Echoes In The Braincase

One of the perks of a digital life is it is possible to present oneself to others neatly giftwrapped, and even add a rumpled bow of modesty and self-deprecation. One can think about it. Engineer it. Why, not too long ago one of you fine commenters here said I was "smart."

This is not so easy to pull off in person. And it's particularly hard to do in the presence of younger people. And I don't know what happened, but there are more and more of them around all the time.

I am well tolerated by the younger people in my life, all of whom I cherish. Now they are smart as hell. They have interesting opinions and different perspectives. I like to listen to them and every now and then I like to snap back with something witty. Problem is, a lot of the witty zone coincides with "things I just thought of five seconds ago." And things that happened five seconds ago live in a sort of quickly escaping vapor. I usually remember the first few words of my witty remark, but then I stick in placeholder grunts, hoping the rest of my thought will stroll by, but sometimes it doesn't, and then I have to say "I lost it there, but it'll come back."

The young people give me a fond and indulgent smile and assure me it will come back, even though it won't, and they know that by now. It's embarrassing. But they're so darn nice. "She's slipping," I see in their thought balloons, but you can see smiley emoticons in there too. I can't refute it. The whole thing has led me to be a better listener, or look just like one. I don't enjoy people witnessing my thoughts evaporate. Acting like I'm listening keeps me from looking as foolish, and is a good idea anyway.

I'm not actually listening. I am at first, but then I start thinking of something else altogether, usually a scene in a novel, or a reminiscence, or the state of the world, and my only connection to the conversation at that point is the attentive look on my face that I hope is still pointed in the correct direction. AND THIS IS WHEN I'M TALKING TO INTERESTING PEOPLE.

Authentic Old Person, With Bran

I'm not as embarrassed around people my own age. We're all kind of a mess. True, in my case some of them watch my neurons failing to connect and secretly put it down to the beer, but they understand anyway. If it wasn't the beer, it'd be something else.

There's a theory going around among older people that this phenomenon has something to do with having one's head so filled with wisdom that some of it needs to be off-loaded, and we have gained insight into what is important to keep and what is not. This is, of course, self-serving baldercookies. The fact is, if there were any more dead air in our brains our neurons wouldn't even touch each other.

Herewith a real dialog example:

     Me: "I'm trying to think of that word. You know, that word? That means, like, you really enjoy something, but it isn't anything you did yourself."

     Person: "Plagiarism?"

     Me: "No, no, more like something...vicarious." 

     Person: "Hmm. Vicarious?"

     Me: "Yeah! That's it! Thanks!" [bounces away]

     Person: [listens for head rattle]

Yes. That really happened. Probably. I do write fiction. It's either real or it's not, I don't remember.

Putting The Pieces Together

As it happens, I'm a quilter too.

I mention this because Nancy, who writes a quilting blog, sent an almost unprecedented number of her readers my way. A whole flock of quilters landed on Murrmurrs and pecked around, and I don't know if they knew what to expect. Mine is a work-a-day, all-purpose blog. I figure if I don't specialize in subject matter, I'll be harder for the trolls to pigeonhole. There are a lot of great bloggers out there writing about politics, or nature, or their cats. I'm more likely to write about the nature of cat poop and tie it in with politics. It's surprisingly easy to do that.

But quilters' blog-rolls run by the yard, and if you take a stroll through their material you realize just how much talent is out there--just how many people are stitching beauty together that makes you warm two ways. I make regular quilts. Mostly the old traditional patterns. It's addictive, watching these things come together under your hands.

The way Dave explains it, if anyone asks, is "Murr takes a bunch of perfectly good fabric and cuts it into little pieces and sews it back together again." Somehow this description seems wrong, but I can't find the flaw in it anywhere. It does make the process sound like a waste of time, but in a true waste of time you don't have a quilt afterwards. Just drool stains and the theme from "Gilligan's Island" in your head.

Anyway, quilting is no different than life. We'd all like to think we see the whole fabric, but in reality we are constantly slicing and dicing what we perceive and then stitching it back together in a way that makes sense to us. We select the evidence that fits our narrative and discard what doesn't. There are people who see in every encounter the likelihood of a personal attack, and set out pickets of rage and blame to hunker behind. My own narrative tends more toward loopy cheer, but neither perspective is made of whole cloth. Even in my garden, which is just nature diced and spliced, I will admire all the flowers and mentally edit out the bindweed until the day it takes over.

At some point in any quilting project I'll discover I've stitched something together backwards and I have to get my seam ripper and undo it. Worse, I'll have run off dozens of the mismatched pairs before I notice my mistake, and that's a lot of ripping. My current project consists of 48 large blocks, each of which is made up of twenty pieces, with a potential 765 ways to go wrong, requiring roughly--hold on, carry the one--three billion stitches to be ripped out. At one juncture, there were at least three incorrect ways to sew two blocks together. I know this because I went through all three, methodically, in order. And then just for good measure I sewed it the first wrong way all over again. Even Chance would have given me better odds of getting it right. And this stuff is easy. All you need to do is hold the pieces together and say "does this look right?" before sewing them together. Which I do. Unfortunately, the dominant loopy-cheer part of my brain always answers "yes indeedy! Why, that looks perfect." Even when it isn't. My brain values optimism over the truth.

This follows a disturbing trend. Whereas ten years ago this might happen once or twice during a single project, now it happens all the way through. That's what's different. My head is fast losing the ability to hang onto two ideas at once for more than three seconds. If I get up to answer the phone while I'm quilting, I won't get back to the machine for hours, because I'll forget that's what I was up to. This should worry me, but instead I find it funny. Because that's the way I like to stitch my reality together.

So it might take me longer than it used to, but eventually, after a lot of ripping, I always get my quilt put together right. I can see my own future, though, and it looks like my elderly friend Mrs. P. I'll ask Mrs. P how her niece is doing in law school, and Mrs. P will say it hardly even itches anymore. I'll say that sounds like good news, and she'll say if it was fine with the bishop, it was fine with her; and after all, what can you expect during strawberry season? And both of us will go off smiling, all our conversational needs met.

I'm approaching my own dotage with a big grin and an even bigger seam ripper, but I know sooner or later I'm going to get all the pieces of my reality sewn together wrong too, and I won't know it. It will look screwy, but I'll still be warm.

This simple, beautiful quilt pattern was created by Cindy Carter, who is kind enough to share. I liked it well enough that I'm going to make another one for myself, because I gave this one away. Thanks, Cindy.