Infernal dialogue

I found the following text on one of the Web forums. The author did not identify himself or herself.

One of the better exercises I’ve heard of to increase control over the internal dialogue is based on an interesting theory.

It is that the part of the brain in charge of talking to ourselves is the same part that involves attention. It has finite resources, so if you can fully use them on attention instead of talking, with practice it gives you more and more control over that part of your mind. Sometimes described as like having a “talk to yourself on/off switch”.

By not talking to yourself, you learn how not to talk to yourself.

Thus the exercise is to do several physically undemanding things at the same time, that use a lot of attention.

Ordinary walking uses a great deal of attention, directed to the legs to keep navigating, avoiding obstacles, etc. So it is a great starting point. Added to that, as you walk, holding your hands in some unusual manner, like with two of the fingers crossed. It doesn’t matter what, just as long as your attention is directed to your arms and hands as well as your legs and feet. If you lose attention on your hands, you just change how you are holding them.

The real trick is to unfocus your eyes. And this uses some interesting psychology. Normally, when you look at things, your attention and focus is “point to point”. You look from tiny spot to tiny spot, which uses just minimal attention, seeing most things peripherally. But when you unfocus your eyes, the whole 180 degree tableau in front of you is equal, as far as your attention is concerned.

And this uses a whopping great amount of attention.

Combining all three things: walking, holding your hands funny, and unfocusing your eyes, overwhelms that small part of your brain by taking so much attention, that it just doesn’t have the ability to keep up the internal dialogue.

And you stop talking to yourself, for longer and longer times.

Walking around this way is easy to learn, and with just a mile or two, every day or two, you start to notice increased concentration in about two weeks. And the effects tend to be cumulative, so the more you do it, the better you get.

Imagine being able to sit down and do an entire SAT test without distraction.

I knew one young man who did this exercise, almost because he had to. His internal dialogue was so intense that he continually vacillated back and forth between focused and unfocused. The end result was that he sounded like a California surf bum. He could barely speak a sentence without being distracted. It was both exhaustive and very frustrating for him.

In about a month, I saw him again, and he looked revitalized. He was almost a different person, could speak in whole paragraphs, and loved the ability to actually finish things he had started. I also noted that he was bursting with energy, no longer having to commit so much brain power to internal dialogue and bouncing back and forth.

There are all sorts of ways of accomplishing much the same thing, but he is the reason I remember this exercise so well.

Gretsch G5810

Rock and roll pioneer Bo Diddley, who influenced just about every first and second generation rock and roll musician, has passed away. "Watching Bo Diddley (in 1963) was university for me," said Keith Richards in a recent interview.

Gretsch G5810 is the model of electric guitar designed by Gretsch and Bo Diddley in 1958. It became Bo Diddley's signature instrument.

From a newspaper obituary:

He never lost a feeling of resentment that his signature rhythm couldn't be copyrighted and that record royalties went unpaid. "I am owed, and I never got paid," he told Associated Press in 1999. "A dude with a pencil is worse than a cat with a machine gun."

28 shades

I was walking my dog around the neighbourhood park one early evening, when a little girl at a soccer (futbol) practice there, she must have been eight or nine, noticed us and remarked, "Your dog has a beautiful colour". His fur has more than one colour, the colours and markings of a yellow Labrador Retriever, which he is not being a mutt, that is to say streaks of white, orange, shades of light brown, beige, certainly, not yellow, a couple of dark brown spots on his ears and a pink nose.

The next afternoon, I was walking with a friend from work to the train station, and we were talking. Or rather, I was walking as fast as I could, and he was riding his bicycle as slowly as he could. We were looking at the massive, seven story concrete parking structure that's just opened near the station. Some local politician had called it The Tower of Torture. It was recently painted beige, one of the eight beige colours that had been considered and argued over by committees and people's representatives. The chosen colour is called "Death Valley" and it beat out "Destiny" and, believe it or not "Pearl Harbor". (The Tower of Torture remains an eyesore on the landscape, whether it's beige, or concrete gray.)

My friend, who's red headed, while I'm silver headed, wasn't surprised when I told him I had learned there were eight shades of beige paint. "Oh, yes," he said, "and there are twenty shades of white, I discovered when we were painting our house." He then told me that I wouldn't believe how the brightest white paint was made. "They make it," he said, "by adding a little bit of black to it."

OK, that's something for someone who has studied color theory to figure out. We said goodbye, he headed for his green bus which starts its route at the station, his bicycle to hang on a rack in front, I for the silver train where bicycles, if any, ride inside the passenger cars. The train car I entered was almost empty, this is the end, suburban station, there were three lone women seated, all of them dressed in black (of course), and three bicyclists, sitting near the exit doors with their bikes, all three of them wearing those bright reflective, yellowish green nylon jackets that make them clearly visible on the road. I was, as usual, colour mismatched myself.

The train soon started out for the green hills that about now are starting to turn shades of yellow, beige, brown, the colours, coincidentally, of my dog's fur.

7 doors

To reach my office cubicle from the ground floor gym, I exit through the gym's back door in the weight room, turn right and walk a short corridor behind the daycare center, climb a flight of stairs, step past the round, windowed wall of the corporate data center, then across the second floor bridge between the buildings, past a double row of cubicles into a center hallway, turn right to approach another stairway, and climb one more flight, turn left to walk north then west, passing the printer area, all the way to the outermost corner of the third floor, right next to a small open lounge by the tall windows overlooking the vast company parking lot, a sparsely occupied modern office park beyond it, and a 3,849 foot mountain in the distance. The hike takes no more than a minute or two -- I'll have to clock it with a stopwatch sometime -- probably less time than if I walked across the courtyard to the back entrance of my building and took one of the three elevators up; and the only people I ever and infrequently encounter during this daily walk are an office mailroom worker pushing her cart, or a building maintenance man, or a computer engineer emerging from the data center, which is called a 'lights out center', that is to say, not staffed, and to complete this journey I have to open seven doors, which slam loudly behind me all by themselves, breaking the perfect silence of these colorless, odorless corridors and stairwells straight out of some 1960s Michelangelo Antonioni film.

Communication secrets

"Most guys hate talking and I don’t blame them because talking leads to communication and once you communicate, you’re going to start feeling things, and from there it’s a slippery slope because you’re going to start experiencing life so I try to avoid it."

William H. Macy, actor

Gray scale

I am standing on a suburban train platform waiting for a train to take me to work. There are a few men here, and about a dozen women, most of them waiting for a train going in the direction opposite to mine, toward the great city. I notice that the women are all dressed in black. Head to toe. Black. Some are carrying backpacks or purses. Black. Sunglasses on, it is a bright morning. Black lenses, black frames. I glance at their shoes. Black. Oh, here is a young woman wearing running sneakers. They are gray and white. There is a letter 'W' sown onto the sides of her socks. It probably stands for 'Wilson', a manufacturer of sports equipment, and now apparently apparel as well. Is this 'W' blue? I strain my eyes to see. No, the 'W' is black.

No colors anymore
I want them to turn black

(The Rolling Stones)

Am I becoming colorblind, I think? Is this a black and white film? Am I watching this scene on an old RCA television set. Am I dreaming? I pinch myself. I must be in Sicily, surrounded by grieving widows.

I wanna see it painted, painted black
Black as night, black as coal
I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it painted, painted, painted, painted black
Yeah!

The women all wear trousers. Not one is wearing a skirt or dress. Trousers with zippers in front, like in men's pants. (A piece of trivia, in case you didn't know it: the purpose of zippers in the front of men's pants is so that the wearer can easily pull out his (?) member when standing at a modern urinal.)

I recall seeing photographs of the woman led from the raided Eldorado Texas Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints Church ranch last week, all wearing long dresses in pastel colors, and how someone told me he was shocked and disturbed to see them, that they looked like they had arrived from the early 2oth century.

Finally, lights of an incoming train become visible in the morning mist, an announcement on the loudspeaker, a tall, light skinned young black woman emerges from the up escalator. She is wearing a short dress. Her stockings and high heel shoes are black. The dress is bright pink.

Whiskey and cigarettes

I think it was John Lee Hooker (and every other bluesman) who sang of whiskey and cigarettes (and wild women, whenever possible), at one time not long ago. That was then, this is now. The National Transportation Safety Board investigating the collision of the Chinese freighter ship Cosco Busan with the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on Nov. 8, 2007, which spilled 53,000 gallons of fuel into the bay, disclosed a list of prescription drugs that the 60 year old local pilot of the ship was taking or had taken in the past (in addition to his past alcohol addiction.) Why such personal medical information is being disclosed to the public poses another question altogether, but in the meantime, let's set the particulars of this case aside for a minute to ponder an example of another overmedicated American. Here is the disclosed list of one man's medications:

PRESCRIPTION DRUGS AND SUPPLEMENTS:

-Provigil to ward off drowsiness. Known side effects include impaired judgment.

-Valium as a sleep aid. Side effects can include confusion, depression, lightheadedness or fainting spells.

-Lorazepam, an anti-anxiety drug. Side effects can include confusion, depression, double vision or abnormal eye movements, weakness or tiredness.

-Darvon Compound-65, a narcotic pain reliever. An expert doctor told the NTSB it was inadvisable to take with Lorazepam.

-Wellbutrin, an anti-depressant. Side effects can include confusion and agitation.

-Aciflux for heartburn.

-Lipitor for high cholesterol. Side effects can include tiredness.

-Alphagan, used to treat glaucoma. Side effects can include tiredness or blurred vision.

-Imitrex, a migraine drug. Side effects can include dizziness or faintness, seizures and tiredness.

-Synthroid for thyroid deficiency. Side effects can include difficulty breathing and sleeping.

-Potassium citrate for kidney stones. Side effects can include tiredness.

Whiskey and cigarettes anyone?