The Very Nervous Person's Guide to Life in the Modern World, Including Blind Dates, Shallow Breathing, Alien Cultures, New Year's Eve, Touching the Bottom of the Lake with Your Feet, Appendix Operations, True Love, and
Just About Anything Else You Can Think Of By Charles A. Monagan
Fifteen Observations Regarding the Social and Personal Behavior of Neurotics
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5. If there is one chance in a million of making a mistake, a neurotic will not call another person by name.
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15. If neurotics have to get up particularly early in the morning they will set the alarm clock, check it again ten minutes later to make sure it is set, wake up in the middle of the night to check it again (and make sure the electricity hasn't gone off) , and then wake up two minutes before the alarm was set to ring anyway.
Your Neurotic Household Questions Answered
3. Q. I always get mixed up between eaves and gables and am afraid of using the wrong word in otherwise
informed conversation. What's the difference?
A. There isn't any--they're just French and English words for the same thing. We call them dormers here in the
U.S.A..
The Collegiate Neurotic
2. The second group of collegiate neurotics comprises those who go through a half-dozen or so complete personality changes in the course of the four years. These are the students who are so undecided about themselves and their futures that they react to college society as if it were a succession of masquerade parties, and to the curriculum as if it were a penny candy display. It seems merely a matter of luck and timing as to whether they leave school as future brain surgeons, tree surgeons, or Moonies.
These people embrace each new thing (a particular brand of beer, a dance step, sociology) with initial enthusiasm and eventual disillusionment. They try on majors as others might try on shoes: looking for something that fits and is practical yet stylish. They do not wish to make any decision regarding the future because if it turns out to be the wrong one they will have no one to blame but themselves. They hope that if they try enough approaches, the correct course of life will become obvious, It never becomes obvious.
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Robert Pinsky's Ode to Meaning
Dire one and desired one,
Savior, sentencer--
In an old allegory you would carry
A chained alphabet of tokens:
Ankh Badge Cross.
Dragon,
Engraved figure guarding a hallowed intaglio,
Jasper kinema of legendary Mind,
Naked omphalos pierced
By quills of rhyme or sense, torah-like: unborn
Vein of will, xenophile
Yearning out of Zero.
Untrusting I court you. Wavering
I seek your face, I read
That Crusoe's knife
Reeked of you, that to defile you
The soldier makes the rabbi spit on the torah.
"I'll drown my book" says Shakespeare.
Drowned walker, revenant.
After my mother fell on her head, she became
More than ever your sworn enemy. She spoke
Sometimes like a poet or critic of forty years later.
Or she spoke of the world as Thersites spoke of the heroes,
"I think they have swallowed one another. I
Would laugh at that miracle."
You also in the laughter, warrior angel:
Your helmet the zodiac, rocket-plumed
Your spear the beggar's finger pointing to the mouth
Your heel planted on the serpent Formulation
Your face a vapor, the wreath of cigarette smoke crowning
Bogart as he winces through it.
You not in the words, not even
Between the words, but a torsion,
A cleavage, a stirring.
You stirring even in the arctic ice,
Even at the dark ocean floor, even
In the cellular flesh of a stone.
Gas. Gossamer. My poker friends
Question your presence
In a poem by me, passing the magazine
One to another.
Not the stone and not the words, you
Like a veil over Arthur's headstone,
The passage from Proverbs he chose
While he was too ill to teach
And still well enough to read, I was
Beside the master craftsman
Delighting him day after day, ever
At play in his presence--you
A soothing veil of distraction playing over
Dying Arthur playing in the hospital,
Thumbing the Bible, fuzzy from medication,
Ever courting your presence,
And you the prognosis,
You in the cough.
Gesturer, when is your spur, your cloud?
You in the airport rituals of greeting and parting.
Indicter, who is your claimant?
Bell at the gate. Spiderweb iron bridge.
Cloak, video, aroma, rue, what is your
Elected silence, where was your seed?
What is Imagination
But your lost child born to give birth to you?
Dire one. Desired one.
Savior, sentencer--
Absence,
Or presence ever at play:
Let those scorn you who never
Starved in your dearth. If I
Dare to disparage
Your harp of shadows I taste
Wormwood and motor oil, I pour
Ashes on my head. You are the wound. You
Be the medicine.
The Very Nervous Person's Guide to Life in the Modern World, Including Blind Dates, Shallow Breathing, Alien Cultures, New Year's Eve, Touching the Bottom of the Lake with Your Feet, Appendix Operations, True Love, and
Just About Anything Else You Can Think Of By Charles A. Monagan
Big Money in Your Spare Time
"The act of hoarding being a key neurotic trait, the recent surge in the collectables market is something that many neurotics have been preparing for all their lives, whether they realized it or not" (43).
The Neurotic Hall of Fame
"Bobby Fischer. Chess is the neurotic's ultimate board game, combining an excessive concern for the near future with an anxious construction of defense mechanisms.
[...] During his epic match in 1972 with Boris Spassky at Reykjavik, Fischer complained that the lightning was too dim, the chess pieces were too small for the squares on the board, the board itself should be made of wood rather than stone, the orange juice was too warm, the presence of cameras did not allow him to think clearly, and that he was a victim of an Icelandic/Communist conspiracy. Astoundingly, the Russians topped all this by having Fischer's chair taken apart after the matches to search for an electronic device with which they thought the winner may have been zapping Spassky's brain.
Sigmund Freud. But of course. Freud worried that he had a tainted heredity; thought he was doomed to die in 1907 (he made it to 1939). He suffered from a pseudocardiac condition and thought that his doctor was keeping the bad news from him. Neurotic jotting (to a friend): 'I had all sorts of other good ideas for you during the last few days, but they have all disappeared again. I must wait for the next drive forward, which will bring them back" (144-145).
In my voyage for Miele vacuum bags today, I left off the broadcasts in order to concentrate on the project. The first conversation I heard upon breaking this rule, after 7:45 pm, was a dispute about eavesdropping, and "eaves" and "gables" followed by the building code to create overhangs to prevent neighborly run-off. I thought about how you would feel about eaves, and this excerpt, particularly.
I put an end to the sensation of existential collapse with new running shoes, which I wear out rather frequently. After a jaunt, with considerate arch support, I made a puttanesca sauce with Picholine olives, and extra capers, and now, I am relieved after moving and eating tepidly, for a week. With more scheduled items, I know these moments will pass.
The trip did not take until 7:45, and I was reading The Zahir with intention.
The Origins of the Modern World by Robert B. Marks
"People naturally vary in the amount of self-control they have, so some will find it more difficult than others to break a habit.
But everyone's self-control is a limited resource; it's like muscle strength: the more we use it, the less remains in the tank, until we replenish it with rest. In one study of self-control, participants first had to resist the temptation to eat chocolate (they had a radish instead); then they were given a frustrating task to do. The test was to see how long they would persist. Radish-eaters only persisted on the task for about 8 minutes, while those who had gorged on chocolate kept going for 19 minutes. The mere act of exerting willpower saps the strength for future attempts. These sorts of findings have been repeated again and again using different circumstances.
We face these sorts of willpower-depleting events all day long. When someone jostles you in the street and you resist the urge to shout at them, or when you feel exhausted at work but push on with your email: these all take their toll. The worse the day, the more the willpower muscle is exerted, the more we rely on autopilot, which means increased performance of habits [especially bad habits or habits we are trying to change]. It's crucial to respect the fact that self-control is a limited resource and you are likely to overestimate its strength. Recognizing when your levels of self-control are low means you can make specific plans for those times."
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/07/college-calculus
http://bigthink.com/videos/neurological-disorders-as-alternate-ways-of-being
https://schabrieres.wordpress.com/2015/09/07/juan-gelman-cest-vrai/
https://www.elitedaily.com/life/being-neurotic-good-for-you/992162
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/10/11/1762/htm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6451231/
I have not been this excited for 2021, for the results of the VICTAS trial, until now. I love systematic reviews, which reappraise preexisting evidence, and repurpose and refine the regimens and labeled uses of already out-of-patent medicine. (!) See, someday, I knew I would need horde of information.
Am I able to turn ionones in the current story? I have thought about ionones since reading Luca Turin's Perfumes A-Z (2010), which are synthesized from beta-carotene. Beta-carotene is a vitamin A precursor, and a component of yolk stored for the avian embryo.
https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/187/9/1907/4995887
As I have overheard from my contemporaries, insuring a family is over $800 per month, just for the privilege. This seems unreasonably high. I could pay cash for general care and preventative care and carry a catastrophic policy.
I have low levels of self control when I am less than four hours away from time off from work. I put in a PT/INR for now, noting in the comments INR supertherapeutic at 15, now 3.3, or add a stool softener here and there to tie up.loose ends. The deviation out of my role won't be remembered tomorrow, when I am not here, and it is for the benefit.
I am neurotic about my vasculature and the fear of plaque that necessitates groin staples and midsternal incisions.
I am neurotic about money and health, but that is because it pays to keep a barometer on conditions and adjust accordingly.
The expenses of a household ... a lot. I know.
I keep Excel spreadsheets of this one and mine.
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