Brilliant with Stars to Dream On.

I still play with the magnetic poetry set in my office, though I’ve not posted any poems recently. It tends to make me feel like an e. e. cummings wannabe, since the only capital letter in any of the sets is the letter “I”. I noticed this poem on the board my office Friday:

I place my trust in life

thick with perilous mischance

ripe with magic grace

dark with timeless night

yet brilliant with stars to dream on

if death be the will of life

my heart will not be discontent

for I have lived

I pieced that together while I was cleaning up my office on my last day of work before going on disability, and then completely forgot about it until I saw it again. It was written six days before I got my transplant. I like the poem. I wonder what happened to the girl who wrote it.

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Ah, but the mundane world intrudes. Last Christmas I purchased some jewelry at a store where I often look, but seldom buy. I got two necklaces (one for each of the sisters) and a ring for Dr. Twenty Cats. The lady at the counter suggested that I sign up for their credit plan, because I would then have six months interest free to pay off the jewelry. That seemed like a fair deal to me. I had the money, but it made perfect sense to charge it and keep the cash available. I paid the jewelry off in five months, but got a bill in the sixth month. The bills arrived only days before the payment was due (something I rather despised, since it seemed designed to create late payments) so I paid it, thinking that I could get a refund from them once I worked the problem out. And indeed I did get a refund check in the amount due me in August, with only minimum effort to clear the problem up on my part.

While I was in California in August, another bill was sent to me from this company for $1.14. This same bill showed a credit of $160 due back to me, so I of course assumed it was a clerical error. They’d sent me a check for $158, so all seemed to be right with the world.

Of course, I was wrong. I should have known I’d be wrong. I now owe $55. The billing I just received indicates I owe accrued finance charges, as well as interest and a late fee. I tried calling their 800 number today at work, but it leads you to an automated system that gives you two choices. Their system allows you to tell them the check is in the mail, and how much that check is for, or lets you can set up a payment schedule for the amount due. Both choices lead to automated systems. There is no option for chewing out a living, sentient (or even semi-sentient) being.

I’ve been burnt before by store credit cards, but this was with a name jeweler. I thought I was dealing with a class outfit here. Now I know. I will never again fall for that old “put it on credit and get a big advantage” scam, even if it’s from a big-name store like Littman/Barclay.

Oops. Did I accidentally type in an actual name there?

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Back in my undergraduate days, I was a psych major. Don’t ask. It’s a long story, suited for another time. There were two things I learned as a psych major that have followed me the rest of my life and made a difference in the way I perceive things. The first concerns cockroaches.

There was an experiment performed where cockroaches were trained to run a T-maze. Their reward was a small pile of food at one of the ends of the T. The amount of time it took to teach cockroaches to learn to turn right or left at the end of the T was recorded and averaged.

The experiment was repeated, with one difference. Instead of the cockroach having the maze to himself, two cockroaches were put in the maze together. The time it took them to learn the T-maze was again timed and averaged. When the two times were compared, it was discovered that the cockroaches ran the T-mazes faster when there were two of them in the maze.

I’ve mentally branded this type of competition “cockroach mentality”. And my observations have convinced me that this mentality is not confined to the cockroach population.

Ever been on a highway, doing maybe five miles an hour over the speed limit? Ever encounter another car in the other lane while doing n+5 mph while the other car was doing n mph? Ever notice that the other car almost invariably speeds up to n+5 mph to keep you from passing it? Cockroach mentality in action.

Ever in a parking lot with plenty of empty spaces and flip on your turn signal to indicate you were going to turn into a spot, only to have another car cut you off to get to that spot first? Cockroach mentality again.

Ever the first car in line at a red light, with another car next to you? Ever notice that when the light turns green, the other car floors it, even though the light one block ahead of you is still red, and destined to remain red for a while yet? The other guy just had to get there first. Still more cockroach mentality.

Ever in a traffic jam where nobody was going anywhere, just creeping along at 15 mph? There you are, leaving a nice safe distance between you and the car ahead of you when the guy in the next lane over abruptly cuts in ahead of you with inches to spare? Speed Racer just had to get ahead of one more car, so he’d get to his destination .0037 seconds faster. You’ve got it: cockroach mentality.

I’ve been considering submitting a paper to the Annals of Improbable Research (sponsors of the Ig Nobel awards) on the topic. There’s a problem though. There’s no way I’d wish to actually win so much as an honorable mention for this.

By the way, the Ig Nobels are on October 2rd, and will be web broadcast. Tickets are available through the above noted website. Those of you who can’t get to Cambridge that day may want to consider tuning in at http://www.improbable.com/ig/2003/2003-details.html. This is a popular event, and bandspace is limited, so be sure to mark your calendars and show up early.

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The other thing of value I learned had to do with behavior modification. My alma mater was big on teaching psychology as a “pure” science. That meant that experiments had to be based on objective and measurable performances. Emotions, which are terribly subjective things, had to be reduced down to respiration rate, pulse rate, pupil dilation, and other measurable phenomenon.

There was a school of psychiatry that believed (and may still believe, for all I know) that the tie between emotion and behavior was a two-way street. We are all used to thinking that if we’re happy, then we act happy. That’s an easy cause-and-effect to grasp.

However, some believed (with some research to back it up) that if you acted happy, then you became happy. This idea was used, with varying degrees of success to treat depression. I haven’t heard much of the technique recently, and I’ve long ago stopped following the psych journals, so I have no idea if this technique is still in favor.

I do know, however, that I can (again with varying degrees of success) use this technique on myself. I stop being angry if I stop acting angry and concentrate on acting forgiving. I stop being frustrated when I concentrate on acting calm. It doesn’t always work, and believe me, I am at the pinnacle of bitchdom when the reverse-your-actions trick fails. It’s less useful for short-term flare-ups of inappropriate emotion than it is for long-term funks.

But I’m in a long-term funk at the moment. So it probably would behoove me to start acting like I’m not. This isn’t a form of denial. It’s just moving on, getting past whatever the problem is. I appreciate I have every right to be in a funk. But the funk has served its purpose. It’s time to move on.

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First step in moving on … getting active in something different, something useful. I called Gift of Life today, and told them I was interested in volunteering. They asked me to email them my name and address and said they’d send me some information. They also invited me to next month’s volunteer meeting.

I’m hoping to be trained as a speaker. When local groups request a guest speaker about donations, I’d be available to tell my story, and convince people of the merits of organ donation. I’ll have an opportunity to meet other people who’ve gone through what I’ve gone through, a chance to make a difference, and perhaps even a foot in the door of finding a way of finding a job in an organization that works with transplant awareness and recipient assistance. Who knows where it will lead? If nothing else, I will get a sense of self-validation from this.

Who knows. It might even be fun. (grin)

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My, but I’ve become long-winded as of late. I do appreciate your patience with my ramblings this evening. One further observation, and I’ll release you to whatever more interesting things you have to do.

Over the weekend, The Socialist observed to me that he believes that everybody is lonely, that nobody really knows anybody else. All we see are the masks that others wear, rarely getting glimpses of what lies beneath the surface. It isn’t a particularly new concept; I’ve run across the sentiment from other people, books, music. Yet the way he explained it (which I unfortunately can’t remember well enough to repeat verbatim) made me realize exactly how profound an insight that is. And it made me realize how valuable those peeks behind the mask really are.

I realized yet again how valuable some of the diaries here and at other sites are. The people who have the boldness to be honest, the confidence to air their insecurities, the garbonzoes to admit to the truth even when there are leeches out there that could (and sometimes do) turn truths into weapons, and twist honesty into deceit … these people who share slivers of their lives are true heroes. I can’t say strongly enough how much I admire those who persevere and continue to tell their story, letting complete strangers into their private places, if only a little way in and if only for a little while. Every time I feel like I’m alone, like I’m the only one who understands me, I have only to read some of the diaries I have followed and come to love, and I realize I’m not the only one who feels as if they are locked within their own mind. This binds us closer together than we can ever realize. I see the irony in that, and the poetry.