{"id":54,"date":"2012-07-22T22:12:31","date_gmt":"2012-07-22T22:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freaksoftechnology.com\/?p=54"},"modified":"2012-07-23T01:39:52","modified_gmt":"2012-07-23T01:39:52","slug":"jessica-miriam-littenberg-the-late-early-period-with-analysis-by-goldie-littenberg-starchild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freaksoftechnology.com\/?p=54","title":{"rendered":"Jessica Miriam Littenberg: The Late Early Period~ (with analysis by Goldie Littenberg-Starchild)"},"content":{"rendered":"

–the following piece was written after Jessica abandoned us for what must have been decades. Fortunately a very nice lady heard our Sisyphean calls and took pity on us until Jessica came back. Our delight at the return of our lady in waiting was short lived, as she brought a small, tightly wound neutron star of a human who called herself “Grandma” and who required ample amounts of coffee but little to no food or sleep. This woman seemed to exert and unprecedented dominion over Jessica, whipping her up into an agitated state and forcing her to disassemble our world, imprison us in small boxes, and have strange men carry us through some infernal wormhole to a new world at its chaotic formation. As our new celestial body cooled and solidified we have grown to love it as our own, and over time the stories of the great cataclysm turned to legend, degenerated to myth, forgotten. Their remnants remain. But I digress. After a period of many feedings, sleep, burning of plants, and frantic movement punctuated with periods of quiet rocking, Jessica produced this short poem \u2014G.L.S.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Finally Again<\/em><\/p>\n

Finally again
\nI shelter my thin skin in external walls.
\nThe world incurs, some days invades
\nothers almost none at all.
\nIt is a gift from quiet to regain
\nthe strength with chaos drains,
\nto have the luxury to disengage
\nfrom a world that spins the speed at which mistakes are made.<\/p>\n

–the following series of poems and prose have been generated in a renewed period of what I believe you humans call self-analysis and improvement. In Standard Galactic Cat, it is simply referred to as \u2018unnecessary\u2019\u2013G.L.S.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reasons to Leave the House<\/em><\/p>\n

To be in nature
\nTo visit friends
\nTo get stimulation
\nTo get exercise
\nTo get healthy
\nTo see new and beautiful things
\nTo discover new places
\nTo run into people I forgot all about
\nTo get ideas
\nTo smell and taste fresh air
\nTo see, interact with, and maybe even touch new animals
\nTo try new foods
\nTo buy food and other necessities
\nTo see what is happening
\nTo meet new people
\nTo touch things
\nTo be a friend
\nTo participate<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On Severe Depression<\/em><\/p>\n

(Part I)
\nI\u2019ve heard it said, \u2018write what you know.\u2019 So, at the risk of being a negative nancy[1], I\u2019m going to write about severe depression.[2] The problem with writing about severe depression is that it doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

Severe depression is an absence, not a presence. Severe depression is the absence of desire. Not just the desire that we call desire, the wanting passion, the grasping at the world\u2013nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs; but, also the abstract desire to be, the desire to live. On top of the basic desire to live\/be is the desire to live\/be in a certain way, the desire to be a good person, both in general and in the specific roles we play \u2014 child, friend, lover, employee, boss, parent, etc. What good means is culturally mediated but, ultimately, individually determined.[3]<\/p>\n

For much of human history, being good has meant being obedient. And, while this still applies to children as well as certain ethnic subcultures\u2013for the rest of us, being obedient has been eclipsed by being actualized (at least when we\u2019re not at work). Unlike being obedient, which usually comes with specific instructions, being actualized remains maddeningly vague. The best I can figure out is that it has something to do with pushing yourself as hard as possible to cram as many things into your life as possible.[4]<\/p>\n

It turns out the opposite of the desire to live is not the desire to die, for that is also a desire, however perverse. The opposite of the desire to live is severe depression. This is not to say that severely depressed people don\u2019t kill themselves, they do, but I believe it is more out of the impulse to escape pain than any desire for the imagined relief and peace of death<\/p>\n

Impulses are pretty much the extent of the severely depressed person\u2019s interactions with the world. And even then, these impulses, these actions, are actually a break, a spark in the void of severe depression, driven by panic or some similarly reptilian emotion; as far as possible from the will power of the frontal lobe. I\u2019ve felt that kind of panic. I found it both barely tolerable and blessedly unsustainable, like rage, eventually you run out of steam. Severe depression, like apathy, runs on the lack of steam; it is an absence not a presence.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is easier to destroy than to create. Maybe this is why modern medicine insists on treating depression as a thing, a malignant presence to be vanquished. Or did you not realize that those white coats were suits of armor and all the disease dragons?<\/p>\n