Date: Sat, 17 Aug 1996 15:39:26 -0400
Message-Id: <199608171939.PAA06258@asylum.apocalypse.org>
From: Kafka Dreams <kjc@[APOCALYPSE]>
To: void
Subject: lost words


  I have been thinking about lost words.  I lose a lot of them now,
more than I used to, generally at innappropriate moments (for
instance, when I need them) and the problem only seems to be getting
worse.

  (Footnote 1: Actually, concentrating upon the problem now, I suspect
'misplace' would be a better verb descriptor for the situation.
Because they don't go permanently, just long enough to leave me
babbling.)

  The other day I asked my housemate for the name of that frozen water
stuff, you know, what you get when water freezes?  She replied, "Ice?"

  Of course!  Ice!  There it is!  I had it all along.  I just couldn't
get to it.  It's frustrating.  Extremely frustrating.  I can always
describe the word I want:

  "The big cold box in the corner of the kitchen."
  "That squishy thing inside your skull where all your thoughts live."
  "The bright shiny thing that people watch in the livingroom."
  "A hole in the wall you can open & close but isn't a door."
  "It has pages, printed words, a binding, a cover..."

...and sometimes I end up arriving at the word in a big EUREKA sort of
feeling.  More often, someone else fills it in for me.

  Where is this coming from?  Why is it getting worse?  (The gloomy
paranoid hypochondriac voice sez "brain tumor" but somehow, I don't
think so). 

  I do have one theory.  All my life my father's been trying to get me
into computers while I've been much more interested in reading and
writing.  The step-by-step processes of putting together a math
problem or a computer program never particularly interested me.  My
brain was too busy exploring the psychological ramifications of
literature and the motivation of characters and the construction of
actual parallel sentences (unlike this one) and what a great buzz a
well-told story can be.

  Then I went to college and ended up working with computers,
balancing hardware installs with operational upkeep and my classes in
English, Psychology & Politics.  I learned a lot about all of the
above, but not as much of them as I could've if I'd concentrated on
one thing.  And after 6 years of that, I suddenly stopped taking
classes and specifically devoted at least one-third of my life to the
computer industry.  I'm going on two years of this now.

  So maybe the words get distracted by all the new stuff, or fall into
grooves not meant for their kind of information.  Perhaps the
grayish-pink spongy thing is wiring and re-wiring and the new way of
handling problems I have pressed upon it (tinged with panic and heavy
with responsibility) is slowly becoming the new pattern.  

  (Footnote 2: It continues to be difficult - I have trouble with
stupid things like remembering bandwidth is in kilo-bits while
transfer rates are usually in kilo-bytes and I'm much better at
documenting a procedure as it's taught to me than figuring it out on
my own, but I give my brain no choice and we move forward, sluicing
through the data.)

  And maybe it's a struggle between the two halves of my brain.  And
in the chaos, words are getting lost.