contained.
I’m healthy but I don’t feel well.
Is this a shelter or a shell?
Confusion’s shallow but runs deep.
I ought to work, I need to sleep.
I’m too fatigued to go to bed
so I’ll compose a verse instead.
I can’t do anything but write,
until I write and set things right.
I felt so dull, but my keen words
like needles pierce and mend my world.
Dec 20 Fri
Disney’s latest animated feature-film is called “Frozen”, and I really like it. The concept of a family-friendly musical reminds me of Jigsaw (the children’s drama-group I assist with - see my “About me” page), whose shows always fit that description. The story of “Frozen” is loosely based on the Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Snow Queen”, so reminds me of the Theatre in the Quarter adaptation of that story I saw on Tuesday by a cast including some Jigsaw members; Jigsaw’s own version of “The Snow Queen” from 2011 Dec is now but a far-flung memory - it’s funny how some distance makes everything seem small! Meanwhile the character of Anna, the optimistic and caring sister of the tortured queen Elsa in “Frozen”, reminds me of the character of Anna, the optimistic and caring sister of the tortured queen Dido in “The Aeneid” (my Latin verse set text for this year). But I have not yet given the main reason why “Frozen” resonates so much with me, though I have described Queen Elsa as tortured.
While it would be insensitive to equate homework deadlines and having to talk to adults with the treatment of certain Guantanamo captives, and I do still have the ability to let it go - at Jigsaw, in Jigsaw’s sister-group Quartz (which I act in), for Duncan’s Childhood Blog, when practising Latin by translating pop songs, etc. - there are times when I can’t start a piece of homework without it turning to ice under my hands, the ink and paper becoming hard and sharp and impenetrable. And I look at the task with cold disdain, and I look at my act of freezing with cold disdain, and I look at myself with cold disdain, for I myself am made of ice. Not in a jolly Olaf-the-Snowman way, but in a frosty Elsa-the-Snow-Queen way.
That doesn’t mean I want to be away from humanity for fear of freezing the fjords (though I suppose in a way it sort of maybe does), just away from school, away from my family, away from myself and my severe apathy and fear of... what really? What am I so afraid of? I think it’s the fear that if I try to thaw out whatever task is at hand, I’ll melt myself in the process. Despite my quivering in a daze at the moment, I’m not depressed or looking to self-harm or suicide, so I don’t want to melt myself. I just want my perspective to change. I just want the icy prism-splinters in my eyes to go away.
So I go do productive things like translating lyrics or writing this article, and less productive things like playing Scrabble against the computer, anything enjoyable to take my mind off the material I and a thousand papers are made of because of me.
I read a John Green novel. I watch a John Green video. I re-watch “Frozen”. And the ice that grew with the fear that grew with my thoughts about it shrinks. And gradually I thaw. And the world thaws. Where once it was icy, now I see.
A couple of days later, I have an idea for an approach to the assignment I froze and froze at. I write it, hand it in, talk to the teacher about it, am congratulated on it. And I’m happy to have done it. I’m happy.
